Say Yes to the Death

by Susan McBride

  “The florist whose career Olivia turned to toast,” she said in a rush, and I heard music and chatter in the background, like she was calling from a party. “I had to ask around . . . and around . . . and around, but I found Jasper Pippin. He didn’t retire to the Keys. He’s been lying low practically right under our nose, and I’ve made a date for us to meet with him tomorrow.”

  Chapter 22

  Malone called not long after Janet, saying he’d left the office and was on his way home. So I kissed my mother on the cheek and squeezed Millie’s hand, telling them both “Good night.” I had to hope that tomorrow would bring some good news. Malone and his defense team at ARGH were on the offense, and maybe whatever preliminary autopsy results they got would be in Millie’s favor. He’d told me to have faith, and I was trying.

  Regardless, my chest constricted as I drove away from Beverly Drive. This wasn’t how Millie should be spending her golden years. She should be doing what she loved most: working in her shop, baking cakes that made people happy, even opening up that restaurant she’d always dreamed of.

  I couldn’t turn on the radio as I headed back to the condo. My head felt so crowded with thoughts that there was no room for music or chatter. I realized I suddenly had a very full Monday and none of it was work-­related. In reverse chronology, I had the interview at Brian’s office in the afternoon, time to be determined. At eleven o’clock I had Draco’s bridal show at the merchandise mart. Before that, at nine o’clock, Janet was picking me up so we could visit a swanky retirement village called Belle Meade.

  And, no, I wasn’t looking to commit my mother.

  I knew the place well because an old bunkmate of mine from Camp Longhorn used to run it before she ran into some trouble. According to Janet, Jasper Pippin had been quietly working at Belle Meade as their in-­house floral technician. He was responsible for visiting the downtown wholesale flower market weekly to put together their fresh arrangements, and he taught classes on flower-­arranging for the residents.

  “Kind of a come-­down from owning his own shop and doing galas and weddings for the biggest names in Big D,” Janet had remarked, and I couldn’t disagree.

  But was it enough of a motive for murder?

  Janet had talked to the current manager of Belle Meade, who’d given us a pass to attend Jasper’s Monday morning flower arranging class. Jan had claimed she was doing a piece on extracurricular activities for the young at heart for the PCP.

  “It’ll make a nice sidebar to my feature on Olivia’s life and untimely death,” my friend had informed me. “One of those ‘where are they now’ bits.”

  “As in, here’s what one of Olivia’s victims—­and possibly her killer—­has been up to since La Belle from Hell ruined his career?”

  “That’s perfect, Kendricks. Mind if I use that for my opening line?” Janet had dryly remarked before hanging up.

  I didn’t care so much about Janet’s cover story as the fact that I’d have a chance to size up Jasper Pippin in person and see if my first impression was, “Oh, yes, I can see him stabbing Olivia in the neck with a cake knife.”

  When I reached my parking lot and pulled into my slot, I saw Brian’s Acura neatly tucked into my guest space. He’d turned on the porch light but I didn’t see any lights beaming through the windows. It wasn’t that late. Had he already gone to bed?

  I went in quietly, setting down my keys and bag on the kitchen counter. The only sound I detected was the air conditioner whirring.

  “Bri?” I said as I tiptoed into the bedroom. “Are you awake?”

  His reply was a softly grunted, “No.”

  I toed off my shoes and pulled off my yoga pants, dropping them onto the carpet. Then I struggled out of my bra without removing my T-­shirt. I tossed the bra to the floor and crawled into bed.

  I snuggled up beside him, setting my hand on his chest and my head on his shoulder. I felt his heart’s steady thump beneath my palm. At first I thought he had dozed off in the few seconds it had taken me to undress. Then I heard his voice, quiet in the dark.

  “How was Millie?” he said.

  “She’s trying to be brave,” I told him, “but she’s scared out of her mind.” I felt his arm wrap around my back. “Mother’s trying equally hard to distract her.” And possibly slipping mickeys in her tea, I left unsaid.

  “Cissy’s a good egg.”

