Say Yes to the Death (22 page)

She remained silent but I could see such sadness in her eyes. Sadness and anger.

“I can't believe you were okay with him living with Olivia in the Turtle Creek penthouse and pretending to be her boy-­toy . . .”

“No!” Tears sprang to her eyes. She swiped at them roughly. “I hated every second of it. It was a horrible way to live.”

“But we couldn't tell anyone,” Draco said. “We could have been sued. It would have been breaking our contracts.” He ran a hand through his dark hair. “We signed confidentiality agreements with Salvo Productions,” he explained, and Terra nodded. “We had to stay quiet. That was part of the deal. We shouldn't even be talking to you.”

“Well, the police are going to find out soon enough,” I said. “I'm seeing Brian at his office this afternoon. Once I tell him all of this, he's going to have to share that information with the DA.”

“Andrea, you can't.” Draco's dark eyes filled with panic. “We can't let you do that, not yet,” he said, and he looked at Terra. “We need time to think. And I have to get back to the buyers first. I'm sorry. You'll have to sit tight for a while,” he added, and he nodded at his wife.

Without warning, she came toward me and grabbed my arm, holding it in a death grip. “Hey,” I said, unsure of what she was up to until I saw Draco put a tight squeeze around my mother all the while apologizing, “I'm sorry, ma'am, really I am.”

“What are you doing?” I asked. “Let us go!”

“We're just going to keep you in the dressing room for a bit,” Draco explained. “Consider it an intervention.”

“You're locking us up?” I said as I stumbled forward in the gown, tripping over its hem as Terra proceeded to push me toward the open dressing room door. “That won't look good on your rap sheet, but I guess nothing's as bad as murder.”

Terra shoved me into the small room.

“Are we being kidnapped? Is this a kidnapping?” my mother was saying as she came stumbling in behind me.

I grabbed for her, holding on as the door slammed shut.

“Don't do this!” I shouted, to no avail.

We heard the jab of a key in the door handle and then the click of the lock. I reached for the handle and jerked, but the door didn't budge.

“You're in over your heads!” I shouted and banged on the door as hard as I could. “You can't shut us up forever!”

Okay, I'd been in stickier situations before, I thought, glancing up. Clearly, the walls were too high to climb over without a ladder. I looked down and saw that the space beneath the door was far too slim to crawl under.

Rats
.

I could still hear Draco and Terra somewhere in the room, arguing in low voices. That gave me hope. Maybe one of them had a conscience.

“Are you going to kill us with a cake knife and blame it on Millie?” I yelled, and my heart pounded because I wasn't at all sure they wouldn't. I didn't know who to trust, and they weren't giving me much ammunition to err toward the “not guilty” side of the fence.

I pressed my ear to the door and realized they'd stopped arguing. I heard the retreating shuffle of their footsteps although I didn't hear the door open or close. What were they waiting for?

“Fantastic, we're locked in a stupid pink dressing room,” I remarked to Mother, and I began to pace the small space like a caged cat.

“And I left my purse out there so I can't even powder my nose,” Mother said and sighed as she settled onto one of the empty wing chairs. “Perhaps you could try on a few more dresses as long as we're stuck here.”

I heard music coming from beneath my clothes on the other wing chair. It took a second for me to realize it was my ringtone for Malone. Mother's purse might be outside the locked door, but mine was inside.

Ha! Take that bumbling kidnappers!

I quickly dug for my phone beneath my pants and shirt.

Brian to the rescue! I thought as I picked up.

Except Draco and Terra must have heard the ringing phone, too, as suddenly their footsteps backtracked and Terra said, “Why didn't you grab her purse?”

Draco shot back, “Why didn't
you
?”

I had my phone out and hit the speaker button as they bumbled with the key in the lock.

“Brian!” I said, so he could hear everything going on. “Mother and I are”—­
trapped,
I was about to tell him, but he ran right over me.

“I have news about Olivia's preliminary autopsy report,” he said, his voice coming through loud and clear. “Someone in the DA's office must have leaked it to the press 'cause it's all over the media . . .”

The lock clicked
,
and the door handle turned.

I gasped.

Brian asked, “You still there, Andy?”

Draco pushed his way in and knocked the phone from my hand. With the grace of LeBron James, Mother snatched the cell out of the air before Draco could get at it.

And that was all the time we needed to catch the bombshell Malone dropped. And just in case we'd missed it, he repeated it for good measure.

“Did you get that, Andy? She was pregnant. Olivia La Belle was pregnant.”

Chapter 27

T
he news hit Draco hard.

