16 Cook's Big Day

by Joanne Pence

  Rebecca nodded. “We must have over twenty witnesses. Has anyone stepped forward? Are they saying who did this?”

  “It's hard to believe, but all we've heard is that no one saw anything other than the fact that the bride came through those swinging doors.” He pointed to doors not far from the wedding cake. “Apparently they open to a small room where the caterer can stage the food he brings up on the elevator, keep extras of anything he might need, or whatever. The service elevator is at the back of the space. Anyway, the guests said the bride burst out of there, through the swinging doors, then ran and stumbled towards the cake with her arms out as if she wanted to grab it, but instead, she fell on it. That was when they saw the knife...and the blood.”

  “Who saw it?”

  “It sounds like all of them. Apparently, everyone went crazy, screaming, and running for the exits. The wedding planner, Sally Lankowitz, somehow managed to keep her wits, and she told everyone to sit down and that they couldn't leave until the police arrived.”

  “Where is she now?”

  “In her office. She’s quite shaken up, as you can imagine. Officer Donaldson is with her.”

  “Where's the groom?”

  “He's in the owner's office with some of his close friends and relatives.”

  “Name?”

  “Leland Blythe.”

  “And the bride's relatives?”

  “I don't know. No one came forward.”

  Rebecca saw that the victim had been an attractive woman, very slim, probably around 5'8”, with long, thick blonde hair. She wore a wedding ring with a substantial diamond, and her dress had intricate beading that probably cost a pretty penny.

  “Did anyone say why she had left the ballroom to go into the anteroom?” Rebecca asked.

  Beamer looked at the other officers. All shook their heads. “Guess not,” he said. “I heard some speculation that she might have used the elevator to come back upstairs from the woman's bathroom, although most people used the stairs. Nobody knows for sure.”

  Rebecca was about to ask where the deceased's belongings were—her handbag, phone, wallet—when the Crime Scene Unit showed up. The photographer immediately began taking photos and recording the scene.

  Shortly after them, Evelyn Ramirez, the medical examiner, entered with her assistants. “One of these days I'm going to arrive before you do,” she said to Rebecca as she snapped latex gloves into place. “But I see I've beaten Bill Sutter, as usual.”

  “And where's the challenge in that?” Rebecca asked with a wry smile. She and Ramirez were accustomed to showing up at crime scenes long before Rebecca's thinking-about-retirement partner. She wished he would turn in his retirement papers and get it over with instead of spending almost every waking hour pondering and talking about it. Ironically, he was still a good detective when he put his mind to it.

  The M.E. leaned over the deceased to get a better look at her. When the photographer gave the okay, she rolled the victim to one side, and then the other. The knife wound was the only evident cause of death thus far.

  “It doesn't appear as if there’ll be any surprises here,” Ramirez said, straightening. “It’s unlikely anything other than the chef’s knife is the murder weapon. Given the size of the blade, it may have penetrated her lungs or caused some other horrific internal bleeding. With either injury, she could potentially walk a few feet before collapsing.”

  “How soon will you be able to do an autopsy on her?” Rebecca asked.

  “Tomorrow morning.”

  “Thanks,” Rebecca said.

  She went into the anteroom. It held an empty table, and a set of shelves lined with a number of sets of salt and pepper shakers, sugar bowls, powdered creamers, clean cutlery, dessert plates, and carving knives. A rolling cart with dirty plates, knives, forks, and spoons had been haphazardly shoved to one side of the room.

  She saw no blood, but it’s possible the bridal gown absorbed most of it as the bride fled from her killer.

  Rebecca left the anteroom to head downstairs to interview the guests and the wedding party, leaving the M.E. and CSI to do their jobs.

  Chapter 3

  Wednesday, 10 p.m. – 2 days, 17 hours before the wedding

  “Oh, no!” Angie collapsed onto the sofa in the living room of her penthouse apartment high atop San Francisco's Russian Hill. A tragedy had struck.

