Veiled Threats

by Deborah Donnelly

  “Someone sent Douglas Parry flowers at the hospital. A bunch of dead roses. Tied up with a dog collar.”

  My hands were cold as I hung up the phone. Perhaps I was well out of it, at a safe distance from the Parrys and their troubles. Unless his condition had changed—and who would tell me if it had?—Douglas was due home from the hospital in a few days. Would there be more threatening incidents at the estate, even ringed as he was with security guards? Like Nickie, I was unfairly angry at the police for failing to stop Keith Guthridge's campaign of intimidation. And couldn't Guthridge see that he was only hardening Parry's resolve to testify against him? Unless, with his damaged heart, Parry had lost his spirit for the fight.

  The phone rang again. I told myself, for the hundredth time, that it wouldn't be Holt, and it wasn't. It was my mother.

  “Carrie, you sneaky thing, you!” She sounded almost girlish, laughing with excitement. “I just opened my mail!”

  “Mom?”

  “Here you've been sounding so concerned about money, you thought I couldn't tell but of course I could, and then this! I'm going to march right in to the bank first thing tomorrow morning and tell them to hand over my mortgage! Or wait, it's a cashier's check, do I have to deposit it first in my own account?”

  “Um, I'm not sure—”

  “Of course, dear, Eddie handles the money for you, doesn't he? He put the sweetest note in with the check. Why don't you two drive over here for a visit, some weekend when you're not too busy? I'm so proud of you, Carrie, for making a success of your business.”

  “Mom, Mom, wait a minute. Back up. How much is this check for?”

  “Twenty-five thousand, of course. The full amount of your loan.”

  “Of course.” I sat down at the kitchen table, with Sally Kroger's husky voice echoing in my head. The matter of overcharging Mr. and Mrs. Parry approximately twenty-three thousand dollars … Eddie must have thrown in two grand of his own. Big of him.

  “Are you there, Carrie? Is something wrong?”

  “No, nothing's wrong, Mom. I, ah, I'm just heading out the door for a meeting, and I'm late. I'll call you later, OK?” I couldn't, I just could not destroy her exhilaration with the ugly truth. Later, I told myself as we hung up, later I'll tell her that Eddie and I have parted ways. But I won't tell her why.

  I did head out the door then, but only to pick up my mail. A familiar stiff, creamy envelope stood out above the magazines and bills, but instead of the hired calligrapher's elegant loops, my address was scribbled in hasty ballpoint. I tore it open as I climbed the stairs to the office. Inside, beneath the familiar, formal “Mr. and Mrs. Douglas Parry request the honor of your presence,” and so forth, was a highly informal message.

  Carnegie, it read, I hate what happened, but I don't care whose fault it was. Would you come to the wedding? My mother will be there and I want you to meet her. I miss you. Love, Nickie.

  Attending Nickie's wedding would be a mistake, I knew that. Her parents would be furious, for starters. They might even risk a scene and ask me to leave. And did I really want to watch while Dorothy Fenner carried off the gala event that I had planned down to the last detail? Every note of music, every morsel of food, every inch of lacy ribbon fluttering from the bridesmaids’ bouquets had come into being through my hard work. And Douglas Parry's money, of course. But now the money was gone, dishonestly buying me my mother's gratitude, and I had nothing left to show for the work but a crossed-off date on the calendar and Eddie's empty chair.

  I tore the invitation in half and went back inside.

  IT WAS A MIXED MARRIAGE: SHE WAS CATHOLIC, HE WAS Klingon. Or something. The “rush job” Eddie had committed me to was a Star Trek theme wedding. I hate theme weddings, and Eddie knew it, the bum. In this case, the bridal couple and their science fiction friends had done most of the planning themselves, except that their choice of site had fallen through. There wasn't really that much for me to do, since Eddie had lucked into a cancellation for a small function room at the Four Seasons Olympic. I was only attending the ceremony at all because Lily insisted we go.

  Lily, of all people. You think you know somebody, and then she turns out to be a Trekkie. I called her to complain, and all I got were eager questions.

  “Whose wedding are they doing?” she demanded. “Worf and Dax? Tom and B'Elanna? Or maybe a new one, like Kirk and Uhuru …”

  “Lily, I have no idea what you're talking about. All I know is, they're being married by a Universal Life minister who's going to wear Spock ears. And they wanted me to dress as someone named Jane, but I said no.”

