'Til Death Do Us Part (5 page)

I returned to my lemon tart and my notebook, jotting down what I’d learned earlier from Ashley as well as from my brief conversation with Peyton. The more I thought about Ashley’s theory, the more preposterous it seemed. As I worked I glanced up every once in a while, observing the action in the kitchen. It seemed that one minute Peyton would play helpful instructor and the next she’d turn into a shrew. After about twenty minutes I caught her eye as she was whipping something with a giant whisk, and when she spotted me, she gave me the five-minute sign. Ten minutes later, she finally strolled over, wiping her hands on an apron.

“Sorry,” she said, “but it couldn’t be helped. Listen, why don’t you come by the house for dinner tonight? I’d love for you to see my place.”

“I’ve got a meeting at
Gloss
tomorrow, but I’ll take a rain check,” I said. “Just a couple more questions if you don’t mind. Did Robin eat lunch here every day?”

“Yes. The employees generally help themselves to food left over from parties.”

“Well, did you ever see her eat foods she wasn’t supposed to?”

“I have
enough
to keep track of without checking up on someone’s diet. But I know that she was
always
grazing. And she had terrible willpower, especially when she was in one of her slumps—I’m sure Ashley could tell you about that.”

I wondered suddenly what was keeping Ashley. I glanced out the window, and to my surprise I saw that it was snowing hard. I cursed myself for not having checked the weather report before I left New York. I told Peyton that I probably should get going and asked if it was possible to phone the silo.

“No, the phone lines haven’t been put in,” she said. “I’d be glad to walk you over, though.”

After we’d both buttoned up our coats, we headed outside. It was a different kind of storm from yesterday’s—the snow wasn’t nearly as dense, but it was gusting hard and the flakes felt like pinpricks as they made contact with my face. There were only a few cars in the parking lot and not a soul in sight. High in the trees the wind made a sound like pounding surf.

As we approached the silo, I realized that the windows cut out of the sides were all dark. If Ashley was still working inside, a light should be visible. My heart began to beat harder.

“Could she have gone to a different building?” I shouted over the wind. “I don’t see any lights on.”

“I know—that’s odd,” Peyton shouted back, a look of concern forming on her face.

She reached the door first, a wooden door without windows, and turned the handle. The door seemed to stick, and she leaned her body against it, giving it a big shove. With a groan, it finally opened. With the little bit of daylight that flooded inside, I could make out an open space with a circular staircase.

“Ashley,” Peyton called, reaching for a light switch. “Are you here?”

It took Peyton a few seconds to find the switch, and as her hand fumbled along the wall just inside the door, I could hear my heart pounding in my ears. Suddenly light filled the space—and Peyton screamed.

Ashley was lying face-up at the base of the circular staircase. Her eyes were totally vacant and her mouth was twisted, caught forever in some state between surprise and terror. She still had her coat on, but she’d unbuttoned it and each side had flapped open, revealing her pretty peach pantsuit. Her right leg was tucked at an unnatural angle behind her, like a branch partially snapped on a tree. And beneath her, on the pale stone floor, was a pool of blood, forming a bright red halo around her head.

CHAPTER 3

I
STARED AT
Ashley’s body in horror and then slowly trained my eyes upward. From what I could see, the staircase rose the entire height of the silo, past several landings where I assumed art was going to be displayed. Because of Ashley’s position and her oddly angled leg, it seemed likely that she had tumbled down the stairs—or over the railing of one of the landings.

“Is she dead?” Peyton wailed beside me. Her voice echoed upward through the silo.

“Yes,” I said softly.

But I wanted to be absolutely sure, so I knelt by the body, picked up Ashley’s right hand, and pressed down my fingers in search of a pulse. Nothing.

I stood up and glanced around the space. There were some boxes and paint cans by the wall and two gallery-style benches, one with a swatch of fabric draped over it. The bags Ashley had carried into the silo with her were nowhere in sight, and I guessed that she had taken them to one of the higher levels—from where she’d fallen. Or been
pushed
. Had someone done this to her? I wondered, my legs feeling limp with fear.

Once more I looked upward, this time listening for any sign of movement. It was totally silent on the floors above.

Behind me, though, I suddenly heard a gagging sound. I spun around to see Peyton hurl the lemon tart she’d eaten earlier against the cream-colored wall of the silo.

“Don’t look anymore,” I said, trying to steady her. “We need to go—and call for help.”

She moaned and grabbed her mouth with her right hand. I led her toward the door, and as Peyton reached for the handle, I turned and looked at the room and the body once more, capturing it in my mind.

No sooner had we stepped outside than Peyton launched the rest of her lemon tart into a snowbank. While she wiped ineffectively at a ribbon of vomit on her mouth, I found a napkin in my coat pocket. I thrust it into her hand, where it flapped in the wind.

Taking Peyton’s arm, I guided her along the path. Through gusts of snow I searched the property with my eyes, but the only sign of life was the smoke curling from the chimney on top of the larger of the two barns. If someone
had
pushed Ashley, he or she either worked at the farm or had followed Ashley here earlier. But it all seemed so improbable. Why would someone want to pick off a bunch of bridesmaids? And even if someone
had
murdered Jamie and Robin because of a secret they shared about the wedding, why kill Ashley? She didn’t know anything. Yet I couldn’t get past the fact that one day after she came to me, fearing for her life, she was dead—from the same sort of freak accident that claimed the lives of Robin and Jamie.

