Group, Photo, Grave (A Kiki Lowenstein Mystery) Read online

  Group, photo, Grave

  ~

  A Kiki Lowenstein Mystery

  By Joanna Campbell Slan

  ~

  Dedication –

  To Beverley Bateman with thanks!

  ~

  Group, Photo, Grave: A Kiki Lowenstein Mystery © 2013 by Joanna Campbell Slan.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever, including Internet usage, without written permission from the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s vivid imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Other books in the Kiki Lowenstein Mystery Series:

  #1 -- Paper, Scissors, Death (2008)

  #2 -- Cut, Crop & Die (2009)

  #3 – Ink, Red, Dead (Revised 2013)

  #4 -- Photo, Snap, Shot (2010)

  #5 -- Make, Take, Murder (2011)

  #6 -- Ready, Scrap, Shoot (2012)

  #7 -- Picture, Perfect, Corpse (2013)

  #8 -- Group, Photo, Grave (Oct. 2013)

  #9 -- Killer, Paper, Cut (Oct. 2013)

  Praise for Joanna Campbell Slan—

  “(One of) mystery’s rising stars.”

  --RT Book Reviews

  Praise for the Kiki Lowenstein Mystery Series—

  “This isn’t your typical cozy. There’s more meat on the bones.”

  --Kittling: Books on Make, Take, Murder

  “A darn good read with a surprise ending. I highly recommend it.”

  --A Bit Bookish on Make, Take, Murder

  Praise for the series--

  “(Kiki Lowenstein is) our best friend, our next-door neighbor and ourselves with just a touch of the outrageous.”

  --RT Book Reviews

  For a complete list of other works by Joanna Campbell Slan, go to http://tinyurl.com/JoannaSlan

  Group, Photo, Grave

  A Kiki Lowenstein Mystery

  By Joanna Campbell Slan

  Author’s Note: In the timeline of Kiki’s life, this is Book #8. It falls between Picture, Perfect, Corpse and Killer, Paper, Cut.

  Who can find a virtuous woman? For her price is far above rubies.

  The heart of her husband doth safely trust in her, so that he shall have

  no need of spoil.

  She will do him good and not evil all the days of her life.

  Proverbs 31: 10

  King James Version of the Bible

  ~ In Memoriam ~

  A Special Edition of the

  Time in a Bottle Newsletter

  As many of you know, this month we said our final goodbye to Dodie Goldfader, the founder and former owner of our store, Time in a Bottle. The cancer that Dodie had fought so long and valiantly finally won the fight for her body. But even her passing cannot rob us of her memory. Dodie has been—and will continue to be—a blessing to all of us who think of Time in a Bottle as a second home.

  Dodie is survived by her husband Horace and her daughter Rebekkah. She was preceded in death by her son Nathan. In keeping with her wishes, immediately after her death there was a brief graveside ceremony for family members only.

  We invite you to stop by Time in a Bottle and create a page with your memories of Dodie. At some point, we’ll collect all these, put them in an album, and give them to her family.

  Thanks for the memories, Dodie!

  Signed: Kiki Lowenstein

  Chapter 1

  Saturday/Second week of June…

  Webster Groves, Missouri

  My motherin-law Sheila’s wedding wasn’t totally ruined by the discovery of a corpse in the punch bowl. Okay, I lie. The corpse wasn’t exactly inside the punch bowl. He’d simply hit the punch bowl on his way down. One of the wait staff was walking through the catering tent and found the body sprawled out on the grass with a punch bowl over its head.

  Every wedding has its moment of drama, right? During mine, Aunt Penny stepped backwards off the gazebo and landed upside down on her noggin. I turned to see where the shriek came from and spotted two skinny legs scissoring in the breeze.

  Except for the corpse, every other part of Sheila Lowenstein and Robbie Holmes’s ceremony had been lovely. Joyful, too, although I watched with a lump in my throat after I noticed an empty chair and imagined my friend Dodie Goldfader sitting there. “Miss you,” I mumbled, knowing that her spirit would have heard me.

