The Wedding Guest

Chapter 14

By the time Robin and I finished dinner, the photos from the wedding still hadn’t come through.

She said, “That was delicious. Nice long bath fit your schedule?”

Slipping out of her clothes as she headed for the bedroom. I followed her. Blanche knew enough to stay in the kitchen.

Wet-haired and loose-limbed, in a T-shirt and shorts, I gave my phone a final look.

An email from Milo’s home computer had arrived ten minutes ago. No heading. Text plus attachment.

I wrote: Deerstalker cap and calabash pipe, too? and opened the file.

Page after page of postage-stamp images filled the screen, each enlargeable by keystroke. The first three hundred thirty-nine covered the processional and the ceremony.

Surprisingly traditional stuff. Color shots made it easier to look for Red Dress. Several other women had chosen variations on the color but she was nowhere in sight.

Next: four hundred thirteen photos from the reception. As Tomashev had said, the emphasis had been the bride. At least two-thirds of the images featured her in various degrees of close-up, maybe half in the company of her new husband.

Baby smiling.

Baby dancing by herself.

Baby doing jazz hands walking like an Egyptian trying on a variety of kittenish pouts sticking her tongue out curling it caressing her own chest gracing the camera with a dizzying collection of views of her butt.

When Garrett was in the frame, he alternated among an uneasy smile, the saucer-eyed bafflement of a tourist viewing a piece of unfathomable art, and an expression so blank he could’ve been a mannequin.

No sign of the girl in Fendi in any of those. Same for the few dance-floor photos that had managed to exclude the bride.

I kept scanning. Spotted her.

Image number five hundred eighty-three, the red dress bright as arterial blood.

She stood in a horde of celebrants crowding one of the bars at the front of the venue. Hanging back at the rear of the throng, a sober face among a sea of bleary grins and agape mouths.

Sober gorgeous face. The angle of her eyes suggested she was watching the entrance.

Waiting for someone?

I inspected the rest of the pictures, found nothing, and enlarged the image.

That blurred the details but clarified emotion. Serious bordering on grim. Definitely not a celebrant.

Waiting for something unpleasant. Having no idea.

I speed-dialed Milo’s home number. The call got jammed up because he was trying to reach me at the same time.

Cellular version of the old Alphonse-Gaston-after-you-no-after-you routine.

I clicked off and then rang again.

He said, “See it?”

I said, “Oh, yeah. Are the shots in chronological order? If they are, she was killed toward the end of the party.”

“I’m texting ol’ Bradley right now to find out. Any other impressions?”

“She wasn’t part of the festivities. She seems to be watching the front door.”

“Waiting for someone she’s pissed at. Or worried about.”

“Exactly,” I said.

“Fits your blackmail thing,” he said. “Unless it was a date and she’s peeved that he was late — hold on, Tomashev’s texting me... some cameras have metadata, his doesn’t, so no chronology. Also, he rearranged everything to prioritize Baby’s photos. Has no idea when that one was taken.”

“Going the extra mile even though he didn’t get paid. Is she someone special to him?”

“I wondered the same thing and asked him and indeed she is. But nothing romantic, the two of them go back to middle school. He’s chubby and gay and used to get bullied a lot. She stuck up for him when no one else did.”

I said, “Nice to hear something positive about her.”

“Tomashev says she’s a ‘cool girl’ when she’s not uptight. I asked him if he’d come up with any new ideas about who’d want to mess up her big day. He said he’d been thinking about it and could only come up with two possibilities that probably weren’t true. Obviously, I pushed him. First, maybe another girl. In school, lots of them were jealous of Baby because she was cute, athletic, and popular, but he had no specific candidates among her current friends.”

“What’s the second?”

“The second made him really nervous, I had to pry it out of him. He remembers Denny Rapfogel being tense when he posed. Which was different from Denny’s usual demeanor, Tomashev had always seen him as a friendly, maybe too-friendly guy. I asked him to pick out a few images to illustrate. He’s got a point, Alex. Check out two fifty-nine and six eighty-three.”

Both were family shots: bride, groom, two sets of parents. In the first, taken in the church, Denny Rapfogel hovered behind his wife, slit-eyed and wearing a smile forced beyond any hope of mirth. In the second image, at the reception, his face had gone blank and he’d put space between himself and Corinne.

I said, “Distant and preoccupied.”

“If he just choked a girl out, he’d have good reason. I’d love to be getting that feeling, Alex — everything jelling. But I’m not there yet. With his marriage and his business falling apart, there’d be all kinds of reasons not to smile.”

“Time for surveillance.”

“You read my mind,” he said. “Then again, they sent you to school for that. I’m gonna do it myself, wanna take a look at where and how these people live. Any other ideas?”

“Still wary of the Valkyrie?”

“Depends on what’s at stake.”

“You could show her Denny’s photo and ask if he was a customer. Or take advantage of her flu and show it to the bartender. Same for other strip joints if you’ve got the personnel.”

“Good idea. The baby D’s don’t have time, I’ll do that myself, too.”