Veiled Threats (5 page)

“All ready!” Nickie came breathlessly out the door, all smiles, with the dress box in her arms. She beamed at Theo, and his stolid expression warmed up at the sight of her. Nickie, I knew, sometimes referred to Theo fondly as her big brother. Surely Eddie was right. Who would hurt a girl like this? It didn't make sense.

“I
TAKE IT THE WEDDING IS STILL ON
?” I
ASKED
N
ICKIE AS WE
recrossed Lake Washington toward Seattle. Ahead of us in the west a barricade of leaden clouds obscured the Olympic Mountains that rise up beyond Puget Sound. Behind us a similar barricade loomed across the eastern horizon, blotting out the Cascades. Rain in the Olympics, rain in the Cascades, and maybe snow as well at the higher elevations, even in June. But here, in between, we drove under a portal of serene, oblivious blue.

She blushed. “It's still on. Ray called this morning. He was all worried about the accident, and we made up. I guess I was overreacting. I've been so worried about Daddy.”

“About these letters, and his heart condition?”

“Did Grace tell you? Yeah, his heart, and now his testimony to the grand jury.” She wound a strand of hair around her fingers and tugged at it. “He's really worried, I can tell. Uncle Keith must be feeling betrayed, but Daddy can't lie, can he?”

“No, of course not. Are you still on good terms with your uncle? I mean, with—”

“With Keith,” she said firmly, like a child with a lesson. “Grace asked me to stop calling him Uncle, but I forget. It's pretty weird. Sometimes he calls me, wants to know if I'm OK.”

“Have you talked to him lately?”

“What about?”

“Oh, your wedding plans, other things. About going to Diane's wedding?”

She shrugged. “He doesn't know Diane.”

Although, I thought, if he's having her watched she wouldn't need to tell him. He'd know where she left her car. I changed the subject.

“So who's Holt Walker?” I asked.

“One of Daddy's lawyers,” said Nickie, unaware that some daddies don't have any lawyers at all. “I thought you'd met him already. They're old friends, and Holt comes to the house a lot, especially since his wife died a few years ago.”

I nodded, picturing a gray-haired family retainer with bifocals and a dry cough. “And what's all this about a reporter?”

She frowned, as fiercely as her gentle features would allow. “Aaron Gold. He's a reporter for the
Sentinel
. He writes about King County Savings in nearly every issue, and he's not fair at all.”

The
Seattle Sentinel
was a weekly paper, livelier and more liberal than the stuffy dailies. It usually focused on politics and the arts scene rather than business, but tying the savings-and-loan scandal to a local magnate was pretty juicy stuff.

“Don't worry about it,” I told her as I threaded through downtown and pulled into a parking lot near the Pike Place Market. “Nobody believes everything they read in the papers anymore, and even if they do they forget it the next day. I'm starving. Let's find some lunch.”

The Market was bustling. Tourists and local lunchers crowded along the open-air concourse of produce stalls and craft displays, and inside the shops and restaurants that
purveyed everything from kites to sushi to collectible comic books. Strawberries in ruby rows, painted T-shirts fluttering on racks, whole crabs and gaping salmon, stacks of hand-woven baskets, bundles of fresh herbs, tables of carved wooden toys—everything looked appropriately wholesome, quaint, whimsical, or just plain tempting.

The street entertainers were out in force: a bluegrass fiddler, a team of jugglers, a one-woman puppet show with a tall cardboard box serving as a theater. I watched her for a moment, then I followed the heavenly aroma of cioppino wafting from a fishmonger's kettle. Nickie and I loaded up our trays and found a table set back from the sidewalk, out of the breeze. I was grateful for Nickie's sweatshirt, though purple was hardly my color. As we wrestled with our clams and mussels and sopped up the broth with French bread, I asked another, more personal question.

“Did you ever get an RSVP from your mother?”

Julia Parry had moved to New Mexico soon after the divorce, when Nickie was seventeen. That was all I knew about her, except that her name on the invitation list had triggered a family quarrel. Douglas put it there, Grace objected, and Nickie, with a very adult bitterness in her voice, pointed out that since Julia hadn't shown up for her high school or college graduation, or anything else, she certainly wouldn't come to the wedding, so what difference did it make? End of quarrel, and the creamy envelope with its stately calligraphy had gone off to Santa Fe.

