Just Murdered

Chapter 7

“Ewww,” Amy said. “What’s wrong with her nails?”

Nails? What nails? Kiki looked like a big, stiff doll. Helen didn’t even notice her fingers.

She felt strangely warm and disconnected, as if she were wrapped in cotton.

Shock, said one side of her mind.

Shit, said the other. I’m never going to get that cold wine.

There were shrieks and screams as a dozen cell phones simultaneously called 911.

Only Amy, the airhead bridesmaid, noticed the dead woman’s manicure. “Her nails are too short.” Amy’s gray eyes were wide with horror. For her, a broken nail was a tragedy. Murder was unthinkable.

Kiki’s small curled fingers seemed pathetically child-like. The gold daggerlike nails were gone. They’d been cut to the quick. Why would she mutilate her manicure?

She didn’t, Helen realized. Kiki would never do her own nails. She’d have a manicurist come to her house the morning of the wedding.

This morning. A thousand years ago.

The curled fingers no longer looked sad. They looked creepy. Anyone who watched TV knew about DNA. If Kiki had scratched her killer, she’d have traces of the DNA under her nails. Her killer had cut them before she—or he—shoved the body in the closet.

Then I opened the door, Helen thought, and left my prints all over it. She felt sick.

Run! she told herself. The police will be here any minute. Everyone heard me fight with Kiki last night. With my past, I haven’t a chance.

Helen looked around frantically for her purse. She could slip out the side door before the police arrived.

Stay! said her rational side. You’re a servant who opened the wrong closet. Nobody noticed you. Nobody cares about you. Sit tight. Of course your prints are on that door. You’re supposed to help the wedding party.

“Somebody help me turn her over,” Brendan said. “I want to look for wounds.”

The father of the bride—and a lawyer—was tampering with a crime scene, but nobody said anything. The groom and the best man rushed over to help. Helen thought she saw Chauncey’s too-red lips form a fleeting smile before he assumed a properly solemn expression. He had reason to smile. His theater was saved. Kiki’s untimely death brought him a hundred thousand dollars.

Chauncey, Brendan, and Luke had trouble lifting the unwieldy body in the outrageous belled skirt. Helen saw the skirt had a huge rip on the side. The stitching had given way in spots, and the roses bulged like tumors.

“Give us a hand here,” Brendan called. Another groomsman, Jason, pushed forward to lift Kiki. The men looked like high-class undertakers in their formal black tuxes.

Terrific, Helen thought. The crime scene was contaminated by the four chief suspects. Make that five. Rod the chauffeur was holding the cobweb dress.

No, six. Desiree grabbed the dress out of his hands. “What are you doing with your filthy paws on my wedding dress?” she said.

“I had to get it out of the way or someone would step on it.” Rod did not sound quite so deferential now that he was a millionaire.

“Don’t touch anything of mine.” Desiree, now wrapped in an oversized white robe, looked shrunken and older than her mother.

As the four men turned over the body, the hoop skirt flipped up, exposing Kiki’s bare bottom.

“No gunshot or stab wounds on the backside,” Brendan said coldly.

Jason seemed to be suppressing a smirk. Luke looked poleaxed by this new view of his mother-in-law. Good thing he didn’t see the golden dollar sign on the other side, Helen thought.

“OK, let’s put her back the way we found her,” Brendan said.

Fat chance, Helen thought. She surveyed the chaos in the room. The staff was standing against the walls, trying to make themselves invisible. The hairstylists held silent dryers. The makeup artists put down their brushes. Even Jeff looked lost. He had no plan for this wedding emergency.

In the center of the room, the bride shed bitter tears into the magical cobweb dress she would never wear. “It’s ruined. It’s all ruined,” she cried, and wiped her eyes on the gossamer skirt.

Whether Desiree was weeping over her wedding, her marriage, or her dress, Helen didn’t know. She certainly wasn’t crying for her mother.

“She didn’t have the decency to die in her underwear,” Desiree said. “She mooned everyone.”

Amy started giggling wildly. Bridesmaid Beth gave her a sharp elbow in the ribs, and she shut up.

The bride shook with shame and fury. The groom patted her back with the same hand that had held her dead mother. His touch was tentative, as if he expected his bride to sprout leathery wings and scales. Luke had the devil’s own luck on his wedding day. His vicious mother-in-law was dead—and her fortune went to his new wife.

