“Wait. Of course I’m interested in her tox screen. This isn’t what you think,” I said sprinting down the driveway behind him. He, stopped abruptly, turned, and I ran smack into him. He had his arms around me for a second as I slammed into his chest. When we both realized we had our arms around each other, he pushed me back, dropping his like I was on fire.
“How do you know what I think? Besides, you have a guest. Shouldn’t you go back to…entertain him?” The vein in his neck was pumping blood to his face and the white was turning redder with every breath.
“Not that I owe you an explanation, and you showed up unannounced,” I said, mustering some degree of indignation. He turned to start leaving again, but I grabbed the back of his shirt. “We don’t even date and I’m not obligated to you or you to me in any way. But just so you know, I didn’t sleep with him. I mean, I didn’t have sex with him. We just fell asleep on the floor after a late night.” I spilled this out in one nervous breath while my heart raced. Then I let go of his shirt.
We both stood there a minute before he turned around, held out the folder in his hand. “Here’s a copy of both tox screens. They both had alcohol in their blood. St. Germain had higher levels than Julia but both had traces of Rohypnol. He might have gotten some in his own drink when he tried to drug her. They both were pretty bombed, from what this report says.”
I took it from him. “She didn’t kill that guy but does this report help her?” I scanned the report. Dante just stood there looking at the folder in my hands. “I thought this drug rendered you more or less paralyzed if you were slipped it.”
“The Coroner’s office says it’s inconclusive. The glasses were both rinsed out and we never found a wine bottle to see if it was in the bottle or just put in the glass.” He paused before looking me in the face. “I can’t watch you with another man. I can’t do it.” He left me standing alone in my driveway feeling hollow and empty inside.
***
I handed Jiff the folder with Julia’s report in it and we ate breakfast discussing what might happen with the results. He said, “That was nice of your friend to bring this by.”
“Actually, that was huge for Dante. He hates Julia.”
“But, he likes you and it seems he didn’t expect to see me here. You two have some history together?” Jiff tried to sound casual but he was fishing. He didn’t know about Dante and I hadn’t had any reason to bring it up. I figured when and if he asked, I’d tell him. Well, now he was asking.
“Our history is we lived next door to each other. I’ve known him forever. It seems our parents thought we were going to get married…eventually.” I looked at the report in his hands. “Dante told me the coroner says the report is inconclusive,” I said.
“Was he the cop that was standing near you the night I kissed you at the parade?” he asked.
“Yes, but it wasn’t Dante that made you move along, it was his partner. What about this report? Does it help Julia or hurt her?” I really wanted to get off the subject of Dante and me.
“Inconclusive does not mean inadmissible,” Jiff added, reading through it again. “If she was drugged by the guy, maybe she can plead self defense if she was aware he was trying to rape her. Maybe one drugged the other, since both had scant traces of the chemical. The one who planned it could have gotten some in their own glass since the alcohol levels might have influenced their motor skills.”
“I really hope you don’t use that as a defense. Julia will be raked over the coals for being in his room and her sex life—the many, many details—will be used against her. She didn’t drug anybody, why would she? And he didn’t have to drug a willing partner in Julia. She slept in his room for God’s sake. Julia is a lot of things, but I do not believe she murdered him.”
“What made her pick up with a guy like St. Germain? He seems a little rough around the edges for Julia,” Jiff said.
“Even though I should not speak ill of the dead, St. Germain was a prince next to her drunken loser of a husband who almost burned her house down. All she did was kick him out. Julia does not have good judgment when it comes to men. Have you met Frank?”
Jiff finished breakfast and cleaned up my kitchen, washed all the dishes and put them away before we walked to the front door. After a tight hug and kiss that should have been saying I’ll see you later instead of hell-o-o-o-o to my girly parts, he added, “Look, that guy clearly doesn’t think he’s out of your life. Just let him know that now I’m in your life until you tell me I’m not.”
