Dolled Up to Die (13 page)

Carly perched on the edge of the bed. “I knew him only in the way one businessperson knows another, not really a personal connection. I did do a big job for him when they had the grand opening for Mr. K’s restaurant. He wanted yellow roses everywhere. That was before Robyn came,” she added, nodding to her grandniece, who was now carefully folding the dress and placing it in a box for Cate to take home. “We still have a standing order for a single rose at each table at the restaurant twice a week, but I don’t know if that will continue now that he’s gone.”

“You didn’t have much actual contact with him, then?” Cate asked. She wiggled into her sweater.

“Actually I’m better acquainted with his wife’s mother, Celeste, than I was with him.”

Even better!

“Well, I did know Celeste,” Carly corrected. “We had kind of a falling-out a while back.”

“This was a personal falling-out, not a business matter?” Cate asked as she sat down to put her shoes on.

“Yes, although it may have been why they didn’t order flowers for the funeral from us. I met Celeste through a bridge
club we both belong to, and then we started going to brunch together occasionally, just the two of us,” Carly said. “I enjoyed her. She had lots of inside stories about celebrities she’d met, kind of catty stuff, but fun. She had stories about their past lives too. She kept wanting to do a past lives regression on me. I thought it was all kind of far out, but finally, a couple months ago, I said okay.”

“She came here?”

“Yes. She told me to get comfortable in the recliner downstairs. She’d hypnotize me, and then we’d go back in time together.”

“And?”

“She couldn’t hypnotize me. I just sat there, all bright-eyed and wide awake. So then she said she’d give me something to help me relax. I said no way, I wasn’t taking anything. That really annoyed her, and she told me I wasn’t cooperating at all. By then I was annoyed with her too, and I told her I was pretty sure neither I nor anyone else had any past lives anyway. That it was all a bunch of hokey drivel.”

“I take it she didn’t care for that opinion?” Cate said.

“She stomped out, and after that she wouldn’t even speak to me at bridge club.”

Interesting, but Cate couldn’t see that it aided her investigation. Although refusing to speak to Carly did show a certain vindictiveness in Celeste.

“Did Celeste ever talk about Mr. Kieferson or her daughter’s marriage to him?”

Unexpectedly, Carly laughed. “Did she ever. She said the man was a clod. Totally unsophisticated. Uncouth. That he had enough nose hair to make a doormat and terrible dandruff. But those flaws weren’t so noticeable, I suppose, when he was waving his money around.”

“She said this at the bridge club?”

“Oh no, this was when we were having brunch together, just the two of us. After a couple of mimosas, Celeste could get quite talkative. We laughed a lot. Although one time . . .” Carly’s elegantly arched eyebrows drew together.

“Something happened?”

“She hadn’t had a mimosa that day, but she was talking about Ed, and she wasn’t laughing. I don’t know what he’d done, but she said, ‘If that jerk does anything to hurt my baby, I’ll kill him. I will kill that man.’”

Carly looked up at Cate. She covered her parted lips with her fingertips, as if she’d had second thoughts about sharing that bit of information.

“I think you should tell the police about that,” Cate said.

Carly hesitated, as if she were considering a conversation with the police. Then she shook her head and laughed. “Oh, I don’t think she meant anything by it. I mean, how many times do people say something like, ‘My husband will kill me when he sees that dent I put in the fender.’ Or ‘I’m gonna kill that kid if he talks back to me one more time.’ I’ve done it. Haven’t you?”

“I suppose.”

“I mean, I think Celeste is a pretentious quack with all that past-lives stuff,” Carly said. “I’m not sure her ‘doctor’ degree is even authentic. But I think ‘kill’ was just a figure of speech. I wouldn’t want to make unfair accusations. She said some bad things about Kim’s ex too.”

“Such as?”

“Like there were only two important food groups in his diet, chips and beer. Like he’d rather cheat someone out of a dollar than earn ten honestly. That he was lazy and mean, and Kim never should have married him even if she was pregnant.”

“Pregnant?” Cate repeated, surprised. She hadn’t heard
anything about Eddie the Ex’s new wife already having a child.

“She lost the baby when she was a few months along.”

“Did Celeste ever mention the ex’s name? Or where he is now?”

“Travis something. I don’t think I ever heard his last name. I asked her what became of him, and she said he was out of the picture. She sounded kind of, oh, self-satisfied about it, and I’ve always wondered if she had something to do with getting rid of him.”

