Just Murdered (4 page)

“I saw Margery dancing by the pool with the handsomest older man. They looked so romantic, Phil. I hope I have a lover when I’m seventy-six and can dance with him by the pool.”

“I hope it will be me,” Phil said. He took her in his arms and kissed her until the fried eggs were two rubber coasters.

Helen felt his scratchy, end-of-the-day beard against her cheek and kissed the tender spot at the base of his throat. His shirt smelled of starch. He smelled of coffee and something spicy.

Phil kissed her again, and the onions and potatoes turned to cinders.

They didn’t notice.

“I will dance with you now, Helen,” he said, waltzing her around the living room. “But I will love you forever.”

Helen kissed him again and tried to forget the other man who’d made that promise. Suddenly the smoke alarm blared and the moment was lost.

“I love this black strapless dress,” Kiki said. “But will it fit all eight bridesmaids? I mean, will it stay up on them?”

“Are their breasts real or man-made?” Millicent said.

Helen blinked.

“Man-made,” Kiki said. “All eight of them. Or should I say sixteen?”

“Good,” Millicent said. “Real breasts shift and sag. Fake ones are hard. You can hang anything on them.”

Eight college-age women, all with implants, Helen thought. Welcome to Florida, where the biggest boobs weren’t always in bras. Instead of Beemers, doting Sunshine State daddies bought their babies boob jobs on their sixteenth birthday.

At first, Helen was surprised that Kiki had picked a plain black bridesmaid dress. Outrageously expensive, it didn’t look like much on a hanger. But put that dress on, and it was magical. It transformed awkward young women into slim princesses. Desiree’s blond bridesmaids would seem regal when they walked down the aisle.

The bride would look like a frump, dragging a fortune in pearls and crystal.

Why could Kiki make everyone look beautiful but herself and her daughter?

In her too-young outfits, Kiki looked scrawny and hard, like a hooker dressed as a schoolgirl. Her daughter was a ragbag. Today, Desiree wore wrinkled sweat-pants the color of cold oatmeal. Her baggy gray T-shirt made her firm young chest seem saggy.

“Chop-chop,” Kiki said. “We need to keep moving.”

Millicent was giddy from the green gush of money. Rush orders! Overnighted dresses! Overtime alterations!

“I can get all eight bridesmaid dresses in the right sizes,” Millicent said. “But there will be an additional rush charge.”

“Splendid,” Kiki said.

Helen was not sure if Kiki was delighted over the availability or the extra cost. Millicent disappeared into her office, her bloodred nails itching to dance on the calculator keys.

“Now where’s the goddamn wedding dress?” Kiki asked.

Helen ran upstairs to the seamstress’s room. Desiree’s heavy Hapsburg princess dress hung on a rack, bristling with colored dressmaker’s pins and encrusted with crystal. Helen carried it carefully as an irritated porcupine.

The walk to the fitting room was cheerful as a funeral procession. The room had a triple mirror, a gilt chair, and a spindly table with a box of Kleenex. There was a lot of crying connected with the so-called happiest day of a woman’s life, and it wasn’t all tears of joy.

Kiki refused to sit. She prowled the room restlessly, nearly tipping over the gilt chair. Desiree flinched whenever her mother came near her. Helen was relieved when Kiki’s cell phone played an annoying tune. Kiki snapped it open, then announced, “My ex, Brendan. I have to take this.”

She stepped out of the fitting room, but Helen could hear Kiki as clearly as if she were shouting in her ear. Her first words declared war. “Let me guess. You’re calling to bitch about money.”

Desiree looked stricken. Helen didn’t want to listen to Kiki’s call, but she was afraid to leave the bride alone. She might hang herself with a rope of Aleçon lace.

“Listen, bigshot, that’s what things cost,” Kiki snarled. “You can’t do decent flowers for less than forty thousand dollars. Yeah, well, you should have thought of that before you ran off with Miss Fake Tits.”

