Alibi in High Heels (23 page)

Chapter One

There's just something about weddings. Something about tulle and lace being spun into fairy tales. Something about friends and family gathering to welcome a new member. Something about gawdy bridesmaid dresses, embossed invitations, and five dozen lilies in strategically placed crystal vases that make grown women turn into squealy second-graders, men have nightmares of chains wrapped around their ankles, and mothers get misty eyed at the slightest provocation.

"Mom, you're crying again," I said, pulling a tissue from my purse and handing it to my mother, lest her caked-on black mascara streak down her cheeks for the third time in as many minutes.

"I can't help it, Maddie. They're all just so beautiful."

I looked down at the array of place cards on the slick, black conference table at L'Amore Wedding Planners.

"They're place cards."

Mom nodded, her eyes shining. "I know. Aren't they lovely?"

I looked down again, chewing on a piece of Doublemint as I narrowed my eyes at the squares of paper. Personally, I was having a hard time telling the difference between the white, linen, embossed cards and the snow, woven, stamped cards.

"They are... nice."

"Oh, Maddie, they're breathtaking!" Mom squeaked out, holding the tissue to her face.

"Honestly, I don't know that we even need place cards, Mom. Jack and I want to keep things small. Intimate."

"And what's more intimate than hand-stamped place cards at each guest's spot?" asked Gigi Van Doren, the proprietor of L'Amore and grand dame of all things wedding. Her pen hovered just above her ever-present clipboard, eagerly awaiting the go-ahead to order several dozen.

I put Gigi anywhere from her early forties to late fifties - one of those women who seemed to defy time and age altogether. Pale blonde hair pulled back from her face in an artful French twist, cool blue eyes steady beneath a pair of rimless glasses, tailored suit fitting a body that spoke of regular pilgrimages to the gym. Or the plastic surgeon. But what had endeared me to her right from the first were the pointy toed, four-inch, black leather pumps on her feet. Prada. The woman knew style.

Still...

"What do you think, Dana?" I asked my best friend.

Dana pinched her strawberry blonde brows together, staring at the array as if she were taking a calculus test. "They
are
nice. Can I see the ivory-edged ones again?"

"But of course." Gigi signaled to her assistant, Allie, a blonde, blue-eyed twenty-something, who produced another indistinguishably whitish square of paper from her case, sliding it across the table.

Dana picked it up and let out a wistful sigh. "Oh, these are so romantic." She held the square up to the light, gazing at it like it might turn into Prince Charming on the spot.

"That one's my favorite," Allie agreed.

"We can watermark it with anything you like - the date, hearts, even your photograph. Very intimate," Gigi assured me.

Hmmm.

"Exactly how much are these intimate water-marked cards going to cost?" I asked, narrowing my eyes at Gigi as I snapped my gum between my teeth.

She shrugged. "Inconsequential. Hardly anything. Besides, how can you put a price on a beautiful occasion like your wedding day?"

"She's right, Maddie," Mom chimed in, dabbing at her eyes. "It's your wedding day. You can't put a price on that."

Maybe
I
couldn't. But I was pretty sure my groom would have something to say about it.

Six months ago Jack Ramirez, L.A.P.D. detective and the last person in the world I expected to believe in happily ever after, proposed to me atop the Eiffel Tower in Paris. It was the single most romantic thing that had ever happened to me. Or, I ventured to guess, anyone outside of a Meg Ryan movie. He'd picked out the most gorgeous ring on the planet, and, once I'd given him my tearful "yes," we'd spent three days of bliss in Paris, wrapped up in each other's arms, floating down the Seine, feeding each other chocolate eclairs, holding hands under the most romantic sunsets in the world.

But, like all good Meg Ryan movies, it had to come to an end sometime. Once we'd gotten home the reality of being engaged had started to sink in.

Ramirez works homicide, carries a very big gun, has a very big tattoo, and a very big... well, let's just say I'm
really
looking forward to the honeymoon. He's not your typical family man, and the whole commitment thing is a new gig for him. For that matter, it was a pretty foreign concept for me, too. So far the biggest commitment I'd jumped into was a ficus tree. And that was plastic.

