Veiled Threats by DEBORAH DONNELLY Read Free Book Online Page B

our eyes, but we laughed it off. After last night's horror, it was comforting to laugh a little. Our shopping done at last, we ducked inside a café to warm up with espresso. Warm up and wake up, since neither of us had slept much.
    Outside the café the light changed on First Avenue, and a horde of pedestrians hurried across toward our seat by the window. Touristy couples with maps. Young skateboarders with pants baggy enough for clowns. The usual perforatti, punk kids with pierced eyebrows, nostrils, lips, and God knows what else, though if God does know he can keep it to himself. Everybody hurrying, except one little old bag lady trailing behind, still in the crosswalk long after the Don't Walk had lit. Some bozo in an SUV honked at her, and I looked more closely. Crazy Mary.
    Suddenly I was hearing her old, rustling-leaves voice:
“I saw him.”
Crazy Mary, who always rode the bus, would have walked up the drive in the rain. No headlights to warn anyone of her coming. What had she seen?
    “Nickie, I'll be right back.”
    I scrambled through the door and out to the corner, just in time to intercept her dogged progress up the street.
    “Mary? Hi, Mary, I met you at the wedding last night, at Sercombe House?”
    She stared up at me without recognition.
    “I was wondering if you could tell me, did you see anyone, um, anyone suspicious out on the driveway? You said something last night about someone breaking things and stealing things. Did you see someone doing that?”
    She looked confused, almost afraid, and then her face brightened. “Cake!”
    “I'm sorry?”
    “The bride said I could have some cake. But it fell on the floor. No cake, no, no, no.” She shook her head vigorously and began to march away, the crowd closing around her.
    “Wait!” I tried to follow, but I was blocked by a field-trip flock of school kids, noisy as starlings. Then a hand caught my arm.
    “Carnegie, Holt is here!” said Nickie's voice. She'd come out to the corner and was waving to a tall, familiar figure approaching us. “Holt, we were just coming to your office! This is Carnegie Kincaid.”
    I lost sight of Mary, and focused on Holt Walker. So this was the old family friend, the one I'd pictured as an elderly widower. Except that this widower stood six feet four and owned a pair of astonishing green eyes. My nonwaiter, quite properly dressed this time in a fashionable gray suit and wine-colored tie. Expensive wine, a tie with a vintage. He smiled at Nickie and then, a bit blankly, at me. His teeth were just as endearingly crooked as I remembered. I probably had fish scales in mine. I certainly had wet hair and clashing clothes. What a time to meet Prince Charming.
    “Maybe you two met last night,” Nickie was saying. The shadow of last night's tragedy crossed her features.
    “Yes, we did,” he said absently, shaking my hand. “In the kitchen.”
    “Listen, I apologize,” I said. “I can't believe I thought you were—”
    “It's terrible about the bridesmaid,” he went on, as if he hadn't heard me. “Unfortunately, I'm late for a couple of meetings, so …”
    “I'm supposed to meet Theo at your office, is that okay?” Nickie asked.
    “No problem,” he told her. Then, with another murmured platitude to me, he was gone. Some prince. And Mary was nowhere in sight.
    “Carnegie, are you OK? You look upset. Is it about last night?”
    “Try to forget last night, kiddo. You go on home. I'm going to drop off your dress and go to the movies.”

I HAD FORGOTTEN TO CALL L IEUTENANT B ORDEN — OR MAYBE I was avoiding the whole issue—so the next day he called me. He tried the office first, and Eddie gave him the number at Joe Solveto's catering office in the Fremont neighborhood. Joe and I were having lunch at his desk, sampling the latest Solveto's hors d'oeuvres. Eddie and I had eaten popcorn for dinner, so I was famished, but I would have made room anyway. The food was superb.
    Joe combined the languid aplomb of Noël