  “If not a little scrambled,” I replied, and he chuckled, drawing me nearer. For a while I lay there beside him, tucked against his warmth. I listened to him breathe and tried to clear my head. I wanted to close my eyes and drift off. I wished I could. But I imagined I smelled Allie’s perfume, and I found myself picturing the two of them working late, Allie sitting much too close to him.

  Stop it, I chastised myself and swallowed down my jealousy. Brian and Allie hadn’t been downtown at ARGH making out. They were working toward the same goal I was: to keep Millie out of jail. So instead of making some idiotic comment, like, Can you tell Allie to nix the patchouli? I asked him, “You’re going to get Millie off, right? She’s not going to prison for something she didn’t do, is she?”

  “Not if I can help it,” he whispered into my hair. “Let’s get some sleep, okay? It’s been a long day, and I’m beat. And you’ve been through the wringer, too.”

  He was right. It had been one of the longest days of my life.

  “I love you, Brian Malone,” I said and tightened my hold on him.

  He nuzzled my neck and murmured, “I love you, too.”

  So this time when I closed my eyes, I envisioned Malone and me on our honeymoon, far away from Allie Price and from my mother, on some tropical island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Somehow I dozed off.

  When I woke up, blurry daylight edged the window shades, and I heard Brian’s razor humming in the bathroom. It was almost like yesterday had never happened, I thought as I yawned and stretched before turning on my laptop. Only yesterday’s horrors were real as a glance at the local news headlines on my laptop would attest: THE WEDDING BELLE SLAIN, ARREST PENDING SAY COPS.

  Oh, boy.

  My stomach fluttered.

  It was strange, the way nothing had changed and everything had changed in twenty-­four hours. My life would go on, maybe better than before. Olivia’s death had closed a rough chapter, and the unwritten chapters that lay ahead promised to be the best part of the whole book. There was just one hitch: Millie. Until she was off the hook, my story was bookmarked.

  Luckily, I had plenty of nosing around to do, enough to keep me very busy. But first I had to brush my teeth.

  Brian waited until I’d rinsed to kiss me. Then he asked what I was doing all day and whether I could come down to the office at two o’clock. I told him I was seeing Janet to help her with a story and then to a fashion show with Mother—­he raised his eyebrows at the latter but not the former—­and I should be done by lunchtime. Satisfied, he kissed me again before grabbing his briefcase and leaving to pick up Millie at Mother’s house.

  Fifteen minutes later I had my face washed, hair brushed, and clothes on. I was eating a banana and trying to get some work done—­adding pages to a local breast cancer recovery group’s support site—­when Janet showed up in her silver VW sedan, tooting her horn out front.

  I could see her vintage yellow cloche hat through the glass even before I jumped into the passenger’s seat and was able to take in her entire ensemble: orange hair, black glasses, black shirt, black belt, black and yellow striped skirt, and black combat boots with laces up the shins.

  “Great outfit. Let me guess. You’re the boogie-­woogie bumblebee from Company C,” I said, smiling as I buckled up and she put the car in gear.

  “Good one.” She grinned. “Well, Jasper Pippin’s into flowers, right? I figured I’d go with the theme.”

  “So you’re going to pump him for pollen?”

  “Until it
stings,” she said with a hearty yuk-­yuk, and I groaned.

  Hey, at least she was in a good mood, I thought as she pushed the car into Preston Road traffic and hightailed it south to Forest Lane. Maybe she’d awakened this morning, too, and realized she could forever close the book on the bad times with Olivia. It was rather liberating.

  We’d barely gone a mile before Janet started to rattle on about calling the Salvo Productions office and talking to her friend Sammi about getting stills from Penny Ryan’s wedding, but I was only half listening until I heard her say, “I asked about that guy, Pete, but she said they didn’t have a cameraman on staff named Pete anything.”

  “What?” I turned away from the window. “Of course there’s a cameraman named Pete. I saw him with Olivia. I heard her call him that. Maybe it’s a nickname?”

  “I described him to Sammi—­the tattoo sleeves, the beard, just like you said—­and she seemed really adamant that he doesn’t exist. In fact,” Janet glanced away from the road as she told me, “Sammi insists they didn’t send anyone from The Wedding Belle to shoot at Penny Ryan’s wedding. She said they couldn’t get permission from Lester Dickens. He threatened to have any of the crew arrested for trespassing if they showed up on his property.”

