Leann Sweeney - A Wedding To Die For

“Sorry. She was waiting on the steps near the professional photographer, but sort of off by herself. And she was focused on her own camera, trying to get a shot of the bride and groom as they arrived.”

“Ears are very distinct. Did the hat cover them?”

“I could see the lobes but not much more. She was wearing pierced earrings—small pearl studs.”

“Okay. I think I have enough to go on.”

I stood. “So do I come back tomorrow or—” “This will take about fifteen minutes and I still need your help.” He was digging around in the crate again and this time pulled out a sketchbook along with a box of charcoal pencils.

“Only fifteen minutes?”

“I can work as fast as the computers stealing what used to be a decent side income. Don’t get me started, though.” He flipped open the book and chose a pencil from a tennis ball can seconding as a brush and pencil holder.

I dragged my chair beside him, and for the next quarter of an hour we worked together creating the composite. The guy was unbelievably talented, and soon we were both staring at the woman in the church.

Dryer pulled a spray can from the crate. “This is fixative. Not good stuff to breathe in, so you might want to step back.”

I stood and moved about three feet away. While he sprayed I kept staring. Something about the picture made it impossible for me to stop looking at the face I had pulled from my memory. What was it? But then the cloud of fixative hit me and I turned my head and had a minor coughing fit.

Dryer, meanwhile, retrieved a camera case from under the Futon and snapped several shots of the drawing with his 35mm. He then opened a drawer in the desk, removed a large manila envelope, and carefully placed the drawing inside. “Chief Fielder wanted this by tomorrow at the latest.”

“Is she coming here to pick it up?” I asked.

“She said Officer Henderson would come when we were done.”

“She’s paying you on delivery?”

“No. Some city official has to cosign on the check, so she’s mailing me the money.”

“Then you wouldn’t care if I delivered it? Because I’d be happy to drop the composite off.” Since Kate had seen the woman, too, I wanted her to have a look, see if she had the same feeling I had that this face was familiar.

“She might not contract with me again if I don’t follow her directions,” Dryer said. The eye must have twitched because he pressed the heel of his hand against his brow.

“If I could get the drawing to her more quickly than waiting for Henderson, then she’d be happy, right?”

“Yes... but, she’d have to okay the arrangement and—”

“Let’s just forget it.” Fielder might not okay anything that had to do with me, even if it benefited her.

But he picked up a cell phone from the desk and dialed a number off a scrap of paper he took from his jeans pocket. “She said to page her as soon as we were done, so I might as well ask her.” He listened for a second, then punched a few numbers and disconnected.

“While we wait for her to call back,” I said, “can I see what you’re working on?”

He smiled. “Are you sure you’re interested?”

His cell trilled. If that was Fielder, either she had no life aside from her job or she needed the composite in the worst way.

It was her, and after Dryer explained he extended the phone in my direction. “She wants to talk to you.”

I took the phone. “This is Abby.”

“How soon can you bring me the drawing?” she said curtly.

“When do you need it?”

“Tomorrow morning. Megan and her mother will be home until around nine thirty and I wanted to show it to them.”

“I can meet you there. I need to talk to Megan anyway.”

“Okay... and thank you.” She disconnected.

A please and a thank-you all in one day? Well, slap me naked and sell my clothes.

Dryer and I spent the next half hour looking at his paintings. No gentle landscapes or country cottages for Mason Dryer. He’d painted ballerinas on tightropes suspended in fluid skies, monkeys and cats in vivid color riding through clouds in an old-fashioned motor car, jesters dancing on domes. I loved his stuff. So when I left, I was carrying not only the envelope, but the monkeys and cats, too.

I pulled into my driveway twenty minutes later, and Kate showed up just as I was taking my new painting from the trunk. I’d called her on my way home since I wanted her to look at the composite. Would she see what I thought I was seeing in that face?

“You didn’t waste any time getting here,” I said, lifting out the canvas.

“I was leaving my office when you phoned, so I wasn’t far away.” She stared at the covered canvas. “But I thought you said you visited a sketch artist. I didn’t realize they painted their subjects these days.”

“Funny. Get the back door for me, would you?” I tossed her my keys.

“So where’d you get the painting?”

I told her about Dryer’s day job as we went inside. After I turned on the kitchen lights, I tore the brown paper off the canvas and showed her my purchase. She seemed less than impressed, but Kate’s tastes tend to lean toward the comfort of Monet or Renoir.

“Tell me about tonight,” she said after offering a polite comment about my cats and monkeys. “I always wondered how a person could create a picture from someone else’s memory.”

“Dryer’s good. Almost like a hypnotist. I mean, I was sitting in that church looking at the woman again.”

“Okay, so let me see.”

I carefully removed the pencil drawing from the envelope. “Is this how you remember her?”

Kate stared at the picture. “Wow. That’s her all right. He did this in fifteen minutes?”

“Yup. There is something special about this face. He captured her accurately, but...”

“I know what you mean. She looks... kind of familiar, but maybe that’s only because we saw her Saturday.”

“Take a longer look—especially at those eyes and the shape of her face.”

“My God, Abby, she looks like—”

“Megan,” I finished.

When the alarm went off the next morning I resisted the urge to hit the sleep button. I had to get an early start to be in Seacliff by nine A.M. After I showered, dressed, and fed Diva, I rummaged through boxes until I found my digital camera. I took several shots of the composite, downloaded them to my computer, printed 8x10 and 4x6 copies and added them to Megan’s file. The more I stared at the drawing, the more of Megan I saw in the woman’s features.

Kate and I might be putting too much stock in the likeness, but what if Megan’s mother had secretly kept track of her daughter? And what if the wedding drew her out of the shadows for an event no mother would want to miss? But this was still speculation, and I wasn’t about to present this theory to Megan. Not yet, anyway.

I arrived at the Beadfords by eight forty-five, and this time Roxanne admitted me to the foyer. She wore oatmeal-colored sweats, no makeup, and a thick red fabric headband that revealed a patch of blemishes on her forehead. In my khakis and off-the-shoulder blue sweater I looked like a supermodel compared to her.

“You didn’t have to make the trip here, though I do appreciate it,” Roxanne said. I must have looked confused because she added, “She came home.”

“Who came home?” I said.

“Courtney.”

How could I have forgotten our strange conversation yesterday? “I’m glad she returned safely,” I said with a smile.

“Perhaps I fret too much,” she said. “But with Uncle James quitting the earth in such a horrible turn of events, I suppose I overreacted.”

Quitting the earth? Turn of events? I decided Roxanne had been spending way too much time reading gothic novels. I was saved from further pained conversation by someone ringing the bell. I turned and opened the door to find that Chief Fielder had come to my rescue. Now there was some black irony.