Veil of Night

by Linda Howard

  “Thank you for speaking to us, Ms. Boyne,” Detective Wilder said. “We’re investigating Carrie Edwards’s murder. What can you tell us about her?”

  Well, that was an open-ended question. Taite supposed it was designed to get her talking, maybe saying more than she intended.

  “We were best friends,” she said simply, and let her voice wobble a little on the last word. It was a nice touch.

  For a few minutes he asked her meaningless questions: How long had she known Carrie, where had they met, when was the last time she’d seen her, blah, blah blah. She answered with complete honesty, because she knew he’d check out every detail. Why lie about something when you didn’t need to? If you kept to the truth whenever possible, that made people more inclined to believe you when you had to lie.

  “Where were you on Wednesday afternoon, between three and six?”

  “Here.”

  “Alone?”

  She took a deep breath, let it out. “No.” She looked down at her hands, clasped her fingers together. “Doug—Senator Dennison—was here. I got back in town the day before from a two-week trip to London, and he left work early so we could have some time together.”

  “He didn’t come over the day you got home?”

  “No. I was too jet-lagged.”

  That, too, was true, at least as far as the jet lag went. And she had been in London.

  “What time did he get here?”

  Taite rubbed her forehead, trying to remember the automatic tells for lying, so she didn’t give any of them. Was it looking to the left, or the right? She couldn’t remember, so she closed her eyes as if she could see the answer on the inside of her eyelids. “He got here … just after three.”

  “What time did he leave?”

  “He was here for almost three hours so … about six.”

  “Are you sure about the time?”

  She met his hard gaze, keeping hers direct. “We’re clock-watchers, Detective. We have to be.” Let him make of that what he wanted; she wasn’t about to apologize or act embarrassed, because she wasn’t.

  Finally, Wilder got to the meat of the interview, the question she’d known was coming. “I understand you and Carrie had a falling-out not too long ago.”

  She sighed. “Not really.”

  “You didn’t? You were supposed to be her maid of honor, but you dropped out of the wedding party.”

  “I … we—” She stopped, took a deep breath. “Carrie was the one who introduced me to Doug, at a fund-raiser for his new campaign. We didn’t intend for—Well, I wasn’t looking to get involved and neither was he, but things happened.”

  “And Carrie found out.”

  Taite looked up, a faintly surprised expression in place. “She knew about it from the beginning.”

  The two cops exchanged quick glances. “What was the argument about?”

  “It wasn’t a real argument. When Carrie asked me to be her maid of honor, I had no idea who Doug was or anything about him. But when we got involved, well, I thought it would be … awkward, if I was there when she married his son, and he was there with his wife. I just didn’t want to do it. But if I quit without a good reason it would look funny, so Carrie and I staged the argument.”

  “She approved of your arrangement with the senator?”

  “Not really. She worried about me. She said the other woman never ended up in a good place, and she might be right.” She took a quick breath. “That’s a chance I’m willing to take.” Whether or not Doug ever left his wife, Taite figured she’d come out of things just fine. If news of the affair got out, and the rich bitch Mrs. Dennison tossed her cheating husband out on his ass, Doug’s career would probably survive. You couldn’t throw a stone in D.C. without hitting a politician who’d been unfaithful to his wife; when they were caught they’d lie low for a while, then pick up where they’d left off.

  If Doug ended up divorced … Taite knew she’d make a great senator’s wife. If he didn’t, well, the life she had now wasn’t bad. No matter what, she was hanging on to Douglas with everything in her. He was her ticket to a better life and she meant to keep him.

  “Carrie and I were best friends,” she said, and managed to blink up a teary-eyed look. Really crying was beyond her, but that would have been a bit much, anyway. “We stayed friends. She was here visiting just last week. She’d been getting some grief about the details of the wedding, and she needed to decompress. Oh, I know she could sometimes be a pain in the ass, but she was a good friend to me. I’m going to miss her.” There. A little bit of truth mixed in with a few very big lies. Couldn’t get any better than that.

  When they got back to the department Eric sat back in his chair, his hands looped behind his head as he stared at the ceiling. Every detail of the case was spinning in his brain. His desk was littered with reports and notes, but everything there was also in his head, and that was where things would finally come together.

  Every witness should be as good as wedding vendors. Each and every one of them who had been at the reception hall on Wednesday afternoon had told the same story. Eyewitnesses were remarkably unreliable, but these were people who were trained to pay attention to detail, to what was going on around them. Their stories had all matched—not exactly, but in all the major areas. If every detail had been the same, he’d have known they’d gotten together and agreed on what they were going to say.

  They each told the story of the confrontation between Jaclyn and Carrie Edwards in their own way, with subtle differences in wording and the progression of events. But their recall of the events was close enough, and consistent enough, for him to believe them.

  On the surface, Jaclyn had the best motive, but none of the evidence supported it. She simply wasn’t a viable suspect, thank God.

  The senator, now … he looked good for it, but his girlfriend had solidly alibied him. Unless they could get some physical evidence from his car, which wasn’t likely considering he was alibied, they had zilch.

