Death Takes a Honeymoon (24 page)

I shoved my way toward the railing, thinking that whoever these idiots were, they deserved every bruise they’d be left with in the morning. Then one peacemaker—it looked like Peter Props—swore and shoved another, who sadly for him happened to be the Tyke. She replied with an uppercut to his jaw, causing a third peacemaker to lunge to his defense, and the two-man fray escalated into a general brawl.

Casualties were limited, because most of the combatants immediately fell down, but the original pair was still grunting and grappling. I caught a glimpse of a swarthy face and then a flash of pink shirt.

One of the idiots was Domaso Duarte, and the other was Aaron Gold.

Furious, and also frightened, I yelled something regrettable and charged forward—right past the railing and onto the rink. You’d think stiletto heels would jab into the ice and give you some purchase, but you’d be quite, quite wrong. I went skidding toward the combatants at a dizzying speed, until my heels went north while my butt went south, and I ended up flat on my back, spinning like a boomerang away from the fight.

It must have looked comical, but it felt terrifying. I could easily have smashed my skull against the uprights of the rail. But at the last moment a pair of shovel-sized hands grasped my shoulders, and a pair of trunklike arms lifted me to safety and set me on my feet.

“Kharrnegie!” boomed my very favorite voice in the whole world, at least at the moment. “Kharnegie, you stay here. I was star of Red Army hockey team. I will fix.”

Chapter Twenty-Six

“RED ARMY, MY ASS,” AARON MUMBLED THROUGH SWOLLEN lips. “The guy played for the best team in the world and now he makes corsages?”

“You’re just lucky that corsage maker can skate and fight at the same time.” I lifted the ice pack away from his right cheekbone to survey the damage. Nasty. “I wonder how Domaso is looking this morning.”

“Worse than me,” he insisted, but he groaned pitifully as he sat up in bed.

It was Saturday, the day of the wedding, and the Idaho sky showed vibrantly blue outside the windows of the Paliere suite. The side of Aaron’s face was vibrantly black and blue, but the rest of him seemed intact, and thanks to the Mad Russian, my own bruises were negligible.

Once Boris had cleared the ice, none too gently, I’d helped Aaron up to bed and then gone back down to oversee the remainder of the party. Luckily most of the older and more shockable guests had departed before the fight, and Beau had apparently slipped away with Olivia. Irresponsible on his part, but at least I didn’t have to hear his snotty comments on my date’s behavior.

As for the younger guests, most of them found the whole episode funny. Even Tracy shrugged it off, and Jack’s only regret seemed to be that he hadn’t participated. I didn’t understand, but I couldn’t complain.

So now I let Aaron do the complaining, as I disposed of the ice pack and carried two cups of coffee back to the bedside. Like most men, Aaron made a lousy patient.

“Needs more sugar,” he grumbled.

I brought some over, then asked the question he’d been too dopey to answer last night.

“What on earth did you say to make Domaso hit you? You didn’t come right out and accuse him of murder, did you?”

Aaron began to speak, then hissed in pain and gingerly touched one fingertip to the corner of his mouth. He tried again. “ ’Course not.”

I waited for further explanation, but he just sipped in silence. “Well?”

“Well, what?”

“What set him off? You must have said something to provoke him. Did you ask him if he was camping near the fire?”

Aaron hesitated, then said, “Can’t remember. It hurts to talk, OK?”

“I’m sorry about that, but I need to know the details. Chief Larabee will be at the wedding, and if I’m going to persuade him to investigate Brian’s death, I need a real eye-opener to get his attention, something he hasn’t already heard about and dismissed. So come on, tell me why Domaso started the fight.”

“Let it go,” said Aaron sullenly. “Don’t you have things to do today?”

“You mean, besides coddling you while you’re being rude? Yeah, I sure do.”

The strain of dealing with a murder, a wedding, and an ill-tempered man was suddenly too much. I yanked an outfit from the closet—the red sheath I’d worn to the spa and some nice flat nonskid shoes—and zipped them into a garment bag to change into later.

“The rehearsal’s at White Pine in an hour,” I said in my frostiest tone, “and the ceremony is this afternoon at five. I won’t be back in between.”

Then I stalked into the bathroom and slammed the door behind me, muttering to myself as I did my hair and makeup. Aaron was still in bed when I came out.

“Are you going to feel up to coming to the wedding?”

He didn’t look at me. “If you want.”

“Oh, don’t do me any favors.” I snatched up the garment bag and my purse, and when I stomped out the hallway door I slammed it, too.

The drive to White Pine didn’t do much for my disposition. I took the first hairpin curve too fast and scared myself by skidding on the loose gravel. After that I slowed down, keeping in mind that this was my lightweight rental car and not Sam’s tank.

