Veiled Threats by Deborah Donnelly

Author:Deborah Donnelly
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Detective, Mystery, Mystery & Detective - Women Sleuths, Detective and mystery stories, Washington (State), Reference, Mystery & Detective, Carnegie (Fictitious character), Weddings, Women detectives, Kincaid, Fiction, Seattle (Wash.), Kidnapping, Mystery fiction, Women Sleuths, General, Suspense, Fiction - Mystery
ISBN: 9780440237037
Publisher: Random House, Inc.
Published: 2002-01-02T08:00:00+00:00

THE SIDEWALK IN FRONT OF ST. ANNE’S EPISCOPAL CHURCH was empty, and the arched double doors were closed. I parked Vanna in a handicapped spot and sprinted up the stairs. I had no plan: I just had to tell Douglas and Grace that their daughter was in danger.

But I'd have to do it after the ceremony. As the door banged behind me, echoing in the vaulted space, I could hear the sweet, precise notes of flute, cello, and violin scattering down from the musicians in the balcony, and the anticipatory murmuring of the guests. The candelabra were lit, and solemn young ushers were already escorting family members to the special pews marked with garlands of white ribbon and stephanotis blossoms. I slipped into a rear seat, trying to slow my breathing. I'd catch the Parrys before the reception, and convince them that Nickie and Ray should escape to the airport right from the church. Or should I actually try to stop the wedding? I couldn't decide.

“You must be Carnegie. Nickie described you to me. You've done a lovely job.”

The woman beside me was in her fifties, with no cosmetics to soften the wrinkles around her tired brown eyes and the rough, uneven coloring of her cheeks. Her dark, heavy hair was as long as a girl's, and pulled simply back in a style that disregarded the many streaks of iron gray. She wore a plain sand-colored dress with a long full skirt, and her only jewelry was a heavy turquoise-and-silver necklace in a squash-blossom design.

“I'm Julia Parry.”

How brave of her to come, I thought, when all Douglas's friends know the story of how she left Seattle, a drunkard, a bad mother, disgraced. And then I thought, with wild irrelevance, why did Dorothy seat her all the way back here? Well, I knew myself that divorced parents, especially estranged ones, make for interesting but perilous points of etiquette.

Julia was still speaking. “Your assistant was so helpful at the rehearsal last night. I realize that it's awkward, having to fit in ghosts from the past.”

I looked at her more carefully. There was a glint of humor in that last remark, but also a somber dignity in her eyes. This woman had lied to herself for a long time, and now she lived quietly with truth.

“Dorothy's not my assistant,” I whispered. “She's my replacement. Grace and Douglas thought I was cheating them. I wasn't.”

“I see.” She smiled, and I could see Nickie in her weathered face. “Well, then, we're both a bit superfluous, aren't we?”

I smiled in agreement, and glanced past her at an inconspicuous oak door near the end of our pew. The door, I knew, led to an enclosed corridor which ran the length of the church, from the dressing rooms at one side of the main entrance all the way down to the vestry near the altar. Ray and his best man would be waiting in the vestry now, and Nickie and her bridesmaids would be fidgeting in the dressing room.

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