  Taite Boyne was the one he couldn’t quite figure out. According to several witnesses, she and Carrie had had a falling out. Falling out, hell, they’d had a spectacular, very believable blowup, and unless they were both very good actresses, that would have been hard to pull off and make it look credible. If Taite was that good of an actress, that threw her little performance today into question.

  She’d cried a little, and expressed what seemed to be genuine dismay. She hadn’t gone overboard with it, and she hadn’t even pretended to be embarrassed by her affair with the senator. He had her pegged as a pretty tough cookie.

  It was the fight she’d had with Carrie that didn’t pan out. It just didn’t feel right. So, it was okay to screw the senator’s brains out a couple times a week, but not to stand by while he and his wife watched their son get married? It didn’t wash.

  Garvey walked over, ever-present coffee cup in his hand, and propped himself against the side of Eric’s desk. “Interesting. Only one person has good things to say about Carrie, and she just happens to be banging the soon-to-be father-in-law at the time of the murder. Sounds like we have the making of our own daytime drama. All we need is an evil twin and an illegitimate baby. Stay tuned.”

  Eric smiled. “What we have here is one colossal clusterfuck.”

  “So, what else is new?” Garvey said, then he added, with more than a touch of genuine emotion, “Man, I love my job. Maybe Franklin will stay gone another week. I’m enjoying the hell out of this.”

  Normally, Eric was right there with Garvey: he loved being a cop. They had all the pieces of a puzzle jumbled before them, and it was their job to make a picture from the mess. They’d do it this time, too. Somewhere, someone had made a mistake. All he had to do was find out who, and what.

  He yawned, glanced out the window at the afternoon sun. He pushed back and stood. He and Garvey had already had a long day, because they’d both come in so early. It was late in the afternoon, and no one would blame them if they knocked off now. The last few hours had
been filled with interviews, paperwork, lab requests, and reports. He was beat, but he had one more stop before he could call the day done.

  And this time, he was going alone.

  Chapter Nineteen

  SOME MARRIAGES YOU JUST KNEW WEREN’T GOING TO last.

  Jaclyn took a deep breath, then exhaled slowly, trying to keep her expression as neutral as possible. Photos of this particular event would never make it into the pamphlets all of them at Premier sometimes used to sell their services to potential clients. Never. In fact, she hoped with all her heart that no one ever knew they were involved.

  This wasn’t the sort of event that usually called for an event planner, but the groom’s mother, horrified by the bride’s plans, had hired Premier in a last-ditch attempt to salvage some dignity for the occasion. Jaclyn realized now that she shouldn’t have taken it on, not when they were already so busy, but the poor woman had been desperate—and with good reason. The awful truth was, Jaclyn didn’t think there was anything she could do that would really help, so the woman was out the money and the wedding was still going to be a disaster, which was only fitting in a bad-karma kind of way, because she’d bet everything she owned that the marriage would be just as bad.

  There were two weddings and another rehearsal taking place tonight. Tonight was the crescendo of their frantic pace, and if they could get through this then tomorrow would be fractionally easier, with two weddings and just one rehearsal. Sunday, thank God, was the last of the six weddings, and after that they would be back on a more sane—or was it merely less insane—schedule, and if Madelyn ever, ever again booked this many weddings this close together, Jaclyn promised herself she was going on vacation and not coming back until they were all over with.

  Normally Jaclyn would have been at one of the weddings while Peach and Diedra handled the rehearsals. Instead, she was here because she was the only one at Premier who could face the bride’s family without either losing her temper or laughing out loud. This rehearsal and tomorrow’s wedding were all hers, like it or not. Thank goodness the family had agreed to hold their rehearsal at a slightly earlier hour than usual, so Jaclyn could go straight from here to the Bulldog wedding, where Diedra was already hard at work. Between them, Madelyn and Peach were handling the other rehearsal—the one they had started calling “Family Drama”—and the Pink wedding in much the same way.

  This wedding was pretty much a lost cause, but Jaclyn had managed to talk the bride out of a wedding cake with a NASCAR theme. That was one point for their side, though even now the bride kept insisting how cute it would be to have the little bride and groom figures climbing out of a decal-covered model car, which she insisted was just like Dale Junior’s. Jaclyn wasn’t a race fan, but at least she knew who Dale Junior was, and she was pretty sure his car wasn’t bright blue. Evidently it was the decals that counted.

  She’d also convinced the bride’s mother that using her multicolored Christmas lights (“But they flash!”) to decorate the barn where the wedding would be held tomorrow wasn’t entirely appropriate. She’d rearranged some of the music, so at least the bride would walk down the “aisle” to the wedding march instead of Willie Nelson or Brad Paisley. Willie and Brad would still make their appearances, just not during the bride’s walk to glory. Tomorrow there would be real flowers, not the plastic ones the bride had originally planned to use because she said they’d never die and she could use them in her new home—either that or use them to make the flower arrangements for Decoration Day at the cemetery where her daddy was buried. The flowers hadn’t even been decent silk flowers; they were literally plastic, and came in all colors—few of which had ever graced an actual living bloom.