  “Captain Janeway—that would be so cool!”

  “No, Lily, that would not be so cool. I admit that their photography idea is cool: The guests are being given digital cameras, and they're going to post all the pictures on a Web site. That's given me all kinds of ideas for the future. But I am not dressing up for this deal and neither are you, all right?”

  “Oh, all right. I'll meet you in the lobby at three.”

  As I drove downtown I couldn't help wondering about Nickie's wedding. Had Dorothy kept to my schedule, and gotten the formal photographs done ahead of time? It was so hard to take posed shots after the ceremony, when everyone wanted to cry and hug and rush off to the reception. And how had the studio shoot come off? Nickie planned to give her father a hand-tinted black-and-white portrait of herself and Ray, to set beside his treasured memento of his own parents’ wedding day. What about the scruffy young videographer; had Dorothy gotten him into some decent clothes? And was Joe Solveto personally slicing the smoked salmon over at the yacht club, as he'd promised?

  I shook off my regrets as I pulled up to the hotel. If I ever got married myself, I sometimes thought, it would be downtown at the Four Seasons Olympic, a gorgeously restored grande dame of a hotel from the 1920's. In the huge, three-tiered lobby, fluted gilt columns rise to a barrel vault ceiling, and the ornate chandeliers overhead are echoed by ornate flower arrangements below. All larger than life, and much more elegant.

  Lily and I were heading up the marble stairs to the mezzanine when Alan Palmer, Joe Solveto's partner, waved at me from some easy chairs near the entrance to the Georgian Room restaurant. I was running a little late, but I always had time for Alan. Especially when he's chatting with the mayor's wife. Besides his chief career of being devastatingly handsome, Alan was a media buyer for a local ad agency, and a networker par excellence. Joe had recently suggested that Alan put me in touch with some families in need of my services.

  “Lily,” I said, “let's go schmooze. That's Vivian Wyble, and she's got unmarried daughters.”

  The two of them rose at our approach, and Vivian met my friendly smile with one of her own as Alan made the introductions.

  “So nice to meet you,” I said. “I met your husband recently, at Senator Bigelow's fund-raiser.”

  Well, I hadn't so much met the mayor as showed him where to park his car, but all's fair in love and small business. I just hoped she wasn't a pal of Grace Parry's.

  “Yes, he told me how well it went. And Alan was just saying what a lovely job you do with weddings.”

  “That's kind of him. I'd love to talk with you sometime about …”

  Alan was staring over my shoulder with the oddest look on his face. Vivian Wyble was staring as well, and she backed up half a step as if in fright. I began to turn around, but doom was already upon me.

  “Kharrnegie!”

  I got the full Boris bear hug, made additionally painful by a huge metallic sash he was wearing across one shoulder of an outlandish gray-and-black uniform. He also wore a bizarrely misshapen skull cap, a long shaggy wig, and fangs. Lily, at least, loved the whole look.

  “Boris! You're Lieutenant Worf!”

  “A ffirmative!” he bellowed, putting me down. “Come, we must drink our fill of blood wine!”

  Mayors’ wives are a gallant breed. Vivian ventured a courteous smile, while Lily swallowed a giggle and Alan remained tactfully deadpan. I could h
ear the spirit of Dorothy Fenner snickering. Boris clapped a gorilla-sized arm around Lily's shoulders, grabbed my hand, and towed us upstairs to a room that had been transformed into somebody's idea of a spaceship. Or something.

  Lily was in heaven, pointing out Starfleet officers and various aliens, and explaining that her mother used to watch the original Star Trek series and now her boys watched the latest one. The ceremony itself was mercifully brief, involving very down-to-earth gold rings. After scanning the crowd for Crazy Mary—would she like outer-space cake?—and downing a glass of “blood wine,” a.k.a. merlot, I dragged Lily away. She stopped in the ladies’ room, so I sat in the lobby and leafed through a copy of the Seattle Times.

  When she returned I was weeping.

  “Carnegie, what's wrong? Are you sick?”

  I offered Lily the newspaper with hands that were suddenly cold and sweating. Crazy Mary's death got half a column on page two of the local news section. Well-Known Fan of Weddings Victim of Hit-and-Run, it read. Died instantly. The car in question located by police. Stolen, no fingerprints. Mary's last name was Jaeger. She left no family. Lily read the article, then sank down in a chair beside me.

