Terror in Taffeta

by Marla Cooper

“And so far all they’ve fed me is rice and beans.”

  “Oh, man, I should’ve smuggled you in a chalupa or something. I’ll see if they’ll let me bring in food.”

  “It’s not so bad,” Zoe said, “but I’d love it if you could bring me some bottled water. I’m terrified to drink out of the water fountains.”

  “I don’t blame you,” I said. I’d warned everyone to stay away from the tap water; our American digestive systems are no match for the local water supply. “I’ll make sure we get you some. But in the meantime, I want you to know that we’re doing everything we can to get you out of here.”

  “I appreciate it, Kelsey.”

  “Your mom tried calling the consulate, but she hasn’t gotten in touch with them yet. Hopefully they’ll call her back today.”

  “What can they do for me, exactly?”

  “I’m not really sure. I don’t think they can get you out of jail, but at least they can make sure you have drinking water that won’t kill you. They can help you find a lawyer, but I’m pretty sure your dad’s already got someone.”

  “I know he keeps a couple on staff, but they mostly deal with all the corporate stuff.”

  “In the meantime,” I said, “your mom’s kind of drafted me to try to figure out what happened. I’m not sure I’m the best person for the job, but I’ll do what I can until they can get some lawyers down here.”

  “You have no idea how much I appreciate you helping. I can’t believe you’re doing all this for me. You must have other weddings to get to.”

  I shrugged. “No worries. Laurel’s handling things for me back in San Francisco. But I do have a couple of questions for you.”

  “Sure, anything,” she said.

  “Zoe, do you know why you’re in here?”

  “No! I have no idea. I didn’t really care for Dana, but that doesn’t seem like any reason to arrest me.” She ran her finger absentmindedly over the word pendejo that was carved into the wooden table. “Don’t they need some sort of proof?”

  I sighed. “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You remember when they searched your room?”

  “Of course. They searched everyone’s room.”

  “Yeah, well, yours was the only one where they found anything.”

  “What?” Zoe looked pale. “There was nothing to find!” If she was acting, she was good at it.

  “My friend talked to another detective on the squad, and he said they’d found poison in your room.”

  “Poison? Like poison poison?” The blank stare on her face dissolved into a look of horror. “Oh, God. That explains all the questions they’ve been asking me, like what sorts of illegal substances I had brought with me, what I’d bought since I’d gotten here.… I thought they thought I was on drugs!”

  “Is there anything you can think of? Maybe something that could be used as a poison? A can of Raid or something?”

  “I don’t even use moisturizer with parabens in it. I don’t have anything that would be toxic to anyone, bugs included.”

  “Well, they found something. We’ll have to wait and see what it is—then we’ll try to figure out how it got there.”

  Zoe stared at the table between us, deep in speculation. “Kelsey, if she was poisoned … I wonder if Fernando could have had something to do with it?”

  “The chef at the villa? Why?”

  “The day before the wedding, I saw them fighting. I was too far away to hear what they were saying, but he looked pretty mad. I didn’t think that much of it at the time. I just figured Dana was being Dana. But what if there was more to it than that?”

  I thought about it for a second, then shook my head. “I can’t imagine Fernando killing anyone.”

  “Um, hello? As opposed to me?”

  Oops.

  “I’m sorry, Zoe. That’s why I suck at this! I can’t imagine anyone killing anyone for any reason ever.” I needed to start thinking less like a wedding planner and more like a hardened detective.

  “He would have had access to Dana’s food,” Zoe said. “If she was poisoned, it would have been easy for him to pull off.”

  “True. And he also would have had access to your room to plant the poison later.” It wasn’t much to go on, but it made as much sense as anything else.

  “Can you see what you can find out?”

  “Of course. I’ll do whatever it takes to get you out of here.”

  I promised to visit again as soon as I knew more, then headed back to the house to talk to Fernando. I had to figure out how to broach the topic carefully, though. Accusing the chef of murder can make things pretty awkward come dinnertime.