  She had spent the day packing the apartment for her big move across town to the home she would share with her fiancé, Homicide Inspector Paavo Smith, and had even turned down seeing Paavo that evening because she felt too hot, sweaty, and dusty. How had she accumulated so much junk? She had a pile of donations for St. Vincent de Paul to pick up, and a much larger pile of boxes of things to take with her.

  But when she pulled a pale green sweater from the closet and put it in the donation bag, deciding she never did like the color, thoughts of her wedding washed over her and she realized that something was less than perfect.

  That, more than weariness, caused her collapse.

  How could anything so heinous happen? She had spent the last five months meticulously planning every exciting, joy-filled detail of her Big Day, such as when to do her hair and make-up; when to put on her wedding dress; what to use to decorate the pews in the church; what to use to decorate the car she and Paavo as well as her family would ride in; how to decorate party favors for the guests; the size of candles on the tables; even the timing of her departure with her husband—husband, such a beautiful word!—to their tower suite at the Fairmont Hotel where they would spend the night before leaving on their Hawaiian honeymoon.

  She had thought about and planned her wedding day for so long that the possibility of anything being less than perfect was simply unacceptable. She had lain awake at night going over lists. She had lists of everything she needed to do, plus what everyone else involved with her Big Day needed to do. She even had lists of lists.

  The difficulty was that not only did she want everything to be perfect, but also different. As part of a large Italian family, she'd been to many, many weddings. Plus, all four of her older sisters had had their own “special” weddings. She didn’t want just another run-of-the-mill wedding that would blend into the stew of family get-togethers. Her wedding day, somehow, needed to stand out from the crowd.

  The wedding ceremony itself would hold no surprises. It would take place in the church her family attended when she was growing up—the church where her parents and sisters had gotten married, Saints Peter and Paul, in San Francisco's North Beach district.

  That meant she had to concentrate on the reception.

  A monumental struggle ensued to get the owner of La Belle Maison to add her to his reception calendar in something less than the sixteen months most people had to wait. Finally, desperate, she had called her cousin Richie, who seemed to know his way around the city and its movers-and-shakers better than anyone else she could think of. True to form, Richie had been friends with the owner, John Lodano, from way back. About a week after talking to him, Richie was able to get her onto La Belle Maison’s schedule in only four months. It cost her father a bit extra, actually, quite a bit extra, and it meant everything else needed to be speeded up, but it was worth it. She was able to work out a time for the ceremony with the church, and then she had to deal with her caterer, the great Chef Maurice, owner of Wholly Matrimony Caterers and renowned for his fabulous wedding feasts. For a generous bonus, she had gotten him not only to prepare Saturday’s sit-down reception dinner, but Friday night’s rehearsal dinner as well.

  And that was where the problem came in.

  She had arranged for the rehearsal dinner to be held on a small cruise ship that would sail around the bay while Chef Maurice served a delicious Italian meal. The wedding dinner wouldn't be Italian, but French, so she decided the rehearsal should be a nod to her family's ethnic heritage. She would also include Finnish desserts, a lingonberry pie and cloudberry mousse, in honor of Aulis Kokkonen, the man Paavo called his “step-father,�
�� who had raised Paavo after his mother had been forced to leave him. It wasn’t until Paavo was an adult that he discovered the complete circumstances that caused him to end up with Aulis Kokkonen, and he appreciated the elderly Finnish man even more after learning the whole story and the dangers involved.

  Chef Maurice had assured her the rehearsal dinner would be perfect. But now, she realized, the table setting was not.

  She was tempted to call her sisters about the tragic lapse she had just discovered. Her four sisters had stepped in as her “wedding planners” when she couldn't find any professional planner who was able to meet her strict requirements. But now, they refused to discuss her wedding arrangements any longer. They told her in no uncertain terms that everything was going to run well.

  “Well?” she had repeated. “Well? Since when is 'well' good enough?” Not in her book.

