The Silent Bride

Praise for

Tracking Time

"Filled with wit and intelligence."

—The Dallas Morning News

"It all comes together in a suspenseful climax that tingles and tangles most satisfactorily ... well-plotted."

—Kirkus Reviews

"The strength of Glass's story lies in her cultivation of themes—broken families, culture clash, ambition and pride." —

Publishers Weekly

"[A] brash New York thriller.. . The writing style seems to fit the city's and heroine's characters."

—The Post and Courier

(Charleston, SC)

"With a plot as real and frightening as today's headlines, nail-biting suspense, and palpable tension,

Tracking Time

is a classic page-turner . .. riveting."

—Romantic Times

"Glass's newest entry succeeds at all levels ... excellent." —BookBrowser

"With each new work, the April Woo tales seem to get better ... Leslie Glass uses her beguiling heroine to provide a humanized police investigation that turns Tracking Time into a wonderful treat for anyone who enjoys a great story starring a strong individual."

—The Midwest Book Reviews

"This engrossing mystery is hard to set aside."

—Pacific Reader Literary Supplement

"An exciting and carefully crafted police procedural."

—I Love a Mystery

More praise for the novels of Leslie Glass

"One terrific read." —Tami Hoag

"Glass anatomizes relationships with a light touch of the scalpel." —

The New York Times Book Review

"Skillful... compelling . .. Weaving together divergent cultures and their people is one of Ms. Glass's strengths." —

The Dallas Morning News

"Detective Woo is the next generation descended from Ed McBain's 87th precinct." — Hartford Courant

"Fast-paced, gritty . . . [April Woo] joins Kinsey Mill-hone and Kay Scarpetta in the ranks of female crime fighters." — Library Journal

"Builds to an explosive climax as unpredictable and surprising as April Woo herself. A fresh, engrossing read." — New York Times bestselling author Perri O'Shaughnessy

"An intense thriller. . . Glass provides several surprises, characters motivated by a lively cast of inner demons and, above all, a world where much is not as it initially seems." —Publishers Weekly

"Glass not only draws the reader into the crazed and gruesome world of the killer, but also cleverly develops the character of Woo ... and her growing attraction for partner Sanchez." — The Orlando Sentinel

"A masterful storyteller in the field of psychological suspense." — Abilene Reporter-News

"Sharp as a scalpel.. . Scary as hell. Leslie Glass is Lady McBain." —New York Times bestselling author Michael Palmer

"If you're a Thomas Harris fan anxiously awaiting the next installment of the 'Hannibal the Cannibal' series and looking for a new thriller to devour, you'll find it in Burning Time." —Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel

"A suspenseful story in which those who appear to be sane may actually harbor the darkest secrets of all." —Mostly Murder

"The plot is clever . .. and the ending is a genuine surprise. Woo is so appealing a protagonist that Leslie Glass can keep her going for a long time." —The Newark Star-Ledger

"Glass writes a masterful police procedural. . . But it's her wonderfully rich portrait of smart, sensible, intrepid, stubborn April Woo that sets this book apart." —Booklist

"Brilliant. . . Skillfully done." —The Tampa Tribune-Times

"Glass does a masterful job of building suspense, and she's a wizard at creating believable, unforgettable characters." — Romantic Times

'This series [is] a winner." —Mystery News

"Tough, fast, edgy ... a layered and rewarding book." —Contra Costa Times

ALSO BY LESLIE GLASS

Tracking Time

Stealing Time

Judging Time

ONYX

First published by Onyx, an imprint of New American Library, a division of Penguin Putnam Inc.

First Printing, June 2002

Copyright © Leslie Glass, 2002 Excerpt copyright © Leslie Glass, 2002 All rights reserved

For Alex and Lindsey

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

For a decade the officers of the New York City Police Department and the New York City Police Foundation have been my constant source of inspiration. Every year I have a greater appreciation for the people who serve and defend New York City. This year more than ever before, I want to acknowledge and commend the NYPD for the courage of its personnel in all its departments and their profound commitment to protect the citizens of New York City no matter how perilous the job.

Thanks especially to Commissioner Bernard Kerik and Deputy Commissioner Maureen Casey and all the top brass for their tireless caring for all the personnel in the department and for the people of New York in the toughest of times. I also want to thank Deputy Chief Dewey Fong for Chinese opera and the Borough of Queens, Inspector Barbara Sicilia for Hate, Detective Margaret Eng Wallace and Detective Ed Wallace for wedding photos and crime scene background, also Lieutenant Joe Blosis of the Crime Scene Unit. Thanks to Pam Delaney, Judy Dyna, Greg Roberts, and all my friends at Crime Stoppers and the Police Foundation for all the good they do.

Two years ago I ran a contest on my Web site. The prize: the winner would appear as a character in my next book. Seems a long time ago, but we do have a winner. His name is Anthony Price. He's a Welsh butler now living on the north shore of Long Island. I interviewed Anthony, changed his name from Price to Pryce, and made up a family for him. Here he is, probably not as sinister as he would like to be.

I am deeply grateful for the friendship and help of Dorothy Harris, director of the Leslie Glass Foundation and perpetual reader and advisor, for being with me every step of the way. Dr. Rosemary Perez Foster of New York University's Ehrenkranz School of Social Work, and Dr. Linda Mills of New York University's School of Law have provided insight into the psychology of traumatized immigrants and the Orthodox community. Claudia Oberweger, C.S.W., C.A.S.A.C., has taught me a great deal about substance and alcohol abuse. Thanks to Nancy Yost and Audrey LaFehr, Woo fans in all seasons.

One

On May ninth, at three-thirty in the afternoon, two months after her eighteenth birthday, Tovah Schoenfeld was getting dressed for her wedding and living the last half hour of her life. She was in a downstairs room of Temple Shalom, near where the caterers were fussing over the last details of the reception and dinner to come. She was perspiring in her heavy bridal gown and very nervous.

To get her married, Tovah's father and mother had tried to make all her dreams come true. Thus she was wearing a Tang Ling gown of white satin covered with lace and seed pearls, unlike anything her friends had ever seen. Her dream had been for a sleeveless gown, something cut down below the hollow in her neck, but exposing skin was not allowed. So this dress was a waterfall that completely enveloped her. Folds of it tumbled down from her shoulders in a wide swath of puddling, snowy silk that weighed a ton and completely hid her beautiful figure.

A jewel neckline tightly encircled her neck. The dress had no waist, and the princess style nipped in only the slightest bit under her breasts so that hardly a curve could be detected. Tovah's arms were encased to the wrists, and her veil, not yet attached to her hair, was outrageously voluminous and would cover her from head to foot. For such modesty the price had been nearly ten thousand dollars. Kim, the fitter from Tang Ling who'd made the dress and personally sewn on every pearl by hand, had come all the way out to Riverdale to dress her.

Tovah was supposed to reign supreme on her wedding day, and her hair was being styled to be seen in public for the last time in her life. Tovah had long fair hair that curled naturally, and she didn't want to cover it. Her mother had bought her a natural-looking shetl for more than three thousand dollars and begged her to put on the wig when she and Schmuel were alone for a few minutes after the ceremony. But Tovah wanted to save it for tomorrow night, the first of the traditional seven postwedding dinners that friends were giving for them. Tovah and her mother were still arguing about the wearing of the wig when her familiar nausea took hold of her.

The crowded room was cluttered with hanging racks of gowns and dresses for now and later, hair dryers, makeup cases, tables with mirrors, combs, containers of hair spray. Tovah's mother, Suri, was in there, her grandmother, Bubba, three of her five sisters, a photographer, a hairdresser, and a makeup artist. The girls were noisy. Tovah's mother was scolding them for running around. Bubba was scolding her for scolding. There wasn't enough air, and Tovah was worried about doing the right thing. Tovah didn't really want to get married. Had she chosen the right boy? She hardly knew him, and he'd looked so young when she'd seen him a week ago. He was shorter than she was; she couldn't even wear real heels with her wedding dress. And he didn't have to shave. She hadn't seemed to notice this the few times they'd dated. She'd been so frightened she could barely look at him.

Wendy, the party planner, was giving her a funny look, and suddenly she was fainting in the heat of the room. She was sweating in the dress. Her mother was getting more irritable. That look crossed Suri's face:

Don't make trouble, Tovah. Don't get sick and have a headache. Don't act crazy.

"Kim, come in here," Wendy called out the door. "It's time to rock and roll."

Kim appeared at the door, smiling and bowing. "Everything all right, beautiful girl?" he asked. "Not worried anymore?"

Water filled Tovah's mouth. "Still worried," she whispered.

Suri and Bubba, in their own long gowns, both stopped yelling and exchanged looks. Surely, among the thousands of boys and girls matched up at the tender age of eighteen by their parents according to taste, disposition, and the financial worth of their parents, Tovah had to be about the most difficult. That was the story their rolling eyes told. Suri started scolding.

"Tovah, Schmuel and his family are here. The rabbi is waiting. Your father is waiting. You look beautiful; you're the luckiest bride in the world. It's time to get that veil on."

Tovah was white. But how could she be sure she was doing the right thing? The rule was you couldn't see or speak to your husband-to-be for a week before the wedding. Now she couldn't remember Schmuel's face or even recognize her own in the mirror in front of her. She'd never worn makeup before, just a little lipstick on their first date. Outside, she could hear people clinking glasses, talking loudly in the party room so extravagantly decorated. Guests who'd come from far away were already eating canapes and carrying on over the twenty varieties of roses and lilies in the centerpieces while they waited for the ceremony to start.

"Give her something sweet, a hard candy, quick." Bubba jockeyed for control.

"Beautiful girl, everyone is like this, nervous at first," Kim said softly.

Wendy grabbed Tovah's hands, chafed them. "Candy!" she commanded.

Suri pulled the wrapper off a lemon drop and stuffed it into Tovah's mouth. "There you go. Sweets for the sweet." She pushed the hairdresser out of the way. "Get out of the way, Penny. Give her some air. It's very hot in here."

"Penny, please step outside for a second. I'll get the veil on her." Wendy took over.

Then Tovah was on her feet. Wendy fluffed her hair and patted her on the back. Kim slid behind her and began fussing with the folds and the veil. While he worked, he murmured to Tovah as if she were a child, encouraging her and telling her she looked magnificent.

"Magnificent," Wendy agreed. "The best yet."

But something was wrong. Tovah was so numb she couldn't feel her feet moving her out of the room. She couldn't make real what was happening in the rabbi's study. She was aware of Schmuel, a skinny redheaded kid, dressed in a tuxedo that made him look more like a bar mitvah boy than a husband. He had blue eyes, too, chosen in part so they would have handsome, light-skinned children. His father was grinning. Her father too. The rest was a blank, the words, the signing of papers, the business being done. All she could feel was her cold sweat inside the magnificent dress. Why did she have to be the only girl in the world who didn't want to marry?

And then the business was done, and the rabbi ushered Schmuel and his mother and father out of his study. Tovah and her parents were following. Now she could hear the music. Her father was on one side of her. Her mother on the other. Each clutched one of her arms, almost holding her up. They began their walk. From the side door up the aisle of the women's section they came. The partition between the men's and women's sections had been removed so the whole congregation could see them: a magnificent trio, rich and beautiful. Tovah and her parents turned when they reached the back of the sanctuary, then headed for the center aisle that separated the men from the women.

There, the width of Tovah's dress prevented the parents and bride from walking abreast. Tovah's mother and father let go of her arms and moved down the aisle first. Because there were no flower girls, no ring bearer, no bridesmaids, Tovah walked alone. It was for this reason that her killer had a clear sight line of her. First her head, covered in lace and tulle, bobbed in the rifle's sights. All eyes were focused on her forward movement, not the empty lobby behind her where the doors were closed and no one was on guard in this safe, safe neighborhood. The bride's head was in the sights, then the cascade of silk falling from Tovah's shoulders. The shooter never shifted the rifle sights to the wall of men and boys in their black suits and skullcaps or the mass of women and children, agog at the richness of Tovah's gown. The people were all well fed and fat. So healthy and rich. Suddenly the barrel of the gun did shift to the crowd, but only for a moment. There was no choice but to fire. Even in five seconds it would be too late. Tovah would be surrounded. She'd be in front of the man with the black robes and white shawl, family on all sides. It would be too late.

No more pain in this life. Salvation was now. The short volley of shots came with a muffled sound. A kind of phumfping. The bullets slammed through the tulle and satin into Tovah's back. She pitched forward without uttering so much as a gurgle. A man in the first row jumped to help her up. At first no one guessed what had happened. It was so easy, so very easy. The bride went down, and it took almost a full minute for anyone to realize she'd been shot. The killer was out the door and gone before the screaming even started.

Two

Detective Sergeant April Woo fiddled with her chopsticks at a window table in Soong Fat's Best Noodle House on Main Street in Hushing, Queens. At four-fifteen on Sunday she was on a busman's holiday, doing a favor on her day off for her sister-cousin, Ching, who was neither a sister nor a cousin. Ching was the third daughter of her mother's friend, Mai Ma Dong, whom April had always called Auntie out of respect. She and Ching had known each other from birth, had shared the same crib, had played together as children, had stuffed themselves and yawned at countless family occasions, had stayed at each other's houses and been compared against each other enough by their highly competitive mothers to make them feel in equal measures the love and wrath of siblings.

Ching was very smart, had a business degree, and a great job at a stable Internet company. She was a rising star. If that wasn't enough to cause April's mother, Sai Yuan Woo, a serious loss of face in light of April's low-class work in law enforcement, Ching was getting married in two weeks to Matthew Tan, against whom April's own Latino lover, Lieutenant Mike Sanchez, stood as a poisonous threat to the purity of all the Han peoples. Ching was getting married and April was doing her a favor. She'd agreed to talk to Matthew's friend, Gao Wan, in the heart of Queens on a Sunday because it was also a good place to go food shopping for her mother.

April hadn't guessed that this favor would involve listening to an endless, shaggy, Chinese dragon-riding tale (illegal entry into the United States) that was completely unbelievable not only because of the manner of the telling, but also the telling itself. Usually illegal aliens did not inform authorities of their plight.

"My mother was the daughter of a fisherman," he'd begun over an hour ago. "My father a river god." Then the sly, appraising smile to see how she'd take such a tall story.

Right then April had known this would take a while. She appraised Gao right back. Could be he was trying to make himself interesting. Could be he didn't know who his father was. In any case, she was no stranger to the most elaborate of superstitions. Along with her ancestors, April herself half believed that the skies were filled with ghosts and immortals flying around making mischief in far greater measure than good fortune. And she often thought her own mother was the most powerful Chinese mythical creature of all, a dragon capable of changing shape as well as anything else that got in her way. Secretly, she believed her Skinny Dragon Mother had invisible armor on her body made up of far more aggressive yang scales than kind and gentle yin ones. Further, April had no doubt that her mother carried the precious pearl of long (possibly everlasting) life in her mouth. The idea was terrifying to her.

"My mother drowned when her seducer took her to his river god home in the weeds. I was orphaned before birth," Gao went on cheerfully. "My uncle had a small cafe in a tourist town. I learned to cook there."

She watched his eyes as he described his teen years working in small restaurants and inris, then his horrific boat journey to the food mecca of the world, Hong Kong. He glossed over his years there, barely mentioning the sponsor who'd brought him here. And finally he hinted at a grave danger he faced from the gangsters who claimed they now owned his culinary gifts for life. April's classic oval face, almond eyes, and rosebud red lips remained neutral as she suppressed her irritation at this elaborate waste of her time.

She'd bet a month's salary that Gao's story was made up from beginning to end and that he had arrived not in the filthy hold of some Taiwanese tanker, but in the comfort of an American airliner, and no gangsters of any kind were after him.

April Woo might be an ABC—American-born Chinese—but she'd grown up in Chinatown and worked there in the Fifth Precinct on Elizabeth Street as a beat cop, then a detective for five years. She knew what was what. She listened to Gao's tall tale— as she did to all the others she heard in the course of her work—without letting any intelligence leak out of her eyes. She'd learned young to hide all emotion, to do her thinking behind the blank wall of a quiet, stupid-looking face. She let the man talk and talk, making the wheel go around. As they said in the Department, what goes around comes around. The way of Tao in the new world also happened to be the way of the NYPD. Eventually she'd learn why Ching had insisted on the meeting.

At nearly four-thirty she dropped her wrist under the table and glanced at her watch. Her

chico,

Lieutenant Mike Sanchez, commander of the Homicide Task Force, was working today, supervising a double homicide and suicide. This morning he'd told her he might not be free until late tonight, so she eyed the food on the table to give him later.

Gao Wan had cooked an impossibly big spread for her. It was late in the afternoon, and the feast was way too much even for a regularly scheduled meal. As her host, Gao wasn't eating a thing and, as honored guest, April could hardly pig out, either. Therefore, the fragrant steamed pork buns; wok-fried garlic tops; crisp scallion cakes; translucent Shanghai noodles, wide as a man's hand and swimming in spicy peanut sauce; clams with oyster sauce; mussels with fermented black beans; eggplant with garlic; shrimp balls;

shui mai;

and sweet/sour fish sat there cooling on their plates as April waited for Gao to say what he wanted from her.

Gao caught April's sidelong glance at the potential leftovers.

"Eat, eat, please," he urged for the fourteenth time. "You don't like?"

"Oh, I ate so much," April said politely. "I'm stuffed." She changed the subject. "How did you meet Matthew, by the way?" They were speaking in Cantonese.

She'd wondered about this because Matthew Tan, Gao's supposed "friend," was an ABC computer expert from California who'd met Ching Ma Dong at a convention in Tucson. Matthew's Chinese did not extend much beyond

kuai he!, xie xie,

and

cha. Drink up, thank you,

and

tea.

She'd be truly surprised if they'd ever met. April was spared having to wonder about it further by the ringing cell phone in her pocket. Caller ID said

private,

so she said, "Sergeant Woo."

"Querida,

where are you?" Mike's voice sounded tense.

"Flushing, what's up?"

"We've got a synagogue shooting up in Riverdale; looks bad...." His voice broke up.

"Mike?" April turned her body slightly away from Gao. "Riverdale where?"

"Burk ... aou."

"Give me an address."

"Independence Ave. Exit Nineteen on the HH Parkway. Copy?"

"Yeah, I copy."

She wanted to know how many people were hit. Was anybody dead? But his siren was wailing, the radio in his car was squawking, and he'd hung up anyway.

The cop's life. April looked regretfully at Gao and the leftovers she wasn't going to get. "Sorry," she murmured. "Something's come up. I have to go."

Three

B

y the time April reached the restaurant door less than five feet away, she'd already forgotten Gao Wan. Crime always suspended real life. Didn't matter if it was her day off, or if she was in the middle of some important family occasion, a funeral or a wedding. When a call came, she hit the road.

Outside the restaurant, a riot of Asia greeted her on the busy Sunday afternoon. Colorful dual-alphabet and language signs for everything from acupuncture and ice cream to hair cutting and gourmet tea all screamed for attention on storefronts and in upstairs windows. Dresses, East and West style, hung outside store windows and in doorways. Merchandise— gewgaws of every kind imported from dozens of countries—jammed small storefronts. On the sidewalk, street vendors hawked a kaleidoscope of familiar products for homesick arrivals: plastic sandals, embroidered silk shoes, toys from China, incense, paper money, herbal cures.

Almost dizzying was the abundance of stalls featuring seductive, dewy-looking vegetables, long beans, cabbage, bok choy, radish, bean sprouts, bitter melon, oranges, Asian apples and pears. Nestled in their ice beds were cockles and clams, whole fish, shrimps, squid, baskets of clawing crabs still very much alive.