  Entering the courtyard, I found Nicole, Vince, and Mrs. Abernathy sitting in the middle of a modest pile of wedding presents, expensive wrapping paper littering the ground.

  “Oh, Kelsey, good thing you’re here. You should be logging these gifts,” said Mrs. Abernathy.

  Well, sure, in between questioning suspects and counseling your daughter, I’ll get right on that.

  “Oh,” I said. “I didn’t realize we were doing this right now.”

  You’d think opening presents would have been the last thing on their minds.

  Mrs. Abernathy snatched a piece of discarded wrapping paper off the ground and handed it to me. “We have to get thank-you notes in the mail. We’re not animals.”

  Nicole tossed aside a gigantic white bow as she ripped into some silver paper. “I’m sorry, Kelsey. I know this seems kind of … insensitive. I had to do something to get my mind off of everything.”

  Vince rubbed his hand over her back, trying to soothe his new wife. Poor guy was supposed to be on his honeymoon right now.

  I softened a little. This had been hard on Nicole, losing a friend and having her sister thrown in jail. If this gave her some comfort, who was I to say no?

  Besides, I didn’t mind stalling while I decided what to say to Fernando.

  “Let me go get the gift log so we can do this properly,” I said, heading toward my room.

  I’d grabbed the notebook from the back of my closet when I suddenly remembered the gift I’d retrieved at the church.

  Crappity crap crap.

  I wasn’t sure what to do. Take it to her? Give it to her later? Leave it behind as a tip for the maid? I flopped on the bed, at a loss. Of course Nicole would want it. But this was terrible timing. It wasn’t going to get any better, though, short of Dana coming back to life and handing it to the couple herself, and that wasn’t going to happen. No, this was the time. If I didn’t give it to her now, it would be even harder to explain later.

  I brought the impeccably wrapped present with me and sat down next to Nicole.

  “Here,” I said gently. “This was from Dana. I found it at the church after the ceremony. She must have been meaning to give it to you afterward.”

  There was a stunned silence as Nicole held the box in her hand. Even Mrs. Abernathy was at an unprecedented loss for words.

  Nicole handed the present to Vince, who set it on the table in front of him. Everyone stared at it like it was a bomb that was about to go off.

  It was Mrs. Abernathy who finally spoke: “Aren’t you going to open it, dear?”

  Nicole buried her face in her hands, shaking her head.

  Vince pushed the package away. “We don’t have to do it now, Nicole. It can wait.”

  “Sorry,” I said. “But I knew you’d want to have it.”

  “She was a good friend,” Nicole said, sniffling loudly.

  “She was, and she loved you very much,” I said. I didn’t know whether it was true, but it seemed like the right thing to say, like if I were a character in a movie and Dana were a cherished friend.

  Nicole wiped her eyes and picked the box up off the table. “This is the last gift I’ll ever receive from her. I have to know what it is.”

  She slowly began to unravel the bow, drawing out the moment.

  “Come on,
Nicole,” said Mrs. Abernathy. “Let’s not be dramatic.”

  “Mom, please.” Nicole’s hands were shaking, and she handed the box back to Vince. “You do it,” she said. “I don’t think I can.”

  Vince pulled the paper off. “You sure?”

  Nicole nodded.

  “Okay, here goes.” Vince opened the flap and stared inside. No one spoke.

  He looked back and forth between the box, his wife, and me.

  “Well, what is it?” asked Mrs. Abernathy.

  “I’m not sure,” he replied.

  “Vince?” Nicole whispered.

  He turned the box upside down and dumped the contents out on the table.

  The last gift Dana would ever give Nicole turned out to be a DVD, some 128GB memory sticks, and a hard drive. And I definitely didn’t remember that being on the registry.

  CHAPTER 12

  What do you get the couple who has everything? Data, apparently. At least it was beautifully wrapped data.

  “So,” I began, since everyone else had been rendered speechless. “Were you hoping to increase your digital storage capacity, or…?”

  Nicole looked at Vince, question marks in her eyes. He looked shocked in return.

