Murder Most Persuasive

sorry. Is there anybody else you’re interested in?”

“Not really,” said Ann. “Most of the guys I know are taken. They’re either happily married or happily divorced and now dating pubescent young things, or they’re gay. I hate to say it, but there are times when I wonder if there’s any truth behind that stupid statistic.” She looked at me for confirmation. “You know the one that says if you haven’t married by age forty—”

“You’re more likely to die in a terrorist attack than walk down the aisle,” I finished. “Yes, I know it.”

Laura burst out laughing. “What utter nonsense! First of all, Ann, you are all of thirty, and second of all, look at me. I didn’t marry Miles until I was well past my fortieth birthday. And it wasn’t some case of two old fogies coming together out of mutual loneliness: It was—and is—true love.”

Ann sat seemingly lost in thought, staring at her glass of wine. Laura turned to me. Her brow was furrowed in concern at Ann’s mood. However, she switched topics. “Ann tells me that you are seeing someone now, Elizabeth,” she said.

I smiled. “Yes. His name is Peter. Like you, I never thought I’d meet a nice guy. Most of my ex-boyfriends seemed to wander off on me; either with other women or personal items of mine.”

“I’ve been there,” Laura said sympathetically. “I’d gotten so used to that particular type of behavior that I actually began to anticipate it. I even thought Miles was about to break up with me.”

Ann looked up, astounded. “Miles? You thought Miles was going to break up with you? He’s adored you from the day he met you! When was this?”

“Oh, a long time ago, back when we were dating. But actually, now that I think of it, it was right before we got engaged—which shows you how clueless I was. I remember I was out of town one weekend visiting my mother and when I came home there he was at the airport with a huge bouquet of roses and a ring.” Laura smiled softly at the memory. “He was actually getting on a plane himself in the next hour, but he said he didn’t want to waste one more minute not engaged to me.” Almost as an aside, she said, “I remember I was so relieved that I burst into tears right there in the middle of Gate Twenty-four.”

“Why were you relieved?” I asked.

Laura appeared embarrassed. “Well, I didn’t talk to him at all while I was away that weekend, and I guess I got worried that he’d gotten tired of me. But we’ll have been together nine years in July,” she said happily. “And I’m as happy today as I was then. Miles is one of a kind.”

As if on cue, the front door opened and Miles strolled in. Shrugging out of his blue blazer and loosening his green paisley tie, Miles apologized for his lateness, explaining that he’d had to meet with a difficult client. Apparently the woman had recently been to France, where she visited Versailles. Enchanted with Marie Antoinette’s Petit Trianon and gardens, she wanted to create something similar. “A friggin’ hamlet in a tiny town house backyard is what she wants me to create,” Miles fumed. “A place where, like the young queen, she can, and I’m quoting here, ‘escape her burdens.’ Burdens! This from a woman who spends her day spoiling her silly dogs! Ten to one, I’m going to want to behead her after another month of this,” he predicted.

Laura poured him a generous glass of wine and rose from her seat. She greeted him first with a kiss then the wine.

Smiling, Miles returned the kiss and said, “Well, thank you! I’ll have to be late for dinner more often! What was that for?”

“Oh, just for being you,” she said. “I was just telling Ann and Elizabeth about how you proposed to me at the airport.”

“One of the best days of my life,” he said with a nod. Miles sat down in the chair next to mine. “And now look at us—an old married couple.”

Laura grimaced. “Speak for yourself, old man.”

* * *

Two hours later, we were sitting in the dining room enjoying Laura’s homemade peach kutchen after having a wonderful dinner of rack of lamb, peas, and orzo. The conversation had drifted to the discovery of Michael’s body.

“The whole situation is simply horrible,” Laura said to Ann. “I feel especially terribly for you and Reggie—it’s almost like you both have to relive Michael’s deviousness. We all thought so highly of him, your father in particular! Afterward, well, I can only guess at the betrayal Marty must have felt. And Reggie! I sometimes wonder if her subsequent rash of marriages wasn’t somehow a result of the whole debacle with Michael.”