The sidewalk was jammed with mothers and children and whole families taking the day to eat and buy food. Everything Asian. Asian faces and products everywhere mixed with the overriding aroma of sizzling garlic and ginger. It all created the impression of a metropolis anywhere but Main Street, USA.

It was only a short block to the parking garage, but one that was clogged by hordes of people who were not in a hurry. April broke into sweat, dampening the armholes of the lime green shell under her lemon suit jacket. She stepped off the curb and dodged into the street, her shoulder bag slamming her hip as she ran. A bicycle messenger swerved to miss her when she dashed through a changing light.

"Fuck you!" he yelled at her in the only words she knew in Korean.

And then she was in her aging white Le Baron and on the road. For the next fifteen minutes she raced northwest, not even trying to rouse Mike on his cell. Beat officers on patrol had radios to communicate with dispatchers and bosses. Some detective units had cell phones or beepers as well so they could call each other directly. April's private car had no radio, and Mike was busy. She'd have to wait.

In less than half an hour, she found the local street in Riverdale off the Henry Hudson Parkway. Two uniforms, both female, were standing in the intersection, directing traffic beside their angle-parked blue-and-white. April resisted the urge to query them about the incident. She showed her ID and the uniforms waved her through.

Down the street half a dozen blue-and-whites were double-parked in a line, some with their doors still open, as if their drivers had charged out. Four unmarked black sedans with shields in the windows indicated that brass had arrived. Two empty ambulances with their back doors closed stood like sentries. And all around was the pandemonium of deflated celebrants—all dressed up, bunched in groups outside their house of worship, stunned and angry, not yet released.

No matter how many times April walked out of everyday life into somebody's death chamber, into somebody's nightmare of grief, into a standoff of innocence against evil, it was always the same. It was a bungee jump into the hell where ghosts and devils lived. Right now there wasn't the frenzy and chaos of people in imminent danger, no hostages to save, no tense SWAT team taking positions against a sniper. No hovering choppers in the sky.

It looked as if a very big, expensive party had been interrupted. Maybe fifty or sixty elegantly dressed women, many of them stout and wearing flashy jewelry, their weight embraced by sparkly, bright-colored evening gowns. The same number of men in tuxedos with gold and red and bright blue cummerbunds and matching embroidered skullcaps. And there were children everywhere, dozens of them trying in vain to get some attention. Like the two sexes everywhere, the men and women had gathered in separate groups. The people were jittery and upset, but their attitude was marked by the kind of lassitude that comes when a tragedy has already taken place, when there's nothing left to do but go home. Whatever had occurred was over.

She parked the car, anxious to get there and do something.

"No more, no more, no more!" was the first thing she heard when she got out.

A woman was ranting, "Where were the police? This is not supposed to happen again."

Sweating heavily in her too-cheerful outfit, April felt her usual beginning-of-a-case sick feeling hit her hard. Headache, slight nausea. Hazard of the job. She was entering the fog of yin when everything was soft, hazy, unformed, and she had to keep her ears and eyes wide open to the sounds and sights around her. She could feel the presence of the immortals, the ghosts and demons churning in the air. It always made her a little queasy because she was an American and not supposed to believe in them. She shook them off and mapped the scene in her mind.

The synagogue was a two-story, rust-colored building flanked by blazing red azalea bushes over five feet tall and wide. It was adorned with only a Jewish star carved in stone over two sets of wide dark-wood doors. Down a short slope to the left, a parking lot was filled with enough prime product to make a used-car dealer a rich man. The street side of the lot was fronted by a four-foot evergreen fence, possibly to afford some shelter to the fortune sitting there. Behind the hedge, a number of valets in red jackets were smoking in a clump, not fetching cars for the women and children waiting for them.

April broke into a run when she heard snippets of angry conversation from the other side of the hedge. "Terrorists." "Israel." "Poor girl." The name "Tovah" and "car bomb."

Then she saw Mike. He was on the sidewalk in a crowd far left of the building. His head was bent toward a precinct commander April had seen around but whose name she didn't know, two other high-ranking uniformed brass whose faces she also recognized, half a dozen stout men in tuxedos, and a small man in a black clerical gown with a blood-besmirched shawl around his shoulders. Her sunny suit caught Mike's eye, and he waved her over.

"Sergeant Woo, this is Rabbi Levi, Mr. Schoenfeld, the bride's grandfather, Mr. Schoenfeld, the bride's uncle. Mr. Ribikoff, the groom's father."

April nodded and murmured "Sir" after each of their names. Her face was neutral, but her head pounded with the shock of personal bad luck. To have a wedding case just when her ahnost-sister Ching was getting married was not good, not good at all. An irrational, uncoplike fear clutched her.

The rabbi's voice chilled her further. "I want every car on the street checked for explosives. Get your dogs, your Geiger counters, I don't care what. And the cars in the lot. Every one. I don't want a single one of my people getting into a car that hasn't been tested for a bomb."

My people! Oh, here zve go.

Already the lines were being drawn. That always ruffled feathers.

Mike took April's arm and led her toward the building before Chief Avise, the stern-looking chief of detectives, had a chance to respond.

"Querida,

you made good time."

"The traffic wasn't too bad."

"You okay?" Mike's almond eyes, not so very different from April's own, caught everything. Now he struck at her anxiety with the love look that had changed her life.

When they'd first sat at adjoining desks in the Two-oh, he'd seemed a bully out for the trophy of getting her in bed when no one else she worked with could. Each time he'd brought her in on a case or horned in on one of hers, she'd thought he was trying to control her, mess with her career. She'd taken a strong position against a cop couple working together, but he'd wanted her front and center, both in his professional and private life. And Mike always got what he wanted. Despite her mother's dire predictions about ethnic incompatibility, he turned out to be her rock.

"I'm okay." She tilted her head to one side. He looked out of place there with his mustache, leather jacket, and cowboy boots, but good to her.

"Enlighten me," she said softly.

His expression didn't change, even though he knew it would affect her. "Somebody shot the bride."

"Oh." April felt the kick of the catastrophe fill her own body. To be a bride, charged with all the hope and excitement for a happy life. Every cliche April both longed for and feared herself. She didn't ask if the girl was dead. She gathered the girl was dead. What bad luck! Bad, bad luck for every spring bride in New York. She shivered for Ching and all the families who would be spooked, even though it had nothing to do with them.

"The groom?" she murmured, scanning the tearful crowd of wedding guests.

"No, he didn't do it. He was standing at the altar waiting for her."

"I meant shot." April tried breathing again.

"No, no. Two other people got hit. A twelve-year-old lost an ear. Another one took a bullet in the shoulder, both males. Looks like the shooter was only after the bride. Chief Avise told me the parents went nuts when the paramedics cut her dress open."

"She's gone?" April asked. Meaning from the scene.

"Oh, yeah. The girl arrived DOA at the hospital."

"Did both officers go with her?"

"One went with her. Two more arrived almost at the same time. They're still here."

They moved closer to the building. The tapes were already up, barring the way up the front walk, but April and Mike would have skirted the bloodstained area anyway. This was going to be a challenge for the CSU unit. A hundred and fifty people stampeded out of the building, leaving footprints of blood, and other bits of themselves behind—tears, eyelashes, fingerprints, lint, fiber, even sequins from the fancy ball gowns.

More car doors slammed. April and Mike turned to see two pairs of German shepherds with trainers arrive and get out of their cars. April knew one of them from a bomb scare at Kennedy a few years back. Actually, it had been an American carrier flying to Tel Aviv, now that she thought about it. The rabbi's wish for an examination of each and every car was coming true. This was going to take a while.

"Any leads?"

Mike shook his head. "The father insists his daughter never dated anyone else," Mike said. "So it's not a boyfriend/girlfriend thing."

"No date? Ever?" April was surprised.

"They're Orthodox. The boys and girls don't mingle. They don't even sit together. Men and women have separate sections here. The father also said no one outside the community knew her. She never left the four corners."

"The what?"

"That's what they call their neighborhood. I thought you knew Jews."

April rolled her eyes. What she knew about Jews could fill a teacup. A Chinese teacup. "What about the parents?" she asked.

"Wealthy. Very."

"I mean, do they leave the four corners?"

"It's a very tight group. I gather they don't mix socially outside, but Schoenfeld, the bride's father, has his business in Manhattan. He claims he has no enemies. He doesn't believe his daughter could be a target. He thinks the shooting was just an attempt to get everybody running to their cars so they'd be blown up in the parking lot."

"Imaginative theory. Is that why they're all in the parking lot now?"

Mike shrugged. Everybody knew by now that terrorists didn't do two-stage operations in a single site. They always made one hit with the hope of getting as many people as possible. They wouldn't shoot one female in a large crowd and leave all the men sitting there. What sense was there in that? Also, shooting and bombing were two different activities, involving different planning, psychology, and equipment. The shooting of a bride at a wedding had to be a personal thing. Somebody wanted her, and only her, not living happily ever after. April shivered.

Since Skinny Dragon Mother had told April in no uncertain terms that she'd rather see her only child dead on her wedding day than married to a non-

Chinese, that sort of thing felt quite reasonable to her in a totally crazy kind of way.

Police were everywhere now, moving people out of the parking lot, taking down names and statements, and starting to check the cars. Forty minutes from the 911 call, the CSU pulled up in two blue-and-white station wagons, and the investigation team was in place. It was a very high-profile case.

Four

L

ooks like we have all the big guns here. How ya doin', April, Mike." Captain Dan D'Amato, commander of the CSU unit, looked a lot like an actor playing a cop. Handsome guy, six feet tall, slim build. Styled hair, blue eyes that didn't miss a thing.

He strode up with Detective Vic Walters, known as the architect because he had a degree in the field and was their structure specialist. Not that any of the forty-two CSU detectives considered themselves specialists in only one area. They were evidence collectors, supposed to know everything. Some of them were accredited scientists, like Vic, who analyzed the items they found and drew the pictures for the DA and the juries. Others photographed, sketched, collected thousands of bits and pieces of paint and soil and fiber and dust and markings of all kinds, handwriting, impressions like footprints, tire marks—everything imaginable for the scientists to match.

"Dan, Vic." Mike held out his hand, and the three men shook. Vic greeted April in a similar fashion.

"Sergeant. Long time."

"Good to see you," April replied.

Handsome Dan looked her over. "Always good to work with the best," he said curtly. "Nice outfit," he added, awarding her a quick smile.

By the time April smiled back, he was already past the small-talk stage. "What do we got?" he asked.

Mike answered. "One homicide, two injuries, and a nightmare scene. Did you know it was a wedding party?" Mike pointed at the building. "A hundred and fifty people were seated in there. The wedding march was playing. Never been any trouble here, so there was no security—" He shrugged to shake off some tension.

"How many people went in? You?" Dan interrupted before he could go on.

Mike held his hands out, palms up. "Not me. I'm just relaying the pertinent here. Girl was shot in the back. First officers on the scene went in. Chaos in there. Panic. EMS went in to work on her. A lot of people were moving around, trying to get out...."

"Okay, been there, done this." He was impatient to go in and look.

"You want to take a minute to hear, or not?"

"Yeah, yeah, I'll hear."

"It's better to have the picture." Mike combed the ends of his mustache.

"Okay, I know. Go ahead, give me the picture."

"The shooter must have come in after everybody was inside. But who knows, maybe he was one of them and ducked out. The lobby is a closed space. Our guess is he stood there for some time, several minutes at least, waiting for the bride to walk down the aisle. She was late." Mike glanced at April. It was all news to her. She had nothing to add.

"As I said, he shot her just before she reached the altar. Maybe you'll get something off the doors."

Captain D'Amato nodded seriously. "Definitely. We could get lucky. Magic is coming. Vic will stay. Who knows?" Now he shrugged. They were all big shruggers.

April stood on the bottom step and let her thoughts wander over to the parking lot. Hundreds of people to interview in this case. She liked that. Somebody was going to know, and that individual who knew would tell her. Somebody always knew. A brother, a sister, a drinking buddy, a friend. There were very few killers who didn't scratch the itch to brag.

This crowd in the parking lot was a particular windfall. A hundred and fifty guests well acquainted with the bride and groom. It wasn't going to be a mystery, she assured herself. They'd nail the killer fast, and the community would heal.

April was absorbed in the bubble of her own thoughts. It was clear to her that this was no random killing, a child caught in the cross fire of a political act. More likely the shooter was someone close to the bride and her family, not a stranger. It had to be someone, unlike herself, who would fit in, not be noticeable. Someone who knew the way in and out, what moment to strike. Someone very, very close to her.

Lost in her speculations, April suddenly realized that she was staring at a woman about her age wearing a pink-and-light-blue, large flower-print dress with long sleeves, many tiny tucks in the bodice, and a skirt that fell to her ankles. Around her neck was a thick collar of gold, and her hair was as black and thick as April's. The hair looked like a lacquered helmet, hard against the soft flesh of her face and the soft colors of the dress. There was something a little perplexing about it. The hair got April's attention.

Skinny Dragon Mother was always complaining about her hair getting thinner and thinner, losing weight with the years as she was. Skinny's white scalp showed through; she hated that. Soon she would have only three, four hairs on her head, Skinny grumbled. It seemed like every week she bought more herbal medicine from a fake doctor to make her hair grow thicker.

April slowly realized the hair of the woman in the parking lot was a wig, and one that happened to be not so different from the wigs strippers wore in bare bars. A big and brassy wig. Short but wide and high, and definitely sassy. April was further astonished that this woman's wig wasn't the only one. Lots of women were wearing them. She wondered if there was some cancer epidemic among them, and they'd all had chemotherapy.

The woman's chin jutted defensively at April's scrutiny. April turned away, sorry that curiosity and surprise had shown in her face. She didn't want to be disrespectful. Forget the wigs. She had a job to do. She made a big show of searching in her purse for her notebook. She had long been in the habit of taking extensive notes. Every stage, every interview in an investigation, required reports called DD-5s. Some people found the writing a chore, but April was addicted to correctly documenting information so that later she could recover her process accurately. This was a requirement of the job, but she was even more thorough than most. She had private notebooks for her own private thoughts.

On the operative level she worked for the DA and the court case that came down the road. Her particular investigative nightmare was not the squirmy stuff, finding the bodies, even touching them when she had to—although Chinese feared the ghosts of corpses and avoided contact with them as much possible. April's nightmare was more along the line of many months, even years later, having some defense lawyer cause her to lose face by losing the case in front of the DA and the jury. So she wrote everything down, even the tiny details of crucial first impressions that often got lost in an avalanche of information that came later when the parameters of an investigation invariably widened.

Now she wrote down her time of arrival, who and what vehicles had been on the scene. It was Sunday. What was the significance of Sunday? The daughter of restaurant workers herself, she considered not only the cops on the scene, and the guests, but also the staff. How much of a staff did this temple have? Who was here today? Maybe some individual who worked here had a grudge. She knew that Jews hired non-Jews to work on the Sabbath, turn on and off the lights, lock and unlock the doors, clean up. What about them?

Mike was still talking. "The other two injured individuals are both males. Possibly by bullets that went through the victim. This guy knew what he was doing. Hey, Ken, Artie, how ya doin'."

Detective Kenneth Souter, a short, dark-haired, broad-chested, mustached thirty-eight-year-old with an intense expression showed up with Arthur Hayle, known as Bacon because of his large size, not his views or habits. Each carried two heavy black suitcases that contained the equipment. Ken particularly had received a lot of attention after he'd lifted a partial thumbprint from the back of a bench in Central Park. That partial was entered in the computer bank in Albany, and a match popped up of a guy who'd been arrested and printed for turnstile jumping. The print led to the arrest of the killer of four individuals in unconnected cases. Zero tolerance for quality-of -life crimes had led to printing everyone arrested for anything. It worked wonders to shake real criminals out of the trees and enraged everyone else printed for the small stuff.

Mike finished his account. The commander and three CSU detectives immediately donned Tyvek overalls that covered them from head to foot and went into the building to evaluate the scene before a team of two would get down to work.

The brass had finished their look-see and were getting ready to leave. One caught Mike's eye to call him over. A few minutes later, they were heading for their cars, and Mike jerked his chin at April.

She moved to his side, and he touched her hand, sending a shiver up her arm. "The rabbi has some concerns. The chief wants you to work with him until Poppy gets here," he said.

"Okay." April's face was unreadable, but she was surprised. Inspector Poppy Bellaqua was commander of the Hate Crimes Unit.

Mike gazed over her shoulder. "You're on it. We'll get organized later."

Usually April loved getting out of her Midtown North precinct detective unit for a high-profile case, but this one felt like a curse leveled at her. A young bride murdered in front of her husband-to-be, her parents, brothers and sisters, and friends. All reason rejected a crime so cruel. She didn't want anyone she loved to be tainted by it. Superstition! She shook off the selfish reaction and obeyed the command to work with the rabbi.

"I'm Sergeant Woo. I'll be working on the case with Lieutenant Sanchez," she introduced herself a minute later.

Rabbi Levi was a small, ascetic-looking man in black robes. He did not look at her or respond.

"Anything you need, any questions you have about procedure, I'll do my best to help," she continued politely.

"Are you the liaison they were talking about?" He tilted his head as if the wind, not a person, were speaking to him.

"For now, yes. Anything you need, you can run it by me and I'll see what can be done."

At this the rabbi separated himself from the other men and gestured with a finger for April to follow at a short distance.

"I do have some issues I told the officer—I don't know your ranks. Not the precinct commander. The heavy ... I think he was a chief." He waved his hand impatiently at his memory, letting the identification go. "Can we talk in my study?"

"No, we can't go in. Crime Scene is not finished with the building yet," April said apologetically.

"What kind of investigation is this?" he demanded.

"It's routine," she assured him.

"The killer came into the lobby, that's all. He shot through the door. I was there. Everybody was there. What routine could take the police into my study?" he asked softly.

"I don't know that they will go into your study, Rabbi Levi. It's more a question of preserving the integrity of the crime scene."

"Is that a cruel joke?"

"Sir?"

"You're telling me about integrity?"

April rephrased. "They don't want people walking there, touching things until they're finished with it."

"Everybody walked there," he said angrily.

"Yes, sir."

"Well, there is a side entrance. Can I use that?"

"As soon as they say so."

"And how long will that be? We have evening prayers... . The caterers want to clean up."

"The reception was here?"

"Yes, the party is always here."

Ah. Then there were caterers, too. "I understand. Is there a particular time you need to pray, and if necessary is there another place you could pray tonight? This will take several hours at least." Maybe several days. She didn't want to tell him that now.

"How many hours?"

"It's a large space. Sometimes it takes as long as five hours. Sometimes longer."

"Why so long?"

"The Crime Scene Unit is very thorough. It can make a difference later."

"What kind of difference? The harm's already been done." Then he threw up his hands in another gesture of impatient compliance and changed the subject.

"That chief told me there is no way to prevent an autopsy."

"No, it's the law with homicides."

He managed to keep his eyes focused inward. "No way to oppose it?"

"No. I'm sorry. I know how difficult it is. If it's any solace to you, the autopsy may help us find Tovah's killer. I know you want that as much as we do."

"We have our laws, too."

"I understand."

"Our laws say she must never be alone. She must be cared for by us. Her father and mother want to stay with her. Her body must not be defiled. We must have her back today. We will bury her tomorrow."

April blinked. These were impossible requests.

"And we need her gown tomorrow," he said firmly.

April didn't want to query the need for the gown and lose face by betraying her ignorance of unfamiliar customs. She pressed her lips together. The other things could be negotiated, but the gown happened to be evidence in a homicide. From the bullet holes, exact calculations could be made about the movement of the victim and the people around her when the shots were fired. The path of the bullets could determine where the shooter stood and even his height. Sometimes the prosecution even dressed a mannequin in the victim's clothes to make some point to the jury. A wedding dress would have profound emotional impact in a courtroom. They'd never get it.

