Weddings Can Be Murder (19 page)

Les remembered the cop’s warning. “Who was it?”

“I’m not sure, but it was someone about the wedding.”

“Did you tell him what hotel?”

“No, but I gave him the hotel’s number. Why?”

“Nothing.” Les looked at her watch and decided to call Katie and tell her about the call before she got off work.

Ten minutes later, and with a half hour to kill before his appointment with the DJ, Carl drove back to try the florist again. He spotted a man loading flowers in his car. Hoping it was Edwards, Carl walked over.

“Mr. Edwards?”

The man didn’t turn around, but he answered, “Yeah?”

Pay dirt
. “I’m Carl Hades. I’ve been calling you.”

He still didn’t turn around. “And I think my assistant offered to help you, too.”

“I like to talk to the person I’m hiring.”

“Sarah does the weddings.” The man, early forties, wearing a shirt advertising his florist shop, finally turned around.

“But you’re the…owner.” Carl noticed the scratches down his neck, not quite as obvious as his own, but they appeared to have come from the same animal: a woman. An angry or scared woman. Maybe one about to be shot?

“Something wrong?” Mr. Edwards asked.

“Just that we both seem to have gotten into a little catfight, if you know what I mean.” Carl touched his own scratches.

“Yeah.” Edwards swung back around and put another vase of flowers in a box in the backseat of his SUV.

Carl made a mental note to ask Ben if CSI had recovered any skin from under Tabitha’s fingernails. “Can you give me a few minutes to discuss prices for a wedding?”

“Sarah will be happy to help you with that. I’ve turned all my weddings over to her. I’ve dealt with my last bride.”

Carl decided to go one more step. “But Tabitha Jones recommended
you
, not Sarah.”

Edwards turned around. “Was Tabitha Jones your planner?”

“Yes.”

“Well, you’d better go looking for someone else.”

Carl played it dumb. “Why?”

“She was murdered. It was on the news last night.”

“Really? Do they know who did it?”

“The news didn’t say.” He showed no sign of remorse for Tabitha’s demise. “Consider yourself lucky,” he said.

“You didn’t think she was good at what she did?”

The man picked up another vase of flowers and turned away. “Sometimes people get what they deserve.”

“She deserved to be murdered?” Carl’s tone became more official, coplike.

Edwards cut him a quick glance as if recognizing the change. “Look, talk to Sarah. Or don’t. It’s up to you. But
I don’t have time to chitchat.” He got in his SUV and drove off.

“I think I will talk to her,” Carl muttered, mentally putting Mr. Edwards on the top of the suspect list.

Glancing at his watch, Carl decided he’d have to come back and visit Sarah later. He got in his own car to head to the DJ, but before he drove off, his phone rang. He checked to see the incoming number.

“Hey, Dad. Mr. Johnson being a bad boy again?”

“Not yet. I took the dog in. Sad story. They said she had three weeks to get a home. Then she’s history.”

Carl frowned. “She’ll find a home. She’s a purebred.”

“Nope. They said purebreds were harder to place because people assume there’s something wrong with them. Especially with her pregnant.”

“Pregnant? How the hell can she be pregnant so damn fast?”

“Didn’t we have that talk when you were thirteen?”

“Funny. I meant, how could they know she was pregnant?”

“She probably has that glow about her. Anyway, there’s no need to worry about her being pregnant. They’re going to abort the babies. Can’t have no mix breeds.”

“You had to find the worst shelter to leave her at.” Carl rubbed his shoulder, and he knew he was going to regret this. “Fuck it. Go back and get her.”

“I’m glad you feel that way.’ Cause when she tried to follow me out, I took her back to your place.” Buck cleared his throat. “Here comes Mr. Johnson, I gotta go.” Then he hung up.

Carl slung his phone down. He’d bet a hundred bucks his dad never took Baby anywhere. Then, remembering his conversation with Mr. Edwards, he dialed his brother’s cell.

