Wedding Chimes, Assorted Crimes Read online

“In other words, you won’t tell me.”

  “Correct.” An impudent grin. “But I’m open to other questions of a personal nature, such as age and marital status.”

  Keely let that pass. Memories of tonight’s reception had blurred into endless clicks of a camera shutter in her mind, but she couldn’t shake the impression that Max looked familiar. “Are you a friend of the Westhaven family?”

  “My reason for mingling with the other extras at this evening’s spaghetti western was business. I’m temporarily managing Feast of Italy.” Max shook his head in disbelief. “I should be loading a mammoth dishwasher, not wishing I’d baked a cake with a file in it.”

  “You’re running Feast of Italy? What happened to Anna Marie?”

  “Broke an ankle playing hopscotch with her overly active granddaughters.”

  Keely winced. “Ouch!”

  “Ah, but the pain fades beside the agony of handing over the reins of her beloved enterprise to a lumpish nephew who, to put it in Anna Marie’s own inimitable way, ‘couldn’t prepare a decent sorrel sauce if his life depended on it.’”

  “Double ouch!”

  Max grinned. Each time he smiled, Keely had the oddest sensation that the harsh glare of lighting in the foyer softened.

  “Poor lady had no other option. I’m the only family member with any experience in the food biz—I served an unforgettable apprenticeship with Anna Marie before escaping to college.

  “Tonight was my first solo effort. That’s why I don’t care how long it takes for them to type my statement. My aunt’s waiting for a report and I still have to come up with a story that won’t launch her out of bed like a heat-seeking missile aimed at my heart.”

  Max’s doleful expression elicited a sympathetic pat on the hand from Keely. In her role as pre-wedding chronicler, she’d attended many consultations with the matriarch of Feast of Italy.

  Anna Marie, wooed by the socially conscious, was shaped like a bushel basket with legs and had a bark like a drill sergeant. Her elite catering service ran as a dictatorship, not a democracy. In Lake Hope, the name Feast of Italy stood for superb food imaginatively served. Like Keely’s Key Shot Studio, it maintained an unblemished reputation for providing satisfaction.

  Until tonight’s disaster. Keely’s shoulders sagged.

  Max grunted, apparently sharing her gloomy thoughts. They sat without speaking as members of the public trickled through the front doors. Some cursed, others cried—a few looked as if they had no more tears left. Keely sipped the bitter tasting coffee, hoping to melt the block of ice in her chest.

  “Ready to talk about what happened tonight?”

  Meeting Max’s sympathetic gaze, Keely sighed. “I’d rather go home. This place has all the ambiance of a dark alley.”

  “Scary, isn’t it? I can’t shake the feeling that I’m in danger of being dragged off to some dank dungeon.”

  Keely liked Max all the more for not putting on a macho act for her benefit. “Are we in trouble?”

  “Depends on how you define trouble.” Max tasted his coffee and grimaced. “They’ve thrown in a worn-out tire along with the beans, but at least the brew meets the two most important criteria for coffee: hot and black.”

  Keely tipped her aching head against the cool tiles of the wall. Ask for reassurance, get a commentary on coffee.

  With an inward tremble, she recalled feeling powerless as her inked fingertips were rolled on a card. Keely peered at her hand, searching for traces of ink in the whirls of her fingertips.

  “All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand,” she declaimed dramatically.

  “Relax, Lady Macbeth. You haven’t killed anyone.” Max turned to regard her with a bemused frown. “Or have you?”

  “Please, don’t joke! I wish I’d never picked up that candlestick. They claimed they just want to eliminate my fingerprints. What if mine were the only prints?”

  Max studied her face. “We need to talk about this or you’ll never be able to sleep. Let’s pretend this bench is a psychiatrist’s couch.”

  “Nothing I like better than a rousing game of ‘let’s pretend.’ While we’re at it, let’s pretend tonight never happened.”

  Max ignored her flippancy. Placing his cup on the floor, he poised an imaginary pen over an invisible notebook. “Okay, start gut spilling. I’ve got another patient due in twenty minutes.”

  Stalling, Keely shifted position and winced. A stiff neck from hauling around the flash power pack was an ongoing professional liability; twinges from today’s exertion were manifesting themselves early.

