“Thank you, darling. Cheers!” She quickly gulped the champagne and dropped the empty glass to her lap. “So, where’s Wesley?”
I took a deep breath, since there was no easy way to break the news. “There’s been a terrible accident, I’m afraid.”
I chose my words carefully. While I didn’t know whether Wesley’s death was accidental or not, it sounded better than to say he’d been murdered. Time would only tell if foul play was involved.
“Accident? Is that why there’s a white van outside that says ‘medical examiner’?”
“Yes,” I said. “I’m afraid we had to call her. It’s Wesley. We found his body this morning in a water tower.”
“Wha…? What do you mean?” She jerked forward, her eyes wide. “That’s not possible. Wesley knows how to swim. He’s an excellent swimmer.”
“No, no. That’s not it. He didn’t drown. But he did pass away. I’m sorry to have to be the one to tell you that.”
“No…I don’t believe you.” She jumped up, which sent the champagne flute crashing to the ground. “You must be wrong. I don’t know what’s going on, but if this is some kind of sick joke, it’s not funny!”
Joke? “No. Of course not. It’s not a joke.” I raised my hands in protest. “Trust me, I would never do that. I’m afraid your stepbrother passed away.”
She wavered for a split second, before she fell back into the chair. “Oh, my God. This is terrible. Dreadful. Poor Wesley!”
“There, there.” Nelle finally joined the conversation. “We know this is a terrible shock. It’s the last thing anyone expected.”
“But I should’ve been there.” The girl looked horrified now. “What will people think of me? They’ll want to know why I wasn’t there when it happened. I was stuck on that god-awful plane…that’s where I was.”
That caught my attention. The girl in front of me had just found out about her stepbrother’s death, but her first thought was for herself? Maybe it was the way she processed grief, but it sounded terribly self-centered.
“Were you two close, then?” I asked.
“Well, not really. To be honest, I haven’t seen him in ten years. But that doesn’t mean I don’t care.”
“No, of course not. I’m sure you two had your reasons.”
“I was in New York, you see.” She sounded anxious now to explain herself. “And he was working here, in his law practice. I couldn’t exactly afford to fly all over the country.”
I didn’t have the heart to correct her. According to Foster Carmichael, Wesley didn’t practice law anywhere. Strange she doesn’t know that. Even if they hadn’t spoken in years, I would think she’d at least have asked him about his occupation.
Slowly, she brushed her hair away from her cheek, which was bone dry. Sunlight dappled her face and highlighted her sharp cheekbones and arched eyebrows.
“Oh, the way to dusty death!” she suddenly cried. “Life is but a walking shadow.” Her face remained tilted to the sun, which was streaming through the window.
“Wait a minute. Isn’t that the speech from Macbeth?” I’d performed the play while a student at Vanderbilt, and I seemed to recall Macbeth said those words after his wife committed suicide.
“Why, yes.” Her head snapped down again. “You have a good ear for dialogue. Most people can’t place those lines.”
Before I could say more, my cell jingled in my pocket, and I quickly withdrew it. To be honest, I welcomed a little relief from Electra’s theatrics.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “But I should take this call.”
By now, I realized it was Ambrose calling me, and I silently praised him for his excellent timing.
“Of course. After all, ‘To thine own self be true.’”
I quickly took my leave, the sound of her voice trailing behind me. Apparently, Electra wanted to perform the rest of Macbeth’s soliloquy for Nelle, and she quickly launched into the next line. Bless her heart.
The moment I accepted Ambrose’s call, I heard his voice on the other end of the line.
“Hey there, darlin.’”
All at once, my shoulders began to relax. Leave it to Bo to calm me down with a single sentence. “Gosh, I wish you were here.”
“I wish I was there, too. How are things going?”
“Not so good.” I quickly told Bo about the morning’s grisly turn of events. “Lance had to tell the family we found Wesley’s body. They were all devastated, of course.”
“Of course. Do you want me to meet you there?”
Sweet of him to ask. “No, there’s really nothing you can do. Turns out Wesley Carmichael had a gambling problem, so now Lance suspects murder. The medical examiner is out there with his body.”
“Well, that’s good. Although, I still think I should drive out there. I don’t want you to have to face this all on your own.”
“It’s okay, really. It’s not my first murder investigation. Remember?”
Unfortunately, I’d had similar conversations with Bo in the past. Ever since someone died at Morningside Plantation, I’d run across several other murders in my travels. Not that I wanted, or needed, the drama in my life, but that was the way things had happened ever since I moved to Bleu Bayou.
“I know,” he said. “That seems like a lifetime ago. You’ve been involved in four cases since then.”
“Five. But who’s counting? Only this one is different. People have been reacting in such strange ways. The victim’s parents won’t even talk to Lance—at least his stepmother won’t—and his stepsister started quoting Shakespeare when I told her about the death.”
“That is weird. How’s the bride holding up?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t seen her in a while. But I spoke with her mom, and I think everyone’s pretty much in a fog at this point.”
Speaking of which…I still hadn’t sent Nelle over to meet with Lance. “Look, Ambrose. I have to go. I promised Lance I’d help him with something.”
