by Linda Howard
Jaclyn complied, ended the call, and got in her car. As she started the engine a silver sedan pulled into the parking slot to her right. A man stepped out of the car, and she stopped to look at him because she had to wonder if Carrie had scheduled any other meetings she didn’t know about. Anything was possible. But she didn’t recognize the gray-haired man who was wearing a well-cut gray suit, with a white shirt and a red tie; he was probably someone arriving to see Melissa about booking the hall. He glanced in her direction as he strode toward the side door, but his mind was definitely elsewhere.
She hoped he was lucky enough not to encounter Carrie. If he did, that was his tough luck.
It was so not her problem!
Chapter Seven
JACLYN USED THE FAIRLY BRIEF DRIVE TO TRY TO CLEAR her mind and settle down, because Madelyn was going to be upset enough when she heard what had happened. She didn’t want to add to her mother’s agitation by being an emotional wreck; she wanted to be calm and cheerful about the outcome even if the way it had happened was enraging.
She deliberately didn’t think about Carrie. Instead she imagined a nice, hot cup of coffee and a warm blueberry muffin. She didn’t indulge in the muffins very often, so having one was a real treat, one she thought was well-deserved—though whether as consolation or reward was up in the air. Thinking of coffee made her think of Eric, and she wondered if he liked blueberry muffins, and if he did, would he stop at a chic establishment like Claire’s to get one? Probably not; it wasn’t at all a cop kind of place. Most of the customers were women, but the coffee was good and the baked goods were phenomenal, so maybe she could convert him. All day she’d very determinedly pushed away her thoughts of him, but now she gratefully seized on anything that would take her mind off what had just happened, and help her to calm down—though thinking about Eric made her feel agitated in an entirely different way.
She pulled off the busy street into the small parking lot and spotted her mother sitting in the shade at one of the outdoor tables, all of which sported huge umbrellas to shield the patrons from the sun. The small table held two cups of coffee and a couple of muffins; Madelyn was already pinching bites from one of them. Jaclyn got out of her car and unhurriedly walked through the wrought-iron gate; it could even be said that she sauntered, but it was the memory of Eric that put the slow sway into her hips.
God. Now she knew what the term “in heat” meant, which was not the kind of thought she wanted to be having right now. Maybe she should be thinking of the gorgeous knockout roses that were blooming in the small courtyard, or taking a dip in the community pool tonight—something calming and serene. Thinking of Eric was neither.
She sat down with a grateful sigh and smiled when she saw that Madelyn had even indulged and gotten the muffins with the glazing on top. Madelyn gave her a sudden sharp look, then jerked her sunglasses off and peered at Jaclyn’s face. “What’s wrong with your cheek?” she asked sharply. Jaclyn had so thoroughly succeeded in distracting herself that for a moment all she could do was give her mother a blank stare.
Then she realized her cheek must be red and said, “I can’t believe I forgot. The bitch actually slapped me, and I’m so relieved and happy to be rid of her that it slipped my mind!”
“She slapped you?” Madelyn echoed in an awful tone, her expression shifting into something so fierce as she half rose to her feet that Jaclyn put a calming hand on her mother’s arm. “I’ll have her guts for garters!”
“That’s some nasty, mean, stinky garters you’d have,” Jaclyn said, smiling. “Not that I’m happy she slapped me, but, damn, when you balance that against never having to see her again, the happy way outweighs the pissed off!”
“Maybe for you,” Madelyn hissed, fully on her feet now. “We’re going to press charges. Did you call the cops? Were there witnesses?”
“Mom, I handled it. I didn’t call the cops, but there were five witnesses so we’re covered legally if she tries to hurt Premier’s reputation.”
“I don’t care about Premier!” Madelyn’s eyes were slits of fury, and she was breathing hard. “That low-life poster child for skankhood slapped you, and I’ll be damned if she gets away with it!”
“Mom,” Jaclyn said again, her voice calm and patient. “I handled it. I told her I’d wipe the floor with her ass if she touched me again. I got our vendors out of there before any of them came to blows with her, though with Estefani it was a near thing. She may quit. I wouldn’t blame any of them if they walked away. Would you stop huffing and puffing like a dragon, and sit down? We have something to celebrate!”
