Veiled Threats Read online

  “Grace, stop it.” Douglas stood and took her arm. “Lieutenant, my wife is upset; anyone would be. Could you excuse us for a few minutes?”

  I hastened across the hallway and let myself out. The sunshine was bright now, almost hot, the sky a flat, faded blue. A car pulled up behind my van: the blood-and-silver Alfa Romeo I'd seen at the house two weeks before. The top was down, and Holt Walker was at the wheel.

  “What a nice surprise!” he called to me. “I've been taking Grace's car for a test drive. She's trying to sell it to me. What do you think?”

  I looked blankly at him, then at the car. “Yes. Yes, it's a nice car. Holt, something has happened …”

  I described the havoc in the rose garden, and Nickie's discovery of her butchered pet.

  “Oh, Christ, the poor kid.” He looked at Lieutenant Borden's discreetly official gray sedan, and then up at the house. “How's Grace?”

  “Pretty shaken up. She thinks Keith Guthridge did it, I mean had it done, to scare Douglas.”

  “She could be right,” he said grimly. “He's up to his neck in King County Savings, and Douglas's testimony is going to sink him. That bastard. And the police won't find a clue, I'd bet money on it. Look, Carnegie, I don't want to butt in on them now, I was just dropping off the Alfa till I make up my mind. Could you take me back to town?”

  We were silent for most of the drive, Holt in contemplation of the news, me in my own private quandary. Was my injury in the woods that night an accident or not? If not, then Theo was lying, and was actually working for Keith Guthridge. Could Theo be that good an actor? Could he be the one, with his weight lifter's arms and his lifeless eyes, who beat Gus's skull in?

  “Carnegie, you're white as a sheet. What's wrong?”

  “I, I …” I clutched the wheel and tried to concentrate, but it was no good. As soon as we were off the floating bridge I pulled over to a side street and brought the van to a clumsy halt in front of a run-down convenience store. I couldn't stop shaking.

  Suddenly Holt was outside, opening my door and urging me over to the passenger seat. “I should have driven in the first place. You've had an ugly shock, and I bet you've been taking care of Nickie all morning.”

  I just nodded, my eyes closed. When I opened them we were entering the parking garage of one of the new waterfront condominium towers near the Pike Place Market.

  “Come on up,” Holt said. “You need a drink.”

  “I'm all right,” I told him, but as I got out my knees began to buckle and I had to steady myself against a concrete column that said “Reserved” in yellow paint. “Actually, I need some breakfast.”

  “Lunch,” Holt said, steering me to the elevators. “At this time of the day we call it lunch.”

  Feast would have been a better term, a small but exquisite feast. Holt's condo was twelve floors up, with a view that swept from the Market directly below to the islands in the Sound to the icy wall of the Olympics on the horizon. The terrace was just big enough for a table for two. He left me there in the sunshine with a glass of sherry while he brought out French bread, a crock of paté, a dish of plums, artichokes in olive oil. I gazed at it all, bemused, while he went back to the kitchen for coffee and a quick phone call to the Parrys.

  “The police have left,” he announced, setting down a glass café filtre pot and two mugs that said “Harvard Law.” “Douglas has gone for a walk to blow off steam, and they've got a team of gardeners coming in to salvage the roses. And someone from a security firm. Douglas is hiring bodyguards.”

  I pictured muscle men in sunglasses flanking the father of the bride at the wedding. Should I order two more boutonnieres? I giggled.

  “Carnegie,” said Holt gently, “eat something.”

  I ate everything, remembering to compliment the cook only at the end, as I polished off a slice of pear tart.

  “No cooking involved.” Holt laughed. “I can barely boil water. I just wander around the Market stalls and buy whatever looks good, one day at a time.”

  “Well, you did some fine wandering today.” I set aside my untouched wine and took a sip of coffee. It was tepid. He really couldn't boil water. I put the mug down. “Holt, can I talk to you about something? In confidence? It involves the Parrys, but I don't know if I want to tell them about it. In fact, I don't know if there's anything to tell.”

  “Of course,” he said. “Shall we go inside?”