Chapter Nine
The entire bridal party was there cackling like chickens when I arrived, fifteen minutes late, to meet Angela and the others at Wedding World—With All Things White and Wonderful for your Wedding! This place was the size of the Wal-Mart warehouse on Veterans Highway in Metairie, with every conceivable ugly bridesmaid’s dress under one enormous roof. Its only competition in terms of size and tackiness was the Mardi Gras float den on the West Bank.
Every saleswoman in the place was commandeered to bring armloads of dresses through a heart shaped doorway into the fitting suite where Angela, her mother, her grandmother—who spoke no English, only Italian—and the other seventeen bridesmaids were waiting. Our job today was to try on dresses until Angela picked one she thought we all looked good in. Each selection was a fashion faux pas. The ones with empire waists made us all look pregnant. The body hugging, tight fitting ones made the not-so-skinny girls look like snakes that swallowed a watermelon. Not one dress was flattering to two of us at any time, let alone all eighteen of us.
“What color did she pick for us to wear?” I asked the girl closest to me.
“We each get to wear our favorite color in the dress she finally decides on,” the girl advised before blowing a big bubble with her gum and popping it. Then she proceeded to pull it off her face with her fingers and stick the gum back into her mouth to continue chewing it.
“Are there that many colors in the spectrum?” I asked. “I think we will exhaust the color wheel before everyone picks their favorite.” I worked my way next to Angela and said I wanted to wear a black dress.
“Bla-a-a-a-ck? For a w-e-e-e-dding? No, Brandy, you can’t wear bla-a-a-a-ack,” she whined as her mother stood up and started to wring her hands. Nana directed her fierce stare at me.
“You never heard of a black and white wedding? Angela, you would really stand out as the only one in white with the men in black tuxedos and the girls all in black dresses. Besides, who can’t use a little black dress again?” I was working hard to sell this idea, hoping Angela would see herself as the ultimate center of attention being the only one in white. I had a mental flash of me wearing a hoop skirt, and a poof-sleeved, puce or mustard-colored dress making me look like a three-day-old dead fish. “You could have the tablecloths at the reception all in black and you would stand out everywhere you went surrounded by everyone in black, after-five attire. Your invitations can say it’s a black and white wedding and then your guests will know to wear black. I saw a wedding like that and no one could stop looking at the bride.”
“Gee-e-e-e-z, I don’t kn-o-o-o-w.”
I thought I had her seeing the big picture when Angela’s mother started speaking in rapid Italian to Angela’s grandmother telling her of my idea. The permanent scowl on the old lady’s face dug deeper into her wrinkles as Angela’s mother explained. She looked at everyone with a fierce scowl or a not-so-fierce scowl, which she saved for Angela. Nana stiffened in the plush chair, the only chair in this room, then shook her head three times while she scissored her hands back and forth in a definite, no, No, NO.
“Ok, then. I want to wear blue.” I said.
“Well, all r-i-i-i-ght. Everyb o-o-o-dy, Bra-a-a-ndy is we-a-a-a-ring blu-u-u-e.”
Angela’s nasal announcement gave her enough time to pull out a tablet and start a list of what colors the others wanted. Then the fighting began. Five others wanted blue. It continued on and on around Angela, Angela’s mother and Nana as sales ladies measured and fitte
d everyone for their dress size so Angela could pick the one dress that made all of us look equally bad next to her. The sales women moved around the room making notes on our sizes for alterations in between toting armloads of wedding gowns in for Angela between our fittings. We had to stop each and every time Angela came out in yet another dress to ooh and ah while her mother and grandmother cried, hugged each other then threw their hands in the air shouting something in Italian. I felt like I was trapped in a bad Fellini movie.
This enormous waste of my afternoon culminated in a hideous choice of a long poof-sleeved ball gown type dress with a hoop skirt, in blue. It made me look like a tidal wave. The fat girls looked fat and even the skinny ones looked fat in yards of swooshing peau de soie. My skin crawled every time someone’s fingernail ran down the fabric. The good news about wearing this dress, if there was any, would be if I did ask Jiff to the wedding and had to stand with Dante as the groomsman, the hoop skirt would mean neither one of them could get close enough to me to bother the other one. I fantasized about the future of my dress cut into dust rags or used for stuffing in dog beds.
