Killer Wedding (3 page)

A
t the end of a charming cul-de-sac, in the historic Whitley Heights section of the Hollywood Hills, amid a dozen pale stucco houses designed in the early thirties when residential architecture had real style, sits my little abode. Smack next to a retaining wall. Smack next to the 101 Freeway. In Hollywood Hills real estate, charm was either very expensive or extremely noisy.

Climbing up my front steps, the mighty river of rushing cars can be heard if not seen. But inside, door shut, the roar of traffic becomes instantly muffled. Darling though it is, this is not a house in which one may carelessly throw open a window. True.

Yet, I love the place. Adorable and affordable, my Spanish charmer has a pedigree that goes back to its original owner, a silent film comedian who was famed for his googly eyes.

“Holly? Wes?” I called.

The lower level of my house has been converted to suit my business, with offices where the original living and dining rooms were, and a largely remodeled kitchen, which can withstand the industrial-sized cooking assignments we love. Upstairs, I've converted the space into my private quarters.

I checked my watch as I walked through the empty entry hall, past Holly's deserted desk and computer. Six-
fifty. I just couldn't wait to tell them about meeting Vivian Duncan. They'd die.

“Anybody home?”

As I turned on a light in my office, I detected the excellent aromas of frying olive oil and perhaps ham, wafting from the direction of the kitchen. Dropping my purse and Vivian's pink portfolio onto my desk, I heard Wes's voice calling. I hefted the bowl of lavender roses and headed toward the voice.

In the kitchen, I felt at once relaxed and restored. The bright lights gleamed off all the shiny white tiles, the brushed aluminum appliances, and the worn butcher-block countertops. My two friends were here, huddled at the large, marble-topped island in the center of the room.

“We didn't know
when
you would be home,” Holly said, looking up, a cup of coffee in her hand. “Ooh, great flowers!” She pushed her stick-straight bangs back off her forehead and looked a bit anxious. “We started to make dinner, hope you don't freak.”

“Moi? Freak?” How well they knew me.

Holly grinned. Standing with one hand on top of her head, white-blond hair pulled back off her forehead, this beanpole of a young woman was stretched to her fullest height, a height that was formidable enough even without the three-inch open-toed wedgies she was wearing at the moment.

“Anything left for me to do?” I asked, trying for nonchalant rather than freaky. I love to roll my sleeves up and become consumed in the, okay, I know it's hokey, the joy of cooking.

“Of course,” Wes said, sticking his head up from the magazine he'd been consulting. “We were just doing
Bon Appetit
roulette. Why don't you take the main course, sweetie?”

I keep an enormous stack of cooking magazines, back issues for years. Sometimes, we just close our eyes and open the page and make whatever we land on. Apparently Holly had just gotten back from the market.

“Great,” I said, looking at the recipe Wes was reading. “Great.” I gave him a little hug.

Wesley Westcott is my right hand. Or perhaps I should say I'm his. We met just after I finished studying at the Culinary Institute in San Francisco about nine years ago, and have stuck like glue to each other ever since. I was working as the lowest sous chef at a celebrated foodie haunt up in Berkeley, paying my dues, and loving it. Wes was finishing up his Ph.D. in comparative intelligences, or something obscure, and he talked me into moving down to L.A. to see if we could start our own firm, catering big Hollywood parties and even working at the studios, catering meals for the stars.

I thought it was a radical idea. I'd been very wrapped up in my own bitter love life at the time. In fact, I'd been dumped by a chef. And a major move southward was the perfect escape. In this way, a new career was born, and Wes and I have been together to this day. I vowed never again to let romance enter into the picture when I was cooking, and with Wesley Westcott, I'd been able to develop the best relationship I've ever had with a man.

“What's this?
Paella
?” I asked, reading from the page they had marked. “Oh, the
pungent
taste of
saffron
!” I did a rather good Julia Child impersonation.

“But,” Wes insisted, as I read through the recipe, “we're not putting in that many onions.”

“I'm making the salad,” Holly said, bending down to whisper in my ear. “Mad, honey, I think Wesley's taste buds are getting totally ghetto.”