  Max waited with an exaggerated air of concentration. Clearing his throat, he raised his brows interrogatively.

  Keely surrendered. “Okay, I’ll play. I’m a photographer—I own Key Shot Studio. When I walked in to shoot the gift tables, I found Mrs. Westhaven. Then you showed up, followed by a cast of thousands. End of story.”

  She fidgeted with her cup. “That moment’ll leave a psychic scar: everyone gaping as though I’d just confessed to being Elvis Presley’s love child.”

  “Shoot. Scar. Elvis. Love. Patient uses words with violent or passionate connotations and quotes from the ultimate dramatization of guilt, Macbeth.” Max rubbed his hands together greedily. “You will need many sessions. Many costly sessions.”

  Although his use of psychiatric jargon set Keely’s teeth on edge, she kept her voice light. “What’s your diagnosis of the root of my problem, Dr. Summers?”

  “The root? Could be something as simple as—Ah hah!” Max waggled one hand under her nose and asked in a rasping Viennese accent, “Do you dream of blue-eyed men whose fingertips smell like garlic?”

  “Never.” Keely sniffed, wrinkling her nose. “Is that the feminine version of the perfect soufflé dream or a hazard of the catering profession?”

  Max blinked, then roared. The boisterous sound seemed to bounce off the ceiling and dingy floor until it echoed inside Keely’s head. This is crazy! she thought giddily. We should be exchanging the names of criminal attorneys and theories about the robbery, not quips!

  Sobering, she said, “Your turn.”

  “Where’s your pen?”

  “I’m a modern shrink. I use a tape recorder.” Keely punched an invisible button. “Okay, let’s begin with you being close enough to hear me yell for help instead of in the kitchen where all good little caterers belong.”

  Max bent over to pick up his cup. “I suppose you know about my aunt’s goofy tradition of presenting a bride’s gift with enough pomp to crown a queen—”

  “Goofy?” Keely skewered him with an outraged glare. “Anna Marie bustles out in a beaded jet gown and kisses the bride before presenting a marzipan love token. A wonderful, theatrical touch! This winter, she made the most exquisite snowflake—”

  Max shuddered eloquently and Keely tossed him a wicked grin. “So which part bothers you most? The beaded gown or the kissing?”

  “I’d rather flip omelets for two hundred hungry Shriners than stage such a silly charade,” he muttered sourly.

  “I think the presentation is romantic, not silly.” An image of Max crouching beside her and holding a box wrapped with a satin bow flashed before Keely’s eyes. “Wait—you chickened out! You were going to sneak the token in with the other gifts!”

  “If it hadn’t been for the goons who cleaned out the room, I would have succeeded.”

  Toying with the idea of asking her companion to employ his garlic scented fingers as a masseuse, Keely eased her tight shoulders back against the wall. “Did the police accept your story?”

  “After a stiff grilling and a warning not to even think about leaving town. Cops apparently view possession of a box of candy to be as incriminating as clutching the assault weapon.”

  Keely flinched from the memory of the brass candlestick in her hand. Her own interrogation had been thorough and curt. All film had been confiscated as “evidence,” but she had no doubts about eventually getting every roll back. Tricia wa
s, after all, the mayor’s daughter. Keely decided to put together a spectacular photograph album. The poor girl wouldn’t be deprived of a pictorial record of her wedding along with her gifts.

  The sight of the uniformed man behind the counter reminded Keely that their ordeal might not be over. “Those interviews were just a formality. We couldn’t actually be under suspicion, could we?”

  Max looked as though someone had ordered him to disillusion a child concerning the existence of Santa Claus. “We’d be in a better position if Mrs. Westhaven hadn’t woke up and accused us of clouting her.”

  “She was disoriented.” Keely massaged the toe of her right boot. “As anyone would be after being slugged with a candlestick.”

  “A candlestick covered with your fingerprints,” Max pointed out with glum relish. “We were caught looming over the victim with the traditional blunt instrument and one of the few gifts that wasn’t stolen. The cop taking my statement seemed dubious about my tale of skulking in passageways to deliver a box of candy.”

  “They’re grasping at straws.”

