Better Off Wed

by Laura Durham

  “As long as your investigation won’t interfere with your ability to pass hors d’oeuvres.”

  “Just think, Richard,” I finished folding the stack of napkins into neat squares and stepped into my black slingbacks as I stood up, “maybe one of the guests tonight will reveal the murderer.”

  “Maybe one of tonight’s guests is the murderer.”

  I gulped hard as someone began rapping on the door.

  Chapter 5

  The guests, or should I say suspects, are starting to arrive.” I stuck my head in the kitchen door and Richard glared at me. “How do I look in my uniform?”

  “Stunning. You’ve got to hold them off for a few minutes. I still need to garnish.” He shooed me away with a handful of parsley. “Take that tray of white wine with you.”

  I balanced the silver tray of filled wine glasses on my arm, the glasses clinking together slightly. “Perfect. The more they drink, the more they’ll talk.”

  “I hardly think you’re going to wiggle a confession out of someone with a precocious Pinot Grigio.”

  “I’ll use what I’ve got.” I winked at Richard.

  “God help us.”

  When I walked back to the living room, several more couples had arrived. The sound of big band came from the piped-in stereo system, but the high-pitched chatter of women greeting each other masked the music. A group of men clustered around the display of antipasto I’d put out earlier. Mrs. Henderson held court in the center of the room in a sleek black dress, her dark hair piled on top of her head. She motioned me over with a flick of her fingers, and I hurried over to proffer my tray. I tried not to cough as I breathed in the smell of expensive perfume that hung over the women like a designer cloud.

  “You can imagine my shock.” Mrs. Henderson turned back to her friends after taking a glass of wine. I stepped away from the group and hovered nearby, pretending to wipe a nonexistent spill from an end table.

  One of the ladies leaned close and lowered her voice. “Did you actually see the body?”

  “No,” Mrs. Henderson said with some measure of disappointment. “But I saw a few things the police didn’t.”

  “What do you mean?”

  I held my breath and took a step closer.

  Mrs. Henderson turned to face me. “How much longer until hors d’oeuvres are passed?”

  “I’ll go check.” I hurried back into the kitchen.

  “Good,” Richard held out two glass trays edged in parsley and brightly colored edible flowers. “Let me explain what’s on each one.”

  “No time to waste.” I took the trays out of his hands and dashed out of the kitchen.

  “Annabelle, get back here.” Richard called after me. “You don’t know what you’re serving!”

  I went back up to Mrs. Henderson with the trays in hand, trying not to breathe hard.

  “Where was he when they found her?” one of the women asked Mrs. Henderson.

  “Who knows? Probably with Bev Tripton. Try the Brie tarts.”

  “Her best friend? Do they have nuts in them?”

  “Well?” Mrs. Henderson looked pointedly at me. “Do the Brie tarts have nuts in them?”

  I glanced at the tray and tried to remember if I’d seen any nuts in the kitchen. I swallowed hard as the women stared at me, and my mouth went dry.

  “No nuts.”

  “Good.” The No-Nut lady popped the tart in her mouth. “If I so much as touch a nut, I have to go to the hospital.”

  Oh, God. I rushed back to the kitchen and slumped against the counter near Richard. I felt faint. “Please tell me the Brie things don’t have nuts.”

  “I will not have my hors d’oeuvres referred to as things. They’re Brie tartlets and, no, I left the nuts out this time. They do have a hint of saffron though.” Richard pulled off his oven mitts and raised an eyebrow. “Why?”

  I motioned toward the party. “Nut allergy.”

  “I told you to wait for me to explain the food to you.” Richard’s face began to flush, and he threw the oven mitts down. “But, no. You had to run off and try to kill more of my clients.”

  “No harm done.” I reached for one of the crab puffs that Richard had arranged on a hand-painted ceramic plate, and he smacked my hand away. I jerked back and ducked out of the range of his swinging dish towel. “I think I overheard something important. Apparently someone had a liaison with Mrs. Pierce’s best friend last night when the murder happened.”

