Bride & Groom

themselves.
    Francie said, “Oh, well, we have fun. But I haven’t seen you at Mount Auburn lately. I’ve missed you.”
    As Rita was explaining that she’d been away, I couldn’t help eyeing the drab Francie and wondering whether her conservative, even dowdy, printed dress concealed lascivious undies like the black merry widow she held in her hand. For all I knew, she was wearing a lacy thong instead of ordinary panties. Maybe she even wore real stockings suspended by garters.
    “I’m so glad you’re back,” Francie told Rita. “I’m really excited about the fall migration, and I’d hate to have to face all those confusing fall warblers without you. Holly, it was nice to meet you.”
    I told Francie that it had been nice to meet her, too. As she headed toward the cash register, I happened to glance toward the rear of the shop. Emerging from the entrance to the dressing rooms was Steve’s fiendish ex-wife, Anita, who was tall and stylish. Her hair was long and blond, her expression sour. Dangling from her hand was a garter belt. She held it with disdain, as if it were a dead rat she intended to whirl around and fling out of sight.
    I turned my back to her and whispered to Rita, “Anita Fairley is just coming out of the dressing rooms, and we are leaving this second.”
    “Coward,” Rita said. Still, she followed me out of the shop. Once we’d escaped, I said, “I am not afraid of Anita.”
    “I know, I know,” Rita said. “You live with two Alaskan malamutes, and—”
    “Anita is a very nasty person. And she hates me. Besides, she was brandishing a lethal weapon.”
    “If one of you ever decides to strangle the other,” Rita said, “my money’s on you.”
    The thought that crossed my mind was so vicious that I didn’t speak it aloud even to Rita, to whom I can say almost anything. The thought was this: Anita Fairley, recently Anita Fairley-Delaney, had met Steve at Rialto. She probably still went there. When she did, she probably parked in the garage under The Charles Hotel. If a woman had to have been bludgeoned to death in the garage, why on earth had it been the innocent Dr. Laura Skipcliff? Why couldn’t it have been that damned Anita Fairley?
     

CHAPTER 7
     
    “I’ll have the Caesar salad,” Rita told our waiter at the mall restaurant. “And a glass of Chardonnay with that. And since I’m not driving, I’ll have another margarita while we wait.”
    I ordered the Caesar salad, too, but also the broiled salmon and a baked potato. Rita was not, by the way, the kind of gustatory hypocrite who eats nothing but salad in public and then goes home to binge on tortilla chips and ice cream at midnight; salad was what she ate, and she stayed slim. In contrast, my leanness was attributable strictly to metabolic luck.
    “We did very well,” Rita said with satisfaction. “You’ve registered for gifts, and we got a good start on clothes for you. I know you paid more than you’re used to, but you can’t go to Paris dressed for a dog show, and the nightie and robe don’t count because they’re my present.”
    “I dress very carefully for shows,” I said. “Appearance does count in the ring.”
    “Where doesn’t it?”
    “In the eyes of your dogs,” I said. “That’s one of the ten trillion ways in which dogs are morally superior to human beings. The Parisian dogs would’ve loved me in ratty jeans.” "And Steve?”
    “That’s a touchy subject, Rita. When it comes to looks, I’m in no position to compete with Anita. You saw her. She wins. That's it.”
    “Anita made Steve miserable. She cheated on him. She kicked his dog. She whined and criticized, and she tried to make him into someone he didn’t want to be.”
    “And she is undeniably beautiful.”
    Rita’s second margarita arrived. I could’ve used a drink, but since I was driving, I took a sip of water and returned to the topic of Anita, who was, as Rita knew, a criminal who’d gotten away with her crime. “The story on Anita is that the wicked flourish like the green bay tree. Could we please discuss another subject?” I introduced one. “Francie seems like a nice person.”
    “She really is very sweet.”
    “The way she hugged you, I thought she must be a mental-health type.”
    “She is, more or less. But she’s a researcher, not a clinician. Talk about depressing subjects, though. Her field is the psychology of grief. Mourning. Loss. Parents who’ve had children die. I can’t imagine a more