"We need the gown tomorrow," Rabbi Levi insisted. "No compromises. And the veil, too."

A sudden fear that they intended to bury the poor girl in her bloody wedding dress brought April's fist to her lips. Such profound cruelty would be devastating for Tovah's ghost. No Chinese ghost would ever be coaxed into a peaceful afterlife with such a gruesome eternal reminder of her violent end.

"And we need any other items of her clothing that were stained with her blood." The rabbi punched the air with his finger to show he meant it. The rabbi's shawl was bloody. Did that count, too? April wondered.

She felt sick. She worked for the dead but had no authority to negotiate for peace in their afterlives. The Jews clearly had a different idea from the Chinese of how their dead should be treated. What could she say? Of course they would release the body as soon as they could, possibly as early as tonight if an autopsy could be done immediately. Forensic work had to be done on the dress, however. Sometimes it took weeks, and she'd have to check that with the DA's office. Items that pertained to a crime were always kept in a secure location, introduced into evidence in court, and not released until after a trial. If a suspect wasn't apprehended, they remained in custody indefinitely. She didn't know if returning any forensic evidence before trial would be possible.

"I'll see what I can do," she promised. "Is this a religious requirement?"

"Yes, absolute requirement."

"I can contact the scientists at the lab to let them know about your time constraints," she said quickly. "But this may be an issue for the DA's office."

"The girl has to be buried with everything that came out of her. We have to have all of her there. Anything else would dishonor her memory. Can I go into my study now?"

"I'll ask," April promised.

Five

T

hree hours later April finished talking with the five valets. She'd taken down names and counted forty-two women wearing wigs. She'd spoken to ten snuffling, wig-wearing women in some detail. All ten were convinced the tragedy was another Arab plot. When questioned a little more deeply on the subject, they denied any possibility of the family's doing business or being acquainted with any Arabs, so their reasoning about how the Schoenfelds might have been singled out for an Arab attack remained unclear. She did not feel it was appropriate to ask about the wigs.

As time passed and cars were swept for bombs, the guests from the wedding party went home. When all were finally gone, April and Mike marched up the steps to the tall front doors of the synagogue and entered the crime scene for the first time. Inside the doors, a carpeted lobby about ten feet deep spread across the width of the building. April slowly absorbed the site. A clump of dark stains on the light brown Berber carpet in front of the two middle inner doors suggested that blood from the victims had been carried out this far on people's shoes, or else the shooter had somehow cut himself.

To the left, well away from the bloodstains on the main entrance path, Ken and Vic had made a little "trash pile" of their used materials so that items they'd brought to the scene wouldn't be confused with articles that had been there before they arrived. Empty film packs, blood-testing materials, used gloves, and soda cans sat on a newspaper blanket in the corner, indicating the CSU team had finished out here.

To the right of the third pair of doors the lobby angled into a hallway like a backward L, wide enough to serve as a landing at the top of a sweeping circular staircase that wound back down to the ground floor. Mike chose these side doors near the stairs for his point of entry to the sanctuary.

"Okay to come in?" he called out.

"Who is it?" Vic Walters called, as if he didn't know.

"Sanchez and Woo," Mike said, smiling a little at April.

"You guys sound like some kind of fusion law firm. Yeah. But come around the other side and don't touch anything in my grid. I haven't done over there yet."

Close to Mike, April breathed in the signature cologne that wafted deliciously from his shirt and jacket and was distracted for a moment. The spicy scent that April's father complained was a hundred times too sweet for a man used to set April's teeth on edge. A few times she'd tried to identify it at perfume counters. The aroma that permeated Mike was a deeper brew than bay rum, complex, but not as musky as patchouli. It evoked orange-lemon-jasmine-cinnabar-scented summer beaches, sex, and coconut-fruity drinks. None of which had Mike personally experienced growing up on 234th Street in the Bronx, which happened to be only a few miles east of where they were at the moment.

"Uh-oh. This is going to be a marathon," she said.

"Looks like." He touched her arm as if she needed reminding to step around the flagged areas on the floor. She knew he just liked touching her.

Through the far left doors they entered both the least and most adorned house of worship April had ever seen. Compared to the show of fancy cars outside, this synagogue was not fancy. Like a younger version of the Lower East Side turn-of-the-century immigrant synagogues, this could not be favorably compared to the uptown temples April had seen in Manhattan. Its auditorium had plain, even dingy walls, unexceptional windows, standard wooden pews, and a raised stage. On the stage were eight armchairs covered with shabby needlepoint, a wooden altar, an ark that April knew housed their Bible (written in the Hebrew alphabet and rolled into a scroll). She'd had a case in the Fifth Precinct years ago involving the burglary of an old man who sold them, so she knew what they were. Above the ark was a Jewish star and the flickering light they called the eternal light. This much about Judaism April knew.

What had been added today for the wedding was a tentlike structure over the altar that was completely covered with real leaves and many varieties of flowers. Even the four poles that supported the canopy were twined with white lilies and the palest pink and white roses. An amazing display. For April, however, white was the color of death. A Chinese wedding might have a bride in white, but only for the ceremony and only to satisfy Western convention. Every other decoration would be in the lucky colors of red and gold. Though Mike liked to tease her with bride magazines full of white dresses, April herself secretly hoped that if the day ever came for her she would wear lucky red.

In the temple, the magnificent white flower bower alone was not so shocking. What was shocking were the signs of flight. Articles of clothes left behind, ribbon-and-cinnamon-and-white bouquets on stands knocked every which way. Lilies and roses crushed underfoot and mixed with blood. It was a pitiful sight, but probably more fragrant than any crime scene in New York history. Vic and Ken were working furiously to record it all. Strobes of light flashed as Vic meticulously set his measuring instruments and shot photo after photo to document exactly how the sanctuary had been set up and looked. His suitcase contained a number of expensive cameras and lenses for different needs, as well as a video cam, which he was not using at the moment. Ken was nowhere in sight.

"Hey, April, you want to get us some food?" Vic called out.

April let annoyance roll off her back. "How long are you going to be? The rabbi needs to clean up. The men want to pray here before sundown."

Vic lowered the camera to check his watch. "Sundown? That's about an hour from now... no way-Look at the size of this place. We're not half done. You know that."

"Do you have an estimate? They start prayers here at five in the morning.

That

going to be okay?" She knew that was not going to be okay either.

Big sigh. "Oh, that's nearly ten hours from now. We've never gone twelve on a case."

"We'll be long gone by then. We're not staying here all night!" Ken called out.

"Don't mind him. We're on an eighteen-hour tour. We can stay on it. If the place is in continuous use, this is going to be our only shot." Vic had a reputation for being a pain in the ass on the subject of leaving before he was satisfied he had everything he could possibly get from a scene.

"A lot of physics to work out here, and physics takes time. How about some of that food downstairs? Can you arrange that?" Vic was back on the food.

April shook her head. They always wanted the females on the job to play mother. She outranked him and wasn't buying into it. Not that she was paranoid, or a stickler. She pointed at the froth of white stuffed under a pew down the center aisle, then caught her breath. It was a long swath of veil, glinting diamonds and pearls in the soft light. The wedding veil.

"Got anything interesting so far?" Mike asked.

"You won't believe this. I lifted a left ear print from the door out there." It was Ken's excited voice.

"An ear? Who do you think you're kidding?" April scoffed, still a little put off by the food request. Not that she was paranoid about it. Uh-uh. She trotted down the aisle to find him, saw his white-covered knees and shoes, and stood up again.

"Don't laugh. We're talking

ear print.

We're talking

second

ear print in history. I lifted it with superglue fumes."

"What's it good for?" April couldn't help teasing a little.

'Ybu don't get it, do you?"

"Yes, we get it; you lifted an ear," Mike said, laughing with her.

"Okay, hotshots, how many body parts are absolutely unique?"

Mike didn't want to play. He took a little tour of the space, careful where he stepped and keeping his hands to himself.

"Okay, April, you don't know this; you should."

April answered. "Fine, I'll bite. Teeth." She counted one. "Fingerprints, footprints. DNA. Thaf s four. What is this, anyway, school?"

"That's not all. What else?"

"Totally unique?" April glanced at Mike, now half an auditorium away. "Eyes?" she guessed.

Ken's voice thundered back. "Retina, yeah, that's five. What else?"

"Okay—ear, I got it. Ear." April thought about it. Okay, she'd concede. If they had the ear of a guy, they had something. She perked up a little. They had an ear. Great.

"And hps. I'll give you five of the seven. You didn't get ear and lips. That's a C in my book. You should do some forensic work."

"Lips. You can always change your lips with a little collagen. You don't happen to have a lip print, too?"

"You got a fucking C, Sarge. Don't make fun."

"Hey, watch the language around the lady," Mike said. Always the gentleman.

"You want an educated guess? Here's what we're thinking. The shooter has his head pressed against the door. He doesn't want to open the door even a crack until the victim is walking down the aisle, all eyes on her. The outside doors are closed. Maybe he's assembling his rifle."

Vic snapped more shots.

"You have something on the weapon?" Mike asked.

"Uh-huh," Ken said. "There was a discharged shell casing on the floor under where I lifted the ear print. It must have rolled back against the door, and he missed it when he picked up the others." His voice was cautiously optimistic. "Maybe we'll get a print from the casing. We got a couple dozen prints and partials from that door alone. Couple of partial palm prints. We're doing the whole damn place. It's a nightmare, but it may pay off later if the guy was ever in here."

Ken was wedged into the narrow space between two pews, about three-quarters of the way down the middle aisle. On his knees with his head down, he was carefully digging at a hole in the blood-spattered wood in front of him.

"Got it," he said suddenly. Clumsy in the tight space, he wiggled his bulk to his feet and displayed his trophy on the end of calipers, viewing it with his flashlight before bagging it in a paper bag and labeling it with all the appropriate numbers.

"Might be a hollow-point, and looks like there's something in it," he reported. "I hope it's not just a splinter of wood. Right here, I picked up a piece of the second victim's ear." He pointed, sniffed, took off his gloves, threw them aside, wiped his nose, donned a new pair of gloves.

April swallowed uneasily, thinking about the piece of ear, the ear print. What was this, an ear case?

Nothing to a Chinese was without some cosmic significance.

"Any idea how many shots were fired?" Vic slid across a row of pews to peer into the bag at the hollow in the crushed piece of lead. "Looks like fiber to me. Hmmm."

"We asked the witnesses what they heard. Not even the pop of a silencer. They said it was like a movie. The music was playing; the bride fell down," Mike said, taking his turn to look at what was left of the crushed bullet.

"You know, I'm wondering if there were two shooters." Vic returned to his photographing.

"How do you figure that?"

"The first shot hit her in the back. But another one hit her in the side of the face."

"She must have twisted as she fell. ..." April murmured.

"Twisted

toward

the first shot, not away? Uh-uh."

April shrugged. They'd have to figure the path of shots from the dress and body. But none of them had seen the body. Until they saw Tovah's injuries for themselves, everything was speculation. The physics of the thing reminded her of the rabbi's asking for the return of the wedding gown tomorrow. This made her nervous. Everything had to be measured and reconstructed. These things took time. Vic worked with strings of different lengths to map the projectiles of the bullets.

No, no, the shots couldn't have come from two sources, she thought. More than three people would have been hit. Odds were it was one shooter. If they were lucky, he'd bled, or left some DNA somewhere.

Who knew if an ear print would be admissible evidence in court. She'd have to ask the DA.

She shook her head at the bad luck of a Yankees game. None of the five valets who'd parked the cars had seen anyone come out of the building before the screaming started. They had been listening to a baseball game, drinking sodas, and smoking under the beach umbrella set up for them. They'd not been aware of anything wrong until people started screaming and running out.

"Do you think the perp could have joined the crowd?" Mike echoed April's thought.

"What are the odds of that?"

"Why not? He could have stashed the gun and run down the stairs," Ken said.

Vic put down the camera and scanned the ceiling.

"What?" April asked.

"I don't know. Seems pretty clear to me the shots came from the lobby. We have the one bullet here. I got one from the pillar over there. Three people were hit. You don't know how many he got with each shot. Always look up," he murmured.

"You going to need a ladder?" April asked.

"Yeah, I'm going to need a ladder."

And this was going to take all night, she thought.

She left the three men talking and returned to the lobby to contemplate the door where the shooter might have left his signature ear. Ken had used tape and fumes, not powder, to lift the ear and many fingerprints from the door. There was nothing to see on it now.

She went down the winding stairs, scrutinizing the steps for blood or evidence. She didn't see anything big enough to catch her attention on the carpet, but Vic would no doubt comb it for fibers. A piece of gum was stuck under the banister. She didn't touch it. At the bottom of the stairs, she caught her breath at a sudden display of wealth. Palm trees and fruit trees with real oranges on them marked the passage from the ho-hum to the extraordinary.

Not broken down yet because the caterers had not been allowed back inside, the party room still had its fifteen tables set with lace tablecloths, silver flatware and silver goblets, crystal glasses, floral arrangements so striking in their appearance it was impossible to imagine anyone thinking them up.

Tovah and Schmuel

was printed on white ribbons that wrapped the party favors. Blue Tiffany boxes were on the plates in front of many seats. Dishes full of candies were scattered around. On one of the many stations where food had been set out, a large ice sculpture of a bridal couple was slowly melting.

Sad, very sad. A few minutes later, April found the dressing room with the gowns hanging on a rolling coatrack, the table scattered with some hairpins, a comb and brush, containers of makeup, a mirror, and other odds and ends, including a honey blond wig on a white Styrofoam head. The head was labeled

Tovah Ribikoff.

Another wig. April caught her breath.

Six

A

t eight-thirty April was on the road, heading back to Queens. At this hour the ground was in total darkness, the sky was her favorite deep blue, still backlit just a little by the dying sun, and the traffic wasn't too bad going south. Her mood was queasy, queasy. Mike was attending the autopsy without her. She didn't want to admit that she was glad. She had these groceries to take home. Then she was meeting Mike at his place. She felt unsettled. With Ching's wedding coming up, her family would be upset about the murder. Every bride in New York would be.

Her cell phone rang. With one hand on the wheel she fumbled around in her annoying purse that just couldn't stay organized with its numerous pairs of rubber gloves, her private notebooks and the Department-issue notebooks called Rosarios, her all-important address book, powder, lipstick, blush, hand cream, tissues, pens, .38 Chief's Special. Ah, right at the bottom she found the precious StarTAC. She flipped it open on the fourth ring.

"Sergeant Woo," she said, hoping it was Mike even though they'd parted only a few minutes ago.

"Hi, it's Ching. What's up?"

"Ching, how are you?" April said cautiously.

"You sound weird. Where are you?" Ching demanded.

"Oh, on the road."

"Working?"

"Yeah. What's going on?"

"Just wondering how it went with Gao. Am I a brilliant genius or what?"

April didn't answer. She knew Ching was a brilliant genius, but not why in this instance. She sighed as her lane suddenly slowed nearly to a stop.

"April, you

did

have lunch with Gao Wan, didn't you?" came the perky, happy voice of the one person in the world she didn't want to alarm right now.

"Oh, yeah. Sorry, it's been a long day." Seemed like a month.

"Nice guy, huh?" Ching prompted.

"Very nice," April said. Neutral.

"You don't have to do anything for him. I was just thinking he might be useful to you."

April sighed again. How could the off-the-boat be useful to her? People had such funny ideas. "I'm sorry, Ching. It's been one of those days."

"Oh, God. Don't make me feel guilty. I thought you were on your day off."

"I was, but something came up."

"A murder like the Wendy's?" Ching said, a little breathless now because the cop stuff always scared her to death. "The Wendy's" was a seven-person homicide and the worst case April had ever seen.

"No! No, no, nothing like that," she said hastily.

"What, then?"

"Nothing to worry about. Just a police matter." The lane opened up, and she hit the gas.

"You all right?" Ching sounded worried.

"Yes, of course. Talk to me. I'm sorry about Gao."

April hit a dead zone and the connection broke. Nothing came out of her phone but a reminder of a phantom ear print. She tossed the phone back in her bag, vowing to call Ching back when she got home.

Then she was back on ears, reviewing what she knew about prints. Not a whole lot. Skin on the hands and soles of the feet had their distinctive swirls and ridges but no oil glands, which meant the telltale marks often invisible to the naked eye that were left behind on certain, but not all, surfaces by "sweaty" palms and fingers were in fact 98.5 to 99.5 percent secreted water. The thing was, not everybody secreted equally. Some people didn't secrete enough moisture to leave prints, and cold hands didn't secrete either. April pondered the issue of secreting ears. Ken had fumed the moisture from this ear almost from the air itself. Impressive, but hardly conclusive.

The ear in question turned out to be located at such a low height, less than five feet, that Ken had to admit in the end that it might have come from a child, hiding out from the service. Or alternatively, the shooter was a young boy, or a girl. This was another idea that reason resisted. Yet April knew well enough that kids could kill. Or the shooter could have been hunched down, crouched, even kneeling. He said it was a very attractive ear, pretty as a sea-shell.

At ten to nine she pulled up in front of her personal albatross, the Woo family house in Astoria, Queens. Two stories high and red brick, it was a cookie-cutter copy of the five best, but all distinctly modest, houses on the block. Her rooms were on the second floor. The living room faced a small backyard where the tiny French poodle called Dim Sum ran around and did her business. April's small bedroom, large enough for a chair, a bureau, and a single bed, faced the street. Separating the two rooms was a tiny kitchen where she never cooked. Her full bathroom was well stocked with flowery bath-and-body products.

From the outside the only notable feature of the house was a bit of decoration over the windows that had been installed by the previous owners. Shaped like the NBC logo, the "awnings" were useless. They provided no shade against the southern exposure of the morning sun and caught rain with all the noise of a tin roof in the tropics. The fans were purely for show, as was April's signature on the mortgage, since she had debt but no title to the property.

Every time she looked at it, she was reminded that at the time of purchase she had not been included in the selection or the location of the house. She hadn't even known the transaction was in the works until she was pressured into the double bondage of using her savings for the down payment and assuming the mortgage so that her parents would be secure in their old age. At just twenty-one and new in the cops, she'd assumed a thirty-year debt. Nearly ten years later, she'd learned a lot. She'd discovered that many grown children could say no to their parents in bigger ways than choosing a career they didn't like. But somehow she wasn't turning out to be one of them. She'd fallen in love with Mike, but was afraid to tell him about the debt hanging over her head. Even worse, she was afraid of her mother's curse should she marry him. Her fears and her family loyalty made her ten thousand times a jerk, for no one was happy with her lack of decisive action. Her least of all

With these thoughts in her head again, she slowed the car. The pathway of small red-for-luck azalea bushes that her father had planted on each side of the walk two years ago hadn't bloomed the year of their planting. Four days ago when April had last seen them, they'd still been covered with buds. Now they were finally, spectacularly in flower and every bit as delightful as he had predicted. Sighing, she parked in her usual space in front of the house and killed the engine.

Skinny Dragon Mother, who must have been waiting for her by the window, came running out before she'd opened the car door.

"Ayeeai, ayeeai! You so late," she screamed. "Nothing for dinner." Skinny was wearing one of her mismatched outfits. Plaid pants, flowered shirt, knitted vest, all of different colors, as if she'd picked them up willy-nilly from a Goodwill pile at a disaster site.

Chinese people could be very noisy, or very quiet. Either way could be trouble. Tonight was noisy. "Where you been?" the dragon screamed.

"Hi, Ma," April said, trying to think of a story that would not spook her.

"You said five o'clock. Now nine o'clock." Sai Yuan Woo ran toward the car, sniffing at her daughter as if she were a dog that had gotten into the garbage.

