Died to Match

by Deborah Donnelly

  Somehow the ugly little scuffle that brought Corinne to the floor of the balcony had evolved into a denouement featuring Roger and Travis as coolheaded heroes, with Crystal and myself as adoring onlookers, and Aaron as an anonymous EMP employee who had merely shouted at Corinne to distract her.

  Talbot even called me “plucky,” the son of a bitch. By the time I was aware of his manipulations, the next morning, a call to the paper with my own version of events would have seemed like self-serving mudslinging. Besides, the last thing I wanted was more column inches associating Made in Heaven weddings with gunfire.

  What I wanted was to have Aaron write up an accurate account of the incident, for his own paper or someone else’s. But Aaron refused to talk about his role—his truly heroic role— because he had frozen up on the tower afterwards and had to be helped down, step-by-step, by a police officer. He saved our lives, and he was embarrassed about it. Men are so odd.

  I would have argued with Aaron about his reticence, but between both our jobs and all our statements to the police, we’d hardly seen each other. I was eager to talk with him tonight. And not just talk, either. I’d made a decision.

  “I’ve got to go, Mom. I’m working on a pumpkin pie.”

  “Oh, good! Are you using my recipe for butter pastry?”

  “Not exactly.” Of course, maybe the packaged pie shell in my freezer had some butter in it. I hadn’t read that label, only the label on the back of the pumpkin can, where it said “Quick ’N’ Easy!”

  “Well, I’m sure it will be delicious. And you say your friend Alan is going also?”

  “His name’s Aaron, Mom.” And I’m going to have sex with Aaron tonight, how about that? But what I said was, “He’s very nice. You’d like him. Lily likes him.”

  “Then he must be nice. You tell Lily Happy Thanksgiving for me.”

  Mom rang off, and I got dressed and got busy. The kitchen had warmed up nicely with the oven preheating, and my enthusiasm grew as I measured out brown sugar, hunted out the cinnamon, and whisked some eggs and evaporated milk. This is so simple, I should do it more often. I was cranking the can opener when Aaron called.

  “So, Stretch, is this thing tonight formal or anything? Both my good shirts are at the cleaner’s.”

  He sounded disappointingly matter-of-fact, but then he didn’t know about my secret plan for our night of passion.

  “No, not at all,” I said casually. “In fact, wear some walking shoes. We usually go around Green Lake after Thanksgiving dinner.”

  “Oh. Do we have to?”

  “Aaron, it’s less than three miles on a paved path! Come on, it’s the Seattle thing to do.”

  “OK. So long as it’s not a no-smoking lake.” I had told him Lily’s house rule about cigarettes. “You need anything for this pie deal?”

  “Nope. I’m just getting it into the oven now.”

  I suppose I shouldn’t cook and talk on the telephone simultaneously, but I’m on the phone so much that it’s second nature. Cooking isn’t, however. I carefully closed the oven door, wiped my hands in triumph, and went about my business, enjoying the spicy smell that spread through the house. But when I passed through the kitchen a little while later, I spotted something odd on the counter: the measuring cup of brown sugar.

  “Oh, hell!” I grabbed some pot holders and hastily yanked out the pie. A dollop of pumpkin slopped onto the hot oven floor and began to blacken and smoke. “Hell and damnation.”

  I was afraid of more spillage if I emptied the pie into a bowl, so instead I sprinkled the sugar over the surface and tried to stir it in with a fork. But the filling had partly solidified by now, and the fork snagged on the bottom and tore up a flap of crust. I smooshed it down as best I could, returned the whole mess to the oven, and waited patiently for the timer to sound. Once done, the pie looked… funny, with lumpy brown spots and little bubbly craters all over the surface. Maybe I could tell Lily’s boys it was a moon pie. Sighing, I set it cautiously aside to cool, and ran up to the office to check my e-mail and do some paperwork.

  E-mail first, in case there was a message from the prominent young heiress who had actually responded to the Made in Heaven web site. Thank you, Zack, wherever you are. I had sent her a proposal for her wedding, along with an invitation to come in for a first consultation, and was eagerly awaiting her reply. And I got one, too, but not the reply I wanted. In my one Unread Message, she thanked me for my time, and said that she’d decided to use Dorothy Fenner instead.

