Eat, Prey, Love

by Laura Durham

  Kate picked up a leather-bound menu on the glass-topped table between our two loungers. “I’m ready for a drink.”

  “You must try the Elderflower Crush,” a woman wearing a wide-brimmed straw hat two lounge chairs away from us said. “It’s one of the mixologist’s specialties.”

  I waved at her. “Thanks. You sound like you know the ropes around here.”

  She sat up and held her hat on her head with one hand. “My husband and I got here a few days ago.” She pointed to a man standing at the edge of the ocean. “We’re on our honeymoon.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” Kate said low so only I could hear her. “Can we not go anywhere without brides stalking us?”

  “Should we ask her where she got married?” Fern said as he leaned over the drink menu with Kate.

  “Absolutely not,” Richard said, his voice a hiss. “Unless you want to spend the next hour listening to every detail about her wedding.”

  “If she says she used blush sequined linens I may just have to gouge my own eyes out,” Kate said.

  I coughed loudly so the bride couldn’t hear my friends. “Congratulations. Thanks for the cocktail tip.”

  “No problem. I did a ton of research before we came here.” She laughed. “You should have seen all the research I did for our wedding. My wedding planning binder was huge.”

  “Make it stop, Annabelle,” Kate whispered.

  Fern nudged her. “Ten bucks says she whips out the binder from her beach bag.”

  A shadow fell over my legs. “Where did you all run off to after breakfast?”

  I looked up as Kristina sat down on the edge of my chair and felt relieved that her arrival had caused the Type A bride to lie back down on her lounger.

  Brett dropped his beach bag on the sand next to Kate. “We heard there was some fight with that prissy designer from New York, then you and Richard fainted.”

  I sat up and slid my sunglasses down my nose. “Hey, you two. First of all, I did not faint. I merely caught Richard when he fainted on top of me.”

  “Who’s saying I fainted?” Richard asked. “Stumbled. I stumbled, and Annabelle happened to catch my fall.”

  A waiter passed by and took our drink orders, leaving the leather menu so Kate could ponder what she should have for her second cocktail.

  “Did everyone hear about our fight with Jeremy?” I asked.

  Kristina waved a hand in the air. “Everyone thinks he deserves to be threatened. He’s been a jerk since he arrived.”

  “They’re saying we threatened him?” I groaned. The last thing I needed was to get a reputation as a hot head with all the top wedding planners. Not to mention the editors at Insider Weddings magazine.

  Richard shrugged. “We did threaten him.”

  “Only because he threatened us first,” I insisted. “He said he’d spread rumors about us. We were merely defending ourselves.”

  “No one’s blaming you, honey,” Brett said.

  I sank back onto my chair. “This trip is not going like I imagined it would.”

  “Aside from the murder and the fact that our nemesis is here,” Fern said, “it hasn’t been so bad.”

  I noticed the bride’s eyebrows disappear beneath her hat at the word “murder.” I closed my eyes and leaned my head against the chair cushion, taking a slow breath and trying to calm myself. I could hear the gentle sounds of the ocean as it met the sand, and I focused on that as I told myself that things weren’t so bad.

  “This should help,” Kristina said as an ice cold glass was pressed into my hand.

  I opened my eyes to see the rocks glass filled with crushed ice, a pale golden liquid, and mint leaves. I took a sip and let the refreshing sweetness fill my mouth. “Delicious.”

  “Want to try my Lychee Caipiroska?” Kate held out her glass garnished with a fleshy round lychee fruit.

  Brett held up his frothy green concoction. “Cheers to this trip improving.”

  Richard raised his glass, and I noticed that he’d also ordered an Elderflower Crush. “I’ll drink to that.”

  “I know there’s been a murder,” Kristina said. “But at least we aren’t dealing with some of the scandals we’ve had at Inspire.”

  “That sounds juicy. What kind of scandals?” Kate popped the blush-colored lychee in her mouth.

  Brett set his cocktail down on the glass side table and began hunting through his beach bag, producing a black tube of expensive sunscreen. “You know how conferences can be. People are out of their element, and the booze is flowing. It’s an alternate reality—like being on a cruise ship.”