“As in…?” I had gotten lost. Holly Nichols needed to come with her own glossary. Updated daily.

“Oh,” Wes said, airily, “skateboarder talk. She's dissin' me. Thinks I can't hack the stronger spices.” Wes retied the white chef's apron he wore over his denim shirt and dungarees. “Use however many onions you want to, board girl.” He picked up another magazine and flipped the page, reading. “I'll do the cake.”

The fun of cooking is enhanced, I think, when you
can do it with friends. And as I poured good olive oil into the heavy enameled pan, I began to gather my ingredients. First thing to do was finish sautéing the hot Cajun sausages. I loved the aroma and hiss of it all. While they were losing their inner pink, I lined up a dozen chicken thighs and a few dozen large shrimp, and began cleaning and chopping an onion (who needs two?) and peeling the dozen garlic cloves I'd use later.

“What took you so long?” Wes asked, always needing details. He turned the bowl of pale lavender roses around, checking them with his discerning eye. “You made it to Beverly Hills and got the full Darius treatment. And then…?”

“What a weird afternoon,” I said, as I removed the sausage and added the chicken, skin side down, to the hot pan. Holly handed me the lid and I covered the thighs to let them cook gently through.

“I met Vivian Duncan.”

“No shit!”

Holly was standing next to me at the industrial eight-burner range, sprinkling oregano over a mixture of baguette cubes and coarsely chopped prosciutto. When she thought I wasn't looking, she swiped a few peeled cloves of garlic and tossed them into her pan.

“Hey!”

“So you met Vivian Duncan,” Wes said, eyes gleaming. “Was blood drawn?”

“It's a pretty strange story. She had her car stolen in broad daylight right from the alley behind the shops on Rodeo. Right near Darius. She was so shook up she asked me to take over a client meeting for her. Isn't that odd? I mean, we work in this town for all these years and I've never ever run into her, and then all of a sudden there she was, sitting on the pavement with a huge run in her pantyhose.”

“She was car-jacked?” Holly asked. “I give up. I mean, you hear about those things happening,” she said, shaking her white-blond wisps, “but when old broads
can't get a manicure in B.H. without getting mugged, it's too much. We should move.”

“Away from L.A.?” I moved in for a surreptitious taste of Holly's
migas
, the Spanish starter of ham fried with garlicky breadcrumbs she'd been stirring up. She caught me and shooed me off.

“Well, we can't leave town yet,” Wes said, diffidently, as he buttered his third cake pan and began mincing orange peel. “We've been invited to a wedding.”

“What?” I spun and looked at him.

“My, what a coincidence,” he said, chuckling. “While you were out, we got a phone call from that man who works with Vivian Duncan. Ted Pettibone.”

“You're kidding,” I said.

“What do they all call him?” Holly asked. In the small world of caterers and party planners and restauranteurs, the gossip factor was appallingly high, and I had to admit, Holly was responsible for a fair share of it.

“Whisper,” Wes said. “Those who know him well call him Whisper Pettibone, although I don't know why. He spoke in a perfectly civil tone on the phone.”

“Maybe he whispers sweet nothings in Vivian's ear,” chuckled Holly, as she washed the arugula and romaine.

“Not even a possibility,” Wes said, enjoying his fair share of gossip, too. “Vivian's married to that handsome man who doesn't do anything. Doesn't really work, I mean. And they have a grown daughter, don't they? But anyway, no matter what Vivian might be up to, Whisper is a, well, a
confirmed bachelor
.”

“Oh,” said Holly.

“Oh,” I said.

I added the cooked chicken to the bowl of cooked sausage, and began sautéing the chopped onion and garlic cloves. Recalling the recent garlic theft, I quickly peeled and chopped two more cloves.

“Did Whisper Pettibone invite us to the Silver-Bell wedding?” I asked, intrigued.

“The what?” Holly asked.

“June tenth at the Museum of Nature,” Wes con
firmed, as he moved to the food processor to mix together his dry ingredients—flour, baking powder, salt, and a cup of almonds.

“Sara Silver and Brent Bell. That's the couple I met with today,” I explained to Holly. “Isn't it sweet that they wanted to invite us to their wedding?”