Madelyn sat, but she continued fuming. “I know someone who knows Fayre Dennison,” she said. “I’ll make certain word gets to her just what kind of vicious shit-faced fluffer her son is marrying.”
Jaclyn’s eyes went wide in shock that her mother—her mother!—knew what a fluffer was. Her mouth opened and closed, then opened again. “Mom!” she said weakly, which was the best she could do.
“What?” Madelyn growled.
“Fluffer?”
“Oh.” A flush warmed her cheeks. She sniffed. “Well. Evidently you know what a fluffer is, too, so you can’t say anything.”
“I found out when I read it on a blog. How do you know what it is?”
“Oh, the same way,” Madelyn said airily.
“Uh-huh,” Jaclyn said. “Right.”
“Don’t go all Victorian on me when I’ve been ready to snatch that bitch bald-headed on your behalf, young lady.”
“And I’m grateful for the hair-snatching sentiment, which has nothing to do with how you know what a fluffer is.”
Madelyn gave her a stern glance. “I’m giving you the compliment of treating you like an adult. I imagine we’ve both done some personal fluffing, so let’s just let the subject drop.” She glanced at her wristwatch. “I want to give myself a cushion in case traffic is tied up, but I have another ten minutes or so. Do you have anything else to do, or are you finished for the day?”
“I’m finished. I have a ton of laundry to do, so I think I’ll just go home. The stress of dealing with Carrie has worn me out. I need a couple of hours of HGTV, or maybe the History channel, to unwind.”
“If anything else happens with that heifer, call me immediately. I don’t want you dealing with her again. If she contacts Premier, I’ll handle it.”
“Fair enough,” said Jaclyn. She’d held her temper and refrained from retaliating today, but she wasn’t certain she could do it again. She doubted Carrie would contact them again, though, because she wouldn’t want word of her behavior leaking out to the poor moron she was marrying. Sean Dennison seemed like a very sweet guy, and he probably wouldn’t believe it, but from everything Jaclyn had heard, Sean’s mother was a different kettle of fish. Fayre Dennison was a force to be reckoned with; Carrie wouldn’t want to butt heads with her, especially not before she and Sean were married, or there might not be a wedding at all.
She and Madelyn parted company ten minutes later. For her part, Jaclyn felt much better. Listening to her mother rant about Carrie had given her back her sense of humor and perspective. Carrie was behind her now, nothing more than an ugly little speck of fly poop on her rearview mirror.
Funny how just getting Carrie out of her life made her feel much less pushed for time, even though Carrie’s wedding wasn’t one of this week’s heavy load. Her schedule was still hectic, but her stress load had just been halved. Maybe she’d even have time for Eric after all. If just thinking about him had the power to push Carrie completely out of her mind, then at the very least she should muster the courage to find out if he was truly special or just another guy.
Maybe she’d call him. No, not yet. Uncertainly she bit her lip. Probably she should wait to see if he called her next week the way he’d said he would. And probably she should get over doubting herself and have a little fun. Eric didn’t have to be the love of a lifetime, or even this year. She’d had sex with him last night without being in love with him, without
any sort of commitment on either of their parts, and the world hadn’t come to an end. Not that she intended to start sleeping around indiscriminately, which seemed kind of unsanitary, but she was overdue for a red-hot affair.
This could be a very interesting summer.
Melissa DeWitt looked up from the contracts on her desk, and for the fifth time in the past fifteen minutes she glanced out the window of the reception hall to see if Carrie Edwards’s car was still there. It was. She heaved a sigh. Why wouldn’t the woman just leave?
She couldn’t see the entire parking lot, just one corner of it, less than a quarter of the large lot. Carrie had snagged a prime space in the shade. What a quandary she must have faced when she’d arrived: Should she choose the spot closest to the door, or one of the few in the shade? Melissa was a little bit surprised she hadn’t been blasted by the bride because there wasn’t a spot that offered both. God knows Carrie had complained about everything else.
