Veiled Threats

by Deborah Donnelly

  “Good morning, Eddie.”

  “Mrs. Parry left three messages on the machine before I got here this morning.” Small talk had no place in Eddie's repertoire. He got to the point and then prodded you with it. “Wants to see you at the estate ASAP, and she's pissed off.”

  “About what, the dress?”

  “Yep. Get on over there.”

  “I'll come up first. I've got something to ask you about.”

  I hung up and fished the business card case out of my tote bag, but when I pried it open all I found was a soggy wad of cardboard, glued together with rain. Maybe some of the cards would be readable later.

  As I showered I speculated about the cards and the other lost items, and then my thoughts wandered to the second Mrs. Parry. Was she a sharp operator like her husband, or a trophy wife who spent all her time shopping? Heaven knows she'd spent enough when she ordered Nickie's first wedding gown from New York: Even in a too-small size, the thing had been a positive snowbank of lace and beadwork, with a cathedral train and a fingertip veil. Nickie's lovely olive skin would have looked unpleasantly sallow against all those acres of stark white. I've always disliked that tired old notion that a snow-white gown is a symbol of purity, like the safety seal on an aspirin bottle.

  I dressed quickly, in flats, and a pale lemon cotton sweater, and slacks. Grace Parry could live with me sans makeup and with my hair clipped back. She was from Chicago, I remembered now, and had gone back on business. So she did have a business. Probably antiques or art collecting or something else suitable for a tycoon's wife. I headed outside and upstairs, sparing a glance for my barrel garden on the deck, trying to focus myself on ordinary daylight instead of last night's darkness. The tulips and daylilies were past their prime, but the irises were still holding on, with nasturtiums curling at their feet. A couple of kayakers paddled by, their shoulders level with my front deck. I kicked some dried-up goose turds off the planking into the water. Canada geese are pretty, but their manners stink.

  Upstairs, Eddie Breen was at his desk in the workroom, with his feet on the desk and a pile of invoices in his lap. He was a small, wiry man, tanned into a web of wrinkles, with lively gray eyes and fine white hair that was sparse enough to make his jug ears even more conspicuous. His standard uniform was as crisp as ever: khaki pants with knife-edge creases, spotless deck shoes and a white oxford shirt with the sleeves rolled back as precisely as origami. He looked more like a ship's officer than a CPA, though in fact he'd been both.

  Eddie avoided weddings, on the principle that they led to the inherently undesirable state of marriage, and he avoided our clients because he thought they were nuts to get married. But though he never attended them, Eddie's penny-pinching guaranteed that our weddings stayed on schedule and on budget. He was cranky and critical, but an absolute wizard with contracts, discounts, and taxes. He was also surprisingly vigorous for a man of seventy-two, which was handy since I wanted him to live forever.

  This morning he looked up from his papers, chewing on an unlit cigar. I loathe cigar smoke, so Eddie only lit up while leaning out one of the windows. Windows made up most of the office's western wall, echoing the glass sunporch downstairs. You entered the office through what we called the “good room,” the one with new paint and framed wedding photos and halfway decent furniture, including a glass-topped coffee table invitingly covered with bridal magazines, etiquette books, and portfolios of gowns, cakes, and floral arrangements. The workroom, through a connecting door, was larger and messier, with both our desks facing the lake, the secondhand computer on its stand in the corner, and a couple of scratched gray file cabinets along the back wall. With the door closed, clients saw only efficiency and elegance. With it open, as it was now, Eddie could easily bellow across both rooms.

  “You OK?”

  He'd gotten my message, then. “Yeah, I'm fine.”

  But he could see that I wasn't. As I crossed the good room and dropped into my desk chair, he came over to pat my shoulder. Pretty good for a non-hugger like Eddie.

  “ A t least Diane and Jeffrey have left for Paris by now, so they'll have lots to distract them.” I sighed. “Pretty grisly way to start a honeymoon.”

  “Well, try not to dwell on it.”

  “But I am dwelling on it. I should have stopped Michelle before she ran outside. And now I've got this spooky thing I can't get out of my head. See, there was this man….” I described the figure in the rain, the dead-end road, and my sudden suspicion that the Mustang had been tampered with. “What do you think?”

  The cigar swiveled to the other side of his mouth. “I think I remember when you saw a suspicious fellow casing the houseboat, and it turned out to be a real estate agent.”