  Sheila had beamed with happiness as she and Robbie Holmes said their wedding vows, while standing before a rabbi and a priest. The day was beastly hot, but the sun was bright in a cornflower blue sky, and a light breeze carried the scent of roses in the air. All in all, a wonderful (pre-dead guy) omen for the new couple. Sheila’s attention to detail had paid off handsomely. The dresses of the bridesmaids were a lovely visual counterpoint to the vibrant pinks, deep reds, rich magentas, and royal purples of the garden owned by my landlord, Leighton Haversham.

  My thirteen-year-old daughter Anya and I were Sheila’s maid and matron of honor, respectively, so we wore dresses in shades of soft pink with navy trim. The rest of the bridesmaids, Sheila’s best friends, a group that went by the nickname of the “Jimmy Girls,” wore plum-colored silk. Ester Frommer from Los Angeles, Toby Pearlman from Palm Beach, and Leah Ginsberg from Chicago had pinned narrow navy ribbons to their chests in remembrance of a fourth friend, Miriam, who had recently died. Sheila had a ribbon, too, but hers was more discretely tucked into her bouquet so as not to ruin the lines of her dress. The quintet had been best friends since their years at the Charles and Anne Lindbergh Academy, known locally as CALA, the same school my daughter now attends.

  On the groom’s side, we had Sheila’s new husband, St. Louis Police Chief Robbie Holmes; his best man and my husband-to-be Detective Chad Detweiler; Detweiler’s partner Detective Stan Hadcho, Lieutenant Milton Lesher, Sergeant Donald Tomatillo, and Captain Prescott Gallaway. Prescott was a nebbish that nobody liked, but as I understood it, he and Robbie were somehow related. The man was also Robbie’s second-in-command at the police station, so an invitation had been mandatory. I knew that Sheila didn’t like him, but she wasn’t in a position to complain, because Robbie’s side of the invitation list was embarrassingly short. It seemed that his kids had decided not to attend their father’s second wedding. Since Robbie’s first wife, Nadine, had died ten years ago, I found their behavior puzzling to say the least. I mean, come on! At fifty-nine, didn’t the man deserve another chance at happiness?

  With or without his adult children’s blessings, Robbie Holmes was a happy man. After they said their vows, when Robbie and Sheila turned to face the crowd, his grin split his face in half. Sheila looked radiant as joyful applause drowned out the music of the string quartet playing Pachelbel’s Canon in D. The bride and groom made a handsome couple as they started arm-in-arm down the flagstone path. My motherin-law’s denim blue eyes and silver-white hair were set off by her periwinkle gown. The navy blue sling that kept her broken collarbone in place contrasted nicely with her dress. Robbie looked especially dashing in a newly designed navy blue uniform that signified his position as Chief of Police for the City of St. Louis.

  The newlyweds’ expressions were priceless. I couldn’t wait to create a wonderful wedding album for my motherin-law.

  My name is Kiki Lowenstein and I’m a scrapbooker. It’s my hobby, my passion, and soon it’ll be my business because I’m finalizing the arrangements to buy Time in a Bottle
, a scrapbook store where I’ve been working. I’m Anya’s mother, Sheila’s daughter-in-law through my marriage to her late son George, and I’m also expecting Detweiler’s baby. So while my motherin-law and her new husband took their first stroll as man and wife, I started thinking about my own upcoming marriage to Detweiler. To elope or not to elope, that was the question. There were pros and cons on both sides of the decision.

  I had plenty of time to mull over my choice. As per our rehearsal instructions, my honey and I had to wait until the happy couple reached a halfway point on the flagstone path before we linked arms and stepped forward together. Next Anya and Hadcho stepped off with Gracie, our harlequin Great Dane, trotting along between them. Around my dog’s neck was a wreath of silk flowers, matching our bouquets of white Shasta daisies, pink Gerber daisies, sprigs of lavender, and pink roses. Given Gracie’s natural black and white coloring, the effect was stunning!

