Say Yes to the Death (11 page)

I was hardly surprised that Janet was speaking so dispassionately about Olivia's murder and penning a story for the
Park Cities Press.
That was how her mind worked. Everyone was a potential lead. And it wasn't like either of us had lost someone worth grieving over.

“Hey, would you talk to me, Andy, on the record, I mean?” She put her cell down and looked over at me eagerly. “You were first on the scene when Olivia's body was found, right? I could use the angle that Penny's wedding was the last one Olivia would ever plan. It's just so dramatic what with your showing up to return that borrowed dress and seeing her lying there—­”

“Janet, stop,” I said, cutting her off. Maybe I wasn't mourning Olivia either but I wasn't quite ready to dance on her grave yet. Heck, she wasn't even
in
her grave yet. And if Millie was arrested for her murder, it would be partially my fault.

“Stop, what?” She blinked bespectacled eyes. “You don't like the idea?”

I almost blurted out, “Like it? I hate it.” No matter how I felt about Olivia, I didn't want to be part of a story about her violent end. And I wasn't sure Malone would embrace the idea of me blabbing about what I'd witnessed to a newspaper. He had his work cut out for him already.

“You can interview every guest at the wedding and write whatever you want about Olivia and her last wedding, but leave me out of it, okay?” I told her and felt the bits of croissant I'd eaten curdle in my belly. “I don't want anything I say at this table used in your exposé.”

Janet didn't look any too happy about that. But after a moment's pause she said, “What happens at Cissy's house stays at Cissy's house. Got it.”

That was something we used to tell ourselves as kids when we got into my mother's walk-­in closet while she was gone and Sandy was babysitting or even when we found the keys to the liquor cabinet and got our first taste of fifty-­year-­old Scotch (
blech
).

“Thanks,” I told her.

Truly, I understood why my friend wanted to write such a piece. It could be a career maker, or a solid notch on her J-­School belt at the very least. Maybe once everything was sorted out and the police had the actual killer in custody, I'd feel more comfortable going on the record about what I'd walked into this morning. But I didn't think that would happen before the story was old news.

“I'll see if I can chat with Penny Ryan about her wedding being Olivia's final affair,” Janet said. Then she sighed. “With my luck, she's honeymooning on some Pacific island without cell towers.”

“I'm sorry I can't help you, Jan, but I have to watch myself. I don't want to say something to make Millie Draper look worse,” I tried to explain. “I'm so worried about what's going to happen to her. What if she's arrested and tossed in jail with hardened criminals? She's a sweet old lady who bakes cakes.”

“Oh, God, you're right. I forgot about Millie.” Janet paled.

But Millie was all I could think about. “I feel like I'm the reason she's in so much trouble,” I confessed, and a rush of tears filled my eyes. “I'm the one who walked in on her at Olivia's office. She was so scared. She wanted to get out of there but I made her stay until the police arrived. I should have gotten her out of there . . .”

“Andy, for God's sake, it's not your fault!” Janet pushed her plate aside and half stood to reach across the table for my hand. She patted it gently. “What were you supposed to do? Aid and abet? Then you would have been an accomplice.”

“But she didn't
do
it,” I repeated.

“Even still, the police were going to catch up with her,” my friend said as she released my hand and sat back down. “Millie admitted that she pulled the knife out of Olivia's neck. There was blood everywhere. They would have found her bloody fingerprints on the knife and a bunch of other places. Someone would have seen her or they'd find her on the footage of some traffic cam at just the right time, and it would have looked even worse for her then, if she'd run.” With a nod, she added, “Worse for you, too.”

She was right. I couldn't have done anything other than what I did.

“I know, I know.” I wiped at my eyes and sniffled. I felt guilty nonetheless. “I have a bad feeling Millie's going to be booked for Olivia's murder. Malone's still at the DPS with her. I don't know what's going on but it's taking forever.”

“They can't book her this fast, can they? Unless she confesses, I mean, or they have footage showing Millie in the act.”

I shrugged. I might have been engaged to a defense lawyer, but that didn't mean I was as well-­versed in criminal law as Brian.

“Millie's such a lamb.” Janet put her elbows on the table and dropped her chin into her hands. “We used to call her the Cake Lady when we were kids, remember? You think she's really the prime suspect?”

