Diva 02 _ Diva Takes the Cake, The (2 page)

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Authors: Krista Davis

Tags: #Winston; Sophie (Fictitious Character), #Mystery & Detective, #Fiction, #Women Sleuths, #General, #Mystery Fiction, #Women Cooks, #Large Type Books, #Cookery, #Mystery, #Divorced Women, #Cooking, #Divorced Women - Crimes Against, #Weddings, #Crimes Against, #Sisters

BOOK: Diva 02 _ Diva Takes the Cake, The
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As I trudged along the brick sidewalk carrying shopping bags of gifts for the bridal party, I realized a woman was standing across the street from my house studying it. Although I’d lived in a historic house in Old Town Alexandria for years, I’d never gotten used to the strangers parading through the ancient streets admiring the quaint buildings.
Pausing to catch my breath, I tried to see my home with fresh eyes. In a nod to my sister’s wedding colors, the begonias, ranunculus, and Wave petunias spilling liberally from the window boxes were a happy mix of soft pinks and a color we were calling cherry, since the groom had an aversion to fuchsia.
Hand-trimming the boxwoods had been a chore, but they presented a neat border along the red brick. Additional pots of pink flowers graced the front stoop. Pressured by my mother, who had been inspired by a TV episode featuring the local domestic diva, Natasha, I’d made a living wreath for the front door out of variegated ivy. If I didn’t forget to water it, it might last through the wedding.
A gracious oval plaque of bronze next to the front door designated my home as a historic building. It was more than a hundred years old, the floors canted and creaked, and odd things happened that I couldn’t quite explain, but I adored the place. I continued walking, flicking my gaze from the woman to my house.
“Excuse me?” The woman approached me. Attractive and close to my age, in her early forties, I guessed. Her dress revealed far too much bosom for early morning in Old Town and her high heels were a mistake on the uneven sidewalks. Clearly a tourist.
She smiled at me and held out a sheet of paper that appeared to have been taken off the Internet. In a New Jersey twang she said, “I can’t seem to find this address.”
My hands full of bags, I tilted my head to look at the paper. Her fuchsia fingernail in a long, squared-off manicure pointed to—my address!
I jerked involuntarily. On the upper corner of the paper was a picture of my sister, Hannah, and her fiancé, Craig. The middle section listed every wedding event we had planned—the dessert party for out-of-town guests, a walking tour of Old Town, the rehearsal dinner, the ceremony, the reception, and brunch the following day. Times, addresses, and even directions to each venue were also included.
“You’re here for the wedding?” I mumbled. Even though I’d been tapped as the unpaid wedding planner, worked on it for months, and had taken time off from my event-planning business this week, the stranger’s presence was a wake-up call. The guests had begun to arrive.
“I’m an old friend of the groom and was hoping I could catch up with him for a visit.” She shuffled papers. “But this address is different.”
She showed me another wedding page from the Internet. It featured a different picture of Hannah and Craig, and whoever had entered the information had mistyped my house number.
I’d never thought about Craig having friends. Truth be told, I’d disliked Hannah’s fiancé from the moment we met. Recently I’d mellowed a little. I even felt sorry for him when I realized that none of his relatives had been invited to the big event. But this real, live, breathing, and apparently nice woman made Craig seem more like a regular guy.
A diamond set in a circle of gold hung on a chain in the hollow of her neck and glittered in the sun. It was just big enough to make me wonder if it was real.
I felt shabby in my oversized white shirt and jeans that had fit once, but must surely have shrunk from being washed too many times. “I’m Sophie Winston,” I offered, “sister of the bride. If you want to give me your name and number, I can pass them along to Craig. He’s not here yet, but they’re scheduled to arrive soon.”
She wrinkled her nose. “I’d like to surprise him. Which house is yours?”
I nodded in the direction of my front walk.
“Oh, the pretty house.”
Well! Who wouldn’t like this woman?
“I’ll stop by later, then. Thanks for your help.”
She strode away, or tried to, since she wobbled on her high heels with every step and her thighs pushed against the too-tight skirt of her dress.