  “Oh, God, Carnegie. You think she saw someone that night, and now they've killed her?”

  I nodded. I couldn't speak.

  Lily folded the paper and clutched it tightly, taking deep breaths. “Carnegie, listen. I know I volunteered to look into all this with you, but now … I have to think about my boys. They don't have anybody but me. This is too dangerous. It's too dangerous for both of us!”

  I held up a hand. “I understand, Lily. Listen, can you take a bus home?”

  “Sure. What are you going to do?”

  I stood up, unsteadily. “I'm going to crash Nickie's wedding.”

  THE SIDEWALK IN FRONT OF ST. ANNE’S EPISCOPAL CHURCH was empty, and the arched double doors were closed. I parked Vanna in a handicapped spot and sprinted up the stairs. I had no plan: I just had to tell Douglas and Grace that their daughter was in danger.

  But I'd have to do it after the ceremony. As the door banged behind me, echoing in the vaulted space, I could hear the sweet, precise notes of flute, cello, and violin scattering down from the musicians in the balcony, and the anticipatory murmuring of the guests. The candelabra were lit, and solemn young ushers were already escorting family members to the special pews marked with garlands of white ribbon and stephanotis blossoms. I slipped into a rear seat, trying to slow my breathing. I'd catch the Parrys before the reception, and convince them that Nickie and Ray should escape to the airport right from the church. Or should I actually try to stop the wedding? I couldn't decide.

  “You must be Carnegie. Nickie described you to me. You've done a lovely job.”

  The woman beside me was in her fifties, with no cosmetics to soften the wrinkles around her tired brown eyes and the rough, uneven coloring of her cheeks. Her dark, heavy hair was as long as a girl's, and pulled simply back in a style that disregarded the many streaks of iron gray. She wore a plain sand-colored dress with a long full skirt, and her only jewelry was a heavy turquoise-and-silver necklace in a squash-blossom design.

  “I'm Julia Parry.”

  How brave of her to come, I thought, when all Douglas's friends know the story of how she left Seattle, a drunkard, a bad mother, disgraced. And then I thought, with wild irrelevance, why did Dorothy seat her all the way back here? Well, I knew myself that divorced parents, especially estranged ones, make for interesting but perilous points of etiquette.

  Julia was still speaking. “Your assistant was so helpful at the rehearsal last night. I realize that it's awkward, having to fit in ghosts from the past.”

  I looked at her more carefully. There was a glint of humor in that last remark, but also a somber dignity in her eyes. This woman had lied to herself for a long time, and now she lived quietly with truth.

  “Dorothy's not my assistant,” I whispered. “She's my replacement. Grace and Douglas thought I was cheating them. I wasn't.”

  “I see.” She smiled, and I could see Nickie in her weathered face. “Well, then, we're both a bit superfluous, aren't we?”

  I smiled in agreement, and glanced past her at an inconspicuous oak door near the end of our pew. The door, I knew, led to an enclosed corridor which ran the length of the church, from the dressing rooms at one side of the main entrance all the way down to the vestry near the altar. Ray and his best man would be waiting in the vestry now, and Nickie and her bridesmaids would be fidgeting in the dressing room. They would enter the church down the main aisle, but Dorothy could move unseen along the corridor between the groom's preparations and the bride's, or through the dressing room's outside door to the service parking lot where the dresses and flowers had been delivered.

  The delivery vans would be gone now, the corridor empty, and Dorothy would be putting the finishing touches on the bride and her attendants. I imagined the scene: the flower girl would upend her basket of rose petals, someone would lose an earring, and Greta, the photographer, would take a snap of the bridesmaids clowning around that would later be one of Nickie's favorite memories. And Dorothy Fenner would be doing a fine job of orchestrating the whole affair, and no one would miss me in the least. Well, better to fret about that than think about poor old Mary, lying on the pavement somewhere. I should have asked Lily to call Lieutenant Borden. But what did we have to tell him, really?

