Do-or-Die Bridesmaid

by Julie Miller

  “Yes. On the phone, when she finally called me back—she was out of breath. Like she’d been running or crying. Or she was hiding. Or hurt? She whispered everything. I kept asking her to repeat things.”

  “Why would she be hiding?”

  She hugged her arms around her waist, shivering. From nerves? Cold? A combination of both? “I’m not sure. I don’t think she was alone, and she didn’t want whoever was there to overhear. I could hear a man talking, but I couldn’t make out any words. Music was playing. She had it up loud.”

  “What exactly did she say?”

  “She said she was eloping with Vinnie—that she talked him into proposing to her. They’re driving to the airport. And then there was something about insurance and she’s counting on me to keep it safe and her mom could never find out, and she was hoping she wouldn’t have to use it.”

  “Keep what safe?”

  “I don’t know. She thanked me and said I was her best friend and that she had to go.”

  “Go where?”

  Laura turned the key in the lock. “Stop asking me questions like you’re a cop and I’m a suspect.”

  “I am a cop.” Her cheeks were pale, her whole body trembling when she glared at him a second time. Conor shrugged out of his suit jacket and draped it around her. Whether she was freezing or about to burst into tears didn’t matter. He clasped her shoulders and rubbed his hands up and down her arms, instilling what warmth and support he could through the jacket. “You’re upset. Enough that you’re scaring me a little bit. Talk to me.”

  The glare was gone when she tilted her gaze to his. “Vegas. She said they’re going to Las Vegas. They’ll get the rings and everything they need there.”

  “They’re not the first couple to do that. You said Chloe was impulsive. Sounds like they both are. Are you worried she’ll have regrets?”

  “She asked me to feed her cat.”

  And that was a problem because...? “Do you have a key to her apartment? Will the landlord let you in?” Then he remembered something she’d mentioned on the dance floor. “Are you worried about your allergies?”

  “She doesn’t have a cat!” She shrugged off his touch and opened the car door.

  Conor palmed the window and closed it again. Either that remark about the cat had been a coded plea for help, or they were the words of someone who wasn’t in her right mind enough to make a big decision like elopement. Laura knew that, too.

  Now he understood her panic, her need to act.

  There was little Conor could explain about the ups and downs of all that had happened this evening. But he knew how to answer a call for help.

  “I’ll drive.” He captured Laura by the elbow and walked her to his car, bundling her into the passenger seat before starting the engine and cranking up the heat. “Keep calling your friend. And tell me everything you know about Chloe and Vincent Orlando.”

  Chapter Three

  Living out your teenage fantasy much?

  Laura’s hands were shaking as she dug through the contents of her kitchen junk drawer to find the smiley-faced key chain Chloe had given her. Conor lurked in the living room of her one-bedroom apartment, scoping out her eclectic décor filled with antiques and travel souvenirs. Or maybe he was keeping his distance while he wondered what was wrong with her.

  What on earth had possessed her to kiss him like that? No friendly peck on the lips, no polite buss across the cheek—but a full-on, hey-I-have-the-hots-for-you kind of kiss. The kind of kiss that left a smear of lipstick and stamp of wishful possession on his mouth for all to see.

  Conor had no reason to stay in Arlington. No reason to give her a chance to prove that her feelings for him had matured as much as she had.

  He was leaving. Going back to Kansas City. Leaving her behind without ever knowing how she really felt about him. Again.

  Laura closed her eyes and breathed in the spicy smell of him that lingered on his jacket. He’d pulled a long wool coat from the back of his SUV to put on while she slid her arms inside his suit jacket and rolled up the sleeves. The warmth from his body she’d felt when he’d put it on her was long gone, yet the sensations of being sheltered and cherished remained.

  But it was all an illusion of intimacy. Polite concern for her well-being was about as romantic as he ever intended to get with her. That rescue dance at the reception had awakened all the old feelings inside her that had never truly died. Not through growing up and taking separate paths. Not through grief. Not through seeing him give his heart to the wrong sister and being gutted by her rejection. Not through her inability to let any man claim her own heart the way Conor unknowingly had.