The bride stood on the alteration platform, a statue of despair. She clutched a tulle veil so hard Helen thought she’d tear it in two. Helen gently pried the veil from her cold fingers. Desiree didn’t notice. Helen started working on the gown’s slippery satin buttons.

“I don’t care where you get the money, Brendan,” Kiki shouted. “But you better get it. Or the whole town will know you’re a deadbeat who can’t pay for your daughter’s wedding.”

Eighty buttons to go, Helen thought desperately. She tried to distract Desiree with small talk. “Eight bridesmaids,” she chirped. “You’re lucky to have so many friends.”

“They aren’t friends,” the bride said in a flat voice. “They’re in my sorority. Mother’s sorority, really. She made me join.

“Mother picked the bridesmaids from their photos in the sorority house. They’re all blond. They’re all beautiful. Mother is buying their dresses and shoes. She’s made their hair and makeup appointments. She’s picked their escorts, too. She chose the handsomest actors at Luke’s theater. She made sure the men were straight.”

Helen was afraid to ask how Kiki did that. Sixty-five buttons to go.

“My real friend isn’t good enough to be in the wedding because she’s fat,” Desiree said.

Her mother entered the room briskly, shutting her cell phone. “That’s not true, darling. I thought Emily would be more comfortable handling the guest book.”

“Mother bought Emily the plum Vera Wang,” Desiree said. “She wouldn’t let her pick out her own dress.”

“Emily has an unfortunate penchant for flappy fabrics,” Kiki said. “She looks like a clothesline in a hurricane.”

Forty-eight buttons. Kiki was spoiling for a fight. Helen tried to steer the conversation to a safer subject. “What kind of flowers do you want for your wedding, Desiree?”

“I want red roses,” the bride said.

“So romantic,” Helen said.

“So ordinary,” her mother said. “I can give her any flower that she wants, and she asks for roses like a shopgirl.”

Helen froze at the insult.

“No offense intended,” Kiki said.

“Of course not,” Helen said.

“But I couldn’t let her embarrass me. We’re having chartreuse lady’s slipper and cymbidium orchids.”

“Science-fiction flowers,” the bride said. “I wanted roses, but I won’t get them.”

“You’ll have plenty of roses at your wedding, sweetheart. The flower girls are throwing rose petals. So are the guests.”

“Instead of rice or bubbles?” Helen said.

“No one has thrown rice in decades,” Kiki said. “And bubbles are so eighties. The bride and groom will be showered with rose petals when they leave the church. At the reception, the attendants are sprinkling rose petals in the commodes.”

Helen thought she’d heard wrong. “You’re putting roses in the toilets?”

“I’m not,” Kiki said. “The attendants are. After each flushing. It’s such an elegant touch.”

“That’s what my mother thinks of my choice,” the bride said. “My roses will be walked on—and peed on!” Angry tears cascaded down her small face and slid into the accordion wrinkles where her chin should have been.

“Prewedding jitters,” Kiki said. She watched her daughter weep as if it were a third-rate performance. She made no move to comfort her. Helen handed Desiree a fistful of Kleenex. She blew loudly. The little bride had a trombone for a beezer.

Twenty-seven buttons to go. Helen had reached Desiree’s upper back, and the buttons kept escaping from their loops. The bride was annoyingly limp, like a protestor who’d collapsed on police lines.

“Straighten your shoulders,” her mother commanded. “And smile. You’re a bride, not a corpse.”

The bride did look more dead than alive. Helen finished the last button. Desiree failed to smile, but she dutifully tried on veils. Some went to her fingertips. Others fell to the floor. Desiree could have been in a coma for all the reaction she showed.

“Which do you like?” Helen asked, hoping for some response.

Desiree shrugged.

Of course, Kiki had an opinion. “That long veil has the same beading as the dress. I like it.”

“It’s a bit heavy, don’t you think?” Helen tried to be tactful. In that long veil, Desiree looked like a ghost haunting her wedding.

“It needs something to brighten it up,” Kiki said.

Two rooms away, Millicent heard another chance to make money. She said, “Helen, go get that crystal crown off the display.”