Now, Nickie rattled the ice in her empty paper cup. “Not yet. She won't come. I know she won't.”

“Would you rather she didn't?”

“I don't know.” She tossed the cup at a garbage can, missed, and got up to retrieve it. When she sat down again,
she didn't look at me. “She was an alcoholic, Carnegie. I don't know if Daddy told you.”

“No, and you certainly shouldn't if you don't—”

“It's OK.” She let out a long sigh, as if the truth had been trapped in her lungs. “They didn't tell me at first, but I knew. She went to a clinic for a while, and we thought she was better, but she wasn't. Then there was a car accident.”

“Was she hurt?”

“We both were.” She drew back her lips in a quick grimace. “That's how I got all these teeth capped. When she got out of the hospital, Daddy told her not to come home.”

“Nickie, I'm so sorry. The crash last night must have been horrible for you.”

She seemed not to hear me. “I've been reading these books, about adult children of alcoholics? About forgiving and letting go of anger and all that. Daddy says she doesn't drink anymore, and I think he misses her sometimes. But I don't know if I ever want to see her. She used to get pretty scary. And she made kind of a nasty phone call when he and Grace got married.”

I thought about my own mother, so fussy and prosaic and always, always there when I needed her. And my father, my stern hero who often seemed to forget that he even had children, let alone that they needed him. I wanted to comfort Nickie, but she wasn't asking for comfort this time. She was trying to make peace with reality by explaining it to me.

“It's hard to forgive your parents,” I said. “It's hard to allow them to be ordinary, or to have troubles of their own.” She nodded, but I couldn't tell if she was listening to me. “There's so much we never understand about their lives—”

“Grace has been terrific, you know.” Nickie was rushing her words as if to convince herself as well as me. “She's a
financial genius, everybody says she's just brilliant, and she does investment counseling for elderly women. They love her. She's incredibly busy, but she's been really good to me. Just like a mother.”

She reached for her tote bag. “Could we get going now?”

“Sure.”

W e spent two pleasant hours wandering through the market stalls and the shops nearby, finding just the right handcrafted thank-you gift for each bridesmaid. Rain clouds rolled in. I'd left my bride's-hairdo-protecting umbrella in the van, so Nickie and I ended up with wet shoes and hair dripping into our eyes, but we laughed it off. After last night's horror, it was comforting to laugh a little. Our shopping done at last, we ducked inside a café to warm up with espresso. Warm up and wake up, since neither of us had slept much.

Outside the café the light changed on First Avenue, and a horde of pedestrians hurried across toward our seat by the window. Touristy couples with maps. Young skateboarders with pants baggy enough for clowns. The usual perforatti, punk kids with pierced eyebrows, nostrils, lips, and God knows what else, though if God does know he can keep it to himself. Everybody hurrying, except one little old bag lady trailing behind, still in the crosswalk long after the Don't Walk had lit. Some bozo in an SUV honked at her, and I looked more closely. Crazy Mary.

Suddenly I was hearing her old, rustling-leaves voice:
“I saw him.”
Crazy Mary, who always rode the bus, would have walked up the drive in the rain. No headlights to warn anyone of her coming. What had she seen?

“Nickie, I'll be right back.”

I scrambled through the door and out to the corner, just in time to intercept her dogged progress up the street.

“Mary? Hi, Mary, I met you at the wedding last night, at Sercombe House?”

She stared up at me without recognition.

“I was wondering if you could tell me, did you see anyone, um, anyone suspicious out on the driveway? You said something last night about someone breaking things and stealing things. Did you see someone doing that?”

She looked confused, almost afraid, and then her face brightened. “Cake!”

“I'm sorry?”

“The bride said I could have some cake. But it fell on the floor. No cake, no, no, no.” She shook her head vigorously and began to march away, the crowd closing around her.

“Wait!” I tried to follow, but I was blocked by a field-trip flock of school kids, noisy as starlings. Then a hand caught my arm.

“Carnegie, Holt is here!” said Nickie's voice. She'd come out to the corner and was waving to a tall, familiar figure approaching us. “Holt, we were just coming to your office! This is Carnegie Kincaid.”

