Gina Cresse - Devonie Lace 03 - A Deadly Change of Heart Page 7

  Chapter Eight

  Pamela Smythe had met Bradley Parker at the bank where she worked as a teller. She spilled all the details of their whirlwind courtship over appetizers at Tucker’s Grille.

  Her youthful innocence amused me. I guessed her age to be around twenty-five. She had short blond hair and big blue eyes that batted like butterfly wings. Her petite figure, though too short to be a model, complimented her expensive designer outfit. If she was wearing makeup, I couldn’t tell. Her complexion was clear and smooth and slightly flushed. Her dainty hands boasted a French manicure, and if I were a betting woman, I’d say her toes were done the same way.

  Pamela didn’t classify her thoughts into compartments. She didn’t separate intimate personal details from the subjects more commonly considered safe, like the weather. She was an open book, withholding nothing, even from me, a perfect stranger. There was no filtering of thoughts going on before she allowed them to flow freely from her lips. I would call her child-like in that regard. She obviously had never been betrayed.

  For every personal anecdote she conveyed about first kisses and long romantic walks on the beach with Bradley, I’d return some comment about Craig’s shoe size or the color of his hair. I knew in my heart that I’d found the greatest guy in the world, but I didn’t want to boast about it. I just knew the instant I felt the least bit smug, somehow I’d lose every good thing that Craig had brought to my life. Lucky. That’s what I felt—lucky that the years of empty searching were over. My mind drifted for a moment and I had to snap myself back to reality. Pamela was chatting away and I’d missed her last sentence. I blinked my eyes and refocused on the conversation.

  She informed me that her wedding was to take place in three weeks, and she was nowhere near ready. I already knew this, of course, but I feigned total astonishment. Nothing would make me happier than to upset Bradley Parker’s underhanded scheme to squash her wedding-day dream by dragging her off to Las Vegas.

  I watched her covet the dress I’d hung from a hook on the end of our booth and I suddenly had the unfamiliar feeling of being a big sister. I found the thought of Bradley Parker subjecting her to the same ordeal he’d put Diane through almost unbearable. I wanted to grab her and shake her and tell her what a terrible mistake she’d be making by marrying such an awful man. Tact forced me to keep my mouth closed. After all, what if I was wrong about Bradley? Maybe he didn’t kill Diane. Maybe he was really a nice guy. Maybe he was just misunderstood. Maybe the Earth is flat.

  “You know, I could help you get ready for your wedding,” I offered. “I have the time and you certainly seem to need the help.”

  Pamela breathed out a heavy sigh of relief. “Would you? I’d be so grateful.”

  I smiled and nodded. “I’d be happy to. It’ll be fun. We should start by finding a dress right away. After lunch, I’ll take you to Ann Marie’s. That’s where I got mine.”

  For a moment, I thought Pamela was going to cry. “That would be wonderful.”

  I removed a small notepad from my purse. “Let’s make a list of what you still need to do before the wedding.” I clicked the end of a ballpoint pen and waited, poised and ready to write.

  She studied the ceiling. “Let’s see. I guess I should have some flowers,” she said.

  I raised my eyebrows and proceeded to write.

  “Do you know a good photographer?” she asked.

  “You haven’t found a photographer?” I marveled.

  “No. Is that bad?” she asked.

  “Three weeks? I don’t know if we’ll find a reputable one on that short notice. Is money an issue?”

  Pamela shook her head. “No. Bradley’s paying for the whole wedding. He said to just send him the bills.”

  “Wow. Guess your folks must be relieved,” I said.

  Pamela frowned. “My parents died when I was sixteen. I don’t have any other family. Bradley’s all I have. He’s my family now.”

  My heart sank. This poor kid, I thought. I didn’t know what to say. I gave her the most sympathetic look I could. I’m sure she thought it was in response to the fact that she’d lost her parents, but if I had to be honest, it was really because she was about to chain herself to Bradley Parker.

  She shook the brief moment of sorrow off. “Don’t be sad. I’m happy. I’m in love with the most wonderful man in the world, and in three weeks, I’m going to have the most beautiful wedding ever.”

  I put the pen back to the paper and made a note. “I’ll check with my photographer. Maybe he has an opening, or knows someone who might be available. What else?”

  The waitress brought our food. I cleared a spot for my salad and asked for a refill of my water. Pamela spread a pat of butter on a warm roll. “A caterer would be a good idea. At first, I was just going to have a cake reception, but if we have an evening wedding, we should probably feed the guests.”

  I set my fork down. “You don’t know if you’re having an evening wedding?” I asked.

  “I haven’t decided.”

