Killer Cuts: A Dead-End Job Mystery (6 page)

King dropped to his knees and threw his arms around her. “Oh, baby, I don’t want anything to happen to you.”

Helen wasn’t sure if he was talking to his bride or his son.

King kissed Honey gently.”I love you.What can I do?”

“Please see to our guests while Mireya finishes the pictures up here,” Honey said.

The groom picked up the bourbon bottle and lurched downstairs. Melody carried in a glass of water.”Drink this, sis,” she said.”Everyone gets on edge at a wedding. It doesn’t mean a thing.”

Helen and Miguel Angel slipped out to the balcony, where the stylist fired up another cigarette.”Why is Honey marrying that man?” Helen asked.”Nurses make a decent living.”

“Not enough to live on Hendin Island,” Miguel Angel said. “She wants a baby, and she’s nearly forty. King is supposed to be worth ninety million dollars. She likes money so much she’s willing to put up with that drunken druggie.”

“He’s using drugs?” Helen asked.

“That’s not powdered sugar on his nose.”

“But he’s drinking heavily,” Helen said. “And he just had a heart attack.”

“Maybe she thinks he won’t live long,” Miguel Angel said.”I hope so, for her sake.”

T
he afternoon sun gilded the bride’s taffeta wedding gown and

turned her nose into an oil slick.

“My nose is shiny,” Honey wailed.”I can feel it.”

Miguel Angel patted it with a sponge to keep Honey’s complexion photo ready.

“Why don’t you use powder?” Honey asked.

“It makes your face look dry and old,” Miguel said.”Brides are sup posed to look dewy.”

Honey shut up at the mention of the O-word.The bride showed no trace of her recent tears, no sign that her future husband had threatened to kill her hairstylist, or that her baby had been kicking up a storm. Hollywood has lost a great actress, Helen thought.

She guarded the makeup case and tried not to look bored. She was stuck doing Phoebe’s job.Again.Worse, she had to watch Honey’s “gal pal” flirt outrageously with a man who looked like a dissipated grand father. Helen thought he might be a former TV host who’d had DUI problems.

“You’re funny,” Phoebe said, and giggled. The white-haired man puffed out his scrawny chest and put his hand on Phoebe’s nearly bare shoulder. It inched toward her breast.

Mireya, the photographer’s assistant, crawled along the pink pavers on the terrace, moving pots of pink impatiens away from the bride’s skirt. Her brown curls shone in the sun.

“Look this way, Honey,” the photographer, Marco Antonio, said. “Tilt your chin up.”

Honey tilted.

An inhuman screech rent the air. Mireya nearly dropped a pot of flowers.

“It’s okay,” Honey said, chin still tilted at an unnatural angle.”It’s one of King’s peacocks. It’s mating season.”

The gaudy bird strutted in front of the bride and fanned its fabulous tail, screeching again, hoping to impress a dun-colored peahen six feet away.

“Beautiful,” the photographer said. “Hold still. Nobody move.” Marco Antonio dropped to his knees as if he were worshiping the bride and the bird, and clicked his camera.

Helen thought of her mother’s favorite saying: “The most beauti ful things in the world are the most useless, peacocks and lilies.” Later, Helen learned that quote was from John Ruskin. She never thought beauty was useless. Honey’s good looks got her this peacock palace— and her ugly groom.

Honey waited until the photographer finished, then said, “King loves those peacocks. He read somewhere that the old-time estates had them. He bought three peacocks and three peahens.The hens are drab and dowdy. Peacocks are noisy, bad-tempered birds, and they wake me up every morning during mating season.”

Helen could see the groom lurking by a pink stucco arch near the terrace. King was taking swigs of bourbon and practically drooling over Mireya’s rounded rear end. Mating season, indeed.The man was getting married shortly, and he was mentally undressing the photographer’s assistant. Helen wondered whether Honey knew about his antics and turned a blind eye.Was she that desperate to marry money?

The peacock folded its tail and strutted away. “You’ll lose those tail feathers come August, mister,” Honey said to the departing bird.”Then you’ll have nothing to crow about.

“I hate their screeching call,” she told Helen.”But King says it’s the sound of money.That’s why I had my attendants wear peacock blue.”

A woman in a peacock blue dress marched down the aisle on the terrace and took a seat in a white folding chair on the groom’s side. Her blond hair was longer than her short, tight skirt. Her face was deeply tanned. Dark lipstick crept into the cracks on her lips.

“Is she a bridesmaid?” Helen asked.

Honey laughed, her voice rich with contempt.”Her? That’s King’s old girlfriend,Tiffany. She’s a stripper.Tiffany expected King to marry her, but he chose me instead.” Her voice was smug with satisfaction.

“Tiffany is very bitter,” Honey said. “But King insisted she be in vited to our wedding—and she had the nerve to show up.”

Tiffany had a lean, muscular body with oversized breasts. Helen wondered if she’d worn the skimpy dress to show King—and everyone else—what he was missing.

“There’s my bridesmaid, Cassie, standing by the palm tree. She is King’s daughter.”