  “Unfortunately, Keely, we’re the straws they happen to be grasping. Disoriented Mrs. Westhaven may be, but she’s still the mayor’s mother and I imagine His Honor’s howling for blood.”

  Keely unclenched her jaw. “Guard or no guard, the gift room is an open invitation to thieves! Isolated, quiet—anyone could back up a truck and haul everything out in twenty minutes. They can’t blame us for an architect’s design that made the salon vulnerable—”

  “Or that the security guard was apparently in on the robbery.” Max patted her knee in an avuncular fashion. “We’re innocent until proven guilty, Keely. Remember that.”

  “I’ve never found myself at the mercy of the criminal justice system before, Max. Even though I know I’m innocent, I can’t help worrying.”

  “Speaking of mercy, I need to use that pay phone and call Anna Marie. I left my cell phone in my car so as to avoid her demands for a minute by minute update during the evening.”

  Max rolled his eyes dramatically. “After dialing my number four thousand times without success, she’s probably got bloodhounds tracking me down. That’s the price you pay for working for family. My aunt’s adopted Tallulah Bankhead’s motto: ‘I’d rather be strongly wrong than weakly right.’”

  “Family! We might as well have millstones tied around our necks.” Remembering the face of the woman pleading for her son, Keely couldn’t prevent an edge from underscoring her words, a harshness which lingered like the bitter aftertaste of the coffee.

  Max’s hand jerked at Keely’s response and his own drink slopped on the knee of his jeans. Muttering under his breath, he yanked a red bandanna out of his back pocket for mop-up operations. Watching him, Keely wished she could blot out her angry words. To Italians, the family unit is the core of life; her companion was probably reassessing her in light of her last remark.

  Max stood up, his jeans molding muscular thighs while the silk shirt softened the outline of his torso. Keely’s toes curled in their cramped space. At least her body wasn’t too numb to appreciate the finer things in life…

  Stuffing the damp bandanna back into his hip pocket, Max started to speak, but Keely forestalled him. “What was the love token for the wedding?”

  With a raised eyebrow, Max accepted her diversionary tactic. “Crossed branding irons with heart brands, but I lack my aunt’s skill with marzipan. Now what’s this about millstones?” He frowned. “I don’t want you to misunderstand me. I don’t consider my family a—”

  “Then what was in that beautifully wrapped box?” Keely concentrated on pinching a chunk from the lip of her cup.

  “A horse, but the front legs crumbled. After reshaping, as near as I could tell, I’d created a kangaroo.”

  “A kangaroo? Max! For the mayor’s daughter? No wonder you didn’t dare make a formal presentation!”

  Keely chortled at the sudden vision of Tricia Westhaven unwrapping a stale marzipan kangaroo in front of her in-laws, but the hysterical laughter died on her lips. Following the direction of Max’s gaze, she saw a uniformed man approaching.

  He wasted no time on pleasantries. “Keely O’Brien? Maxwell Summers? Your statements are ready to sign.”

  Keely followed him to a separate room and affixed her signature to the brief statement. Hoping to finish their conversation, she waited for Max near the bench.

  He still hadn’t emerged from the warren of offices and corridors when a woman came through the front doors and approached the information counter. Her hesitant gait marked her as one on unfamiliar, treacherous ground. Clothing and hair were impeccably stylish—only a crooked smear of hastily applied lipstick betrayed distress.

  “I’m Barbara DuShay. I heard there was an accident on Barrington Road, a young woman.” She spoke rapidly, her polite smile a ghastly counterpoint to the fear in her eyes. “My daughter isn’t home yet—she always calls when she’s late—I’m rather worried.”

  “Your daughter’s name, ma’am?”

  “Maddy DuShay. She’s only sixteen.”

  The policeman’s expression didn’t change, but the impersonal tone softened. “Have a seat, I’ll find someone to talk to you.”

  “I spent the evening at my bridge club. I’m afraid I panicked when I arrived home and she wasn’t there. Her curfew is ten-thirty.” The woman paused to wring the strap of an expensive leather handbag. “Maddy was at a party at a friend’s house. I called, but they said she’d already left. I suppose I’m just being silly, but Maddy probably would have driven home by way of Barrington—”

  A uniformed woman appeared and the policeman said gruffly, “This is Mrs. DuShay. She’s here to inquire about her daughter.”