“Where in the museum are they getting married?” Holly asked. “Not in the Hall of Dinosaurs! That is so nug!”

“Nug?” I looked to Wes for translation but he only shrugged.

“Man, I love fossils,” Holly said, excited. “The
Triceratops
was a plant-eater, did you know that?”

“Is that so?” Wes commented dryly. “Well, there will be no
paella
for that, uh,
bad boy
.”

“I've always wanted to do a big event at the Museum of Nature.” I added freshly sliced tomatoes and a couple of bay leaves to the cooking vegetables. “It is awfully cool.”

“It is awfully expensive,” Wes noted, as he continued to whir various sweet ingredients into his batter. “Didn't we look into renting that place for a wrap party one time, Mad?”

“Right. It's over ten grand just to get in the door, plus thousands for each additional room you need. It's fabulous but it's a hassle. They have a gazillion restrictions and rules and fire codes. Anyway, this couple, Sara Silver and Brent Bell, were going through a bit of a crisis today. Actually, I'm glad to hear they're over it.”

I added a sliced red bell pepper to the pan and heard the delightful crackle as cold veggie hit sizzling oil. Heaven.

I quickly stirred arborio rice into the cooked tomato and peppers, while I turned down the heat under a pot of chicken broth simmering with paprika and saffron.

Wesley came over to lend a hand.

Holly sliced the sausage into nice thick diagonals, and tossed them in, and Wes began adding the cooked chicken to the rice mixture. I topped it by carefully pour
ing the hot chicken broth over all. With a tight twist of heavy-duty aluminum foil to seal in the steam and juices, Wesley lifted the heavy pan into the oven. Wes and Holly each went back to their own workstations, jobs still to do, but I was ready for a break.

“So it's going to be a fabulous wedding,” Holly prompted, trying to pick up the thread of our conversation.

My refrigerator is never without a stash of Diet Coke and I poured myself a glass and got back to the tale of my day. “I hope so. They seemed like a very nice couple. And they have no discernable problem spending money.”

Holly put her salad greens in the refrigerator to crisp up and said, dreamily, “I love that in a man.”

“Well, then, I think you'd have a crush on the bride's grandfather. Apparently he's paying for it all.”

Forty minutes passed while the savory
paella
simmered in the oven, spreading its marvelous scent of the Mediterranean. I stirred rich chocolate icing as Wesley finished up baking his orange-almond cake, and Holly happily filled us in on all the latest news she'd unearthed in her amazingly stealthy way.

The phone rang just as I was adding the garlic-marinated shrimp to my nicely cooking
paella
, so Holly answered.

“Mad,” she said, “it's for you.
Whisper
Pettibone.”

Wes put the cakes on the cooling racks and turned to listen.

Wiping my hands and placing the
paella
back into the oven, I took the receiver.

“Hello.”

“Is this Madeline Bean?”

“Yes.”

“We've never met, but I know you were with Vivian this afternoon. I hope you don't mind that I am calling.”

“Why, no.”

“I work with Vivian and of course she called me this afternoon, right after she ruined her wonderful suit. And,
as I'm sure you know, replacing this season's Chanel suit in a size four is simply impossible. But we'll get over it. She told me the angels had sent you from heaven to take over her tabletop.”

I doubted the angels in heaven were too worried about Vivian's party-planning schedule, but I thought it rude to make any such comment.

“The point is, Vivian stopped back for a moment to change clothes, naturally, but now she's off again. And she is not answering her phone. I'm simply desperate to find her.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Sorry. Is she with you?”

“Sorry,” I said, imitating his precise way of speaking without thinking. “No.”

“Oh. I see. Terribly sorry to burden you. Don't give it another thought.” And then the man hung up.

“Vivian is missing?” Wes asked, a furrow creasing his normally smooth brow. Wesley was as thin as they come, and had that thick brown hair that stuck out with a little prompting and the right sort of gel.

“Apparently. And I'm getting a bad feeling. Suddenly, Vivian Duncan is all over my life. She even wants us to buy her wedding business.”

Wes shot me an everyone-has-a-good-idea-what-we-should-do-with-our-windfall look.