  Two-by-two, the rest of the wedding party processed away from the chuppah, the ceremonial canopy that’s a standard feature of Jewish weddings.

  As we moved past the seated guests and spilled onto Leighton’s lawn, I caught a glimpse of my friend Cara Mia Delgatto, who was catering the wedding banquet. Standing in the back in her simple black shift and pearls, she’d been waiting for this moment to spring her staff into action.

  Yes, though she’d been confined to a recliner with her broken collarbone, Sheila had polished every bit of the ceremony to a high gloss of perfection. From the handmade invitations I’d created and assembled to the wisteria and roses running up the poles of the chuppah, she’d taken care so that the colors, sounds, and fragrances would evoke a wonderfully romantic ambiance.

  Everything was absolute perfection—and as a result, I was exhausted by Sheila’s demands. That and the fact I was now fourteen weeks pregnant. I had worked like a fiend to accommodate all of Sheila’s demands. Er, requests. Even clothing factory workers in Bangladesh were allotted more breaks than I had gotten from Sheila.

  “Looks like she pulled it off, sweetheart,” whispered Detweiler. “Now you can relax and get back to running your scrapbook store.”

  “Can you see the relief on my face?” I said quietly. I was holding my bouquet so that it partially covered my baby bump. Since this was my second child, my waistband had expanded at an alarming rate. I felt a tad embarrassed about my condition, but it was nothing I couldn’t handle. Lately, I had started caring a lot less about other people’s opinions. Instead, I concentrated on what I wanted out of life.

  A brush with death can have cause a rearrangement of your priorities. Sheila and I had both nearly died in an event we now wryly called “the shootout at the slough.”

  But we’d foiled the bad guy and lived to tell about it. Today was a truly milestone to celebrate.

  Chapter 2

  The gun fight hadn’t been pretty, and I wasn’t proud of what happened, but out of necessity I’d killed our captor, my husband’s former business partner. My choice had been to shoot him in the head or let him kill all of us: Sheila, me, my unborn baby, and Johnny Chambers, the brother of Mert Chambers, my former cleaning lady and best friend.

  My best friend.

  I still thought of Mert as my BFF (Best Friend Forever), even though she still wasn’t speaking to me. She blamed me for her brother’s involvement in the mess. I had high hopes that when she learned the truth, she would come around, but Mert is a Scorpio, and once they decide they’ve been wronged, they want nothing to do with you.

  As yet another consequence of the melee, Sheila’s injuries forced her to change the original date of her wedding. So this lovely event was special for many, many reasons. Not only to Sheila and Robbie, but to all of us. It was a triumph, considering what we’d endured.

  My landlord Leighton used the event as an excuse to add a creek and goldfish pond to our shared backyard. As his gift to the newlyweds, Leighton put up two white tents, one for the ceremony and one for the reception, so a sudden shower couldn’t possibly ruin the day.

  That meant there were three tents, two large ones for the guests, and one small spot where Cara Mia’s crew had set up coolers, bins, and containers.

  At Sheila’s urging, Leighton had also installed a temporary flagstone path for the bridal party to take on our way to where a priest and rabbi waited to perform the ceremony. Yes, Sheila had thought of absolutely everything. And she wanted absolutely everything. And she expected and got absolutely everything. As my friend and co-worker Clancy Whitehead said, “Nothing is impossible when you are willing to spend money hand over fist.”

  Although Robbie never voiced a word of complaint, the staggering sums they’d spent on the wedding were a source of concern to him. I’d overheard him asking Sheila to be more cautious about spending. In response, she’d laughed and given him a kiss. The cost of their honeymoon cruise alone was absolutely staggering. At least to me, it was.

  Once the ceremony had started, Cara Mia’s wait staff had migrated to the back of the tent to watch. Word had spread that our entourage included a “real, live, flower dog” the size of a small pony, so the servers wanted to see my Great Dane. Gracie charmed the socks off of everyone by walking along slowly between Anya and Hadcho, wearing her collar of flowers, and wagging her long black tail.

