Chapter Fifteen
THAT WAS TUESDAY NIGHT. WITHIN HOURS—NOT NEARLY enough hours—it was Wednesday morning and I was at the Sun Valley Lodge, unlocking the Paliere suite and throwing a fit.
“A bee!” I stomped inside and whirled to face the remorseful young man who’d been drooping out in the hallway. “A
bee
?”
I heard myself sounding hysterical, but I couldn’t help it. I was a mess. I’d slept right through the alarm B.J. set for me when she left for work, and woke up on her couch in a panic less than half an hour before my big vendor meeting. No breakfast, no shower, and no time to react to the events of the night before. Which possibly wasn’t a bad thing. I had to think weddings, not murders, and I had to think fast.
A heavy foot on the gas brought me to the lodge with three minutes to spare—just enough to blow up.
“Valerie Cox is bailing out on this wedding because she got stung by a goddamn bee?”
“
Please
let me finish.” The remorseful young man was Wallace Waggoner, the tallest, thinnest, droopiest person I’d ever met. He looked even sleepier than I did, if that was possible. “Val is allergic to beestings. She went into anaphylactic shock, which brought on a minor heart attack. She’s still in the hospital.”
“Oh.” My fury collapsed like a leaking balloon. “Oh. So they sent you.”
“On the red-eye.” He dropped his carry-on bag off one skinny shoulder and onto the floor as if he wanted to join it there. “Could I please make some coffee? I came straight from the airport.”
“Of course. Make the whole pot, would you? There’ll be eight of us.”
The suite was set up for business, with a small conference table, a coffee urn, and a drawer full of pens and such bearing the lodge’s sunburst logo. As Wallace fussed with the coffee, I arranged a pad and pen at each place, along with my business card and a copy of the wedding-events timetable.
We’d need the air-conditioning later, but just now the room felt cool and a little stuffy. I pushed open a window and stood staring out at the terrace and the ice rink, blinking in the early sunshine and trying to get my head in the game.
Who was coming this morning, and what did I need to discuss with each one? Caterer, photographer, videographer, floral designer, the tent-and-rental man, the entertainment director. I was eager to confer with the latter, because Shara Mortimer’s paperwork contained not a single detail about music, as if a file had gone missing from the bundle she’d handed me.
Who else? Oh, the stylist, a woman from the studio who was apparently senior to both Hair and Makeup. Tracy had insisted on her presence today, since film and photos of the bridal party would be so widely distributed. Between the glare of publicity for my bride and the nightmarish scene last night, this was feeling less like a wedding and more like a made-for-TV movie.
I went on trying to focus on the meeting’s agenda, but my thoughts kept straying back to Brian. I was convinced now that Dr. Nothstine’s theory had merit. But why was he killed, and which of the three smoke jumpers had last seen him alive? Who had stalked me in the parachute loft, behind those silken walls?
Whoever it was, if I went to the police with my suspicions and the killer heard about it, I might be triggering even more violence. I felt dazed and paralyzed, and I wished I could talk to Aaron.
A knock on the door brought me up short. Wallace handed me a steaming mug and went to answer it.
Good
man.
The rest of the vendors arrived all at once, increasing my sense of confusion. The well-groomed Englishwoman I pegged as the stylist turned out to be Joan, the tent-and-rental “man,” while the caterer and videographer were both stout, mustachioed men named Bob. At least I recognized the D. P., whose name was actually Evan. He was Tracy’s own director of photography from the TV show, and seemed to rank senior to Bob. Photo Bob, not Food Bob.
Well, I’d sort that out later. For now I took my place at the head of the table and addressed them as if everything were normal. I was shooting for friendly but confident, but it came out stiff and officious, at least at first.
“I’m Carnegie Kincaid, of Made in Heaven Wedding Design in Seattle, subcontracted for the moment to Paliere Productions. I’m an old friend of the bride’s, and as some of you may know, Shara Mortimer has handed over coordination of the Kane/Packard nuptials to me.”
By the looks exchanged across the table, no one was lamenting the change.
“I know you’re all busy,” I went on, “so thank you for taking the time to come this morning. We’re in the homestretch now, with the baseball game and bachelor party tomorrow, the rehearsal dinner and ice skating Friday night, and the ceremony itself on Saturday.”