  “Well, he was lurking around!”

  “And I remember you thought your friend Lily's new boyfriend was married, because he wouldn't show her his house, and it turned out he was just a lousy housekeeper.”

  “Didn't it strike you as funny when he kept putting her off?”

  “No, it did not. What strikes me is that you keep playing Nancy Drew, when you should be drumming up new business.” He lifted the invoices. “ We are seriously behind this quarter.”

  “I know, I know, but really, don't you think I should tell the police?”

  “Well, the police called this morning, as a matter of fact.” He picked up a notepad and glared at it. “A Lieutenant Borden. Wants you to call him, but not 'til this afternoon. Says a Mrs. Fenner told him you were encouraging the bridesmaids to get drunk.”

  “What?! I was not! That bitch. OK, I brought them a bottle of champagne, but I always do that. They all have a little toast and—”

  “Well, this Michelle kid had more than a toast, didn't she?”

  “I know. I should have stopped her. I … I … Eddie, it was so awful—” Suddenly I was shuddering, and Eddie actually did hug me.

  “Hey. Hey, I didn't mean to upset you. Carnegie, don't.”

  “Sorry. I'm OK, really.” I took a deep breath, then took the slip from him with the lieutenant's number. A nasty thought occurred to me. “Eddie, if I tell the police I saw someone suspicious, they'll think I'm just avoiding this accusation about getting Michelle drunk.”

  “Well, they might. Honest to Pete, Carnegie, you do have a lively imagination. Why on earth would anybody try to hurt the Parry girl? She's only about nineteen.”

  “Twenty-two. Well, I don't know. Keith Guthridge must be pretty angry at her father, with his grand jury testimony coming up.”

  “Angry enough to kill Parry's daughter? Jesus, that would guarantee Parry's testimony against him. Doesn't make sense.”

  “No, no, of course it doesn't. Maybe I am just avoiding the accusation. I'll never give my bridesmaids champagne again.”

  “Worry about that later. Right now, worry about that faded old dress you bought the Parry girl. And about these bills. I've said this before and I'm going to say it again: You're undercharging for this wedding, and you're spending too much time on it instead of marketing for new business.”

  He was just trying to distract me, but I let him. “I'm only charging them our standard rate.”

  “Douglas Parry is not standard, for God's sakes. He makes millions off widows and orphans; you don't have to knock yourself out to hunt down good deals for him. Christ, we could charge him double on everything and he'd never notice!”

  “Eddie, I see your point, I really do. But Douglas Parry hasn't been convicted of anything, OK? In fact he hasn't even been accused, not yet. Even if he is, it won't affect us. This wedding is going to establish our reputation. What's left of it after last night.”

  “Louise can't pay her mortgage with our reputation,” he said. Louise was my mother, the widow of Eddie's oldest friend and a dear friend in her own right. “That payment deadline is coming up.”

  “Oh, Eddie, you're worried about her, aren't you? I'm going to pay her back soon, honest I am. If I have to I'll get another line of credit on the business. I won't let her do
wn.”

  “I know you won't,” he relented. “I'm just fussing. You get yourself over to the Parrys’, and we'll take in a show tonight, OK? Get your mind off things.”

  Every couple of weeks the entire staff of Made in Heaven went out for a bad movie and a candy binge. Art films I saw with Lily. Eddie and I preferred science fiction, but we'd take natural disasters, gangsters, or spies, as long as it was loud, fast, and unbelievable.

  “It's a date. Thanks, Eddie.”

  He made a shooing motion with his hands. Resisting an impertinent urge to kiss him on top of his silky white head, I took the notebook on Nickie's wedding out to Vanna. Maybe he was right, and I was being overimaginative about the man in the rain. Well, I'd tell Douglas Parry about the mysterious stranger, and he could tell the police if he wanted to, and that would be that. I put the van in gear and the transmission made a faint but ominous new noise. Soon, I promised my faithful vehicle. You'll get a tune-up soon.

