Just Murdered Read Online Free PDF Page A

thought desperately. She tried to distract Desiree with small talk. “Eight bridesmaids,” she chirped. “You’re lucky to have so many friends.”
    “They aren’t friends,” the bride said in a flat voice. “They’re in my sorority. Mother’s sorority, really. She made me join.
    “Mother picked the bridesmaids from their photos in the sorority house. They’re all blond. They’re all beautiful. Mother is buying their dresses and shoes. She’s made their hair and makeup appointments. She’s picked their escorts, too. She chose the handsomest actors at Luke’s theater. She made sure the men were straight.”
    Helen was afraid to ask how Kiki did that. Sixty-five buttons to go.
    “My real friend isn’t good enough to be in the wedding because she’s fat,” Desiree said.
    Her mother entered the room briskly, shutting her cell phone. “That’s not true, darling. I thought Emily would be more comfortable handling the guest book.”
    “Mother bought Emily the plum Vera Wang,” Desiree said. “She wouldn’t let her pick out her own dress.”
    “Emily has an unfortunate penchant for flappy fabrics,” Kiki said. “She looks like a clothesline in a hurricane.”
    Forty-eight buttons. Kiki was spoiling for a fight. Helen tried to steer the conversation to a safer subject. “What kind of flowers do you want for your wedding, Desiree?”
    “I want red roses,” the bride said.
    “So romantic,” Helen said.
    “So ordinary,” her mother said. “I can give her any flower that she wants, and she asks for roses like a shopgirl.”
    Helen froze at the insult.
    “No offense intended,” Kiki said.
    “Of course not,” Helen said.
    “But I couldn’t let her embarrass me. We’re having chartreuse lady’s slipper and cymbidium orchids.”
    “Science-fiction flowers,” the bride said. “I wanted roses, but I won’t get them.”
    “You’ll have plenty of roses at your wedding, sweetheart. The flower girls are throwing rose petals. So are the guests.”
    “Instead of rice or bubbles?” Helen said.
    “No one has thrown rice in decades,” Kiki said. “And bubbles are so eighties. The bride and groom will be showered with rose petals when they leave the church. At the reception, the attendants are sprinkling rose petals in the commodes.”
    Helen thought she’d heard wrong. “You’re putting roses in the toilets?”
    “I’m not,” Kiki said. “The attendants are. After each flushing. It’s such an elegant touch.”
    “That’s what my mother thinks of my choice,” the bride said. “My roses will be walked on—and peed on!” Angry tears cascaded down her small face and slid into the accordion wrinkles where her chin should have been.
    “Prewedding jitters,” Kiki said. She watched her daughter weep as if it were a third-rate performance. She made no move to comfort her. Helen handed Desiree a fistful of Kleenex. She blew loudly. The little bride had a trombone for a beezer.
    Twenty-seven buttons to go. Helen had reached Desiree’s upper back, and the buttons kept escaping from their loops. The bride was annoyingly limp, like a protestor who’d collapsed on police lines.
    “Straighten your shoulders,” her mother commanded. “And smile. You’re a bride, not a corpse.”
    The bride did look more dead than alive. Helen finished the last button. Desiree failed to smile, but she dutifully tried on veils. Some went to her fingertips. Others fell to the floor. Desiree could have been in a coma for all the reaction she showed.
    “Which do you like?” Helen asked, hoping for some response.
    Desiree shrugged.
    Of course, Kiki had an opinion. “That long veil has the same beading as the dress. I like it.”
    “It’s a bit heavy, don’t you think?” Helen tried to be tactful. In that long veil, Desiree looked like a ghost haunting her wedding.
    “It needs something to brighten it up,” Kiki said.
    Two rooms away, Millicent heard another chance to make money. She said, “Helen, go get