  His living room was spare but comfortable, with Scandinavian furniture in teak and pale green cushions. All the drama and color was on the walls: framed, oversized photographs of zebras through savanna grass, mountain peaks cloaked in storm, a purple dawn over endless sand dunes. And one collage of snapshots showing Holt and various other smiling, suntanned travelers, with those same exotic locales in the backgrounds. I sat down, almost sleepy from the food and sun, and told my strange little story. It took a while, but Holt was patient and encouraging.

  “So you see,” I concluded, “Theo couldn't have been at the houseboat Wednesday night. He was home in bed. But if someone was there, and the same someone attacked me in the woods, then Theo must have been lying. He claims I caught a glimpse of him in the dark, panicked, and hit my head when I fell. And if Theo's lying, maybe he's involved in … in what happened to Gus.”

  “And working for Guthridge behind Douglas's back? Not possible.” Holt shook his head. He was wearing a spotless white sweatshirt with his jeans, and he pushed the sleeves up over tanned forearms as he spoke. “Theo is completely loyal to Douglas, I know that for a fact. And he hates Guthridge, for Douglas's sake. He told me so himself, and I can't believe he was putting on a show for my benefit. So if we leave Theo out of it, then where do we stand?”

  I liked the way he said “we.” This was much better than Eddie's fatherly disbelief. We tackled the puzzle from every angle, with occasional digressions about Nickie's wedding, Holt's close relationship with the Parrys, and Theo's choice of wardrobe. We talked about Crazy Mary, and what she might or might not have seen. But after a while we were talking in circles.

  “So maybe there's no mystery at all.” I sighed. “If Theo really is telling the truth, then I really did fall in the woods. In that case, I must have just imagined the mysterious scent. And in that case, there was no one in the houseboat Wednesday night.” I looked at Holt accusingly. “Which means it's all your fault. You poured me one too many brandies up in Victoria.”

  He leaned forward across the coffee table between us, and I did the same. “How can I possibly make it up to you?”

  It's not easy, kissing across a coffee table, but it's not that hard, either. And if you push the table out of the way and find a delightfully thick, soft carpet underneath it, well, there you go. We took a long time to kiss before we shed our clothes. First his sweatshirt and then my blouse, his jeans, my skirt, and then he tossed one of my shoes over his shoulder. It landed out on the terrace with a slap that brought me to my senses for just a moment.

  “Holt, I have to ask you something.”

  He looked down at me solemnly. “You want to know if we'll be seeing each other again.”

  “That, too,” I said. “But right now I want to know if you have a condom around.”

  “Coming right up.”

  “Well, I can see that.”

  We were still laughing when he returned from the bathroom. Then we held each other close, and the laughter stopped. I traced my fingertips along his temple, his jawline, watching my own reflection in his green, green eyes. He kissed me, hard, and a wave of passion drove us against each other with a force that was close to violence. He was crushing me, I was clawing at him, pulling him to me, demanding to be crushed. It was over very quickly, like a wave breaking, a rising, racing curve that smashes into spray and thunder and disappears. I lay cradled in Holt's arms, listening to his heartbeat become heavy and slow against my heart.

  The telephone woke us. Holt grabbed his jeans and went to answer it, leaving me chilled and befuddled on the carpet. It was obviously a c
lient. Holt's voice was all business. I groped for my clothes and found my way to the bathroom. It was late in the day, clouding over, and I was suddenly anxious to be back in my own home before dark. As I washed and dressed, the sight of Gus's blood-soaked fur kept appearing in my mind, and the memory of Nickie's tears this morning clashed in an ugly way with the laughter and the passion of this afternoon. Sex with strangers and crimes in the night, I thought, struggling for humor to combat a mounting sense of depression. Enough of this. I want a cup of tea and a nice cozy chat with Lily.

  But when I emerged, the man on the terrace holding my shoe was hardly a stranger. He was Holt, familiar again in his white sweatshirt, a respectable attorney, a friend of a client. And a genuinely nice guy. When he saw my forlorn expression, he made me laugh by dropping to one knee, a parody Prince Charming, to offer me my quite unromantic moccasin. It was very silly, and very charming.

  “Size six glass slipper, my dear? I'd know you anywhere, you're the dame who's always leaving dances at midnight.”

  “Nine and a half narrow to you, mister,” I retorted, and leaned on his bent shoulder for balance while I put on my shoes. “And now I've got to go back to my own castle.”

