was a danger of running into an old flame. And boy, was Clara abiding by that rule. She wore a sleeveless floral-print silk voile dress. Beads and sequins dotted the print and caught the light beautifully. A beaded belt sat low on Clara’s hips, and she wore a long pink beaded necklace. Gold heels peeked out from under the dress’s long, artfully uneven hem.
Parker wore a gray pin-striped suit with a matching waistcoat. In his pocket was a delicately folded green handkerchief, which matched the color of his tie. A gray bowler hat covered his dark, wavy hair.
The two of them stood with two middle-aged men, neither of whom was dressed formally enough for a wedding. One was overweight and dressed in a tweed suit. Half his shirt was untucked under his jacket. The other was a nondescript fellow with wrinkled worry lines crawling across his forehead, wearing an equally nondescript brown suit.
Despite the fact that Clara and Parker were possibly one of the best-dressed couples at the wedding, neither looked happy. They seemed to be in the middle of an argument.
“C’mon,” Lorraine said. “I smell trouble.”
Melvin allowed her to pull him toward Clara and Parker. “That could just be the potpourri. There’s one crystal bowl too many of that stuff here, if you ask me.”
“What’s the rumpus?” Lorraine asked once she reached Clara and Parker.
But they were still in heated conversation. “It’s all up to you,” Parker said to Clara. “There’s no one else. You have to stand up when they ask and accuse her.”
“I can’t do that!” Clara exclaimed. She was getting into a lather. “I can’t cause a scandal and ruin Marcus’s big moment!”
Lorraine cleared her throat loudly—Clara and Parker finally looked at her. “Cause a scandal? That sounds like my cue.”
“You must be Lorraine,” the overweight man standing with them said. “I’m private detective Leonard Solomon”—he gestured toward the man beside him in the brown suit—“and this is Lieutenant Robby Skinner.”
“Well, my, my.” Lorraine reached out to shake their hands, incredibly flattered that they knew who she was. Clara probably bragged about having a friend as intriguing as Lorraine all the time. “Nice to meet you, gentlemen. So what are you two talking about?” Lorraine looked back and forth between Clara and Parker. “And where’s that hard-boiled character you were supposed to sneak in here?”
Clara let out a heavy sigh, looking close to tears.
“Benji missed his train,” Parker explained. “And now Clara’s going to have to accuse Deirdre during the ceremony.”
“Except I can’t.”
“Except you have to,” Parker fired back. He smoothed his dark hair and turned back to Lorraine. “Without Benji, we’ve got no one to identify her. The police won’t arrest her without a positive ID.”
“So what will you do?” Melvin asked.
Parker shrugged. “Hope that Deirdre will slip up when Clara confronts her in front of all these people.”
“She’s a hardened criminal, Parker,” Clara said. “I don’t think a roomful of senators and socialites is going to scare her.”
Lorraine nodded. “She is a pretty tough cookie.” She glanced at Clara. “You said he was a tall, skinny guy, right?”
Clara nodded.
“Have you got a picture of him on you?”
“I do,” Detective Solomon said. He opened his black leather briefcase, pulled out a thick manila folder, and withdrew a booking photograph. “Here’s Benji.”
Lorraine studied the photo: The skinny man had beady brown eyes and dark hair, a dusting of freckles across the bridge of his long nose. She turned back to Melvin. “Take off your glasses!”
His face scrunched up. “But you’re always telling me not to!”
“Just this once,” Lorraine replied. Melvin reluctantly took his glasses off and put them in the pocket of his jacket, and Lorraine tried not to cringe. Melvin’s poor eyesight really was a blessing—for his face.
She looked at the photo again: In it, Benji was wearing a newsboy cap. Lorraine plucked Parker’s bowler hat off his head, eliciting an angry “Hey!” from him. She ignored it and started banging the hat hard against her knee.
An older woman in a lavender suit walked in on the arm of her son and stared at Lorraine questioningly.
“Love your suit!” Lorraine called, still thwacking the hat against her leg. “What is that, Chanel?”
The woman shook her head and hurried away.
Once the hat was shapeless, she plopped it on Melvin’s head. It mostly hid his flaming-red hair. “Perfect,” she said.
Clara looked at the photo as well, with a small, wondering smile on her face. “He has a mustache and a mole, though,” she said, referring to the picture.
Lorraine