I lost sight of Mary, and focused on Holt Walker. So this was the old family friend, the one I'd pictured as an elderly widower. Except that this widower stood six feet four and owned a pair of astonishing green eyes. My nonwaiter, quite properly dressed this time in a fashionable gray suit and wine-colored tie. Expensive wine, a tie with a vintage. He smiled at Nickie and then, a bit blankly, at me. His teeth were just as endearingly crooked as I remembered. I probably had fish scales in mine. I certainly had wet hair and clashing clothes. What a time to meet Prince Charming.

“Maybe you two met last night,” Nickie was saying. The shadow of last night's tragedy crossed her features.

“Yes, we did,” he said absently, shaking my hand. “In the kitchen.”

“Listen, I apologize,” I said. “I can't believe I thought you were—”

“It's terrible about the bridesmaid,” he went on, as if he hadn't heard me. “Unfortunately, I'm late for a couple of meetings, so …”

“I'm supposed to meet Theo at your office, is that okay?” Nickie asked.

“No problem,” he told her. Then, with another murmured platitude to me, he was gone. Some prince. And Mary was nowhere in sight.

“Carnegie, are you OK? You look upset. Is it about last night?”

“Try to forget last night, kiddo. You go on home. I'm going to drop off your dress and go to the movies.”

I
HAD FORGOTTEN TO CALL
L
IEUTENANT
B
ORDEN
—
OR MAYBE
I was avoiding the whole issue—so the next day he called me. He tried the office first, and Eddie gave him the number at Joe Solveto's catering office in the Fremont neighborhood. Joe and I were having lunch at his desk, sampling the latest Solveto's hors d'oeuvres. Eddie and I had eaten popcorn for dinner, so I was famished, but I would have made room anyway. The food was superb.

Joe combined the languid aplomb of Noël Coward with the competitive instinct of a great white shark, constantly tracking his competitors and refining his menus. He wore exquisite clothes, and styled his body at a health club the way some women style their hair. He also ventured out before dawn in howling rainstorms to go steelhead fishing, and he collected Lionel trains, “but only pre-1950, before they went plastic.” Almost all the vendors I dealt with were pleasant acquaintances, but a few, like Joe, had become valued friends. He was well-respected in the business, and generous with compliments and wise advice. Right now, though, Joe was in goofball mode.

“Doesn't Eddie cover for you when the cops call?” he stage-whispered as he handed me the phone.

“Shhhh!”

“Lieutenant Borden, Ms. Kincaid.” It was a deep voice, with no particular inflection. “Just wanted to verify a few details with you.”

He walked me through that dreadful evening, from the bridesmaids’ champagne consumption to the estimated speed of the Mustang as it careered down the hill.

“And apparently you saw a suspicious individual on the drive earlier that evening?”

“Grace told you about that?”

“What exactly was this individual doing?”

“Um, walking. Down the hill, away from Sercombe House. But see, the drive dead-ends at the house, so where was he coming from? I mean, he wasn't just passing through.”

A pause. Joe was juggling two cherry tomatoes. The lieutenant sighed. “You saw a man, walking.”

“Well, yes. He could have been walking away from the Mustang!”

“You didn't see him at the vehicle, you didn't see him tampering with the vehicle in any way.”

“N-no.”

Long pause. Joe added a third tomato. “Thank you for your assistance, Ms. Kincaid.”

“But what about the Mustang? Did you check it over?”

“Thank you for that suggestion.” The weight of his sarcasm almost made me drop the phone. “Yes, we did. We expended quite a few man-hours on that, though the vehicle was too badly damaged to reveal much. We found no evidence of any cause of the accident beyond reckless driving while under the influence.”

“Oh. But I suppose there could have been evidence that was destroyed in the crash?”

Very long pause. A tomato hit the floor. Joe retrieved it
and hit a two-point shot in the wastebasket across the room. “Thank you for your assistance, Ms. Kincaid.”

I replaced the phone and cradled my head in my hands. If only I'd caught up with Mary! Maybe then I'd have had something concrete to tell him. Or maybe not. “Joe, am I crazy?”

“On occasion. Pretty upset about the bridesmaid, aren't you? What was her name?”