“He’s dead?”

“Oh, I didn’t mean that.” Carly touched both cheeks in alarm, as if Cate had suggested Celeste had killed him. “I just meant, maybe she encouraged Kim to leave him. Although he could be dead, I suppose. I think he had kind of a wild lifestyle.”

So maybe Celeste had experience getting rid of undesirable husbands. And maybe she’d gotten away with murder not just once, but twice?

 11 

Cate slipped into her jacket and picked up the big box. She couldn’t make herself white lie about looking forward to the wedding, but she did manage to say, “I’m sure it’s going to be a beautiful wedding.”

Robyn reached over and picked up a strand of Cate’s red hair. She held it out from Cate’s head like some slimy specimen she’d found lurking on a plant at the flower shop. “Your, um, hair,” she said.

Cate tilted her head out from under Robyn’s hand. “I’ll get it cut before the wedding. And use some really strong hairspray to keep it from flying around.”

“A cut would be nice,” Robyn said. “But it’s the color I’m thinking about.”

“The color? What about the color?”

“Well, it’s . . . red.”

Yes, it was. Cate’s hair was red. It had always been red. Barn-paint red. Tomato red. Flaming carrot red.

“The thing is,” Robyn said, “my maid of honor and the bridesmaids are dark haired. I thought that would be a nice backdrop to, you know, spotlight my blonde coloring.”

Robyn fingered a strand of her own hair that reached below
her shoulders in a lush fall of silky radiance. One golden-haired princess of a bride. A herd of dark-haired bridesmaids.

Except one of those bridesmaids wasn’t dark haired. Cate was the off-breed red-haired mutt in a lineup of purebred brunettes.

Cate knew she should feel relieved. Here was the perfect opportunity to agree with Robyn; red hair would totally destroy the ceremony. Both she and The Hair must be removed from the scene, or some warp in the universe would destroy the world as they knew it. But at the same time an unexpected indignation erupted.

“You knew my hair was red when you asked me to be a bridesmaid.”

“Yes, of course! I just—” Robyn broke off, apparently unable to think of a tactful rescue. “I love your hair. But I’m thinking that maybe, just
temporarily
, you could have it colored for the ceremony? I’ll pay for it, of course.”

“You want me to dye my hair?”

“Everybody colors their hair,” Robyn said, emphasizing the more euphemistic word. “I mean, even mine isn’t quite this blonde naturally. Didn’t you ever want to try a different color?”

Okay, Cate had thought a few times about a change. She’d even tried it once, but the resulting pool-slime green was not a flattering change. (“I’ve never seen that happen before,” the hair colorist had said, looking a little green herself.) Now Cate was out of her comfort zone just being a bridesmaid. To be a bridesmaid with hair dyed to meet Robyn’s color scheme was too much.

Carly, apparently sensing rebellion, stepped up. “How about a wig?”

Cate and Robyn repeated the words together. “A wig?”

Robyn jumped on it instantly. “Aunt Carly, that’s an awesome idea! I should have thought of that to begin with. Don’t
you just love it, Cate? You can be a stunning brunette for just that evening, and then you can turn right back into a . . . unique redhead. I’ll pay for a wig, of course.”

Cate didn’t “just love” the idea, but after thinking it over for a few moments, she reluctantly nodded. “I guess I could do a wig.”

Robyn tapped her fingertips together in a gleeful clap. “Great! There’s a salon over in the mall with an awesome collection of wigs. I’ve even thought of getting one myself for, you know, those bad hair days.”

Robyn have a bad hair day? Maybe. On the same day pigs flew. In formation over the Pentagon.

“When could we go look for one for you?” Robyn sounded anxious.

“Tomorrow, I guess.”

Robyn turned to her aunt. “You don’t mind if I take a couple of hours off, do you, Aunt Carly?”

Carly inclined her trim body into an elegant little bow. “Never let it be said that I stood in the way of the perfectly color-schemed wedding.” She winked at Cate.

Cate and Robyn arranged to meet at the hair salon the following afternoon. Cate got to the mall early so she could pick up shoes to replace the oil-soaked ones, but Robyn was already looking at wigs when Cate arrived at the salon. She had four possibilities picked out, all dark brown but of varying lengths and styles. A hairdresser sat Cate in a salon chair, pinned her hair up, and fitted the first wig to her head.

