I was picturing all this in my head, trying to imagine how it had looked. “Is she normally like that? Mean and selfish?”
Alison grimaced. “I hate to say it, but she did have a streak. She hated it when other people got something nicer than hers, and she didn’t like to be anywhere other than at the center of attention. I always said it was insecurity because of the way she looked in grade school and middle school. But yeah, it was there. It’s one of the reasons I stepped back from her. My parents got me an older Celica for my sixteenth birthday, and two days later, she was driving a brand new one.”
“Wow,” I said. “That must have been tough.”
She tilted her head and thought for a second. “Yeah, it was, but in retrospect, I feel sorry for her. Can you imagine how horrible it must be to be so insecure that you can never be happy for a friend?”
That was a powerful insight, and I found myself liking Allison. She was a person who would have been Jaime’s friend through thick and thin, and as far as I was concerned, Jaime had made a huge mistake passing her over for the chance to be in the Cool Kids Club.
“I suppose I can,” I replied. “So what happened then?”
Exhaustion crossed Alison’s face, and tears welled in her eyes. “Mid-tirade, she grasped her throat, and her eyes got all bulgy like she was choking. I tried to do the Heimlich on her, but it didn’t work. Less than a minute later, she was dead. I called 911.”
“And that’s it?”
She nodded and dabbed at the corner of her brown eye with a tissue. “That’s it. It sounds so horrible that her life ended just like that, but it did.”
I thought for a minute, doing a mental inventory of the artifacts recorded in the book. “Can you remember off the top of your head if any of the gifts were antiques?”
“Oh, god no,” she replied with an adamant shake of her head. “Jaime would have stroked out if somebody had gotten her anything used. Her style was modern all the way.”
“Even with the silver platters and whatnot?” There had to have been something.
“Nope, the silver platter came from The Shiny Dolphin.”
That was an upscale place in Old Town, and I knew all their inventory was new. And expensive.
“I’m sure somebody kept a list of gifts, right?” Or at least I hoped.
“Oh, absolutely,” she replied. “Not sending a formal thank you would have been gauche. It’s probably still in there. Cassandra, the tall blonde over by the fireplace, was keeping it for her. She’s the maid of honor.”
I tried to think if I had any more questions for her, but I came up blank. “Thank you so much for talking to me, and it was nice to meet you.”
“It was nice to meet you, too.” She rummaged through a slouch bag that I knew didn’t have a designer label and pulled out a business card. “This is my cell. If you have any more questions, I’d be happy to answer.”
Another idea popped into my head as I took it. “You didn’t by chance take any pictures, did you?”
“I did,” she replied. “Do you think they can help you figure out what happened?”
I lifted a shoulder. “They couldn’t hurt. If you don’t mind, could you text them to me?”
Alison nodded, and I gave her my number. She tapped it into her phone, then scrolled through what I assumed was her gallery. A few seconds later, my phone chimed with incoming texts.
“I sent them all even though some of them are repeats,” she said, tucking her phone back in the purse. “I figured there might just be something in one that’s not in another.”
“Thanks again, Allison, and I’m sorry for your loss.”
She nodded and pinched her lips together. “Me too. She used to be an amazing person, and I’ll miss that part of her.”
I walked away, scanning the room for James and Luther. I approached them both mid-interview but whispered to them to get as many pictures as possible texted to my number. Surely with all the modern tech in the room, at least one person captured the artifact in a picture.
After I spoke with them, I made my way toward Cassandra, who was huddled with three other women.
“Excuse me, but you’re Cassandra, the maid of honor, right?”
She nodded. “I am. But I don’t have anything to tell you other than what you’ve already learned.” She lowered her voice. “I hate to speak ill of the dead, but she was a hormonal wreck today. Jaime was always trying to be better than everybody else, but she was so bad today that we’re wondering if she was maybe ... pregnant. She whispered that last word behind her hand like it was a top-tier swear word. I supposed it was in her circle, though. The high-society equivalent of the eff bomb, though I knew from experience that in closed company, they were just as likely to swear like truckers as anybody else was. The taint of getting married out of necessity was more of a stain than if Jaime had stood up and shouted the eff word at the opera to this crowd, though.
“Wow. Thank you for letting me know,” I whispered back, appropriately shocked. “That’s useful information to have. I know this might seem to be an odd question, but I was told you were the one keeping track of the gift list. We’ll need to see that.”
Cassandra lifted a shoulder and pulled a small notebook from her clutch. “Sure, though I don’t know what good that will do you since she choked to death. She didn’t
