Died to Match by DEBORAH DONNELLY Read Free Book Online Page B

it’s important that you don’t discuss the details of the case with anyone.”
    “What do you mean, details?”
    “Cause of death, condition of the body, Mr. Barry’s presence at the scene, and so forth. That won’t be released to the press just yet. For now, a party guest was found dead, that’s all.”
    “Of course. Whatever you say.”
    After they left, I went back to hang up the gown, just until I could get it to a dry cleaners. As I lifted the crumpled black folds, I heard a faint clatter against the tiles of the bathroom floor, and remembered: Mercedes’ powder compact. I pulled out the little square of black enamel and gold trim, and felt tears welling up. Just a bit of female frippery. Souvenir of a dead woman. I took a shaky breath, set the compact gently on a shelf, and returned upstairs to discuss details of a very different sort with Buck, Betty, and Bonnie.
    The Buckmeisters were a living, laughing, hollering argument for charging an hourly rate instead of a commission. Ifigured that by the time Bonnie said “I do,” Buck and Betty would have paid me about fourteen cents an hour for my services. They popped in to see me almost daily, had me pursue every new fad and feature that showed up in the magazines or on-line, and changed their minds as often as Buck changed the bandannas that he invariably wore, pirate-fashion, wrapped around his broad red forehead and knotted in back above his scraggly gray ponytail. Today’s bandanna was blue with yellow polka dots. Buck was from El Paso, where he’d made a fortune in hot tubs, and moving to Seattle hadn’t changed him one little bit, no siree.
    Daughter Bonnie was to be a Christmas bride, and we’d already worked through four or five entire scenarios for the wedding, from food to flowers to music, each of them increasingly Yule-ish. The only constants were the church and country club sites, the ornate wedding gown, and the invisible groom. Invisible to me, that is, because he’d been out of the country for the entire planning process, setting up a computer center for his company in Milan. I hoped he wouldn’t throw me any curves at the last moment. It was remarkable enough for a father of the bride to be as immersed in wedding minutiae as Buck was; grooms and dads usually just showed up and said “Yes, dear.”
    “Yes, dear,” Buck was saying now. “I did too bring the chicken, it’s in this bag, no it isn’t, wait a darn minute, here it is! Carnegie, we brought you your favorite!”
    “You eat up, dear, and we’ll tell you this wonderful idea we’ve had about the bridesmaids,” said his wife. Betty’s hair was dyed black as patent leather, and permed into curlicues that framed her round, kindly face just like a painted doll’s. “Instead of bouquets they could carry little silk purses, dyedto match their shoes, with flowers peeking out the top. Wouldn’t that just be sweet?”
    I sank into a wicker chair, wondering how Boris would respond to yet another change in plan. “Very sweet. I bet you have a picture to show me.”
    “As a matter of fact, we do!” Bonnie was the round, curly image of her mother, amplified with some of her father’s height and heft. “We found this at the library. Look!”
    She opened a glossy volume authored by the sort of florist-to-the-stars that Boris claimed to disdain and, I suspected, secretly envied. The thought of Boris brought Corinne’s face, deathly pale, floating before my eyes. Should someone tell Boris about her fall, or would she be embarrassed if he knew? Damn her anyway for being so melodramatic.
    “See?” said Bonnie. “It’s a bride’s purse in the picture, but all the girls could carry them, and we’d have Christmas flowers instead of these tiny little pansies or whatever they are.”
    “Primroses!” Buck boomed. “Caption says they’re primroses and forget-me-nots. Hmph. I’d like to see anybody forget my little Bonnie. Anyhow, we’d want holly and mistletoe, wouldn’t we, to