Robyn didn’t wait for any comment from Cate. She instantly waved a dismissing hand. “Too poufy.” The next wig was “too hairy,” whatever that meant. The third, a stick-straight style, made Cate look ready for the morgue.

Then the hairdresser placed the last possibility on Cate’s head, and Robyn gave a little gasp. So did the hairdresser.

Cate stared at herself in disbelief. The dark hair was longer than Cate’s own hair, with a loosely tousled curl and sideswept bangs unlike anything Cate had ever worn. Her nose went from snub to elegant, and even the shape of her face looked different. In an instant, she had
changed
.

Robyn stepped back. “I can’t believe it. You look so . . . not you.”

If Cate didn’t know the dark-haired woman staring back at her really was her, she’d think the mirror had made a twilight-zone mistake. She looked sultry. Mysterious. A woman who might jet off to the south seas or Paris on a moment’s notice. A woman with provocative secrets.

The hairdresser, as if the decision had already been made, asked, “Do you want it in a box, or would you rather wear it today?”

Cate didn’t hesitate. Sultry and mysterious was a new and exhilarating experience for her. “I’ll wear it.”

She walked out of the salon feeling as if she could do all sorts of new-woman things. Walk into some elite boutique and, without a qualm, try on $500 shoes. Eat caviar without the yuck reaction that it was really just fish eggs. Walk up to Celeste Chandler and say “I know you killed Eddie the Ex, and I’m going to prove it.”

Back home, Uncle Joe was in the Belmont Investigations office, on the phone with someone. He put a hand over the phone when Cate entered the room.

“Could you wait in the other room, please? I’ll be with you in a minute.”

“Uncle Joe, it’s me, Cate!”

He peered at her suspiciously, then reared back in the chair. “Cate?”

Rebecca came in the door behind her and said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize someone was here—”

Cate turned. “Hey, it’s me!”

Joe ended his phone call, and both he and Rebecca stared at her. Only Octavia, who wandered in at that moment, seemed unstartled. She pawed Cate’s leg in her usual pick-me-up gesture. Cate complied and snuggled the cat against her cheek.

Finally Joe said, “You doing some undercover job I don’t know about?”

“No, it’s a wig to fit a color scheme at a friend’s wedding.”

Uncle Joe still looked skeptical, but Rebecca stated firmly, “It’s quite lovely. Are you going to show Mitch?”

Cate hadn’t thought about that, but . . . why not?

Cate picked up a pepperoni/mushroom/olive pizza on her way over to Mitch’s that evening. She was holding the box in one arm when she rang the doorbell with the other hand at his condo.

“Oh, I didn’t know the pizza was being delivered.” He reached for his wallet. Then he did that rearing back thing that seemed to go with a hair surprise. “Cate?”

She stepped inside and twirled. “What do you think of the new me?”

“I’m not sure. Give me a minute. What brought this on?”

“Robyn and Lance’s wedding. She wants all the bridesmaids to have dark hair.”

“I’m glad she didn’t have some height requirement that everyone had to be shorter than she is. No telling what she’d have wanted then.” He cautiously fingered the dark hair as if he thought it might bite.

“You don’t like it?”

“It’s not that I don’t like it. I’m just kind of used to the old you. The redheaded one. I mean, you do look nice. It’s just so . . . different.”

She let him pretend all through the pizza that the change was fine until finally he said, “How permanent is it?”

She went to the bathroom, pulled off the wig, and returned to the kitchen in her normal flyaway redhead state.

He looked at the brown wig dangling from her fingertips. His smile held relief. “Good. I mean, I’ll love you even if your hair turns green, but—”

He broke off, and they stared at each other, because this statement was something newer than a change of hair color between them. They were together a lot. They enjoyed each other’s company. Cate had tentative thoughts about a long-term future together. She thought Mitch sometimes had those thoughts too. But
love
was a new word between them.

It hung there like a piñata waiting to be whacked.

A strange mixture of confusion and surprise and awkward joy ricocheted through Cate. Had she been waiting for this? She wasn’t about to jump to conclusions over a few words that had just popped out, however. Although neither did she want to whack them.

Instead, with purposeful irrelevancy, she said, “Wouldn’t Robyn be surprised if all the bridesmaids showed up with green hair?”

“I might surprise you sometime too. My grandfather went bald by the time he was thirty-eight.”

I’ll love you anyway.

She instantly retracted that mental leap. She wasn’t ready for that yet. So this time all she said was, “Bald is beautiful.”