  “Really,” Mrs. Abernathy said, rolling her eyes, “would a place setting have been too much to ask?”

  “Nicole,” I said, “do you know what—I mean why—I mean, what is this stuff?”

  “I have no idea!” she replied, as bewildered as I was. “Are you sure it was meant for us?”

  “Dana brought it to the church with her and it was wrapped in wedding paper, so I just assumed. I mean, it’s not like she had another wedding to go to right after.”

  “I can’t imagine why she’d give us these,” Vince said. “There must be some kind of mistake.”

  Yeah, asking Dana to be a bridesmaid was the mistake. The girl had been drama from the beginning, and the small matter of her death hadn’t changed anything.

  Vince scooped everything back into the box and closed the lid. “Well, thanks for this, I guess.”

  I’d never encountered a wedding present quite like that, and I didn’t know what to make of it. I thought for a moment. “Could it be pictures, maybe? Like of the two of you? Something she wanted to share with you?”

  “I don’t think so, but who knows?” said Nicole. “Do you have your laptop so we can see what’s on them?”

  Of course I did. I don’t go anywhere without my laptop; it’s command central for my business. I sprinted to my room to get it and made it back in record time, slightly out of breath and dying of curiosity.

  Nicole handed me one of the USB sticks, and I inserted it. A log-in window appeared on my screen. Encrypted. I should have known. We checked another just to be sure. Encrypted again. This was turning out to be one mysterious gift.

  “Any guesses what the password would be?” I asked.

  We tried birthdays, pets’ names, even the combo of 1234 on the off chance she’d chosen the world’s most common password. Then again, anyone who encrypts files isn’t going to make it easy.

  “Oh! Try ‘artichoke,’” said Nicole.

  “‘Artichoke’?” I asked.

  “Yes, it was her favorite vegetable.”

  Being the good sport I am, I humored her. Unsurprisingly, the password was not “artichoke.”

  “Huh. Okay, hand me one of those discs and let’s see what’s on them,” I said, undeterred. I slipped the DVD into the drive. Finally, something that didn’t demand a password. There were only a few files, and they had mysterious, unhelpful names. Two clicks later I was staring at a spreadsheet, Nicole and her family crowded over my shoulder.

  “Weird,” Nicole said.

  “Yeah,” Vince concurred.

  “Sooooo, congratulations on your nuptials, here’s a spreadsheet?” I asked.

  “Is this what the young people are doing these days?” asked Mrs. Abernathy. “Thank God we don’t have to write a thank-you note.”

  I scrolled through the numbers, not really knowing what I was looking at. “Does this mean anything to anybody?”

  “Not at all,” said Nicole.

  It appeared to be financial information, but why, and for whom? It was clear this wasn’t meant to be a gift. Dana had used the camouflage of gift wrap to hide something she didn’t want anyone else to see. It sure wasn’t her own personal checking information; the numbers were way too big.

  I kept my thoughts to myself for the moment, although surely the others were wondering the same thing.

  “Is there any information other than numbers?” Vince asked.

  I scrolled to the bottom of the page and back up again for due diligence. Nothing. With not much more understanding than I had before, I ejected the disc and sat back in my chair.

  “Well, looks like we’ll never know,” Vince said, taking the disc and returning it to the box.

  “Actually, I have an idea,” I said. “This would be a good job for my Information Technology department.”

  “You have an IT department?” Vince asked, surprised.

  “Yes. His name is Brody.”

  In addition to being my favorite wedding photographer, Brody was my go-to guy whenever I needed a little extra tech support, and I felt certain he’d know what to do. I scampered to his room, data in hand, and thrust the box of discs and drives toward him. “Here, want a special project?”

  He peered into the box and looked back up at me. “What, you want me to back up your hard drive on these?” he asked, one eyebrow raised quizzically.

  “Nope, better. These files are encrypted. Work your magic!” I waved one hand dramatically over the box before shoving it into his hands.

  He sat down at his desk and opened up his laptop. “Do you have the encryption keys?”