  She knew the sound of his goodbyes. So, she’d kissed him. Because the chance to pretend Conor Wildman could be hers for even a few moments before he walked away, before she ever had the chance to show him how she felt, was just too great to resist.

  But he hadn’t kissed her back.

  In terms of emotional self-preservation, it wasn’t the smartest move she’d ever made. Clearly, Conor still thought of her as fifteen and in need of a big brother, instead of twenty-five and ready to go after the man she wanted—even risking their lifelong friendship to do so—so the kiss was probably just a whole weird, uncomfortable thing for him.

  She should be content with friend status because, after Chloe’s cryptic phone call and Isaac’s can’t-be-bothered-with-her attitude, she needed a good friend right about now. Something was wrong, judging by that call. It was a cry for help she didn’t understand, but Laura had no intention of ignoring it.

  Affirming that her priorities were in their proper place, she fisted the key to Chloe’s apartment in her hand and hurried past Conor out the door.

  By the time they reached the stairs beside the elevator, Laura had pushed aside all fantasies of kissing Conor, reluctantly accepting that he would never see her as anything more than Lisa’s kid sister. With the tall, lanky frustration following her every step of the way, she hurried up the stairs and down the hallway to the apartment above hers.

  She was glad Conor had driven, not because she didn’t think she could squash the panic enough to get herself safely home, but because she wanted someone with her for moral support. Laura’s worries about Chloe were all over the board, leaving her thoughts scattered and her heart racing. Until she had some answers, she was imagining all kinds of worst-case scenarios that her friend might have gotten herself into—having her heart broken by Vinnie, getting stranded in Vegas. Her comment about wanting Laura to guard an insurance policy was still a puzzle. She knew darn well that Chloe barely kept up the payments on her car and renter’s insurance, and that was only done with Isaac managing things for her. The kind of insurance Chloe had talked about sounded a little bit like blackmail. Laura didn’t have to be a criminologist to know that the person being blackmailed tended not to like being coerced into doing something against his or her will. Maybe Vinnie had done something worse than break her friend’s heart. Maybe he’d talked Chloe into doing something dangerous or illegal for him. Maybe the marriage offer had been the bargaining chip he’d used to get Chloe to help him.

  Chloe might be a free spirit who danced to her own tune, but she’d never once done anything so bizarre as give Laura a message about her nonexistent cat. Unless she’d impulsively gone out and adopted herself one, in which case, Laura’s temper would boil over for all the unnecessary stress she’d caused her today. While she stewed and speculated, Conor was in clearheaded cop mode, with no emotional ties to Chloe to cloud his thinking.

  Conor was here as her friend. Laura was grateful, humiliated and heartbroken all at the same time.

  Damn. She never should have kissed him.

  “Here it is.” Reaching apartment C-8, she knocked on the door and waited. “We water plants and pick up each other’s mail when we travel.” She knocked on the door again before sliding the key into the
lock and twisting the dead bolt. “Chloe? You here? It’s Laura. I’m coming in.”

  She pushed open the door, flipped on the light switch and froze.

  In the split second it took for Laura to take in the utter devastation of Chloe’s ransacked apartment, Conor had grasped her shoulders and pulled her back into the open doorway.

  He moved between Laura and the shredded sofa cushions, broken picture frames, shattered knick-knacks and pages from her precious art books torn and tossed across the floor. “Miss Wilson? I’m Detective Wildman,” he announced. “A friend of Laura’s. Are you here? Are you all right?” He pulled back the front of his jacket and patted his belt.

  Laura’s blood ran even colder when he pulled his hand away with a muttered curse. He was looking for his gun. He thought whatever had happened here was really, really bad. She stiffened at the tension radiating off him. She’d been right to worry. “Conor?”

  He pulled his badge from his pocket and clipped it to his belt before reaching back to squeeze her shoulder. “Stay here. Call 9-1-1. Report a break-in.”