  Richard barely concealed his disdain. “You call that a clue?”

  “It has to be someone important. Someone who shouldn’t have been with her.”

  “Like who, her husband?” Richard started to laugh and then stopped. “It could have been her husband. Now things are getting interesting.”

  “So far it’s just a theory.”

  “Well you’re not going to find out by sitting in here.” Richard handed the plate of crab puffs to me.

  “You just want me to get back to work,” I grumbled.

  “I’ve always admired your keen perception, Annabelle.” Richard pushed me out the door. “Now go!”

  I made my way through the ever-growing crowd, spotting Mrs. Henderson and her friends in the far corner, huddled together. By the gleeful looks on their faces, I’d missed a color commentary of the murder. I tried to push my way through a group of men, holding the plate above my head.

  “Of course he did it.” A man with wide sideburns stared at the plate of hors d’oeuvres as it moved past him. “Wouldn’t you have killed that woman?”

  I spun on my heel and swung the tray down. “Crab puff?”

  “No doubt he had a motive.” A man wearing a plaid tie popped a puff into his mouth.

  “Motive? She didn’t give him a motive; she gave him a mandate.”

  “They’re excellent with the remoulade sauce, sir.”

  “Trying to ruin his career just asked for trouble.” Plaid Tie shifted his eyes to me. “I don’t like spicy food, thank you.”

  “It’s very mild,” I assured him.

  “He wouldn’t have been foolish enough to actually kill her though. She’s right, Glen. The sauce is delicious.”

  “Maybe he didn’t do it, but he should have.” Sideburns jumped in the conversation. “I prefer old-fashioned tartar sauce myself.”

  “We’ll probably never know if he did do it. He’s much too smart to get caught. Do you have any tartar sauce, young lady?”

  “I’m sure I can find some for you.” I turned and raced to the kitchen.

  Richard had arranged the remaining hors d’oeuvres on trays. “How did the crab puffs go over?”

  “We’ve had a request for tartar sauce.”

  “Tartar sauce?” Richard shrieked. “Why don’t I just slap a bunch of fish sticks on a plate, and they can eat all the tartar sauce they want?”

  “I thought you’d feel this way.” I tried not to laugh as Richard threw open the refrigerator door and began rummaging through the contents. I snuck a crab puff off a tray and ate it in one bite, chewing and swallowing the savory hors d’oeuvre before he turned back around.

  Richard shook a fist in the air. “These are the same people that ask for A-l with their filet mignon.”

  “What have you heard about Mrs. Pierce trying to ruin her husband’s career?”

  “Nothing.” He slammed the refrigerator door shut. “Why would she do that?”

  I tapped my fingers on the counter. “I’m not sure, but that’s what the tartar-sauce guys were talking about.”

  “Are you sure they were talking about her husband?”

  “I just assumed they were,” I admitted. “But they never mentioned him by name.”

  “Knowing what we do of Clara Pierce, it’s possible that more than one man had a reason to kill her. Pretty likely, as a matter of fact.” Richard grimaced as he shook the contents of a plastic bottle. “Squeezable tartar sauce. What’s this world coming to?”

  Before I could respond, a crash of glass came from the living room.
Richard jumped and squeezed the plastic bottle at the same time, sending an uneven stream of tartar sauce into the air.

  Richard had bits of chunky sauce splattered on his face. Globs of white dotted the shiny copper pots hanging above him and dripped onto his head. I put my hand over my mouth to keep from laughing. “Well, now the only thing we need to make this party perfect is a dead body.”

  Richard narrowed his eyes. “The night’s young, Annabelle.”

  Chapter 6

  Was that so hard?” Richard handed me the last wine glass to dry.

  “Now I remember why I’m a wedding planner and not a caterer. At least I’ve never had to clean my clients’ kitchens.” I glanced around at the sparkling stainless-steel appliances and the white marble countertops that were cleaner now than when I’d arrived. I could almost see my own reflection in the copper pots dangling above us. No evidence of the chaos that had taken place only an hour before, and not a single drop of tartar sauce anywhere. I had to hand it to Richard. He could break down a party even faster than he could throw it together.

