Annabelle Archer BoxSet, page 43
part #1 of Annabelle Archer Series
“What? No, I mean, like we mentioned earlier, we’ve been involved in one or two incidents before,” I said.
“One or two?” His gaze narrowed.
“Or three,” I added.
He snapped his fingers. “Wait a second. Did you have anything to do with the murder at the Fairmont Hotel?”
“The Mayflower Hotel was the last one, actually,” Kate said. “The Fairmont was the time before.”
Now it was the officer‘s turn to appear surprised.
I glared at Kate. “You’re not helping.”
“He should be glad to have wedding planners like us around,” Kate said. “We always helped the DC police solve the cases. Mostly by almost getting killed but, still, it was a help.”
“Sometimes I got to wear a costume,” Fern said. “I make a very convincing priest.”
Both officers shifted their eyes from Fern to Kate and then to me. The darker one cleared his throat. “Let me be very clear. I do not need wedding planners running their own investigation. I do not want wedding planners running their own investigation. I do not want anyone wearing a costume.”
Fern dismissed him with a glance. “Your loss. My performance was Oscar-worthy.”
The blond officer leveled a finger at all three of us. “No investigating. I have this completely under control.”
“Fine,” I said. “We were only trying to help by asking people if they noticed anyone running—“
The darker officer cut me off. “Let us do the questioning, okay?”
I nodded but didn’t respond.
He took a deep breath. “We called this in to the police—“
“What?” I cried. “But you promised Lorinda you’d wait.”
The officer leveled his eyes at me. “If you’d let me continue, I was going to say that they can’t send a team right away. Some sort of incident across town has most of their officers tied up so they won’t be here right away.”
I sighed with relief. There was a still a chance to save Lorinda’s skin and keep the show on schedule.
“But my team is combing every inch of the building until the police arrive.” He paused. “And we’re questioning everyone.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” I said.
Fern cleared his throat. “If that’s all, I need to go upstairs to finish the models for the fashion show.”
“You’ll have to be patted down by my guys if you leave the ballroom,” the paler of the two officers said.
Fern eyed the two burly men posted at the doors. “Don’t mind if I do.” He winked at Kate and me over his shoulder as he headed toward the doors.
Once the security duo had walked off, Kate let out a breath. “What a killjoy. He’s not nearly as fun as Detective Reese.”
“No, he’s not,” I agreed. Detective Reese would have warned us off, as well, but he would have done it with a flirtatious smile. “And I doubt he has as much experience catching real criminals.”
“As a hotel security guard? Doubtful,” Kate said. “The only hotels that have had serious crimes are the ones we’ve done weddings in.”
I cringed at the truth of that statement. “Thanks for reminding me that we’re the wedding planner angels of death.”
“No one calls us that,” Kate said. “Well, maybe Richard. But he’s one to talk.”
“Do you really think this hotel security team has any chance of catching a jewel thief who seems to have planned out their crime pretty well?” I started walking down the side of the room and Kate followed me. We passed a DJ in a tuxedo setting up his laptop. Gone were the days of turntables or boxes filled with CDs. All a DJ needed these days was a laptop, a digital library of music, and a pair of speakers.
“Not really. But you heard what he said. We can’t be involved in this.” Kate paused at an unmanned booth displaying bridal veils and put a lace mantilla on her head.
I shook my head. “Too virginal for you. Even if we can’t investigate, they can’t stop us from putting together what we know so far.”
Kate replaced the veil on the mannequin head. “Which is?”
“When the lights went out, someone made their way to the jewelry case, pushed Lorinda down, took the rings out of the open case, and hurried out of the ballroom.” I continued down the colonnade of wedding booths until I reached the one for Richard Gerard Catering.
“We think they left the ballroom,” Kate corrected me. “They could have stashed them somewhere in the room to retrieve later. The lights weren’t off for very long.”
Richard came around to join us from behind his tiered food display. Frosted glass shelving filled with confections covered the back of his space. Tarts, brownies, cookies, towers of profiteroles. The table in front held small bowls and tiny plates of shrimp and grits, shredded duck tacos, and vegetarian beggar’s purses all displayed on Plexiglas cubes with the name of the food written in lavender calligraphy.
“The lights were off long enough, thank you very much,” Richard said. “I was terrified that people were going to start running and knock over my glass shelving.”
Kate glanced at Richard, then his food display, then him again. “Did you match the calligraphy on the Plexi food stands to your shirt?”
“Well done.” He smoothed the front of his lavender button-down. “I hoped one of you would notice.”
“Sorry,” I said. “My mind is on this robbery.”
“Any luck so far?” Richard asked.
“I can’t figure out how someone could cut the power and make their way around the room to the jewelry case before the lights came back on,” I said. “The Goodman & Sons booth is in the middle of the room.”
“Well, one of the lighting panels is right there.” Richard pointed to a panel on the wall across from him covered in the same fabric as the hotel walls.
“Did the security team check it for prints?” I asked.
Richard put a hand on his hip. “This is not CSI. That thing is covered with prints. Everyone who works in this hotel uses it to adjust the lights not to mention the lighting crew for the show. I doubt they’ll find anything useful.”