“Don’t forget the bachelorette party,” said the stylist. She was a tiny but imperious Scandinavian named Ilsa, with a harsh throaty voice and a youthful, unlined face that contrasted with the silver of her geometrically cut hair. Either Ilsa was prematurely gray by a couple of decades, or she’d had some serious work done. Her smooth, blank expression reminded me of a beach after the tide has receded. “We need to talk about that after the meeting.”
“Fine,” I said. “Now, let’s take it from the top.”
As we worked our way through the timetable, I began to breathe easier. Some of these people had worked together before, and all of them knew what they were doing. As we reviewed the photography schedule, a businesslike but amiable spirit emerged, with suggestions offered and accepted, accommodations made for each vendor’s requirements, and a general understanding that with a TV star for a bride, this wedding had to be picture-perfect.
As Tracy had already told me, the smoke jumpers were keeping the bachelor party casual. So Food Bob would grill burgers and tap beer kegs, and Evan would take some candid photos. Shara had planned to supervise the setup and the cleanup, but that was all.
“Unless your friend the bride is including you in the baseball game,” said Joan, the tent-and-rental, in her plummy British accent. “I understand those gorgeous gentlemen from Los Angeles are in need of players. I wouldn’t mind joining
that
team.”
“I didn’t know the game was coed,” I said. Then I realized that the smoke-jumper team would include women, so the California contingent might also. “Is Tracy playing?”
“You’re
joking,
” intoned Ilsa, horrified. “She could break a nail, or receive a bruise, or—”
“Of course,” I said soothingly. “Silly question. Let’s move on to the menus, shall we?”
Food Bob smacked his lips in anticipation. He had a genial, folksy manner, and I scribbled myself a crib note that his mustache was brown and bushy, while Photo Bob’s was flat and black. Bad form to tell the photographer the sauce was too salty, or ask the chef for a shot of the bride’s uncle.
“The rehearsal dinner’s our really fancy meal,” said Bob. “We’ll have just a grill-to-order buffet kinda thing up at White Pine after the ceremony, and of course the wedding cake. Two of ’em, actually. Orange tiramisu with butter-cream frosting, and then a chocolate-chestnut groom’s cake with sugar-dipped champagne grapes and laurel leaves. They’ll be real good. ’Course, we’ll use powdered egg whites in the butter cream, to stabilize it in the heat.”
Real good?
But any fears that maybe Bob wasn’t real sophisticated quickly vanished as he led us through his fancy meal. From the seared pheasant breast with wild cherry conserve, through the lamb chops in phyllo, to the roasted pears with pecorino cheese and the chocolate-chestnut mousse, we were in the hands of a master. I began to regret, bitterly, my lack of breakfast.
“What about the vegetarian guests?” I asked, to cover the rumbling of my stomach.
“Pepper-crusted salmon on a bed of leeks.”
“But that’s not vegetarian.”
“It ain’t meat!” he protested, all innocence.
I felt my blood pressure rising. “Bob, a lot of vegetarians don’t eat fish, either. In fact, vegans don’t—”
“Take it easy!” The bushy mustache stretched over a broad smile. “I was just jerking your chain. We got a strictly nonflesh, nondairy wild mushroom ragout with roasted asparagus and carved potatoes. It’s a beaut on the plate, you’ll see.”
Next up, among the general chuckles at Bob’s joke, was Sebastian, the entertainment director, an
uber
-hip and supercilious southern California type with thick black glasses and thin blond hair. He filled us in about the big-deal rock group he’d hired for the reception, tossing off the famous name as if it were routine.
“And for the ceremony, of course, we have the quartet.”
“What kind of instruments?” I asked, scribbling notes.
“What kind?” His eyes glittered behind the geeky glasses. “The Ladislaus Quartet plays string instruments. I thought everyone knew that, but apparently I was wrong. Dear me.”
“You’ve got the
Ladislaus
?” My favorite recordings in the world were the Ladislaus renditions of the Beethoven middle quartets. The prospect of hearing those celestial strings attending Tracy down the aisle was...a problem. “That’s wonderful, but if the wind comes up, those big pine trees in the meadow are going to generate a lot of noise.”
Noise is a tricky issue at an outdoor event. I’d learned that the hard way at a seashore wedding, and again at a ceremony in a Seattle park that turned out to be under a flight path for SeaTac Airport. But today my fears were groundless. This was show biz, and not only had Sebastian arranged to fly the quartet in from their world tour, he’d also made detailed arrangements for mikes, amps, cables, power supply, and even backup power.