It had been a while since Melissa had heard any noise at all from the reception area, but she’d been making—and taking—a sudden spurt of phone calls, so if there’d been any further fireworks she might have missed them. She couldn’t imagine Jaclyn was still talking to the foul-tempered witch, but why else would Carrie still be here?
Melissa had thought she’d faint from shock when Carrie had actually slapped Jaclyn. Poor Jaclyn! Then she remembered the flash of fire in Jaclyn’s eyes, and the sentiment vanished. Poor Jaclyn, my ass. If anyone could hold her own against someone like Carrie Edwards, it was Jaclyn Wilde. Just because she was normally calm and controlled, with the diplomacy of an ambassador, didn’t mean there wasn’t fire behind the facade. She wondered if Carrie had any idea how close she’d come to getting decked. Jaclyn hadn’t been about to return the slap, she’d been winding up for a full-strength fistfight.
But why was Carrie still here?
Melissa left her desk and stepped to the open doorway of her office, sticking her head into the hallway and straining to hear voices. Silence. Her office was on the other side of the building from the reception area, with a couple of other small meeting rooms and restrooms in between. All afternoon, since Carrie had first arrived, she’d heard the occasional raised voice. Usually there was a lot of laughter and good-natured joking, when these kinds of meetings were held here, but not today.
She didn’t want to face Carrie Edwards alone, but she wanted to lock up and call it a day, and she couldn’t very well do that if the bride-to-be was still in meetings. The only way to find out was to face Carrie. Since the woman had spent all day mowing down everyone in her way, Melissa wasn’t at all anxious to place herself on that path.
Taking a deep breath, she steeled her spine. If the bitch wanted to get violent with her, she would hit back. She wasn’t a violent woman—far from it. At the same time, she wasn’t sure she had the kind of restraint Jaclyn had displayed. Not that Jaclyn had been meek. If looks could kill …
Melissa strained to hear something, anything, as she walked toward the reception area, but the building was completely silent. It was eerie, knowing Carrie was somewhere in the building but not knowing where. She peeked through the door of the reception hall, noted that the table there was still littered with samples and paperwork, and continued down the hallway to the side entrance she’d left unlocked for Carrie and her vendors.
Curiously she stepped outside, wondering if Carrie was standing out in the heat talking to someone else. No one was there. Carrie’s car, and her own, were the only vehicles still in the parking lot.
She stepped back inside, frowning. Was Carrie in the ladies’ room? Had she gotten a ride with someone else and just left her car in the lot to collect later? Why would she do that? Not that it was beyond the realm of possibility, but it would’ve been common courtesy to at least stop by the office and let her know everyone was gone, and that she was leaving her car there for a few hours while she went out for a drink with a friend, perhaps.
Carrie had never shown any common courtesy, though, to anyone. Not only that, it was doubtful she had any real friends. Given that, Melissa hoped Carrie was off with an acquaintance who passed as a friend, and not lurking in the restroom, priming herself for another confrontation. She seemed to thrive on them. Melissa did not thrive on confrontation. The idea of being Carrie’s next target was enough to make her stomach clench in dread. She hadn’t been present for all the meetings today, but she’d checked in often and had seen enough—more than enough.
She braced herself, just in case, and went into the reception hall to clean up the mess Carrie had left behind. The table was cluttered and there were even piles of fabric on the floor; she could see a bit of it though the long tablecloth blocked much of the view. Even if Carrie was still here she wasn’t the type of person who cleaned up after herself.
As soon as she entered the room she caught a whiff of something unpleasant. She stopped, her head lifting and her nose wrinkling as she took a deeper sniff. Oh, dear. That smelled as if one of the toilets had overflowed. The restrooms were down the hallway, though, and she hadn’t smelled anything when she’d passed them. The farther she walked into the reception hall, the stronger the odor became. Had a sewer line ruptured?
Her steps slowed, and she brought up her hand to cover her nose. Her heart began to race. Something was wrong. Something felt very wrong. The hairs on her arms lifted as chills roughened her skin. She moved forward another three steps, and her breath caught in her throat, strangling her.