“Okay. I won’t keep you then, but there’s something else you should know. Something’s happened over here.”
Uh-oh. Little by little, my shoulders began to tense again. The last thing I needed was more bad news. “What do you mean?”
“It’s about our wedding.”
“Our wedding?” Now I knew I was cursed. I’d already taken a call from Brandy d’Aulnay that morning, which I never did tell Bo about. “That reminds me…I meant to tell you something, too. One of the d’Aulnay sisters called me this morning.”
“D’Aulnay? Isn’t that the name of the family that owns the Riverboat Queen?”
“It is, and Brandy’s one of the daughters. She said the boat caught fire last night and the kitchen burned.”
“That’s terrible. Will they be able to fix it in time?”
“No, they can’t,” I said. “We have to find another venue. Can you believe it?”
When he didn’t answer me for a few seconds, I worried we might’ve been disconnected. “Bo…are you still there?”
“Yeah, I’m here. Well, that’s too bad. Why don’t we talk about it when you get home tonight?”
“Okay. But what did you want to tell me?” I detected some hesitation in his voice. He was hiding something, and now he couldn’t wait to get off the phone.
“It’s not important. I’ll tell you tonight. You’ve got enough going on right now.”
“Ambrose Jackson.” While I appreciated his concern, I didn’t like where this conversation was heading. If he had more news, I needed to hear it, whether I wanted to or not. “Please tell me what’s happened.”
“Okay. But are you sitting down?”
“No, I’m standing. Does it matter?”
“It might. I found out something about our wedding photographer.”
“Okay. Let me have it.”
“I was working with a client,” he
said, “and she told me all about her wedding plans.”
“And?”
“And she’s the daughter of a pretty famous senator. It’s Senator Rios, out of the Valley.”
“Well, good for her.” That didn’t sound like bad news at all. “And good for you, too.” The senator was one of the most important politicians in Louisiana, so the job would bring Bo tons of publicity. Although I honestly had no idea how it would affect our wedding.
“Well, we had our first appointment today,” he said.
“Could you please tell me the news?” At this rate, I was never going to find out what had happened.
“Now, don’t get mad, but she’s using the same photographer we are.”
“Why would I be mad about that?” I’d hired a photographer named Dana to shoot our wedding, and she owned a studio near mine. We often ran into each other by the elevator to the atrium. “She can shoot any weddings she wants to. It’s a free country.”
“Yeah, but the wedding is the same date as ours.” He abruptly cleared his throat. “At the same time.”
“Excuse me?” Surely I misunderstood. With all the hullaballoo this morning, my mind must be playing tricks on me.
“She’s getting married the same day as we are,” he repeated. “At the same time.”
“But…but that’s impossible. How can a photographer be in two places at once? You must have heard her wrong.”
“I’m afraid I didn’t. Turns out the senator’s staff booked the photographer only a week ago. She must’ve said yes without realizing she’s shooting our wedding that day.”
“That’s…that’s awful! She’ll never turn down the chance to shoot a high-profile wedding like that. She’s going to cancel on us. I just know it!”
“Okay, now calm down.” Once again, Ambrose cleared his throat. He seemed to buying time so I could rein in my emotions. He always did that when it sounded like I was ready to jump off the nearest ledge. “She hasn’t called you yet, right? Maybe she’s going to come up with a plan.”
“A plan? Like how to split herself in two?”
“Maybe she’s going to have her assistant shoot our wedding. Or the other way around.”
“Think about it, Bo. She’s not going to palm off the senator’s daughter to an assistant. If anything, she’ll give us the B team and shoot the other wedding herself.”
“We don’t know that yet,” he said. “Why don’t we give her the benefit of the doubt until we hear from her?”
Leave it to Bo to be calm, cool, and collected, while I wanted to throw something out the nearest window. “You don’t sound upset about this, Bo. Why aren’t you more upset?”
“Because you’re upset enough for both of us,” he said. “Plus, it’s not the ceremony I care about. It’s you. I could marry you in a pizza parlor and still be happy.”
That took the fight right out of me. “Awww.” Of all the nice things to say—and he’d said many over the years—that one took the cake. “You’re right. You always mange to keep things in perspective.”
“Someone has to,” he teased. “Look, just do what you have to do over there and then hurry home. We’ll figure this out.”
With that, he blew me a kiss—the squeak of his smooch tickled my ear—and hung up the phone. It took a moment for me to realize he was gone. I still couldn’t process the idea of losing our photographer to someone else. Even someone more famous and with much better connections.
It seemed the universe was conspiring against us, and we had only four weeks to go until our ceremony.
Chapter 7
I finally lowered the phone and turned around. While I expected to find Nelle and Electra in the same place where I left them, they’d disappeared. The only reminder of our talk was an overturned champagne flute on the floor.
I’d missed the chance to tell Nelle about Lance. So I left the room as well, anxious to find her and send her to Lance. If I couldn’t do that, at least I could tell Lance about our conversation with Electra.