But slowing down made for a longer drive, and the heat of the day was building up relentlessly. My next mistake was cranking the air conditioner to high as the car labored up the steep mountain road. I was only halfway to the inn when the air whistling from the dashboard vents went from cold to cool to warm, and the engine temperature gauge crept into the red zone.

“Bloody
hell.
”

I pulled off in a patch of shade, where I lowered all the windows before cutting the engine. The last thing I needed was an overheated car to go with my overheated temper. Being a wedding planner means never having to say “I’m sorry I missed the rehearsal.”

I smiled a little at this thought, and smiled some more when I remembered Mom’s comment to Aaron about my temper. I’m not sure redheads have a shorter fuse than anyone else, but people do seem to notice it more when you explode.

When I was a kid, Dad used to tell me to count to ten before I blew up—but to do it in seven languages. So I challenged him to teach me how, and we spent some giggly afternoons at the library with a stack of foreign dictionaries. I still missed my father, but I was so lucky to have had him.

Eventually the engine cooled off, and so did I.
Of course
Aaron was cranky this morning,
I told myself.
He was hurting,
poor guy.
I pictured us drinking champagne in perfect harmony on the terrace this afternoon, and by the time I got to White Pine my spirits were rising. I do love weddings, after all.

Weddings, but not mothers of the bride. The moment I entered the inn with my garment bag over my shoulder, I was pounced upon by a caterwauling Cissy. She wore a purple bathrobe and no makeup whatsoever, a condition I’d never observed her in. Between her stark pallor and her heartrending tone of voice, you’d think someone had died.

“It’s ruined! The wedding is ruined,
ruined
! Beau doesn’t even know yet, he’s at the meadow with the carpet people, but what could he do anyway? What are we going to
do
?”

“Cissy, deep breath, remember?” I was beginning to feel like a Lamaze coach. “In...out. Again. Good. Now tell me what’s happened. Is it really that bad?”

“It’s pretty bad.” Olivia spoke from the top of the stairs, with the oddest expression of amusement and distress on her face. “You’d better come see this.”

Cissy followed me up to the master bedroom. A jumble of dresses and shoe boxes and lingerie obscured the icky purple bedspread, and a triple mirror stood near the picture window. The bridesmaids, along with Hair and Makeup—I couldn’t recall their names—were clustered around it, staring in horror at the bride in her wedding gown.

“Oh,” I said. “Oh, brother.”

Tracy stood with her back to the glass, looking over one shoulder at her reflection. It was a classic pose for a prewedding photograph, but instead of girlish delight her eyes held only sick dismay.

I could see why. The coral satin gown was stunning, all right. But the long line of pearl buttons down the back was separated from the corresponding line of button loops by a long gap of Tracy’s bare skin.

The gap started out narrow, just above the point where the chiffon train attached with snaps at her slim, trim waistline. But up at shoulder level it spread to a good two or three inches, making the buttons impossible to fasten. And with the back unsecured, the barely legal front of the gown would be noticeably illegal, especially in the state of Idaho.

“It’s the upper-body workouts,” said Olivia in a giddy whisper. “She’s all bulked up. I mean, look at her trapezius muscles. And her deltoids—”

“Carnegie,” wailed Tracy, “do something!”

The bridesmaids began to twitter like flustered sparrows, while Hair and Makeup chimed in with accusations, lamentations, and suggestions. The suggestions ranged from wearing a shawl—a shawl, for God’s sake—to “running into town” for another dress, as if we could hop a bus and get off in Manhattan.

“Out!” I said. “Everybody out, now. You too, Cissy.”

Alone with me, Tracy’s Botoxed face attempted a petulant frown. “Go ahead, say it.”

“Say what?” I asked absently. I was thinking, and thinking hard. Ribbon...or some kind of cord, or even string...

“Say that you told me so! I haven’t gained an ounce, how was I supposed to know this would happen?”

“Mmm,” I said, walking around her. “We’ll do a Watteau train....”

“What’s that?”

“It’s what you’ll be wearing,” I said briskly, as I un-snapped the chiffon train from her waist. “It fastens at the shoulders and flows to the hemline of the dress, sort of an Elizabethan look. Now, we need some narrow ribbon...”

Fate smiled on us then. As I laid the train carefully over a purple armchair, I spotted the cord that tied back Cissy’s purple drapes. It was pink, not coral, but close enough. With a little cry of triumph I pulled the cord free and began lacing it in a zigzag pattern between the buttons and the loops.

“We do
this,
” I said, finishing off with a tiny bow at the base of her neck, “and then we sew on some snaps and add
this
.”

I held the train to Tracy’s shoulders, to show her the effect, and waited for her reaction.
If she sulks about this,
I thought,
I’m driving right back down this mountain and getting
on an airplane.

