The Silent Bride

pillows that had fallen on the floor.

'We had a nice party, you and I. Come back.'

'Too late.' She threw a pillow at his head, then another, tidying up for the day.

He sighed and reached for the coffee, secretly pleased. She'd made coffee just the way he liked it, thick and sweet. He swallowed gratefully. 'Angel from heaven, when are we getting married?'

'I had a dream about that girl last night,' April said, pulhng up the sheet to cover his lap. Modesty.

He laughed. 'Was the dream a special message for you,

queridal'

As his dream had been for him.

'Probably. Why didn't you want to talk about it last night when you got home?' she accused.

'Where did you learn to make such good coffee,

queridal'

He couldn't help changing the subject, wanting the credit for having taught her himself. The case could wait three seconds, just three.

'I worried all night. You got home late, wouldn't talk.' The sound of her complaining like her mother was enough to make him laugh some more. She wouldn't let up.

'Thank you for the coffee,' he said.

April dipped her head in acknowledgment. She didn't drink coffee in the morning. Hot water with lemon. Or just hot water. He was grateful for her making the effort for him and gave up a little information.

'Tovah Schoenfeld had a malformation in her brain. That was about it.' The autopsy on the young bride had given Mike a squirmy feeling.

Before Dr. Gloss, the ME, peeled back Tovah's scalp and sawed off the top half of her skull as if it were nothing more than the cap of a boiled egg, the girl had been lovely, a real stunner. It had been creepy to discover that had she lived, she might have died prematurely anyway.

'Really, what kind of malformation?' April asked.

'A little thing, like an aneurysm. It could have popped at any time. Weird, huh?'

'But that wasn't the COD?' April sat on the bed again and took his hand because she could see that he felt as bad as she did. Shit, a bride! This case was personally upsetting to both of them.

Mike shook his head. 'You know how Gloss likes coming up with the special touches. He thought the brain thing was an interesting anomaly, since it might have caused her a problem at a later date. She'd had her appendix out. She wasn't pregnant.' He swallowed the last of the coffee. 'She was still a virgin. That's about it.'

He gave her hand a last squeeze, then reached for his watch on the table and snapped it on his wrist. His three seconds of normal life were over. Now he was charged. His business was to catch a killer. It was his primary focus, and he was ready to go.

'That's one theory out the window.' April took the empty cup to the kitchen.

'Boyfriend/girlfriend? Well, maybe.'

'Would a spurned lover kill a virgin?'

'Maybe,' Mike said again, disappearing into the bathroom.

'How many hits? What about the gun?' April fired questions at him through the door.

'I'll tell you in the car,' he called out.

He stood under the hot water in the shower, scrubbing with the rough green seaweed soap April said purified his skin and increased his qi. He didn't know what his qi was. He suspected it was one of those things he had enough of already. In any case, he didn't think it was stimulated by laceration. He preferred soothing sensations, so he finished up quickly, jumped out, shaved, trimmed the ends of his lush mustache, and doused himself in aftershave. Then he put his clothes ori in a hurry because April always complained it took him longer than a girl to choose his outfits. He changed his tie only three times, preoccupied by plans for the investigation. He was determined to clear this awful case in a day, two at the most.

Eight

W

endy Lotte's phone started ringing off the hook before seven. The phone was so persistent it felt as if the whole world was out to get her, not just a client this time. She pulled her beautiful duvet over her head and lay in bed, sniffing the stale scent of fear that emanated from all the pores in her body. Seven rings, then silence when voice messaging picked up. Then it started again. Wendy was frightened. Who else could it be but that detective again? This might be her busy season, but please. No one called this early.

She knew enough about cops to be afraid. She didn't want to go through another ordeal. Her life was good now. She'd stayed out of trouble all these years. But yesterday she almost lost it when the detective with the mustache started pushing her around. The bastard wouldn't let her leave, wouldn't believe her story and let her just go home, even though she was a pro at lying. He even searched her

car.

It freaked her out.

All night in a seriously inebriated state Wendy worried about the questions people would ask today. She worried about having to attend the funeral. Just the thought of a second funeral in less than a year made her puke. She puked a lot during the night and didn't sleep at all. Hanging over the cool porcelain bowl in her bathroom, she agonized over her past and future and gagged in equal proportions.

This morning she was so dizzy she couldn't get up. She writhed under the covers, trying to calm down and overcome the worst hangover she'd had since high school. She'd dreamed this exact thing so many times. Only weeks from the big four-oh, she was the only person in the world who wasn't being celebrated, wasn't getting a party, wasn't married with children.

How many brides had she married over the years? A generation of them. Literally hundreds of times she'd worked through every single reception thing: from the lists, to the invitations, to the gowns, to the organization of registries in the appropriate stores, the categorizing of gifts when they arrived, the thank-you notes. The prewedding dinners, often with their impossible blending of bride-and-groom ill-fitting families. The tantrums over flowers and ballrooms and bands. The bridesmaids who got so drunk they couldn't stand up (and worse). The seating plans, the timing of everything so it all went off each time just like a NASA space shot. Now she was doing the sweet sixteens and the debutante parties for the children of couples whose weddings she'd worked on twenty years ago. Some of them were on their second marriages. From sea to shining sea Wendy had walked in brides' shoes through every single phase of it. Every phase but one. She was almost forty years old and she hadn't pulled it off herself.

Practically all her life she'd dreamed of being a bride—the center of attention—feted and endured in all her demands and jitters. A big diamond sparkling on her finger. She'd dreamed every detail, the dress, the room, the flowers. Other girls found men—or their mothers found them—why not her? Sometimes, when she had to smile for hours and hours at other girls' weddings, it was so painful that her face felt like a pinched nerve.

Tovah Schoenfeld's death was a cautionary tale in a way, because she didn't deserve to be a wife. She didn't want to be a wife. The marriage would have been a flop, another fake. Wendy was sorry about the resulting chaos, though. The last thing she needed was to be questioned, to attend the funeral, to have her name in the newspapers.

Wendy had a firm rule: She never drank on the job. Never! A bottle of leftover celebratory Veuve Clicquot

might

find its way into her large carryall after an event and she

might

sip it slowly at home. But last night after police had checked her bag for the gun that had murdered poor Tovah, she'd been so upset that she'd slipped back into the party room and taken two bottles. Two were all she'd been able to rescue. No gifts had been on display, and she didn't want the trinkets in the little Tiffany boxes. There had been nothing else to rescue. It turned out that the Schoen-felds, who looked as if they were throwing money all over the place, were actually careful to the extreme about getting ripped off. The expensive gifts had always been elsewhere.

The phone rang seven times and was silent, seven times and was silent. Wendy's selfish assistant, Lori, had taken a vacation so there was no one to answer the phones and be her buffer against the world.