  “Wait, what?” I stopped her because it made no sense. “Of course Pete was shooting for The Wedding Belle. Why else would he have been there?”

  “He could have been part of the wedding photographer’s party,” Jan suggested.

  “No,” I said, because I knew that wasn’t right. Pete didn’t seem to have had anything to do with the official photographer. Another guy had shot all the formal wedding pics, and he had his own crew, all women, who’d taken the sanctioned shots of the wedding party and the families. Pete hadn’t been anywhere around for that. “Olivia sure acted like he was with her show. When I interrupted her yelling at Millie for showing up an hour late with the cake, she had Pete take five. Then she ranted about ratings and how she had to ramp up the drama to hold onto her show. And when Olivia pulled a hissy fit about the cake, Pete was there, catching it all on his camera. If he wasn’t with Salvo Productions, Olivia sure acted like he was.”

  “That’s weird,” Janet said, precisely what I was thinking. “You told me they confiscated the guests’ cell phones, right?”

  “Yep, and security was tight.”

  “But somehow Olivia snuck this Pete guy in to record for her show? Wouldn’t Lester Dickens have had him tossed once he saw him working the wedding?”

  “You’d think so,” I agreed.

  “And if Dickens didn’t throw him out, surely the Ryans would have,” Jan said, and I nodded. “But no one did?”

  “No.”

  “Something’s fishy, indeed,” she said.

  That was exactly what I’d told my mother after Olivia’s wedding cake drama. Who was Pete? And why was he at Penny Ryan’s wedding? It was almost as though he’d been present just to record Olivia’s dressing down of Millie when she was late with the cake and Olivia’s histrionics over the cake-­cutting. Was it the Wedding Belle’s idea to have a rogue cameraman on-­hand so that she could pressure Millie to drop the $10,000 bill? Or was there more to the story that I didn’t see?

  “Can you ask your buddy Sammi if the routine with Millie’s cake was scripted,” I said, “because Millie insists Olivia knew the bottom layer was Styrofoam, that it was her idea in the first place. I got the impression Olivia pulled her pissy diva routine for the camera.”

  “Sure, I’ll ask,” Janet said. “Anything else?”

  “We have to keep digging,” I told her, more convinced than ever that something very twisted was going on with Olivia toward the end, something that had worked its way up to her murder. And either Millie had been unfortunate enough to get caught in the crosshairs or she’d been the perfect patsy.

  Chapter 23

  Janet and I were both quiet as she pulled the VW onto the grounds of Belle Meade. Once we’d turned off Forest Lane, the car rolled past tall privacy fencing anchored by two stone pillars topped by huge carriage lanterns. Janet slowed down as we thumped over speed bumps toward a security guard’s booth.

  “Hey, there, I’m Janet Graham from the Park Cities Press. I should be on the visitor’s list. I spoke with Madge yesterday,” she said after rolling down her window to check in with the white-­haired guard.

  I thought I recognized him from when I’d visited Belle Meade with Cissy about a year ago. Wasn’t his name Bob or Sam? I couldn’t recall which, and he didn’t give me a second glance as he looked into the car and waved us past.

  “It’s gorgeous, isn’t it?” Janet remarked, steering the car beneath the overhang of tall, gnarled oaks toward a plantation-­style house with pillars straight out of Gone with the Wind. “I hope I stick around to tack on at least fifty more years of mileage. If I do, I want to move into this place. They have every amenity you can think of,” she said. “It’s like Disneyland for real grown-­ups.”

  “You should probably make your reservation now,” I told her. “I think the waiting list is something like ten years.”

  “I’ll check it out while we’re here, see if they have a spot I can reserve in another half a century,” she said and smiled.

  I didn’t know if Janet really wanted to book a villa at Belle Meade when she reached Golden Girlhood, but if she did, good for her.

  Personally, I hoped that Malone and I could live out our old age in a house we bought together, somewhere quiet on a bit of acreage so we didn’t have neighbors too close. I think being in a condo for so long had burned me out on living in what amounted to a human ant colony.