I recalled the look on Officer Shands's face when she realized the blood on Millie's clothes and hands hadn't come from Millie. “Yeah, I think they do.”

“That stinks.” Janet loudly exhaled.

“Yeah, it stinks,” I repeated. “I know she didn't kill Olivia, and I'm hoping you can help me prove it.”

Chapter 14

“M
e?” Janet wrinkled her brow. “How am I supposed to do that? I'm not a private investigator, Andy. I'm sure Brian's law firm has somebody who can poke around even if the police are piling up evidence against Millie.”

“But you know Highland Park,” I said, wanting to remind her that Bess and George hadn't been PIs either, but they'd always helped Nancy. “People trust you, Jan. They tell you things.”

Janet had been writing exclusively about the Dallas social scene for years. If anyone could dig up dirt on Olivia's life—­private or public—­it was Janet.

“I appreciate the flattery.” She blushed. “But I'm not a priest. I don't sit in a confessional while socialites spill their deepest, darkest secrets. If the police charge Millie, Brian's going to do a bang-­up job defending her,” Janet said, as if I needed reminding. “I don't know how anything I could do would trump that.”

“But the police won't
need
to charge Millie if we can turn over a few rocks before it comes to that.”

Janet shook her head.

“Come on, Jan, what if the cops don't look anywhere else besides Millie?” I asked the question that kept running through my mind because I had seen it happen before. “Why wouldn't they figure they had their prime suspect when she'd been caught—­literally—­red-­handed at the crime scene?”

“This is a bad idea,” my friend warned me, and not for the first time. I'd asked for her help before.

“We have to do something,” I insisted. “I can't just sit around and twiddle my thumbs while Millie spends her sunset years in jail. I'm not saying I want to hunt down her killer. I just want to prove there are plenty of other viable suspects out there.”

“And if that doesn't work, maybe Millie will give us a recipe for baking a cake with a file in it,” Janet joked, but I didn't laugh.

“I'm serious. Will you help me or not?”

“All right, all right, I can see you're going to be OCD about this.” She tugged a strand of dark orange hair and began to twist it around her finger. “What can I do that isn't immoral or illegal? Okay, never mind immoral. But the illegal part stands.”

I could have kissed her.

“For now, just fill in some blanks for me, will you?”

Jan stopped playing with her hair. “Shoot.”

“Was Olivia in a serious relationship?” I asked, because her murder sure looked like a crime of passion to me.

“Was she in a serious relationship,” Janet repeated. “Hmm,” she intoned, delaying her response while she snagged a second croissant. Her brows arched above the rims of her black glasses as she chewed. Then she swallowed, took a sip of juice, and wiped a smudge of chocolate from the corner of her mouth. “Yes and no,” she finally replied.

“Which is it?”

“Both,” Janet answered. “On the surface, Olivia was involved with a man formerly known as Melvin Mellon.” She paused as if waiting for some kind of reaction.

“Formerly known as? Is he a con artist or a rock star?” I was stumped.

“Hmm, maybe a little of both,” Janet said with a grin. “You
are
hopelessly out of the loop, Kendricks. Melvin Mellon is a fashion designer from the Midwest who lost in the finals on last season's
Operation: Runway,
another Salvo Productions show. The producers had the brilliant idea of plunking him down in Dallas so he could open up shop seeing how much we love rhinestones and glitter. He goes by the name Draco, he's about all of twenty-­five, and he was reportedly living with Olivia.”

Draco.
I wrinkled my nose. Why did that ring a bell?

“Oh, my God, he's the one responsible for Penny Ryan's horrific bridesmaids' dresses,” I said, wondering if he'd named himself after the evil wizard kid in Harry Potter. “So he was Olivia's boyfriend? But if he's a fashion designer, isn't he . . . ?”

“Gay?” Janet laughed. “Not all male fashion designers are,” she said and gave me a look. “Come on, Andy, I thought you were more enlightened than that.”

“Me, enlightened about fashion? That's a good one,” I remarked, although I had been raised in a house with a mother who saw fashion almost as a religion, so I could tell a Pucci from a Gucci, but only if my life depended on it.