  Now these same servers raced back to the catering tent. Appetizers, champagne, soft drinks, and sparkling white grape juice would mark the start of a wonderful repast. I’d seen the menu, and I knew that Cara wouldn’t disappoint. The tables were decorated with tulle, tiny hearts and doves punched out of paper, and lavish floral arrangements. Guests searched for their tables with their decorated name cards.

  Not a cloud marred the celestial blue sky. Birdsong mingled with the Bach played by a string quartet. The sweet smell of petunias and roses scented the air. Sheila’s bell-like laughter and Robbie’s booming bass rose over the appreciative murmurs of the crowd.

  All in all, this was a wedding to die for.

  Chapter 3

  As per the bride’s prior instructions, Detweiler, Anya, Gracie, and I headed to the fishpond for formal portraits by Vincent, the photographer. I didn’t go directly back. I stopped by my own house to use the bathroom, drop off Gracie, and grab my purse with my camera. By the time I arrived at the fish pond, Anya was posed, sitting on the edge of the goldfish pond and dangling her fingers in the water. The koi bubbled up to the surface eagerly, hoping to be fed.

  “Watch out, Anya,” warned Detweiler. “You’re liable to lose a finger.”

  In response, she flicked water at the long, lean cop. Their playful relationship brought a smile to my face. Soon we would be a real family, united by our marriage as well as by the addition of our baby and Detweiler’s son Erik, a child by his first wife, Gina, who’d recently died in a car accident. What a wonderful blended family we were going to have!

  “Gents? Ladies? Group photo, please.” Vincent herded us together.

  Sheila and Robbie joined us.

  “I hope you hurry with those pictures,” said Milton. “My stomach is rumbling and that food smells delicious. If we don’t get over there soon, I bet it will be all gone.”

  “Not likely,” said Robbie, clapping a hand on his officer’s shoulder. “Unless we’re joined by the Russian army.”

  That brought a big laugh. Sheila had ordered enough food to feed the hungry hoards on a thirty-day march. Cara had kindly squeezed Sheila into her catering schedule at the last minute and cheerfully put up with my motherin-law’s ever changing demands.

  “If I were you, I would have shoved a plate of meatballs in her face by now,” I told Cara after Sheila had made yet another change to the menu.

  “It isn’t personal,” said Cara. “Sheila can’t keep changing the menu forever. Sooner or later, we’ll be right back where we started. And you’re a fine one to talk about dealing with her. She keeps adding to the guest list so you have to keep making more handmade invitations, envelopes, place cards, and so on. Your poor hand is swollen fro
m hitting those punches over and over!”

  “Too true. I’ve been soaking it in ice water at night. But there’s a light on the horizon. She can’t keep inviting people. She’s bound to run out of friends sooner or later,” I said. “And knowing Sheila, it’ll be sooner rather than later. In fact, I suspect she’s bribing strangers with the prospect of an open bar and the promise of your food!”

  “In less than two hours this will all be over,” Cara had whispered to me when she and her catering crew had pulled up next to Leighton’s house so they could unload. Vincent’s photo van was parked nearby. “Your motherin-law will be on a cruise, and we won’t hear from her for an entire thirty days.”

  It would be good for Sheila and Robbie to get away. Especially to a place where cell phone coverage would be iffy. I watched as he slipped a proprietary arm around Sheila’s waist. They’d fallen in love in high school, married other people, and found themselves all over again. Really romantic.

  “Hey, gorgeous.” Detweiler came up behind me and kissed me on the neck. My knees went a bit wobbly at his touch and the scent of his cologne.

  “No PDA,” sniffed Anya. “That means no public displays of affection. You two need to get a room.”

  “Maybe we will,” said Detweiler. “You can go on home and babysit Gracie.”

  A scream split the dense summer air.

  Chapter 4

  Detweiler and Hadcho took off running.

  Usually I would tag along, but the heat was really doing a number on me. Besides, the yelp probably came from someone who’d spotted a garter snake or a big bug, common uninvited guests to an out-of-doors function. Instead of chasing after the boys, I grabbed a folding chair and took a load off my feet.