But when I'd shown my newly adorned left ring finger to Mom and Faux Dad, as I affectionately called my stepfather, reality didn't so much sink in as hit me like a cheap pair of loafers to the gut. Saying the word "wedding" to my mother was like saying "
Haagen-Dazs
" to a Weight Watcher. She was foaming at the mouth within seconds, planning a ceremony to top all ceremonies, appropriately scheduled for this coming Valentine's Day. Suddenly the romantic moments Ramirez and I had stolen in Paris were turned into a whirlwind of reception halls, bridesmaid dresses, honeymoon packages to Tahiti, gardens versus churches, lilies versus roses, prime rib versus chicken kiev. And currently, white, snow, or ivory watermarked place cards.

"I don't know..." I hedged, looking down again at the squares. "Exactly what is the dollar amount of inconsequential?"

Gigi shot me an annoyed look, her mouth puckering up like she was sucking on a lemon drop. "Well, that all depends on how many people are coming."

"Just friends and close family," I said. Then repeated my wedding mantra, "Small and intimate."

"Right," Mom agreed, bobbing her coiffed hair up and down. "Just four hundred."

I swallowed my gum with a hiccup. "Four hundred? As in people?"

Mom gave me a blank stare. Then nodded. "Didn't you look at the guest list? I emailed the final version to you last night."

I shook my head. "I didn't have time to print it out before I left. But I didn't realize it went on for fifty pages. What happened to small and intimate?"

Mom blinked her heavily lined eyes at me. "Honey, I did the best I could to pare it down."

"We can easily accommodate four hundred," Gigi told me, her annoyance being replaced by what I could only interpret as glee.

"Exactly, that's why we chose an outdoor venue. The Beverly Garden Hotel said they could seat four-fifty, so I figured we were fine." Mom gave me an innocent look that I didn't buy for a minute.

"Wait." I held up a hand. "Hold the phone. I don't even know four hundred people."

"Yes, you do. Honey, don't you want people to come to your wedding?"

"People, yes. Strangers, no."

"These are not strangers."

"Four hundred, Mom? I have four hundred close friends and family?"

"Oh, honey, we simply couldn't leave anyone out."

Was I not annunciating clearly enough? "Smaaall. In-ti-mate."

Mom cocked her head to the side. "But, honey, it's your
wedding
. It's your special day."

I clenched down so hard I bit my tongue. "Yes, my wedding
day
. One day. There is no way I can feel good about spending a mint on one day. It can be special without declaring bankruptcy over it."

Dana's eyes ping-ponged back and forth between us. Mom puckered her forehead. Gigi narrowed her eyes at me like I'd just spoken blasphemy.

"Well," Mom hedged, "not everyone has RSVPed yet..." She reached into her gargantuan purse and pulled out a leather-bound book, laying it out on the conference table.

"What's that?" I asked.

"The guest list."

I took a deep meditative breath. Then opened the book and started scanning names.

"Who is Amber White?"

"Oh, honey," Mom said, smacking my arm. "You remember Amber. She's that woman who did your hair that time for the recital."

"Recital?"

"You know, when you were Little Red Riding Hood?"

I blinked at her. "Mom, I was six."

"And you looked adorable."

"You did not invite a woman I haven't seen since I was six to my wedding." I hiccupped again, that gum lodging in my throat.

"Well, she took such an interest in you."

"Mom!"

She pursed her lips, an argument on the tip of her tongue. But, lucky for me, she bit it back. "Okay. Fine. Amber's out."

"Thank you." Now we were getting somewhere. "What about her?" I asked, stabbing my finger at a name halfway down the page.

"Dolly Schlottskowitz?"

"Yeah. Who is she?"

"Oh, surely you remember Dolly Schlottskowitz? You know, Megan Schlottskowitz's mom?"

"Seriously? Megan the cheerleader from high school? Mom, I haven't seen her in ten years. And we weren't even friends then!" I grabbed Gigi's pen and crossed Mrs. Schlottskowitz's name off the list.

"I remember Megan," Dana piped up. "I heard she got really fat after high school."

I raised an eyebrow. "Really?"

Dana nodded, her blonde shag bouncing up and down. "Oh yeah. I ran into Karen Olsen at Starbucks one day and she said she saw Megan going into the Lane Bryant at the Burbank mall. And," she said, leaning in with a pseudo whisper, "she's been divorced." Dana help up two fingers. "Twice."