“There's Ralph Lauren and Tommy Hilfiger,” Janet rattled off, cocking her head and squinting at the ceiling as though more examples were written up there. Or perhaps she was just channeling Cissy, who could likely recite the names of every fashion designer in the world, gay or straight, male or female, dead or alive. “Um, Yves Saint Laurent, Elie Saab—­”

“Okay, you can stop now. I'm enlightened already.” I waved a hand to cut her off. “Tell me more about the gossip around Olivia's boy toy.”

Janet scooted forward in her chair. “Well, not everybody bought the story they were selling. Plenty of folks figured Draco and Olivia were a match made in TV heaven. Some said they were each other's beards, and that he was using her for the publicity on her TV show, and she was using him to hide what was really going on in her boudoir.”

I took a stab. “Was
she
gay?”

Janet shrugged. “That's part of her mystery,” she said noncommittally. “If she was, she kept it on the down low, and I can't blame her. She ran a very traditional business in a
very
conservative town. You know how folks are around here. Mamas don't dream of their little girls becoming cowboys or engineers or astronauts. They want them to debut, pledge a sorority, get pinned, marry money, join the Junior League, and have babies, all in that order.”

“Tell me about it,” I said, because that was precisely what Cissy had wanted for me, although that hadn't exactly panned out, had it? “So what do you think? Did Olivia have a secret girlfriend?”

“Maybe she did, and maybe she didn't.”

I groaned. “Come on, Jan, give me a crumb here. Which is it? You know everything about everyone in this burg.”

“Speaking of crumbs, I'm hungry,” Janet murmured and took another bite of a croissant before brushing the crumbles off her hands. “A few of the Highland Park ladies who lunch swore that Olivia's Achilles' heel was playing house with married men, but I think they were just guessing like everyone else.”

“Ah,” I murmured, because that one made more sense, considering the Olivia I had known back in prep school always wanted what she couldn't have and thought rules, respect, and common decency were for sissies. “So she did the nasty with married guys.”

Janet put up a hand. “Don't get too excited, Andy. Like all the rumors about Olivia, it's just talk. She was extremely good at keeping the spotlight on her business, not on her love life. So nobody seems to really know anything except what she put out there.”

“But sleeping with other women's husbands would have been very bad for business, wouldn't it? Was she shagging the grooms or fathers-­of-­the-­brides?”

“Why not throw in the mothers-­of-­the-­bride, too?” Janet tossed out, just to make my brain even dizzier. “Your guess is as good as mine.”

“You must know
something.
”

“Cut me some slack, would you?” Janet frowned. “Olivia's private life was not Watergate, and I'm not exactly Woodward or Bernstein.”

“No, you're the Socialite Whisperer,” I told her, and she sighed.

“All right, all right, I did try to find out more about Olivia when I interviewed her last year for the
PCP.
It was the Wedding Belle's tenth anniversary. She had chatted up my boss about running a big promotion in the paper. So Gary thought we should do a nice sidebar about Olivia. You know, the whole ‘local girl makes it big' angle.”

“You met with her?” I said, wondering how Janet had remained civil with Olivia when she'd despised La Belle from Hell as much as I. “You didn't tell your boss you and Olivia had a history?”

“Not exactly,” Janet said. “I did mention we were at Hockaday together, but I left out the part about her tormenting me and my friends. I was dying to see the Turtle Creek penthouse she and Draco moved into a few months back. She must have been raking in some serious bucks, because I know Draco's not bringing home enough bacon for Turtle Creek, not yet.”

“Maybe the reality show pays better than the wedding planning,” I suggested.

“I'm told they pay peanuts, relatively speaking,” Janet remarked, “and that it's more like free advertising than real income.”

“So what happened? Did you get to the penthouse?”

Janet made a face. “Unfortunately, Olivia declined to meet my photographer and me at her Turtle Creek digs. We had to go to her office instead.” An angry blush began to bloom on Janet's cheeks. “And when we got there, she totally acted like she didn't know who I was. If my name rang a bell, she didn't let on. She probably didn't even remember all the times she harassed me. If I hadn't been doing the story, I would have called her out. But I didn't want to lose my job.”

By the time Janet finished, her face was a hot shade of red.

