Weddings Can Be Murder (15 page)

“Who was it from? What was the call
about?”

“She didn’t know. She said it was a man,
older-sounding, with some kind of an accent but she really couldn’t
describe it. He asked if she was related to … now this is the part
I don’t remember … what the name was. Victoria thought he was
asking about her mother but he didn’t quite have all the facts
right. Vic’s mother died a long time ago. I’m sure you know all
this.”

“Yes, she’d said it was when she was in high
school.” It was one thing we immediately had in common when we
met.

“That’s right. Mrs. Morgan’s life insurance
was what allowed Vic to go to college with no student loans. I
think she used part of it for the down payment on that cute little
house of hers. I have to admit I was faintly envious of her
financial position at that point. Of course, I wouldn’t trade the
time with my mom for anything.”

She seemed to realize she was rambling
again. “So, about the call, I’m afraid that’s all I know.”

“This man didn’t give Vic his name?”

Emily stared toward the ceiling for a
minute. “I’m sure he did. I’m just trying to think what she told
me. It was kind of a weird name, I think, not one I’d ever heard
before.”

I drank the last of my tea, wishing I could
prompt her or push her in some way to make the information come
forth. But Emily seemed genuinely stumped. I ended up pulling one
of my business cards from my purse and handing it to her.

“If you recall that name, please let me
know. It’s really important.”

From another room came a child’s voice and
Emily’s attention darted away from me. She saw me to the door but
she’d already forgotten most of our conversation. I sat in my car
for an extra minute, writing down exactly what Emily had said about
the mysterious phone call and Victoria’s reaction to it.

If Vic had been concerned about the man’s
intentions, why wouldn’t she have immediately told Ron about it? We
could have done some background checks, found information on the
man. There must be more to this than I could see at the moment.

Chapter 14

Juliette yanked the tangled sheet from her
legs. She hadn’t slept well in the two nights since Friday’s visit
by Elmer Reddick at the office. She’d driven home in a blur, her
mind churning with the lawman’s comment. Al should have been at the
condo and she would ask him, and he would no doubt have a simple
answer to reassure her. But all she’d found at the condo was a
note:
Sorry baby, got called out of town on business for the
weekend.

Business on Easter weekend? She phoned his
house where Ernestina the maid told her she had not seen Señor
Proletti since early that morning. If not for Reddick’s remark,
Juliette would have suspected another woman. But if Al really was
being investigated by the sheriff’s department … everything took on
a whole new meaning. What could he have done? It had to be
something simple, such as not getting a required building permit.
If only she could talk to him.

Of the possibilities—trouble with the law or
seeing another woman—Juliette wasn’t sure which disturbed her more.
Her daddy, a preacher in Dalhart, would be horrified to see what
she’d got herself into. Mama might once have echoed Daddy’s words,
although privately she usually offered a little sympathy. At least
there would have been a shoulder to cry on. But his new wife, whom
Juliette could not bear to think of as step-mom, was completely
caught up in appearances and would see that she was disowned on the
spot.

Juliette got out of bed and padded barefoot,
wearing only a satin kimono, to the kitchen where she started the
coffee maker. She reached for the wall phone and started to dial
Carol Ann. Set the phone back. In their last conversation Carol Ann
had been full of exciting plans for a weekend trip to St. Augustine
with Tommy. She felt her eyes well up. There was no one she could
talk to. She took her coffee to the living room, curled up in the
corner of the sectional and stared out at the ocean. Easter
morning.

The phrase brought back memories of sunrise
church services under the trees in Texas, a bigger-than-usual
Sunday dinner followed by an Easter egg hunt and baskets filled
with cellophane grass and jelly beans, new shoes and
dress—something frothy and precious. As for most children, the
holiday had been a high point in her year. Now it was nothing but
another day at a beach filled with tourists in bikinis, laughing
too loudly under the influence of way too many drinks. A tear
plopped into her coffee cup.

