A Wedding To Die For

wants to talk to you.”

I took the phone. “This is Abby.”

“How soon can you bring me the drawing?” she said curtly.

“When do you need it?”

“Tomorrow morning. Megan and her mother will be home until around nine thirty and I wanted to show it to them.”

“I can meet you there. I need to talk to Megan anyway.”

“Okay... and thank you.” She disconnected.

A please and a thank-you all in one day? Well, slap me naked and sell my clothes.

Dryer and I spent the next half hour looking at his paintings. No gentle landscapes or country cottages for Mason Dryer. He’d painted ballerinas on tightropes suspended in fluid skies, monkeys and cats in vivid color riding through clouds in an old-fashioned motor car, jesters dancing on domes. I loved his stuff. So when I left, I was carrying not only the envelope, but the monkeys and cats, too.

I pulled into my driveway twenty minutes later, and Kate showed up just as I was taking my new painting from the trunk. I’d called her on my way home since I wanted her to look at the composite. Would she see what I thought I was seeing in that face?

“You didn’t waste any time getting here,” I said, lifting out the canvas.

“I was leaving my office when you phoned, so I wasn’t far away.” She stared at the covered canvas. “But I thought you said you visited a sketch artist. I didn’t realize they painted their subjects these days.”

“Funny. Get the back door for me, would you?” I tossed her my keys.

“So where’d you get the painting?”

I told her about Dryer’s day job as we went inside. After I turned on the kitchen lights, I tore the brown paper off the canvas and showed her my purchase. She seemed less than impressed, but Kate’s tastes tend to lean toward the comfort of Monet or Renoir.

“Tell me about tonight,” she said after offering a polite comment about my cats and monkeys. “I always wondered how a person could create a picture from someone else’s memory.”

“Dryer’s good. Almost like a hypnotist. I mean, I was sitting in that church looking at the woman again.”

“Okay, so let me see.”

I carefully removed the pencil drawing from the envelope. “Is this how you remember her?”

Kate stared at the picture. “Wow. That’s her all right. He did this in fifteen minutes?”

“Yup. There is something special about this face. He captured her accurately, but...”

“I know what you mean. She looks... kind of familiar, but maybe that’s only because we saw her Saturday.”

“Take a longer look—especially at those eyes and the shape of her face.”

“My God, Abby, she looks like—”

“Megan,” I finished.

7

When the alarm went off the next morning I resisted the urge to hit the sleep button. I had to get an early start to be in Seacliff by nine A.M. After I showered, dressed, and fed Diva, I rummaged through boxes until I found my digital camera. I took several shots of the composite, downloaded them to my computer, printed 8x10 and 4x6 copies and added them to Megan’s file. The more I stared at the drawing, the more of Megan I saw in the woman’s features.

Kate and I might be putting too much stock in the likeness, but what if Megan’s mother had secretly kept track of her daughter? And what if the wedding drew her out of the shadows for an event no mother would want to miss? But this was still speculation, and I wasn’t about to present this theory to Megan. Not yet, anyway.

I arrived at the Beadfords by eight forty-five, and this time Roxanne admitted me to the foyer. She wore oatmeal-colored sweats, no makeup, and a thick red fabric headband that revealed a patch of blemishes on her forehead. In my khakis and off-the-shoulder blue sweater I looked like a supermodel compared to her.

“You didn’t have to make the trip here, though I do appreciate it,” Roxanne said. I must have looked confused because she added, “She came home.”

“Who came home?” I said.

“Courtney.”

How could I have forgotten our strange conversation yesterday? “I’m glad she returned safely,” I said with a smile.

“Perhaps I fret too much,” she said. “But with Uncle James quitting the earth in such a horrible turn of events, I suppose I overreacted.”

Quitting the earth? Turn of events? I decided Roxanne had been spending way too much time reading gothic novels. I was saved from further pained conversation by someone ringing the bell. I turned and opened the door to find that Chief Fielder had come to my rescue. Now there was some black irony.

“Good morning, Ms. Rose... Miss Beadford.” Her gaze rested on the large envelope in my hand.

“Good morning.” I handed her the drawing once she crossed the threshold, wondering if she would pick up on the resemblance to Megan.

“Are you satisfied with the composite?” Fielder asked.

“Very,” I answered.

“Composite of what?” Roxanne asked.

“I’ll fill you in later, Miss Beadford,” Fielder said. “But for now, I’d like some time with your aunt. Can you tell her I’m here?” Fielder sounded about as pleasant as I’d ever heard her. Guess she saved up her best stuff for the victim’s family—and I couldn’t argue with that approach.

“Certainly,” Roxanne said. Then she lowered her voice. “Aunt Sylvia’s upstairs preparing for her trip to Galveston. The medical examiner will be performing a postmortem examination on Uncle James’s remains, and she must complete the paperwork for the eventual release of his body.”

I swear she almost smiled before she walked through the foyer and made a slow ascent up the right staircase. Hmmm. Maybe someone forgot her medication today.

I caught Fielder rolling her eyes. Then she said, “I appreciate you coming down here, Ms. Rose.” She wore black trousers and a herringbone blazer, but even her expertly applied makeup couldn’t hide her fatigue. Definitely puffy around the eyes.

“I’m much more comfortable with Abby,” I said.

“Certainly.” She forced a smile.

The awkward silence that followed was broken by Sylvia and Megan’s appearance. Megan had on the same clothes she’d worn yesterday, but Sylvia was dressed in a throat-high black knit dress that made her look like she was already headed for the funeral.

We exchanged greetings, and before Fielder escorted Sylvia into the formal living room off the foyer, she told Megan to wait, that they’d only be a minute or two.

Keeping her voice low, Megan said, “Sorry I had to hang up on you last night. Why do we need to go to the Bureau of Vital Statistics? I thought the Adoption Registry was a dead end.”

“I’ve been digging deeper, and you may not have been born at St. Mary’s,” I whispered. “Maybe a new copy of your birth certificate will confirm this.”

“Not born at St. Mary’s? But—”

“I don’t think this is the best place to talk,” I said.

“You have a real lead?” she asked, eyes bright.

“Could be the break we’re looking for,” I replied.

“Okay. We go today.”

“But Fielder wants to show you the composite. And you said you had to take Sylvia to Galveston.”

“Travis will fill in for me with Mother.”