Murder Has a Sweet Tooth - By Miranda Bliss Page 0,71
as she stepped around me and into my apartment, she whisked just such an album out of her leather tote bag and handed it to me. Since I already had my purse in one hand (not incidentally, Beth’s Girl Scout cookie money was inside it) and my keys in my other hand, I back stepped toward my coffee table so I could set them down.
“We could talk about it later,” I suggested to Eve. “I’ve got some things I have to do.”
“Things that are more important than your wedding?”
I managed a smile. No easy thing since guilt had been eating at me all night and I hadn’t gotten a wink of sleep. “Of course nothing’s more important than my wedding,” I told her, and I meant it. Only I didn’t bother to mention that cleansing my conscience was plenty important, too, and that I’d never be able to do that until I explained the mix-up to Beth and threw myself on her mercy. “It’s just that this has to do with the investigation and—”
“Then it can wait. Especially now that Alex is out of jail.” She flopped down on my couch and I cursed myself for giving in and opening the door to her when I could have stepped out into the hallway, told her I was on my way out, and been done with it. “This is such a fabulous idea, I think we need to jump on it really soon.”
“A photo album.” I turned it over in my hands. The album was big enough to hold four-by-six prints. It had a shiny, satin-looking cover in a shade of ivory that appealed to me and, according to the sticker on the cover, each album could be custom embroidered with the names of the happy couple and the date of their wedding. “It’s a good idea, but the wedding is one week from today.”
“No buts. Look at how perfect this is.” Eve plucked the album out of my hands. When she paged through it, I wasn’t surprised to see it was filled with pictures of Doc. Doc on Eve’s couch. Doc seated on one of the chairs at Eve’s dining room table. Doc in her kitchen. Doc looking over the bottles of bubble bath in the bathroom closet, as if he was all set to choose a scent. In every picture, he was wearing a little red sweater that matched the one Eve had on.
I checked out each picture again. I looked over at Eve just in time to see her grin. “You’re starting to get the picture. Picture! Get it?” With one elbow, she poked me in the ribs. “I took these pictures of Doc this morning. Every single one of them. But I still managed to get them all into a photo album, and you’re wondering how, right? I took my camera over to that photo place on Wilson and voila! They had the whole album ready in just a couple minutes. Wouldn’t that just be the best! We could take pictures during the ceremony—”
“You can’t take pictures during the ceremony. You’re the maid of honor.”
“Well, not me, then. Norman.”
“Norman is going to be the usher. He’s going to show people where to sit and keep things in order.”
“Well, somebody else then.” Eve dealt with the objection with a toss of her head. “Anyway, there could be pictures taken. By somebody. And as soon as the ceremony is over and the reception starts, that same somebody could run out with the camera and come back with the albums. It’s a great idea.”
In the scheme of Eve’s wedding planning ideas, it wasn’t bad. It was unobtrusive, didn’t involve sparklers, and there had been no mention of Doc actually taking part in the ceremony, resplendent—or not—in a tux. I was almost convinced until I saw the price list stuck into the back of the photo album. I multiplied the cost of the albums times the number of people who said they’d be honored to join us. Even though we’d vowed to keep the wedding small and the guest list to a limit, the total was staggering.
“Simple, Eve. Remember?” Since I couldn’t believe my eyes, I’d pulled the price list out of the album for a better look. Now I handed it back to her. “I know math isn’t your thing, so take my word for it when I tell you we’d need our own bailout to make this work. I refuse to go into debt for this wedding. We’ve got