Veiled Threats (2 page)

“You're a guest. I'm very sorry. I—”

“My fault.” He had a light tenor voice, surprising in such a large man, and slightly crooked front teeth that showed when he smiled and saved him from being male-model perfect. Not that one objects to perfect strangers. “Obviously I came in the wrong door,” he was saying. “Have I missed everything?”

“Yes. No.” Deep breath. “The ceremony is almost over, but you can slip in the back if you go through the dining room and to your right. I am sorry.”

“No problem,” he said, smiling as he walked by. “You can order me around anytime.”

I stood bemused for a moment, muttering “Who
was
that masked man?”

Then I got back to work.

W
HEN YOU
’
RE WORKING
,
WEDDING RECEPTIONS ARE ONE LONG
adrenaline rush. Make sure a table is set aside for signing the marriage certificate. Make sure the photographer knows where the table is. Make sure the string quartet knows their cue to switch from Mozart to the first waltz, and will adhere to their blood oath not to play the horribly overplayed Pachelbel
Canon
. Make damn sure everything is elegant, with an original flair.

A wedding coordinator is a sort of general contractor, a hardheaded business type who secures the services of printer, dressmaker, wine merchant, reception hall, bakery, clergy, ad infinitum. She's also an assistant daydreamer and amateur therapist, bringing fantasies to life and smoothing family tensions. At that moment, though, I felt like nothing so much as a Broadway producer with a hit on my hands. Diane, Jeffrey, and their guests filed into the dining room in a cheery chaos of laughter, hugs, and champagne, strobe-lit by flashbulbs and perfumed with roses and the honeyed scent of beeswax candles.

I paused to catch my breath and take it all in. This was my largest wedding yet and I'd done an excellent job, more than earning my percentage of the wedding budget and some invaluable word-of-mouth advertising. I allowed myself a
moment of giddy optimism. Surely Made in Heaven would make it after all. Though we'd better do it soon. The bills were mounting up, my partner Eddie Breen was deferring his salary, and I was overdue on the start-up loan my mother had made me. She had a balloon payment on her mortgage coming up in September. Surely I could pay her back by then.

Back to business. “Where do the gifts go?” “Is there pork in the pâté?” “Can the violinist play ‘Feelings’?” Upstairs, definitely not, and I'm
so
sorry but no, I replied, while directing the photographer, paying the judge, and flinging my last handkerchief on some spilled champagne before it stained the oak floor and ate into our damage deposit.

Suddenly I had company: Crazy Mary was on her knees, scrubbing at the spill with a napkin. Her hands were curled and knobbly with arthritis, just like my mother's.

“Why, thank you,” I said.

She turned her startled eyes to me and spoke, in a voice like dry leaves. “She said I could stay, the bride did! She said I could have a piece of cake.”

Good for Diane. “Of course you can. And don't worry about this. I'll take care of it.”

“Terrible,” she muttered, continuing to scrub. “People are terrible. Breaking things, stealing things. I saw him, you know. I saw him.”

It was actually a woman who'd spilled the champagne, but I let it go. “It's all right, thanks for helping. They'll be cutting the cake soon.”

“Terrible.” Her head went on shaking, like a pendulum. “Terrible, terrible. I saw him.”

Then the crowd shifted around us, and she was gone. I rose and waved across the room at the photographer to take
her position near the cake. Oops. Just behind her, stepping aside from the knot of guests around Diane, was the green-eyed man in the heathery sweater. He raised an eyebrow and waved back at me, and I felt myself blushing again. Sometimes I hate being a redhead. He lifted his champagne glass in a private toast. Or was it an invitation to join him?

I would have joined him, too, but my way was suddenly blocked by 265 pounds of Slavic fury: Boris, the Mad Russian Florist.

“Kharrnegie! You rruined my bouquet! For what?”

Boris Nevsky was not really mad, not entirely, but my pal Lily had nicknamed him and the name stuck. He was huge and loud and brilliant with flowers, and the fact that I'd dated him a couple of times apparently gave him license to harass me at wedding receptions. The dates had stopped when I went to his family's place for a lamb barbecue, and the lamb was still alive when I got there. He thought I was prissy and squeamish, and I thought he was a barbarian. Besides, any more of his embraces and I'd have had broken ribs.