The crown was five hundred bucks, more than Helen made in a week. Helen came back and crowned the chinless little heiress. Desiree looked like she had a headache.

“Do you like it?” Helen asked.

Desiree shrugged. Helen wanted to shake her. Why didn’t she stand up for herself? Helen was grateful when Millicent stuck her head in the dressing room and said, “The groom’s here. Should I send him back?”

“Isn’t it bad luck for the groom to see the dress?” Helen said.

“Join the twenty-first century,” Kiki said. “These days, the groom may pick out the dress.”

“Luke might as well see it,” Desiree said, as if he were viewing a fatal accident. “I’ll be out in a minute. Leave me alone, please.”

Helen tiptoed up front for a quick look at the groom. Luke was definitely scenic. He wasn’t tall, probably about the same size as Millicent. But he was perfectly made from his cleft chin to his well-shod feet. His deep-brown hair was so thick, Helen wanted to run her fingers through it. Luke’s lightweight blue sweater and gray pants were nothing special. Yet Helen noticed them, because they seemed so absolutely right.

Luke was with a skinny man about sixty dressed in black. His clothes and goatee screamed, “I am an artiste.”

“I’m Luke Praine,” the groom said to Helen and Millicent. “This is my director, the owner of the Sunnysea Shakespeare Playhouse, Chauncey Burnham.”

“Kiki, darling, so glad to see you.” Chauncey had a sycophant’s smile. His lips were unpleasantly red and flexible. Helen wondered if that was from smooching patrons’ posteriors.

“Really, Chauncey, can’t I have any peace?” Kiki said.

“I saw your car and I had to come over and say hello.” Chauncey’s smile slipped slightly.

“You’ve said it. Now go.” Kiki started to turn away.

“Er, could we have a moment alone?”

“Anything you have to say, Chauncey, you can say right here.” Kiki was daring him.

The director took a deep breath, rubbed his goatee, and pursed his rubbery red lips. “All right, I will. Kiki, you promised my company five thousand dollars so we could get through December. Now you say you can’t give us any money until January first.”

“I can’t, Chauncey. The wedding has been expensive.”

“The landlord says he’ll close us down next week in the middle of the run. We haven’t been reviewed yet, Kiki. The critic for the
Herald
can’t come until next Thursday. I know we’ll get a big crowd when we get a favorable review.” Chauncey was pleading now, like a mother begging for the life of her child.

“
If
you get a favorable review. He called your last production ‘uninspired and derivative.’ ” Kiki’s face was a frozen mask of meanness.

Chauncey showed a brief flash of anger. Then he puckered properly. “Kiki, please. You know Luke is marvelous in this production. I beg of you, help us. We won’t make it to January without your support. We’ll die.”

Kiki’s smile was cruel. “Don’t beg, Chauncey. It’s weak.”

Chauncey hung his head. Millicent moved away. Humiliation might be catching.

Desiree appeared in her frumpy wedding dress and veil, an expensive specter. “Poor Chauncey,” she said softly. “You’re much too nice. If you were only more like your Shakespeare characters, you could save your theater. The bard knew what to do with inconvenient women.” Her smile was honeyed malice.

Chauncey looked stricken. “Please, dear lady, that’s not funny.”

“Screw your courage to the sticking point,” Desiree said, a demure Lady Macbeth.

Sweat broke out on his forehead. “Please, it’s bad luck to quote the Scottish play.”

“Perhaps.” She shrugged. “But my mother’s death would be good luck for you.”

There was a shocked silence. Chauncey turned white, down to those mobile lips. “I’d better go,” he said. “You look lovely, Desiree.” He backed out of the shop.

“Money is so important in the theater,” Desiree said. “Everyone thinks Luke is marrying me for mine, but that’s not true. I won’t have any money until I’m thirty and Luke is thirty-five. That’s old for a leading man, you know. He’s getting a little thin on top now, but I think balding men are attractive, don’t you?”

She patted the groom on his head. Helen thought she saw his hair eroding like a Florida beach.