Jaine Austen 7 - Killing Bridezilla (10 page)

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“Attention, everybody,” Conrad Devane called out. “Since Patti is taking a little longer than expected”—at which point, Daphna Devane rolled her eyes theatrically—“I want everybody to enjoy a flaming Elizabethan rum punch! It’s Patti’s favorite cocktail. Now don’t blow out the flames until we’ve toasted the bride and groom.”

Brad took two drinks off a passing tray and handed me one, the flames licking at my eyebrows.

Leave it to Patti to come up with a dopey drink like this.

When everyone had been served, Conrad raised his drink in a toast.

“To Patti and Dickie.”

“To Patti and Dickie,” we all echoed hollowly.

Denise was watching us now, and once again Brad shifted into high octane lovebird mode, staring worshipfully into my eyes and entwining his drinking arm with mine.

We were just about to blow out the flames and drink our ridiculous concoctions when a passing waiter, no doubt unused to traipsing around in tights, tripped and jostled my arm.

The poor guy apologized profusely, and I told him it was nothing to worry about.

Wrong.

There was plenty to worry about.

Because just then I smelled smoke.

I turned and, to my horror, saw that it was coming from Walter’s toupee. Good heavens, I’d set Walter’s hairpiece on fire!

Suddenly flames started shooting from the matted fur.

“Walter!” I screamed. “Your hair’s on fire.”

At which point, Brad sprang into action, whip

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ping the wig from Walter’s head and hurling it to the ground, where he proceeded to stomp out the flames.

Walter eyed the charred remains of his toupee and whirled on me, furious.

“You did this, didn’t you?”

“Walter, I swear it was an accident!”

“First you reject me in high school, and now you set my hair on fire!”

I continued to protest that it had all been a ghastly accident, but I didn’t get very far. Because Denise, who had been staring intently at Brad throughout this whole firefighting escapade, suddenly blurted out: “Now I know where I saw you before! At Patti’s bachelorette party. You were one of the male strippers. You’re Fireman Brad!”

All eyes were now on me and Brad.

He turned to me, sheepish.

“It’s a part-time gig,” he shrugged.

“You’re engaged to a male stripper?” Walter asked.

“We’re not engaged,” I sighed. This stupid charade had gone on long enough. “He’s not my fiancé. He’s a paid escort, all right?”

“You’re here with a paid escort?” Walter bellowed, just in case anybody in Pomona didn’t hear.

“I’m so sorry about this, Jaine,” Brad said, his eyes wide with sympathy. “But actually your hour is up, so unless you want to spring for another three hundred dollars, I’d better be going. Besides, Mona’s probably waiting for me out front.”

He gave me a plaintive wave good-bye and headed off, crossing paths with Conrad, who had just come from inside the house.

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“Okay, everybody,” Conrad said. “Grab a seat.

Patti’s ready now. The show’s about to start.”

The guests began trooping across the lawn to their seats. Nothing, I thought, could possibly top the show they’d just seen.

How wrong I was.

Chapter 10

Ithought about running out after Brad, away from this ghastly wedding, but I refused to take the coward’s way out. We Austens are a proud people. Instead, I took a seat on one of the white slatted folding chairs, determined to suck in my gut, hold my head high, and stuff my face with as much free food at the reception as possible.

I soon began to regret my decision. All around me, people were shooting me covert glances, whispering about the Flaming Toupee Affair.

Their whispers died down, however, when strains of lilting flute music filled the air and Patti came floating out onto the balcony, looking far lovelier than she deserved.

Dickie stood below her beside one of the Cupid statues and smiled nervously. I couldn’t be sure, but I thought I saw a cheat sheet with his lines propped up on Cupid’s diaper.

“Dickie, Dickie!” Patti cried, launching into her first speech with all the finesse of a cheerleader at the Old Vic. “Wherefore art thou, Dickie?”

But she wasn’t about to find out wherefore Dickie was because just then a woman in a 96

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T-shirt and faded cutoffs came lurching down the aisle, glugging from a bottle of whiskey.

“Bravo, Patti!” the woman shouted. “Break a leg.”

Dickie turned ashen.

“Normalynne,” he gasped.