“No, that can't be true. It can't be,” he mumbled, and he staggered away, out the dressing room door.

Terra followed on his heels.

“Andy? Andy, are you okay? Is something going on?” Malone was asking as I picked my phone up from the floor.

“I'm here,” I said, breathing hard.

“Are you and Cissy all right?”

“Yeah,” I told him as Mother caught hold of my arm
,
and we stuck our heads out of the dressing room. “We were tied up for a few minutes, but we're fine now.”

“Someone posted a few seconds of video of Olivia and Millie from that wedding,” he added, as Mother and I listened, my pulse thumping. “It's gone viral, like, a hundred thousand hits already.” He sounded perturbed, which was exactly how I felt. “It's one more thing for the police to use to build a case against Millie.”

“Damn,” I said, anger washing through my blood like hot oil. I was furious. “Can't anyone find that cameraman, Pete?”

“We're looking for him, Andy. No one at Salvo Productions knows who he is, and we've tracked down the wedding photographer through the Ryans. This Pete guy definitely wasn't part of their crew,” Brian said, which is exactly what Janet had said, too. “Allie's taking Millie home now. She needs a break, and she's ready to deal with the mess left by the cops. Allie's going to stay and help her clean up.”

Oh, yeah, that Allie's a saint,
I wanted to say, but bit my cheek.

“I'm going to grab a sandwich, but feel free to come in sooner than two. I have something I want to show you.”

“We'll be there soon,” I told him. “I promise.”

Draco was slumped on the round pink settee, and Terra stood in front of him, looking but not touching. I had a feeling she was wondering the same thing I was wondering: was he the father of Olivia's unborn baby?

Mother whispered, “Andrea, let's go. I don't want to find you a wedding dress
this
badly. We can always go to Neiman Marcus.”

Call me stupid—­and maybe I was—­but I didn't feel threatened by Terra and Draco, not really, and I couldn't leave yet, not with so many questions burning in my brain.

I slogged toward Draco in the wedding gown until I was close enough to ask point-­blank, “Was the baby yours?”

“No,” he said without looking up. He dragged his fingers through his dark hair and stared at the floor. “No, it couldn't have been mine,” he repeated, and he lifted his gaze to meet Terra's. “I never slept with Olivia. Even those nights I stayed at the penthouse and they taped those—­” He stopped and swallowed hard. “—­those bedroom scenes for the sake of the show. You believe me, don't you?”

Terra nodded. “Yes, I believe you.”

Draco reached for her, and she took his hand. “I would never really cheat on you, not for fame, not for money.”

No, you'd just sign some paperwork, pretend you're not married, and agree to live with a woman who wasn't your wife for fame and money, I thought, which in my eyes made him a greedy man-­ho. But it didn't make him a killer.

“The other day,” Draco went on, “Olivia said something about kicking up the ratings with a pregnancy scare. I thought she was joking. I told her that was going too far
,
and I wouldn't go along with it. I couldn't do that to Terra. Olivia was pretty upset.”

“Maybe she already knew she was pregnant,” I said.

He shrugged. “Olivia was complicated. She kept a lot to herself.”

“Oh, Mel, you should've told me,” Terra said to him, and he just held her hand and repeated, “I'm sorry, I'm sorry.”

I didn't want to, but I believed him.

Olivia wouldn't have wanted Draco for a lover much less a baby-­daddy. He was far too pretty, too up-­and-­coming, too ambitious, too young, and too poor (at least from her perspective). In other words, he wasn't remotely her type. So who had gotten her knocked up for real?

“So who was Olivia sleeping with?” I asked. When neither of them answered, I got angry. “If you don't speak up now, it's going to look even worse when the cops find out what you withheld from them. And they will find out, I promise you that.”

I would make sure of it.

Draco hung onto Terra's hand, but they both remained tight-­lipped.

“Come on,” I pleaded, “you must have some answers. I knew Olivia way back when, and if she stuck to her old M.O., she was seeing someone older, someone with a big bankroll.” Recalling Janet's gossip, I added, “Probably someone with a wife and kids.”

I saw Draco's Adam's apple bob.

Terra wouldn't even meet my eyes.

Cissy tapped my back. “Darling, you should change,” she said, “and we should go.
Now
.”

But I wasn't ready to quit.

“C'mon, people,” I growled. “The police will assume you're the father, Draco. They'll hound you, and your charade will be exposed in the worst light. If you volunteer the information, you'll have some control of things.”

Silence.

