Jaine Austen 7 - Killing Bridezilla (17 page)

“I really should have offered you some of that lasagna,” Dickie said, coming back into the room.

“It looks delicious.”

“Oh, no. I just had lunch. I’m not hungry.

But why don’t I cut a piece for you?”

“Okay, sure.” He smiled wanly, sinking down onto the sofa. “I guess I forgot to eat today.”

Unbelievable, huh? The last time I forgot to eat I was in my mother’s womb.

I trotted off to the kitchen, where I found Dickie’s stainless steel refrigerator plastered with pictures of him and Patti in various poses of premarital bliss: on the beach, at a barbeque, on the ski slopes, kissing under the mistletoe. Lots of Kodak moments, all oozing romance.

The lasagna was on the counter where Dickie had left it. Gad, it looked yummy, all tomato-ey and dripping with cheese. I cut him a big chunk and put the lid back on. Okay, so I didn’t put the lid back on. I cut myself a tiny sliver, too.

Okay, so it wasn’t so tiny. Big deal. Like you’ve never had a Quarter Pounder with a lasagna chaser before.

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I headed back out to the living room and handed him his plate.

“Here you go.”

“On second thought,” he said, staring down at it, “I guess I don’t have much of an appetite.”

Alas, mine was still very much alive and well, so I dug right into my slice.

“I’m so sorry about Patti,” I said between bites.

“It’s been horrible. Just horrible.” He buried his head in his hands and groaned. “It’s all my fault that Patti’s dead.”

“Dickie, that’s crazy. How is Patti’s death your fault?”

“If I hadn’t proposed to her,” he said, looking up at me with anguished eyes, “Normalynne would have never done what she did.”

“You don’t really think Normalynne is capable of murder, do you?”

“It’s true she doesn’t seem the type. But I never thought I’d be the type to leave my wife.

And I did. I know it was a terrible thing to do to Normalynne, but I couldn’t help myself. That night I saw Patti at the reunion, it was like I’d been sleepwalking all my life, and I suddenly woke up.”

I nodded in sympathy, but all I could think was that he’d have been better off asleep.

“I know Patti could seem difficult, but when you got to know her, she was a totally different person. So loving, and full of life. So passionate.”

You know what this was all about, don’t you?

The “S” word. Sex. The Great Deceiver. Men are such idiots,
n’est-ce pas
? One frantic roll in the hay and they think Lucrezia Borgia is Florence 170

Laura Levine

Nightingale. Then two years later, they wake up and realize they’re in the marriage from Hell and wonder how it all went wrong.

“I’ll never meet anyone like her again,” he sighed.

For his sake, I sincerely hoped not.

I polished off the last of my lasagna and got down to business.

“I don’t believe Normalynne killed Patti, and I’m trying to find out who did.”

“Who else would want to kill Patti?”

Far be it from me to break it to him that people had probably been standing on line for the privilege.

“That’s what I’m here to find out. Denise Gilbert happened to mention that you went upstairs the night of the cocktail party. Do you remember seeing anyone on the stairs? In the upstairs hallway? Anyone at all?”

“Nope. Nobody.”

“Did you see anything out on the balcony?

Hear anything?”

“Not a thing. I’ve already been over all this with the police. I got Patti’s sweater and went back down again. The only person I ran into was Veronica. She needed some help unloading champagne from her van. So after I gave Patti her sweater, I went outside and helped her. But that’s it.

“Like I told the police, I wish I could be more help.”

That made two of us.

It wasn’t until later that night when I was curled in bed with a warm cat and a hot chocolate that I flashed on what Dickie said—that KILLING BRIDEZILLA

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he’d bumped into Veronica on his way downstairs, and that she’d ask him to help her unload champagne from her van.

Why, I wondered, did she ask Dickie, when she had a staff of waiters at her command?

Maybe she hadn’t really been looking for help.

Maybe she’d been headed upstairs to loosen the bolts on the balcony. After all, Patti had threatened to ruin her business. And with Patti’s A-list connections, surely she had the social chops to do it.

Just something to think about between chapters.

Chapter 16

Normally I am not a morning person (think Lizzie Borden with PMS), but for some reason I was feeling particularly peppy when I woke up the next morning. Indeed, I leaped out of bed with a smile on my lips and a spring in my step.