That wasn’t a pile of fabric on the floor behind the table, it was Carrie Edwards, staring back at her open-eyed and oddly blank through the fine net of the veil that had been draped over her face. Her blood pooled on the floor; kabob skewers—some still skewering shrimp and beef—stuck out of her body at odd angles.
Melissa vaguely heard a strange shrieking sound, and after a moment realized it was she who was making the noise. She had a reputation for being able to handle any crisis with aplomb, but other than a funeral, she’d never seen a real dead body before, and this was different from seeing one on television. Aplomb went out the window. Dear God! The smell, the congealing blood, the complete lifelessness of the woman on the floor, were all too gruesome and too real.
The end of a scream caught in her throat and she took a step back, her eyes still on the body. There was no reason to check for a pulse. She might never have seen a dead person before, but she didn’t have any doubt Carrie was doornail dead. No way was she going to touch her.
Okay. Okay. What should she do? She couldn’t just stand here and stare at a dead woman. Nor could she do what instinct said, which was lock the door, go home, and leave her lying there for someone else to handle. There was no one else to handle it.
She had to call someone—911. That’s it. She should call 911.
She turned and ran for her office, the administrator in her abruptly taking charge. There was an event planned for the weekend, a twenty-fifth high school reunion. Surely this wouldn’t interfere with that; surely the police would have the mess cleaned up by then, and her nice, orderly reception hall would be in shining order again. She wasn’t certain of that, though; even to the very end, Carrie Edwards had a gift for screwing up other people’s lives.
And then another thought intruded. What if the murderer was still in the building? Watching her, maybe waiting around the next corner, armed with skewers and cake knives and floral sticks. Melissa faltered, then kicked off her high heels and picked up the pace, turning the corner and sliding like Tom Cruise across the floor into her office. She slammed the office door and locked it behind her, then glanced frantically around the small room to make sure she was truly alone before she lurched for the phone.
Chapter Eight
THE HOT, LATE-AFTERNOON SUN WAS SHINING DIRECTLY into his eyes as Eric searched for enough room on the crowded street to park his car. The parking lot of the reception hall was a tangle of patrol cars, a medic truck, even a fire engine, though he couldn’t imagine why the fire engine wa
s there. All of them had flashing lights, adding to the visual chaos. Okay, the patrol cars in the streets needed their lights on, but why the hell didn’t the rest of them turn them off? Across the street, news trucks were already parked, round satellite dishes blooming on their roofs. Eric found enough room to nose his car off the street and got out, nodding to a couple of patrolmen as he ducked under the crime scene tape.
Hopewell didn’t have many murders; the town was mostly upscale, no gang activity, and even their drug cases tended more toward prescription drugs than meth or crack. That didn’t mean the police department was inexperienced in handling murder cases, just that it wasn’t an everyday occurrence. When he’d been on the Atlanta force, between the gangs and drugs and everything else thrown in, the violence had seemed unending. It had been like working in a war zone. Even better, with its tax base, Hopewell could afford to pay its police department well, meaning they had good people, good services, and good equipment, which in turn translated to a high solve-rate.
The lieutenant and sergeant were already there, which upped his level of alertness. He’d already spent time with the lieutenant that morning, because the media had seized on the foiled convenience store robbery as something out of the ordinary and had contacted the department wanting an interview with him. He’d declined, because who had time for that shit, but the lieutenant had deemed otherwise. In a brief meeting beforehand, Lieutenant Neille had given him a curious look and asked, “By the way, why didn’t you use your weapon? Why throw something at him?”
“Paperwork,” Eric had replied, earning an expression from Neille that was both understanding and admonishing. “Besides, I’ve played baseball since I was four; I knew I could hit him.”
The reluctantly given interview hadn’t gone quite as smoothly. The same question had been asked, and he’d given the same answer. Then the reporter had said, “The suspect is hospitalized with a concussion, which brings up the question of whether or not you could have thrown something that wasn’t as heavy as a quart of oil.”