  “I’ve always said you wedding planners were a bit soft.”

  “Soft?” My jaw dropped open. “Who cleaned up that crystal bowl of artichoke dip that someone broke all over the living room floor?”

  “I never said you weren’t useful, honey.”

  “And did you see how much wine those people went through? I’m surprised they could still walk out the front door.”

  “I’m quite aware of how much wine they drank because I washed every last glass.”

  Richard picked up a red milk crate full of cooking utensils and trays, and I pushed open the heavy kitchen door that led out to the alley. When we reached the sidewalk, I looked around for his silver Mercedes convertible. Cars were lined up end to end along both sides of the street, inching over driveways and blatantly ignoring no parking signs, but I didn’t see Richard’s car anywhere.

  “Didn’t you drive?”

  “I tried, but the closest parking space I could find was the one I already had in front of my house.” Richard shifted the milk crate onto his hip. “It’s impossible to find parking on the weekend. Sometimes I wonder why I bother to live in Georgetown at all.”

  “You live here because it’s fashionable,” I reminded Richard before he launched into a laundry list of petty grievances.

  “Well, there is that.” Richard began walking in the opposite direction of his house toward my building. “Come on, I’ll walk you home.”

  I knew it would be a waste of breath to argue. Living in a city hadn’t affected Richard’s sense of chivalry one bit. Anyway, he loved strolling around Georgetown at night and peeking into all the fabulously decorated row houses. “Window shopping,” he called it.

  “Where else in the city can you find homes like this?” He motioned with an elbow at a house with two ornate iron staircases leading up to a pair of lampposts.

  “Mm-hmm.” I alternated between looking up at the house and watching the uneven brick sidewalk. “Who do you think those men at the party were talking about anyway?”

  “The house on the next block is really something to talk about. Wait until you see the chandelier in the front room and the fresco on the outside.”

  “We already know that her current husband may have been having an affair and couldn’t be found during the wedding, so don’t you think that gives him motive and opportunity?”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s Waterford though.” Richard ignored the taxi at the intersection, and I hurried across the street after him. “They have money, even if they don’t have restraint.”

  “It could have been anyone. Everyone wanted to kill her. Even we wanted to kill her.” I stumbled over a bit of tree root that poked through the sidewalk. “All we have to do is sort out the motives.”

  “Talk about too much!” Richard gazed up at a brick house with an enormous crystal chandelier dominating the yellow living room. The front room was almost entirely windows, and the lights were on, giving us a perfect view. “Palladian windows weren’t enough for them. They had to do double Palladian.”

  “Considering her winning personality, I think our prime suspects should be the people who knew her best.” I tugged Richard by the sleeve, and we resumed walking. “Which brings us back to her current husband, who may or may not have been having an affair.”

  I ran the short list of suspects through my head as we turned up the next street.

  “Sometimes you just wonder what people were thinking,” Richard gasped.

  “I know,” I agreed, trying to imagine who could have committed murder. “It’s awful.”

  “It’s beyond awful.” Richard pointed at a white lattice carport dripping with vines. “It’s like the Hanging Gardens of Babylon right here in Georgetown. Have you ever seen anything like it?”

  “I’ve never seen anything as awful as Mrs. Pierce’s mangled body. But if the fall wasn’t what killed her. . . if that rash on her neck means she may have been poisoned, then the killer didn’t have to push her down the stairs. Anyone Mrs. Pierce came in contact with during the night could have murdered her.”

  “Now that’s a real crime.” Richard nodded at two enormous urns that flanked a doorway. They were ornamented with carved floral swags spilling down the front.

  “A crime of passion isn’t out of the question.” I shrugged. “Especially if Mrs. Pierce found out about the affair. Let’s not forget the ex-husband, either. I have no doubt she made their divorce as painful as possible. So I’d say those are our two prime suspects.”