Silence engulfed me again as I moved through the hall. Gone was the laughter that characterized the morning; the happy chitchat and excited hubbub. It gave way to an oppressive quiet that had me tiptoeing all the way to the foyer. If people were out and about this morning, I couldn’t see them, and it stayed that way until I reached the front room.
Finally, I spied someone standing by the entrance. “Hi, Darryl.”
He quickly turned, but his face looked troubled.
“Is something wrong?”
He indicated a package in his hand. It was a gift-wrapped box, covered in shiny silver paper and tied with a velvet bow.
“Well, that’s pretty. Who’s it from?”
“I don’ know,” he finally said. “Someone done sent it ta dat boy.”
“Wesley?” I glanced down and noticed the gift came with no card. Someone had scrawled Wesley’s name on the wrapping but forgot to include a note. “I wonder who it’s from?”
“I gots no idea,” he said.
“Maybe you should give it to the bride, then. But you might want to wait a little. She probably doesn’t want to see anything like that right now.”
“It’s not fer her.” Darryl eyed the package protectively. “Someone wants it ta reach da boy.”
“Then why don’t you give it to Lance? He’ll know what to do with it.” As a matter of fact, I intended to find Lance myself, so maybe I could spare Darryl the trouble. “Or you can just hand it over to me. I need to speak with Lance anyway.”
“Okay, den.” Darryl shrugged and gave me the box.
It was heavy, and about the size of a toaster. I cradled it in my arms as I stepped past him and moved away from the foyer.
The shiny silver paper winked at me as I walked. Someone had gone to a lot of trouble to wrap the package, but why didn’t he or she include a gift tag? I mulled that over as I walked, and before long, I arrived at the kitchen.
Lance stood near it, with his head bent low over his notebook.
“Hey there, Lance.”
He glanced up from his notes. “I thought you were going to find the mother-of-the-bride for me.”
“I was, but she slipped away before I could do that. Look at this.”
He eyed the package curiously. “What is it?”
“I have no idea.” I walked into the kitchen and laid it on the counter. “And I met Wesley Carmichael’s stepsister. I need to tell you about her. She was a real piece of work.”
“First things first.” Lance sidled up to the counter, too. “Where’d you get the gift?”
“Darryl handed it to me. It’s for Wesley.”
“Wesley?” Lance said. “That’s strange. People don’t usually send a gift to the groom.”
“Tell me about it. They usually send one to the bride’s home, or maybe they bring it to the reception.”
“There’s only one way to find out what’s in it.” Lance quickly took a pair of latex gloves from his back pocket, which he slipped over his fingers. Then he reached for the box and carefully peeled away the first layer of wrapping paper. After working his way through another layer, he unearthed a brown cardboard box sealed with strapping tape. He carefully stored the paper to one side, before he slowly peeled off the tape and opened the lid.
We both peered into the box at the same time.
“It’s a clock.” I quickly appraised the rich brown case with an elaborately scrolled base. “A beautiful clock. Why would someone send a clock to a guy on his wedding day?”
“Beats me.” Lance withdrew the clock from the box and balanced it in his hands.
The mantel clock was probably a hundred years old. The case was mahogany, like I’d thought, and a rim of gold circled the dial. Someone had removed the pendulum, and the hands pointed to six and twelve.
“What a beauty.” The details were extraordina
ry, including the latticework base and four filigreed feet that supported it. “It looks expensive.”
“Hm, mmm.” Lance angled the clock to the window, where it glowed in the noontime sun.
Once he finished inspecting the front of the clock, he slowly turned it over and inspected the back. All at once, he let out a long, low whistle. “Well, look at that.”
I glanced over his shoulder. Across the back of the clock, someone had scrawled a few words in black felt pen. The letters singed the wood like a lightning strike: Time’s Up.
Lance and I gaped at each other.
“Who would do that?” I finally asked. “They’ve ruined it.”
“I want to know why they did it. That’s an even better question.”
“Someone obviously had it in for Wesley.” I noticed the writing was scratchy and raw, since the back was covered in pine, instead of expensive mahogany, like the front.
“I need to get this to the lab to be fingerprinted.” Lance gently placed the clock back in its carrying case. “Then again…” his voice trailed off as he studied it.
“What?” I never knew what to expect with Lance. He often surprised me with how he handled evidence.
“I might just hold off on sending this to the station. It’d be interesting to see what people around here think about this little present.”
“Oh, I get it. You want to see if maybe someone in the wedding party sent it.”
“Bingo. It’s hard for people to deny something when you put the evidence right in front of them.”
Something rustled behind us just then, and we both turned. A medical examiner bustled into the kitchen wearing a white lab coat with a logo for the St. James Parish Medical Examiner’s Office stitched onto the pocket. Since St. James was only one parish over, I guessed it shared its employees with the parish where the wedding was to take place.
“Hello, Adaline.”
“Missy! Good to see you again.”
“You two know each other?” Lance looked surprised.
“Of course I know Missy,” Adaline said. “We’ve worked together several times.”
Since even the medical examiner knew my name, odds were good I had a penchant for finding dead bodies. But that was neither here nor there at the moment.
What the Hatmaker Heard Page 6