"I'm really sorry, Ma. Something came up."

"Today day off," Skinny grumbled.

"I know." April opened the back doors and started gathering the plastic bags of staples she'd been careful to purchase before her meeting with Gao, just in case she didn't feel like it later. Lucky it hadn't been too hot a day and she hadn't bought a squirming fish that her mother would definitely reject now. Everything else looked okay.

"Bu hao. Murder every day." Skinny correctly intuited murder even though April had not touched the corpse.

"I know, Ma." How many times could she say she was sorry? One time for every leaf in all the trees in the neighborhood. One time for every star in the sky. Ten billion times, more than the national debt, would not be enough.

"Look what I got you, Ma. Fresh litchis, baby bok choy."

"Murder more important than sick old mother?"

"No, Ma. You're the most important thing in the whole world." April crossed her fingers.

Skinny scoffed at the bags stuffed with two pounds of adorable baby bok choy only two inches long, and the fat bean sprouts, better even than the ones from Chinatown. Enough to eat for a week and still make the pickled vegetables she loved.

"If you so important, how come not on TV?"

There was no way to win with Skinny. If she was on TV, her mother thought she looked bad. Which always was true. April trotted an armful of groceries into the house. In the kitchen she found her father sitting at the chipped linoleum table she kept trying to replace. By Ja Fa Woo's side was the ubiquitous bottle of Remy Martin cognac that had replaced his former choice of Johnnie Walker Black Label. He was reading one of the four Chinese newspapers with opposing political views that came out every day. He was smoking a cigarette. A Chinese program was playing on cable TV. He was enjoying his day off with the poodle on his lap.

April's father was maybe five feet tall on a good day and had absolutely no flesh on his bones. Despite his profession as a chef, Ja Fa Woo was a walking skeleton, and he was bald except for a few stray hairs scattered over the top of his head. He wore glasses with big black frames and had a wide, toothy grin that revealed two bicuspids of twenty-two-carat Hong Kong gold. Although they were not the worst of her father's collection of features and characteristics, those gold teeth embarrassed April mightily at promotions and on other ceremonial occasions when police brass were present.

When she came into the kitchen, both the dog and her father came to life. The dog barked and Ja Fa Woo jumped up to give his only child what passed for a hug. He was a little drunk, but not so bad that he staggered. The ashtray was full of butts. She worried that he drank too much and was rotting his liver, that he'd fall down one night in the subway, that he'd get lung cancer from smoking all those cigarettes. All of the above.

"Beautiful girl," he said, lighting up now. "What want for dinner?"

With both Mother and Father Woo standing there so hopeful they'd have her at least for the night, she was at a complete loss for the right words to tell them she loved them a lot, really. But something had come up, and she had to leave.

Seven

O

n Monday at six-ten, when the cloudless sky outside his twenty-second-floor Forest Hills apartment was already brightly heralding the new day, Lieutenant Mike Sanchez was awakened by a throbbing erection. In his dream his body was pressed against April's. She was wearing a bikini, not much of one, yellow like her pantsuit. They were lying together, baking in the heat of a Mexican beach. Maybe a Caribbean beach. Hawaiian. Somewhere far away. He was caressing her flat tummy, the bare skin on her neck, her shoulders, her arms. Hugging her tight. Kissing her. April's skin was so smooth that he never got tired of stroking and admiring it. Smoother than any skin he'd ever felt before, and he'd felt plenty.

"Alpha hydroxy is the secret," she told him.

"Ha-ha." The very idea broke him up every time.

His mother, Maria Sanchez, complained that

la china

was too skinny and didn't eat enough (wasn't a Catholic), but her body was all roundness and generosity to Mike. Although she was not Catholic, April's spirit was just right, too. She was gutsy and tough, but not hard. How could he explain it to his mother, his priest? April's virtue came from doing right, not from fear of hell. Totally unusual where he came from.

Another difference was that her emotions didn't erupt when she was angry. She didn't get loud and hysterical like the other girls he'd known. She didn't try to eat him up from the inside or own him. How could he explain it? Oh, he throbbed with longing. April aroused so much feeling in him that he wanted to merge with her, be so completely together that their thoughts and bodies became one. This passion for her made him crazy because she would not m?»rry him. And marriage was on his mind, on his mother's mind.

Mike knew his feelings for his lover, the woman he wanted as his wife, were both nuts and not nuts at all. Nuts because they were so intense, beyond anything he'd felt for anyone in his life. And not nuts because every day he was handed death on a platter. And every day his mother nagged at him to get married.

"Almost thirty-seven,

un adulto, casate, dame ninos,"

Maria Sanchez complained.

Give me some babies!

But the only babies Mike saw were dead newborns stuffed in garbage cans. Young children burned to death in fires. Girls of all ages raped and strangled. College students mugged and drowned in the rivers. Almost every day some loon dreamed up an unimaginable horror to perpetrate on innocent humans. The World Trade Towers. How could a person absorb such horror? Mike often wondered how God could let such terrible things happen.

And he worried that he could never have a good life when this life he led of death every day destroyed so many marriages, including his own. His first wife had left him many years ago, then died of leukemia in Mexico. Mike was beginning to think April would never marry him and save him from that terrible failure.

But in his dream, he and April had escaped. They'd jumped all the hurdles. The snipers had missed them at their own wedding, and finally they were on the honeymoon seashore, set for life. He was breathing the tea rose smell of her, licking pina colada from her lips, and she was murmuring in his ear, urging him to hurry up... hurry up and come inside her. Oh, he was throbbing.

"Querida,"

he moaned.

"Hurry up, lover boy. It's your turn in the bathroom." It was April's voice, but not in any dream.

He smelled coffee, opened his eyes, realized that he was hugging a pillow. And she was standing with a cup in her hand, laughing at him. He reached out to grab her.

"Chico.

Time to get up!"

"Uh-uh." He didn't want to come back from heaven. He rolled over, turning his back on her.

"Fine." She walked around the bed, then put the mug down beside his nose.

He muttered, grumbled. Bleary-eyed and deflating quickly, he sat up. As in his dream he was naked. But unlike his dream, he was not married, and not on a beach. He was in his queen-size bed, twisted up in the blue sheets that April had bought and he liked so much. The sun was orange in the sky, and all the tragic events of yesterday crashed back on him in a single arid breaker.

"Que hora?"

he asked.

"Six-fifteen."

"Mierda."

He peered at her through a haze of sleep and groaned again. April was already dressed. She was wearing a light cotton wrap skirt, navy blue, and over it a slightly brighter blue jacket, smartly tailored, but loose enough to conceal the 9mm Glock she wore holstered at her waist. The jacket wasn't buttoned now. Her blouse was white. She was a very traditional girl, wearing a brand-new outfit for the first time. The skirt was not too long, not too short. Her face was fresh; her hair was newly blow-dried. She looked good. The woman he loved was a beauty.

Cdmo no?

Peering down at him, she refrained from scolding. He always had more trouble getting up in the morning than she did. This morning he looked so wasted that she took pity on him. She sat on the bed and began to rub the stiffness out of his neck and shoulders.

"Ohhh. Ohhh. Nice." He let his head roll around in her hands for about two seconds. Then, since she was now close enough to grab, he tried kissing her to get her to lie down again. This was not so easy to accomplish with an expert in karate who also wore a gun.

"Stop it and tell me about last night."

End of neck rubbing. End of nice sitting on the bed. She was back on her feet, fussing with the duvet and pillows that had fallen on the floor.

"We had a nice party, you and I. Come back."

"Too late." She threw a pillow at his head, then another, tidying up for the day.

He sighed and reached for the coffee, secretly pleased. She'd made coffee just the way he liked it, thick and sweet. He swallowed gratefully. "Angel from heaven, when are we getting married?"

"I had a dream about that girl last night," April said, pulhng up the sheet to cover his lap. Modesty.

He laughed. "Was the dream a special message for you,

queridal"

As his dream had been for him.

"Probably. Why didn't you want to talk about it last night when you got home?" she accused.

"Where did you learn to make such good coffee,

queridal"

He couldn't help changing the subject, wanting the credit for having taught her himself. The case could wait three seconds, just three.

"I worried all night. You got home late, wouldn't talk." The sound of her complaining like her mother was enough to make him laugh some more. She wouldn't let up.

"Thank you for the coffee," he said.

April dipped her head in acknowledgment. She didn't drink coffee in the morning. Hot water with lemon. Or just hot water. He was grateful for her making the effort for him and gave up a little information.

"Tovah Schoenfeld had a malformation in her brain. That was about it." The autopsy on the young bride had given Mike a squirmy feeling.

Before Dr. Gloss, the ME, peeled back Tovah's scalp and sawed off the top half of her skull as if it were nothing more than the cap of a boiled egg, the girl had been lovely, a real stunner. It had been creepy to discover that had she lived, she might have died prematurely anyway.

"Really, what kind of malformation?" April asked.

"A little thing, like an aneurysm. It could have popped at any time. Weird, huh?"

"But that wasn't the COD?" April sat on the bed again and took his hand because she could see that he felt as bad as she did. Shit, a bride! This case was personally upsetting to both of them.

Mike shook his head. "You know how Gloss likes coming up with the special touches. He thought the brain thing was an interesting anomaly, since it might have caused her a problem at a later date. She'd had her appendix out. She wasn't pregnant." He swallowed the last of the coffee. "She was still a virgin. That's about it."

He gave her hand a last squeeze, then reached for his watch on the table and snapped it on his wrist. His three seconds of normal life were over. Now he was charged. His business was to catch a killer. It was his primary focus, and he was ready to go.

"That's one theory out the window." April took the empty cup to the kitchen.

"Boyfriend/girlfriend? Well, maybe."

"Would a spurned lover kill a virgin?"

"Maybe," Mike said again, disappearing into the bathroom.

"How many hits? What about the gun?" April fired questions at him through the door.

"I'll tell you in the car," he called out.

He stood under the hot water in the shower, scrubbing with the rough green seaweed soap April said purified his skin and increased his qi. He didn't know what his qi was. He suspected it was one of those things he had enough of already. In any case, he didn't think it was stimulated by laceration. He preferred soothing sensations, so he finished up quickly, jumped out, shaved, trimmed the ends of his lush mustache, and doused himself in aftershave. Then he put his clothes ori in a hurry because April always complained it took him longer than a girl to choose his outfits. He changed his tie only three times, preoccupied by plans for the investigation. He was determined to clear this awful case in a day, two at the most.

Eight

W

endy Lotte's phone started ringing off the hook before seven. The phone was so persistent it felt as if the whole world was out to get her, not just a client this time. She pulled her beautiful duvet over her head and lay in bed, sniffing the stale scent of fear that emanated from all the pores in her body. Seven rings, then silence when voice messaging picked up. Then it started again. Wendy was frightened. Who else could it be but that detective again? This might be her busy season, but please. No one called this early.

She knew enough about cops to be afraid. She didn't want to go through another ordeal. Her life was good now. She'd stayed out of trouble all these years. But yesterday she almost lost it when the detective with the mustache started pushing her around. The bastard wouldn't let her leave, wouldn't believe her story and let her just go home, even though she was a pro at lying. He even searched her

car.

It freaked her out.

All night in a seriously inebriated state Wendy worried about the questions people would ask today. She worried about having to attend the funeral. Just the thought of a second funeral in less than a year made her puke. She puked a lot during the night and didn't sleep at all. Hanging over the cool porcelain bowl in her bathroom, she agonized over her past and future and gagged in equal proportions.

This morning she was so dizzy she couldn't get up. She writhed under the covers, trying to calm down and overcome the worst hangover she'd had since high school. She'd dreamed this exact thing so many times. Only weeks from the big four-oh, she was the only person in the world who wasn't being celebrated, wasn't getting a party, wasn't married with children.

How many brides had she married over the years? A generation of them. Literally hundreds of times she'd worked through every single reception thing: from the lists, to the invitations, to the gowns, to the organization of registries in the appropriate stores, the categorizing of gifts when they arrived, the thank-you notes. The prewedding dinners, often with their impossible blending of bride-and-groom ill-fitting families. The tantrums over flowers and ballrooms and bands. The bridesmaids who got so drunk they couldn't stand up (and worse). The seating plans, the timing of everything so it all went off each time just like a NASA space shot. Now she was doing the sweet sixteens and the debutante parties for the children of couples whose weddings she'd worked on twenty years ago. Some of them were on their second marriages. From sea to shining sea Wendy had walked in brides' shoes through every single phase of it. Every phase but one. She was almost forty years old and she hadn't pulled it off herself.

Practically all her life she'd dreamed of being a bride—the center of attention—feted and endured in all her demands and jitters. A big diamond sparkling on her finger. She'd dreamed every detail, the dress, the room, the flowers. Other girls found men—or their mothers found them—why not her? Sometimes, when she had to smile for hours and hours at other girls' weddings, it was so painful that her face felt like a pinched nerve.

Tovah Schoenfeld's death was a cautionary tale in a way, because she didn't deserve to be a wife. She didn't want to be a wife. The marriage would have been a flop, another fake. Wendy was sorry about the resulting chaos, though. The last thing she needed was to be questioned, to attend the funeral, to have her name in the newspapers.

Wendy had a firm rule: She never drank on the job. Never! A bottle of leftover celebratory Veuve Clicquot

might

find its way into her large carryall after an event and she

might

sip it slowly at home. But last night after police had checked her bag for the gun that had murdered poor Tovah, she'd been so upset that she'd slipped back into the party room and taken two bottles. Two were all she'd been able to rescue. No gifts had been on display, and she didn't want the trinkets in the little Tiffany boxes. There had been nothing else to rescue. It turned out that the Schoen-felds, who looked as if they were throwing money all over the place, were actually careful to the extreme about getting ripped off. The expensive gifts had always been elsewhere.

The phone rang seven times and was silent, seven times and was silent. Wendy's selfish assistant, Lori, had taken a vacation so there was no one to answer the phones and be her buffer against the world.

Wendy hated having no cover. Now she had to do a second event by herself. It wasn't fair. Reluctantly, she turned her thoughts to the wedding of Prudence Hay, who happened to be another undeserving, spoiled brat with a mother who doted on her. Wendy had no choice but to get a move on. With an aching head, she dragged herself out of bed, put Tovah behind her and Prudence to the fore.

Nine

T

he Long Island Expressway was already jammed by the time Mike and April hit the road at seven.

"You mind telling me where we're going?" April asked.

"One PP."

"Oh, yeah. I thought we were going to the Bronx."

"We're meeting Inspector Bellaqua first. Know her?"

"Not personally," April said.

"Good woman."

Satisfied for the moment, April pulled out her cell phone and called into Midtown North to get her messages. Then she roused her boss, Lieutenant Iriarte, on his cell while he was on the road driving in from his home in Westchester. He yelled at her for about ten minutes.

'Trouble?" Mike asked as soon as she finished the call.

"The usual bullshit." She dialed Woody Baum, her protege and sometime driver, and talked to him for a while. When she finished that call she was quiet.

"Quenda,

you okay?" Mike asked after a minute or two.

Her response was a Chinese silence he didn't try to decipher. He took the Midtown Tunnel, then the

FDR down to the bridge exit. The traffic wasn't too bad. At eight-oh-nine, he flashed his gold at the patrol officer guarding the triangle around headquarters. The uniform waved them through the many barriers into the fortress of One Police Plaza, otherwise known as the puzzle palace. A number of department vehicles, black Crown Victorias, blue-and-white cruisers, and vans were parked inside the triangle. There was no place for Mike's ancient Camaro. At the ramp leading down to the garage in the building, he flashed his shield again, then drove in and found a parking place far from the elevators. From the garage they went straight up on a slow elevator that filled on the way. Mike said hello to a few people with whom he'd worked over the years, but he and April stood well apart and didn't speak to each other.

Everybody knew the elevators had ears, and theirs was a situation ripe for gossip. On the eleventh floor they got off and turned right. The Hate Crimes Unit was on the southwest corridor, last door on the left.

Bias Unit

read the outdated sign on the frosted glass-topped door. Mike went in first.

The area was set up just like dozens of other special units in the building. The main room was an open space crammed with desks and computers, filing cabinets, a few narrow lockers. On the far end a bank of windows faced downtown, where the sun was streaking in from Long Island. Narrow pathways between islands of four pushed-together desks barely allowed navigation through the room. Mike followed the path to the inspector's office. Bellaqua had a corner office with windows on two sides, a bookcase, an attractive desk, a small circular conference table, all the accou ferments of a modern business executive. She was on the phone. As soon as she saw Mike, she finished up and waved him in.

"Hey, Mike. Right on time," she said. "Some night last night, huh?"

"Yes, it was. Inspector, this is Sergeant April Woo from Midtown North." Mike turned to April, who was right behind him.

"My old precinct. I've heard about you, April. Is Iriarte still in command over there?" Inspector Bel-laqua was one of the higher-ranking women in the Department. She was about April's height, with a fuller, womanly figure and a round, youthful face. Dark hair, sharp eyes. Fresh lipstick, well applied and not too red. She regarded April with interest.

"Yes, ma'am." April responded with a no-frills answer. She always took things real slow with new people.

"Let's see, Arturo took over from me, what, four years ago?" Bellaqua mused.

"More." Mike jerked up his chin with a little smile. "The place was never the same after you left."

"Thanks." Bellaqua went on reminiscing. "That's right, almost four and a half now. We had some good times, busy place. How are you dom' over there, April?" The inspector gave April a long, speculative look, trying to read her.

"Good," April replied, flat as a pancake.

"It's a good command. You want some coffee, doughnuts?" Unperturbed, Bellaqua moved right on.

Hospitality at NYPD meant offering the official food of the department any time of day. Twenty-four/seven, doughnuts were highly acceptable.

"I sent out for a box. What kind do you like?" she asked.

"Thanks, we like them all," Mike said.

"Coffee?"

"Sure, that would be great," Mike said.

"Take a seat, please." The inspector rose. She was wearing a black pantsuit. She'd been up all night with the Schoenfeld family, but didn't look sleep-deprived. As she left the room, April assessed her back.

"Good woman. You should have seen her working with those people last night. A real inspiration." Mike took a seat on a new-looking chair in front of the

desk.

"Good, we need some inspiration," April murmured.

When the inspector returned, her expression had changed. She was through with nice. Now came management. The Detective Bureau consisted of more than six thousand people working in precincts and special units all over the city, also in the puzzle palace of headquarters. In big cases like this detectives were pulled in from different units to work together, often displacing the precinct detectives on whose turf the crime occurred. The rivalry between precinct detectives and special-units detectives was well known. Everybody jockeyed to keep important information in his own court, to be the one to break the case and get the credit for himself and his own unit.

"Tovah Schoenfeld's body was released early this morning. Mike, you know this. I've never seen a victim move through the system so fast." Bellaqua put her index finger against her cheek and tapped. "I'm telling you, it was a very emotional scene at the ME's office. You know how it can get."

"What happened?" April asked.

"The family refused to leave without the body. The family staged a sit-in. They didn't want to leave the body alone. They also tried to get the gown released to bury her in." Bellaqua shook her head.

"How did they do on that?" April asked.

"An offer of a possible forty-eight hours was made. I don't know how real that was/' Mike jumped in.

"Well, Jimmy might have been able to do the ballistics work in forty-eight, but the DA's office would have taken a stand that the dress was direct evidence in the case. When it was put to them that way, the family decided not to delay the funeral. They're putting her in the ground this morning. They've requested security at the funeral," Bellaqua said. "And they're getting a lot of it. The cemetery is in Queens."

"What's the rush?" April asked.

"They're very religious. They wanted her in the ground as soon as possible." The inspector lifted a shoulder.

You know how it is.

"So what's the muscle?"