She set the beverage aside and walked to the
sliding door, eyeing her narrow balcony and looking down at the
patch of concrete surrounding the pool, eighteen floors below.
Laughter and shrieks from the crowd drifted upward on the warm
spring air. She felt one moment’s longing to simply dive off. A
child’s voice giggled and shrieked “Mommy!” and the feeling
evaporated in an instant.

“I can’t sit around like this and I can’t
just do
nothing
!” she yelled into the empty living room.

She took a shower and washed her hair. Under
the steaming spray she made a plan. She dried off and slipped into
a favorite pair of shorts and a T-shirt. Grabbing her purse and
keys she headed to the office.

I can’t very well ask Al what’s going on if
I don’t have a clue where to begin, she thought as she cruised
along Greenlee Boulevard. But down inside what she really wondered
was whether she
should
talk to him or whether she’d better
do as the deputy advised and stay clear. Either way, she needed to
know.

The construction yard was dead silent. She’d
never been here without the roar of big equipment engines out in
the back lot and the bustle of men and vehicles moving in and out.
The wide chain link gate leading to the back was closed and
padlocked, a sight she’d never seen before. In fact, Friday
afternoon was the first time she’d been left alone to lock up. If
Al were to come in, she would have some explaining to do. She
thought about this as she parked and unlocked the front door. She
could say that she’d left a personal item behind and needed it.
What item? She scrambled for ideas while she entered the alarm code
at the keypad on the white box beside the door. That was another
thing he’d only now begun to trust her with, a key and the code. A
shiver passed through her as she considered his reaction if he felt
she had betrayed him.

She left the reception room lights off and
went directly to her own office. The two plants on her desk looked
desperately dry. Good—that would be her excuse. She set her purse
on the desk beside them and brought a cup of water from the
kitchenette. The moment she heard a noise at the door she would be
ready with her plausible justification for being there.

The building felt eerily quiet without the
constant hum of the AC and fluorescent lights. Even her sandals on
the tile made too much noise. She tiptoed to Al’s office, chiding
herself for being so jumpy. With the door to the lobby and the
window blinds closed, there was no way anyone could know she was in
there. She kept one ear tuned to the bell at the front door as she
stepped behind Al’s desk and reached for the center drawer. A tug.
Locked.

She tried each of the file drawers to the
left and right of the knee space. All securely locked as well. His
credenza held two more file drawers and a center section with doors
across it. Frustration mounted as she discovered all were locked.
Come to think of it, she’d never actually had access to any of
those drawers; each time she finished a letter or handled a file
she brought it to his Inbox and set it there. He’d always done his
own filing. The fact had never struck her as odd until now. What
executive filed his own letters unless he was hiding something in
those drawers?

She chewed at her lower lip for a moment.
She had no idea if the drawers were locked during business hours or
not. It could be that he’d simply taken the precaution because of
the long weekend. She spotted the sharp metal letter opener near
his leather-rimmed desk pad. A few stabs at the lock on one of the
drawers yielded no result except some tiny scratch marks on the
lock.

Stupid, Juliette. Don’t do it. If he spots
those he’ll know what you tried.

She replaced the letter opener exactly as
she’d found it and went back to her own office. Across the hall,
Marion Flightly’s door was closed, as usual. Hmm … Who would have
better access to the business’s innermost secrets than the
bookkeeper?

She scooted across the hall and tried the
door. Not surprisingly, it too was locked. She debated the
letter-opener trick—maybe a door lock was different than a desk
lock—but the sharp old bird would surely notice even the slightest
difference in the appearance of the door or her office. She’d
bragged in the coffee room, more than once, how easily she noticed
discrepancies in figures and how her bank register was never out of
balance. And she’d commented each time Juliette wore a new pair of
shoes or carried a new purse. It wasn’t worth the risk of being
called out in front of the others.