For her dress, Angela selected a strapless, tight fitting mermaid tail-wedding gown with a tiara instead of a veil. Angela and her mother were all smiles while Nana had the not-so- fierce scowl going on. The army of flower girls being escorted by the cute little boys in tuxedos would also wear miniature-wedding gowns and they would look darling in these.
The bridesmaids were about to revolt. We descended on Angela like sharks on bleeding prey. No one could ever wear these dresses again, anywhere, except the gal who got stuck with the orange one. Maybe she could wear it to a prison gala should she ever find herself in the big house. Angela stood her ground with her mother and Nana as her backup. Several threatened to drop out and Angela’s mother started wringing her hands again. Three said they couldn’t afford a dress they would never be able to wear anywhere else again. They were the hot pink, mustard yellow and lime green colors. No one wanted to put a deposit on the dress to be ordered. Finally, Angela made a decision and mandated we would all wear the same color—the green one.
Wait. What? I hate green. It’s my least favorite color and I look dead in it.
Bubble-gum girl popped another one while Nana gave her the fierce look. The faces on the eighteen of us didn’t change much and that was it as far as Angela was willing to give in since this was ‘her’ big day, and we weren’t the bride and ‘she’ was the one we were all supposed to be there for. The green she chose was a weird one, close to the color of a rotting avocado. Great, we would all look bad together. I calculated the yardage needed for eighteen dresses and thought we could rid the planet of this color. Who would loom this much of a hideous, unflattering hue? If I looked at it this way, maybe I would feel that I was doing good instead of contributing to the visual ugliness of the world. If I had to say anything nice about the dress, and this was a stretch, it would have to be that the sweetheart neckline showed a lot of cleavage and even made the flat-chested girls look good.
I tapped my watch when I caught Angela’s eye across the room of partially dressed bridesmaids waiting to be fitted, pointed to the door and blew her a kiss with a big smile. I had to escape before I lost patience and wanted to strangle someone trying to be helpful in this wedding wonderland. One of the sales commandos handed me a color swatch and claim check for the dress, and told me to go to the shoe department where I could order my size and have it dyed to match the dress. Oh great, now a pair of shoes in this color I’ll never wear. The bubble-popper and another bridesmaid made the escape when I did.
I was the first to finish in the shoe department when I heard the other girl mention to bubble gum-girl we had to go to the hat department next.
A hat? I was just about to ask what kind of a hat when bubble gum girl answered, “Yeah, it’s the only good part of this outfit. Angela picked out an anti-bellum hat.”
“I think you mean ante-bellum,” the elegant, well-dressed sales lady said trying to correct her.
“Dat’s what I said, an anti-bellum hat.” Bubble gum rolled her eyes and the sales lady graciously moved to help the next girl in line.
A big hat? Great. Now at this blasted reception I would be stuck wearing a hat the size of a satellite dish all night, because once you put on a hat you can’t take it off or you will have hat hair. This entire ensemble was like date repellant and would runoff anyone trying to intrude into my personal space. I’d have at least a four-foot diameter around me until I undressed.
Dancing at the wedding was going to be a real challenge unless the only one asking me was Little Tony. He would fit under the hat.
As my luck would have it, I wore the sample size they had in stock. The sales lady said this was great for me since I didn’t need to order one and pay for alterations, I could take it home with me today. Oh joy!
Trying to get the dress with that enormous hoop skirt into the trunk of my car reminded me of trying to get the Jack back in the Box. The hoop underskirt made the hood bounce up every time I tried to close it. The dress and all that came with it was tap dancing on my last nerve and I considered tying it to my bumper and dragging it behind my cute little BMW. I finally wedged it into the backseat. It completely obliterated my rearview window. The hat got the place of honor in the front seat and had to ride on a forty-five degree angle, obstructing the passenger window view.
I drove to Julia’s to share the tox screen info Dante had given me. While it wasn’t great news, Jiff thought it was good news and she needed something to keep her spirits up. Frank was more of a glass half empty kinda guy and his reminding her constantly that she could go to prison was making Julia paranoid and depressed.