Todd Sweet wasn’t in. So Katie drove to the home office of Will Reed, the DJ. She knocked. Before anyone answered,
Katie heard the music playing inside. The music reminded her of…what? Oh yeah, the strange phone calls she’d gotten.

The door opened and a thirtyish, dark-haired man stood in front of her. Katie extended her hand. “Mr. Reed? I’m Katie Ray. We’ve spoken on the phone and I e-mailed you. It’s about—”

He took her hand in his. “Your wedding?” He smiled. “Why is it the most beautiful ones are always getting married?”

She released his hand and noticed his gaze shifted to her scoop-necked blouse. Fidgeting with her purse, she fought the urge to adjust her neckline. While the look Carl had given her earlier had been ten times more suggestive, this man’s attention struck a nerve. Carl—well, he struck different nerves. Good nerves. The music changed tunes.

“I tried to call you today,” he said. “Left a message.”

“You did?” Katie asked.

“Yes. Tabitha e-mailed that you’d decided to go with someone else. I wanted to check, since I’d already gotten a deposit.”

“Actually, that’s what I’ve come to discuss,” Katie said, trying not to react to the mention of Tabitha’s name.

“Come on in.” Mr. Reed stepped back. “I’m just cutting another music video for one of my brides.”

“He has scratches,” Carl told Ben. “I got a sense of bad blood between them.” Carl frowned when his brother’s laugh came through the line. “What?”

“It’s just funny that you’d point out his scratches, considering your own face.” He sighed. “But if it makes you feel better, I had Mr. Edwards in this morning. We’re looking at him. However, he came in voluntarily.”

Carl turned onto Mr. Reed’s street. “Look hard at him.”

“Where are you at now?” Ben asked.

“On my way to see the DJ.”

“Then I must be right behind you.”

“I don’t need big brother taking care of me, you know?”

“I never said you did. My schedule cleared up and I decided to check a few of these people out today.”

“Right.” Carl didn’t buy it. He almost got pissed, then realized that if he knew Ben was out interviewing a suspected serial killer, he’d want to watch his back, too. “Let me visit him first, you show up later.”

“I’ll park up the street, but don’t take too long, I need to see if CSI has anything back on Tabitha’s body. Plus, some patrols just brought in Sweet, our cake maker, for questioning.”

“He came in willingly, too?” Carl asked.

“Not really. But his license sticker was expired.”

“Convenient,” Carl said.

“Not for him. Anyway, I’d like to get back there before they let him go.” Ben paused. “Didn’t you say you visited the photographer? What was your take on him?”

Carl parked in front of Reed’s house. “At first he…” His gaze slammed into the car in the driveway. “Fuck.” His gut clutched. “What is Red’s license plate number?”

“I have it in my files, but not on me. Why?”

“There’s a car here like hers. I gotta go!”

“Wait on me!” Ben said. “I’m two minutes behind you.”

“Can’t.” Carl traded his phone for his gun.

He darted to the Honda, hoping to see something that would tell him he was wrong—a pack of Pampers, a messy interior—anything that told him that this wasn’t Katie’s car. Instead, his gaze lit on the passenger seat. Or rather what was sitting on it. The elephant painting.

Images of Red flashed in Carl’s mind. Her smile. The way that strand of red hair kept falling against her cheek during lunch. Then his mind flipped to the images Ben had described of the mutilated corpses they’d pulled out of the woods.

“Damn!” Adrenaline shot through him and he bolted to the porch. His mind searched for the right approach. He reached to knock. Images of a knife being held at Red’s throat rained down on him. His hand went to the knob, twisted. The door was unlocked. An invitation.

He stood on the porch for a second, listening. Music. Churchy music. But no voices.

With his foot, he inched open the door. Listened harder. Nothing but music. He slipped inside, his gaze moving left. Right. Why was Red here? She wasn’t using this DJ service.

The entryway dumped him into a living room. Voices mingled with the music. He followed the voices.

