The Silent Bride awm-7

by Leslie Glass

  Wendy responded by slouching and sneering like a big caged cat—or a guy. That was it, she was acting more guy than girl. Her coil of resistance was strengthening. She'd become one hundred percent yang, almost as if she knew for sure that nothing could touch her. The arrogance pissed April off. She felt ever more stressed by the ticking clock, by Bel-laqua's and Mike's depending on her, and the chief's personal command to get it done today. The story was right here in the room. April could feel it just out of reach. All she needed to do was push the right button.

  "Can I have a Coke, please?"

  "Sure." April stepped outside. "Get me another Coke, please."

  Mike appeared. "Want me to take a crack at her?"

  "Not yet. Let me keep it soft for a while. We can try that. There's always time to muscle her. Anything come up on Lori Wilson, the assistant?"

  "Nothing yet. Her background looks clean, but let's find out where she is."

  April nodded, glanced at her watch.

  "You sure you don't want me to hammer her?"

  "Uh-uh. Thanks," to the uniform for the Coke.

  She went back in. "Here you go." It was Coke number five.

  Wendy drank half of it in one gulp.

  "Feeling better?"

  "No."

  "Look, don't push me away. I can help you out. Whatever happened I know you had a reason. You don't have to be a tough guy with me," April soothed. "I'm on your side here."

  Wendy snorted. "Oh, come on, you're treating me as if I were a common crook, like that bum who was in here before. You said I was a thief, you implied I was fired from my last job. You told me you have my fingerprints on shell casings. Ha-ha." She made the explosive sound of air extruded through closed lips. "I understand what you're doing."

  "I want to help you go home, that's all."

  "That's what they always say on cop shows." Wendy snorted.

  "We're not in a movie here. At least three young women died on your watch. You're the link, Wendy. I need your help."

  "I don't care what you need. It's not my problem." Wendy tapped her foot.

  "Let me repeat that. Two beautiful young women were murdered at your weddings. A third died the day before her wedding. I'm not forgetting Andrea. Three of your weddings make it your problem."

  "Not my weddings." Wendy made a face.

  April caught the sudden slice of pain through bravado. "Of course, your weddings," she said lightly.

  "Turn that thing back on." Wendy pointed to the recorder.

  April lifted a shoulder and complied with a new cassette and the routine of coding in the pertinent information. The mood was shot again. Wendy was an expert at pushing away.

  "Tell me about Barry," April said softly, starting at square one again.

  Wendy swiped at her nose with the back of her hand. "It was an accident. How many times do I have to say it?"

  "No, no. I mean what was he like?"

  "What was he like?" She shifted position and gazed up at the cracks in the ceiling.

  "Yeah, what happened? What went wrong?"

  "It won't help you. It has nothing to do with this." She glanced down at April, then clicked her tongue as if she thought April was stupid.

  "It's part of your history. It's part of what makes you dck."

  "Why do you want to know what makes me dck?"

  "You're in a lot of trouble. I want to help you."

  "Sure you do."

  "What went wrong with Barry?" April could push right back.

  "Oh, please. The usual, what else? It happens all the time. A girl thinks she has someone; the guy has a different idea." She rolled her eyes, drawing the pain upward like smoke up a chimney.

  "I know what it feels like. Yeah, men suck, don't they?" April murmured.

  For the first time Wendy's eyes flashed interest. "Yes, that's about it."

  "You got engaged, he cheated on you," April guessed.

  Wendy shrugged wide, bony shoulders. "It's no big thing. They all do it. They'll do it the day before their wedding. They'll do it the night of their wedding. Shit, some of them will go out for a shave the morning after and fuck someone else before lunch."

  "And you're in a position to know about that," April murmured.

  "Oh, I know a lot about that," Wendy agreed, checked her nails this time.

  April did not doubt it. She nodded. "Barry was a big disappointment."

  "Barry is an asshole." Wendy's burst of laughter was contemptuous. "The jerk's been married twice since then. Doesn't that say it all?" She drank up the rest of the Coke.