  He rose. “Are you all right, Carnegie?”

  “Yes. A little shaken up, that's all.”

  “Me, too.” He put his arms around me, offering comfort, asking for nothing. “God, it sounds so trite, but I haven't felt this way about anyone in a long time.”

  We stood quiet for a moment, and then the phone rang again.

  “The machine will get it,” Holt said. “I'm sorry I jumped up like that before. It's just habit.”

  He continued to hold me, but I could sense him listening, and when Nickie Parry's voice rose from the answering machine I stepped away.

  “Go ahead and talk to her. I'm sure the family needs you. I've got to go.” As I began to let myself out, I could hear Prince Charming changing back into the family lawyer.

  “Nickie, hello. I heard about the garden and the dog, and I'm just … When? Where are you, which hospital?”

  I turned back, my hand on the doorknob. Holt covered the mouthpiece and stared at me.

  “It's Douglas,” he said softly. “He's had another heart attack.”

  “HE WAS JUST TAKING A WALK,” NICKIE TOLD ME WHEN I TELEphoned her a few days later. I hadn't wanted to intrude, but there were some wedding details that couldn't wait, and I knew from Mariana that Douglas's condition had stabilized. “He started having chest pains, and when he got to the general store they called Medic One.” She stopped to yawn, sounding like a drowsy child saying very adult words. “Sorry, I've been sleeping at the hospital most nights. The doctor said myocardial infarction, and then arrhythmia leading to cardiac arrest. And they broke a rib, doing CPR at the store, but thank goodness they knew how to do it at all. Everybody was really great, at the store and then at the hospital.”

  Are they greater, I wondered, when the patient is one of the wealthiest men in the state? But then I remembered my father's final weeks, back in Boise. Not an important man, in the eyes of the world, no matter how precious he was to my mother and me. But the nurses and aides had treated him gently and well. I shuddered, recalling my own nights spent in waiting rooms, the medical smell and the unread magazines and the vending machine coffee in white Styrofoam cups. At least my father hadn't needed bodyguards.

  “I'm so sorry, Nickie. Is he, that is, will he be able to come home soon?”

  “ A week, they think, maybe less. He's doing really well. He says he'll be at the wedding with bells on. But if the angioplasty doesn't hold, the little balloon thing he's already got in one artery, then he'll have to have bypass surgery.” Her voice turned bitter, close to tears. “I just hope Uncle Keith is proud of himself. This is all his fault.”

  “Have the police found out—”

  “They say there's no evidence, but who else would do something like that? Oh, Carnegie, the trial isn't till the end of August. What's going to happen between now and then? And poor Gus …”

  I murmured my sympathy, but I glanced at the master calendar on my desk while I did it. Dress fittings and limousines seemed irrelevant at a time like this, but if the wedding was to stay on schedule I had to think about them. Douglas Parry's wife and daughter certainly wouldn't want to.

  “Nickie, do you want to cancel the bridesmaids’ luncheon?”

  “Oh, God, I forgot about that. Grace says to go ahead with all the plans, so Daddy doesn't feel like he's spoiling things, and Ray says so, too. Could you postpone it?”

  “Sure. I'll call everyone and set up a new date, at a restaurant.” We sure as hell couldn't use the rose garden.

  “Fine, whatever. Is there anything else to decide right now? I want to get back to the hospital.”

  I scanned my checklists quickly, and we ran through a couple of items including the final dress fitting. “I think you can skip the fitting, actually, but there is one thing. We forgot to have you try on your pearl necklace with the gown. The dressmaker wants to see the pearls so she can adjust the neckline to match. I could drive over and pick them up, if you want.”

  “Don't bother, Carnegie. I'll have Mariana send them over to you by taxi.”

  “I'm not sure that's safe,” I said in alarm. It would have seemed risky even to transport the necklace myself, but dropping several thousand dollars’ worth of jewelry on some cabbie's front seat was just asking for trouble.

  “It's all right,” Nickie assured me. “I'll send the fakes.”

  “The fakes?”

  “Daddy has all our jewelry copied, for when we travel. The real ones have a platinum clasp, and the fakes have gold. I can't tell them apart myself, except for that.”

  “Oh.” I'd never had my rhinestones copied, so this was news to me. “OK, send them over, then. I'll be in the office all day.”

