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She hesitated. “I think so.”
“You’re not sure?”
“It’s Wanda Weiland.”
My heart stopped. “The wedding planner?”
She nodded and flashed an apologetic smile. “As in Weddings by Wanda.”
My fight-or-flight response kicked in, raising my pulse and respiration rate, as I considered the possibility that Wanda had been sent by my mother. An ambush on my own turf.
“She’s not alone,” Darcy added.
“Please tell me my mother’s not with her.” I gazed at the second-story window and contemplated a jump as my only means of escape.
Roger, now wide awake and on alert, watched me with an eager look, as if reading my thoughts. He flashed his full-focus grin and wagged his tail. If I jumped, Roger would follow. The crazy pooch was game for anything.
I considered my options. The fall probably wouldn’t kill me, but I might break a leg, so I couldn’t run. Unable to flee, I’d be completely at Mother’s mercy. I abandoned the idea of a header onto Main Street and sucked up to face the music.
“The other woman isn’t your mother,” Darcy said. “She’s younger than your mother, but older than you.”
“Not Caroline?” I could probably get rid of the wedding planner, but I didn’t want to be double-teamed by my persistent older sister.
Darcy shook her head. “I’ve met Caroline. It’s not her, but whoever she is, she’s too distraught to give her name.”
Distress could be real or an act. I wouldn’t put it past Mother and Caroline to stoop to a ploy to reel me in, but I could handle Wanda and a stranger, who’d be more reasonable than my family members. Everyone was more reasonable than my relatives. I told Darcy to show them in.
Darcy went to fetch them, and I called Roger and set him on my lap. He’d never met a leg he didn’t love, and his humping could be bad for business, so when clients arrived, I kept him on a short leash.
Wanda Weiland breezed through the door, looking as fresh and blushing as a bride herself in a clingy floral dress, strappy sandals and makeup that gave her a perfect healthy glow. Her long auburn hair swung as she walked, and she flung it off her shoulders with a snap of her head and took a chair across from my desk. She looked to be in her late thirties or possibly even forties. These days it was hard to tell whether a woman had good genes or an excellent plastic surgeon.
In contrast, the woman with her looked like an emotional wreck. Although she was neatly dressed in tailored slacks, a silk blouse and pearls, her complexion was splotched from crying, her eyes red-rimmed. She clutched a damp Kleenex in one hand, her purse in the other. She stopped just inside the door and appeared dazed and disoriented. She didn’t sit until Wanda patted the seat of the chair next to her.
“Thank you for seeing us on such short notice,” Wanda said.
“It’s an emergency,” the other woman added with a shiver, her voice hoarse from tears. “My daughter’s missing.”
“I read about you in the newspapers,” Wanda said, “how you solved Senator Branigan’s murder. I told Jeanette you could help us.”
“Jeanette?” I said.
“Jeanette Langston,” the distraught woman introduced herself. “I hope you can help me. I don’t know where else to turn.”
“You’ve been to the police?” I asked.
Jeanette nodded. “I spoke with the sheriff’s department. They told me there’s been no sign of a crime, and since Alicia left messages assuring us that she’s all right, they won’t get involved.”
I eyed Jeanette and estimated that she was older than me, somewhere in her mid-to-late fifties. Years ago, I would have assumed her daughter to be a grown-up, but with current advances in medical science and women having babies later in life, I took nothing for granted.
“Tell me about Alicia,” I said.
“She’s supposed to be married at the end of this month,” Jeanette said with a hitch in her voice.
Unless something kinky was going on, that fact made Alicia an adult. And it also explained the presence of Wanda, the wedding planner.
“Here’s her picture.” Jeanette slid a four-by-six photo across my desk.
I picked it up and studied the pretty girl posed on a seawall, long blond hair flowing in the wind, hazel eyes smiling at the camera. Tall and slender, she had an air of seriousness lurking beneath the happiness on her face.
“Alicia’s disappeared?” I said.
Jeanette nodded. “Four days ago. She left a note saying not to worry about her. And a voice mail a day later, assuring me that she’s okay. But I’ve tried calling her cell phone and she doesn’t answer. Garth, her fiancé, hasn’t heard a word from her, either.”
“So she’s a runaway bride.”
Even I, who never went to the movies and seldom turned on a television, was familiar with the Julia Roberts chick flick. I’d watched it late one night in the throes of insomnia and had felt a special kinship with the character who couldn’t commit.
“She’s not a runaway,” Jeanette said with obvious conviction.
Wanda, so far, had nothing to add but a reassuring pat of Jeanette’s hand.
“Not cold feet?” I said. “You’re sure?”
Jeanette shook her head without ruffling a strand of her honey-colored dye job. “Alicia loves Garth. They’ve been engaged for three years. A year ago they began planning this wedding to take place when Alicia finished graduate school.”
“Still,” I said reasonably and with a strong degree of empathy for Alicia, “she could be having second thoughts.”
“She did say in her note to cancel the wedding plans,” Wanda interjected.
“Big wedding?” I asked.
Wanda nodded. “Six bridesmaids, flowers by the truckload, and 250 guests, including a sit-down dinner with a string quartet and a deejay at the Osprey Country Club.”
“Refundable?” I pried.
Wanda shook her head. “Not at this point.”
I turned to Jeanette. “That must hurt.”
“I don’t give a damn about the money,” she insisted, then paused. “Although we’re not that wealthy, and we’ve had to borrow money for college, graduate school, and the wedding. But I’m scared for Alicia. This behavior isn’t like her.”
“Where did she disappear from?” I said.
“Home,” Jeanette said with a sniff and dabbed her nose with a tissue. “She was living with us to save money and commuting to the University of South Florida in Tampa.”