  "You were, what, twenty at the time?"

  "Twenty-three. Old enough to know better," she said bitterly.

  "Not really. Twenty-three is a very hopeful age. How did you meet him?"

  Wendy chewed the inside of her lip, bobbed her head. "You really want the story of my life?"

  "Absolutely, we have all time in the world."

  "We have the time until I call my lawyer." Wendy laughed again.

  April froze. She and her camera became still as stone. Wendy knew exactly what she was doing. The minute she demanded a lawyer it would be over. It would be either arrest her on the spot or let her go home. A partial print was weak, nothing more than a muscle to flex. April had lied about one thing: Even fingerprints could be contested. A paid expert could easily contest a partial. How much minutiae could they have, how many matching swirls?

  Please.

  Even if there was enough minutiae to suggest a match alone, the print was only a suggestion of guilt, a possibility. Aware of watchers behind the mirror, April pressed on.

  "You met him ... ?"

  "Barry is my stepfather's son. He's my stepbrother."

  "No kidding." A flag. Something new.

  "Well, not at first. My mother didn't marry him until years later," Wendy amended. She glanced at her watch, at the ceiling, everywhere but at April.

  "After you started going out, you mean?" April ignored an itch in an intimate place.

  "Yes, I guess that's what I mean. They didn't get divorced right away." Wendy sucked in her lips and sighed as if bored.

  "Right away when?"

  "Oh, they knew each other a long time." Now she broke into a smile. Some little secret smile. The woman had swift mood changes.

  Oh, this was a long game. April kept waiting.

  "I knew Barry. My brothers liked his sister, Miff. It was all pretty friendly when we were growing up." Wendy paused; then her expression soured again. "They had a couple more kids. They're still together."

  So Wendy shot a stepbrother and was now out in the cold, probably not so welcome at family reunions, at the very least. April wasn't a shrink, but psychologically speaking, it sounded as if alienation from her own family might be a component of Wendy's problem. April flashed to Jason again. Ha, she could do this.

  "Where did the shooting incident occur?" she asked, feeling the excitement of a puzzle piece fitting.

  "On Martha's Vineyard. We had a home there."

  Click, Martha's Vineyard was also where Lori Wilson, Wendy's assistant, was on vacation. And she'd seen something else about Martha's Vineyard. What was it?

  "Had?" she prompted.

  "Oh, we lived in it when I was little. My mother got the house in the divorce," Wendy said, offhand.

  "Does she live there now?"

  Wendy shook her head. "No. They moved to Newport."

  Rhode Island. Another resort area April knew nothing about. "Who owns the place now?"

  "I don't know." Wendy gazed at the ceiling.

  "What kind of shooting did you do?"

  "Sport shooting." Hat.

  "Oh, yeah, what exactly is that?"

  Wendy gave her a look. "Sportsmen shoot bull's-eyes, either slow fire or rapid fire, but it's the opposite of what you do."

  "Really. What do we do?"

  "You just empty a magazine into the silhouette of a human as fast as you can. With a rifle or revolver. Combat shooting is pretty trashy. It's for the b
eer-drinking crowd. In sport shooting, the idea is to aim. You do any knockdowns?"

  April shook her head. That was for the military.

  "In sport shooting you go for silhouettes of game animals about twenty, thirty yards out. If you hit them, they fall over. Or we shoot clay, skeet. No humans." She said it with a nervous laugh. "Unlike you."

  "What kind of rifles do you use?"

  "It depends. A sporting clay, a skeet rifle. A trap gun. For competition you use a 308; that's a .30-caliber rifle."

  "Shotguns." Now they were getting somewhere.

  "Mm-hm. They have different chokes in them, seven-and-a-half-, eight-, or nine-size pellets, depending. You could cut somebody up pretty bad from twenty yards away but not kill them with that size shot, but as I said, we don't go out for humans like you do."

  "How many guns do you have, Wendy?" April asked, unperturbed.

  "I don't know."