“Good point,” I said. “But even if someone killed the lights from here, they didn’t have time to walk all the way around the room.”
“You’re forgetting the possibility that two people pulled off the heist,” Richard said. “One to cut the lights and the other to snatch the diamonds.”
“So the person who took the diamonds could have been near us when the lights went off. The fastest way would have been to go past Buster and Mack’s booth, snatch the rings, then leave the same way,” Kate said.
“Except that Brianna said she heard someone run past her,” I reminded her.
Kate wrinkled her nose. “Right. I forgot about Botox Barbie.”
“So who has the booths closest to the end of the room?” I walked beyond the Richard Gerard Catering space. “There are only a few more down here.”
We passed the cosmetic dentistry display, which was devoid of dentists for the moment.
Richard giggled. “I think my sugar is getting to them. They’ve gone through so much sugarless gum that I’m afraid lockjaw will set in before the show starts. I think they finally had to step outside.”
Next to the dentists stood Christopher’s booth, near the end of the row. Instead of the ivory drape that everyone else used, he’d draped his space in crushed red velvet. A black velvet tufted stool sat in the center of the space, and an ornate gold mirror hung in front of it with the words “Hair by Christopher” written in a flowery script around the top of the glass.
Kate took a step back. “Wow.”
“It’s like Vampira meets Versailles,” Richard said.
“The questionable choice of beehives is starting to make more sense.” I peered around to see if any of the security team was nearby. “Let’s see if there’s anything suspicious about our hunky hairstylist.”
I lifted the edge of one of the black velvet cloths covering his table. Nothing underneath save an empty crate. And nothing on top of the table except for bottles of hairspray and clear glass jars of brushes and bobby pins. “Nothing. Not that I expected to find anything.”
“Well, this may be something,” Kate said.
I straightened up and focused on Kate holding back a panel of red velvet drape. Christopher’s booth backed right up to Buster and Mack’s booth on the other side of the fabric wall.
“All you would have to do is pull back this material and voila,” Kate said. “You’d be on the other side and only a few steps away from the Goodman & Sons display.”
Now things were getting interesting.
9
“So he had easy access to the other side,” I said after Kate had dropped the drape. “But what’s his motive?”
“Lots of pretty diamonds?”
I gazed around me at the gaudy but sparse space. “Okay, I’ll go with your theory that the cute but dumb hairdresser managed to cut the power, pass through the drape to our side, and snatch the diamonds. But then where did he put them? We saw him get patted down when he left the room.”
“Don’t forget that his accomplice could have cut the power,” Richard said. “Giving him more time to grab and then stash the rings.”
“What accomplice?” I pulled my phone out of my jeans as it pinged to let me know I had a text.
“He’s a hairdresser,” Richard said. “What about the model?”
“That waif in the too-tight, see-through dress? She can barely move in that thing, so I doubt she’d be much help. Besides, she’s a model the show provided. I doubt he’s laid eyes on her before today.” I read the text from Fern. “The dress rehearsal for the fashion show is about to begin.”
Richard’s face perked up. “I’m up for a fashion show. Anything to save me from the DJ’s sound checks.”
“Well, you’re wrong there,” Kate said.
I held out my phone. “I don’t think so. He says to come up ASAP.”
“No, about Christopher and the model. He’s definitely dating her.”
“How can you know something like that?” I asked Kate as we walked with Richard toward the ballroom exit. We paused to be cleared by the security team that was frisking everyone leaving the ballroom with Richard complaining loudly that they were wrinkling his shirt.
“The real question is when have you ever known me to be wrong about something that involves dating?” Kate asked.
“You make a good point.” Kate did boast an uncanny ability to determine if a couple was involved and even how involved with a single glance. She considered it her superpower.
“And you know that Christopher is dating the model because . . .?”
Kate reached over and rested her hand on the small of Richard’s back.
He took a step away. “I beg your pardon?”
“Exactly.” She snapped her fingers. “That’s not something you do to a colleague or a friend or a model you just met this morning. But Christopher did that to this model, and that tells me that he knows her. Very well.”
I nodded at Kate in admiration. “You’re like Sherlock Holmes meets Tinder.”
“Look at you talking about Tinder,” she said. “I’m swelling with pride.”
“Just because I’ve heard about swiping right on your phone to meet Mr. Right doesn’t meet I have any intention to ever use the app.” The thought of dating being distilled down to an app on my smartphone that offered me pictures of men to either accept (swipe right) or reject (swipe left) horrified me. I’d convinced myself that I’d rather stay single than resort to finger swiping.
“Too bad,” Kate said. “I’d be happy to help you swipe.”
I pushed the call button for the elevators. “That’s what I’m afraid of.”
“Richard, tell Annabelle that she’s being ridiculous about dating apps.”
“Annabelle, you’re being ridiculous if you’re using dating apps,” he said.
“That’s not what I meant, and you know it.” Kate swatted at him as the far elevator doors pinged and then opened.
Richard held his palm against the motion sensitive elevator doors as Kate and I stepped on. The elevator closed, and I pushed the button for the top floor.