  “I thought Dorothy was leaving town!” I called Joe Solveto to whine, after gritting my teeth and sending the heiress a gracious reply. That’s the nice thing about E-mail, you don’t have to fake your tone of voice. “Why isn’t she in Arizona where she belongs?”

  Joe chuckled. “The word is that Dominatrix Dorothy packed her husband off to Scottsdale alone, and took an apartment near her office. She says he can come back to visit her, but only by invitation.”

  “Just what I needed,” I grumbled. “Bad publicity, and Dorothy still on the scene.”

  “There is no such thing as bad publicity,” he told me sternly. “You wait, brides will call you just to get the juicy details about Corinne Campbell. Now go enjoy your turkey. Give my love to the luscious Lily.”

  Aaron arrived almost half an hour late, and seemed preoccupied, so I decided to save the unveiling of my secret plan for the end of the evening. He apologized, then frowned as I climbed into his car and settled the pie on my lap. “Is pie supposed to look like that?”

  “Of course it is. Listen, Aaron, Lily might have a friend there tonight, a man.”

  “Besides me?” he asked as he drove. “You know how I hate to co-star.”

  “Be serious. I mean, she’s dating someone, and I haven’t met him yet, so behave yourself, OK?”

  “When do I not?” He glanced over at me. His shiner had faded to a repulsive yellowy-green. “Of course I will, Slim. I’m very fond of Lily.”

  It only occurred to me to wonder, as we entered her modest, happily messy house, if Aaron would be fond of Lily’s sons, and vice versa. But he immediately began to wrestle with them, causing shrieks of delighted terror to bounce off the walls. Lily ignored them, and beckoned me into the kitchen.

  “Let them wear themselves out before dinner,” she said, pouring me a glass of wine. “How are you?”

  “Never mind how I am, what about this new guy of yours? Are you going to tell me more about him before he gets here?”

  She smiled mischievously. “You’ll have to wait… no, you won’t, he’s here.”

  Marcus and Ethan had begun to shriek, “Mike! Mike!” so I stepped to the doorway—and saw Detective Lieutenant Michael Graham, a bottle of wine in one hand and a bouquet of white roses in the other, with both boys wrapped around his legs like curly-haired little octopuses.

  “Hello,” he said, as Aaron and I gaped silently. “Carnegie, was it Pinot Noir you liked so much? That’s what I brought.”

  Lily pecked him on the cheek and relieved him of the wine and the flowers. I shot her a look that said, You only met him two weeks ago! and she shot one right back saying, So what? Then she laughed, and Aaron pumped Mike’s hand, and we settled down to dinner.

  The feast was wonderful—Lily did her famous Madeira gravy—and the walk around Green Lake was bracing, with the boys putting in double the mileage of the grown-ups with all their running around. On our return, my unfortunate pie was consumed with only a few witty comments about its interesting texture. The high-spirited atmosphere and the obvious chemistry between Lily and her new man—and maybe the Pinot Noir, too—got me counting the minutes before Aaron and I could decently leave and head back to my place.

  Aaron seemed to be sharing my thoughts, sitting ever closer to me on the couch, and slipping a warm, massaging hand between my shoulder blades. I began to speculate about the location of his tattoo, and to lose the thread of the conversation.

  But then the boys were carried off to bed, and the conversation tu
rned, inevitably, to Corinne Campbell.

  “It’s the saddest kind of case,” Graham said, leaning back in his chair with his hands wrapped around a coffee mug. “She might never have resorted to murder if Peters hadn’t pushed Mercedes Montoya into the water. The way I figure it, Campbell killed her rival in a fury, got blood all over her white Venus costume, and then jumped into the harbor to cover it up. She couldn’t very well go back to the party looking like that.”

  “Her nails,” I murmured.

  “What?” asked Lily.

  I told her, as I had already told the police, about Corinne’s long fake nails, the ones that were gone when she was “rescued” from the harbor. “She must have had blood under her nails, too, and pulled them off in the water. But first she threw in the diamond ring that Roger had promised her, still on the chain that she took from Mercedes’ neck.”