  “Well, if I had those I wouldn’t need you. Duh.”

  “Clearly. Look, I don’t know if I can do much with these. You don’t need me; you need a hacker.”

  “C’mon, Brody, who taught me how to repair permissions and, whatchamacallit … reboot in single-user mode? You did! Help me, Obi-Wan, you’re my only hope!”

  “What are these, anyway?” He inserted one of the drives and was greeted with a password request just like I had been.

  “World’s worst wedding gift.”

  “What?”

  “Remember the box from Dana that I found at the church? This is what was inside.”

  “Ohhhhhh,” he said, realizing the full implication of his assignment. “Wow. So this could help us figure out what happened.”

  “Exactly! Now you get it.” I told him about the financial information, and he agreed that it sounded like a lead, especially considering the pains Dana had taken to hide it.

  Brody looked thoughtful. “I guess we could try to guess what she used as a password. Maybe Nicole could help.”

  “I’ll tell you right now, it’s not ‘artichoke.’”

  “Huh?”

  “Never mind. Can I leave these with you? I have to go talk to Fernando.”

  Mission Fernando had fallen to the bottom of my priority list, but I had promised Zoe I’d ask him about his altercation with Dana.

  Brody stared at the screen, and I could almost hear the wheels turning in his head. “All right, but no promises.”

  * * *

  It didn’t take long to find Fernando, who was busy in the kitchen preparing our evening meal. When I walked through the door, he was chopping cilantro, and my sudden and unexpected arrival caused him to jump.

  “Kelsey! Buenas tardes.”

  “Sorry, Fernando, I didn’t mean to startle you.”

  “It is nothing,” he said, pushing the cilantro into a small mound with his knife. “Are you hungry?”

  “Always,” I said, smiling in spite of myself. Some “bad cop” I’d make.

  “There are some tamales in the fridge. Help yourself.”

  I opened the double-wide stainless-steel refrigerator and only paused for a second before
grabbing the dish. I’d be pretty easy to poison, I thought ruefully. Oh, well, the odds of him keeping poisoned tamales on hand for just such an occasion seemed slim, so I went ahead and forked a couple onto a plate, then popped them into the microwave.

  “Thanks, Fernando, you’re a lifesaver.” When I was done heating the tamales, I pulled up a stool and watched him work, balancing my plate on one knee. “Fernando, can I ask you something?”

  “Of course. As long as it is not my recipe for chili con carne, because I make that up as I go along.”

  I took another bite, stalling. “These are delicious, by the way.” I swallowed and set my fork down. “You know Dana, the woman in the wedding party who died?”

  “The one who is the reason you all stayed, right?”

  “That’s right.”

  Fernando nodded, dumping the carrots into the pot. “Very sad. I am sorry for your loss.” He hardly missed a beat before moving on to some cilantro.

  “Oh, it wasn’t my loss,” I was a little too quick to say. “But, you know, the Abernathys are pretty upset.”

  “Of course.”

  “I was wondering if you might be able to help us out. We’re trying to figure out what happened.”

  “I am afraid I don’t know anything that would help you. I never even talked to her, outside of serving her meals.”

  A bite of tamale had been en route to my mouth, but my fork froze in midair as I took in what he’d said. Never talked to her? But Zoe said she’d seen them arguing. Why was he lying? What was he trying to hide? I inched the fork back to my plate on the off chance that I was about to ingest deadly chicken-stuffed masa dough.

  “You never talked to her? Not at all?”

  He looked up from his cilantro-chopping duties and shrugged innocently.

  Not that I’m a human polygraph machine, but I could tell he wasn’t being forthright.

  “That’s weird. Zoe seemed to think you didn’t like Dana much.”

  His face darkened as he continued to chop, putting a little more shoulder into the task than was necessary against the innocent herb. He could say what he wanted, but the vein in his temple was pulsing in time to his bladework. Finally he looked up at me. “It is not right to speak ill of the dead.”

  Normally I would agree, but I’d already made an exception for Dana more than a couple of times.