“Oh, Muffy,” she breathed, with tears in her eyes. “It’s beautiful.”

“Yeah, isn’t it? I almost like it better this way. Don’t cry, kiddo, you’ll spoil the pictures.”

“You saved the show,” said Tracy, reverting to actress mode. “You absolutely saved the show. Thank you
so
much.”

“You’re welcome. Now let’s get you back into your casual clothes for the rehearsal. It’s scorching out there, so dress cool.”

As I busied myself with unlacing her, a devious idea occurred to me. If we couldn’t ask Domaso about his whereabouts, why not ask his “old friend”?

I decided on a surprise attack, so right in the middle of Tracy’s gushings about the dress I said, “Tell me, were you and Domaso camping near the Boot Creek fire?”

She frozen, and her eyes grew round. It was no cute little mannerism this time, but genuine alarm.

“He said not to—” She faked a little fit of coughing. As I said, for an actress she wasn’t much of a liar. No script, I guess. “Um, no. No, I haven’t been camping in ages. Why?”

“Oh, a friend of my mother’s was asking about fishing at Boot Creek, and I wondered how much damage the fire did. Maybe someone else can tell him.”

A lame explanation, but with any luck Tracy would be too busy getting married to think any more about it. As we gathered up the other women and she told them about the dress, I silently congratulated myself. Vermeer, my eye. Tracy was never in Portland, she was playing in the woods with her old friend Domaso. Which put Domaso near the scene of Brian’s murder. I had found my eye-opener for Chief Larabee.

I figured if Dr. Nothstine could restate her belief that Brian’s corpse had been tampered with, and then I could point to a shady character like Domaso covering up the fact that he’d been in the vicinity, surely Larabee would have to pay attention.

With that settled, I could bide my time until the chief arrived. So now, out on the sunny green meadow with its centerpiece of lofty pine trees, I concentrated on helping Beau direct the rehearsal. Now that the spotlight was on, Beau was front and center. But I must say he did it well, using his famous charm to smooth over the inevitable conflicts that arise when so many specialists are brought together.

The videographer, for example, wanted Tracy to approach the grove from a different direction, for the sake of shadows or backlighting or something. But the landscaping foreman refused to rearrange his carpeting and turf, and Joan, the tent-and-rental woman, needed a decision before she could unload her truckful of white folding chairs.

While they haggled that over with Beau, I tried to defuse the hissy fit that Sebastian threw once he got a look at the Quartetto Polizia.

“They play perfectly well,” I told him as we stood in the shade of the pines watching the kids tune up.

“I don’t
believe
this,” said Sebastian darkly. “The viola has
acne.
”

“They’ll be fine. And I was right about the publicity.”

The reporter for
People
magazine, a jaded name-dropper who would have taken the Ladislaus Quartet for granted, was startled and enchanted by Tracy’s novel choice of musicians. After doing a joint interview with the students, he arranged to photograph Tracy in T-shirt and shorts hanging out with her “young hometown pals.” She’d never laid eyes on the kids before, of course, but who needs facts when you’ve got an angle?

So the quartet played, and the bride proceeded across the grass on the arm of her cowboy-hatted dad. Jack stood by the pine trees with the Tyke by his side as best woman, gazing at Tracy so lovingly that I could only pray he would never get wind of her “friendship” with Domaso. Especially if Domaso turned out to be involved in Brian’s death.

But I was too busy to dwell on that, as Beau and I made notes about timing and coached the participants through their roles. We had to send Sebastian back to Ketchum, since Montezuma was still having his revenge, and I wasn’t surprised. I’ve never seen skin quite that green. What did surprise me, as the day wore on, was to find myself working with Beau in a reasonable spirit of professional cooperation.

“C’est bon,” he said grudgingly, as we watched Jack and Tracy lead the recessional. “You understand your work.”

I considered jogging Beau’s memory about that vastly successful Christmas wedding of mine, but I didn’t want to awaken memories of the toupee incident. So I kept my mouth shut—something I thought I might try more often with Aaron in future.

We all finished up in reasonably good spirits, and adjourned to the inn for a sandwich lunch out on the grand veranda. Even the mother of the bride had calmed down, once Tracy reassured her about the dress and she pulled out her economy-size bottle of tranquilizers. I was happy to see those little white pills disappear past Cissy’s rosebud lips, though it made me uneasy to see how much wine she chased them down with. But with any luck, the whole mix would keep her sensitive nature under wraps until after the ceremony.

I finished my BLT and went looking for the Red Army star, to thank him for his efforts on the ice. I found him upstairs, directing the placement of some daisy-filled buckets in the guest bathroom. With an unlimited budget for flowers, no space goes undecorated.