He heard sirens outside, growing nearer. His brother.

Gun held out, Carl moved down the hall. A man stepped out of a door. “Freeze!” Carl growled.

The man bounced back against the wall. “What the fuck?”

“Red?” Carl called.

A squeak, as if someone rose from a chair that needed a good oiling, sounded from the other room. Katie Ray appeared at the door—alive, unharmed, perfect. Her blue eyes rounded when she saw the gun pointing at Mr. Reed.

“Police!” Ben’s voice rang out. “Drop your weapons!”

“In here,” Carl yelled.

Ben turned the corner, his gaze zipping from one person to the other. “What happened?”

“I’d like to know that myself,” Reed stated.

Carl’s attention zipped back to Red. “Are you okay?”

His brother spoke up. “Did Mr. Reed threaten you in any way, Miss Ray?”

“No,” she managed to say.

Carl left Ben to talk to Mr. Reed, and he motioned for Red to follow him. He got her outside before he let go of the burning question. “What the hell are you doing here?”

She stiffened. “I…What are
you
doing here?”

“Answer me.” He rolled his shoulder; the tension had his muscles in knots.

She blinked those blue eyes at him. “I came to see if I could get my deposit back.”

“Deposit? Tabitha’s files showed you used a different DJ.”

“Not originally,” Red said. “I’d hired Will Reed. Tabitha went crazy and changed everything that last day.”

“Everything?” He gave his left shoulder another squeeze. “Who else were you working with?” When she didn’t answer, he started ticking off names. “Jack Edwards with The Red Rose?”

She nodded.

Damn
. “Todd Sweet?”

She nodded.

Double damn
. “Grimes Photography?”

She nodded again. “Why is that important?”

“Fuck!” he said.

“Is this really f-word worthy?” she snapped.

“Yeah. It really is.”

Ben walked up, a frown so deeply grooved in his face it looked permanent. “He’s agreed to forget this whole thing happened. But you’d better God damn pray that this guy isn’t our man, because I can guarantee you that if he is, this will come back and bite us in the ass.”

“Oh, God!” Red said. “Do you think he killed Tabitha?”

Ben looked at Carl. “I thought you said she wasn’t working with any of our names?”

“Ms. Jones changed things, but she was originally with them all.”

“What’s going on?” Red insisted.

Ben frowned and looked at Red, then back to Carl. “You’d better tell her.”

“
Somebody
tell me,” Red insisted.

Carl held up his hand. “Follow me to the Starbucks on the corner, and we’ll talk.”

She didn’t look happy about the temporary delay, but she finally took off to the car.

“You screwed up!” Ben snapped as soon as Red was out of hearing.

Yeah, he had. He shouldn’t have kissed her. Touched her. Carl’s gaze stayed focused on Red’s hips swaying toward her silver Honda. The memory of slipping his fingers inside the back of her panties, touching the softest skin known to mankind, had a stiffy coming on again.

“Get your eyes off her ass,” Ben snapped. “I’m talking to you. Did you have to go in like Rambo?”

“I thought he had Red, doing God only knew what. I didn’t—”

“Do you realize the trouble I’m going to be in if I have to arrest him later on? Illegal entry…” Ben ticked off all the rules he’d broken.

“If he’s our man, we’ll find a way around it,” Carl said.

“Isn’t that why you quit the Force, because trying to get around the rules got you and others shot?”

Carl took a step closer to his brother. Ben might be older, but Carl had never backed down from a fight. “I made this situation hard for you. For that, I’m sorry. But don’t throw that other shit in my face. Because I can fucking guarantee you, if you’d been in my shoes, you’d have done the same thing I did.”

“There are rules,” Ben ranted. “Rules exist for a reason.”

“Yeah, and how many criminals walk the fucking streets because those rules work more in their favor than ours?”

“It still doesn’t give us—”

“I’m not part of that ‘us’ anymore. I don’t have to walk that line. And I didn’t ask you to babysit me today.”