I threw up my hands and stomped around them in the wedding gown. “What if the real baby-­daddy is the one who killed Olivia? What if he wanted to keep her from ruining his life? There's a murderer out there. Don't you want him to be caught? Or would you rather a sweet, little old lady who did nothing but bake a wedding cake go to prison and have that on your heads for the rest of your lives?”

I paused before them, staring daggers, like I was a Marvel Comics superhero who could summon confessions with the Evil Eye.

“We don't know who he is,” Draco said, looking up at me. “I swear, Olivia never told us. She always met him somewhere private, not the penthouse and not at the office or anywhere else they might be seen or ratted out to the press by a doorman.”

That wasn't what I'd wanted to hear.

“But you know
something
, don't you?” I said. “You two worked with her”—­I looked at Draco—­“you
lived
with her. Surely she dropped a few hints.”

The Olivia I'd known was a braggart. She had a deep-­seeded desire to feel superior, and she'd never been quiet about it.

Draco glanced at Terra, who stood stock-­still. “She called him ‘Frog' sometimes.”

“Was he French?” I asked. “Olivia's parents live in Monte Carlo. Her father's an ambassador.”

Draco shrugged. “Olivia made comments now and then, like, how he had people kissing his ass right and left. How he had women passing him their numbers on napkins, wanting to get him in bed. She got a kick out of the fact that she was the one who'd roped him in.”

So Olivia's lover was in the public eye, too? I tried not to be disappointed by the lack of facts. “Anything else you can think of?”

“He must have paid for the penthouse,” Draco said. “Olivia called it hush money for keeping her mouth shut. But she told me no one would know it was him because everything was handled through some dummy corporation.”

“What dummy corporation?” I asked.

“I don't know. Something like Staypuff,” he said.

“Like the Staypuff Marshmallow Man from
Ghostbusters
?” I asked.

Draco grimaced. “I'm sorry. That's all that comes to mind. I only heard her mention it, like, once. I didn't pay attention. It didn't matter to me what she did on her own time.” He got up from the settee. “Look, I promise that we'll tell the police everything we've told you. But let us talk to our lawyer first. If we're violating our contracts with Salvo Productions, we need to know what our options are.” He rubbed his hands on his dark black jeans. “But I don't want to stay silent and protect Olivia's killer.”

“You almost sound as though you liked her,” I said.

“I felt sorry for her,” Draco replied. “She wanted things she couldn't have, and when she got them, it wasn't enough. I wondered if she would ever really know what it felt like to love and be loved unconditionally.”

No, I thought, and she never would.

“One last thing,” I said, looking at Terra, as she'd barely said a word. “Can you tell me how to reach Pete, the cameraman who was shooting footage at Penny Ryan's wedding? Olivia must have worked out some special arrangement with him. He wasn't with Salvo Productions or the official wedding photographer's crew.”

Terra's eyes went round. “You mean the guy with all the tats?”

“Yeah, and the beard and black shirt,” I said.

She looked confused. “He wasn't with the network?”

“No, the TV producers didn't send anyone to cover the wedding. Lester Dickens wouldn't allow it,” I said without going into detail about how I knew that.

Terra and Draco exchanged glances.

“Sometimes,” Draco began slowly, “Olivia would ask for help from her boyfriend. He seemed to be able to get things done when no one else could. If the Salvo people don't know the guy then that's probably what happened. He was probably a hired gun.”

Hired gun, I thought, how apropos.

“Andrea, please,” my mother whispered loudly from behind me. She'd stayed so quiet that I'd almost forgotten she was there. “It's time to leave before they decide to lock us up again.”

“We're not locking you up again,” Draco said flatly, and he gave us his saddest puppy dog eyes. “I apologize for panicking.”

“You did go overboard,” Mother scolded then added under her breath, “I liked him better with the accent.”

Terra suddenly came alive again. “Mel, get back to being Draco and go out to your buyers,” she instructed and fairly pushed him out the door. “Go air-­kiss them all so they double their orders. Then we'll call our attorney, okay?” She waited until Draco had gone before she snapped at me, “Are you happy now, Andy?”

“I'll be happy when Millie's off the hook,” I said.

She flipped her skunk-­hair and turned her back, reaching for the door.

“Oh, Andy”—­she paused to aim one final salvo over her shoulder—­“don't forget to leave the dress . . . unless your mother wants to buy it for you since that's the reason you came today, isn't it?”

She pulled the door shut with a
bang
, and I gritted my teeth. Yesterday, I'd actually begun to like Terra Smith; now, not so much.

“You were right, sweet pea,” my mother drawled as she unzipped the gown and helped me out of it, “that girl is most definitely not Junior League material.”