Good heavens. It was Dickie’s ex-wife, Normalynne Butler!

Aside from the fact that she was roaring drunk, she hadn’t changed much since high school.

Same scrawny body. Same lank brown hair in the same ponytail. Eyes framed by the same unflattering harlequin glasses.

Back then, Normalynne had been the kind of mousy kid who faded into the scenery. But she was far from mousy now.

“On second thought,” she called up to Patti,

“why don’t you make everybody happy and break your neck, you conniving bitch?”

Then she turned to Dickie, who looked like he’d sell his soul to sink into a gopher hole.

“Can’t you see, Dickie? She’ll only make you miserable!”

“Somebody get her out of here!” Patti shrieked.

At which point, Conrad Devane and Kyle Potter rushed to Normalynne’s side and began hustling her off the grounds.

“She stole my husband!” Normalynne wailed as they dragged her toward the house.

“Oh, get real, Normalynne!” Patti shouted after her. “Sooner or later Dickie was bound to leave you!”

The wedding guests, whose tongues were getting quite a workout that afternoon, were now yakking full blast about the latest development in this drama-fest of a wedding.

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“Will you all please shut up?” Patti screeched, ever the gracious hostess.

Silence was finally restored and the show began. This time, with Shakespeare no doubt gagging in the great hereafter, Patti and Dickie managed to say their lines. They agreed to get married right then and there and avoid the whole icky double suicide mess.

But when Patti leaned over the balcony to blow Dickie a kiss, something happened that was definitely not in the script. A grating whine filled the air, and suddenly the imported Veronese railing gave way. A look of utter confusion crossed Patti’s face as it came crashing to the ground.

She struggled to maintain her balance, teetering on the edge of the balcony for a few nail-biting seconds. But then, to the horror of everyone present, she fell, her wedding gown billowing out behind her like a tulle parachute.

The crowd gasped as she landed with a sickening thud on the marble statue of Cupid. According to the coroner, she was killed instantly, impaled in the heart by Cupid’s arrow.

Poor Patti. Killed by the cherub of love. Not exactly the happy ending she’d been hoping for.

Of course, none of us knew about the coroner’s report at the time. All we knew was that the bride, skewered by Cupid’s arrow, was dead.

“She’s not breathing,” Dickie moaned over and over as he stroked her lifeless body.

Daphna Devane stood nearby, her face a frozen mask, while Conrad turned to his guests.

“I think you’d all better leave now,” he said, his voice choked with tears.

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In somber silence we filed across the lawn and then in through the house to retrieve our cars from the valets out front. As I inched along at the tail end of the line, I thought about Patti’s fatal plunge. There was something about the way the railing had given way so easily, as if it had been barely bolted in, that roused my suspicions.

Given Patti’s endless enemy list, I couldn’t help wondering if her death might not have been an accident.

At last I reach the foyer where my thoughts were interrupted by the sight of my wedding present on the gift table. I had a sudden urge to reach out and take back my $90 corkscrew. Yes, it was incredibly tacky of me, what with Patti lying dead out back, but lest you forget, I still hadn’t been paid and my bank balance was pretty close to flatlining, too. I really needed that ninety bucks.

So I decided to go for it.

I hung back until everyone had filed outside, and when the coast was clear, I sidled over to the gift table. But just as I was snatching my gift, I looked up and saw Eleanor Potter coming down the Devanes’ winding staircase.

I froze, caught in the act of giftnabbing.

I only hoped she wouldn’t blab about this to Patti’s parents.

But then I noticed something strange. I wasn’t the only one who was embarrassed. The mother of the groom looked pretty darned uncomfortable herself.

Now, I knew why I was feeling guilty. The question was: what had Eleanor been up to?

“What a tragedy about poor Patti,” she tsked.

“We’re all devastated.”

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Oh, yeah? She didn’t look all that devastated to me. I remembered her vow to put a stop to the wedding. Killing the bride was one surefire way of doing it.

“I was just upstairs powdering my nose,” she said with a stiff smile. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I must go and console Daphna.”

Her eyes drifted to the purloined wedding gift in my hand.