There were four girls in the kitchen when we stepped inside, including Phillipa, who had obviously licked her wounds and returned. Peyton yelled for one of them to bring her a phone. A girl with a tartan skirt beneath her apron rushed over with a cordless phone. Peyton glanced at me momentarily, her eyes asking for clear directions.

“Call 911,” I told her.

The four workers all froze in their places, their kitchen utensils poised, like orchestra members waiting for their cue. When they heard Peyton say that a woman was lying dead in the silo, they all gasped in shock and then let go with a torrent of questions. Half listening to Peyton’s discussion with the operator, I hurried over to the group, urging them to be quiet for now. I told them all I knew: that Ashley was dead.

“Do you know where Mary is?” I asked urgently. Since she was the executive director, Peyton was going to have to rely on her for help today.

“I’m right here,” she said, suddenly appearing in a doorway on the far side of the room. “What’s going on?”

I met her halfway across the room and quickly explained that we had found Ashley’s body on the floor of the silo.

“And she’s
dead
?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said, though I had just told her that.

“Ginger, come here,” Peyton yelled to the girl in the tartan skirt. “They want someone to stay on the line until the police get here.” She thrust the phone at Ginger and then joined Mary and me.

“Is there anyone else on the property?” I asked the two of them.

“Peyton’s assistant is over in the office—in the farmhouse—along with a few administrative workers,” Mary said. “And we have a clerk in the shop.”

I suggested that she call the entire staff and have them come over right away; it would be smart to have all staff immediately accounted for. Within a few minutes they all had arrived, their coats thrown hastily over their shoulders. While Mary, Peyton, and Peyton’s assistant, a small, dark-haired girl, conferred in a corner and the rest of the staff put food away, I sat alone at the table, a hard knot forming in my stomach. I hadn’t particularly liked Ashley, but I’d felt a bond of some kind with her, and it was horrible to think of her lying dead on the floor of the silo. As I looked around the room at the group of WASPy young women, all employees of the burgeoning Peyton Cross empire, I wondered if one of them could possibly be a murderer. I also wondered if I should have done something to secure the silo. But I figured that the police might be annoyed by any attempt at interference, so it was probably best I hadn’t.

It was a good fifteen minutes more before help arrived—an ambulance, quickly followed by a black-and-white police car with a red stripe from the town of Greenwich. Peyton and Mary rushed outside and spoke animatedly to the two patrol cops. In unison they all turned toward the silo. After a minute more of dialogue, the two women scurried back in from the cold. “Detectives are already on the way,” Peyton proclaimed.

We all stood bunched together by the door, waiting for things to unfold. About two minutes later an unmarked car pulled up. Two regularly dressed men, obviously the detectives, jumped out into the swirling snow and were greeted by one of the uniformed cops, who had emerged from the silo. He pointed in that direction and then back to the barn. The detectives nodded and then strode toward the silo, while the uniformed cop headed in our direction. He rapped once on the door and entered without waiting for us to answer.

“Is everyone who works here accounted for?” he asked Peyton. He was short and baby-faced, like a little kid playing a cop in a school play.

“Yes, yes,” she said impatiently.

“And what about customers? Was there—”

“There’s been no one here for an hour at least,” she said. “Because of the snow.”

“Why doesn’t everyone have a seat for now,” he announced, turning his attention to the rest of us. “There are two detectives here already and they’ll be over after they’ve taken a look at the situation. I’d appreciate it if you didn’t speak among yourselves.”

Most of the women withdrew reluctantly from the knot by the door and perched on the edges of chairs and stools around the room. For the next fifteen minutes—which seemed like an eternity—we waited. Peyton paced, stretching her neck as if she couldn’t bear having her head attached to her body. One worker sniffled from time to time, clearly distressed, and the others just sat there looking stunned. Finally the detectives arrived, their hair and shoulders dusted with snow.

Because it was Greenwich and not any old town in Connecticut, I figured the detectives might be fairly spiffy, and it turned out they were. The older of the two, a burly guy with an affable face and a brown mustache streaked with gray, walked directly to Peyton, clearly recognizing her, and introduced himself as Detective Pichowski. The younger, Detective Michaels, was about thirty, a collegiate-looking guy with a corduroy sports jacket peeking out from under his long winter coat, as if he were headed to someone’s house for brunch and Bloodys.

“What happened to her—do you know?” Peyton asked almost desperately.

“That really can’t be determined until our people have studied the scene and an autopsy has been performed,” said Pichowski in the kind of gravelly voice that made you want him to clear his throat.

“Who was it that discovered the body?” he asked.

“We did,” Peyton said, gesturing toward me. “She’d been gone too long and we went to check on her.”

“And you are . . . ?” he asked, turning to me.

“Bailey Weggins. I drove over to the farm with Ashley today.”

He shut down any more talk about Ashley right then and asked Peyton about the layout of the barn. When he learned there were rooms in the back, he asked the officer to accompany everyone back there—except me. He told Peyton he would speak to her next and asked that she provide a phone number for Ashley’s next of kin to the officer.

As soon as the three of us sat down at the wooden table, I felt my stomach start to churn. I’d become infatuated with the last cop who had questioned me at a murder scene, and now I was experiencing a discomforting flashback. I told myself to stay calm and focus on sharing every single detail I could recall.

After asking for the spelling of my name and my address, they got right to the point. What could I tell them about what happened today? I started instead with yesterday, with Ashley’s call to me, her concerns about the two dead bridesmaids, my decision to come to Greenwich, and how I’d waited for Ashley in the kitchen. Their eyes seemed to widen as I unfurled the whole story, though I couldn’t tell if it was from concerned interest or skepticism.