  “When I go,” Janet said out of the blue, “I hope they have to pry my knotty old hands off my keyboard.”

  “I want to fade out with my bony claws clutching a paintbrush,” I told her, adding, “and if I’m really lucky, with Brian stiff as a board in front of the TV, watching hockey across the room.”

  “Yep,” Jan replied, “that sounds perfect for you two lovebirds. None of that mushy holding hands stuff when you croak in tandem.”

  “Okay, so I’ll clutch my paintbrush one-­handed and hold Malone’s hand with the other while he stares at hockey on the forty-­two-­inch screen across the room,” I said, laughing, before I realized what we were talking about. “Listen to us! We’re positively morbid. It’s Olivia’s fault, for making us think about life and death.”

  Janet shrugged. “If you can’t joke about what scares you most, what’s the point?”

  “Yeah, what’s the point,” I repeated as Janet pulled the VW into a visitor’s spot in front of Belle Meade’s pillared façade. She shut off the engine and twisted around to grab her big bag from the backseat.

  “We’re supposed to stop by the management office and then head to Activity Room 3 where Jasper’s holding his class.”

  So I dutifully followed on Janet’s combat boot heels, entering the main building of Belle Meade with its oiled wood and crystal chandeliers. I trailed her into the management office, where she introduced me to Madge Malloy, the woman who’d taken over after my friend Annabelle’s departure. I didn’t speak except to smile and say, “Nice to meet you.”

  Janet seemed to have the patter down perfectly, telling Madge she’d send her courtesy copies once the piece on Jasper’s floral-­arranging class appeared in the PCP. Then Madge dropped us off at Activity Room 3. Although we were ten minutes early for class, the chairs were filled with chattering women who gave us the once-­over as we walked in. And I didn’t think it was just because we were the only ones who appeared to be under sixty. The crowd of bespectacled eyes homed in on Janet and her bee-­inspired ensemble.

  “Nice topper,” one of them said, admiring Janet’s cloche hat. She was an elegant-­looking woman with her gray hair pulled back into a ponytail and a paisley scarf around her neck. “My mother left me a few Caroline Reboux ori
ginals that I should dust off. They’re still in their boxes.”

  “Wow, Caroline Reboux in boxes,” Janet said breathlessly, and I half expected her to jump in the woman’s lap and wriggle like an excited puppy. “That’s vintage gold.”

  “Real treasures never age,” the woman replied with a smile.

  Janet smiled back.

  “Okay, now that you’ve made a new friend, can we sit down?” I whispered, nudging her toward the only pair of unoccupied chairs in the back. “Guess you’ll have to grill Jasper after class, huh?”

  “Yeah, Madge said he’d give me a few minutes,” Janet responded and tugged open her bag. She withdrew a point-­and-­shoot camera, which she passed over to me. “Hold this, would you?” Then she got out a tiny notebook and pen. “Yes, I still take notes longhand,” she said when I gave her a look.

  Jasper hadn’t shown yet, though there was a rectangular table set in the front of the room. Its surface was covered with buckets containing greenery and an assortment of peonies. There were as many vases as women present so I figured that, once Jasper gave some instruction, he let his students have at it.

  Soon enough the sound of footsteps could be heard tapping on the tiled hallway and the women seemed to sit up straighter. Their chatter stopped.

  And into the room swept the same thin, smartly dressed man I’d glimpsed in a few of The Wedding Belle episodes. He had on pin-­striped black trousers, a mustard-­colored jacket, and a patterned black-­and-­gold cravat.

  I nudged Janet and whispered, “I see he got the memo that it was Dress Like a Bee Day.”

  “Shh,” she hushed me with a finger to her lips.

  “It’s another beautiful morning at Belle Meade, isn’t it, girls?” he said to the room at large, and the group replied in unison, “Hello, Jasper.”

  “Hello, hello,” he replied, winking, and he smoothed a hand over his shiny pate.

  He may have been a card-­carrying member of AARP himself, but he looked fit and agile, moving behind the table to gesture at all the goodies gathered atop it.