“Aaron Gold,” the Tyke declared, “your best talent is...”
She paused doubtfully, and into the hush that fell I piped up and said, “Kissing! He’s talented at kissing.”
Pandemonium. Everyone whooped and roared, and Aaron gave me a glittering look and laughed aloud.
“Excellent suggestion.” The Tyke waved her mug, anointing him with a slosh of beer. “Go ahead, mister, give it your best shot.”
I edged forward, blushing, and that was when Aaron Gold got me back for locking him out of the suite.
He slapped both hands on the bar, vaulted up next to the astonished Tyke, wrapped one arm around her shoulders and the other around her neck, and laid on a long,
long,
passionate kiss that brought down the house.
When he was finished, another hush descended as the crowd waited breathlessly for the Tyke’s reaction. Would she laugh at Aaron, or swear at him, or clobber him senseless?
But the Tyke did exactly what I would have done. She ran her tongue slowly across her lips, looked Aaron up and down, and said, “Best two out of three?”
Chapter Twenty-Four
“AARON SEEMS NICE.”
“He’s very nice, Mom. Please don’t touch anything.”
My mother put down the pink gerbera daisy she’d been twirling between her fingers. It was Friday, the morning after the Talent Show and the day before the wedding, and we were visiting the floral workstation. Mom had never seen me on the job before, so she was tagging along as I did my rounds of checking on Food Bob and Photo Bob and Boris. I still hadn’t heard from Beau, but given what I was dealing with, that was fine with me.
Having Mom along was a distraction, but hardly my only one. In addition to pondering Brian’s death, I was wondering whether my bride was going to cancel her wedding. And on top of all that, I was half asleep. After Aaron’s performance with the Tyke, I had vowed to lock him out again—then spent much of the night letting him change my mind.
Now Aaron was off somewhere consulting with Julie Nothstine about trout fishermen and hermits and the spoils of war, while I went through the motions of getting Tracy Kane married. At least the flowers seemed to be shaping up well.
The floral crew was appropriately busy as bees, chatting gaily and zooming in and out of the refrigerated trailer as if it were their hive. They buzzed industriously around the work tables, gloved against the rose thorns and constantly misting their materials from spray bottles to combat the rising heat.
As Mom and I watched, scissors snipped briskly, spools of floral tape spun merrily around, and blocks of green foam were carefully carved and soaked and fitted into white porcelain bowls and elegant silver epergnes for the rehearsal dinner tables. Our general themes were candlelight and lilies for tonight, sunshine and roses for the ceremony tomorrow.
I snagged a worker bee as she zipped past. “Is Boris around?”
“Can’t you hear him?” She nodded toward the trailer. “Poor Wallace.”
Now that I listened for it, I could make out the disgruntled rumbling of the Russian’s voice. I told Mom to stay put and entered the chilly atmosphere inside. The trailer was half full of finished arrangements today, and I tried to thrust yesterday’s image of Tracy and Domaso romping among the tubs and sacks to the back of my mind.
“Then you must find space!” Boris bellowed, as Wallace cringed. “Kharnegie, is no cold space for buddy flowers. I cannot mek them all tomorrow, I must start today, but must be cold space!”
“Buddy...oh, body flowers.” Body flowers are bouquets, boutonnieres and corsages, as opposed to tabletops and garlands and covered tent poles and such. Boris was an expert at directing the adornment of spaces, but he liked to create all the personal pieces with his own two gigantic hands.
I reviewed the possibilities. “The kitchen can’t loan you one of their coolers?”
“Full of food,” said Boris, disgusted at the thought of protecting mere edibles instead of his creations. “All full.”
“Well... I know, we’ll crank up the air-conditioning in my suite, and you can store the dinner arrangements there for the afternoon.” I couldn’t get the suite down to forty degrees, the ideal temperature for flowers, but every little bit would help. “That will free up the trailer for tomorrow’s flowers. How’s that?”
“Brill-i-ant!” he bellowed, and engulfed me in a rib-crushing hug. Over his shoulder, I saw Wallace make a grateful thumbs-up and slip away. “Many thanks, my Kharnegie. Flowers will be magnificent for this wedding. Everything magnificent. You have talked to Beau today?”
“Not yet, but I need to tell him about a change in the music situation. He might not be too happy about it.”
Boris tilted his shaggy head and pursed his lips lasciviously. “Beau is most happy with maid of honor. He will not mind about music, you will see.”
“Let’s hope. Come outside and say hello to my mother.”
Mom had met Boris before, and she greeted him now with a wide smile and a shameless lack of concern for the fibs that she and Eddie had concocted about us. Boris surveyed the tables and his minions’ work with satisfaction, then checked his watch.