  “Are you trying to say that people fool around?” I asked. I’d heard of indiscretions at corporate conferences or conventions, but it had never occurred to me that wedding people would behave the same way as stifled businessmen.

  Kristina nodded. “I mean, there have been some genuine romances to come from Inspire, but there are no shortage of hookups either.”

  Brett squeezed some cream into his palm and spread it on his already-tanned arm. “And since there aren’t tons of straight men to choose from, the competition and jealousy can get fierce.”

  It was true the wedding business wasn’t packed with many options for single, straight women to choose from. I should know. I’d been a single wedding planner for years without meeting an eligible bachelor who wasn’t either a guest at one of my weddings or in the wedding party. And I had a hard-and-fast rule about not dating groomsmen or relatives of clients, which left a very small pool. Mostly DJs, married photographers, and bandleaders with groupies. Not a great selection. I felt lucky that I’d finally met Detective Reese.

  “I never got sucked into that mess.” Kristina pointed to a wedding ring on her finger. “But there are a few people on this trip who did.”

  “Like who?” Fern nearly fell off his chair trying to lean closer to her.

  “This was before my time.” Kristina took a bite of the white jicama stick garnish from her cocktail. “But Sasha was rumored to have a long-running affair with a lighting designer from Texas.”

  Brett snapped his fingers. “That’s right. They’d meet up at Inspire conferences and award ceremonies every year. Apparently, they rarely made it out of the room to hear the speakers.”

  Richard made a face. “Sasha?”

  “She was younger and thinner,” Kristina said. “But also married.”

  “Yikes,” I said. “That’s not good. I feel bad for her husband.”

  “For a lot of reasons,” Richard mumbled.

  “What happened?” Kate asked. “I’m guessing it’s not still going on.”

  Brett dropped the sunscreen back in his bag and picked up his drink. “Didn’t she leave her husband for him?”

  Kristina gasped. “That’s right. I’d forgotten about that part. She left her husband for him, but after all that he didn’t marry her.”

  Fern shook his head. “Men are dogs.”

  Brett drained the rest of his cocktail and waved for the waiter. “From what I heard, he was the type of man who was only interested in her when she was unavailable. Once she was free, he moved on to someone else.”

  Even though I found her abrasive and condescending, I couldn’t help feeling sorry for Sasha. That must have been a devastating blow. Maybe being burned like that was the reason she was so abrasive in the first place. “Who did he move on to? Someone else in the wedding biz?”

  Kristina shook her head. “I don’t remember. Someone young and new. But that was a one-time fling that didn’t last. Then he stopped coming to conferences. Last I heard, he’d settled down with a woman in Texas who has no connection to events.”

  Brett inhaled sharply. “I just remembered the name of the young thing he dumped Sasha for.”

  Kristina slapped a hand over her mouth as she must have remembered as well.

  Brett nodded, his eyes wide. “Veronica.”

  Chapter 10

  “It can’t be a coincidence two women who dated the same man a
re here,” I said, slipping my sheer black bathing suit cover-up over my head and standing up.

  Richard tossed back the rest of his drink in one gulp. “And that one of them is dead.”

  “Hell has no fury like a woman’s thorn,” Kate said.

  Kristina’s brow furrowed, and I could see Brett mouthing the expression to himself. It wouldn’t take them long to figure out Kate was the queen of malaprops.

  “You sure you don’t want to walk down the beach with us?” I asked Kate and Fern as Kristina and Brett stood to join us.

  Kate lay back on her lounge chair. “I got plenty of exercise on the stairs this morning. I’m going to soak up some sun so people back home will know I went to a tropical island.”

  Fern raised his unfinished, and second, cocktail to us. “I could never leave a job half done, darling. But be sure to tell the sarong ladies I said hi. The lady who sold me mine was twelve.”

  Richard’s mouth fell open. “She was twelve years old?”

  “No, she called herself twelve.”

  Richard put one hand on his hip. “Her name was twelve?”