“Go ahead,” she said, her smile growing conspiratorial. “Take it back. Poor Patti can’t use it now.”

She left me to rejoin the members of the immediate family at the back of the house, and I headed outside with my corkscrew. After giving my parking ticket to the valet, I hovered near some shrubs, hoping no one would notice my booty.

I’d already been the object of enough embarrassing chatter, thanks to the flaming toupee fiasco.

But no one even glanced my way. They were all too busy whispering about Patti’s fatal plunge.

Waiting for the valets to retrieve my car, I wondered what Eleanor Potter had been doing upstairs. I wasn’t buying that nose-powdering excuse. Not for a minute. Why go upstairs to use the bathroom when there were about a gazillion guest bathrooms downstairs?

I was in the midst of these musings when I heard a car horn honking. I looked up and saw the most god-awful purple Cadillac roaring up the circular driveway.

And I wasn’t the only one staring at this automotive monstrosity.

Everyone else in the well-heeled crowd had turned to gape at it, too.

The car came to a screeching halt, and then—

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to my utter and complete mortification—out popped Rocky aka Miss Emily.

Still wearing his
Practice Makes Pervert
T-shirt.

Oh, Lord. Obviously Brad had never called him to tell him he was going to make it to the wedding after all.

“Jaine, sweetheart!” Rocky waved at me, smiling broadly, his store-bought choppers glinting in the afternoon sun. “Here I am! Your neurosurgeon fiancé, Francois.”

Now it was me they were gaping at—me and the wedding gift I’d just taken back from a dead bride.

And as I stood there, burning with humiliation, I knew that somewhere in hell, Patti was chuckling.

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YOU’VE GOT MAIL

To: Jausten

From: Shoptillyoudrop

Subject: Getting Ready for Roberto
Marvelous news, darling. The Sunny Maintenance people are coming to clean the carpets, which sorely need it. We still have gravy stains under the dining room table from last Thanksgiving! It wasn’t easy getting them on such short notice, but I begged and pleaded and they finally agreed.

Not only that, I got the most divine curtains for the guest bedroom, a lovely sage green which will work so well with the new sage comforter set I ordered from the shopping channel. What a bargain that was! Only $49.95—plus free shipping and handling! It was so lovely, I ordered one for you, too, dear. They were all out of sage, so I got you Tequila Sunrise. It’s an orangey-magenta color, a tad on the loud side, but you can always tone it down with throw pillows.

I’ve decided to welcome Roberto on his first night with a genuine Italian meal. Edna Lindstrom next door gave me the most yummy recipe for eggplant parmigiana. I cooked a test batch and it was fabulous. Edna says the recipe comes from the best Italian restaurant in Oslo.

And the best news of all—Daddy seems to have forgotten all about Roberto. Apparently he had an argument with the Tampa Vistas librarian about an overdue book, and that’s all he seems to be talking about lately. You know Daddy. He always has to be 102

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mad about something. I’m just glad it’s not Roberto!

Oops. There’s the doorbell. It must be the carpet cleaners.

Ciao, sweetheart!

XXX

Mom

To: Jausten

From: DaddyO

Subject: Civil Rights Violation
Dearest Lambchop—

Your mom’s running around like Martha Stewart on speed, getting the house ready for her sleazy Italian lover. She thinks I’ve forgotten about him but I haven’t.

True, I’ve been somewhat preoccupied over another matter. You’ll never believe what happened when I went to the Tampa Vistas library the other day.

Lydia Pinkus, the insufferable woman who runs the place, claimed the book I was returning was overdue. A blatant lie. The return date was the eighth; anyone with working eyeballs could see that. But that self-righteous battle-ax insisted it was a “three”

on the date stamp, not an “eight.” Of course, if the cheapskates on the Tampa Vistas board of directors would invest in a new date stamp or get a computer like the rest of the world, we wouldn’t be having this problem.

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I stood up for my rights, as any red-blooded American would do, and refused to pay the fine. True, it was only 18 cents, but it was the principal of the thing! If nothing else, Lambchop, I am a man of principle.

And now I’m also a man without a library card.

Because when I told that Pinkus woman I intended to keep my library book until she waived the fine, she ripped up my card.