“Beautiful ladies will have lunch with me, yes?”
But Mom, it seemed, had other plans. “I’m so sorry, Boris dear. I have a date already. Oh, there he is!”
She waved at someone approaching from the grassy lawn beside the parking lot: Sam Kane, shambling along with a companion by his side and his white Stetson bobbing in the sun. The other man, no doubt a wedding guest, looked to be in his early sixties, almost as tall as Sam but built much sturdier, with fair-haired, ruddy-cheeked good looks and a vigorous stride.
“You and Sam can join us, Mom,” I said. “I need to speak with him, anyway....”
I faded off here. While Sam was nodding genially at Boris, tipping his hat to me, and stooping to peer at the flowers, his companion marched right up to my mother and kissed her on the mouth. And she kissed him back. Hard.
“Carrie, dear,” she said, and she was damn near glowing when she said it, “I’d like you to meet Owen Winter. Owen, my daughter Carnegie.”
“Good to meet you,” said this Owen person, his blue eyes twinkling. He had a thin tenor voice, the kind I dislike. “I feel like I know you already, from everything Lou’s told me.”
Lou?
I didn’t like that, either.
“We’ll have to chat more later on, dear,” Mom was saying. “Owen has promised me a wonderful afternoon on the Harriman Trail, a bicycle ride and a picnic, so we’d better be moving along.”
They began to depart—holding hands, yet—when Mom paused and said, “Owen, did you ask Sam your fishing question? He wants to go trout fishing, Sam, but I told him I wouldn’t have the faintest idea where. I thought you might know?”
“Nope, but I know who does,” said Sam. “Domaso Duarte. He’s around here this week. Duarte knows every secret trout stream in Blaine County. We’ll get you fixed up, Owen.”
Owen expressed his appreciation and escorted my mother away, leaving me standing there stupefied with startling thoughts flashing through my mind like heat lightning.
Mom
and this new guy? Domaso and trout streams?
“Your mouth’s open, Red,” said Sam. “That Winter’s a handsome fella, isn’t he? Good taste in women, too.”
“I...yes, I can see that. Who is he, anyway?”
He chuckled. “Oh, I get it. Louise has been playing things close to the vest, huh? Winter just retired from Boeing. Pretty high up the food chain there, too.”
“And he lives in Ketchum now?”
“Not yet, but he’s thinking about it, and he’s got the bucks to do it in style. I gave him a quote on one of my best view lots up at White Pine, and he didn’t even blink. He’ll be at the wedding and the dinner and all, though, so you can check him out yourself.” Sam resettled his Stetson. “Now, Tracy told me about the switch in musicians.”
“Right.” I took a steadying breath and prepared to defend my unilateral decision. “I couldn’t reach Beau last night, and I thought I’d better get on it right away. I really think this is the best solution—”
“ ’Course it is!” He slapped me on the back and I staggered a little, not as steady as I thought. “It’s just fine to have Larabee’s kid playing his fiddle for us. No, it’s the cello, isn’t it, the big one? Anyhow, I heard them at a party last Christmas.”
“How were they?” I asked, mental fingers crossed. The kids’ references were good, but—
“Terrific! Practically professional. And I can always use a little extra support from our police force, if you know what I mean. Parking tickets and such. In fact, I invited the chief to the wedding so he can watch his boy perform.”
“Good idea.” I thought it over. “Actually, that’s a very good idea.”
The more I thought about it, the more certain I was that a police presence at White Pine was exactly what we needed. If Aaron and I could turn up enough information about Brian’s death, or even stir up some kind of reaction from the killer, Chief Larabee would be on hand to take over from there.
I was less certain about the significance of Domaso’s interest in trout. The Wood River Valley was teeming with fishermen, any one of whom could have been camping near the fire last Saturday, the day Brian died.
Although I did see fishing
gear in Domaso’s convertible on Monday. He could have been
just coming back from Boot Creek—
“Kharnegie!” Boris tapped my shoulder impatiently. “Do you take care of air-conditioning, or do I send someone?”
“Sorry, I’ll go do it right now. I’ll see you at dinner, Sam.”
We weren’t actually rehearsing the ceremony till tomorrow morning—it was too much trouble to transport everyone up to White Pine and down again—but then tonight’s affair was less of a standard rehearsal dinner and more of a general bash. Between Tracy’s photo ops and her father’s business-related hospitality, this wedding wasn’t standard at all.
I did my own mental rehearsal on the way to the lodge, running through the list of vendors I still had to check on. Beau may have planned this wedding, but he sure as hell wasn’t directing it. I was.