“Who’s the tramp?”
I turned to find my across-the-street neighbor and best friend, Nina Reid Norwood, lowering her sunglasses for a better look.
“One of Craig’s friends.”
“Reeaaally.” She drawled it out in a deep North Carolina accent. It was pretty funny since Nina’s own deep V-necked T-shirt showed ample cleavage.
She snorted. “And he always acts so conservative. Everything ready for the big onslaught of family?”
“Almost.” I checked my watch. “Oh no. Time to put the pork on the grill.”
“Sophie, you won’t be eating dinner for a long time yet.”
“It’s pulled pork, has to slow-cook on the grill for hours. And I have to roll your grill over to my yard for the ribs. Why don’t you come early? You can help me get ready for the party tonight.”
“Yeah, like I’m such a domestic diva.”
Grinning because Nina was actually an anti-diva, I rushed up the walk to my house, unlocked the front door, and deposited the bags on the kitchen counter. I washed my hands, pulled two Boston butt roasts from the refrigerator, rubbed the raw meat with a grainy mixture of paprika, brown sugar, salt, and pepper, and wrapped each piece in aluminum foil.
But something wasn’t right. Where was Mochie? Not quite a year old, my rambunctious Ocicat with the M on his forehead always met me at the door. Though he was a purebred Ocicat, his fur bore the American Shorthair pattern instead of the trademark spots. But his lively personality was all his own, and there was no way he wouldn’t be interested in huge hunks of raw meat.
“Mochie?” Carrying the meat on a tray, I walked through the sunroom, calling his name. No sign of him. Where was that little devil?
I let myself out the side door and hurried around to the brick patio. In anticipation of parties and a house full of guests, I’d worked like a demented gardener to achieve a garden in full bloom for the wedding. My sunroom had taken on a jungle theme in the spring when I coaxed the plants into blooming early. With the help of my favorite nursery and the cooperation of the weather, pots of hibiscus and mandevilla bloomed like it was mid-July instead of the first week in June.
Hastily, I dampened mesquite and started the grill. But I couldn’t concentrate until I knew Mochie was all right. Leaving the pork on an outdoor table, I jogged into the house and called Mochie. I ran up to the second floor, which contained my bedroom and two others. From the landing, I could hear faint mewing.
On the third floor, the plaintive mew grew stronger. When I opened the closet door in the bedroom, Mochie marched out and wound around my ankles. I picked him up and held him close. He purred and head-butted my chin.
How could I have shut him in the closet? I’d been a bit crazed the last few days getting things ready for my houseguests, but I couldn’t remember being on the third floor this morning. And I did recall feeding Mochie when I snarfed a chocolate-iced Krispy Kreme doughnut for breakfast, rationalizing that I had to eat it before my mother arrived and told me to lose weight. I gazed around, but nothing seemed out of place.
Years ago, in an attempt to enlarge the house, someone had finished the attic. As a result, the ceilings were a decent height, slanting downward only at the outer edges of the room, although the windows sat flush on the floor, not at eye level where one would expect them. Fortunately, they were large windows in the colonial fashion and their odd location gave the room a fun, slightly off-kilter appearance.
Yesterday I’d turned down the bed and left a pot of coral begonias on the dresser for a splash of color. Hannah would be staying in the third floor room while Craig and my parents occupied the guest rooms on the second floor.
Carrying Mochie, I peeked into the teeny attic room next door. The daybed where my niece would sleep was made up as I’d left it. Faux diamond hair clips to fasten her crown of tiny roses sparkled on the round table next to a basket of purple petunias. They were a departure from Hannah’s pink, but Jen loved purple. Her fancy dress for the wedding hung in a dress bag on the back of the door.
Still totally confused about Mochie and his closet esca pade, I set him on the floor. He bounded downstairs and headed straight to the kitchen and his food. I returned to the grill wondering how he’d managed to get stuck in the closet, but with the party tonight and the wedding the day after tomorrow, I didn’t have time to figure it out.