Red’s silver Honda, backing out of the driveway, brought an end to the heated conversation. Carl took off for his car.

She met him at the door of Starbucks, and they walked in together. “What is this about?” she asked. He almost rested his hand on her lower back. But touching her could be dangerous.

The coffee’s aroma filled his nose, and he resented the way that it chased away Red’s scent. Still trying to figure out how to tell her without scaring her half to death, Carl moved to the counter.

“Let’s order first.” He needed something to cut the edge off his frustrations—both the sexual ones and the problems with Ben.

Red set her coffee down, dropped in a chair, and gazed up at him. “Okay, spill it.”

Carl’s cell phone rang and he held up a finger asking for one more minute. “Hades,” he answered, and stared down at her. The view offered him more cleavage. His breath hitched.

“It’s me,” Ben said. “I didn’t mean to drag up the past.”

“Yeah.” Carl accepted his brother’s apology and tried not to focus on Red’s cleavage. “Ditto about causing you trouble.”

There was a pause. “Look, I didn’t mention this earlier because it didn’t seem important, but now it might be.”

“What?” His gaze shifted from the soft mounds of flesh to a loose strand of hair resting on Red’s cheek. His fingers itched to touch it. Oh hell, he wanted to touch those breasts, too.

“You know we had to run a background check on Red.”

“And?” Carl wasn’t going to believe anything bad had come up on Katie. She rocked babies. Watched
The Brady
Bunch
and
Sex and the
City. His gaze shot back to the cleavage.

“We stumbled over the fact that a 911 call was made from her residence the night of the shooting. One of her friends made the call. It was written up as a possible break-in. I spoke with the uniforms who covered it. They found a broken window and something was said about a back door being found open. But there were some downed tree limbs from the storm beside the window and it was questionable if it was the storm or something else.”

“And you’re thinking something else.” Carl watched Red sipping her brew but listening. The thought of someone hurting her the way they hurt those other women brought out every manly instinct he had: hero, gentleman, not-so-gentleman. Instincts that led him to one conclusion. He wasn’t going to let anything happen to her. Right then, protecting her became his top priority.

“It looks suspicious,” Ben said, drawing Carl’s attention back to the phone call. “I’ve got men going out to talk to the photographer. I’ll let you know if something turns up.”

“Yeah,” Carl said.

“Another thing,” Ben added. “We talked to the family
of the victims found in the woods. Both women had started getting prank calls. Something about the caller playing music. Ask Red about that. If she’s gotten any, let me know ASAP.”

“I will.” Carl cut his phone off and met her eyes. She didn’t look happy. He knew he was part of that unhappiness. He’d admit the whole gallery scene had been over the top, and maybe he had broken a few rules. But as Ben had pointed out back there on Will Reed’s lawn, Carl had always sucked at following the rules.

“That was Ben,” he said.

She set her coffee down. “What’s going on?”

Sitting down, he shouldered back in his chair, tried to find a pretty way to say it—but one didn’t exist. “We think the guy who shot Tabitha also killed two other women. The other women were both…engaged.”

Her face went white. “And their wedding planner was—”

“Tabitha. I’m afraid so.” He palmed his hot cup.

A wrinkle appeared between her eyebrows and she ran a hand over her chest. “Was it the women found in the woods?”

He wanted to touch her, assure her he wasn’t going to let anything happen to her, but he just nodded.

“And you think…” Her face paled another notch. “You think this…this guy is coming after me?”

This was where it got tricky. “There’s a possibility.”

Her blue eyes stood out against all the soft white skin. “And Will Reed? You think he might be that guy?”

He reached for her hand. “Could be.”

“Oh, fuck!” She pulled away.

He agreed this was definitely f-word worthy. He waited for her to sip her coffee before he asked, “Have you been getting prank calls? Maybe where you hear music?”

The look on her face told him the answer before she spoke. “I just got another one. Just a few minutes ago.”

