Claus for Celebration

by Laura Durham

  Claus for Celebration

  Annabelle Archer Wedding Planner Mystery #15

  Laura Durham

  Broadmoor Books

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Also by Laura Durham

  About the Author

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter 1

  “I think we've made a huge mistake, Annabelle," my assistant, Kate, said as she walked into my apartment carrying several canvas tote bags slung over her shoulders. She dropped them on the floor, kicked off her high heels, and collapsed onto my couch.

  "You couldn't find the ice-blue paper?" I asked, bending over and pawing through the bags with one hand while holding my bottled Mocha Frappuccino with the other.

  "Oh, I found it." She flicked a hand through her blond bob. "Along with the ball ornaments and the 'naughty' and 'nice' signs for the drinks." She cast her eyes around my apartment, lingering on the sparsely decorated Christmas tree in the corner. "Good thing, too. This place needs a little oomph. I thought Richard was helping with party decor. Unless he's going through a minimalist phase again."

  "He got delayed yesterday. Some important meeting that's going to change all of our lives." I padded back to the kitchen in my bare feet, taking a swig of my cold, sweet drink as I walked. I resumed buttering the toast I'd left on the counter when Kate had walked in, and I now peered at her across the opening between my kitchen and living room. "So what's this huge mistake we're making?"

  "Taking on all this work. We usually slow down in December. All of our corporate planner friends get crazy and our hotel contacts are too busy to eat, but the holidays are usually the one time of the year when we can catch our breath." She motioned to the bags strewn across my floor. "Where's my break?"

  I took a bite of toast, savoring the Irish butter my fiancé had gotten me hooked on, and chased it with a gulp of cold mocha-flavored coffee. Kate was right. December was usually downtime for wedding planners. Only the most stalwart brides wanted to compete with corporate holiday parties for event space or pay the holiday premiums. As the owner of Wedding Belles, Washington DC's most on-the-rise wedding planning company, I usually blocked off the month for rest and regrouping and catching up on sleep after the busy autumn and before the intense booking season that started in January. This year, however, my usual plan had flown out the window.

  Carrying my plate of toast and drink out with me to the living room, I sat down next to Kate on the couch. "I know this month has been unusual, but might I remind you that the engagement party was your idea?"

  She sat up and tilted her head at me. "Because we haven't had a free weekend all fall. If we don't have it now, you and Hottie Cop will never have a proper party to celebrate your engagement. I know you like to put off anything personal, but since you put me in charge of your wedding planning, we're throwing you and Reese a party." She flopped back again. "I just didn't know we'd have to work it around two weddings, including one on New Year's Eve."

  "Neither did I," I said, holding out the plate and offering her a piece of toast, which she waved away. "Who knew we'd get a last-minute New Year's Eve wedding?"

  "Don't get me wrong. The extra money will be nice, especially since they're paying our holiday wedding premium, but you know what a sacrifice it is for me to work on New Year's Eve, Annabelle."

  I did know. As a champion dater, New Year's Eve was typically one of her busiest nights of the year. Kate had been known to fit in multiple dates on New Year's Eve, flitting between fancy restaurant seatings and over-the-top parties. Personally, I didn't know how she juggled it all, since I was more of the type to ring in the new year on my couch in my PJs.

  "I promise I'll make it up to you," I said. "If anyone books a last-minute Valentine's Day wedding, I'll do it solo. And aside from lots of new meetings with potential clients, January and February are dead."

  She gave me a side-eye glance. "I suppose I can survive until then. Fern is working on a new system to streamline my Valentine's dates this year, so hopefully it won't be as much of a disaster as last year."

  I remembered the year before had involved wireless headsets, spreadsheets, and plenty of hysterics on our hairdresser friend Fern's part.

  "I thought I remembered something about you wanting to slow down your dating pace and find someone to get serious with." I tucked my feet up under me. "What happened to that?"

  She draped one arm across the back of the yellow twill couch cushions, drumming her pink, polished fingernails on the fabric. "There is one guy I could see myself with, but I'm not sure if I'm ready to settle down yet."

  "The lawyer from Williams & Connolly?" I asked.

  She shook her head.

  "The guy who works at the White House?"

  She wrinkled her nose. "No one dates White House staffers anymore. Anyway, I’m not into young guys who work on the Hill anymore. This guy’s more . . .established.”

  Established? I knew what that was a code word for. I tried to remember her mentioning an older guy, but I'd always found it hard to keep track of her men. "Did you finally decide to get a sugar daddy?"

  Kate gave me a scandalized look. "He's not that old, besides, I gave up that idea when Wedding Belles took off, and you raised my salary." She darted her eyes to me. "He's not your typical DC guy. He's older and not involved in politics or the government at all. Plus, he's completely different from me in almost every way."

  I shrugged. "You know what they say. Opposites attract."