No one exactly invited Boris to their weddings, but once he delivered his flowers and arranged them with ferocious precision, he just never left. Yo u don't ask a force of nature to go home. I explained about Susie's bouquet, quickly and quietly. Boris stared at me, his thick black eyebrows parting and rising like the Fremont drawbridge. His face seemed to contract, like a fist, when he was angry, and then expand like the full moon when he smiled. Just now he was expanding, and erupting in laughter.

“Sneezing? Sneezing! Yo u should have put her in string quartet, for percussion! Kharnegie, you look beautiful tonight.”

“Well thanks, Boris, but—”

But he was at it again, embracing me in a grizzly bear hug, then planting a big wet kiss. It was like being hit in the mouth by an affectionate truck. I pushed him away, and caught a glimpse of the green-eyed man, who was now heading for the bar. And there by the cake table was dear Dorothy Fenner. Bloody hell. She looked at me in a pained but sympathetic way, as you would at a four-year-old who's knocked over the orange juice again. Sighing, I headed for the ladies’ room to regroup.

The Sercombe House cloakroom was sweet enough to induce diabetic coma: gilt cupids, blossom-and-ribbon wallpaper, and tiny china bowls of potpourri. But at least it was empty, giving me a chance to collect my straying wits while redoing my hair and lipstick. There. Lipstick on straight, eyeliner unsmudged. On the other hand, nose still beaky, eyes still an undecided hazel, and freckles still on parade despite foundation and powder. Ah, well. As I dabbed at my soggy dress—Boris must have been out in the rain—Nickie came in.

“Carnegie, can I talk to you?”

“Sure. What's wrong?”

Nickie was a pretty, curvy girl, full lips and full hips, with heavy waves of dark hair and fine olive skin. Just now she was close to tears, biting her lip and picking nervously at the spectacular double strand of baroque pearls at her throat.

“It's Grace. She's back from Chicago. But I haven't told her about the dress yet. I'm … I'm kind of scared to.”

I was a little worried about the dress myself. Nickie's original wedding gown had recently arrived, two weeks late and two sizes too small. The couturier couldn't produce a replacement in time, and Nickie's stepmother Grace was out of town, so
Nickie and I had gone shopping. A chance detour into my favorite vintage clothing store turned up an Edwardian gown, a timeworn but lovely concoction of cream-colored lace. We both loved it, so I bought it, dispensing a hefty sum from the household checking account, which Douglas Parry had put at my disposal. But perhaps we'd been a wee bit impulsive. I hadn't met Grace yet, but I hoped to hell she was open-minded.

“And besides,” Nickie rushed on, the tears overflowing, “Ray's family is all upset because of this new publicity about Daddy and King County Savings. They're so conservative and proper, and I never know what to say to them anyway—I keep thinking they don't like me because I'm not Japanese. But Ray thought I was criticizing them, and I thought he was criticizing Daddy, and now there are these anonymous letters, and then we had a fight on the t-telephone. That's why he's not here tonight, so I drove myself and brought Michelle and Sean.”

“That must have been a pleasure,” I said dryly.

She laughed, damply. “It was awful! She kept wanting to drive the Mustang, but I don't let anybody drive it, not even Ray.” The tears overflowed again. “And now he's mad at me. Why does everything get so complicated? I just love Ray and I want everybody to l-leave us alone!”

Juliet, at bay between the Montagues and Capulets, might have been more eloquent, but no more sincere. I hugged her to me, letting her cry for as long as she needed, and hiding my own rueful smile. Youngsters keep falling in love and wanting the world to go away, and the world never does.

Then I frowned at myself for this remarkably middle-aged sentiment. Who was I, Juliet's old hag of a nurse while still in my thirties? Always a bridal consultant, never a bride. I had a sudden image of those sea-green eyes, and a sudden desire to
star in my own romance. I set it firmly aside and pressed on to more serious matters.

“Nickie, I'm sure you and Ray will sort this out. Just give it time. But what's all this about your father? What letters?”

