Detective Eric Wilder had called both her cell and her home phone the night before, but she hadn’t answered because she’d needed time to think things through, to get herself into the proper frame of mind. When he’d called early that morning, she had finally been ready to answer, and they’d arranged a time to meet. She’d suggested her home instead of work, because she didn’t want cops in and out of the boutique where she worked as a buyer. It was the perfect job, because she made her own hours and was often out of town. That left plenty of time for the senator, and he took a lot of time.

When the doorbell rang, she was ready. This was a bit like being in a play, she thought. Get into the role, practice your expressions and tone of voice, immerse yourself in the character. A lot was riding on how well she balanced several different things.

She answered the door of the twenty-eight-hundred-square-foot lake house Doug had bought for her. The lake was a private one, with only eight building sites around it, and three of the sites were still unsold. The acreage was sufficient that her neighbors weren’t close enough to see who came and went, plus Doug always simply pulled into the three-car garage and got out of his car there. It wasn’t as if he was ever outside doing yard work. The house was in her name, the utility bills were in her name, and she paid for everything from her checking account. A nosy reporter would have to dig very deep, or get very lucky, to connect Doug to any of this.

All of this was in jeopardy now, because Carrie had been a greedy bitch.

Her expression was calm but sad as she led the two cops—Wilder and Garvey—into the den. From the den you could see the sparkling pool through the double French doors, and fifty yards beyond the pool, there was the lake, the blueness of the cloudless sky reflected on the surface. She saw them looking around, noting every detail—one of which was a photograph she’d dug out of the back of the closet, one of her and Carrie with their heads together, laughing. In any play, the props on the set mattered because they set the mood. The mood she was going for was bereaved but not hysterical.

“Would you like some coffee, or iced tea?” she asked as they sat.

“No, thank you,” said Wilder, answering for the both of them. Thank God they didn’t want anything; the sooner they got this over with, the sooner they’d be out of here. In the back of her mind she coolly noted that he looked like someone she wouldn’t mind getting to know better, back in the days before Doug. He would have been a fun time, but she wouldn’t risk what she had now just to have a hot roll in the hay.

She took the chair facing the sofa where they’d both sat down. She’d chosen her costume for effect: a snug, but not too snug, knee-length black skirt, and a crisply tailored white blouse. She’d also gone easy on the makeup; she didn’t exactly look wan, but neither did she look festive. She had even used just a touch of eyeshadow to put faint bruises under her eyes. Because she was a buyer she had to always look sharp, so she hadn’t gone for dowdy, just restrained. Her four-inch heels were sharp and stylish, the type a sophisticated buyer would wear for work, and she really was going to work as soon as they left. A little touch of reality was always handy.

“Thank you for speaking to us, Ms. Boyne,” Detective Wilder said. “We’re investigating Carrie Edwards’s murder. What can you tell us about her?”

Well, that was an open-ended question. Taite supposed it was designed to get her talking, maybe saying more than she intended.

“We were best friends,” she said simply, and let her voice wobble a little on the last word. It was a nice touch.

For a few minutes he asked her meaningless questions: How long had she known Carrie, where had they met, when was the last time she’d seen her, blah, blah blah. She answered with complete honesty, because she knew he’d check out every detail. Why lie about something when you didn’t need to? If you kept to the truth whenever possible, that made people more inclined to believe you when you had to lie.

“Where were you on Wednesday afternoon, between three and six?”

“Here.”

“Alone?”

She took a deep breath, let it out. “No.” She looked down at her hands, clasped her fingers together. “Doug—Senator Dennison—was here. I got back in town the day before from a two-week trip to London, and he left work early so we could have some time together.”

“He didn’t come over the day you got home?”

“No. I was too jet-lagged.”

That, too, was true, at least as far as the jet lag went. And she had been in London.

“What time did he get here?”

Taite rubbed her forehead, trying to remember the automatic tells for lying, so she didn’t give any of them. Was it looking to the left, or the right? She couldn’t remember, so she closed her eyes as if she could see the answer on the inside of her eyelids. “He got here … just after three.”

“What time did he leave?”

“He was here for almost three hours so … about six.”

“Are you sure about the time?”

She met his hard gaze, keeping hers direct. “We’re clock-watchers, Detective. We have to be.” Let him make of that what he wanted; she wasn’t about to apologize or act embarrassed, because she wasn’t.

Finally, Wilder got to the meat of the interview, the question she’d known was coming. “I understand you and Carrie had a falling-out not too long ago.”

She sighed. “Not really.”

“You didn’t? You were supposed to be her maid of honor, but you dropped out of the wedding party.”

“I … we—” She stopped, took a deep breath. “Carrie was the one who introduced me to Doug, at a fund-raiser for his new campaign. We didn’t intend for—Well, I wasn’t looking to get involved and neither was he, but things happened.”

“And Carrie found out.”

Taite looked up, a faintly surprised expression in place. “She knew about it from the beginning.”

The two cops exchanged quick glances. “What was the argument about?”

“It wasn’t a real argument. When Carrie asked me to be her maid of honor, I had no idea who Doug was or anything about him. But when we got involved, well, I thought it would be … awkward, if I was there when she married his son, and he was there with his wife. I just didn’t want to do it. But if I quit without a good reason it would look funny, so Carrie and I staged the argument.”

“She approved of your arrangement with the senator?”

