Love Can Be Murder

it that time," the photographer said. "Okay, ladies, I need for you to turn sideways and move in as close as possible so I can get the fountain behind you."
    Twenty-four bridesmaids in primrose pink. Angora inhaled as the girls on either side squeezed in closer. Not an easy feat to round up twenty-four girls from the club who weren't pregnant or who hadn't already ballooned up because they'd been married too long to care, but she'd done it. True, three of the girls she barely knew, but they came from very good families, and twelve maids on each side of her would look splendid in the photos.
    She'd wanted to ask her cousin Roxann to be a bridesmaid, but her mother had vehemently refused. Dee detested Roxann, which was a shame since she was Dee's only flesh-and-blood niece, but things were what they were.
    "Angora, darling, stop frowning," her mother called.
    She smiled, which triggered the pantomimed reminder about laugh lines, so she tried to fix her face into the nonsmiling, nonfrowning expression her mother had patented.
    If truth be known, Dee hated Roxann because Roxann was smart. Smarter than anyone Angora knew, and certainly smarter than anyone in the family, including Dee with all her conniving talent, so devious at times it bordered on admirable.
    "Your cousin is a beatnik lesbian and I won't have her at the wedding," her mother had declared when Angora proposed the idea.
    She had nearly burst out laughing. Roxann, a lesbian? Her cousin had taught her how to give a blowjob on a tube of toothpaste. Roxann could recite verbatim entire chapters from How to Make Love to a Man, and had been working her way through the positions illustrated in The Joy of Sex. When Angora had been forced to leave the dorm, Roxann and her poet grad-student boyfriend were up to "the Figure Eight." She always wondered how that one had turned out.
    "Mother, what makes you think Roxann is a lesbian?" she'd asked.
    "She's so odd. Besides, she's not married."
    "I'm not married."
    Dee had made an impatient noise. "It's not the same thing. Roxann has always worn her hair short."
    She'd dropped the dead-end conversation with Dee, but she'd asked the calligrapher for one blank invitation and addressed it using the post office box she'd wangled from Uncle Walt last Christmas.
    She'd even started a couple of letters to Roxann several months ago, but the words had seemed forced and boring. With the exception of her engagement, her life was much the same as it had been ten years ago. Same people, same parties, same gossip. In comparison, the details she'd gleaned from Uncle Walt about Roxann's life were beyond exciting—her exotic cousin was living on the fringe of the law as some sort of top-secret bodyguard. Uncle Walt had been evasive and a little bewildered, but button-busting proud. Angora would have given her second-favorite pair of diamond stud earrings if she thought she could make her parents proud.
    Not that she actually expected Roxann to come to the wedding—she couldn't be sure, but to an outlaw, country club events were probably a bit passé . Besides, Uncle Walt said Roxann had to keep moving around, so she might not even have received the invitation. She cringed when she realized if the invitation was returned, Dee would know she'd sent it.
    "Darling, why are you frowning?"
    She rearranged her face and bugged her eyes at the lens.
    "Got it!" the photographer said.
    Oh, well, she would consider it payback for Dee insisting that she invite Darma Walker Lowe, Trenton's former girlfriend. Her mother practically fell to her knees any time one of the Walkers entered a room—their real estate empire and influence were far-reaching. Trenton and Darma had dated years ago, but she'd left him for a man higher up the food chain, a plastic surgeon. They'd been ill-suited anyway, Trenton had assured her. She believed him, because no two people could be more suited than she and Trenton. They liked the same restaurants, listened to the same music, drove the same model of BMW. They understood each other.
    "Okay, just the bride and her parents."
    The bridesmaids squeezed her hand and wished her luck. She squeezed back and kept an eye on her train to make sure it wasn't trampled. The twelve feet of crystal beads and iridescent sequins had doubled the cost of the white silk dress, but she was marrying a doctor, after all.
    "You look beautiful, sweetie," her father said, touching her tiara—the most stunning of her crowns, Miss Northwestern Baton