"Money. Riverdale. Real estate. Take your pick. You don't think ultra-Orthodox when you think of the area, do you?"

April glanced at Mike. He smiled. No one had to tell Mike about Riverdale. He'd grown up there, just a block or two from the Five-oh. But he let his superior talk.

"It's always been an enclave, classy. But pretty much of a mixed neighborhood. You got your pockets of Hasidic Jews in Brooklyn, in Morningside Heights. Upstate, of course, out in Port Washington, in Queens. Riverdale's Orthodox population has been growing lately. It's upscale, quiet, and, most important for them, geographically a confined space."

Mike nodded thoughtfully, as if he'd never heard this before, as if Poppy Bellaqua, who'd worked with him on several occasions, didn't know perfectly well where he came from.

"This neighborhood is bounded by the Henry Hudson Parkway and the Hudson River, from as far south as Spuyten Duyvil and up to the Two-forties. The synagogue is up on the parkway, Independence Avenue. You were there yesterday. Yes, thank you."

A very good-looking Latina, young, with about a ton of curly black hair and a red jacket, came in carrying a loaded cardboard tray.

"Right here." Bellaqua patted a space on her desk. "Detective Linda Perez, Sergeant Woo, Lieutenant Sanchez," she did the honors.

"Nice to know you." Detective Perez put the tray down. Three coffees in blue mugs, white-lettered with

Bias Unit,

a bakery box of assorted Dunkin' Donuts. A container of milk and a pile of sugar packets, both regular and Sweet 'n Low. Napkins, white plastic spoons.

The inspector examined it quickly. "Thank you, Linda. Go ahead, take," to Mike and April.

She grabbed a mug herself, passed on the container of milk, the sugars, and the doughnuts.

Dieting,

April thought. "You got everything you need here, Mike, April?" she asked.

Mike reached for a jelly doughnut. April hesitated. Bellaqua stared at her until she selected one, then waited for them to flavor their coffees before she went on.

"Okay, so they own a lot of real estate in the area and have become something of a political force out there." The inspector paused to swallow some black coffee, grimacing only a little.

"This is what we know so far. They're Orthodox. Tovah just celebrated her eighteenth birthday two months ago. According to the custom, this was an arranged marriage." Bellaqua paused for effect.

"Wow." April put down her half-eaten doughnut, glanced at Mike again.

"Not an everyday situation, right?" Bellaqua tapped her cheek.

"I can see how it would be a parent's dream," Mike tossed back, clearly referring to April's parents.

"Not many can pull it off these days, though. And something went very wrong here. Who knows, this may be a family thing. It may not be. We're going to have to use our common sense here, go at it several ways. Frankly, they pulled me in on this; but I don't see the profile of a hate crime. I'm sure you've talked about this between you. April, you were on the scene yesterday, any preliminary thoughts?"

"I'm not an expert on bias cases," April murmured. She was way behind the curve on this.

"Well, it may not be a bias case. We'll break it down this way. My people will take the bias angle. We'll canvass the neighborhood. Mike, you and April can start with the families and see what we can come up with there. Finish your doughnut," she directed April.

April took another bite.

Her hostess duties satisfied, Bellaqua went on. "You may want to do some research on customs and practices. But here's the general background the way I understand it. This community is real tight. They keep the boys and girls apart. Marry them young before they have a chance to fool around. They don't go for sex out of marriage. This was confirmed in the prelim report. Tovah was a virgin."

This Mike had reported. Always fast with the sex details. April took out her notebook and pen.

"So the way it works is the mothers do the matching themselves when the kids graduate high school. The girls' mothers put out the word their daughters are looking and what they're looking for. The boys' mothers show interest. Both sides have lists of potential candidates. Let me tell you, the background checks are very detailed. If a boy gets into trouble being rebellious at camp or not saying his prayers, it goes on his record that he's a delinquent and it affects his marriage prospects. Same with the girls. They're watched and gossiped about." Bellaqua did not smile. This was no joke.

"It's very serious business to them and well organized. The kids all have blood tests but don't know what's up until their mothers tell them there's somebody for them to meet. Tovah and Schmuel went through this process two months ago and became engaged almost immediately. Maybe someone was against the match." Bellaqua shrugged.

"Had they dated anyone else before they met?" April asked.

"Schmuel apparently rejected two candidates before he met Tovah. That means he went out with each one once and told his mother no. Tovah had never been out with a boy before. That's their claim."

"But surely she knew other boys from school...."

"She went to a girls' school, did not go to camp." Bellaqua shrugged again. "The Schoenfelds live in a house on Alderbrook Road, very nice. I've got a background check going on them."

"Let's return to the bias question for a moment," Mike said. "Has there been any anti-Semitic activity in the area? Any property complaints?" He licked a dusting of powdered sugar off his fingers.

The inspector nodded. "Nothing stands out here. In a typical hate crime profile there would be plenty of signs, cases of property damage. Swastikas, slashed tires, broken windows, that kind of thing. Perpetrators of hate crimes use terrorist tactics to isolate people, make them afraid to go out. Have another, please." Bellaqua waved at the doughnuts.

"No, no, thanks. One was great."

"We had a case of a hit-and-run not too long ago. African-American girl was hit by a van filled with Hasidic schoolboys out in Brooklyn. At first it looked like a prejudice thing. Unfortunately, the girl died of her injuries." Bellaqua shook her head, then went on.

"We investigated. Turns out the van didn't stop to help her because it was against their code of ethics to touch or have eye contact with a non-family member female. You may have heard about it. The case inspired a lot of anti-Semitic feeling. We had complaints from both sides about harassment, assault, and property damage arising from it. What we're talking about in Riverdale is not that extreme. It's an Orthodox community that doesn't mix, but is not ultra-Orthodox like the Hasidim. You'll see. Anything else?"

April thawed a little. "Thanks for breakfast."

"Oh, and you'll be working out of the Five-oh. They'll take the statements of the various vendors, caterers, etc. You'll want to work closely with them.

Follow up on everything. Could be somebody who serviced the wedding. You never know. Push it. Keep in touch. We've got to nail this guy fast." The interview was over.

Ten

B

y a little after ten April and Mike were on the Major Deegan, heading up to the Bronx. Mike found his voice and was finally talking freely. He told April about the Schoenfelds' agonized vigil at the medical examiner's office during Tovah's autopsy. He described his own feelings seeing Tovah on the autopsy table in her bloody wedding gown that spilled off the metal table onto the floor. She was photographed clothed to show where the bullets had entered her body through her clothing, then naked with the bullet holes in her back. The dress had been difficult for the attendants to manage because there was so much of it. In spots the blood was still wet on the heavy silk and lace. The gown was a ruin, slashed open from neck to knee. But the small holes in the back, with a minimal amount of blood edging them, showed clearly where on her body the bullets had entered. Only from the back, it turned out. Her front and back were photographed and then the attendants removed all of her articles of clothing and bagged them. The bridal gown, white lace bra and panties, white panty hose.

Six people were in the cold room, all suited up from head to toe, all wearing respirators, nobody making small talk. April knew Mike was usually cool in autopsies no matter how frightful the condition of the corpse. She was surprised to hear him admit that this time he'd almost puked.

"A hollow-point chewed up her heart and lungs like hamburger meat," he said, then got quiet thinking about it.

Not that he and April hadn't seen these horrors many times before. Hollow-point bullets left small holes where they entered the body, and exploded on impact like bursting bombs once they got inside. Usually they lodged in their victims and didn't exit at all. Hollow-points caused the worst damage and were the bullets cops feared most from guns out on the street. For the second time April was glad she hadn't been there to see Tovah's body, as Mike described it. She didn't need any more nightmares, but neither did he. She tried to divert him.

"He must have used a light rifle, something that can easily be broken down," she suggested.

"Yeah. Maybe a nine-shot with a short barrel," Mike agreed.

"Not so easy to hide in a space like that. Anybody could have seen him at any moment."

"Maybe somebody did see him but doesn't know

it."

April nodded. Sometimes you don't see what you're not expecting to see.

"If this had happened at a church, right now I'd be thinking the shooter might have been somebody wearing a liturgical robe, maybe disguised as a nun, a priest, an altar boy. That would play. But I saw only two people wearing robes, the rabbi and the cantor," Mike went on.

April remembered them. One big and fat, one small and thin.

"Or it could have been a woman. There were a lot of women in long gowns," he added.

April considered the idea of a female sniper in an evening gown shooting a bride down in a synagogue full of people. "Gee, I don't know about that." It wasn't exactly a female kind of crime.

"It could have been a man dressed as a woman. Lot of wigs there, too."

She nodded, liking that better. "There you go."

She put her face out the car window into the wind and breathed the spring air. It wasn't good that both of them were so spooked by this homicide. Maybe Mike was troubled because it occurred near his old home, a section of the Bronx that crime-wise had always been quiet. In his day it had been staunchly middle- and upper-middle-class. Now a lot of newcomers to the city lived there. The neighborhood had changed from white-collar to blue-collar. Even Mike's mother, Maria Sanchez, who'd been a newcomer herself thirty years ago, complained about the immigrants who flocked to the buildings on Broadway. But still, the Five-oh was one of the safest precincts in the city. Crime-wise, it was sleepy.

The Deegan cut through the Bronx to Westchester. Apartment buildings were rooted in the hills on the east and west sides of the highway. The older ones were ten stories high, square, unrelieved red brick, one after another laddered in the hills. The newer ones were twenty, thirty stories high, towering on the bluffs.

April turned her thoughts to the funeral. They'd go. They'd see who was there saying good-bye.

Killers frequently went to the funerals of their victims. If the funeral was at one, they'd go over to the house and talk with Tovah's family in the late afternoon, around five. She didn't relish the prospect of interviewing the family. This was going to be a long day, but what day wasn't? Mike interrupted her timing calculations.

"I think we should get married. What do you say,

cjuerida

? How about we finally set a date?" he asked suddenly.

"Let's not compete with Ching's wedding."

Or a homicide,

she thought.

"How is that competing?" He put his foot on the gas, reacting to the evasion.

"There's just a lot going on right now, that's all." April shook her head; he'd driven right out of her comfort zone. And now he was speeding.

"There's always a lot going on," he countered.

"What's the sudden hurry,

chicol"

she said softly.

Don't push me at a bad time.

"The hurry is, I have a bad feeling."

"About what?" Her heart spiked as he changed lanes too fast. He was definitely pissed at her. She hated that, too.

"About this bride shooting. About being together but not married. Not being married feels wrong now, like bad luck. That's it. It feels like bad luck." He turned to look at her as he said it, and his expression was fierce, showing that he really meant it.

Bad luck!

April felt the kick of those two highly charged words. Right in the gut where she was most vulnerable. Only yesterday he'd been content being together on any basis. Now he was thinking it was bad luck. That hurt, because April's constant nagging worry was that worse luck would result from their marrying. So far she'd been able to avert really bad luck by nonaction. Now he was suggesting nonaction itself was dangerous.

"1 think you're in a funky mood/' she said.

"And I think you have a problem, April."

Oh , now she had a problem. This cold reading sent her feelings careening from hurt, to anger, to anxiety about truth and untruth and what she had to do about it. The feelings vied for supremacy.

She

had a problem! He didn't understand the complexities of her life.

He

was her problem.

She wanted to lash out at him but had to contain herself. It wouldn't be fair to make a scene in his home territory. From the second he exited the highway and crossed the overpass to Broadway he always got funny, thinking his childhood was looking him in the eye. There, the skating rink from his vouth. It was now a Loehmann's. There, where it used to be the Dale movie theater, now a bank. There, the Stella D'oro factory with the air still percolating with baking anisette and almond cookies. And Pauline's was still a grungy bar down the block from the precinct. McDonald's was still next door. Stop and Shop was across Broadway. Van Cortlandt Park a few blocks down. Two hundred thirty-eighth Street, still the end of the line for the Broadway El. And his mother within hailing distance. She couldn't say a word with his mother's ghost so close by.

April simmered on low as Mike parked outside the Five-oh, not a bad house, as precincts went. The blue building was three stories high and had been built within the last twenty years. But it was far from her home base back in Manhattan.

Mike got out arid stretched.

"Todo bien, quenda?"

he asked, as if he didn't know perfectly well that he'd ruined her day and she couldn't do a thing about it.

"Oh, yeah, everything's just hunky." April didn't lash out. She pulled herself out of the car, smoothed the wrinkles out of her blue skirt, adjusted her gun, her jacket, her brains. And she jerked herself back into line. There was no place for private feelings in police work. Anyway, she always got butterflies in a house not her own where she didn't know the personalities and no one wanted them there. She was far from hunky right now, but what else was new?

Cool as could be after laying his cards squarely on the table, Mike clipped on his ID and headed for the detective squad. It was in the usual spot on the second floor, had the usual components of holding cell, locker room with table for eating, a TV. Six desks that were home for twelve detectives, now scrambling because they hadn't had a homicide in quite a while. Suddenly smiling broadly as a man coming home, Mike raised his hand in salute to the worried-looking sergeant on command, and the guy dipped his head in acknowledgment.

"Hey, Sanchez, look at the big shot now. A lieutenant, hogging all the good cases. How ya doin'?" Sergeant Hollis held out his hand, oozing friendship.

"Hey, shut up. Let me think here," Hollis barked at the crowd in the room. No one shut up or moved out of the way, so he had to push through them.

Hollis was a man just over forty, five-ten, medium build, thinning ginger hair, light dusting of freckles across his nose and cheeks, blue eyes, a mustache almost as lush as Mike's own. A man in a quiet house, used to an easy life. He was wearing jeans and a Mickey Mouse tie.

"Jimmy, good to see you." Mike clasped the hand and made quick introductions. "This is Sergeant April Woo. Jimmy was my boss when I came in. April worked with me in the Two-oh."

Hollis nodded. "I know. Another hotshot. I've seen your picture, both you guys. How's Dev, see much of him these days?"

"From time to time." Mike's smile turned a little chilly. His old partner was a big boozer, always got him in trouble.

"This is a bad one," Jimmy said, getting right down to the case. "We're lucky on the other injuries. You hear about the kid in the hospital?"

"Anything new?" Mike asked.

"Twelve-year-old lost his ear. Could have been worse. The other one, bullet went right through him. He was lucky."

Right through him?

April thought.

Another hollozv-point went through someone?

That was rare.

"Any ideas?" Mike asked.

"Not yet. Everybody in the victim's family was in front of her in plain view. So was her intended and all his family. That excludes family members. We've been in contact with the wedding planner. She has a guest list and vendor list."

April glanced at Mike. They had a wedding planner.

Hollis smiled. "This is Riverdale," he told her. "They have somebody to do everything. The wedding planner, a woman called Wendy Lotte, has all the details, knows everybody's name and everybody's story. She was there the whole time. She can fill you in on personalities. Doesn't have an alibi for the moment of the shooting. Claims she was in the ladies' room." He arched an eyebrow. "I'm still talking to her."

"Really? She a suspect?" April found the idea downright weird. It wasn't a woman's crime.

"I don't know. She gives me a creepy feeling, what can I say?" He lifted a shoulder. "Nobody else stands

out."

April frowned. "Motive, background check?" "Oh, yeah, working on both." "Okay, what about the community, any anti-Semitic stuff going on here?" Mike's question.

"Inspector Bellaqua's been all over me about this." Hollis flipped the Mickey Mouse tie up and down. "Nothing. Believe me, we'd be on it if there were anything in it."

Mike glanced around at the crowded space and the noisy detectives all pretending to ignore them. "Where do you want to set up the charts? Let's figure out how wide we have to go on this." "Yeah, no problem." They were down to business.

Eleven

A

nthony Pryce shot the cuffs in his summer uniform and adjusted his chauffeur's hat. He was a tall, slender Welshman, good-looking, with intelligent blue eyes and sandy hair that straggled over his collar in a London-late-Beatles-era shag. His gray uniform was just as smart as the wing collar, striped trousers, and tails that he wore when butlering in the house. He finished prepping himself for the ride to Manhattan and went down the back stairs to see to the cars. He couldn't stop thinking about that bride on the news, shot dead in the Bronx just before she took her vows. He moved through his chores, feeling an odd tingle of excitement about the possibilities such a murder presented: If someone wanted revenge on any bride in New York, now was the time to get it. It was all about knowing everything.

Anthony had worked on the Hay North Shore estate for eleven years, ever since his twenty-first birthday. And there was nothing he did not know. He was the butler, the driver, the cook when only Hays pater and mater were at home. He was the horticultural expert who directed the gardener in all his endeavors, the official head of the kitchen garden, and expert in all areas of social protocol. Along with Wendy Lotte, he was practically in charge of Prudence's wedding.

Anthony's knowledge of the family's doings extended to the secret places where in jealous rages Alfred, the toy poodle, tinkled against the priceless antiques. He knew that Lucinda Hay hid packages of forbidden foods like Twinkies and Ding Dongs along with acceptable ones in her room and nibbled between her hearty breakfast, tea, luncheon, tea, cocktails, and dinner. Mrs. Hay had once been a great beauty as well as a socialite, Anthony was proud of telling his friends. Now, alas, she had run to fat.

Anthony also knew that Terence senior was very rich and loved the bottle at least as much as his wife, and Terence junior was following in his father's footsteps, with hardly a sober moment since his junior year in boarding school, despite a sterling record at Yale and Harvard Law School. The Irish legacy. He now worked at the venerable firm of Hathaway, Harold, and Dean on Wall Street. What Anthony knew about Prudence was everything. And more than anything in the world, he hated the idea of her marrying that creep Thomas, an unexciting boiled potato of a young man, who knew nothing about her at all. And cared less. Anthony hated the idea, but it was fixed. It was done. There was nothing he could do about it. He couldn't very well marry her himself, now, could he?

In the kitchen he slowed only for a second to check on Nora, the Peruvian housekeeper. She didn't speak a word of English, but she kept going all day long like one of those bunnies in TV commercials. She liked to clean and he didn't, so from morning 'til night he had her dusting and polishing silver and the brass lamps and stair rails in the circular staircase. He had her cleaning the crystal in the three great room chandeliers and all the bowls in the bathrooms. Right now she was doing the flatware, humming happily.

"Hasta la vista,

Nora," he said as he charged out the back door.

"Que la via bien,"

she replied. She knew he was on his way to the city and would be back by dinnertime.

On the mud porch, Anthony checked to see if the dry cleaner had been by yet to pick up Mr. Hay's suits and the quilt from the master bedroom that needed cleaning. Pampers had been by for the pickup. He checked his watch, ten-oh-two. Getting on the road between rush hours was both an art and a science. Anthony took personally long waits in halted traffic. Even now, when he hated what the family was doing to his girl—his Pru—he still couldn't help trying to make their lives perfect.

As he sailed out the back door, he noticed that the bird feeder was empty. It was hung on clothesline rope from a large oak limb over the brick-walled service area where the five cars were parked. The birds didn't really need seed in the spring and summer, but Mrs. Hay liked to see them constantly flying in for a feed, so he was careful to make sure it was well stocked in all seasons.

Anthony chose the Bentley for the drive into the city. At exactly ten-oh-five he drove out of the service entrance of Casa Capricorn and into the drive next to it. He circled the row of magnificent Kousa dogwoods, the late-blooming kind that stayed in flower all the way into July, and stopped by the brick mansion's front door.

Minutes later, he had Pru and Mrs. Hay settled in the car, and they were headed toward 25A and the Grand Central Parkway Mrs. Hay spoke up from the backseat.

"Anthony, the Denihan wedding." She picked up from where she'd left off yesterday, comparing all the weddings of their large acquaintance.