  If she hadn’t been shell-shocked, Jaclyn thought a little hysterically, she would have seen right away what a perfect match the plastic flowers had been for the blinking Christmas lights. It wasn’t as if she had anything against Christmas lights; she actually loved them … at Christmas. She didn’t love plastic flowers any time.

  Fortunately there was no proper lighting at the barn for the rehearsal to take place there so late in the afternoon, so the rehearsal and reception were being held at a restaurant/bar that was owned by the “minister.” Unfortunately, that restaurant was Porky’s BBQ, and there were signs scattered about that bragged about the food. Most prominent was the proud claim: “You’ll love our butts.” Second place went to “Best butts in town.”

  She wasn’t certain the minister was really a minister, but at this point that was the least of her worries. It would be a blessing in disguise for the groom if the marriage wasn’t legal, so she kept her mouth shut about the minister.

  A makeshift altar had been set up under a neon Budweiser sign, which had been glowing brightly until Jaclyn had insisted that it be turned off. If she could have come up with a way to take it down she’d have done so, but like the “butts” signs, it was attached to the rough plank paneling. Multicolored plastic flowers—almost certainly the ones Jaclyn had banned from the wedding—had been used to decorate the table beneath the now-dark neon sign. The flowers clashed horribly with the plastic red-and-white-checkered tablecloths that covered the tables. Some of the tables were round, some of them were square, but all of the tablecloths were square.

  The tablecloths, plastic or not, weren’t that bad. It was a theme she could have worked with, given the time, money, and, most important, permission. White daisies, red and white plates and glasses, and she’d have had an elegant picnic theme. Instead, the best she could do was, whenever possible, stave off disaster.

  Unfortunately, she didn’t think it was possible.

  The groom’s mother, a middle-aged widow, was very pale, but she did her best to smile. It was a wavering, uncertain smile, and Jaclyn was almost certain the poor woman’s teeth were clenched. She could sympathize. She’d never seen so many mullets in one room. The dress for this event was supercasual—only Jaclyn and the groom’s mother and sisters were dressed in a way that she would consider appropriate, which basically meant they weren’t wearing jeans and T-shirts with slogans on them. And the minister—she was almost certain he’d come by the title via the Internet—well, all she could do was hope that tomorrow he’d clean himself up a little, maybe even put on a tie. He was a big man with a handlebar mustache and a red bandanna tied over his bald head, and tonight he wore faded jeans and a Harley tee with the sleeves ripped out, which revealed his colorful tattoos from shoulder to wrist, on both arms.

  On the other hand, if she could ever say with absolute certainty that her services were needed, that time was now and the place was here. No one knew who was supposed to stand where, or what the proper progression of events should be. Maybe the bride’s mother would be seated to a Brad Paisley song about checking you for ticks, but she would, by golly, be seated at the right time, and in the right place.

  That was if everything went as planned tomorrow. If neither the bride nor her mother got arrested tonight. If the minister wasn’t killed by a rival motorcycle gang.

  That was a lot of ifs, and she thought their chances of making it through were low.

  First, she had to get through tonight.

  The Christmas lights Jaclyn had gently banned from the wedding ceremony had been broken out for tonight. They hung everywhere, cheerful and random and occasionally tangled, and completely wrong. At least she’d been able to dissuade the bride’s friends from outlining everything in sight, from the beer spigot behind the bar to the loaf of bread sitting on the long counter, with the twinkling, brightly colored lights.

  The disastrous rehearsal was bizarre enough to take her mind off Carrie Edwards and Eric Wilder for a while. Well, to be honest, she didn’t think about Carrie as much as she did Eric, and that was kind of sad. It wasn’t sad enough to make her dwell on the woman, though.

  But Eric … he was the most maddening man she’d ever met. The more she tried not to think about him, the more stubbornly he lodged himself front and center in her brain. Because of him she’d made
a spectacle of herself, and how she’d face the minister tonight at the Bulldog wedding, she had no idea. Maybe she’d pretend she’d been in a fugue state, and didn’t remember anything that had happened.

  But she was able to banish Eric while she oversaw the rehearsal, which was much like corralling wild pigs and putting bows on their tails. The bows didn’t help, and the pigs were fractious. The rehearsal went relatively well; a touch of color began creeping back into the groom’s mother’s face—until the minister let out a whoop and directed everyone to the bar for hot wings and beer, to be followed by banana pudding and brownies.

  All of the color immediately left the woman’s face again. Jaclyn had seen the spread earlier, and had noted with horror the cans of icing sitting by the brownies and the brightly colored sprinkles on both desserts. Her client had tried—she’d tried very hard—to put together a proper rehearsal dinner. That should’ve been the one aspect of the wedding where she had some control. But the happy couple had insisted that it didn’t make any sense to go elsewhere when there was great food right here, and they already had the place to themselves for the night. Basically, the groom’s mother had been bulldozed.

  Jaclyn even heard her whisper to one of her daughters that maybe her son had been switched with someone else’s baby at the hospital, because she could not have given birth to a man who would do this to her.

  The bride’s mulleted brother sidled up next to Jaclyn, gave her a come-on smile and a nod of his head. With a knowing look he said, “I can’t believe a pretty thing like you is here all alone. A woman like you should never be without a date.”