  That was when they stopped answering her phone calls or text messages. She even posted messages to them on Facebook, but they also ignored those. She suspected they might even be laughing about her perfectionism. The nerve.

  What should she do? The green sweater had reminded her that she had ordered little thank-you boxes of perfume for her bridesmaids and cologne for the groomsmen, and she planned to give them out during the Friday night rehearsal dinner. But the boxes would be wrapped in lime-green paper and tied with lime-green bows rather than the white paper and ribbon as she had originally thought. That meant she didn't want the caterer to use the lemon-yellow napkins she had chosen, but preferred that he use a white ones. She didn’t want her table setting to look like an advertisement for citrus fruit.

  Okay, even she had to admit that the color of giftwrap clashing with the color of table napkins was small, but she had wanted everything to be perfect. The thought of the imperfect table setting was like a toothache.

  Since her sisters were ignoring her, she decided to take matters into her own hands and put in a call to Wholly Matrimony. No one answered, as expected that time of night.

  She left a message. “This is Angie Amalfi. Something very important has come up regarding Friday night's dinner. Please call me as soon as possible.” But then, before she hung up, she remembered her sisters saying not only would they no longer take any calls from her, they had told everyone else involved in putting on the wedding not to as well. What if Chef Maurice and his staff wouldn’t answer her message? How vile was that?

  “Or better yet”—the more she thought about her sisters telling the chef not to talk to her, the angrier she got—“I'll be there in the morning.”

  Chapter 4

  Wednesday, 11 p.m. - 2 days, 16 hours before the wedding

  Rebecca and Bill Sutter, who finally showed up at the crime scene, were seated in the events coordinator’s office. It was a pretty room done in pastel blues and yellows giving it a French country flair. They sat at the small round table where Sally Lankowitz usually met with clients. Clearly, the office had been decorated to give potential customers a relaxed, welcome feeling.

  Sutter nodded at Rebecca, indicating that although he was the senior homicide inspector, she was to take the lead on this case. He was in his late fifties, with short gray hair, watery gray eyes, and from the way he was acting since walking into the events hall, didn’t like having anything to do with wedding receptions. He was divorced.

  “Ms. Lankowitz,” Rebecca said, her hands folded as she leaned slightly towards the woman, “I understand you were the one who stopped the guests from making a mad dash out the door. That was a good thing on your part. Now, could you please describe everything you saw and did?”

  Sally shifted her red-framed glasses higher on her nose. She wore a plain but expensive black dress—the sort that would let her unobtrusively fit in with guests as she did her job. “I was looking for the bride because it was time for the cake cutting. I was surprised that she wasn't in the ballroom. I asked Leland, the groom, if he knew where she was, but he thought she was talking with one of the bridesmaids. I looked around, but I still didn't see her.”

  “Were all the bridesmaids in the ballroom?” Rebecca asked.

  “I'm not sure. There were only three—it was a small wedding, as you saw. I'm not sure why they held it here, except that we're famous. But the bride paid for a lot more space than she needed, hiring this entire hall.”

  “And then what?”

  “Well, I started walking around the room looking for her. Come to think of it, one of the bridesmaids may also have been missing. I know I saw two of them—their dresses are an ice blue shade—and I assumed the bride was with the third. I was heading for the stairs to check the ladies’ room on the ground floor, when the door to the back of the hall swung open hard, and smacked loudly against the wall. The bride stumbled forward and kind of ran and staggered—my first thought was that she had overindulged—straight towards the cake.” Sally took several deep breaths before continuing. “When she fell onto the cake, I saw the knife sticking out of her back. It was horrible! Beyond horrible. For a moment, I’m sorry to say, I froze.”

  “What happened after you saw her?”

  “Well, as soon as the swinging doors banged against the walls, that caught everyone’s attention. And when they saw the way Taylor was moving, several stood and watched. After she fell, it was pandemonium. The group surged towards her, with people shouting to call nine-one-one. But then someone screamed that she was dead. Several people turned as if to run from the place. Somehow, I thought to shout that they had to remain here, that we had to find out what had happened.”