  “Ma’am, would you please come this way?”

  “I’d like for you to tell me it wasn’t her.” She clung to the edge of the counter, voice shrilling. “Tell me I’m being ridiculous and overprotective. Tell me that the girl who was killed wasn’t my daughter.”

  The desk officer said quietly, “Mrs. DuShay, if you’ll follow Officer Walters, she’ll answer all of your questions.”

  The woman cast a frantic look at her proposed escort. “For mercy’s sake, don’t leave me to imagine the worst—tell me now!”

  Keely’s headache was back; blood roared in her temples. Forgetting Max, she turned and fled out the front doors, but the scream of a woman for whom a mother’s worst nightmare has just become reality pursued her into the night.

  Chapter 3

  The insistent ringing of the telephone woke Keely. Grumbling, she rolled over and fumbled twice before bringing the receiver to her ear. “’Lo?”

  “Keely, it’s Margo.”

  “Have you no respect for the dead?” Keely groaned, pushing a curtain of tangled hair out of her eyes.

  The events of last night slammed into her sleep-softened body like bricks. The police station. Max. The porcelain face of Maddy DuShay’s mother shattering into a thousand pieces—

  “Oh, Keely, yesterday was such a nightmare! I was shaking, literally shaking, when they took my statement. The police confiscated the videotapes I made yesterday!”

  “I’m sorry you were traumatized, but we’ll get them back.” Keely smothered a yawn, irritated by the whine in Margo’s voice. No one would ever consider her assistant a solid rock in the shifting sands of a crisis. “They’ll probably turn them over when they finish sniggering at the sight of Alderwoman Wallace doing the Electric Slide with His Honor.”

  Keely squinted at the clock on her bedside table until the blurred numbers came into focus. Ten-thirty, Maddy’s curfew. Too late to go to church and beg for a miracle, to pray that God would rewind the clock of life twenty-four hours and bring back Maddy DuShay, only sixteen…

  “Greg’s upset, Keely.” Margo’s voice dropped to a dramatic whisper. “He’s talking about lawsuits.”

  Margo and her theatrics. “You weren’t hurt, were you? No bruises from police brutality?”

&n
bsp; “Greg’s always been against me having this job, Keely, especially with the weekend work. Now he’s putting his foot down.”

  “Please assure Greg there’s nothing to worry about.” Keely stretched, her neck muscles protesting the movement. The silence at the other end of the line was deafening. “You were never in danger, Margo. Your husband will calm down—”

  “I’m sorry, Keely. I’m going to have to quit.”

  “Margo, please—”

  “Good-bye, Keely. I enjoyed working with you. You can mail me a check for last week.”

  Click. Buzz. Keely slammed the phone down. Jumping out of bed, she drop-kicked her pillow across the room, then retrieved it with a shamed-face smile.

  Have a care, Missy! You’ve got your father’s Irish temper and one day, it’ll land you in big trouble! Keely had often tried to ignore her mother’s criticism but the irritating, often painful burr-words stuck in her mind.

  Thinking of her mother, Keely’s gaze drifted to the water-color hung on the wall over her bed. It was often the first thing she saw every morning, an overblown rose in an opalescent bud vase. Moira had painted the flower’s heavy head drooping over the lip of the vase, crimson petals strewn across the cloth underneath. The rose was just past its glory, the few petals that had fallen signalled the beginning of the end.

  Yanking on her robe, Keely remembered how Margo had avoided her during the uproar following the shocking discovery in the gift salon. Her assistant had simply gotten cold feet. Greg probably didn’t give two hoots whether Margo continued to work for Keely.

  She knew from past experience that rather than risk a confrontation, Margo raised her husband’s edicts as a shield whenever she had something unpleasant to impart. “Greg doesn’t want me to work this weekend” or “Greg thinks I need a salary increase.”

  Minus one trained and fairly reliable assistant, Keely stalked downstairs and made herself a cup of tea. Sipping the hot liquid, she tried to relax, but the image of a woman standing in the ruins of a building kept intruding. The woman had Keely’s face; the wreckage was a once prosperous business.