“How so?” I asked.

“Well, Reggie was really in love with Michael,” said Laura. “When she met him, it was as if she was suddenly struck with Cupid’s arrow. Don’t you remember? She was all hot and heavy with that boy … oh, what was his name?”

“Donny Mancuso,” Ann offered.

“That’s right! What a good memory you have!” Laura said. I studiously refrained from looking at Ann. “Anyway,” Laura continued, “she dropped Donny like a hot potato. I never was a big fan of his, a bit of a jug head, I always thought, but was he ever devastated. He pined after her for months, but Reggie never gave him a second look after meeting Michael.” Laura paused and took a sip of coffee. “You know, I don’t think she’s ever really loved anyone the way she loved Michael. She didn’t like him just because he was heir to the business. She liked him for himself. Afterward, it was as if she put up a kind of emotional wall; she wasn’t going to let herself get hurt again. In every relationship she’s had since him, she’s the one who has ended things, not the other way around. I really think that for each one of those relationships, Reggie was really trying to get Michael out of her system.”

“Well, if that’s the case, that boy must have really clogged up her system,” Miles said with a smirk as he took a bite of the kutchen.

Ann hid a smile and said, “But Laura, you’re forgetting, Reggie broke it off with Michael, too.”

Laura dipped her head in acknowledgment. “I know, and thank God she did given all we’ve learned about the kind of person he turned out to be. But I don’t think Reggie really thought it was over until Michael took off and then money was discovered missing. She may have ended things with him hoping that he’d sort out his drinking issues and then come back to her. When he didn’t, and she learned of the embezzlement, she was devastated.” Ann looked down and said nothing. “You had left for England so you weren’t here for the aftermath,” Laura continued, “but I can tell you it was awful. Here I was planning my wedding and she was dismantling hers. Oh, the money she was going to spend on that wedding!” Laura shook her head at the memory. “There was no budget whatsoever. Even Marty was starting to get worried. He asked me at one point to see if I could talk to her about incorporating a little moderation into the planning, but you would have thought I told her to have a barbecue in the backyard from the way she reacted. I remember she said that she might as well get married at City Hall.” Laura rolled her eyes. “No, she was going to have the wedding of her dreams. She had planned every detail. The menu, the dresses, the decorations, that custom-made arch, the shape of the pool…” Laura broke off as we all thought how the pool had played its part.

“Oh, God, I remember that arch thing,” Miles said quickly, to change the morbid direction of our thoughts. “I think she must have attended a Jewish ceremony, because it was basically a chuppah. A really, really tacky chuppah,” he added with a smile.

Laura sprang to Reggie’s defense. “No, it wasn’t! It was lovely. You saw it, didn’t you, Ann?”

Ann shook her head. “No. What did it look like?”

Laura opened her mouth, but it was Miles who spoke. “It looked like a wooden arch upon which every conceivable aspect of wildlife had landed and remained stuck. Roses, bees, birds, small woodland creatures; hell, I think even Old Nessie may have been carved into that thing.”

“Okay, it may have been a bit over the top, but I assure you it wasn’t that bad,” Laura insisted.

Miles shot her a challenging look. “Well, in any case, I’m almost positive that Nessie was featured.”

“For a girl whose idea of roughing it is to go to a four-star hotel, I don’t know why Reggie ever picked the whole ‘nature’ theme for her wedding,” Miles said, laughing.

“Maybe like your client, she’d recently been to Versailles and was inspired by Marie Antoinette,” I suggested with mock seriousness.

“She made up for it with her next wedding,” Ann said. “Remember that one?”

I rolled my eyes. “How could I ever forget? The Little Bo-Peep wedding.” For that one, Reggie had gone with the shepherdess theme. Wide puffy dresses, satin sashes, and lacy hats ruled the day. At the reception, real sheep