  “You think this is a robbery? It looks so...violent.” She scanned the main room from one wall to the other. No piece of furniture was untouched by the chaos. “Chloe?”

  “Call.” Conor’s long, smooth strides, quickly taking him from room to room with a sharply uttered “Clear,” made her think he believed this was something more, too. Clear meant there was no sign of Chloe, right?

  But was that a good thing or a bad thing?

  Tamping down the urge to shake in her sparkly heels, Laura pulled out her cell and dialed the police. “My neighbor asked me to come over and check on her place,” she explained to the dispatcher. “Someone has completely trashed her apartment.” Her eyes never left Conor while she gave the address and answered questions. She noted the details as best she could. Plants had been dumped from their pots on the windowsill, the dirt strewn across the hardwood floor beside Chloe’s desk. “Her computer is missing.” The dispatcher probably didn’t care about the colorful ceramic statuary that had been knocked to the carpet or broken against a harder surface, or the hand-sewn pillows that had been cut open and had their stuffing pulled out. Laura frowned. “Her television is still here. To be honest, it looks as though there was a terrible fight, or the intruder was looking for something.” But what that might be she couldn’t tell the dispatcher. “No, she doesn’t keep a lot of money here. She doesn’t have a lot of money.” Almost anything of value here, besides her artwork, had been given to Chloe by one of her boyfriends. When the dispatcher asked about precious jewelry, Laura moved toward the bedroom, clinging close to the wall—partly so she wouldn’t disturb anything, but mostly because there was no other safe way to move through the main room. “She inherited some gold beads from her grandmother when she passed away. Yes, I’m checking for the necklace now.”

  Conor met her at the closed door to Chloe’s bedroom, looking none too pleased that she hadn’t remained near the hallway. “I told you to wait—”

  “Scowl away, Wildman. The dispatcher wants me to—”

  “Let me.” He held up a white handkerchief in his hand that he used to turn the doorknob. “The police will want to dust for fingerprints, and I don’t want them to find yours.”

  She nodded, appreciating his caution, before turning her attention back to the woman on the other end of the call. “The jewelry box is...”

  Laura screamed.

  Conor swore and turned her away from the gruesome sight.

  He plucked the cell phone from her fingers and rattled off some official-sounding words like “badge number” and “bus” and “home invasion.” Clutching at his shirt and jacket as he backed them both out of the room, Laura buried her face in his chest.

  But she couldn’t bury the image of Chloe Wilson’s bruised body trapped beneath the drawers of her overturned dresser, her skull bashed in and her blond hair floating in a pool of blood.

  Chapter Four

  “And now for Miss Prom Night.” Deputy T. J. Cobb turned away from the body bag on a gurney the medical examiner was wheeling down the hallway and pointed to Laura. He ordered another deputy to give them some privacy and gestured to the unoccupied apartment across the hall where he’d been conducting interviews. Once she’d entered the empty beige space, Deputy Cobb pulled a small notepad from inside his jacket and tapped it with his finger. “You and I need to talk, little lady.”

  “Don’t patronize me, sir.” Laura had changed into her suede and sheepskin boots and returned to join the gathering of neighbors, crime scene techs and uniformed deputies gathered outside the yellow tape stuck across the door to Chloe’s apartment. She wished now that she hadn’t listened to Conor’s suggestion that she go downstairs to her apartment to regroup a bit while he waited for the local authorities to arrive and take his statement. She didn’t care that she looked like a little girl playing dress-up in her poufy bridesmaid’s dress, Conor’s suit jacket and her winter boots. But she did care that the flat boots made her the shortest adult here, save for her mom, who was waiting with her dad down in her place, in case she needed their support. She had a feeling she would, especially if the deputy couldn’t see beyond her girlish looks and speak to her as an adult. “I am perfectly capable of answering any questions you have.”

  “Fair enough.” The way Deputy Cobb smiled down at her around the toothpick wedged between his teeth made Laura feel like he was a starving man and she was the last morsel left on one of the canapé trays at Lisa’s wedding reception. Nor was she comforted by his dubious good ol’ boy charm. “How come you’re all dolled up?” he asked.