  "What do you mean, you don't know?"

  "The house was burgled during the winter years ago. I don't even remember when. I had a few guns up there then; I don't remember how many." Wendy bobbed her foot.

  April guessed that was where the murder weapon came from. She switched off the tape recorder and left the room without a word. She glanced at her watch. Jesus, nearly seven. She had to pee. And she had to go to Martha's Vineyard to find Lori Wilson and more about Wendy's missing guns.

  Forty

  "Hey, what's your hurry,

  querida

  ?" Mike caught her as soon as she stepped into the squad room.

  "Gotta pee. Be right back."

  She brushed past him, found the lieutenant's bathroom, cursed because there was no dssue, used some from her purse. She washed her hands and face with the grimy soap chip on the sink. No paper towels, either. They didn't keep up the housekeeping here. Muttering, she glanced up for a moment to see how bad she looked. She was startled by the shadow of a dragon, snapping its tail deep inside the mirror behind her miserable reflection. She clapped her hands the way the noisemakers did on the Chinese New Year to chase away evil spirits. The clap jogged her memory. Wendy had done a wedding on Martha's Vineyard a month ago. Now her assistant was there on vacation. She flushed the toilet with her foot and forgot about applying lipstick. Something was up with Massachusetts.

  Mike was waiting for her when she came out. "We located Tito and Louis, just in case you're interested," Mike said.

  "Where?"

  His hps disappeared in a grimace under his mustache. "At Louis's shop. The two alibi each other again. Louis says they worked half the night last night setting up, then returned to the shop around eleven. They've been there ever since." He lifted a shoulder.

  "Very convenient, but he lied about that last time," April remarked.

  "Right, we can't rule them out now. The Ubu story is up for grabs, too."

  "We're way behind the curve,

  chico.

  You heard Wendy's fiance was her stepbrother? Missed that one." She shook her head. "Missed a few other things, too."

  "Uh-huh." Mike planted himself against a wall of wanted posters, looked pretty tired.

  "The shooting must have broken up the family. The parents moved away a while ago. But Wendy still has ties. She did a wedding there a month ago."

  "No kidding. April?"

  "Yes. Mike?" April poked him to get by.

  "Not you,

  querida,

  the month. Who gets married up there in cold, rainy April?" he mused, still keeping the wall up.

  "Someone did. I have to go to Martha's Vineyard." April had stopped trembling. The female fog of yin had been replaced by the male energy of yang when she didn't need food, didn't need sleep. She could feel energy spiking her system. How long it would last she didn't know. She wanted to keep at it, though. She knew all these wedding people were intertwined somehow. Covering for each other. And the one who'd kicked Mike in the face, now on suicide watch at Bellevue. All in it together. The how and why was what they didn't know.

  "You want to tell me why?" Mike said.

  "Lori Wilson, the assistant. All these people and their movements. And the house. Houses are powerful things. I want to get a look at the house." She was certain Wendy had lied about the house.

  "Okay." Mike watched her think.

  "Look, we'll talk about it later. I want to get back to her."

  Mike shook his head. "We're going to Sutton Place. Poppy wants to take a go at her now."

  April shook her head, disappointed. "But I was getting somewhere."

  "Let's go talk to Mr. Hay and his butler before their memories blur." Mike pushed off the wall.

  "We were just establishing a rapport," April protested.

  "She'll keep."

  April frowned. "She won't keep. She'll shut down. I know this woman."

  "But you're going with me," he said.

  "Vamos."

  He smiled ruefully at the door. There was nothing he could do. Poppy was the boss.

  "Fine." Frowning, she swung her purse over her shoulder. Sutton Place it was.

  Forty-one

  A

  nthony Pryce set out milk, sugar, and a plate of chocolate-chip cookies. He was wearing a crisply ironed pair of chinos and a white shirt. His eyes were red, but his face was composed and his movements quick and sure. Relegated to a yin position again, April's energy faded down to a shadow. Suddenly she was dead tired.