"Yes, Mrs. Hay." Anthony glanced in the rearview mirror. He could see Pru blowing on her engagement ring, polishing it on her sleeve even though he'd just cleaned it for her again this morning. Three carats, classic Tiffany solitaire. He kept telling her not to take it off and leave it on every sink everywhere she washed her hands. He knew she couldn't live on her own without him to care for her. She didn't know how to do a thing.

"Louis did the Denihan wedding, of course. What did you think of it?"

He was expected to answer even though they'd been over the Denihan wedding numerous times before. "Very pretty, but half the guests were overcome," he reminded her.

In fact, St. Thomas had been so glutted with lilies that people had coughed and sneezed throughout. Not only that, Mary Denihan had not allowed a single arrangement to be moved from the church to the reception, so that Louis had to repeat the fragrance debacle at the Pierre, where people sneezed all through dinner as well. The famous florist-to-the-stars had ended up acquiring every single Casablanca lily in the city for the event. That was the kind of thing Louis's clients liked him to do. Anthony would not mention it, however, for it would only fuel the competitive fires in Lucinda Hay's ever-spreading bosom. Lucinda Hay wanted Pru married well, and she wanted an over-the-top wedding. She was getting both.

"I'm glad we didn't do lilies, aren't you, Pru?" Mrs. Hay said loftily.

"I've always hated lilies, makes me think of funerals," Pru replied, just a touch sulky. She'd always had a crush on Teddy Denihan, a far more dashing boy than lackluster Thomas Fenton.

"But you

liked

the Angels' wedding, Anthony?"

"The violets were lovely." All two thousand bunches of them, all flown in from Africa. No more need be said.

"Yes, we thought so, too," Mrs. Hay said.

Anthony knew a great deal about weddings, funerals, engagement parties, et cetera, because his services were often requested for events requiring strict attention to detail in the moving around, announcing, and making comfortable of important guests. Claire Angel, now Collins, and all her twelve bridesmaids, who'd been dressed like something out of

A Midsummer Night's Dream

with crowns of fresh violets and gowns of tulle layered over lace over an array of sorbet-colored satins, had not stopped with the four-letter words and the inelegant cursing from the moment she'd gotten engaged. Her verbiage had been a scandal.

Anthony couldn't imagine how the young gentleman could put up with her prewedding, much less the rest of his blinking life. Bad behavior in a bride was unconscionable, Anthony thought. Still, the flowers had been delightful. Louis had found wild-flowers out of season, and the guests had raved.

He glanced at Pru in the mirror. She'd turned out a beauty, after all, but was now chewing savagely on the side of her thumb. Recently she'd started mangling her cuticles so badly that the skin was ripped to shreds and her fingers bled. He knew she was nervous as a cat about getting hitched forever to boring Thomas. He caught her eye and she looked quickly away.

"I don't know what's the matter with Wendy. I've called her a dozen times this morning and she just isn't picking up/' she said irritably.

"Don't worry. We'll see her at the fitting." Mrs. Hay had a certain tone for talking to her daughter. A combination of soothing and wheedling that always set Pru off.

"I have concerns. I want to talk to her now!"

Pru had to be managed. Lucinda managed her.

"Now, Pru, you know we'll get through this. Right here is fine, Anthony," she told him, as if he didn't know where to stop for Tang Ling's.

Anthony did not park in front of the Tang Ling store to wait for the Hay women to emerge. Instead, he drove the Bentley down Park Avenue and around to the St. Regis Hotel. As soon as he slowed to a stop, the doorman leaned in the car's open passenger window.

"Oh, Anthony, there you are. Ready for the big day?"

"Hello, George. We're working on it." Anthony knew some of the staff at the St. Regis because Mr. Hay and Terence drank at the bar there. Over the years he'd sat in this position chatting with this and other doormen for many happy hours. "You're not going to have any problem with the cars on Saturday now, are you?" he asked.

"None at all." George was an old-timer on the post. He gave the driver a knowing smile. "Are they taking rooms here or dressing at the apartment?"

"The apartment, but we'll leave the car here during the ceremony. They'll need me there, of course. As soon as they exchange vows, I'll run up to get it. Should be about noon, maybe twelve-thirty. You mind if I leave it here now for a few?"

"No problem." George was never unhappy with the maroon Bentley at his curb.

Anthony closed the window, dropped his gloves and chauffeur's hat on the front seat. Then he got out, sniffing disdainfully at the bloomed-out spring flowers in the window boxes. He'd have to have a word with Mrs. Hay about it.

"How long will you be, then?" George asked.

Anthony checked his watch. It was eleven-nineteen. "Ten, maybe twelve minutes."

"Good-oh."

Anthony patted the car as if parting from an old friend. He walked briskly to Fifth Avenue and down the few blocks to St. Patrick's Cathedral. There, he skipped up the steps to the side door on Fifty-first Street. The door was locked, and he wondered if security had been beefed up since the attack on the cardinal during a Mass a few months ago.

"The front entrance is open," a thin priest standing nearby chatting with an old lady called out, and waved him toward Fifth.

"Thank you, Father." Anthony about-faced and marched down the block, frowning at the hordes of office workers gathered on the front steps. The sun always brought people out of the buildings all around. They came to the cathedral for special occasions and also just to have their lunch on the warm steps in an open space. Tourists were also out in droves. Anthony clicked his tongue at the sound of so many foreign languages. The crowd boded ill for Saturday. This was what happened when a choice was made for the wrong reasons.

He ducked inside the huge doors and let himself enjoy for a few seconds the lovely coolness of stone and the comfort of flickering candles. Then he was overcome again with irritation at the tourists. On Saturday there would be no abatement of them. What if they wandered in and out during the Mass, during the exchange of vows? And here the wedding party of two hundred would look small and insignificant.

If it had been Anthony's wedding, he would have chosen a smaller church where the guests could feel comfortable, not ogled at, and where it was totally private and safe. But the Hays wanted to make a splash, have the best of everything. The best groom. Idiots. He shook his head at the great size of the place, at the women answering questions at the information tables up front, at the TV monitors mounted on the pillars for congregants in the back pews. Anything could happen in a place like this. He shivered and lit a candle, saying a quick prayer for his own salvation.

Twelve

C

hing Ma Dong took the subway to Manhattan without her mother, or her sister-cousin April, or anyone else knowing she was going there. She was full of happy secrets, excited about the chance to spend a few private moments with her old friend Tang Ling, who was giving her a wedding gown at an absolutely unheard-of price: free, for nothing. And they hadn't even been close friends for more than a decade. Why had the famous Tang Ling made such a gesture? Ching guessed it was just for old times' sake, to show off how great she'd become. As if Ching didn't know.

Tang and Ching had met when Tang was just a young woman studying economics to please her parents, but secretly cutting out patterns for fantasy dresses on her bedroom floor. Tang had wanted to be a designer. Ching was the one with the head for business. The two had drifted apart long ago—Tang into glamour, Ching into the world of the Internet. Ching had been awed by Tang's flare for self-promotion ever since.

Tang Ling had been the first Asian designer to become a household name in the special-occasion dress business. She was the first to set up shop on Madison

Avenue, the first to have a worldwide clientele. Her broad peasant face was the first female Asian seen in AmEx commercials. She was a phenom. Everybody wanted a Tang Ling dress. The gowns were slinky, spare, understated, often cut on the bias. And the rage all over the world. Born and raised in Hong Kong, educated at Stanford and FIT, Tang Ling had been in the business for fifteen years, subsidized in her ambition by a wealthy grandfather and even wealthier father. She had a reputation as the close friend of celebrities, personally creating gowns for their Oscar night, Emmy night, and Golden Globe appearances. Her photo was in

People

magazine almost as often as theirs.

When Ching got engaged, she called Tang on a lark. She was well aware that Tang traveled in limos, knew all the movie people and politicos, was out every night. But even celebrities and people in the field paid through the nose to wear her clothes. She knew that, too. Tang had always been tightfisted and socially ambitious. She was Chinese, after all.

So Ching certainly had no expectations that a long-ago friendship would yield any special attention from Tang. She wasn't even sure that Tang would remember her at all. She called to say she was getting married. She was that happy and proud of herself and just wanted to share her news. Tang's instant positive response had taken her completely by surprise. It was as if no time had passed at all.

"Tell me all about the wedding," Tang had gushed as if they were still in a college dorm and no business meetings and important people were waiting while she chattered on the phone in her office.

"It's just a simple banquet at the Crystal Palace," Ching told her shyly. "Nothing special."

"Oh, that's perfect. I love Chinatown weddings. They're my favorite. You'll have to wear one of my gowns." Tang enthused over the idea as if Ching had thousands of dollars to spend, like all the stars with whom she mingled.

"I'd love to," Ching said slowly, but she couldn't possibly afford such a luxury. Not a chance. She didn't want to get embroiled in something that would cause her embarrassment.

"Yes, yes. Come into the shop. I insist. I'm sure we can find just the right gown for you. And don't worry about a thing; we're doing inventory now."

Ching was silent, didn't know what to say. Then Tang surprised her again.

"I'm giving you one, silly," she said. "You can't refuse."

So she didn't refuse. Ching had visited the magnificent shop on Madison Avenue, and Tang found a sample from last summer that they weren't making anymore.

Here Tang showed her true colors. No free lunch for anyone. She offered Ching a gown that had a large coffee stain in the train and was a size too big for her. Tang was queenly about her offer and promised Ching the gown would be perfect when they were finished working on it.

Ching was Chinese, too, and showed no distress over the gesture, or the tiny flaw in it. The dress had been, after all, five thousand dollars last year. That was a great deal of a gift, even if the item was unsellable now. Ching's athletic figure was far from delicate, and she had a robust appetite she'd never attempted to curb. Tang's sculpted sheath with pink pearls dancing across the bodice and tulip sleeves would skim her curves and give her stature and grace.

It also made her ambitious. Suddenly she wondered if there was another dress among the thousands Tang didn't need for her stubborn sister-cousin, April Woo. Nothing too fancy. Just the same fashion glory for them both, so they could shine together like real sisters on Ching's great day. April would object, of course. For sure she would object to being Ching's maid of honor. April didn't like standing out in any way whatsoever. That was the reason Ching hadn't told her yet. But if April had a magnificent gown, she wouldn't be able to refuse being maid of honor. She'd have to stand up with Ching and give a speech.

Secrets, manipulations, and most of all scheming was the only way to work with the stubborn Woos and also the Tangs of the world. When Ching got off the subway at the Hunter College stop, she was smiling at all her manipulations on April's behalf and hoping against hope that Tang would indulge her just a little more. It was a gorgeous day, only three blocks to Madison, and she wanted that dress.

When Ching climbed the stairs to Tang Ling's ultrachic second-floor showroom, however, she was disappointed to find Tang herself deeply engaged in a cantankerous bridal fitting for a noisy mother-daughter duo. Fittings with Tang were unusual. She was always so busy designing a new line for each season and traveling around the world that only the rarefied few received her personal attention after the choice of a gown was made.

"Prudence, stand still!" the mother shrilled loudly.

"1 am standing still," protested a slender girl who seemed to Ching awfully young to be a bride. She was encased in alenqon lace from shoulder to toe and eight feet beyond, dolled up like a Barbie of the fifties and looking every bit the part with a dip of real blond hair over one amethyst eye. All she needed was the white mink shrug of Doris Day to make her perfectly retro.

It was a daunting sight, and Ching was discouraged. She'd expected to have Tang to herself for at least a few minutes. She knew Tang had an important meeting at noon. So the young bride and her mother, and the friend they had with them, were an annoying setback. Time was passing, and they filled the ballroomlike showroom—usually large enough for more than one party to parade around in at the same time—making it clear how important they were in the scheme of things.

"Ni hao, Ching," Tang called out when she saw her. "Have a seat. I'll be with you soon." She glanced at her watch, a large one, heavily studded with diamonds.

Ching nodded and sat on a slipper chair by the elevator to watch the maestro work. After she'd been there for fifteen minutes, she had to hand it to Tang. The most famous of all special-occasion designers knew how to work the crowd and steer clear of disaster. The bride was slender; the mother was stout. Ching's own mother was chubby, but this woman was huge, her chest as big as a ship's prow. Tang took control of them.

Both women were wearing white gowns. The mother's had a long chiffon skirt that softened her bulk, but she wasn't happy with it. The neckline was cut low enough to reveal a great expanse of soft, crepey skin on her neck and abundant chest. That, however, wasn't what bothered this MOB.

"It's too plain," she complained, eyeing her daughter's extravaganza.

"Ah, yes, it definitely needs something, don't you agree, Wendy?" Tang said.

The third woman nodded. "A beaded bolero?" she suggested.

"Maybe not beads," Tang said slowly.

Kim, the fitter, shook his head. "Better just a handkerchief of the same material."

"What do you think, Pru?" The MOB turned to her daughter. "Is it too plain?" she demanded.

"I don't know," the girl replied crossly. She turned her back on her mother and marched across the room to the window on Madison, dragging her train behind her. When she got there she stared out at the street blankly while Tang ordered one of the salesgirls to gather some jackets, scarves, and other accessories to enhance the MOB's dress.

"What's the matter, Pru?" The mother tried to rouse her daughter out of her sulk, but got no response for her effort.

"Wedding jitters?" teased the woman Tang had called Wendy.

"No," came the petulant reply.

"Maybe she doesn't want to get married so quick." This from Kim.

"Kim!" Tang's voice was sharp. "What are you talking about? Of course she wants to get married."

"No," came the sulky voice again.

"We don't want to get married! God, give me strength." The MOB clamped a hand on her chest.

"I can't wait until the ordeal is over. My God, I'm sick of all these freaking details."

"Ah, here we are," Tang said cheerfully.

The saleswoman arrived almost staggering under a load of shimmering, glittering merchandise.

Ching groaned to herself. This was going to take forever. Then she watched with utter fascination as Tang, the woman called Wendy, and Kim all skillfully steered the discontented MOB toward a stunning embroidered and beribboned bolero that served three purposes: it camouflaged the offending chest skin, allowed the mother to almost outshine her daughter, and cost an additional seven thousand dollars.

"The Hay women and their wedding planner," Tang said with a wan smile when they finally left. "Ching, I'm sorry to keep you waiting."

"No, no. It's nothing."Ching would never in a million years complain. "It was wonderful to watch you work. I never realized how hard it is."

"You can't even begin to imagine." Tang rolled her eyes, and immediately the salesgirl brought in Ching's gown.

Another girl came into the room and whispered loudly, "Your car is downstairs. You have two minutes."

"Ching, you look so great! 1 only have two minutes."

"Thank you." But Ching knew she didn't look great at all. Tang was the one who looked great. Thin, dressed all in Armani. Slide shoes, hair dyed red. Red nail polish. Pearls as large as marbles around her neck. And she'd had her eyes done! Almost Western eyes in a very Asian face. Ching had to admit it was a good job, even if she disapproved of surgery. She smiled. "You're the glamour girl."

"Not such a glamour girl today." Tang's customer demeanor dropped away, and she wilted visibly

"Tired," Ching said sympathetically.

"No, didn't you hear? One of my brides was murdered yesterday," Tang told her with an angry look.

"No!" Ching put her hand to her mouth.

"Terrible thing," Kim said, his eyes tearing up.

"What happened?" Horrified, Ching looked from one to the other.

"Someone shot her as she was going down the aisle." Tang glanced at her watch. "Hurry up. I have one minute."

But Ching was still trying to digest the news. A bride shot! Suddenly she felt dizzy and wondered what April knew about it. Poor Tang. "Did you know her?" Ching asked.

"Of course I knew her. We dressed her, made her gown. Special order. A big one," Tang said impatiently. "It's just terrible! And they haven't paid the bill yet."

"What?" Ching was shocked by the concern about money, but the tragedy gave her an idea. It occurred to her that she had an important relation in the police department. Maybe she could help Tang somehow by offering April to assist her. Then maybe Tang would give her a free dress for her trouble.

"My best friend, my maid of honor, in fact, is a very important detective in the police department," Ching said slowly. Tang read her mind before she was even finished getting the sentence out.

"You aren't going to ask for a free dress for

her,

are you?" she said quickly. "I can't afford any more freebies."

Ching blushed hotly. "No, no. Of course not. You've already been so generous. 1 just thought maybe she can do something to help."

"Well, thanks anyway, Ching. But no cops. I just want to stay as far from this as possible. The last thing 1 need is this kind of attention."

"Miss Ling, you're going to be late." The girl was back. "I have your purse."

"No, no, take it back upstairs. I have some calls to make." Tang hurried out the door. "See you, Ching."

Suddenly Ching felt queasy. After the news of a murdered bride in a Tang gown and Tang's attitude, Ching's joy of being an insider with a free wedding dress dissipated fast. She felt like the poor college girl of the old days, someone getting leftovers. And the murder troubled her more than she wanted to admit. She felt funny putting on the gown, even though Kim had altered it to fit her perfectly.

She evaluated herself in front of the mirror. The train with the coffee stain was gone. The hem dipped just enough in back now to puddle a few inches on the floor. Kim had added more bobbing pearls to the bodice, adding to its luster. But Ching was a plain, no-nonsense kind of girl, not in any way the beauty that her friend April was, and her expression shov/ed that she wasn't happy in her gift.

"What's the matter, girl, you don't want to get married?" Kim said, smoothing his hand along her waist speculatively. He took a tuck, careful not to stick her with the pin.

"No, no. I love the dress. Kim, you did an amazing job. Really."

"It was my design," he said modestly.

But he didn't think it was perfect. A few minutes later Ching left without the dress. Kim had insisted on another fitting.

Thirteen

A

t four-forty-five that afternoon April tapped at the closed door of Rabbi Levi's study in Temple Shalom. "It's Lieutenant Sanchez and Sergeant Woo," she said.

"Yes, they told me you were here. Come in," the rabbi said in a tired voice.

Mike opened the door, took a quick look around, then let her go in first. Coming from the brightness of the well-lit hall to the darkness of the paneled room, April's eyes didn't register a person in there at first. In his black suit Rabbi Levi was a small figure sitting motionless in a dark leather chair behind a large desk. On this sunny Monday afternoon his study was in dusk. Lined on three sides with leather-bound and dark-covered books, the room looked like an ancient library from another world. This atmosphere was enhanced by the folded newspaper in Hebrew that was all the paper visible on his desk. The sorrowful, gray-haired man seemed much reduced from yesterday. His expression clearly said it was happening again: His people were being embroiled in a brand-new holocaust in the year 2002, right there in Riverdale, New York.

Without looking at the two detectives, he gestured for them to enter the office. "We had almost a thousand people at the funeral. They came from all over. A sizable demonstration of respect."

"Yes, and thank God there was no trouble," April murmured.

There had been no anti-Israel demonstrations and none of the anti-Semitic sentiment from the African-American and Middle Eastern factions in the city that the rabbi had predicted. April's instincts appeared to be on target. This killing was a personal thing. And the news media thought so, too. The media bulldozers were already moving the earth around the wealthy Schoenfeld family, searching for their underpinnings. The news vans were out in droves. Dozens of reporters from agencies all over the world had been at the funeral, plus the dozens of still cameras, clicking away. Tovah's murder was topping the worldwide charts as America's freak-of-the-week crime horror. The mayor was going nuts, the police commissioner, too.

A lot of people were asking again: What kind of city was this where somebody could shoot down an eighteen-year-old bride in front of hundreds of people? Several vans were outside the temple even now. Mike and April had been videoed going in. The press couldn't be stopped.

The rabbi bristled at April's remark that the funeral had gone without a hitch. "There's lots of trouble, maybe not the kind you mean. The girl, bless her soul, is in the ground now. No one else can hurt her. But that can't be said of rest of us." His anger escalated as he spoke. He was a man used to lecturing. "Do you know who did this terrible thing to us?"