More tears. “Someone's sending him threats in the mail, and I think they're calling him, too! He didn't want me and Grace to know about it, but I saw one of the letters by accident. It called him a—it called him names, and said he stole people's life savings. It said if he didn't confess to the grand jury, that he'd be sorry for the rest of his life! Carnegie, he wouldn't do anything wrong, ever.”

“Of course he wouldn't,” I told her, thinking just the opposite. Douglas Parry didn't look like a crook to me, but then again I'd once been stiffed for nine hundred dollars by a baker who looked like Mother Teresa with a rolling pin. And the whole savings-and-loan debacle seemed so Machiavellian, so many deals within deals. How many of those wealthy, well-connected bankers were completely above reproach?

I knew only the outlines of this case. Douglas Parry had chaired the board of King County Savings, which went into receivership after heavy losses and allegations of securities fraud. During a seemingly endless federal investigation, the CEO, Keith Guthridge, had tried to shift the blame to Parry, but Parry claimed that Guthridge had misled him every step of the way. What made it really ugly was that the two men had once been close friends. Keith Guthridge was Nickie's godfather.

“The grand jury will sort it all out,” I said, trying to sound brisk and knowledgeable. “After all, your father's just a witness. It's Guthridge who's the defendant, right? The letters are from some poor investor who got his facts wrong. Lots of prominent people get hate mail. Let's just concentrate on the
wedding, OK? Grace is going to love your dress, I know she—”

“FUCK YOU!!”

Nickie and I stared at each other. The voice had come from the dining room, but it was more than loud enough to reach us here. A slurred, screechy voice. Michelle. As we rushed out of the cloakroom, Nickie's tears forgotten, we heard the smashing of glass, and more shouting. The string quartet faltered to a halt, then started up again, providing a lovely Strauss counterpoint to the appalling brawl now going on between Michelle and Sean, her leather-clad boyfriend.

“You bastard! I saw you looking down her dress, you bastard, don't lie to me!” Michelle was standing, or rather swaying, with her back to the cake table, while Sean backed away from her, muttering halfhearted denials and dark threats. A champagne flute lay in shining splinters at his feet, and another one was still clutched dangerously in Michelle's gesticulating hand. Both of them had the foolish, defiant look of misbehaving children who suddenly realize there are adults in the room.

Most of the adults tonight were looking shocked and uncomfortable, though I noticed the waiters grinning broadly. Jeffrey had his arm around his bride, as if to sweep her away to safety, or perhaps to keep her from murdering her cousin. And dear, dear Dorothy had one hand pressed to her proper bosom and was shaking her head in regret at this deplorable scene. This stuff never happened at her weddings, of course. I groaned and stepped forward.

“Look, Michelle, let's go talk about this somewhere private, OK?”

“There's nothing to talk about!” she hollered. The music had stopped again, and her words were piercingly clear. “I'm so fucking sick of all you people
talking
!”

With the last word she flung her arms wide. The glass flute went flying from one hand, but it was her other hand that did the real damage, smacking deep into the middle tier of the wedding cake and sending the top tier to the floor with a weighty, chocolatey splat. The bride shrieked, Sean snorted with laughter, and Michelle pulled her hand free and fled down the hall toward the bridesmaids’ dressing room. Sean made to follow her, but I caught his arm.

“Leave her alone. I'll go talk to her. You go cool off.” I pushed him into the custody of the blessedly sober best man, motioned the quartet to play on, and helped the waiters begin to mop up. I needed a minute to cool off myself, I was so furious. Then I headed down the hall, through the exclamations and the nervous laughter of the wedding guests. Poor Diane. Poor me! Poor Michelle, once I got my hands on her.

The dressing room was empty, and I heard the back door slam.
Idiot
girl, running around in the rain. I cut through the kitchen and stopped on the porch to let my eyes adjust. Headlights flashed past, blinding me with their glare. Michelle wasn't running; she was driving. She'd taken the keys to Nickie's Mustang and gone roaring down the steep, narrow drive toward the sharp bend down below.

“Michelle! Michelle, stop, don't—!”

I could no longer see the car, just the yellow cones of light from the headlights marking its crazy flight down the hill. I was still shouting when the Mustang tore straight across the bend and rammed full speed into the brick wall at the bottom. A crumpling, splintering crash, then the headlights died, and there was only darkness and the sound of rain.