  "Speaking of opposites." Kate craned her neck toward the hallway of my apartment. "Where is your very attractive opposite?"

  "Reese?" I asked, glancing down the hall, even though I knew my fiancé wasn't there. "He went into the precinct early this morning. There's been an uptick in shoplifting and pickpocketing around Georgetown, and one of their prime suspects showed up outside the station tied up in gold Christmas garland with a bow around his mouth."

  Mike Reese was not only my fiancé, he was a DC police detective I'd met when one of our clients had been murdered at a wedding. It had taken us a few years--and a few more dead bodies--before we'd started dating, but we'd been living together for almost a year and had been engaged for several months.

  "So he was literally gift wrapped for them?" She flipped a hand through her hair. "Which proves that the city is crazy at the holidays, which is why we don't take weddings in December, which is why it's insane that we have a wedding at the Four Seasons on Saturday and your engagement party on Sunday, not to mention the last-minute planning for the New Year's wedding."

  She gasped for breath.

  "We can handle it." I took a final bite of now-cold toast and drained the Frappuccino, standing and heading for the kitchen with the empty plate and bottle. "It isn't like we've never had two events on a weeke
nd."

  "Yes." Kate stood and walked to the opening between the two rooms, leaning over the counter and poking her head into the kitchen. "But how wrecked have we looked the second day? I refuse to let you go to your own engagement party looking like you did at the Turner-Finley wedding."

  I dropped the empty bottle in my recycling bin. "How did I look at that wedding?"

  She waved a hand in my general direction. "Like this. Hair in a ponytail. Hardly any makeup. Like you don't care."

  I touched a hand to my bare face and glanced down at the jeans and T-shirt I'd thrown on. "I don't care. It's barely ten in the morning, and we don't have a meeting until this afternoon. This morning is supposed to be about finalizing all the vendors for Saturday and putting together gift bags."

  "Fine," she said. "But I hope you're planning on a cute outfit to go see Buster and Mack later. It's one of the few in-person meetings we're going to have with our New Year's bride before the wedding day."

  I made a mental rundown of my closet and the size of my dry-cleaning bag. "Don't worry. I've got plenty of cute winter outfits."

  Kate made a face. "You might want to rethink that." She cut her eyes to her own short black skirt and white button-down opened low at the neck. "Why do you think I'm not wearing a coat in December?"

  I'd assumed it was so she could show as much leg and cleavage as possible. "What are you talking about?"

  Kate made tsk-ing noises at me. "You never check the weather, do you? We got a warm snap. It's seventy-eight degrees outside and will be all week."

  "In December?" I gaped at her. "But Saturday's wedding is snowflake themed. Everything is icicles and ice blue. We have an outside s'mores station and hot chocolate bar."

  "Yeah, that's going to be a little weird."

  I slumped against the kitchen counter, hearing my office phone ringing down the hall. If I was a betting woman, I'd have put money on that being Saturday's bride calling in a panic because her wintry wedding was now going to be pleasantly warm instead of cool and cozy. I knew I'd have to work some serious wedding planner Zen magic to convince her that her day wouldn't be a disaster. Even though I told all my brides the only thing I couldn't control was the weather, they still seemed to think I could whip out a mythical cure-all when it poured rain or when temperatures soared to near one hundred degrees in the summer.

  The door flew open, and my best friend, Richard Gerard, staggered into my apartment, dropping a plastic crate on the floor with a loud thud. His gaze went from the scantily decorated Christmas tree to me, and he let out a tortured sigh.

  "The next time I have another brilliant idea like this, will someone please shoot me?"

  Kate grinned at me. "Dibs."

  Chapter 2

  “Neither this absurd warm weather nor you living on the fourth floor of a walk-up is getting me in the holiday spirit," Richard said as he fanned himself with two hands. "Thank heavens I didn't wear my cashmere. Much more of this, and I'm going to need to pull my summer wardrobe back out. Trust me when I say I do not have time to air out my linen suits right now."

  He swung his black leather man bag off his shoulder and set it on the ground. As it tipped over, a tiny black-and-brown Yorkie popped out of the top and scampered out, yipping happily as he ran around sniffing.

  "Poor Hermès can't even wear his sweaters," Richard said, fluttering a hand at the small dog. "What's the point of having Gucci if you can't wear it?"

  "One of the great questions of the universe," Kate said under her breath as she scratched Hermès under the chin.

  "Don't worry," I said, joining Richard in the living room as he brushed off the sleeves of his royal blue blazer with a lint brush that seemed to have materialized out of thin air. "I was just explaining to Kate that the week might be a little packed, but it's nothing we can't handle. We've all had multiple events on a weekend before."

  "Indeed," he said absently, his gaze scouring my apartment while he frowned.

  As the owner of Richard Gerard Catering, one of the premier catering companies in the area, Richard was adept at juggling parties. I knew back-to-back events were not enough to send him over the edge, although he did live most of his life close to it. Or, as Kate liked to put it, on the brink of insanity.