  Laura curled her fingers into the wool of Conor’s jacket, clutching the lapels together at the base of her throat. She hadn’t felt warm since she and Conor had discovered her friend’s body, but she guessed the sea of goose bumps dotting her arms now had more to do with shock than with the wintry temperature outside. “I was at my sister’s wedding. Shouldn’t you be asking me about Chloe? Miss Wilson?” She heard the ding of the elevator arriving on the third floor, thought of her friend’s half-dressed body being hauled away in a bag like discarded trash, and shivered. “The victim?”

  “We’ll get there.” He shoved his flat-brimmed hat back on his head and scratched at his curly blond hair before glancing down at his notepad. “It’s Laura Karr with a K, isn’t it? You live downstairs?”

  Laura nodded. “Apartment B-8.” She hated how long it took Deputy Cobb to complete a sentence, as if he had all the time in the world to bring Chloe’s killer to justice. As if finding out the truth wasn’t as urgent a priority for him as it was for her.

  “Well, Ms. Karr with a K... You always a nosy neighbor?” The deputy’s tongue darted between his teeth to move his toothpick from one side of his mouth to the other. “You messed up my crime scene.”

  Was that an accusation? His lazy-drawled attempt to upset her enough to reveal something he thought she knew? She bit down on the frustration that wanted to spew out and kept her voice as even as she could manage. “I was worried about my friend. She called me.”

  “Called you? We didn’t find any cell phone in there. No landline.”

  “I don’t know anything about that. She called me earlier. At the wedding reception. She was in trouble. As soon as I opened the door...” She shook her head to dispel the memory of all the destruction. “I didn’t touch anything.”

  “The bedroom is at the back of the apartment. You’re saying you didn’t walk through that apartment to get to your friend?”

  “You saw what it looked like. I was concerned for Chloe’s safety. Rightly so.”

  The flurry of voices in the hallway behind her barely registered.

  He pulled the toothpick from between his lips and pointed it at her. “Did you and your friend have a falling out?”

  “No.”

  “Traipsing through Miss Wilson’s apartment
was either a careless act on your part, or you were intentionally trying to sabotage any clues that might tell us what happened to your friend.”

  Laura bristled at his thinly veiled allegation. “I didn’t sabotage anything.”

  “We can’t even tell if that lock was forced.”

  “It wasn’t.” A familiar, deep voice clipped through the air behind her. Conor. Relief huffed out in an audible sigh. When the man at the door tried to stop him, Conor pointed to the badge prominently displayed on the chest pocket of his coat—right next to the spot where the officer was restraining him. “Detective Wildman. And you’re going to lose that hand if you don’t let me in to see Miss Karr.”

  Cobb looked from her up to Conor, then shrugged and stuffed the toothpick back between his lips. “Let him in.”

  Laura felt Conor’s hand at the small of her back before he spoke again. “She can’t tell you anything about the crime scene I haven’t already told you. We used a spare key the victim gave her to get in. As an officer of the law, I entered the premises because we feared for Miss Wilson’s safety. I know crime scene protocol. We touched nothing. As soon as we found the body, we went back out into the hall and waited for you and your men to arrive.”

  Not only could she feel Conor’s warmth radiating against her side like an infusion of life-giving sustenance, she could feel the gun and holster he’d strapped onto his belt. He must have gone out to his SUV and suited up into full cop mode while she’d been putting on her silly, cushy boots. She hadn’t handled anything very well tonight—not her concern for Chloe, not that impulsive kiss and certainly not her friend’s murder. No wonder Conor still looked at her like the kid next door, and not a mature woman.

  She needed to do something, say something, be something more than a woman who was too upset or intimidated to stand up for herself. She appreciated Conor’s staunch support, but she needed to summon her own strength. She tilted her chin to meet the deputy’s pale green eyes. “There was no blood anywhere else in that apartment. The murder occurred in that bedroom, and we never went in there.” She glanced up at Conor. “Detective Wildman got us both out of there as soon as we discovered the body.”