  Fern sighed. “They have licenses to sell on the beach. Numbered licenses. She was number twelve.” He reclined on his lounge chair and slipped oversized black sunglasses over his eyes. “Be careful, though. She’s good at haggling.”

  “We’re going to check out the rest of the beach, not shop.” I pulled my hair up into a high ponytail.

  Brett swung his beach bag over his shoulder. “I’m going to bring my money just in case.”

  We cleared a cluster of palm trees and headed down the beach, walking four across with Kristina and Brett in the middle. We wound our way through the resort lounge chairs on the sand with open umbrellas, and I recognized some familiar faces from dinner the night before. One woman with a brown topknot glanced up as we passed.

  “Don’t stop,” Brett said out of the corner of his mouth. “That’s Cathy from St. Louis. We call her Chatty Cathy.”

  “If you get sucked into a conversation, you’ll never escape,” Kristina agreed as she sped up her pace.

  I saw a couple I remembered from dinner stretched out on side-by-side lounge chairs holding hands.

  “Jacob and Katherine,” Brett whispered to me. “Aren’t they adorable? Those two actually met at in Inspire and have been together ever since.”

  I spotted Sasha sitting on a lounge chair, wearing a straw hat so wide it nearly touched Jeremy in the lounger beside her. She had her phone pressed to her ear as she talked loudly to someone about tent permits. I coughed as I inhaled a cacophony of Shalimar, suntan lotion, and salt air.

  Jeremy glanced at us and slid his sunglasses down his upturned nose. “Didn’t you and your little team run off?”

  “We didn’t run off,” I said, using my fingers to make air quotes. “We went sightseeing.”

  Jeremy arched an eyebrow like he didn’t believe me. “I thought maybe you were trying to escape all the gossip about you and your friends.”

  Brett and Kristina looked at me, a questioning look on their faces.

  “You mean the untrue rumors started by you?” Richard asked.

  Jeremy shrugged. “If it isn’t true you’ve had multiple clients drop dead at your weddings, I’ll be happy to correct my statements.”

  “At least we didn’t embezzle money like some people,” I said, noticing Chatty Cathy look over as our voices rose.

  Jeremy’s eyes narrowed, then he gave a haughty laugh. “But the Balinese police aren’t investigating embezzlement, are they? I’ll bet they’d be interested to know that several people on this trip have actually been suspects in a murder investigation before.”

  I balled my hands into fists, but before I could think of something to say in response, Brett took my elbow and spun me around.

  “I thought we were taking a walk,” he said, propelling me forward and away from Jeremy.

  Kristina linked her arm through Richard’s and dragged him with her as he hurled an insult about Jeremy’s knockoff Prada flip-flops over his shoulder.

  We walked down the hard-packed sand until we’d reached the edge of the water. I looked out into the ocean and saw the waves breaking further out, making the water close to the shore flat and placid. The sea extended out in bands of blue, from a pale turquoise at the sand to teal as the water deepened to indigo where the waves crested. I relaxed my hands and tried to put Jeremy and his threats out of my mind as I took in a breath free of spicy perfume.

  “I’m sorry about that,” I said to Kristina and Brett.

  “I’m just sorry I didn’t get to tell him what I thought about his bargain basement spray-on tan,” Richard said, clearly still fuming.

  “Don’t give it a second thought,” Kristina said, patting Richard on the shoulder. “Jeremy makes enemies everywhere he goes.”

  “How do you know everyone?” I asked.

  Brett winked at me. “I’m not as young as I look. Plus, almost all the people on this trip are Inspire people. Different cliques but I still know who they are.”

  Since I was on the end closest to the ocean, I let the water wash up around my feet, feeling pleasantly surprised by the warmth of the water. “And Chatty Cathy is from Inspire?”

  Kristina nodded. “She tried to hang with Dina and Veronica more than with us though.”

  “Which was fine by me,” Brett added.

  “So whom did Sasha pal around with at Inspire?” Richard asked. “Aside from the guy she had an affair with?”