Sheila’s desk proved to be a much better
target. None of the drawers were locked and Juliette rifled them
guilt-free. Unfortunately, all she found besides the standard pens,
notepads and message books were a bottle of Glowing Flame nail
polish, a hairbrush, a box of tampons, two dried up tubes of
Superglue and a spare Bic lighter.

The file-sized drawer held a few thin manila
folders which seemed unimportant. Toward the back were spiral bound
message books with yellow duplicates of the phone messages she took
all day. This could be good, Juliette thought. The forms were
two-part, four to a sheet. The upper pink copy was perforated so
four separate messages could be written and torn out. A sheet of
carbon paper copied the messages onto yellow duplicates which
stayed in the book. She had one like it at her own desk. Al often
asked for someone’s phone number and it was handy to go back to
those yellow copies to find it.

She paged through one of the books, looking
for … what, exactly? She wasn’t even sure. She came across familiar
client names and others who were unknown to her. But what did that
mean? Nothing, really. She’d been in the office twenty minutes
already and knew she dare not stay longer, especially if someone
saw her car, casually mentioned it to Al, and she were to try using
her plant-watering excuse. That was a five-minute task. She needed
to get out now.

She put the message books back in the order
she’d found them, watered her plants, retraced her steps to be sure
all lights were off, all trace of her presence gone. Her hand shook
a little as she entered the alarm code and locked the front door,
but no one was outside. Cars on the street roared past at their
usual pace, no one turning a head to look her direction as she
started her car and pulled out.

Across the street from her condo she spotted
a little street fair with food vendors and crafts booths fronting
the beach. She parked the Camaro in her underground spot and walked
over, deciding to clear her head. Her stomach rumbled at the scent
of grilled meat and she ordered something billed as the Latin Macho
Burger, eating it as she walked the beach. Stretching her legs and
breathing the fresh sea air felt good. Tossing the wrapper from her
sandwich into a bin, she browsed a booth selling handmade bead
earrings and bought herself a pair in shades of blue and
purple.

She’d probably blown everything out of
proportion this morning. That deputy was full of crap and Al really
did have a business trip this weekend. He loved her. She worked by
his side every day and slept with him almost every night. Surely he
had no secrets from her. She walked home, put on her new earrings
and settled on the sofa with a book she’d been wanting to read for
a long time.

Monday morning, Al put her mind at rest when
he walked into her office looking jaunty and somewhat amorous. He
closed the door and took her hand, pulling her up from her chair
and pressing his body close.

“Umm, I missed you,” he whispered in her
ear, raking his fingers through her hair.

“I missed you too. The weekend was too
long.”

“Feel like company tonight?” he asked. He’d
reached for his coat pocket and pulled out a small square box.

Her breath caught as he put it in her hand.
She took a step back and lifted the lid. An exquisite heart-shaped
pendant, covered in tiny diamonds, glittered under the lights.

“It’s beautiful,” she said, her breath
coming quickly.

“For the most beautiful girl in the world.”
He pulled the delicate chain from the box and draped it around her
neck, stepping behind to hook the clasp.

Juliette cooled slightly at his words. She
knew good and well she was not the most beautiful girl in the world
and the words were meant to pacify her when he knew she’d been
peeved with him. But when he stroked her cheek and looked deeply
into her eyes, she forgot all that.

“Let me take you to dinner, that seafood
place you love so much, then we’ll go home and …” His eyebrows
wiggled. Her body warmed.

She smiled and shooed him back to his own
office, then immediately went to the ladies room to look at the
necklace in the mirror. It was now the third time he’d given her
diamonds. One of these times would the gift be a ring?

“
Al’s going down one of these days, hon,
and you don’t want to be there.”
The voice of the deputy
intruded into her thoughts.

“No.” She said it out loud to erase his
voice and shake off the memory of his visit.

Turning her back on the mirror she left the
restroom and went back to her desk. But Reddick’s words would not
completely go away. Why was Al’s desk locked? What secrets were
hidden in there or in Marion’s office? She didn’t like it that the
lawman who’d known Al since they were kids now seemed intent on
getting him.