  The necklace arrived at mid-morning, in a velvet-lined cloisonné case. Teal-blue butterflies danced across the white enamel surface, and ruby-red flowers rose up on golden stems. Inside the case, on teal-blue velvet, lay the necklace, gold clasp and all. The pearls certainly seemed real, each one a little marvel of curves and captured moonlight. The gold clasp was a tiny, ornate work of art all in itself. As I lifted the double strands with a fingertip I heard the outside door open, and I called out without turning around. “Hey, Eddie, you're late! Forty lashes.”

  “Sounds kind of kinky, but I'm willing to give it a try.”

  I turned. Aaron Gold, with a cardboard box in his hands and a smirk on his face. I closed up the pearls, dropped the case in my purse, and joined him in the good room, wrinkling my nose at the cigarette aura that hung around him.

  “Don't you ever make an appointment, or call ahead?”

  “Not when I'm doing a good deed.” He dropped the box on our glass-topped conference table and began pulling out the contents. “Remember that supplement the Sentinel did on kids’ books? Sure you do, you're a loyal reader. They were getting rid of all the review copies, so I snagged some for your story hour. I got mostly little-kid books, but there's a couple of teenage romances, too. Lots of bondage scenes, probably. You'll love 'em.”

  I smiled in spite of myself and looked over the loot. Fresh new books with bright colors and intact covers, not like the battered volumes I got from the library and Goodwill. “Well, thank you. Thanks a lot.”

  “No problem.” He put his hands in his pockets and looked around. “So this is Wedding Lady HQ. Nice.”

  “We like it.”

  He glanced into the workroom. “Very professional looking, computers and all. How's the Parry shinding coming along?”

  “Just fine.” I could see what was coming. Goddamn you, I thought. Goddamn you for living off other people's troubles.

  “I heard Douglas Parry is in the hospital.” He jingled some pocket change. “Is he OK?”

  “Mr. Gold, are all your bribes this cheap?”

  “What?” He looked like I'd slapped him, which I very muc
h wanted to do.

  “Well, it's pretty obvious, isn't it? A stack of books that didn't cost you a dime, and I'm supposed to give you all the dirt on my clients. Or maybe there's a fifty-dollar bill at the bottom of the box? Do you get an expense account for this kind of thing?”

  I expected an argument, a snappy retort, but Gold just set his jaw and stared at me. He walked to the door, stood with his back to me for a moment, then turned.

  “Where do you get off, being this rude to me? Who do you think you are? I was asking after the man's health, that's all.” He began to say something else, then stopped himself. “ To hell with it. The books are for those kids. You can throw them in the lake for all I care.”

  He passed Eddie on his way out the door.

  “Nice-looking couple,” Eddie said. “New customers, I hope?”

  “Couple? What couple?” I went to the door and looked down the staircase to the dock. Gold was walking toward the parking lot, his arm around the shoulder of a pretty brunette in shorts and a baseball cap.

  “I didn't meet her,” I said. “But he's Aaron Gold, the reporter who called the other day. He was … I don't know. He was dropping off some books.”

  Eddie shrugged and went back to work, and so did I. Business was picking up, or at least inquiries were. We'd had four prospective brides call in response to our ad in a regional wedding magazine, and each one would get red-carpet treatment when she came in for her free consultation. Later on, if there was a later on for Made in Heaven, we'd charge for consultations, but right now we just needed to get people in the door. I tried to focus on that, and forget about Aaron Gold's unfair rebuke. He was completely out of line, and even if he wasn't, there was no harm done. I wanted him to stop pestering me about the Parrys, and now he would. Good riddance.

  Meanwhile, we had just under two weeks until Nickie's extravaganza, and pages of single-spaced checklists to work our way through. A backup generator for the dance band's power source and the rental chandeliers, check. Gray silk ribbon, not black, to wrap the stems of the ushers’ heather-sprig boutonnieres, check. Separate dessert stations for the wedding cake, lemon sour cream with a bittersweet chocolate glaze, and for the groom's cake, a mogador of rum-soaked chocolate genoise filled with raspberry preserves, check. And a new item: a wheelchair stashed unobtrusively at both church and reception, in case the bride's father had need of one. Check.