  The diamond that Roger Talbot wanted back as a memento, I thought, and Rick Royko wanted as payment on a drug deal, is permanently sunk in the black ooze at the bottom of Elliott Bay. Diamonds are forever.

  Graham—I’d have to start calling him Mike—nodded and went on. “Campbell didn’t find out until the funeral that Angela Sims saw her getting rid of the ring. She might have won a jury’s sympathy about the first murder. The wronged woman, a moment of madness, that kind of thing. But killing Sims was almost certainly premeditated, and of course she shot Thomas Barry in cold blood. No one’s going to execute a pregnant woman, though. She’ll have the baby in prison.”

  The thought was so depressing that I couldn’t speak. Lily bit her lip and made a soft, distressed sound.

  “Corinne must have thought about abortion, earlier on,” she said sadly. “But being Catholic, and being in love with Roger Talbot, that would have been a horrible prospect. And then after committing murder, the deadliest sin, she just lost her grip altogether.”

  Aaron seemed not to hear her. He was still putting the factual pieces together. “She killed Mercedes, and then claimed that someone tried to kill her. She killed Angela, and made up that story about being chased by Lester Foy Corinne was always the victim, always crying wolf. We just couldn’t see that she was the wolf.”

  A silence fell. I tried to use Aaron’s perspective, to think about the puzzle and not the heartbreak.

  “OK, Mike, two questions.” I held up my cup as Lily poured more coffee. “If Lester Foy wasn’t Dracula, then who was? And what was Foy doing at the cemetery in Redmond, if he wasn’t stalking us?”

  “The first one’s easy,” said the detective, flushing a little, “though if you tell anyone I’ll deny it.”

  We all leaned forward a little, and he rolled his eyes. “Dracula was a guy named—well, never mind his name. He’s a hotshot DEA agent from the party-drug task force. He’d been tracking Rick the Rocket, and he wanted to try some close-up surveillance. Without telling us, of course. The goddamn Feds are always pulling stunts like that. Excuse my French.”

  Amid our exclamations, he continued, “But Lester Foy showing up at the cemetery is a mystery to me. He must have been following one of you for some reason, but I don’t see why.”

  “I do!” Lily laughed her big, full-throated laugh. “I mean, I can guess why he was there, but he wasn’t following anybody. Carnegie, didn’t you say Foy was with his girlfriend, and that she’s a guitarist?”

  I nodded. “What’s that got to do with it?”

  “You were at Greenwood Cemetery in Redmond, right?” The phone started ringing, and as she stood up to answer it she said, “Girl, Greenwood Cemetery is where Jimi Hendrix is buried! Music people go there all the time. Excuse me a minute.”

  “Librarians are such show-offs,” said Aaron, in mock indignation. “How did she know—”

  “Aaron, it’s for you,” said Lily from the kitchen door. “Long distance, I think.”

  He grimaced and shut his eyes, as if something expected and yet dreaded had happened. “Sorry. My cell phone’s on the blink, so I left your number with someone just in case.”

  Two minutes later, he returned from the kitchen with an odd, tight look on his face. “Well, it’s getting late. Stretch, do you mind if we take off now?”

  “No problem,” I said. Enough with the postmortem, let’s go home and start the carpe diem. But when I followed him into Lily’s bedroom to fetch our coats, and tried to steal a quick kiss, he kept his distance. I touched his shoulder. “Aaron, what is it? Something wrong with your family in Boston?”

  “Yeah,” he said, shrugging into his coat. “Well, no, not exactly. But I do have to fly back there right away. There’s someone I have to help out.”

  “Who?”

  Aaron jammed his hands into his pockets and sighed. I was just thinking about how handsome he was, even with a black eye, when he said, “My wife.”

  About the Author

  DEBORAH DONNELLY’s inspiration for the Carnegie Kincaid series came when she was planning her best friend’s wedding and her own at the same time. (Both turned out beautifully.) A long-time resident of Seattle, Donnelly now lives in Boise, Idaho, with her writer husband and their two Welsh corgis. Readers can visit her at www.deborahdonnelly.org.

  If you couldn’t wait to turn each page of you’ll be on the edge of your seat with the next wedding planner mystery by

  Deborah Donnelly, on sale Fall 2003

  Read on for a preview…

  I don’t do bachelor parties.

