temples all over the city. She'd seen the brides in their white gowns and the men in their tuxedos, but she knew very little about them.
'Can you tell me anything about the wedding that was unusual beyond the extravagance?' April asked.
'They had a wedding planner. That was unusual, since Suri Schoenfeld is such a competent woman.'
'Why did they, do you know?'
'I don't know; that woman put everything out of proportion. There was bad feeling about it. The spending was crazy. They had real flowers, real silver. The girl had her own gown from some store in Manhattan. Party favors for everyone. Such a waste.'
'I don't know your customs, Rabbi. How is it generally done?' April asked.
'With our large families most people don't go in for too many extras. The trend is for the girls to rent their gowns, use the caterer's centerpieces. They're not real flowers, but they look very good. They might have one or two arrangements of real flowers in the sanctuary. And of course, there's always lots of food.' A small smile lit up his eyes at the mention of food.
April nodded. Just like Chinatown. In Chinatown flowers were for funerals. At weddings, the families of the happy couple gave a wedding feast with lots of Scotch or cognac, plum wine, beer, soda. The decorations consisted of a few red carnations set on red tablecloths. For special show there might be red-lacquered chopsticks instead of the generic wooden ones. Personalized banners with slogans for good luck and long life in Chinese characters hung from the ceiling and were stuck on the walls with Scotch tape. Everything was red and gold. And cash went from friends to happy couple. As much cash as possible. The guests went away drunk and full but not with gifts and party favors.
April remembered the baskets of candy, the large floral arrangements so strongly scented, both in the sanctuary and on the tables: the palm trees, the orange trees with real oranges on them, the silver flatware, the gold-rimmed crystal glasses, the blue Tiffany boxes at many of the seats. They'd had favors from Tiffany!
'This party must have excited a lot of envy,' April murmured.
'A lot of talk,' the rabbi admitted. 'Usually our own people make our parties. We've never had trouble before.'
Afterward, the two detectives conferred about what they'd learned. April didn't like the way the rabbi kept calling Tovah 'the girl' and the groom 'the boy,' so she was careful to keep Tovah's name in her mind as she made notes to herself.
Fourteen
J
ust before five Louis the Suri King sent his assistant, Tito, out in the van with the completed order for the benefit at Tavern on the Green in Central Park. Then he collapsed in a damp heap on the green Victorian wrought- iron settee in his hothouse of a garden, angry as a hornet at Wendy Lotte.
The sun was as hot as summer. Usually he felt blessed that the town houses around him were low enough for the sun to creep into all the corners of his walled refuge, but today he was exhausted and discouraged, so the heat seemed like just another blight on his world. Still, it was better outside than it would be inside, dealing with the ankle-deep mess of cut stems and leaves that Tito had left on the floor of the shop and Jama wasn't there to pick up because he'd gone to ground.
Louis did not want to be inside and visible to any hapless visitor who might want to get in to buy something. He was through for the day. If someone came and he was forced to speak, he would just scream. His irascibility had cost him bundles in the past, and he knew he mustn't revert to type because of a murder.
In the past Louis had done several funerals where the estate lawyers didn't get around to paying him for over a year because the IRS questioned the expense. He had a policy against working for dead people. And now he'd just sunk more than fifty-five thousand dollars into a wedding for a dead person. He was going to sit there, sweating and cursing Wendy Lotte, until she showed up and reassured him that his investment was not lost.
Louis the Sun King's shop consisted of the first floor and garden of a town house in the East Sixties between Lexington and Park. His establishment was surrounded by antique shops, jewelry shops, a high-end chocolatier, a lingerie boutique, a custom tailor, and a number of pricey restaurants frequented by Eurotrash with titles from long-defunct monarchies, social pretensions, and lots of money. It was close enough to Bloomingdale's, Williams- Sonoma, Caviar-teria, and Barneys for any kind of instant shoppmg pick-me-up, and Louis loved it.
Hardly any plants were for sale there. Garden antiques and collectible containers in many materials were for sale. Cement and bronze planters and painted Italian pottery that presently contained palm trees were for sale. Nineteenth-century Chinese export porcelain, Japanese Imari, sculptured Lalique, opaline, Venetian, and other forms of art-glass vases were for sale, as well as curios of all kinds and hard-to-identify objets d'art on lacquered Chinese and Italian mosaic tables. Screens that cleverly created cunning alcoves were for sale. The garden chairs around the large center table in the extension where the work of planning parties was done were not.
Last, in a corner of the shop, screened by a stand of bamboo in brass planters, Louis's boyfriend Jorge had set up a hair-coloring salon at one of the sinks Tito used for soaking and trimming flowers. Jorge recently commandeered the sink when he quit his job at one of the best hair salons in the city and refused to look for another.
Louis the Sun King was known for designing terrace gardens, greenhouse displays, weddings, benefits, and parties of all kinds. Two major hotels used his services for seasonal decorations of their lobbies. Nearly everything he did was a special order, and a lot of people who thought they knew the street well had no idea it contained a florist.
It was not a long wait. Wendy banged on the locked door at quarter past five. 'Louie, Louie, it's me,' she cried. Bang. Bang. Bang.
He buzzed her in. She marched through the shop and found him outside. Wendy Lotte was a tall, blond, self- important anorectic of impeccable credentials. She'd come up on Park Avenue. She'd graduated from Miss Porter's and Smith College. She'd been in the Sotheby's human resources department for a year after college, then worked for a giant PR company for five years after that as an event planner. She was keen on making a lot of money because her divorced parents had both married again, one more than once, and had new families to support. She was always expensively dressed and coiffed, and was attractive to people who liked fast-talking, slightly horsey, stiff-hipped kinds of girls.
'I've never had a day like this in my whole life.' She sat and launched in without a pause. 'You wouldn't have believed the scene there yesterday. Blood everywhere. People screaming, thinking it was another terrorist attack. It was so awful it was funny.
One woman's wig fell off, and she almost went crazy trying to find it. Hysteria beyond belief. All your little boys ran away, and that detective is harassing me. He called on my
while I was with Prudence and Lucinda. Why do 1 have to take the flak?'
'Oh, please.' Louie threw up a hand. 'Wherever you are is trouble.'
'No, really, Louie, this is not a joke. This Bronx idiot, with an accent so thick 1 can't understand a word, is harassing me.'
Louis put his hand to his pompadour, smoothing it back. 'Why?'
'I have no idea. He's a complete asshole. He doesn't like me, and I was perfectly nice to him until he tried to get into my purse.'
'They searched your purse? Poor Wendy, you never learn.'
'Oh, shut up, Louis. He didn't find anything. But this is all going to be in the papers. My name is coming up everywhere. You can't imagine how crazy it is. An agent called me twice while I was out with Pru and Lucinda. Somebody wants to do a TV movie. The
wants to pay me fifty thousand dollars for a story. 'Arranged marriage ends in murder. The wedding planner tells all.' Can you believe it?'
'Why not? It's a great story. That wretched girl was married like a cow.' Louis fanned his face with a big hand.
'Louie, don't start with that.'
He made an angry noise. 'It was slavery, face it.'
'Stop! You don't know anything about it.'