  “You mean you don’t have the church reserved?” I asked, sounding more like a mother than a helpful acquaintance.

  “Oh, no. Bradley doesn’t want a church wedding,” she replied.

  Right. Someplace where he won’t be struck down by lightning the second he steps foot in the place, I thought. I set the pen down on the table. “Maybe we should take a different approach. What have you taken care of so far?”

  Pamela appeared slightly injured. “I’m sorry. I’m really embarrassed. I’m just horrible at planning and organizing. It’s one of those things that, if you don’t learn by a certain age, you never will.”

  I felt like a heel. This poor girl hadn’t developed the callused scars around her heart that life tends to create, and I’d managed to unwittingly hurt her feelings. “It’s okay, Pamela. Everything will work out. Have you considered a Nevada wedding? Not Vegas, but maybe Lake Tahoe?”

  She shot me a horrified look, her eyes as big as saucers. “No. I refuse to get married next to a slot machine.”

  I could tell she was adamant and there was no point explaining that it wouldn’t have to be the way she imagined it, marching down an aisle flanked by one-armed bandits to a minister who doubled as a black-jack dealer. I picked up my pen. “Okay, then we better get busy. Tell me what we have to work with.”

  “I have reserved the day at Bay Vista. Have you seen it? It’s spectacular. We’ll have the entire Pacific Ocean as a backdrop.”

  I jotted it down and nodded with approval. “Good.”

  “And I have a Justice of the Peace arranged. He’s available any time that day. I just need to let him know the time.”

  I flipped the page on my notebook and started on a fresh sheet. “Okay. Here’s what we still need to do. Invitations?” I looked at her with raised eyebrows. She nodded. I wrote it down. “Flowers. Photographer. I think you should go for the cake reception and forego the caterer.”

  “Okay,” she agreed.

  “Cake. Chairs for the guests. How many?” I asked.

  “About a hundred.”

  “One hundred chairs. A table for the cake. Punch. Wine?”

  “Champagne,” she said, decisively.

  “Champagne. Glasses. Plates. Forks. Do you like chocolate covered strawberries?” I asked.

  Pamela rolled her eyes. “I love them.”

  “Good. Me too. They’ll go great with the champagne.” I continued adding to the list when a thought popped into my head. “You’ll need favors for the guests. You know what would be really cool? Bubbles. It’s outdoors. It’s perfect. What do you think?”

  Pamela giggled. “Bubbles? Like what I played with as a kid?”

  “Yeah. They’re really popular for weddings now. Rice makes such a mess and people slip and fall all the time on it,” I explained, repeating what I’d learned when looking for favors for my own day of bliss.

  “I like it. Yeah. Bubbles,” she said, beaming.

  I wrote it down. “Good. Let’s go
find a dress.”

  Ann Marie’s had one dress in the entire store that fit Pamela perfectly, needing no alterations at all. Luckily, it also made her look like a princess. She actually cried when she saw herself in the mirror. I warned her to stop or she’d get mascara on the white satin. My suspicions were confirmed when she told me she wasn’t wearing any mascara. She was a natural beauty. Ann Marie’s would have it pressed and ready to pick up in a week.

  Pamela invited me to dinner at Bradley’s house that evening so we could go over the guest list. I offered to print the invitations and envelopes with my computer to save time.

  “Oh, and be sure to bring Craig along. I’m dying to meet him,” Pamela said.

  I smiled and agreed to extend the invitation to him. I hoped she’d spend one evening with a truly decent man and realize the creature she was about to walk down the aisle with was nothing but a snake trying to pass himself off as a human being.

  The dinner invitation was a stroke of luck. It would give me a chance to snoop around and see what I could find out about Diane. We drove around the La Jolla neighborhood, searching for the address Pamela gave me. The homes were gorgeous. Views of the Pacific were spectacular.

  “Parker’s business must be doing well for him to keep his home here,” I said.

  Craig pulled into the driveway and set the brake. “You’re not kidding about that. These are some expensive places.”

  I wondered about the trouble with his business, mentioned in Diane’s letter, and how he managed to recover so quickly.

  Pamela answered the door and let us into the house. “Hi. Come on in. You must be Craig,” she said, holding out her hand.

  “Nice to meet you,” Craig replied, shaking her hand.

  She led us past the entry, where I picked up the scent of garlic cooking. We followed the wonderful smells through the living room and into the kitchen, where she was putting the final touches on a German Chocolate cake.

  “I love German Chocolate cake. Can I help with anything?” I offered.

  “Nope. Everything is just about ready, believe it or not. I can’t plan a wedding, but I can cook like Emeril,” Pamela boasted.