  “Did they listen?”

  Sally swallowed hard. “I’m not sure what would have happened if the best man hadn’t spoken up. His name is Darrel Gruber. He said everyone needed to stay to put, that they needed to be there to support and help Leland Blythe, the groom. Leland, or Lee as his friends call him, had run to Taylor, and he was just standing next to her, not moving, not touching her, and looking completely shocked. At the best man's words, people quieted down and some agreed—or at least stayed put.” A sudden tear began to roll down her cheek, and she brushed it away.

  “That’s good,” Rebecca murmured, reminding herself that for a person like Sally Lankowitz who normally dealt with happy occasions, coming face-to-face with murder had to be traumatic. “So tell me, how did everyone end up downstairs?”

  Sally tried hard to compose herself. “One of the attendees was a retired police officer. I think he was one of the groom's uncles or something. He told everyone they needed to go downstairs and wait for the police to arrive, and to clear the crime scene.”

  “So no one doubted she had been murdered?” Sutter asked, finally joining in the questioning.

  “Not after seeing that knife in her back.” Sally’s answer was little more than a whisper, but then she faced Sutter with a question in her eyes. “Except that, how many brides are murdered on their wedding day? I tried to tell myself, and maybe others did as well, that she'd backed into the knife, or fell onto it somehow. But that’s very hard to believe.”

  “True,” Sutter said with a grimace.

  Rebecca asked, “Did Taylor ever express anything to you that gave an indication she was worried or afraid of something happening at her wedding?”

  “Quite the opposite.” Sally pursed her lips. “She had been given a part in a movie, and everyone knew how excited she was to get the role.”

  “She was actress?” Rebecca asked.

  “So she said. That was the reason for the Wednesday wedding. She needed to be on location in Mexico on Friday. The change was no problem for us. Wednesday is scarcely a busy day for weddings or any other receptions here.”

  “Was the date change a last minute thing?”

  “We had a month's warning. We did our best, but Taylor was the type of bride who kept changing her mind and demanding that we jump through hoops to accommodate her every whim.” Sally’s jaw clenched, and she tightly clasped her hands together. “So much for all her demands now.”

  o0o


  Rebecca and Bill Sutter took over the owner’s office to hold interviews with the wedding party. It was far more formal, staid, and expensively decorated than Sally Lankowitz’s. It was the sort of room, the two homicide inspectors decided, more likely to cause some nervousness in a guilty person.

  Leland Blythe, the groom, was the first person they called in. He was about 5’9”, medium build, with thinning brown hair with lots of gel to make the top stand in a skinny front-to-back fringe. He looked as if he was in a state of shock as he approached them. Both inspectors stood.

  “I'm sorry for your loss,” Rebecca and Sutter murmured. They introduced themselves and gestured towards a seat. He all but fell into it. They could smell the alcohol on his breath.

  “Mr. Blythe,” Rebecca began, “can you tell us where you were when you last saw Taylor?”

  “Where? In the ballroom, of course.”

  “Did you talk to her?” Sutter asked.

  “No. I was getting myself more champagne. Taylor doesn't like me to drink, but I really wanted to, so I went ahead. I didn't think she'd fuss at our wedding, after all. But I also didn't want to, like, shove it in her face.”

  “How long was that before ... before she stumbled into the room and onto the cake?” Rebecca tried to think of a better way to phrase that, but couldn't.

  “I don't know. Fifteen, twenty minutes, I guess. I was talking to people.”

  “Who?”

  “I don't know. A lot of them.” He ran his fingers through his hair and then glared at the shiny goop that stuck to them. “I had my champagne, and I was being a good host, I guess.

  “Did Taylor have any concerns about anyone wanting to harm her? Did she ever talk to you about anything like that?”

  “Not at all.” He began to choke up. “Everyone loved and admired her. The only problem could have been that some people were jealous of her. She was beautiful, successful, and was going to have a great career in movies.”