“Is her car missing, too?”
Her mother nodded.
“Did she say why she left?” I asked.
Jeanette rolled her eyes. “She said she wants to find herself. After a B.A., M.A., and a Ph.D. in philosophy, how much more self-discovery does she need?”
“What’s your take on this?” I asked Wanda.
The wedding planner frowned. “A year ago, when we started making plans, Alicia was enthusiastic, excited. You have to begin making decisions well in advance to carry off a wedding this massive, you know.”
I nodded with a grimace. “So my mother and sister have told me. But lately, had Alicia’s attitude changed?”
Wanda nodded. “The last few weeks, she seemed different.”
“Reluctant?” I suggested.
“Distracted.”
“She was finishing her dissertation,” Jeanette insisted. “Of course she was distracted.”
“What was the subject of her dissertation?” I asked.
Jeanette waved her hand. “Transcendentalism, spiritualism, some such nonsense. She tried explaining it, but I didn’t understand a word. But then Alicia’s very bright, much smarter than me.”
“In the voice mail she left,” I said, “was there any sign of coercion in her tone?”
Jeanette shook her head. “She sounded more elated than anything.”
“Was her farewell note typed or handwritten?”
“She wrote it on her personal stationery.”
“Any signs of tension or anything out of the ordinary in her handwriting or the words she chose?”
Jeanette shook her head. “That’s another reason the police won’t get involved.”
“So you feel reasonably certain her disappearance is her own doing and not the result of kidnapping?”
“Not totally,” Jeanette said and added with a frown, “because it doesn’t make sense. Alicia wants to marry Garth. Why would she leave? And why won’t she answer her phone to talk to Garth or her father and me?”
“Just to be clear,” I said, “you want me to find Alicia only to make sure she’s all right?”
Jeanette nodded.
I patted Roger, who was getting restless and looking longingly at Wanda’s bare, tanned legs. “If I find her, I can’t promise she’ll come home to go through with the wedding.”
Jeanette looked pained. “Understood. But her father and I have to know that she’s okay.”
She looked even more anguished when I quoted my hourly rate. Wanda, however, seemed unperturbed. Whether I found Alicia or not, the wedding planner’s nonrefundable fee was already in the bag.
CHAPTER 2
A few hours later, I paused inside the front door of Dock of the Bay and searched for Bill. The rustic restaurant with its knotty pine walls, decorated with sea-shells, crab traps and fishnets, overlooked Pelican Bay Marina where Bill lived aboard his cabin cruiser. A blast of cold, air-conditioned air hit me, a welcome change from the stifling heat and humidity that continued to build outside. An afternoon thunderstorm was the only hope for breaking the stifling conditions.
The lunch crowd had barely begun trickling in, but the old Wurlitzer in the bar was already in full swing with Joe Nichols crooning “Tequila Makes Her Clothes Fall Off.” The lyrics made me smile. Some liked country music for its melancholy. I loved its sense of humor.
Bill waved from our usual booth and flashed a welcome with the blue-eyed expression that had won my heart two decades ago. I slid onto the bench across from him and ordered raspberry iced tea from the waitress.
I’d spent the remainder of the morning at the office with Jeanette Langston, making lists of Alicia’s friends and acquaintances and their addresses. Then I’d taken Roger to my waterfront condo for a walk before settling him in his favorite doggy bed while I joined Bill for an early lunch. This afternoon I would begin the search for the elusive Alicia.
Bill, with his thick white hair, muscular physique, and Beach Boys tan, although ten years my senior, had grown more handsome with age, but I loved him as much if not more for his good heart and happy disposition. We were polar opposites, I an introvert with insecurities and pessimism rooted in my childhood, Bill an extrovert and perennial optimist. No wonder I was consumed with premarital jitters, even though the wedding was months away.
“Busy morning?” he said with that smile that could make me promise him anything.
I filled him in on the runaway bride.
“You think she’s lost her nerve?” he asked. “Or is maybe mentally unstable?”
“No hint of mental illness from either her mother or the wedding planner, but, according to her mother, her behavior’s definitely not normal. I should have a better take on why she took off after I talk to her fiancé and some of her friends this afternoon.”
I sighed.
Bill narrowed his eyes and studied me with an intensity that made me squirm. “What’s wrong, Margaret?”
I could never hide anything from Bill. He read body language better than I read English.
“What makes you think something’s wrong?” I hedged.
“Is your mother still on your case about a big wedding?”
“I’ll deal with it. As soon as I can screw my courage to the sticking point and confront her.”
One part of me yearned for my mother’s approval and unconditional love, withheld my entire life, and, illogically, considered the possibility that going along with her wedding plans might produce the desired results. The smart part of me knew better.
“Something has you restless and uneasy.” He nodded toward my left hand and the engagement ring he’d given me last Christmas, three aquamarines, my birth-stone, set in yellow gold. “Having second thoughts?”
“You know I love you.”
He nodded and reached across the table for my hand. “And I know the idea of marriage scares you senseless. If that’s what’s bothering you—”
“No.” I shook my head, then flashed a rueful grin. “I’m willing to give marriage my best shot and praying that my best shot will be good enough.”
“Don’t sell yourself short. I’ve been wanting to marry you for twenty years.”
I squeezed his hand and released it when the waitress returned with my tea. Bill waited until she’d taken our order and left before continuing. “So, what is bugging you today?”
I tried to get a handle on the vague dissatisfaction I felt so I could put it into words. “I think I need a career change.”
He sat back in the booth as if I’d hit him. “You want out of the business? We only started the P.I. firm a few months ago.”
I was doing a lousy job of expressing how I felt, primarily because I couldn’t really put a name to my discontent.