  We crossed from our resort’s beach area into what appeared to be a public beach with an open-air restaurant and plastic lounge chairs grouped closely together in tight rows. A thatched hut with a pair of high massage tables sat over to one side, and two bored masseuses sat underneath talking to each other.

  Kristina thought for a moment. “Come to think of it, I don’t know if she did hang around with a group. And after the affair ended, she never returned to Inspire.”

  “That’s sad,” I said.

  “She was cheating on her husband for years,” Richard reminded me. “Plus, she’s the reason Jeremy is here.”

  I gave myself a mental slap. “Right. Forget I said that.” I stepped around a stretch of crushed shells in the sand. “Do you think Sasha could have killed Veronica to get revenge after all these years?”

  Brett and Kristina exchanged a glance, and Brett shrugged. “I don’t know her well enough to say, but she doesn’t seem like the most easygoing person.”

  “But why wait all this time to take her revenge?” Kristina asked. “And it’s not like Veronica stayed with the guy. He married someone else. I’d have an easier time believing Sasha flew out to Texas and killed him.”

  We passed a row of rust-colored beach umbrellas, and I looked up at the hotel behind them. Sprawling, with chocolate-brown stairs leading up to a large building surrounded by lagoon-like swimming pools, the resort looked luxurious. As we walked further down the sand, members of the hotel staff were setting up a dark wood ceremony structure draped with white fabric in front of three short rows of folding chairs. Four fabric-draped poles marked off four corners of the beach, each topped with a large floral ring reminiscent of a wagon wheel, with white tassels dangling underneath.

  “A wedding,” Richard said, more like a curse than a statement.

  I sped up my pace. “We do seem to have a hard time avoiding brides and weddings on this trip.”

  “I don’t mind weddings,” Kristina said. “Of course I don’t do them all the time. I do a lot of big galas.”

  “It would be nice to have the occasional event without a bride,” I said. “Their emotional needs can drain you.”

  Brett walked around one of the standing floral rings, reaching up and tapping one of the tassels. “Try doing a wedding for a celebrity bride. Or, even worse, a reality TV celebrity bride.”

  Richard made a face. “That’s the one saving grace of DC. No reality TV stars.”

  “Be careful what you wish for,” I s
aid, shuddering at the thought of reality TV stars descending on my understated and classic city.

  “Annabelle’s right,” Brett said. “They’re the worst. They’re not famous, but they think they are, so they want everything for free. And if they don’t get their way, they go off on Twitter. It’s a nightmare.”

  Suddenly our brides weren’t looking so bad.

  “But at least you have recognizable famous people,” Richard said. “Our famous people are politicians. Most people couldn’t pick them out of a lineup no matter how powerful they are. Plus, they aren’t pretty. I wouldn’t mind having some pretty people.”

  I tried not to roll my eyes. “We have pretty brides.”

  Richard sighed. “But the grooms, Annabelle. What about the grooms? You’re not going to stand here and tell me that the Secretary of Commerce or Treasury or whatever was a looker.”

  Richard was right. I was not. And I wasn’t going to defend his bride either. Although the raven-haired actress was one of the so-called pretty people Richard craved, she hadn’t been a pleasant client, and I was thrilled to have that wedding in my rearview mirror.

  “Should we head back to the hotel?” Kristina asked. “I’m definitely going to need to shower and wash my hair before dinner tonight.”

  We reversed ourselves, passing the wedding setup again. This time there was a small wooden table under the wedding ceremony structure and more chairs had been added.

  “So, just for argument’s sake, let’s say Sasha didn’t kill Veronica,” I said. “Who else might have a reason to murder her?”

  Richard narrowed his eyes at me. “Why don’t we leave that to the police?”

  “You heard our driver this morning,” I said. “The Balinese don’t have crime unless tourists bring it. That means they’re not going to know how to get inside the mind of a killer. Which means they probably won’t figure out who did it.”

  Kristina raised an eyebrow. “Someone likes true crime.”

  Richard crossed his arms over his chest. “Someone thinks she’s Columbo just because she’s dating a detective.”

  Kristina’s face lit up. “A detective? Is he cute?”