The woody aroma of mesquite already perfumed the backyard. I plopped the huge roasts, wrapped in foil, onto the grill, turned down the heat, and closed the cover, making sure the vents were open so the mesquite smoke could escape.
No sooner had I returned to the house than the kitchen door slammed.
“The wedding is off!” my sister, Hannah, proclaimed as she wrenched her engagement ring from her finger and threw it onto my kitchen table.
TWO
From “THE GOOD LIFE”:
Dear Sophie,
My fiancé’s family is coming from out of town and staying at a local hotel. His sister said she’s looking forward to the treats in her gift basket. I’ve never met some of these people. Am I expected to buy them gifts?
—Clueless in Clinchport
Dear Clueless,
It’s not obligatory, but it is a nice gesture to prepare goodies for out-of-town guests. They can be prepared well in advance. Use baskets or a container that ties in with your wedding theme. Include a list of wedding events with times and locations as well as relevant maps and phone numbers. Local food specialties are always popular. If your budget permits, personalize treats, like M&Ms with your names on them (
http://www.mymms.com
) or water bottles bearing special wedding labels (http://www. my
ownlabels.com
).
—Sophie
The pink three-carat princess-cut rock set in yellow gold that Craig had given Hannah with great pomp at Christmas landed squarely amid boxes of exquisite Belgian truffles I’d been wrapping as favors. Mochie immediately leaped to the table, hunted down the ring, and pawed at it.
I held my breath. I would have been thrilled if Hannah called off the wedding. Her fiancé, Dr. Craig Beacham, creeped me out. But I knew better than to butt into my sister’s life. Hannah needed to make her own decisions—no matter how much I disliked Craig. “What happened?”
“He’s been married before.”
My hope deflated as fast as a released balloon. “Hannah, you’re forty years old. Don’t you think most people our age carry some baggage?” I steered clear of pointing out that this would be Hannah’s third trip down the aisle.
“I don’t care about the women in his past. But I don’t think he was ever going to tell me. And that’s outrageous. How can I marry someone who keeps secrets from me? What will I find out next? That he has a family? Two little kids in Tulsa?”
She had a point. And a good one at that. Secrets would make for a difficult marriage. Unfortunately I could relate all too well. Detective Wolf Fleishman, whom I’d been out with a few times, had yet to tell me the details of what had happened in his marriage. Or more specifically, what had happened to his wife, who some said had been murdered.
Her mouth drawn in anger, Hannah leaned against the kitchen counter. “He’s afraid she might show up and make a scene at the wedding. Can you imagine? That’s the reason he had to come clean. He thinks we need security at the wedding.”
“Security? Who is this woman? Some kind of commando?”
“And what’s worse—he’s blaming it all on me.” Hannah tossed her long blond hair in a gesture I knew well. She was angry and defensive. Craig would have a tough time easing back into her good graces. “He neglects to mention a former wife, and now the consequences are my fault.”
She’d lost me. “It’s your fault that his first wife is unstable and might make a scene?” Maybe Craig had made the whole thing up. I found it hard to believe that an ex-wife would be so jealous about Craig, the comb-over wonder. Then again, that woman had been looking for him a couple of hours ago. Some people obviously liked him. Unless . . . surely she wasn’t the ex-wife?
“He said she never would have found out if I hadn’t posted online about the wedding.”
The two wives would never have known about each other. That sounded like the Craig I despised.
Just then Hannah let out a high-pitched squeal that caused Mochie to jump like a Halloween cat. “He’s outside the kitchen door, looking in.” Now, to be fair, Craig’s presence wasn’t exactly surprising since he and Hannah had planned to drive up from Berrysville together.
“Get rid of him.”
“Hannah!” She disappeared so fast that all I caught was a flash of golden blond hair. Swell. There were few things I disliked as much as being alone with Craig. Grumbling to myself, I opened the door.
Craig strode in. “Hannah!” He whirled around and loomed over me. “Where is she?”
“She doesn’t want to see you right now.”
His pristine polo shirt revealed well-muscled arms. “You must be very pleased by all this.”

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