To Tovah, April wanted to correct him. The victim was a person with a name. Others could have been killed very easily, but no one else had been killed. It had been a careful hit. The murder was not a message for the universal them. April wished she could lecture right back and tell this mourning rabbi that Tovah was the one they had to think of now. They had to focus on what had made her a target in her happiest moment on her happiest day—not the day before, not the day after. She refrained from saying this. She wanted his help, not his ire.

"Your people left a mess. It's a disgrace," the rabbi went on, changing the subject so quickly April wasn't sure for a second what he meant.

"In the synagogue?" she asked, glancing at Mike, who'd asked her to conduct the interview.

"Everywhere. Those yellow tapes. Bloody floors."

Ah.

Sometimes people went on the offensive when they were hurt. They threatened to hire lawyers, to sue anyone and everyone they could think of. The rabbi was a complainer. April nodded sympathetically. She knew that the Crime Scene Unit had taken all the refuse from their own materials with them, but he didn't mean that. He'd wanted the place cleaned up last night after they'd finished. Literally the floors and pews washed so they could have their services in the sanctuary today.

April had already checked out the situation. There were several other synagogues in the area where people could pray today and tomorrow. That was as far as she could go. In the movies, you might see bad guys cleaning up their murder scenes, but the police were the good guys. They provided other services.

"I know you talked with Inspector Bellaqua about anti-Semitism in the community," she murmured.

The rabbi leaned forward and looked hard at Mike for the first time. "Good, hardworking people live here. I told the inspector we had a small incident last year—a swastika in shaving cream on one of the windows. Not even spray paint. A prank. Since then, a broken window. A few things..." He seemed of two minds about pursuing it. If he let that angle go, where would the police look next?

"That's what Sergeant Hollis told us," April said.

"He's a good policeman. We had a car theft once. He was helpful." Rabbi Levi looked away. He'd played the hate crime card. Experienced bias detectives were all over the place. They were turning the area upside down. They would continue with every lead they could dig up. But not a lot was there. No follow-up to the crime had occurred so far. The killer had gone to ground. That put the motive back in the family arena. Rabbi Levi clearly wasn't comfortable with it.

April glanced at Mike again. He'd told her to lead, but the rabbi didn't want to acknowledge a female. Or maybe it was the Chinese tiling. Maybe both. Some people didn't think a Chinese female could investigate a crime. Mike wasn't going to jump in and help. April made a note to call Dr. Jason Frank, a psychoanalyst and the only Jew she knew well enough to ask about how the Orthodox thought.

She changed the subject. "Tell us about your staff here. Any problems with them?"

Rabbi Levi gummed the insides of his cheeks as he recited the information. "We have a large staff, teachers in the school. They are all part of our community. We have cleaning people, same. Only one person is not of the tribe. He's a good man."

"You're talking about Harold Walker?" April asked.

"Yes, a good man," he said wearily.

"Never had any trouble with him?" April probed a bit more. In fact, a background check on the dignified Jamaican revealed that he'd been arrested twice for assault in bar fights. At the time Mr. Walker had only good things to say about Rabbi Levi. But he had a temper. Maybe he wasn't treated as well as he claimed and had a beef.

Rabbi Levi hesitated a long time. Finally he shook his head. "No trouble."

So there were some little things about Harold. Okay, they'd come back to it. She saw a slight movement of Mike's hand. He wanted her to move on.

"We need a list of everyone who works in the building, everybody who has a key. We'll be talking to everyone connected to the synagogue as well as everyone who attended the event. What about the photographers? Was anyone filming at the time the shots were fired?"

"No, it's strictly forbidden during services. They did videos in the party room and of the girls getting ready." He lifted his shoulders.

Too bad. It would have helped them to have a video of all the people in all the rows so they could know for sure who they could eliminate as suspects. The rabbi went on.

"Do whatever you have to do. I don't know everyone who was here. I just met the boy and his people last week."

"What did you think of them? Was it a good match?" The word didn't trip easily off April's tongue.

Match.

What was a good match, anyway? Mike was listening, taking notes. She could feel his warmth, smell his aftershave in the airless room, almost hear his thoughts churning.

"They did some upsetting things yesterday. I'm sure you heard." Now he was speaking to the bookcase.

April hadn't heard. "What things?"

"A terrible thing. When the ambulance got here, people were screaming. You couldn't tell what was going on. The technicians—whatever you call them— they came in and cut her dress open down the front." He demonstrated with his finger down his own front. "Terrible."

April nodded.

"They were trying to save her. Her parents were crazy. No one knew she was dying. People were afraid to go out the front doors; they were panicked." He talked without looking at her.

"When the girl was on the stretcher, and they were about to wheel her out, the boy's father reached over and pulled the ring off her finger." Rabbi Levi put a liver-spotted hand over his eyes.

"The ring?"

"The engagement ring," he said impatiently, as if she were some kind of oaf who didn't know that nice people had two rings.

"Did anyone try to stop him?"

"No, no. He did it quickly. The ring fit the girl's left hand, but it was big on her right hand. Ribikoff yanked it off and put it in his pocket." He shook his head. "I've seen many disputes over property of deceased loved ones in my time, but I have never seen anybody grab a piece of jewelry off a dying girl." He looked shocked all over again.

April, however, had seen these tilings. She'd seen two sobbing relatives on the street stop grieving long enough to fight over which should get the watch of the man just murdered in front of them. She'd seen a widow, out of control on the scene of a traffic accident in which her husband had died, suddenly notice with pleasure that her best friend who'd emerged from the crash unscathed was wearing the diamond bracelet she'd wanted for her birthday.

"Do you think the ring has any relevance?" she asked.

"No, probably not. You just asked me about the people who were there, and I was thinking that the boy's people are from Brooklyn. I don't have much information about them, don't even know how Suri found them. The mothers don't always seek my advice in these matters. The women, they do it their own way." He went on, after a reflective pause. "I can tell you it was a large function. We have so many happy occasions to celebrate here, a bar mitzvah or a wedding almost every week. But this was the most elaborate party we've ever had here. Too bad, too bad." Rabbi Levi leaned back in his chair, contemplating the irony of a murder occurring at the most elaborate function the synagogue had ever had.

"Rabbi, tell me about the Schoenfelds."

He shook his head. "What is there to say? They are a wonderful family, very observant, generous people." He spread his fingers and touched his newspaper with a pinkie.

"You must have known Tovah well."

"Yes, since she was born. A very sweet girl, a wonderful girl." He nodded as if to confirm that to himself.

"What was she like?"

"Like?" He seemed puzzled by the question.

"Her personality, her likes and dislikes. Her hopes and dreams for her life with her husband. Did she love him? Was she excited?"

His features didn't register this line of questioning.

"Did she have boyfriends, someone who might have been disappointed?" April tried again.

"No, no, no," he answered sharply. "I told him yesterday." He pointed at Mike. "She was a good girl. No boyfriends. She didn't know anyone outside of here."

April had the feeling Tovah's spiritual leader hadn't known her very well, or maybe hadn't liked her. It was just a feeling.

"Somebody didn't like her enough to kill her, Rabbi. Somebody didn't want her married."

He made an angry gesture with his hand. "The girl was eighteen years old. She was beautiful. Who wouldn't like her?"

April shifted in her chair. The girl was beautiful. That was all he could say. Was beauty a motive to kill? Well, sometimes it was.

"Tell me some more about your congregation. You have many wealthy members." She tried another tack.

"Wealthy, no. Comfortable maybe ..."

"But the Schoenfelds are wealthy."

The rabbi's fingers played with the newspaper. He glanced at Mike. It was clear he didn't want to talk to April. She waited, sweating a little at the snub. He was pale; he was small. He looked as if he hadn't eaten anything for a long rime. "When can we clean up?" he asked.

"Soon," she said. "Can you tell me anything more about the party?"

"Ah." He became more animated with that subject. "We try not to encourage too much display here. Competition excites envy. People get hurt feelings when they can't do for their children what their wealthier neighbors are doing. But what can you do when people want to share their good fortune?" Again the shoulders went up.

"You should have seen today. Our custom in funerals is the opposite of the joyous occasions. In death we are always simple, modest. The remains of our loved ones are washed by our own members. You'd be amazed the people who choose to do it. The remains are wrapped in white cloth. They go into the ground in a plain wooden box. Everyone the same." His eyes strayed for a moment directly into April's face, and she was surprised to find herself blushing. This was how the women must feel when the men took notice of them. Trapped for a moment in the light.

"We were at the funeral," she murmured. And competition was the same everywhere.

She thought of Ching's upcoming wedding at the Crystal Pavilion on Mott Street. In Chinatown there was the eight-course wedding, the twelve-course wedding, and the twenty-course wedding. Ching was having the twelve-course feast, and she planned to change her clothes three times while the guests stuffed themselves. No one would remember the last two dresses because they'd all be drunk by the time she got them on, but the photos would last forever.

During her years as a cop, April must have seen hundreds of wedding parties coming out of churches and temples all over the city. She'd seen the brides in their white gowns and the men in their tuxedos, but she knew very little about them.

"Can you tell me anything about the wedding that was unusual beyond the extravagance?" April asked.

"They had a wedding planner. That was unusual, since Suri Schoenfeld is such a competent woman."

"Why did they, do you know?"

"I don't know; that woman put everything out of proportion. There was bad feeling about it. The spending was crazy. They had real flowers, real silver. The girl had her own gown from some store in Manhattan. Party favors for everyone. Such a waste."

"I don't know your customs, Rabbi. How is it generally done?" April asked.

"With our large families most people don't go in for too many extras. The trend is for the girls to rent their gowns, use the caterer's centerpieces. They're not real flowers, but they look very good. They might have one or two arrangements of real flowers in the sanctuary. And of course, there's always lots of food." A small smile lit up his eyes at the mention of food.

April nodded. Just like Chinatown. In Chinatown flowers were for funerals. At weddings, the families of the happy couple gave a wedding feast with lots of Scotch or cognac, plum wine, beer, soda. The decorations consisted of a few red carnations set on red tablecloths. For special show there might be red-lacquered chopsticks instead of the generic wooden ones. Personalized banners with slogans for good luck and long life in Chinese characters hung from the ceiling and were stuck on the walls with Scotch tape. Everything was red and gold. And cash went from friends to happy couple. As much cash as possible. The guests went away drunk and full but not with gifts and party favors.

April remembered the baskets of candy, the large floral arrangements so strongly scented, both in the sanctuary and on the tables: the palm trees, the orange trees with real oranges on them, the silver flatware, the gold-rimmed crystal glasses, the blue Tiffany boxes at many of the seats. They'd had favors from Tiffany!

"This party must have excited a lot of envy," April murmured.

"A lot of talk," the rabbi admitted. "Usually our own people make our parties. We've never had trouble before."

Afterward, the two detectives conferred about what they'd learned. April didn't like the way the rabbi kept calling Tovah "the girl" and the groom "the boy," so she was careful to keep Tovah's name in her mind as she made notes to herself.

Fourteen

J

ust before five Louis the Suri King sent his assistant, Tito, out in the van with the completed order for the benefit at Tavern on the Green in Central Park. Then he collapsed in a damp heap on the green Victorian wrought-iron settee in his hothouse of a garden, angry as a hornet at Wendy Lotte.

The sun was as hot as summer. Usually he felt blessed that the town houses around him were low enough for the sun to creep into all the corners of his walled refuge, but today he was exhausted and discouraged, so the heat seemed like just another blight on his world. Still, it was better outside than it would be inside, dealing with the ankle-deep mess of cut stems and leaves that Tito had left on the floor of the shop and Jama wasn't there to pick up because he'd gone to ground.

Louis did not want to be inside and visible to any hapless visitor who might want to get in to buy something. He was through for the day. If someone came and he was forced to speak, he would just scream. His irascibility had cost him bundles in the past, and he knew he mustn't revert to type because of a murder.

In the past Louis had done several funerals where the estate lawyers didn't get around to paying him for over a year because the IRS questioned the expense. He had a policy against working for dead people. And now he'd just sunk more than fifty-five thousand dollars into a wedding for a dead person. He was going to sit there, sweating and cursing Wendy Lotte, until she showed up and reassured him that his investment was not lost.

Louis the Sun King's shop consisted of the first floor and garden of a town house in the East Sixties between Lexington and Park. His establishment was surrounded by antique shops, jewelry shops, a high-end chocolatier, a lingerie boutique, a custom tailor, and a number of pricey restaurants frequented by Eurotrash with titles from long-defunct monarchies, social pretensions, and lots of money. It was close enough to Bloomingdale's, Williams-Sonoma, Caviar-teria, and Barneys for any kind of instant shoppmg pick-me-up, and Louis loved it.

Hardly any plants were for sale there. Garden antiques and collectible containers in many materials were for sale. Cement and bronze planters and painted Italian pottery that presently contained palm trees were for sale. Nineteenth-century Chinese export porcelain, Japanese Imari, sculptured Lalique, opaline, Venetian, and other forms of art-glass vases were for sale, as well as curios of all kinds and hard-to-identify objets d'art on lacquered Chinese and Italian mosaic tables. Screens that cleverly created cunning alcoves were for sale. The garden chairs around the large center table in the extension where the work of planning parties was done were not.

Last, in a corner of the shop, screened by a stand of bamboo in brass planters, Louis's boyfriend Jorge had set up a hair-coloring salon at one of the sinks Tito used for soaking and trimming flowers. Jorge recently commandeered the sink when he quit his job at one of the best hair salons in the city and refused to look for another.

Louis the Sun King was known for designing terrace gardens, greenhouse displays, weddings, benefits, and parties of all kinds. Two major hotels used his services for seasonal decorations of their lobbies. Nearly everything he did was a special order, and a lot of people who thought they knew the street well had no idea it contained a florist.

It was not a long wait. Wendy banged on the locked door at quarter past five. "Louie, Louie, it's me," she cried. Bang. Bang. Bang.

He buzzed her in. She marched through the shop and found him outside. Wendy Lotte was a tall, blond, self-important anorectic of impeccable credentials. She'd come up on Park Avenue. She'd graduated from Miss Porter's and Smith College. She'd been in the Sotheby's human resources department for a year after college, then worked for a giant PR company for five years after that as an event planner. She was keen on making a lot of money because her divorced parents had both married again, one more than once, and had new families to support. She was always expensively dressed and coiffed, and was attractive to people who liked fast-talking, slightly horsey, stiff-hipped kinds of girls.

"I've never had a day like this in my whole life." She sat and launched in without a pause. "You wouldn't have believed the scene there yesterday. Blood everywhere. People screaming, thinking it was another terrorist attack. It was so awful it was funny.

One woman's wig fell off, and she almost went crazy trying to find it. Hysteria beyond belief. All your little boys ran away, and that detective is harassing me. He called on my

cell

while I was with Prudence and Lucinda. Why do 1 have to take the flak?"

"Oh, please." Louie threw up a hand. "Wherever you are is trouble."

"No, really, Louie, this is not a joke. This Bronx idiot, with an accent so thick 1 can't understand a word, is harassing me."

Louis put his hand to his pompadour, smoothing it back. "Why?"

"I have no idea. He's a complete asshole. He doesn't like me, and I was perfectly nice to him until he tried to get into my purse."

"They searched your purse? Poor Wendy, you never learn."

"Oh, shut up, Louis. He didn't find anything. But this is all going to be in the papers. My name is coming up everywhere. You can't imagine how crazy it is. An agent called me twice while I was out with Pru and Lucinda. Somebody wants to do a TV movie. The

Enquirer

wants to pay me fifty thousand dollars for a story. 'Arranged marriage ends in murder. The wedding planner tells all.' Can you believe it?"

"Why not? It's a great story. That wretched girl was married like a cow." Louis fanned his face with a big hand.

"Louie, don't start with that."

He made an angry noise. "It was slavery, face it."

"Stop! You don't know anything about it."

Louis glared at her. "Anybody who knows that girl knows that the last thing she wanted was to marry."

"Not your business, Louie, just not your business."

"Well, did you shoot her? Or is your specialty cats?" He laughed.

Wendy leaned forward and grabbed his arm. "Look, Lori's on vacation this week. I'm alone in the office. I'm stressed beyond belief. Don't start with me."

"Hello, it's me, Wendy." He gazed at the sky. "Never forget how much I know about you."

"What are you talking about? Is this a threat?"

"No, no. But I don't need a spotlight on me right now."

"I gave you all this work. I thought we were friends. And now you're

blaming

me for a very unfortunate situation."

"Wendy, people want your story.

Hello,

now you've got the attention you've always craved. Your fifteen minutes of fame. How could I not be concerned—"

Wendy's face paled. "You shit!"

"Maybe. But I'm all you have. I'd say you were one of my riskiest projects." He gave her a bleak smile. "So. Tell me about Prudence Hay; is

she

going to make it to her wedding day?"

'You cold bastard." Wendy's eyes filled with tears. "How could you be so cruel when things are so crazy, and I'm under such pressure—without even

Lori

to help me?"

"Oh, please, look who's talking."

"It could have been you. It could have been any one of your boys. Don't look at me. Just don't look at me." Wendy covered her face. "I'm out of here," she announced. "I'm just gone. Don't try to call me. I hate you."

Fifteen

A

pril burst outside into the radiant, early-evening light, grateful for the sweet breeze off the Hudson River. The whole time she'd been in Rabbi Levi's office she'd felt a tightness in her chest, as if Tovah's angry ghost were still trapped in the place where she'd died.

The rabbi had used the word

terrible

many times. That was what stuck in April's mind as she and Mike drove the few short blocks to the Schoenfeld house on Alderbrook Road. It was a terrible thing to interview a family before a funeral. It was just as terrible to interview a family after a funeral. Tomorrow, next week. A year from now it would still be terrible.

"What did you think of the rabbi?" she asked Mike.

"He didn't know her," he replied instantly.

"That's what I thought. He really pinpointed the wedding planner. May be an angle there," April mused.

"Te quiero, te amo, querida,"

Mike said suddenly. He loved her.

"Como no?"

she murmured, meeting his eye with just about her first smile of the day.

Mike was a handsome, sexy man, and even though he'd criticized her earlier, he still loved her. The thought gave her a warm feeling in the middle of a mess. Bias, Bronx, and the Homicide Task Force were all taking a piece of this case. Mike was Homicide. She was the monkey in the middle. Hollis was already trying to steal their thunder. She'd have to watch him. And her boss, Lieutenant Iriarte, would be hoping for the worst. She had to find a way to let him in so he wouldn't punish her later. But Mike was back on the subject of love.

"I really do,

cjuerida.

I love you more and more. I don't know what I'd do if someone shot you on our wedding day."

"No one's going to shoot me, wedding day or any other time," April said, uneasy about making a promise no one could keep.

Skinny Dragon believed people owned each other. The dragon believed that because she'd given birth to April, she owned her daughter for life. But people didn't own each other. Tilings happened, they fell in love with the wrong people, got hurt, got sick, died. Shooting wasn't the only bad thing that happened.

"Yo rezo,"

he said curtly, as if reading her mind.

Well, she prayed also, just to different gods. His sudden Spanish made the point that in the Bronx he was home. And at home there were certain things you just didn't do in English. Praying and loving were two. April knew how it was. At her home the thing you didn't do was feel anything but guilt. Guilt was the operative feeling. You had to make money and save face, that was it.

Face

translated into Spanish as

macho,

and

macho

translated into English as

honor.

As far as April was concerned all of it made trouble.

"Next time, don't go to autopsies of brides in the middle of the night. Makes you morbid." She ended the conversation. He was tough, but it had gotten to him, no question about it.