  A few late arrivals were still finding seats. Julia and I shifted down our pew, and I directed my attention toward the center aisle, trying to distract myself. Ray's brothers were both acting as ushers, just now escorting his parents and sisters to the front. Mrs. Ishigura's hair was still a gleaming ebony, but her husband's was a distinguished pepper-and-salt mix. They didn't look at all disapproving today, just quietly proud. I could see Holt, up front, sitting with the bride's family. Douglas Parry was already seated, next to Nickie's uncle and aunt; so he wasn't walking his daughter down the aisle after all. As he leaned across them to speak to Holt, I could see why. Douglas must have dropped twenty pounds since the heart attack, and his gingery hair only emphasized the slack pallor of his face. At least Keith Guthridge had had the grace to stay away tonight, and not upset him further.

  The music changed tempo, and Grace Parry entered, moving regally past the guests on the arm of the handsomest usher. She wore a wrap-front dress of palest green silk. It set off her cornsilk hair and slender legs to perfection, and when she glanced up at her young escort with those strange amber eyes, the back of his neck turned crimson. Somehow I'd have to get Grace alone, away from her husband, to tell her about Crazy Mary.

  The ceremony began. The Reverend David Allington, silver-haired and spry, mounted the steps to the chancel and turned to face the congregation. Ray Ishigura and his best man, a lanky, curly-haired French horn player named Ted, were debonair in their cutaway coats and gray ascots. The ushers filed to the front and made a handsome line to the right, most of them even remembering to stand up straight. The flute trilled to a close, and the trumpet soloist stepped to the balcony rail and began the processional. Purcell's Trumpet Voluntary in D, an oldie but a goodie. Now, I thought automatically. First bridesmaid, step out now.

  She did, right on cue, and there were smiles and sighs for her lilac peau de soie gown and her bouquet of tulips and narcissus and her nervous, lovely smile. The other bridesmaids followed, all of them so young and so pretty, enjoying their moments in the spotlight. Then the maid of honor, Nickie's cousin Gloria, with her more elaborate flowers and her impish smile. There was a pause while the attendants arranged themselves on the chancel steps, and then we waited, ready to ooh and aah over adorable little Piper, the flower girl with the yuppie name.

  And we waited. The Trumpet Voluntary went on, joyful and inexorable, while our smiles of anticipation became fixed, and then faded. A long minute went by, then two. Indulgent chuckles broke out here and there: Nickie's nervous, people murmured, or the little girl is acting up. Reverend Allington fr
owned, and then smoothed his face into patient benevolence once more. The trumpet wavered. My pulse was pounding. The murmurs grew, loud enough to cover the childish voice that reached me from a crack in the little oak door.

  “The lady fell down,” whispered Piper, peering around the edge. She was crying huge, silent tears. “I'm scared.”

  I went cold all over. I stood up, thrust Piper into Julia's comforting arms, and closed the oak door firmly behind me before sprinting down the corridor toward the bride's dressing room. The door was slightly ajar, and a sickly hospital smell reached me as I tried to shove it open. An obstruction behind the door gave way slowly, and then held. I shoved harder and squeezed through.

  The obstruction was Dorothy Fenner. She was tumbled across the rug like a rag doll, her permed silver hair askew, her breathing hoarse and wet. Beyond her was an old overstuffed chair, one of several in the faded, mismatched furnishings, piled high today with the bridesmaids’ street clothes, their hairbrushes and lipstick cases and crumpled tissues. But this one chair had nothing on it except a satin shoe. One of Nickie's. Inside the shoe was a piece of lined white paper, printed roughly in pencil. Dazed, in slow motion, I picked it up.

  We'll tell you what to do, it read. No police or you get her fingers in the mail.

  I STOOD HOLDING THE VICIOUS LITTLE NOTE FOR ONLY A moment, but it seemed like forever. I was strangely reluctant to release the paper from my hand, as if doing so would release a flood of events that must be held back at all costs. I had no sense of disbelief, no futile thought that this wasn't real, couldn't be happening. I didn't look wildly around the room to convince myself that Nickie was gone, or run frantically to the street door to try to catch a glimpse of her abductors. The deed was done, the terror and the grief would be all too real. But not until I opened my hand, and let the paper fall.

  Then Dorothy Fenner stirred, and the trance was broken. I dropped the note and knelt beside her. The sickly smell was strong on her face and her silver hair. The door pushed open again and Julia Parry's face appeared above me, concerned but calm, responding sensibly to what she assumed was a minor crisis.