  "Is it the rehearsal dinner or my engagement party that has you worried?" I asked. "Or are you still peeved the couple decided on a hotel for their actual wedding reception, because you know I can't force them to choose an off-premise venue. You did get their rehearsal dinner, and it's a pretty elaborate one."

  "What?" He shook his head. "Of course not. I got over that ages ago."

  I didn't point out that he'd been complaining about it only two days prior. I'd found with Richard it was better not to have a perfect memory.

  I rested a hand on his sleeve. "I promise you it will all be fine. Tell him our new Wedding Belles motto, Kate."

  "It's handled," Kate said, spreading her hands out in front of her as if she were unfurling a sign. "We're thinking of putting it on T-shirts."

  I looked down at the crate at his feet. "We can set out the holiday decor you brought, and we'll be halfway to having this place decorated for the engagement party."

  "About that," Richard said, not meeting my eyes. "I may have added a teensy little 'to-do' to your week."

  "How teensy?" Kate asked, both hands on her hips as she eyed him.

  "Don't be upset, Annabelle." He shifted from one foot to the other. "But I may have arranged for a photographer from DC Life Magazine to do a profile piece on Wedding Belles."

  "Why would that make me upset?" I asked. "We've been dying to get into that magazine. A profile on our business would be huge."

  He bent over his plastic crate and began pulling out holiday decor. "I'm glad you're pleased, darling. Now all we need to do is get your apartment in shape for the magazine's photo shoot."

  My stomach tightened as I glanced around the slightly unkempt and severely unstyled living room. Client files were strewn across one end of the dining room table, and one of Reese's jackets was hooked over the back of a chair. Wedding magazines sat stacked high in a rack by the couch, and my glass coffee table held nothing but more paperwork and an unwashed coffee mug. "A photo shoot? In my apartment?"

  "I tried to convince them to do it somewhere else." He sighed deeply as he scanned the space. "But they insist on capturing their subjects in their homes and offices. They want a real behind-the-scenes look."

  I groaned. Unfortunately for me, my apartment also doubled as Wedding Belles headquarters, with the home office down the hall housing filing cabinets, a rarely-used desk, and a vast assortment of leftover wedding favors, gift bags, and programs. Despite planning over-the-top weddings for clients, my own design style was decidedly simplistic. I usually argued that I didn't have time to keep my life and my clients' weddings styled, but the truth was I wasn't a fussy person when it came to myself. I favored yoga pants and jeans over cute dresses, and would rather have a comfortable home than a fussy one. I was a substance over style woman, and I knew that did not lend itself to stunning photos.

  Kate flopped back onto the couch, and Hermès immediately jumped up and began licking the hand draped over her head. "We're doomed."

  "Nonsense," Richard said, adopting the take-charge tone he used when addressing his waiters or his dog. Accordingly, Hermès froze, his eyes on Richard. "All this place needs is a thorough cleaning, all new furniture, a fresh coat of paint, and some sort of design aesthetic."

  "Oh, is that all?" Kate asked, propping herself up on her elbows. "And this is in between final preparations for this weekend's wedding, planning for our New Year's Eve wedding, and pulling together Annabelle's engagement party?"

  Richard swiveled his head toward me, and his dark spiky hair didn't so much as quiver. "A New Year's Eve wedding? When were you going to mention this to me?"

  "That's what you took away from all of that?" I asked.

  He sniffed, looking slightly abashed. "Fine. Perhaps this isn't
the best time to have a photography team descend on your apartment, but when opportunity knocks, Annabelle, you have to open the door."

  "Yoo hoo!" A head popped around the front door that Richard had left standing open.

  "And when you come here, you have to remember to close the door," I muttered to Richard as my downstairs neighbor Leatrice bustled inside wearing a reindeer sweater with three-dimensional googly eyes, her jet-black hair adorned with a blinking reindeer antler headband. "And lock it."

  "I thought I heard barking," she said, making a beeline for Hermès.

  For a woman who had cruised past her eightieth birthday, she had remarkably acute hearing. She also considered herself an amateur spy, so she possessed an apartment full of listening devices. It was anyone's guess which she'd employed today.

  "What's up, Leatrice?" I asked. "We're kind of in the middle of a crisis here."

  Her eyebrows popped up, and she pursed her bright-coral lips. "Another murder?"

  "No," I said with a sigh. "It's not like we stumble over dead bodies every day."

  "It's been months since we had anything to do with a murder investigation," Kate added, counting quickly on her fingers. "Over eight months. I think that's a record for us."

  "You aren't counting the body you found on my wedding day?" Leatrice asked as she rubbed Hermès's belly.

  Kate shook her head. "He wasn't dead. I'm only counting actual corpses."

  "I think I know who you shouldn't have at the magazine interview," Richard said out of the corner of his mouth.