“Remind me again why you care so much about these diamonds?” Richard asked as the elevator surged upward.
I forgot that he’d stomped off before I’d promised Lorinda that we would find out who’d taken her diamonds. “So Lorinda can recover her diamonds and the show won’t be canceled.”
Richard crossed his arms over his chest. “And why, pray tell, are the police not involved? Wouldn’t things go faster if there were detectives here?”
“The police are busy with something else,” I said. “Plus, Lorinda doesn’t want to file a police report if she can avoid it. She says her father will crucify her if he finds out.”
Richard nodded. “Well, she’s right about her father. He’s awful, and he’d most certainly blame her.”
“You seem to know a lot about the man,” Kate said.
“I only met him once, but he falls into my top ten list of unpleasant clients,” Richard said.
“Wow, that’s saying something.” I’d worked with enough of Richard’s clients to know that those were bold words.
Richard studied me. “So you’re determined to find the diamonds before the police arrive because you and Lorinda are such good friends?”
“Not entirely,” I said, stepping out of the elevator the second it arrived at the top floor of the hotel. “I do want to help her. I feel bad for her as another businesswoman who’s working hard to get ahead. I also don’t want to police to shut down the show.”
“Are those the only reasons?” Kate asked.
Richard chased after me as I strode down the hallway to the right. “Are they?”
I stopped in front of the large white doors leading to the Altitude Ballroom. “There may be a small part of me that isn’t eager to run into Detective Reese.”
Richard darted a hand out and held it against the doors so I couldn’t open them. “You know he isn’t the only officer on the force. The chances he’d show up to a burglary are small.”
“Not with my luck,” I muttered.
“Anyway, how hard could it be to find a few diamonds?” Kate asked. She pulled open the door to the Altitude Ballroom and we all stared open-mouthed. The ballroom had a wall of windows on the left side with the window shades drawn up to highlight the view and let in light. Funky petal-shaped light fixtures hung from the whitewashed beamed ceiling, and a transparent, illuminated runway extended halfway down the length of the room. Rows of clear Plexiglass chairs surrounded the runway and filled most of the floor space. A white drape embedded with crystals created a backdrop to the runway, and above the runway were thousands of clear wires strung with crystals and suspended so that the room appeared to be dripping in diamonds.
Kate met my eyes. “Well, this could be a problem.”
10
I walked a few steps into the room so that I stood underneath the suspended crystals. I reached up and touched one of the two-inch-long clear crystals dangling overhead. A hole had been drilled into the top so it could be strung. “No one would mistake these for a diamond.”
“Not when you get up close,” Kate agreed with me.
Richard stood next to me, his head tilted back. “And I seriously doubt the thief would have had to time to transport the rings out of the downstairs ballroom and up to the top floor of the hotel. Much less string the diamonds up over the catwalk.”
“If they got the rings out of the ballroom, a smart thief would have walked out of the hotel with them,” I said.
“Unless they couldn’t.” Kate continued walking up to the stage backdrop and fingered one of the gems in the white fabric. “What if their plan was to leave the hotel but they didn’t make it and they had to hide the rings somewhere until things cool off?”
Richard cocked an eyebrow at her. “Things cool off?”
“You know,” Kate said. “Until the heat is off and they can sneak the diamonds out without security busting them.”
Richard motioned his head at Kate. “I hear Godfather but I see Barbie.”
Kate stuck her tongue out at him.
The doors on the right side of the room opened and a statuesque woman with a severe blond bun and a clear clipboard stepped in, followed by a row of models in wedding gowns.
“This is a dress rehearsal, ladies,” she called as the models walked single file to the back of the stage behind the drape wall. “That means I want you to imagine the room filled with brides.”
“Should we leave?” Richard asked.
“You, there.” The woman pointed at us. “I need you to be my audience. Sit in the front row.”
“I guess not,” Kate said.
Richard saluted the woman’s back as we scurried to seats facing the runway. We picked up the Tiffany-blue show programs from our chairs and scanned them as the models lined up behind the stage and the lights came on from the corners of the room. I turned around to see a sound and lighting tech standing at a narrow control board in the back right corner.
Kate nudged me. “There’s Fern.”
I stared up at the stage and could see flashes of his green velvet jacket through the drape. I knew he must have been doing final touch-ups to the models before they hit the runway. Fern always considered himself more than a wedding hairstylist. He helped brides into their gowns, he fluffed their veils, and he calmed their nerves. I often joked that with Fern around, I didn’t need to lay eyes on the bride until she was ready to cut the cake.
The music began and the light changed to blue as the first model hit the runway.
“What is that music?” Richard asked.
I cringed. “It sounds like 80s hair-band music played on the violin.”
“That’s what I thought.” Richard nodded. “Interesting choice.”
The first model, a blonde in a high beehive, hit the end of the runway and paused so that the A-line skirt of her gown swirled around her legs. She pivoted and, without breaking a smile, tossed two handfuls of iridescent confetti in the air, turned, and walked back down the runway as another model came out. The second model had a smaller beehive and wore a lace fit-and-flare gown.