Then I remembered: today was my breakfast date with Walter Barnhardt.

And just like that, my spring sprang and my pep pooped.

It was with heavy heart indeed that I trudged to the kitchen and sloshed some Tasty Tuna Tidbits in a bowl for Prozac’s breakfast.

Afterward I threw on my grungiest sweats, determined to be as unalluring as possible when I showed up for my date. I checked myself out in the mirror and was pleased to see that my sweatsuit bagged at the knees, sagged at the tush, and added inches to my waist. On the downside, though, my hair looked terrific. Just my luck, the weather was bone dry, so there was no sign of frizz anywhere, just a mass of soft, shiny curls.

I corralled them into a sloppy ponytail and grabbed my car keys.

“See you later, Love Bunny,” I called out to 174

Laura Levine

Prozac as I headed for the door. “Kiss kiss, hug hug.”

She looked up from where she was clawing my sofa.

Whatever. Bring back food.

I drove over to Starbucks, giving myself a vigorous pep talk en route. How bad could it be?

I’d have a cup of coffee with the guy, chat a bit, and then leave. I’d do penance for having set fire to his toupee and be a free woman again.

By the time I pulled into the Starbucks lot, I was feeling a lot better. Inside, the place was crowded, bustling with people getting their morning jolt of caffeine. I looked around for Walter, but there was no sign of him. For a giddy moment, I thought maybe he’d stood me up.

But no such luck. Because just then I heard:

“Hey, Jaine!”

I turned and saw him loping toward me with a supermarket shopping bag.

He, too, was wearing sweats, and the same baseball cap he’d worn to the funeral, still unwilling to expose his bare scalp to the general public.

After exchanging awkward hello’s—mine was awkward; he was grinning from ear to ear—we headed over to the counter to get our coffees.

“My treat,” he said.

“Absolutely not,” I insisted, refusing to feel indebted to him in any way. “It’s on me.”

“Okey doke,” he agreed, with whiplash speed.

We gave our coffee orders to the barista behind the counter, a stunning young man who no doubt was pouring lattes between auditions.

I checked out the pastry case and saw a chocolate chip muffin the size of a hubcap. I debated KILLING BRIDEZILLA

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about ordering it. After the shameful way I’d gobbled down that lasagna yesterday, I knew I should be ordering something sensible like a bran muffin. But as always, Sensible Me lost the debate to Irresponsible Me.

“I’ll have a chocolate chip muffin.”

“No, she won’t,” Walter piped up. “I brought us breakfast,” he said, pointing to his supermarket bag.

“I don’t think they like you to bring your own food,” I whispered.

“Oh, they don’t mind.”

Yes, they did. Our barista handed us our coffees, along with an exceedingly dirty look, and we went over to the supply table to add our milk. Walter reached into his shopping bag and whipped out a large Tupperware container. He opened it, and I saw that it was filled with Cheerios.

Then, to my utter mortification, he started pouring in Starbucks milk.

I turned to see if anybody was watching. Indeed, he had quite an audience. Several people were gawking at him, their eyes bugging in disbelief.

“You can’t use Starbucks milk for your cereal,” I hissed.

“I’m not using their milk. I’m using their half and half. Really, they don’t mind. People do this all the time.”

On what planet?

He poured out the last of the half and half from the urn, then shouted to the barrista, “Hey, fella. You’re out of half and half.”

Yikes. This guy had clearly been an honors student at Chutzpah U.

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By now, word had spread among the patrons, and all eyes were riveted on us as we took a seat at a table by the window. If only I hadn’t worn those butt-magnifying sweats.

“I brought two spoons,” Walter said. “So we can share.”

“No, thanks, Walter. I’m not hungry.”

“Are you sure?” he asked, dumping three packets of Starbucks sugar onto the Cheerios. “It’s dee-lish.”

Never was I more certain of anything in my life.

“So,” I said, trying to ignore the stares of my fellow patrons. “How’s everything?”

“Pretty good.” He dug into his Cheerios with gusto. “I ordered my new toupee. It’s coming in from Taiwan any day now.”

“Like I told you, Walter, I think you look fine without it.”

“Wrong,” he said with a dismissive wave of his spoon. “Women like a man with a full head of hair.”

Hair, yes. Hamster fur, no.