“It’s okay.” He grabbed her hand and this time held on. After the first jolt of emotion, touching her felt so damn right.

Katie’s cell phone rang. Before he could tell her how to deal with the call, she’d apparently come up with an alternate plan: flinging her purse across Starbucks.

Carl jumped up, grabbed the purse, snatched out her cell phone, then walked over and showed her the number displayed on the front. “Recognize it?”

She shook her head. Her pale color grew chalkier. He leaned down and whispered in her ear. “Breathe, Red. All I want you to do is say hello. Got that?”

She nodded, and he opened the phone and put it to her mouth.

“Hello,” she managed.

He passed a hand over her cheek and winked at her. Pulling the phone to his ear, he waited for a voice. Or for music. “This is Hank Links at Piper Hotel,” the voice said. “I hate to have to call you like this, but…but I’m afraid there’s been a break-in in your room.”

Break-
in?
“Hello,” Carl snapped. “This is a friend of Miss Ray’s. Was anyone apprehended?”

“No, I’m afraid a maid found…found someone in there. He knocked her down and ran out.”

“Can she describe him?”

“I don’t know.”

“When did this happen?” If this just happened, it couldn’t have been Will Reed.

“This morning. I apologize about just now getting to you.”

Carl gritted his teeth. “Did you call the police?”

“Well, we weren’t sure anything was missing and so—”

“And so you didn’t want it going on public record!” He knew how hotels worked. “Is the maid still there?”

“Yes.”

“Keep her there. We’re on our way.” He hung up.

Red looked up. “What now?”

“Someone broke into your hotel room.”

Panic hit her eyes. “Les wasn’t there, was she?”

“I don’t think so.” He handed her the phone. “Call her to be sure.”

Katie sat in the hotel office, feeling numb inside. Les hadn’t been there. And neither was the maid by the time they’d arrived. It seemed apparent the maid was an illegal, and talking to the police made her nervous.

The call to Les on the way to the hotel had been cut very short because Les was in the exam room with the doctor and her grandma. When Katie asked if everything was okay, the only thing Les said was that she’d call Katie back as soon as possible.

Katie watched Carl verbally stretch the hotel manager on the rack, and decided Carl made a better friend than enemy. Before the fiasco ended, he’d called Ben. After they questioned everyone at the hotel, they took her into one of the back meeting rooms and, from the way Ben looked at her, she knew he was about to interrogate her again. Not that she minded, but she really just wanted to go somewhere and throw up.

The television hanging from the wall blared, and at that moment a news flash came on. A woman reporter appeared in front of a patch of woods. “Two bodies were found here, and from our sources we’re told we may have a serial killer on our hands. While the police are yet to confirm these findings, we have spoken with Robert Barton, the man who found the bodies while hiking. According to Barton, both bodies were women, both, we’re told, were brutally stabbed—”

“Damn it!” Ben snapped. “I told Barton he wasn’t to talk to anyone. He pulled out his cell phone and started punching in numbers.

The TV went black. Carl held the remote control. “No use watching that.” He stared at her, concern filling his eyes.

Not that she gave his concern much thought. She stared back at the television screen and the reporter’s words echoed in her head.

Brutally.
Brutally
. Katie leaned back in her seat. Ben hung up the phone and she stared at the two of them. Two men who looked like Antonio Banderas shouldn’t be a bad thing, but she wished someone would tell that to her stomach.

“Breathe, Red,” Carl said, studying her.

She inhaled and looked around for a bathroom. Spotting one, she slapped her hand over her mouth and took off.

“Ah, shit!” Carl said behind her.

She barely made it. Seconds later, leaning against the stall, some tissues pulled from her purse, and trying to talk herself out of a good, long, hard, gut-wrenching cry, she heard the bathroom door swish open. She flushed the toilet.

“Red?”

“I’m fine,” she sputtered. “Go away.” She heard water running. The stall door pushed open.

“Here.” Standing outside the cubical, Carl pressed some damp paper towels into her hands.