Independence Avenue was only six blocks long, from 239th to 247th streets. It ran parallel to the Henry Hudson Parkway and the Hudson River, located halfway between the HH Parkway and the Palisades. Lining the parkway like soldiers in a parade were miles of luxury apartment buildings. Behind them was the old Riverdale, practically untouched. A real suburb only a few minutes from Manhattan, this area had narrow, hilly roads and gracious brick Tudor and stucco Mediterranean-style houses, overarched by the branches of venerable trees. Around them, landscaped yards with walks and arbors were studded with flowering shrubs and brilliantly hued spring flowers. The houses on the Hudson had the bonus of a majestic view of the mighty river and the green palisades of New Jersey.

"Wow." April whistled as they came to the tiny dead-end road of Alderbrook, a lane so narrow it didn't look wide enough for a moving van to get in or out. Tucked into a cul de sac th«t dated from early in the last century were six old houses. Parked cars and TV vans blocked the road and lined the roads around it. Mike had to backtrack and leave his unmarked vehicle in the circle of a giant apartment complex two blocks away. They plowed through a bunch of reporters who tried to get them to say something.

The Schoenfelds' house was at the end, in the curve of the U. It was a sturdy structure, built for a family just the size of theirs. It was pale gray-painted stucco with an orange-tiled roof and a covered veranda in the front. More reporters jammed the front lawn. Mike shook his head at them.

"You take the girl's family/' he murmured to April.

"Tovah," April corrected softly.

Tovah,

she repeated to herself as she rang the bell.

Less than a minute later Mr. Schoenfeld opened the door. He was a tall, heavyset man, at least six-two. He didn't appear to be in good shape, but he looked young for a man with a daughter of marriageable age. He had curly light brown hair on a big head, a Roman nose, a strong chin thickly packed into a roll underneath, angry blue eyes.

"This is not a good time. We're sitting shivah," he said curtly.

"We're sorry to intrude," Mike told him.

Schoenfeld glanced quickly at April, dismissed her. "That other detective was already here. Isn't that enough for one day?"

"We have a few more questions."

Schoenfeld blocked the door. "What exactly do you want to know?"

"We need information about the party vendors," April said, not wanting to get his back up about their looking into his daughter's activities in the last few months, weeks, days, hours of her life.

"My wife and my daughter would be the ones who dealt with the . . ." He hiccuped and closed his eyes, swaying on his feet like a big tree caught in a wind. April saw that he'd been drinking.

He blinked, recovered his focus and balance, pushed away the hand the Mike held out to him. "Come in," he said abruptly.

The smell of food twitched at April's empty belly as she followed him into the kind of home she'd seen often on Central Park West. The living room was furnished with many traditional chairs she recognized as antiques and fat sofas upholstered in heavy brocade. A thick, patterned carpet partially covered the wide-planked wood floor. Voluminous drapes with tassel fringe, crystal lamps, inlaid tables, and gilded mirrors on the walls, now obscured by a soapy film, finished the look. From another part of the house came the muted sound of children's voices. About thirty well-dressed males sat and stood around with plates of food in their hands.

In the dining room, a spread of party food was laid out on a huge slab of a table, a crowd of women were loading their plates, and a heavy woman with a blond wig was directing traffic. April had forgotten the Styrofoam head with Tovah's wig on it, but she remembered it now. Her mother had one, too.

"Suri, these detectives want to talk to you," Schoenfeld said to the woman. Then he returned to the living room, where the men were.

"We're sorry to intrude. I'm Sergeant Woo; this is Lieutenant Sanchez," April said.

The woman put her hand out to a smaller woman near her, wiry with steely blue hair and a hard expression. "My mother," she said faintly.

"I'm Belle Levine."

The two women led the way through the kitchen out of the house onto the back porch, where there was outdoor furniture, a large table, a love seat, chairs, and a glider. There Mrs. Schoenfeld started to cry. "Why would anyone do this?"

"Tell me about your daughter, Mrs. Schoenfeld,"

April said gently. Mike gave April a sympathetic look and went into the house.

"She was a beautiful girl. Eighteen years old, nothing but childhood behind her, her whole life in front of her. What is there to tell?" her mother said.

"What was Tovah like? Who did she know?"

"A girl who led a quiet life, didn't know anybody, never dated a single boy but Schmuel," her grandmother said.

"He was a terrible choice. I'll never forgive myself," Tovah's mother sobbed.

"A terrible choice?" April murmured.

Suri Schoenfeld stopped crying abruptly. "Are you Chinese?" she demanded.

"Yes," April told her.

"You people have arranged marriages, don't you?"

"Some do," April admitted.

"You see." Suri pounded the arm of her chair. "I wanted the best for my daughter. Who wouldn't?" A wail escaped her.

"Suri," her mother said sharply. "Don't blame yourself. Tovah chose

him."

"But I chose the family. Terrible family. Look. They won't show their faces here. It's a

shanda.

You should check those people. They're criminals, Russians with relatives in the mob."

"Suri, you don't know that," her mother said sharply.

"They took the ring off a dying girl's finger!" Surf's grief poured out. "What kind of people would do that? Now there's a curse on all my children. I'll never marry any of them. Murderers," she wailed.

"Tell me about the last two weeks," April said gently. "Tell me everything you did."

Suri wanted to talk. She told about Tovah's visit to the

mikvah

last Thursday, the ritual bath. April made a note to ask Jason Frank about it.

"And the wig maker to pick up the wig, also Thursday."

April finally had the chance to ask about the wigs. She opened her mouth to ask, but Suri Schoenfeld anticipated the question.

"We cover our hair after marriage," Suri said. "Modesty."

"Ah." April glanced at Suri's mother, with her own steely blue hair.

"Not all of us," Belle said pointedly, ending the inquiry.

Then Suri told her about the many calls back and forth to Wendy Lotte, the wedding planner, because the Ribikoffs had been so difficult about the final lists. People who hadn't been invited were coming. People who said they were coming couldn't come. Not only that, Schmuel's father was allergic to fish, nuts, and gluten and didn't want anything with those ingredients at the dinner. That was about as difficult as people could get.

"Nothing with flour!" Suri was still reeling over it. "It was a nightmare. Why couldn't they have told us that before?"

April noted everything, their trips to Manhattan to meet with the florist, a person improbably called Louis the Sun King, and with the caterer to constantly revamp the menu. Their meetings with Wendy Lotte, and their visits with Tang Ling and her fitter Kim. Suri went with her mother, Belle, most often. When necessary, they took Tovah with them.

"Tovah didn't always go with you?" April asked.

"It was so tiring." The two women exchanged glances.

"Tiring? Tovah was a young woman."

"She had migraines."

"What was her mood in the last few days?"

"Except for the migraines, she was fine."

"Was she anxious about getting married? You said she had no experience with boys."

Suri looked exasperated. "I went to college. I dated. What's so great?"

"She was not anxious," the grandmother insisted. "Every girl wants to get married. Who wants to be an old maid?"

April hid her ringless ring finger under her notebook.

But maybe not everybody wants to be married at eighteen.

April had barely graduated from high school at eighteen.

Then Suri launched into an explanation of their preparations for the Sabbath, the reason she'd hired a party planner. "I start on Wednesday. For a family this size, we need ten loaves of bread, six chickens, fish. I cook everything myself and always do five courses. I couldn't do that and a wedding too," she explained.

Such elaborate cooking and arrangements for a twenty-four-hour period every week! It was as bad as being Chinese.

"This was my first break in nineteen years. My husband owed it to me," Suri said tearfully.

"Can you think of anyone who disliked your daughter, Mrs. Schoenfeld?"

"Rich and pretty girls always excite envy," Suri said smoothly. "I know that from my own experience. But it couldn't be one of us. Jews don't have guns." She was certain about that.

"One more thing. Did you notice anyone leaving the sanctuary before the ceremony? Someone from either family missing?"

"Oh, I have no idea. The only person I couldn't find when we came in was Wendy. I needed her to do something. I looked for her, but she wasn't around. Can I go back in the house now?"

Wendy again. April nodded. "How long do you sit shivah?"

"Seven days," Suri said. "I don't know how I'll get through it."

"You will," April assured her. Somehow they always did.

Sixteen

C

hing didn't watch Channel Twelve all day to keep track of all the terrible crimes that happened in New York City and April's role in solving them, but her mother Mai Ma Dong did. Mai followed April's career with avid interest, collecting the news clippings about her cases and recounting her successes in the police department to her daughter and anyone else who would listen. To Mai, her own daughter was a difficult rebel, but Sai's daughter was a real star. Sai, of course, felt exactly the opposite.

When they were little, the two best-friend mothers took turns dragging Ching and April to Chinese school on weekends to learn calligraphy and other Chinese arts. They'd taken them to martial-arts classes and taught them to cook traditional meals. Ching had incurred her mother's wrath by not being interested in any of it. She'd been the math genius and longed for escape from the narrowness of Chinatown. April had been the fighting beauty, the black belt who won all the matches—the stay-at-home who supported her parents and went to college at night. To Mai, who'd missed Ching when she was away in California for many years, April remained the loyal daughter and became the famous cop she saw on TV.

Mai was the one who sighted April and Mike during the coverage of the terrible shooting in the Bronx. They were coming out of the house of a murdered bride shaking their heads. "No comment at this time." And right away she called Ching at work to warn her.

"Bad luck," she cried. "Terrible luck to happen just before your wedding."

Oh, God.

This was the last thing Ching wanted to think about. "It's the Bronx, Ma. A Jewish wedding. Nothing to do with us."

"Poor April," Mai wailed. "Bad luck for her."

"No, no, Ma. Don't say that."

"Yes, yes, now she'll never get married," Mai predicted unhappily.

"But this is her job. One thing has nothing to do with the other!" Ching argued.

"I don't know. Bad luck," Mai insisted.

The reasoning was nuts. "Come on, terrible things happen every day; that doesn't mean they'll happen to us."

"You better call April," Mai concluded. "Tell her."

"Tell her what, Ma?"

"No more murders before the wedding," Mai said.

Ching groaned. Oh, sure, as if April could keep the whole city crimeless for ten whole days.

"Okay, Ma. I'll tell her." She hung up and scratched the side of her mouth the way she did when she was troubled. Her mother was a management problem at the best of times. April was not so easy, either. All Ching wanted to do was keep her mother quiet for a few more days, and get April away from her work long enough to be her maid of honor. She wanted to have a happy wedding, and go on her well-deserved honeymoon to Venice.

Seventeen

Wendy checked her caller ID. When she saw it was Kim again, she smiled at the two detectives in her living room and dropped the ringing cell phone back in her pocket.

"I'm devastated to have missed the funeral. I called this morning to see what I could do to help, but no one picked up." Wendy appraised the two cops. A Chinese woman, young, very attractive. No wedding ring. She noticed these things. A Hispanic man with a mustache like the other detective. No wedding ring either. Like the Bronx detective, these two were dressed in plain clothes and didn't look terribly intelligent. Wendy didn't know she was just slightly dulled with drink. She always felt she could talk her way through anything no matter how much hooch was in her. And she'd had plenty of experience with both cops and vodka.

"I had no idea they'd bury her so fast. It's so difficult with all these restrictions." She hurriedly ticked them off on her fingers. "No communication on Friday after dark until Saturday after dark. That's twenty-four whole hours of every week out the window. Believe me, that can be quite a hurdle when you have details that need attention. I had to learn all this. I've never done Orthodox before. You know anything about them?"

"No, tell us," the Chinese said.

"No answering the phone when you're in mourning. Who would think of it? I can't imagine how the arrangements get done." Wendy lifted her eyes heavenward. "Not that I'm judgmental about customs. I work with all kinds of people," she amended quickly. Now the phone rang in her office. She ignored it.

"How do arrangements get done?"

"I gather there's some sort of temple fellowship that takes care of everything so the family doesn't have to think about it. They don't allow flowers." Wendy glanced at her watch, blew air out of her mouth to control her impatience.

"I asked the caterer to help. They're a very nice kosher couple, by the way. They wanted to know what to do with the food from yesterday. No one ate. Mr. Schoenfeld didn't want to

pay

for it after what happened, so I told the Goldsteins to take that food right over to the house and set it up for the shivah." Wendy was proud of this maneuver. The delivery of the food was done in the guise of kindness, and she knew Mr. Schoenfeld would have no choice about paying for it now. Luckily she'd learned a long time ago to take her own cuts up front and in commissions along the way. A lot of vendors could go unpaid for this kind of disaster.

"And the Goldsteins did it?"

"Oh, yes. Smart people always take my advice. Thinking ahead is the key to my business." Wendy wanted to be alone and wondered what she should do to make these two cops happy and go away.

"Would you like something to drink, a glass of champagne?" she offered. She was longing for a glass herself.

"No, thanks."

"Are you sure, April?"

Wendy was good at names. April Woo. She wouldn't forget it. Mike Sanchez. She wouldn't forget that, either. They were sitting there like two Do-bermans, waiting for a reason to attack. She could see the gun on one of them, but they weren't acting like any cop from any cop show she'd ever seen on TV, or like that Bronx detective who kept calling and harassing her just because she was out of sight for ten lousy minutes.

She glanced pointedly at her watch again. Nearly eight-thirty and she had fifty messages to return.

Please go home now,

her smile said. No such luck. At the sound of her name the Chinese frowned. Wendy's agreeable expression didn't change. She knew that look. Chip-on-the-shoulder look.

I'm a sergeant. Don't call me by my first name.

All that garbage.

"Then how about a glass of water, Sergeant?" Wendy sweetened her tone, aware that she was taller than both cops, had good breeding, was well dressed. All that made her feel in control.

"Maybe later," the sergeant replied.

Wendy smiled at the rebuff and crossed her legs for Lieutenant Latino, who was staring at her with undisguised interest. Wendy had good long legs. She was wearing a short skirt and beige-and-camel alligator pumps, good copies of the real Hermes ones. She thought of herself as a beautiful woman and sat at ease on her modern modular sofa. She'd had a few drinks to calm down after her fight with Louis. But not too many to lose her edge, she thought. Like her mother and father, she could hold her liquor. And then she'd opened her last bottle of Tovah's wedding champagne. Alcohol didn't bother her. She was still in control.

The telltale signs of her solitary tippling—the open bottle and empty crystal flute—were on the cocktail table, but they didn't bother her, either. She was in her own home; there was no law against having a glass of bubbly at the end of a long day.

She smiled again at the Latino wearing cowboy boots. "How about you, Lieutenant?"

"Nice place you have," he remarked.

"Thank you." But Wendy knew it was just okay. She lived on Seventy-second Street and Lexington Avenue. Her five rooms were light and airy. Her wood floors were pickled white and her decor was modern. Beige was the darkest color in her decorating palette. But it wasn't Park Avenue. Not at all what she would have if she married someone who could double her income. She tapped her foot, anxious for them to go.

"Do you mind if I use the bathroom?" the Latino asked.

"Of course not. Right this way." She led him through the office. He went into her second bathroom and closed the door. She hesitated at the desk, listening for the sound of water in the bowl. She waited in there for the toilet to flush. She did not want him opening her closets or files, or messing with her computer. The toilet flushed. He took some time running water. She began to worry about the cop in her living room. Which one should she watch? Finally he opened the door.

"May I look in your albums? I'm getting married myself," he said.

"Congratulations," she said curtly. "Why don't you bring it into the drawing room with you?"

He picked one up and took his time slowly turning the pages of an album featuring table settings with elaborate centerpieces. Wendy ducked out the door and was alarmed not to see the Chinese in the living room. She hurried out of the office to find her, then exhaled with relief. Woo was standing at the window, studying the photos in a

Bride.

Sanchez came out of her office with two albums. "Sergeant, this may interest you," he said.

The two of them put their heads together, flipping the pages of an album that showed the whole process: invites, table settings, menus, decorations of churches and other sites, tents, favors, wedding gowns and tuxedos. They seemed impressed.

"Okay, now that you know what I do. I told you I was in the ladies' room when it happened; are we all square now?" Wendy was finished being nice.

The Woo woman looked up, puzzled.

"Isn't the ceremony the most important moment in a wedding?"

"Not for me. We practice the walk together, but then there comes the moment when they just have to muddle through themselves." Wendy slid over the single facet of her job that made her queasy.

"You went to the ladies' room?"

"Yes. I told you that." Wendy showed irritation for the first time. "I'd been there all day. Not only with the florist to supervise setting up the

huppah

—I'm sure you noticed it; it was huge—and the caterers setting up the party space

and

the seating plan for the tables. And they dressed and had their hair and makeup done right there in the temple! It was a madhouse with all those girls assembled there. Crowded and hot, tempers volatile. Six girls in there! The mother and the grandmother." Wendy shuddered at the chaos.

"But you went to the ladies' room at the exact moment when the service started. Isn't that unusual?"

Wendy made an impatient noise. "Not for me. Look, don't you people coordinate? I told that other detective that I needed to pee. I hadn't had a moment to myself all afternoon. So I went

then.

It seemed a good time."

"What about the family?"

"Oh, don't get me started. It was weird. This big producdon for a girl who wasn't all there."

"What do you mean?"

"It was sad. When we were going through the planning stages, Tovah was kind of out of it. Her mother and grandmother pulled all the strings."

The Chinese was interested. "Do you think maybe Tovah was coerced into the marriage? Did she have another boyfriend?"

"Oh, no. It was more like she was on drugs or something," Wendy said slowly.

"Drugs?"

"Yes, she had a kind of stoned look, maybe tranquilizers." Wendy lifted her shoulders, glancing at the champagne. At least half a bottle remained. Her buzz was dulling. She needed a lift.

"Was there anybody else in the bathroom with you?"

"Oh, I don't remember." Wendy shook her foot. They were back on the bathroom. "Let's see, yes. I think there were. Several people. Look, it's really late...."

"One last question. If I understand this correctly, you were downstairs in the party room when the family was getting ready. Then the family went upstairs and spent about twenty minutes in the rabbi's study before the ceremony, signing papers and doing the business before the procession got under way. Where were you then?" Woo asked.

Wendy blinked. "I don't understand the question."

"What were you doing before you went to the bathroom?"

"Oh, I was outside having a cigarette," she said quickly.

"Thank you. We're about done for the moment. I'd like a list of your events for the last year or so," Woo said.

"Why?" Wendy was stunned.

"Routine," the cop said. "And then we'll get out of your hair."

Eighteen

"Thanks for the diversion,

chico."

April glanced at

A the menu at the uptown Evergreen, known for its good dim sum.

"You're welcome. Find anything interesting?"

"The woman's a pack rat. You running a check on her?"

"Yeah. I get the feeling something's off there. She wanted to come into the bathroom with me."

"Since when is that a negative with you?" April tried to laugh off some nervous energy.

"She didn't want me alone in her office," he elaborated.

"What didn't she want you to see?"

He shrugged. "You got her client list."

She nodded. "She certainly didn't want me to have it. If you think there's something in her place, we can always get a search warrant. I'm really bothered by her time frame. She said she was out having a cigarette while the Schoenfelds were in the rabbi's study. But she's no smoker."

There had been no ashtrays, no lighters, or cigarette butts in her apartment. No odor of smoke in her clothes. Smokers smelled; their homes smelled, too.

No amount of scented candles or bowls of potpourri could quite cover it.

"Besides, if she needed to pee, wouldn't she do that first and then go out for a smoke?"

"She's a boozer. Maybe she slipped out for a drink."

"Yeah, she's a drinker," April agreed.

"I don't want Hollis in there," Mike was saying. "He's got his own thing going here. Maybe he's checking guests and staff for someone who saw her in the bathroom. Maybe he knows something we don't know."

"Maybe, but I still don't see her as our killer." April shook her head at the thought. "Twenty-some minutes is a long time to disappear, but what would be her motive? The Schoenfelds were clients of hers. She was trying to get that Orthodox business."