“Not really. She worried about me. She said the other woman never ended up in a good place, and she might be right.” She took a quick breath. “That’s a chance I’m willing to take.” Whether or not Doug ever left his wife, Taite figured she’d come out of things just fine. If news of the affair got out, and the rich bitch Mrs. Dennison tossed her cheating husband out on his ass, Doug’s career would probably survive. You couldn’t throw a stone in D.C. without hitting a politician who’d been unfaithful to his wife; when they were caught they’d lie low for a while, then pick up where they’d left off.

If Doug ended up divorced … Taite knew she’d make a great senator’s wife. If he didn’t, well, the life she had now wasn’t bad. No matter what, she was hanging on to Douglas with everything in her. He was her ticket to a better life and she meant to keep him.

“Carrie and I were best friends,” she said, and managed to blink up a teary-eyed look. Really crying was beyond her, but that would have been a bit much, anyway. “We stayed friends. She was here visiting just last week. She’d been getting some grief about the details of the wedding, and she needed to decompress. Oh, I know she could sometimes be a pain in the ass, but she was a good friend to me. I’m going to miss her.” There. A little bit of truth mixed in with a few very big lies. Couldn’t get any better than that.

When they got back to the department Eric sat back in his chair, his hands looped behind his head as he stared at the ceiling. Every detail of the case was spinning in his brain. His desk was littered with reports and notes, but everything there was also in his head, and that was where things would finally come together.

Every witness should be as good as wedding vendors. Each and every one of them who had been at the reception hall on Wednesday afternoon had told the same story. Eyewitnesses were remarkably unreliable, but these were people who were trained to pay attention to detail, to what was going on around them. Their stories had all matched—not exactly, but in all the major areas. If every detail had been the same, he’d have known they’d gotten together and agreed on what they were going to say.

They each told the story of the confrontation between Jaclyn and Carrie Edwards in their own way, with subtle differences in wording and the progression of events. But their recall of the events was close enough, and consistent enough, for him to believe them.

On the surface, Jaclyn had the best motive, but none of the evidence supported it. She simply wasn’t a viable suspect, thank God.

The senator, now … he looked good for it, but his girlfriend had solidly alibied him. Unless they could get some physical evidence from his car, which wasn’t likely considering he was alibied, they had zilch.

Taite Boyne was the one he couldn’t quite figure out. According to several witnesses, she and Carrie had had a falling out. Falling out, hell, they’d had a spectacular, very believable blowup, and unless they were both very good actresses, that would have been hard to pull off and make it look credible. If Taite was that good of an actress, that threw her little performance today into question.

She’d cried a little, and expressed what seemed to be genuine dismay. She hadn’t gone overboard with it, and she hadn’t even pretended to be embarrassed by her affair with the senator. He had her pegged as a pretty tough cookie.

It was the fight she’d had with Carrie that didn’t pan out. It just didn’t feel right. So, it was okay to screw the senator’s brains out a couple times a week, but not to stand by while he and his wife watched their son get married? It didn’t wash.

Garvey walked over, ever-present coffee cup in his hand, and propped himself against the side of Eric’s desk. “Interesting. Only one person has good things to say about Carrie, and she just happens to be banging the soon-to-be father-in-law at the time of the murder. Sounds like we have the making of our own daytime drama. All we need is an evil twin and an illegitimate baby. Stay tuned.”

Eric smiled. “What we have here is one colossal clusterfuck.”

“So, what else is new?” Garvey said, then he added, with more than a touch of genuine emotion, “Man, I love my job. Maybe Franklin will stay gone another week. I’m enjoying the hell out of this.”

Normally, Eric was right there with Garvey: he loved being a cop. They had all the pieces of a puzzle jumbled before them, and it was their job to make a picture from the mess. They’d do it this time, too. Somewhere, someone had made a mistake. All he had to do was find out who, and what.

He yawned, glanced out the window at the afternoon sun. He pushed back and stood. He and Garvey had already had a long day, because they’d both come in so early. It was late in the afternoon, and no one would blame them if they knocked off now. The last few hours had been filled with interviews, paperwork, lab requests, and reports. He was beat, but he had one more stop before he could call the day done.

And this time, he was going alone.


Chapter Nineteen

SOME MARRIAGES YOU JUST KNEW WEREN’T GOING TO last.

Jaclyn took a deep breath, then exhaled slowly, trying to keep her expression as neutral as possible. Photos of this particular event would never make it into the pamphlets all of them at Premier sometimes used to sell their services to potential clients. Never. In fact, she hoped with all her heart that no one ever knew they were involved.

This wasn’t the sort of event that usually called for an event planner, but the groom’s mother, horrified by the bride’s plans, had hired Premier in a last-ditch attempt to salvage some dignity for the occasion. Jaclyn realized now that she shouldn’t have taken it on, not when they were already so busy, but the poor woman had been desperate—and with good reason. The awful truth was, Jaclyn didn’t think there was anything she could do that would really help, so the woman was out the money and the wedding was still going to be a disaster, which was only fitting in a bad-karma kind of way, because she’d bet everything she owned that the marriage would be just as bad.

There were two weddings and another rehearsal taking place tonight. Tonight was the crescendo of their frantic pace, and if they could get through this then tomorrow would be fractionally easier, with two weddings and just one rehearsal. Sunday, thank God, was the last of the six weddings, and after that they would be back on a more sane—or was it merely less insane—schedule, and if Madelyn ever, ever again booked this many weddings this close together, Jaclyn promised herself she was going on vacation and not coming back until they were all over with.