Page 21 of The Wedding Party

Dressing for success means carrying a gun on me, even to a party, though my little going-out purse doesn’t want to shut. In my book, this is a real problem, but while the gun won’t fit in my purse, on a positive note, I fit into the little black dress I’m wearing. There’s a knock on my door, and I do my whole cautious door routine and then open up to find Lana standing there, also in a little black dress. Hers looks better on her than mine does on me, but whatever. I guarantee I handle a gun better than her, and besides, I don’t have divorce tormenting me like she does. I decide that she deserves to look better. “I’m almost ready,” I tell her, waving her into the room.

I’m quickly back to trying to force the gun into my purse. “What are you doing?” Lana asks, joining me, watching what I’m doing.

“If it fits, it ships,” I say. “I need to make it fit.”

“It’s not going to fit, and if it does, you’ll shoot someone trying to get your lipstick. Just leave it. I mean, why do you need a gun? And frankly, I’d rather you not have one while drinking.”

“Good point,” I say, but I mentally resist leaving my weapon behind, and self-analytical as I am, I question my actions this weekend. Perhaps I didn’t have Lana tell everyone I was a schoolteacher because my badge and gun are my security blankets. I don’t think I even know who I am without them. That’s what Aiden insists, though I’m not so sure.

Whatever the case, I’m just going downstairs to a party. I won’t need to shoot anyone. Decision made, I place the gun in the hotel safe and lock it. “I’m ready,” I announce.

A few minutes later, Lana and I enter an intimate banquet hall, which is just large enough for the thirty to forty guests. The overall feel and look are exactly what one might expect from a hotel-hosted event: tables, waiters, and people everywhere. The women are in dresses, the men in suits. Apparently, the idea of loosening your tie and partying hard for a bachelor party is lost on this group.

“When exactly do the men and women split up?” I ask, suspecting some of that tie loosening will happen soon, when the booze does the job of relaxing the formality in the air as well.

“After announcements,” she says. “I know it’s weird to do this together, but it’s kind of cool, too.” Lana grabs two glasses of champagne from a tray. By the time we’re sipping and sitting at a table, Josh is by her side. I’m the outsider, but I don’t mind. That’s kind of my life. I spy a chocolate fountain and decide this night is better already. I head in that direction, and I’m stuffing my face with a chocolate croissant when I hear, “You’re Lana’s friend, right?”

I rotate right to find a tall man with brown, tamed, slicked-back curly hair and chiseled features standing beside me in what appears to be eager anticipation for my reply. “Otherwise known as Andi,” I say when I manage to swallow.

“I’m Trevor,” he offers. “One of the groomsmen.”

He’s in a gray suit with a burgundy tie, worth a good $5,000. Which I know because every case I work on leads to all kinds of random facts, like the way to tell what suit costs what price, that will live in my head forever. In other words, Trevor is a corporate type, able to navigate social scenes. Meanwhile, I’m not quite sure what to say to him, since I’m not asking where he was last night when the crime took place. There is no crime. And I’m not interrogating him.

Reluctantly, I set my croissant on a plate and the plate on the table. Soon, I promise myself as I ignore the vast selection of chocolate items.

Trevor rambles a good five minutes about his CEO job, his father’s connection to Oliver’s father, and the cigar club again but lands fairly quickly on, “I heard you catch killers.”

Here we go again.

It’s a little curious how obsessed these people are with my job, almost as if they want to convince me they are the good guys who would never commit a crime. Only those people don’t exist. Everyone has a line, and everyone has something that will make them cross it. “Something like that,” I reply.

“How do you do it? It’s one thing to watch a horror movie, but to study real-life crime scenes, to see real-life brutality, has to be the making of nightmares.”

“Not really,” I say. “I’m used to it. Once you’ve walked through puddles of blood and studied rigor mortis for the time of death, you get numb to it all.”

He pales and makes an excuse, before leaving quite abruptly. Obviously my social skills are rusty, but I don’t know why they ask if they don’t want the answer.

“If your plan was to scare him off, it worked.”

I turn to find a man with wavy light-brown hair standing next to me. He’s tall. Fit. Good-looking and inappropriately dressed in jeans and a tan leather jacket. “And yet here you stand,” I say.

“I worked the ER department in my residency,” he says. “You can’t scare me off with talk of blood and rigor mortis, but you can try.”

“You’re a doctor,” I assume. “You must work with Carrie.”

“Oh, hell no,” he says. “Emergency medicine is a shit show on a stick. I got out years ago.”

“You’re not that old,” I say. “Maybe thirty-five?”

“Thirty-nine. I opened a medical clinic a couple of years back. It’s all cosmetic fluff and stuff, and I love it. People pay a fortune to fix a wrinkle, and even better, they don’t die on you. They cheer you on.” He points at his own face. “And I won’t ever age. I have all the fancy face creams and Botox I could ever want at my fingertips.”

“Well, you don’t look your age,” I agree, sipping my champagne as my gaze just happens to find Carrie a few feet away from us. She’s standing with Bianca and shooting daggers in my companion’s direction. I glance over at him. “Are you a friend of Oliver’s or Carrie’s?”

He glances at Carrie and then me, a smirk on his face. “That’s a complicated question and answer,” he says, downing the whisky in his hand and setting his glass on a waiter’s tray as he passes. “Brody Matthews, by the way,” he says, introducing himself. “And you’re Andrea Castle. Everyone is talking about you, so I listened.”

Carrie breaks from Bianca and heads our way. She’s in a fire engine–red dress, with an excess of cleavage, but this is her naughty night, so more power to her. Her gaze is focused on Brody, and her anger is palpable. She stops in front of him, ignoring me in the process.

“Go home, Brody,” she demands. “Go home.”