The father of the bride barked into his cell phone, “I don’t care! Get his ass off the golf course and get him over here right now.” Brendan strutted back and forth, a short, energetic general calling in reinforcements.

The blond bridesmaids cried and clung to one another. Their black dresses were no longer symbols of sophistication. They were mourning clothes.

“I’ll never wear this dress again,” Beth said sadly, “and it’s a Vera Wang.”

“I’ve never seen a real dead person before,” Amy said. “She looks gross.”

No one went near Kiki. That made her death even lonelier. Helen thought she looked oddly pretty with her gray-green skin, blond hair, and dark rose dress. As long as you didn’t look too closely at the popped eyes speckled with red pinpoint petechiae.

Poor Kiki. She seemed so small in death. Helen remembered what Millicent had said. “If she were a man, would you notice her outrageous behavior?” The heart of a Hollywood mogul had been trapped in that little body.

All eight groomsmen crowded into the room. Helen felt as if the air had been sucked out of the place. She leaned against the wall next to a silent hairstylist, and hoped everyone would keep quiet until the police arrived. But the drama wasn’t over.

Lisa, looking like Nemesis in her black bridesmaid dress, marched straight up to Jason. Her brown eyes were electric with malice. “Since you were the last one to see Kiki alive last night,” she said, “maybe you can tell the police who killed her.”

Jason’s handsome face took on a feral look. “You’re crazy,” he said. “I left the restaurant with everyone else.”

“And waited for her in your car,” Lisa said.

Everyone in the room stared at her. Last night Jason, her sometime escort, had humiliated her. Today she was getting her revenge. “I heard Kiki tell the chauffeur to go on without her after the rehearsal dinner because you would take her home.”

Jason’s voice was a knife. “Here’s what I heard: You went home alone. Nobody wants a bitch like you.”

“Quiet! Both of you,” the father of the bride said. “Nobody talks to the police without a lawyer. I’ve called in some favors. Friends of mine in the legal community are on their way.”

Now Helen understood Brendan’s frantic cell phone calls.

Lisa was outraged. “You’re getting lawyers for the wedding party? Do you want your wife’s killer to get away?”

“Ex-wife,” he corrected. “And our kind are not killers.”

Helen suddenly realized the offer of attorneys did not extend to the help. The staff was being set up to take the rap. One makeup artist turned so pale her foundation looked like a beige mask.

Helen began edging toward the door. She would run if she was going to be a scapegoat.

“Where are you going?” Brendan snapped his cell phone shut.

“I need some air,” Helen said. “I feel faint.”

“Open a window, somebody,” Brendan commanded. “You! Sit down and put your head between your knees.”

And kiss my rear end good-bye, Helen thought. They’re going to pin this on me for sure. She felt trapped. There was no way she could make it to the door.

“I know you. You had the fight with my wife last night,” Brendan said.

“Ex-wife,” Helen said. “Everybody had a fight with her last night, including you.”

“But your fight was special,” Brendan said. “She threatened to fire you. You killed her to keep your job.”

Helen laughed, although she was so frightened it sounded wobbly. “You think I killed her for six-seventy an hour? I’d make more money stamping license plates in prison. At least there my living expenses would be covered.”

She thought it was a good bluff. Now she attacked. “I can always get another low-paying job. But what about you? Kiki was after your last nickel. The cops will check your bank records and see you’re headed for bankruptcy and Kiki was demanding more money each day. I heard her.”

Brendan’s eyebrows shot up. Helen knew she’d scored. She tried another thrust. “And your daughter had a few fights with her mother.” As soon as she said that, Helen knew she’d made a mistake.

“You leave my daughter out of this.” Brendan’s voice was low and dangerous. His face was a weird wine red. Brendan didn’t love Desiree, but he wouldn’t let an inferior attack anything that was his.

“Shut up,” Desiree shouted. “Everyone shut up.”

Helen could hear the sirens now, howling like lost souls outside the church.

“The Sunnysea police are here.” Amy was never afraid to state the obvious. “And a bunch of gray guys are getting out of Beemers. Are those the lawyers?”

Brendan looked out the window. “Yes,” he said. “Now remember, everyone. No talking unless the lawyers say it’s okay.”

But it was much too late for that.