“Satisfied?” he asked airily. “Once we’re done here I’m off to Cabo San Lucas for a client’s birthday gala, but I’ll be back on Friday afternoon. If you can spare me?”
“We’ll get by. No problem.”
There seemed to be no problems at all, in fact, except the one created by Valerie Cox’s bloody bee. Wallace Waggoner, poor fellow, was the weak link at this wedding. He had the facts and figures down pat about the refrigerated semi-truck trailer full of cut flowers and the rental of nursery stock in tubs. But when it came to artistic vision, he was a washout.
The more I asked about decorating the tents and tables, the bridal arch and the guest chairs, the railings at the lodge and the porta-potties at the White Pine Inn, the clearer it became that Wallace was a born follower. He kept clutching his paperwork, stammering out broken phrases, and looking around as if Valerie would magically appear and save him from making decisions.
“We’ll discuss the flowers in more detail later,” I said at last, to put him out of his misery.
And even later than that,
I told myself,
I’ll be back in Seattle telling Eddie funny stories
about all this. Hold that thought.
As the meeting broke up, the thought of Seattle brought on thoughts of Aaron. I yearned to call him, just to talk through this tangle, but would he think Dr. Nothstine was nuts and I was overdramatizing? Still, a corpse is a corpse, and at the very least I deserved some sympathy for the shock I had suffered. Not that Aaron was all that good at sympathy. He’d probably just tease me about—
“Well?” Ilsa had bustled up to me, but I’d been staring vacantly over her head. “Well, what shall I put you down for?”
“What? Sorry, I was just...put me down for what?”
“For injections at the bachelorette party.”
“Injections?” I squeaked. Needles are not my friends. “What kind of party is it?”
“An afternoon at Peak of Pleasure,” she said impatiently. At least I assumed she was impatient, from her tone of voice. I couldn’t quite tell from her face. “The spa. Didn’t you get the invitation?”
“No.” I gestured her to join me in the suite’s sitting area, where I wouldn’t tower quite so far over her. “No, I’m a late addition to the guest list.”
“Well, you’re in for a treat.” Perched on the needlepoint love seat, she still had to look up at me, but at least she smiled. It was nice to know that she could. “Heated stone massage, full-body sugar-scrub exfoliation, tanning, hot-oil scalp massage, French manicure, herbal pedicure, and your choice of Botox or collagen. What shall I put you down for?”
“Um, now that I think about it, I’m going to be awfully busy today. I’m not sure I can make it.”
She lifted her hand to my face. You know how in the movies, the guy is always reaching out tenderly to trace his fingertips along the girl’s cheek? I don’t like it when guys do that, and I sure didn’t like it when Ilsa did it.
“What are you?” she said, tracing away. “Thirty-four, thirty-five? You don’t want to neglect yourself. And that’s quite a frown line between your brows.”
I jerked my head aside. “Barely thirty-two. And I’m not neglected, just busy.”
“Well, it’s too bad. All the bridesmaids will be there, and even”—she sniffed in disapproval—“even the best ‘man.’ ”
“The Tyke’s going to be there? I mean, Pari Taichert?” I made a show of looking at the timetable again. “You know, I think I could fit in the time this afternoon. Yes, definitely.”
“Excellent. And you know to wear red, of course.”
I nodded without thinking, preoccupied as I was with the idea of scoping out the Tyke’s alibi for last night. By the time her last remark registered, Ilsa was bustling toward the door.
“Wait a minute,” I called after her. “Red? I don’t usually wear—”
But she was already out the door. I sighed and reached for my phone. B.J. could explain it to me. I needed to confer with her anyway, and with Dr. Nothstine, too. Between the three of us, surely we could find out where the Tyke, Danny Kane, and even Todd Gibson had been last night around eleven P.M.
I carried the phone to the suite’s king bed, yanked the covers down, and flopped onto my back amid the cool, clean sheets and brocaded throw pillows. No point letting this luxury go to waste, and I was bone tired. Might as well confer with my feet up.
But before I called either B.J. or Dr. Nothstine, I tapped in a Seattle number that I knew by heart. I was in serious trouble here, and only one man could get me out of it.