  I picked up a scone and a double cappuccino from Federal Espresso, my favorite caffeine pushers, and headed across the Evergreen Point Bridge over Lake Washington, admiring the whitecaps on one side of the span and the calm silvery water on the other. The Parrys lived in Medina, a semirural enclave of the rich and rustic on the east side of the lake. Just a modest little cottage with a quarter mile of shoreline, a view of Mount Rainier, and a staff of five. Just a place to hang your hat, dock your sailboat, and have the chauffeur park your Rolls. Ray Ishigura, the groom, was a middle-class military brat whose family lived in a split-level in Tacoma, near McChord Air Force Base. But Ray had the potential to be a pianist of international reputation, which must have helped his courtship in Douglas Parry's eyes.

  I managed the scone just fine, scrounging on the floor for a tissue to wipe my fingers. But the coffee did me in just as I started up the Parrys’ half-mile driveway. I swerved to miss a jaywalking squirrel, and a stream of hot brown splotches suddenly bisected the front of my sweater. I had nothing on underneath, and nothing in the van to change into. Great.

  Swearing the way only children of the merchant marine can swear, I pulled up in front of the house, dabbed at the splotches, and walked past a line of cars that made Vanna look as downscale as her driver. Nickie's car was gone, of course, but there was Douglas Parry's splendid silver Rolls, and two sports cars, a hunter-green Jag and a blood-and-silver Alfa Romeo that looked fast standing still. I had some nail polish that color once, but it kept me awake at night.

  As I stepped up to the front door, I remembered my first visit to consult with Nickie. In my infinite wisdom, I'd known exactly what the Parry estate would look like: mock Tudor, maybe a French baronial tower or two, stiffly groomed grounds, lots of antiques. Wrong, on all counts. The house was Northwest avant-garde, with a king's ransom in oldgrowth cedar in swooping curves and jutting angles and unexpected skylights.

  My musings were interrupted by Theo, the chauffeur. He opened the door, stared coldly at my stained sweater, and lingered for just a moment before stepping aside to let me in. I'd been expecting Mariana, the housekeeper, and my cheery smile stiffened foolishly in place. Theo was about twenty-five, but his skin was as pale as a baby's, as if despite his spiffy sports clothes he'd never set foot in the open air. His hair, brows, and eyelashes were white-blond, giving him a colorless, raw look that I found unnerving.

  “It's a jungle out there,” I prattled. “I just got mugged by a cup of coffee.”

  No reaction whatsoever. “Mrs. Parry is in the master bedroom.”

  “Right.” I edged past him. Inside, antique Persian rugs mixed with gaudy Central American textiles, and a dizzying number of mirrors reflected confectionery art glass and ceiling-high houseplants. The main stairway had alternating black and white marble steps, like piano keys, rising from a black marble hallway edged with tiled pools complete with water hyacinths. Got to have those hyacinths.

  I ascended the stairs, and paused to admire the view from the landing. An immense ebony Doberman, as dark as Theo was pale, trotted out from a hallway: Augustus Caesar, guardian of the house and all within. Nickie called him Gus. Gus gave me a cold yellow stare.

  “You don't fool me,” I whispered. “I know your dirty little secret.”

  I leaned down to pull gently on his ears—a liberty I took with him only in private—and he closed his eyes in contentment. Outside the bay windows, Mount Rainier was in full glory, snow white and ice blue above its forested lower slopes. My next wedding after Nickie's would be at a lodge halfway up Rainier, and I wished I were already there, strolling the meadows instead of dealing with a dress crisis. But duty called. From the master suite down the left-hand corridor I could hear a woman's voice, calm but sharp-edged.

  “I can't imagine what you were thinking of, Niccola. It's torn, for heaven's sake. And it's dirty.”

  I gave Gus a farewell tug and headed for the voice, through a foyer to a froufrou dressing room. Nickie stood in front of one mirrored wall, shoulders slumped and arms dangling, doing no justice at all to the Edwardian gown. Mariana, a wizened Brazilian woman, was standing quietly to one side without her usual sunny, gap-toothed smile. Beyond them, regally erect in a wicker fan chair, was Grace Parry, small, blonde, and elegant in a mauve silk suit and an out-of-season tan.

  “You're Carnegie Kincaid.” Her voice was low and smooth. I nodded, and she nodded back, slowly and thoughtfully. “You're fired.”

  WE FROZE: NICKIE WIDE-EYED, MARIANA CAREFULLY EXPRES sionless, and me, I assume, with my mouth open. Nickie flung herself into the conversational breach, her gaze switching rapidly between me and her stepmother. She looked very much as if she'd been crying all night. Life went on, but no one was forgetting what happened to Michelle.