I watched him shovel Cheerios into his mouth for a few unappetizing seconds, then sneaked a peek at my watch. Yuck. Only seven minutes had slogged by since I first walked through the door.

I couldn’t possibly leave yet. Oh, well. As long as I was trapped, I might as well question him about the murder.

“Sure is a tragedy about Patti.”

“I dunno,” he said. “If you ask me, Dickie’s well out of it.”

“Oh?”

“Patti would’ve made him miserable. I tried to warn him but he wouldn’t listen.”

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As he shoveled down another spoonful of cereal, a crazy thought flitted through my brain.

Had Walter sabotaged the balcony to spare his friend a miserable marriage? But that didn’t make sense. Julio swore it was a woman he saw on the balcony.

“But Dickie stopped paying attention to what I said a long time ago. He’s not the same person he was in high school. I think he only asked me to be his best man because we used to be so close.” His eyes clouded over for a beat, but then he shrugged philosophically. “I guess that’s what happens. People grow apart.”

“Indeed, they do,” I said, thinking of Patti, Cheryl, and Denise.

“Anyhow, I hate to say it, but the world’s probably a better place without Patti. The only thing I’m upset about is that I wasted $29.95 on their wedding present. Plus ten bucks to have it specially gift wrapped.”

“Twenty-nine ninety-five? I didn’t see anything for $29.95 on their gift registry.”

If I had, I would’ve bought it in a heartbeat.

“Oh, I didn’t use their registry. The Sexometer came from a mail order catalogue. In fact, the same place where I got my toupee.”

“The Sexometer?”

“It’s like a kazoo with different buttons on it, so that your partner can read your sexual temperature. There’s
On Fire, Warm, Tepid,
and
Honey
I’ve Got a Headache
. What a great idea, huh?”

“Uh-huh.” I nodded woodenly, aghast at this new low in bad taste.

“I wanted to take it back from the gift table so I could get a refund, but who does a tacky thing like that?”

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A quick change of subject was definitely in order. So I asked Walter what I’d been asking everybody else, if he’d seen anyone sneak upstairs during the cocktail party. Like everybody else, he saw nada.

“If you remember,” he said, “that night I only had eyes for you.”

I remembered, all right. Only too well.

At last he’d finished his tub of cereal and slurped up every last drop of half and half.

Enough time had elapsed, I thought, for me to make my exit. I was just about to fumpher an excuse and make a break for it when he cleared his throat and said:

“Say, Jaine. Have you heard about the Hermosa High reunion this weekend?”

“No, I guess I’m on their Do Not Call list.”

“Last year’s reunion was such a big success, they decided to have another one. Anyhow, I was wondering if you’d like to go with me.”

No way. Never in a zillion years. Not if he were the last insurance actuary on the face of the earth.

“I’m afraid not, Walter.”

His mouth opened in a tiny Cheerio of disappointment.

“Please don’t feel bad,” I said.

“Of course I feel bad. You know I’ve always had a crush on you, Jaine, ever since the day I first saw you eating M&M’s in assembly. I must’ve invited you to my house a hundred times to see my ant farm, but you never came. And then, in senior year, you broke my heart.”

“I broke your heart?”

“Remember how I asked you to the prom and KILLING BRIDEZILLA

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you said you weren’t going and then you showed up with Dylan Janovici?”

“Walter, you asked me to the prom on the first day of school. By June, I’d forgotten all about it.”

“I stayed home that night and watched Lawrence Welk with my parents while you were out dancing with Dylan.”

I thought back to that ghastly evening, being tossed around on the dance floor like a ship in a hurricane, and the utter humiliation of landing in Principal Seawright’s lap.

“If it’s any consolation,” I said, “I had a horrible time, too.”

“It couldn’t have been worse than mine. That night was the unhappiest night of my life.”

“I’m so sorry, Walter. I never meant to hurt you.”

Ironic, isn’t it? While Patti and Denise and Cheryl were torturing the rest of the student body, I’d been unwittingly torturing poor Walter. High school was undoubtedly a daisy chain of torture, a teenage caste system fueled by raging hormones and gross insecurities.

“That’s okay,” he sighed. “I got over it. And I’ll get over this, too.”

He sat there with a piece of Cheerio on his chin, and I was suddenly awash in a wave of pity.