As I crossed the lobby I glanced through the glass door of the Duchin Lounge. Speak of the French devil, there was Beau at a table for two, very much
tête-à-tête
with Olivia. They seemed to be arguing, but I pretended not to notice.
“Good morning,” I said. “Beau, I’ve been trying to reach you since yesterday.”
“And here you find me,” he answered smoothly. But his tone carried a warning, from boss to underling. “As you see, however, I am engaged. Everything progresses well,
non
? You are capable of managing today’s schedule without my direct supervision?”
“Of course I am,” I snapped. “But there are some details we should—”
“You two go right ahead.” The actress rose abruptly, her mouth tight and her considerable bosom lifting indignantly beneath a skimpy black crop top. “We’re done talking. In fact, we’re done altogether!”
Heads turned toward us from around the lounge. Beau captured one of Olivia’s hands and drew her into her seat again, murmuring in French, pouring on the charm.
“Ma chere,
in Paris one always flirts with the chambermaid. It meant nothing....”
I thought I’d seen Beau in action before, but this was like watching a horse whisperer. Olivia’s expression softened, her eyelids drooped and fluttered, and by the time I left the lounge he was nibbling on her fingertips and she was cooing like a contented dove. Amazing.
Back in the lobby, I heard a different kind of whispering. Staff and guests alike murmured and pointed, discreetly directing each others’ attention to a side window that looked onto a private little alcove of the terrace outside.
At least, the man and the woman standing in the alcove must have thought it was private. On their side the sunlight would be bouncing off the white window curtain, making it look opaque. But the curtain was perfectly sheer from our side, affording us all a front-row seat for Tracy Kane’s latest love scene.
And a charming scene it was, too. She was looking up into Jack’s face, speaking rapidly, her palms on his chest and her lovely features set in earnest appeal. The words were inaudible but obviously persuasive, because Jack bent closer and closer, spoke a few words in reply, and enveloped her in a tender embrace.
Throughout the lobby, their unseen audience let out a single, satisfied sigh. Mine was especially sincere, being a sigh of profound relief, and I headed upstairs with a far lighter heart. The wedding was on.
I found Aaron and Julie—it was hard not to think of her as Dr. Nothstine—sitting on the love seat with the coffee table pulled close, surveying a room-service tray of sandwiches and iced tea. Her cane lay on the floor by their feet.
“Hey there, Stretch,” said Aaron. “This seemed like the most private place for us to have lunch. Dr. Nothstine’s been telling me something really interesting.”
She frowned and set down her glass. “I simply don’t agree that it’s significant. As I’ve told you repeatedly, the charges of looting were dropped altogether. Therefore your theory is incorrect.”
“Wait, back up.” I joined them and appropriated the other half of Aaron’s turkey on sourdough. “What’s going on?”
“Nothing pertinent to your cousin’s death,” said Julie firmly. “People will always resurrect old rumors from time to time. I’m sure it was mere coincidence—”
“And I’m sure it wasn’t.” Aaron leaned toward me across the coffee table, and I could see the reporter’s fire in his eyes. “Carnegie, the guy at the newspaper office said that somebody else called him recently to ask about back files from the 1950’s. He couldn’t remember the name, but now I’ve got a pretty good idea. Guess who chatted up Dr. Nothstine at the gas station a couple of weeks ago, and just happened to ask her about the Crown of Silla?”
The hair on the back of my neck stirred. I swallowed the bite I was chewing and said, “I don’t have to guess. Domaso Duarte?”
“Exactly. What do you bet he was up at Boot Creek hunting for buried treasure?”
“It’s possible,” I said slowly, watching Julie’s face. Aaron had her off to his side, but I was seeing her straight on, and I didn’t like what I saw. She sat rigidly erect, as always, but her lips were quivering and her face was paling. “But Sam told me that Domaso’s a big trout fisherman. Maybe he was just there fishing.”
“And just happened to commit murder in between casts? And just happened to be curious about the Crown of Silla?”
“But then, what about the security guard? Why would Domaso—”
“The cops think that was a robbery, and maybe they’re right.” Aaron was on a roll. “No, I figure either your cousin was killed because he saw Duarte with the crown, or else he found the crown himself and Duarte killed him to get it. It all makes sense!”
I watched as a tear slipped from behind the thick glasses and ran down Julie’s lean, lined cheek. She ignored it.
“On the contrary,” she said, in a voice that came out quavering and a little too loud, “it makes no sense whatsoever. It is simply inconceivable that Roy Kane would have stolen something of such value and historical importance. Or stolen anything at all, for that matter. He was a decent, honorable man, a remarkable man. If you had heard the many, many tributes at his service—”