They were in the garden and Julia was directing Frank how she wanted the shrubs groomed. Julia was moving around like a zombie. Frank was on a stepladder with a hedge clipper trying to get Julia’s attention for approval. “What’s that in your backseat?” he asked as I got out of my car in front of Julia’s B&B. He dropped the hedge clipper to the ground, turned with his back to the ladder and came down the steps like a Rockette in a stage production.
“Only the most beautiful dress in the world I wanted y’all to see,” I said. This got Julia’s attention and Frank had already opened the car door and was tugging the hoop-shaped hanging bag out of its confinement.
“What do you have in here? What’s this big round thing?” Frank looked like he was in a fight for his life with the dress trying to get it out the back seat. For me it didn’t want to go into the car and for Frank, it didn’t want to come out.
“What kinda dress comes in a round hanging bag?” asked Julia. “Wait. Are you in a wedding?” She spotted the Wedding World insignia stamped on the bag.
“Nothing gets by you, Eagle Eye.” This got a smile from Julia. “And, yes, I’m in the biggest Italian wedding of the decade.”
Frank held the dress bag at arms length, not wanting to drop it but clearly trying to detach himself from it. He said, “This is a bridesmaid dress?” with all the distaste his voice and facial expression could muster. “You are wearing a bridesmaid’s dress that has a hoop skirt?” Frank and Julia looked at each other by way of confirming what they both thought.
“Yes.”
“Well, come on inside and put that sucker on. I wanna see this,” Julia said as her face broke into a full smile.
Frank offered to button me up since the dang dress had at least one hundred covered buttons and loops to go around each one, not buttonholes or a zipper. This took several minutes during which I had to endure their remarks on how this dress would be like birth control, since it took so long to get in or out of it, my partner would lose interest or die from waiting. Frank admitted he was only buttoning every other one to go faster. When I turned around to show them the dress, they both doubled over laughing.
“Why, Scarlett, I love what you’ve done with the drapes!” Frank said with his hand on his hip and waving the other one around over his head.
“When did you agree to buy Betsy Ross’ dress and be in a Civil War reenactment of a wedding?” asked Julia, hardly able to get the words out through her laughter.
Frank was standing there holding the hat. “Do you want to put this on for the whole effect?” he asked.
“No, because I want you both surprised when you see me in the wedding with it and the basket of flowers I have to carry.”
“Basket?” Frank looked at Julia again.
“Not just a basket, but a bushel basket, big enough to put a bale of cotton in,” I said.
Frank was bent in half again laughing at how ridiculous I was going to look.
“That is the same response this dress got from the other seventeen bridesmaids at Wedding World,” I said.
“Eighteen bridesmaids? Are you kidding?” Julia was laughing so hard I could barely make out the questions. “Look, Frank, she is going to have to hold her arm straight out to the side to even touch the guy she’s standing with to escort her down the aisle. Who are you stuck standing with?” she asked to more raucous laughter.
“Dante,” I said. They both stopped laughing. I guess Julia briefed Frank on the Dante situation.
“What? Why are you standing in a wedding and why are you standing with Dante, and why is he standing in the same wedding with you, and is he wearing the Confederate or Yankee uniform? I bet he’s a Yankee. He would be. I’ll shoot him myself if he is wearing a Yankee uniform.” Julia took a breath and was about to launch into another series of questions I wouldn’t be able to answer fast enough when I held up my hands for her to stop.
“I knew you’d get a kick out of this circus tent I have to wear but I really came over here to bring you some news Dante gave me early this morning.” I pulled out the report and gave it to her as Frank helped me out of the dress, leaving me standing there in my hoop and underwear. He motioned for me to remove the hoop and said he would find a place to hang my dress upstairs so it wouldn’t get wrinkled. He ran off somewhere with it and I really thought he was going to try it on himself.
Dead and Breakfast (The New Orleans Go Cup Chronicles Book 2) Page 7