“What a jerk,” I said, quickly adding, “If it makes you feel any better, Olivia didn't recognize me either. Not for a few minutes anyway. We were standing face-­to-­face, and I haven't changed
that
much.”

“Troll,” Janet muttered.

If I wasn't such good friends with Janet, I might have wondered if she didn't stab Olivia in the neck herself.

“So did you get any scoop from the interview?” I pressed. “Did Olivia divulge anything earth-­shattering?”

“I asked her about being in love since love is her job,” Janet said. “I kind of hoped she'd jump on the couch like Tom Cruise and make a big deal about Draco, trying to convince everyone they were really a unit.” Janet tightly crossed her arms. “But you know what she said?”

“That she was an alien from the planet Be-­otch and didn't have a heart?” I suggested to Janet's snicker.

“Oh, it's even better science fiction than that,” my friend replied. “She said that planning events to celebrate milestones in other people's lives was her one true love and that anyone in her life had to understand that.” Janet let out a snort. “Is that the lamest thing you've ever heard or what?”

“It sounds like a nonanswer.”

“Exactly”—­Janet bobbed her head—­“she was completely avoiding the question.” She squinted thoughtfully. “I didn't see a single photo of Draco in her office, not a romantic one, anyway. The only pictures of Draco showed him with Olivia's brides in the gowns he'd designed for them.”

“Interesting,” I murmured.

So was Olivia's relationship with Draco a farce? Was she hiding behind it because she either had a lesbian lover or a married one? Even if that was the case, was it any reason for someone to want Olivia dead? Unless Olivia was tired of faking it and Draco wasn't ready for his ride on the gravy train to end.

“I would love to meet him,” I murmured, “just to size him up.”

“What if you're barking up the wrong tree?” Janet asked. “Maybe her death has zero to do with her love life. Olivia had plenty of enemies on the job. For example”—­she began to tick off on her fingers—­“every assistant she'd ever hired and fired, other event planners whose clients she stole, vendors who didn't like to have their arms twisted.”

“Like that florist, Jasper Pippin,” I blurted out, recalling a tidbit my mother had shared. “Although Olivia didn't just twist his arm, she drove him out of business.”

“Ah, Jasper Pippin.” Janet tapped her chin. “I remember last fall when he sold his shop piece by piece. I think he started dismantling the place even before Olivia's infamous show aired, because he was supposed to do the flowers for the White Glove Society's annual deb ball and he bailed on them. They were in a tizzy, trying to find someone else at the last minute. The fact that Olivia tarnished his rep on TV was just the final nail in the casket. The whole mess got Jasper unseated as chair of the state floral association. The poor guy practically went into hiding.”

“He was selling his store
before
the show even aired?” Geez, I thought, he must have been terrified, knowing what was to come. “Can you find him?” I asked. “He's a prime suspect as far as I'm concerned.”

Janet pursed her lips then sighed. “Well, if he hasn't picked up stakes and moved to Key West, I'll hunt him down and see what he's been up to.”

I sat up straighter, finally feeling as if I was getting somewhere. “And I'll talk to Terra Smith,” I told her. “Olivia sounded like she was getting ready to can her. Maybe she gave Terra the axe after Penny Ryan's wedding, and Terra popped a gasket. Olivia did tell me that if she canned Terra, things could get messy.”

“Well, they got messy all right,” Janet said with a loud
hmph
. “What do you plan to do? Phone the girl and ask if she killed her boss? My God, that's brilliant!” She smacked her forehead with the heel of her hand. “Why didn't I think of that?”

“Oh, ye of little faith,” I said with a sniff, having just come up with the most perfect idea. “I thought I'd ring her up and see if she wanted to plan a wedding.”

“Whose?” Jan asked, and her brow wrinkled.

“Mine,” I said. When Janet gave me a
Whatchu talkin' about, Willis?
look, I explained, “What can it hurt to pretend I'm plotting the course for my pending nuptials while asking a few subtle questions to see what I can find out?”

“You? Subtle?” Janet guffawed. “You're the proverbial bull in a china shop.”

I ignored that. “It's the least I can do for Millie.”

I didn't add that going upstairs to visit my Nancy Drew books had inspired me to sniff around, although Janet would probably have found that equally amusing.