"Reeeeally?" I said, drawing out the word. I put Mrs. Schlottskowitz back on. So I wanted to show off for the former cheerleader. So sue me.

"This looks like it may take some time," Gigi said, eyeing the list. She glanced down at the gold watch adorning her slim wrist. "Why don't we adjourn for now? You get back to me with headcount tomorrow when we do the final cake tasting at..." Gigi looked to Allie who whipped out an electronic organizer thingie, quickly consulting it.

"One," she said.

"One," Gigi repeated. "Sound good?"

Mom clapped her hands together. "Perfect. Maddie, we'll go over it this afternoon, yes?"

I nodded reluctantly. I'd hoped to meet Ramirez for lunch, but unless I wanted my mom's neighbor's second cousin's milkman attending my
special
day, it looked like an afternoon with The List was in order.

"But let's at least decide on the place card design," Mom insisted.

I sighed. "Do we really need them?" I looked to Dana for help.

She shrugged. "They
are
nice, Maddie."

Three against one. I didn't stand a chance. "Okay, fine. Let's do the ivory linen one."

Mom clapped her hands with delight. Gigi's eyes lit up with that dollar sign look again.

I sincerely hoped Ramirez didn't mind working overtime.

* * *

Five hours - and a mere thirty-five pages worth of people I barely knew - later, I pulled my little red Jeep up to my studio apartment in Santa Monica. Just blocks from the ocean and sandwiched in between rows of eclectic buildings that conformed to L.A.'s hodge-podge school of architecture, it was my little slice of heaven.
Little
being the operative word here. A fold-out futon and a sketch table, and I was at max capacity. Which is why Ramirez and I had decided that I would move into his place after the wedding. Unlike me, he had an actual house. With an actual bedroom. And closets. Oh man, did he have closets. Little did he know they'd all soon be filled with shoes.

But I had to admit, a part of me was going to miss my little studio. It might be small, but it was cozy, quaint, and I'd come to love it.

I fit my key in the lock and shoved the door open.

"Hey, honey, I'm home," Ramirez said, grinning at me as he flipped channels on my TV.

I couldn't help it. My hormones did that little happy "squee!" they always did when I saw him. He had that tall, dark and handsome thing down to a science, his broad shoulders tapering to a compact frame. Black hair, just a little too long, curled around his ears. Dark eyes, a square jaw, and a paper-thin white scar cutting through his left eyebrow all gave him a slightly dangerous air that made women swoon and men lock up their daughters.

Luckily, my father lived two hundred miles away.

"What are you doing here?" I asked, dropping my purse on the kitchen counter and leaning in for a hello kiss.

"Mmmm... hello," he murmured against my lips, wrapping both arms around me.

I swear it was almost enough to make my afternoon with The List melt away.

"My cable was out," he said, when we finally came up for air. "Thought I'd come watch the game here. I ordered pizza, too. Should be here any minute."

"Pepperoni?"

He grinned. "With extra cheese."

The man was a god.

"So, how was your day?" he asked, settling himself on the futon as tall guys in expensive sneakers filled the TV screen.

"Ugh!" I plopped down next to him. "Don't ask. Did you know that my fourth-grade teacher is coming to our wedding?"

"Okay. Cool."

"No, not cool. I haven't seen her since I was ten! And then there's my uncle Charlie's first wife who lives in Belize, my grandmother's third cousin from Oklahoma, and the guy who sold Mom her minivan!"

Ramirez raised an eyebrow at me. "Sounds like a lot of people."

"Four hundred."

"Damn. What happened to small and intimate?"

"That's what I'd like to know," I mumbled, grabbing for the remote as a Budweiser commercial flickered across the screen. "And we're getting ivory linen place cards."

"I'm watching that."

I flipped to the news, checking the weather for tomorrow. I had this new pair of suede boots I was dying to wear, but not if there was even the slightest chance of rain. "Just a sec."

"Darlin', if I miss tip-off, I'm gonna cry."

I gave him a playful smack. But gave in, flipping back once I saw we were all sunshine for the next week. Gotta love L.A.

"So," I said, relinquishing the remote and leaning my head against Ramirez's chest, "we're doing the final cake tasting tomorrow. One o'clock."

Ramirez threw an arm around me. "We?"

"As in, you and me."

A groan rumbled beneath my ear.

"What?"

"Didn't we already pick a cake months ago?"