  Wait, that sounds like I jump naked out of cakes. And who makes cakes that tall and skinny? What I mean is, I don’t plan bachelor parties. Weddings, yes. Rehearsal dinners, of course. Bridesmaids’ luncheons, engagement parties, even the occasional charity gala, when business is slow.

  The business in question is “Made in Heaven, Elegant Weddings With An Original Flair, Carnegie Kincaid, Proprietor.” I’ve got a pretty decent clientele in Seattle by now, and sometimes I get non-nuptial referrals. But I don’t do bachelor parties.

  First off, I resent the symbolism of the doomed groom enjoying one last spasm of freedom before turning himself in to the matrimonial slammer. I’m in favor of matrimony, after all. I might even try it myself—but that’s another story.

  The second and more compelling reason is that no event planner in her right mind wants to plan an event where the guests are hell-bent on drinking themselves to oblivion and behaving as poorly as possible en route.

  So why, at ten o’clock on a frigid December evening, was I en route to the Hot Spot Café, inside of which were at least two dozen inebriated bachelors? Because of Sally “The Bride From Hell” Tyler.

  Now, most brides are content to let the best man coordinate the bachelor bash. Not Sally Tyler, oohh no. Sally was a mere slip of a girl, with milky skin and smooth white-blonde hair, but she had cold agate eyes beneath dark, level brows. When she was displeased—a seemingly daily occurrence—her eyebrows drew together and her furious glare pierced your vital organs like a stiletto carved from ice.

  I desperately needed the revenue from the Tyler/Sanjek account, but it was turning out to be hard-earned. My innards were practically perforated.

  Sally’s latest excuse for a temper tantrum was this bachelor party. Supposedly, she asked me to plan the affair so that my valuable services, along with the food and drink, could be her wedding gift to Frank Sanjek, her devoted (not to say besotted) fiancé. But I saw through that little fiction.

  What Sally really craved was more scope to contradict, criticize, and in general control Frank’s every waking moment. Though why she thought my involvement would prevent the best man from pouring too much booze, or screening porno movies, or doing anything else he pleased, was beyond me. I’m a wedding planner, not a chaperone.

  Anyway, I declined, Sally fumed, and then Frank’s best man, Jason Croy came up with a perfect site for the party. A friend of his owned a café on the Seattle Ship Canal, complete with bar and pool table, and the place was closing for a major remodel. The guys could take it over for the night for free. They could
do their worst, with Jason as master of ceremonies—but only if the event was held immediately, well in advance of the wedding date.

  So, like a good best man, Jason set up the bachelor party venue, the guest list, and the entertainment. Meanwhile I made peace with Sally by arranging for a buffet of serve-yourself Greek appetizers catered by my friend and colleague Joe Solveto, while stipulating that I personally would not be visiting the party permises. Frank thanked his bride for her generous gift, and everybody was happy.

  Until ten minutes ago. I’d been working late, digging through some files over at Joe’s office in the Fremont neighborhood, when my cell phone rang.

  “Carnegie, it’s Sally. You have to go to the Hot Spot right away. Jason needs you.”

  “Why can’t he just call me? What’s wrong?” My stomach constricted at the sudden vision of all the things that might be wrong: property damage, an angry neighbor, an injured guest…

  “Just go, OK? You’re, like, two minutes away from there, aren’t you?”

  “Not exactly, but—” But if someone was hurt, or the police had been summoned, every minute would count. “I’ll be there as quick as I can.”

  So I climbed into Vanna White Too, the new replacement for my dear departed white van, and drove through the Christmas lights and sights to the south side of the canal.

  December in Seattle is usually gray and drippy, but this evening had a winter wonderland feel, with Christmas trees and decorations all a-glitter in the clear, crisp air. The “Artists’ Republic of Fremont” has gone almost mainstream these days, now that a big software firm calls it home and the fancy condos have sprung up, but there are still plenty of funky shops and charming restaurants.

  Everywhere I looked tonight, white puffs of frozen breath rose above the Yuletide shoppers and diners as they hurried cheerfully along the sidewalks. Too bad I wasn’t one of them. I crossed the Fremont drawbridge to the darker, quieter blocks along Nickerson, then dropped down a side street.