  She watched Anthony's intense focus on correct service, her thoughts flashing like a neon sign to Martha's Vineyard. Martha's Vineyard. What a waste. After an hour with Mr. Hay, all they got from him was a deep conviction that the shooter was very tall. Who was tall? Louis and Wendy were tall. The African in a psych ward at Bellevue was tall. Why couldn't he remember anything else?

  Anthony set down a white china coffeepot, a matching teapot, and a plate of cookies, arranging them just so on the table. Then he quickly attacked a wayward cookie crumb, brushing it off the polished wood into his hand. A perfectionist. Good. April's nose twitched at the deep and smoky aroma of Lap-sang souchong infusing in the teapot.

  She and Mike sat at a small table on the window end of the kitchen in a grand apartment that overlooked the East River. At eight o'clock it was dark outside. Over in Queens the lights twinkled on a cool and silvery city evening. Mike ate a few more cookies, deep in his own thoughts. April's paranoia uncoiled just enough to make her wonder if he knew something he wasn't sharing.

  Anthony disappeared into the butler's pantry around the corner, then reappeared with two dessert plates and two linen napkins. He set down the plates, folded the napkins, went back for a pitcher of water and two glasses.

  "We have food. I could make you a sandwich," he offered.

  "No, thanks. This is terrific." The plate of cookies was nearly gone and so was Mike's coffee. "Have a seat," he said.

  "It's no trouble." It was clear Anthony didn't want to take a seat. He poured more coffee in Mike's cup, continuing to hover.

  Mike raised his eyebrows at April. Food?

  "No, thanks," she echoed, dying for a sandwich but not enough to take the time for him to make one.

  "I read about that other girl in the paper," Anthony said. He brushed at the crumbs that littered Mike's side of the table.

  "Did you know her?" Mike asked.

  "No, no, of course not. It was in the Bronx, wasn't it?" he kneaded his hands nervously.

  "Yes, Riverdale."

  "This is so upsetting. Who would do this?" His eyes filled. "Did the same person kill both girls?"

  "It's a possibility," Mike said slowly.

  "When that girl was shot, the first thing I did was go to St. Patrick's to look around."

  "Why?" Mike was surprised.

  Anthony finally sat down, his face suddenly animated. "Someone attacked the cardinal there. A few months back, do you remember that?"

  "Yes. Were you expecting something to happen?"

  "No, not expecting, really, but you have to be vigilant. P
eople will do anything in these troubled times. We can't ever forget that, can we?" Anthony found another crumb.

  "Did you have any special danger in mind?"

  "The Hays are Irish."

  Mike's eyebrows shot up like flags.

  Ah, the Irish.

  He caught April's eye. "Do you think there's an Irish connection to the shooting?"

  "Everything's so political now, isn't it? One can't ignore the risks."

  "Are you Irish yourself?" Mike asked. Everybody had a natural enemy these days.

  "I've lived in Ireland, of course. Thaf s where I met the Hays. But no, I'm Welsh," Anthony said proudly.

  "So you think there may be some political motive at work here? Can you be more specific about your concerns?"

  "I thought about it, that's all," Anthony said vaguely.

  Mike glanced at April again. Her face was the Great Wall of China. Impenetrable.

  "When you went to St. Patrick's, what were you looking for?" She spoke for the first time.

  "I try to be thorough. It's my responsibility to see that things go smoothly." Anthony brushed the hair out of his eyes.

  "You thought something could go wrong?"

  "I told you, there was the other girl. And the cardinal. It worried me."

  The phone in April's purse started to burble. She located it, checked caller ID. It was Ching. She turned the phone off, then tossed it back into the mess.

  "Tovah Schoenfeld was not Irish. She was an Orthodox Jew," Mike pointed out.

  "I heard something about that. It just made me think, that's all. People get ideas from these things. Politics, it makes sense, doesn't it?"

  Not really. "What did you hope to find?" Mike asked.

  "I was concerned about people walking in and out throughout the ceremony. I wanted to see how that would be."

  "You didn't know it would be private?"