  “She's kidding, aren't you, Grace?” said Nickie. “It's not Carnegie's fault. We can return the dress—”

  “ A ctually, we can't,” I said briskly. “And we won't need to. I'll have it dry-cleaned, repaired, and starched, and once you have your hair up, and the right accessories, you'll be lovely.”

  She was, in fact, lovely already. The dress was fashioned from diagonal ribbons of glossy satin and bands of intricate, rose-patterned lace, with a skirt that dropped from a high waist to a scalloped hem that swept lower in back, forming a hint of a train. Antique gowns are often tiny, but this one had been created for a full-figured woman, and it fit Nickie like a dream. The low-necked bodice and softly draped skirt followed her curves, and the color, not so much faded as burnished by time, drew a golden glow from her skin. Standing at the altar, shy and womanly, Nickie would be a bride from another, more gracious time.

  “There are only a few buttons missing. We'll have some made to match, and the two panels of lace that are a bit discolored can be replaced.” I crossed the room with my head high. “Nice to meet you, Grace. I'm looking forward to your ideas on Nickie's hairstyle and flowers. Unless I really am fired?”

  She rose, with a single easy motion. “Of course not. Just a little joke.”

  Some joke. But she smiled at me warmly enough, looking up from her five-foot-four height, and shook my long narrow hand with her dainty, elegant one. Her cornsilk hair fell casually but perfectly back from her face, and her tawny complexion spoke of sunbathing, not mowing the lawn. Grace Parry looked about thirty-five, and as if she intended to look that way for years to come, no matter how much time or money it took. The one visible flaw was quite subtle: Her eyes were a pale, clear amber, but the gaze of the left one was angled ever so slightly out of true with the right. The effect was disconcerting, as if she were looking past me, or through me. Just now, though, she was clearly looking at my coffee stains. She arched an eyebrow. Bette Davis couldn't have arched any better.

  “Would you like a change of clothes? Let's find you something. Nickie, we'll be right back.” She drew me into the bedroom, but she didn't go looking for clothes. I knew what was coming.

  “About last night,” she said.

  “Mrs. Parry, I'm so terribly sorry! I mean, we all are,
but I just wish I'd stopped Michelle, or—”

  “Call me Grace. And there's nothing you could have done, I'm sure. But Nickie's terribly upset, and I'm concerned about my husband's heart.”

  “His heart?” Douglas was a robust, bull-shouldered man in his sixties, with faultless posture and an energetic stride. I'd come to like and respect him, as a hardheaded but enthusiastic client for Made in Heaven. “He has heart trouble?”

  “Quite serious trouble.” Her face took on a tight, determined look. “He had a damaging heart attack at Christmas. We were skling in Switzerland, and he recuperated there. He doesn't want anyone here to know. But it's critical that he avoid stressful situations.”

  I took a deep breath. “In that case, I think I'd better tell you instead of Douglas. Last night I saw someone suspicious—”

  A far door was flung open and Douglas Parry strode into the bedroom, waving a newspaper and breathing fire, with Gus trotting sternly along at his heels.

  “I'll sue this bastard Gold, Grace, I swear I will! This article of his is libel, it's sheer—” He stopped abruptly and frowned past us into the dressing room at Nickie. “Pumpkin, is that your wedding dress? It isn't white.”

  Instantly, Grace, Mariana, and I joined feminine forces in the face of this monumental masculine gaffe. That the bride's father should see her gown before the wedding, let alone criticize it, was more than any of us could tolerate. I stepped in front of Nickie, Mariana put a protective arm around the girl, and Grace took her husband's arm and ushered him downstairs, cutting through his bluster with a stream of soothing words. With her father out of earshot, Nickie laughed, a little wildly.

  “Maybe we should just elope! Only Daddy would want to carry me down the ladder, and come on the honeymoon to make sure we did everything right.”

  At that, Mariana and I both laughed, and tragedy gave way to romantic comedy, at least for the moment. Nickie slipped out of the gown and Mariana boxed it up so I could take it to a dressmaker's for repairs. As she got dressed, Nickie offered me a purple-and-gold University of Washington sweatshirt in exchange for my spotted sweater. Thus collegiately attired, I followed her downstairs, still hoping for a quiet word with Grace.