  “You have to have both, I suppose.” Richard shuddered and made a face. “It would be off-balance to have just one.”

  “I never thought about it that way, Richard, but they could’ve been working together. Why not? More than one killer makes a lot of sense.”

  Richard stopped short as we rounded the corner onto my street, and I bumped into him. “Are you expecting another visit from the police, Annabelle?”

  I followed his gaze and saw a pair of squad cars and an ambulance with flashing lights parked in front of my building.

  “Leatrice!” I grabbed Richard’s arm and pulled him forward.

  “That nutty old lady who’s always trying to set you up with the UPS man?”

  “Something must have happened to her.” My mouth went dry. “She’s old, Richard.”

  “She never seemed that old to me,” Richard muttered as we ran up to the building. I went to knock on Leatrice’s door on the first floor but heard loud voices and crackling radios coming from upstairs. I took the stairs two at a time and could hear Richard puffing behind me, the contents of his milk crate clattering as he tried to keep up. When we reached the fourth floor, I saw that my apartment door stood wide open, and two uniformed police officers were in the hallway.

  “What’s going on here?” I could feel the panic in my voice.

  “I’m dying.” Richard reached the top of the stairs and let the milk crate crash to the floor.

  Leatrice rushed out from my apartment and threw her arms around me. “Thank heavens you’re home.”

  “Leatrice.” I pulled her away from me and tried to ignore the fact that she had loosely belted a brown raincoat over what had to be children’s pajamas, complete with feet. “What are you doing in my apartment? What are the police doing here?”

  “What is she wearing?” Richard looked up from where he leaned against one of the officers.

  Detective Reese stepped out of my apartment. “Ms. Archer.” He placed a hand on my shoulder. “I’m afraid you’ve been robbed.”

  Chapter 7

  Ransacked is more like it.” Leatrice pulled me by the arm into my apartment. Papers were scattered all over the floor, and my couch cushions had been tossed against the wall. The shopping bag full of clothes I’d meant to take to the dry cleaners the week before had been ripped open, its contents emptied onto a chair. Tiny candy hearts littered the floor in bits and pieces.

  Detective Reese wal
ked past me into the room. “From the looks of things, they didn’t burglarize you.”

  “What were they doing then, redecorating?” Richard came in to stand next to me and had his hands on his hips surveying the damage.

  “What I mean is that it appears that your computer and TV were untouched. You’ll have to check and see if the intruders took any jewelry, of course.”

  “I don’t have any expensive jewelry.”

  “Now there’s the real crime.” Richard began picking my clothes up off the floor and then spotted my dining table covered with scattered papers. “Look at the mess over here.”

  I glared at him. “Actually, the burglars didn’t touch the table.”

  “Sorry,” Richard mouthed.

  “There’s always a chance that the intruders were disturbed before they could take what they were after.” Detective Reese leaned against the back of my couch. “Your neighbor made quite a racket.”

  I peered down at the tiny woman standing beside me. “Leatrice disturbed the burglars?”

  “Well, I knew you weren’t home.” Leatrice patted my hand. “I saw you tear out of here earlier.”

  “An emergency?” Reese eyed the milk crate of cooking equipment that Richard had pushed into a corner.

  “Something like that.” I avoided the detective’s eyes and turned my attention back to Leatrice.

  “So when I heard someone throwing things around in your apartment, I knew it couldn’t be you.” Leatrice turned to smile at Reese. “She’s such a nice girl. No parties or late-night guests like other young people have these days.”

  I heard Richard stifle a laugh, but I refused to look at him.

  “Miss Archer is lucky to have such an observant neighbor.” Reese returned Leatrice’s smile. He probably loved this.

  “Leatrice.” I took a long breath. “How did you hear someone throwing cushions and clothes from four flights down?”

  “Well, I came up to see if you were back home yet.” Color began to creep up her neck and seep through the bright coral dabs of rouge applied to her cheeks. “I stood outside your door getting ready to knock when I heard the intruders.”