“Michelle.”

“Right. The police got to me yesterday, not that I could tell them much except she was drunk and raving. But you think something else happened?”

“No, I don't guess I do anymore. Pass the veggies, would you?” We munched in silence for a few minutes. When he wasn't playing the fool, Joe could be nicely silent. “These baby squash are wonderful. What's in the marinade?”

“Cumin powder and extraordinary skill,” he announced, eating one himself. His shadowy blue eyes narrowed. “And how is the bride business?”

Joe never pried, ever. I could have answered, Business is just fine, and he'd let it go at that. But it wasn't just fine and we both knew it.

“Business
was
getting better, but Michelle's accident isn't going to help. I hate to be cold-blooded about it, but there it is. I'd probably lose clients in droves, if I had any droves to start with. At least Nickie Parry's wedding has a huge budget.” I didn't mention the Keith Guthridge business, of course. Wedding consultants see a surprising amount of dirty linen, and discretion comes with the service. Just the suggestion that I gossiped about my clients would be enough to cut my business in half. “I'll need my whole percentage from Nickie to pay off a family loan, and I've only got three smaller weddings booked after hers.”

Like a magician, Joe produced two wineglasses from a desk drawer, along with a half bottle of something intriguing. “Well, one step at a time. This is a freebie from the new wine shop on Pike. Join me?”

“Yes, please.”

“So you're on the way to paying off your loan, but meanwhile you need to eat.”

“Meanwhile I need to eat and advertise and pay Eddie and get the front end of my van aligned. Landing Nickie's wedding was a godsend.”

Joe frowned into his glass of Vouvray. “Douglas Parry is in legal trouble, isn't he?”

“No! Well, not exactly. Not yet. Why?”

He took a sip before answering and swished the wine in his mouth. “Hmm. Nice. But not nice enough for the price. Carnegie, I wouldn't presume to tell you your business, you know that. But I hate to see you so dependent on someone as … unsavory as Douglas Parry. There are rumors—”

“There are always rumors, Joe,” I said stiffly. “Nickie and Ray are very nice kids, and Made in Heaven has a contract to put on their wedding. Whatever Douglas may or may not have done in his career, I don't see why I should boycott his daughter.”

“Of course not,” said Joe. “I didn't mean that you should. I just … never mind, forget I said anything, please. Listen, can I ask you a personal question?”

I leaned forward. “Anything.”

“Hussy. You charge fifteen percent, right?”

I sat back, startled. “Yes, I do. Why?”

He swished some more wine. “I didn't tell you this, but Dorothy Fenner charges ten.”

“What?! How can she? How does she manage?”

“She manages because she got into
Amazon.com
on the
ground floor and then got out at the roof. She could run red ink out of her shell-like ears for months and not notice it.”

“But that's not fair!”

“Don't even go there, Carnegie. Nothing is fair.
Nothing.
”

I suddenly wondered how well I really knew Joe Solveto.

“Well, hell. Do you think I should drop my rates?”

“Absolutely not! Or we'll all be lowballing each other. But now that you've got the Parry wedding, you're batting in Dorothy's league. So, forewarned, forearmed, that kind of thing.”

“Thanks, Joe.”

“You're welcome. Forget I said anything about the Parrys, OK?”

“It's forgotten. I still hate Dorothy, though.”

“I do, too. She calls me ‘Joseph,’ and she's snotty to Alan. Look, here's to Made in Heaven, then.” He raised his glass, and I touched mine to it. We looked like a TV commercial, the perfect couple, redhead and blond, relaxing after the perfect party. Except that Joe's cheekbones were prettier than mine. He drank off his wine and bowed to me.

“May I have this dance, mademoiselle?”

“Delighted, monsieur.”

He waltzed me around the office, humming Strauss. My eyes half closed, I swayed in Joe's muscular arms and wondered if Holt Walker was a good dancer. He probably didn't have Joe's flair, but then he probably didn't have a lover named Alan, either. I hoped. Joe gave me a final dip and spin.

“So when's your wedding, Carnegie?”

This was a standard joke between us, and as I finished my wine I gave the standard reply. “Once I found out you were taken, Joe, I gave up the whole idea.”