  Bradley strolled into the kitchen carrying a brandy snifter half full of the amber liquid. Pamela flashed him a huge smile.

  “This is Devonie and Craig, sweetie,” Pamela said.

  I put my hand to my chest and put on a look of total surprise. “Well, we meet again. What a coincidence. I didn’t know you were engaged to Pamela.”

  Pamela gawked at the two of us. “You’ve met?” she asked.

  “I applied for a job today with your fiancé’s company.”

  “Wow. What a small world,” Pamela said.

  “Isn’t it?” Craig replied. He winked at me. I’m sure he enjoyed this little game, even if he didn’t want to admit it.

  Bradley forced a smile. “Hello,” he said, regarding me with a look I would almost have called irritation. He offered a hand to Craig and shook it like a boy being forced to shake hands with his enemy after getting in trouble for fighting. He never offered to shake my hand. I guess that’s an honor only extended to other men, certainly not to women who threaten his underhanded schemes. I’m sure Pamela explained to him how I was going to help her with her wedding plans so she wouldn’t have to resort to a Vegas wedding.

  He turned his attention to Pamela. “How long till dinner?”

  “Not long. Why don’t you give Devonie and Craig a tour of the house while I put the finishing touches on this cake,” she said.

  We followed Bradley into the living room where he stopped at the bar to refill his glass. “Drink? Brandy’s my poison, but I can give you just about anything under the sun,” he offered.

  “No, thanks,” I replied.

  Craig shook his head. “I’ll wait till dinner,” he said.

  The room was large and heavily furnished. There was too much furniture to comfortably walk around. The wall facing the ocean must have been mostly windows, but the curtains were drawn and the room was a little too dark for my liking. I inspected the framed photos on the fireplace mantel. I recognized the two teenage boys from the pictures in Diane’s purse. There were photos of Bradley and Pamela, but nothing that even indicated Diane ever lived there. I suppose that could be understood. The new fiancé would not want reminders of the previous wife around, no matter how bad the relationship had been.

  “Good looking boys. Yours?” I commented, nodding toward the graduation pictures.

  “Yeah. Both are at UCLA. Costing me a fortune,” he complained.

  Why don’t you just push them off a cliff and solve your problem? The wheels began turning in my head and I got down to the business at hand. “Does their mother help with their expenses?” I asked in an effort to bring up the subject of Diane.

  Bradley frowned. “No. Their mother died last year.”

  “Oh, I’m so sorry. Was she ill?” I asked.

  “Accident,” he answered, then took a drink of brandy.

  “Dinner!” Pamela called from the dining room.

  “I haven’t finished the tour, yet,” Bradley called back to her. She stepped into the living room.

  “I’ll finish the tour after dinner. Come on, before it gets cold,” Pamela insisted.

  We sat down at the heavy oak dining table and admired the spread she’d put out. A lovely salad, garlic mashed potatoes, Cornish game hens and a bowl of steamed vegetables. Pamela wasn’t exaggerating when she said she could cook.

  “This is great,” Craig said, grabbing a hen with the tongs and placing it on his dish. “You’ve outdone yourself.”

  “Wait till you’ve tasted it before you start throwing around compliments,” Pamela replied.

  “Anything that looks and smells this good has got to be delicious,” Craig said. “But you’re right, to give a true compliment, I’ve got to put it to the taste test.” He sliced a piece of white meat from the hen and speared it with his fork. Pamela watched with anticipation as he placed it in his mouth. He chewed it twice then rolled his eyes in ecstasy. “This is wonderful,” he said, taking another bite.

  “Thank you,” Pamela said, blushing.

  I scooped a spoonful of potatoes and handed the bowl to Bradley. “Your business must be doing pretty well,” I said.

  He took the bowl from me. “I’m keeping busy.”

  Pamela handed me the vegetables. “He’s doing much better now that the lawsuits are over with,” she said.

  Bradley shot an angry glare at Pamela, but it went unnoticed. She was busy filling her salad bowl.

  “Lawsuit?” I asked.

  “Yeah. Over that crazy Voltage program. What a fiasco,” Pamela said.

  Bradley continued to fire daggers at her, but she had yet to look his direction.

  “Voltage? I think I read something about that in Computer World,” I said, trying to keep the subject alive.

  Bradley finally decided to speak up before Pamela had a chance to spill any more information. “I was a VAR for the company who sold the Voltage software.”

  “VAR?” I asked.

  “Value added reseller,” he explained. “I arranged demos and set up meetings for clients who had a need for that particular type of software.”

  “Voltage? What’s it used for?” Craig asked.

  “It’s sort of an ERP system for power plants. Handles resource planning, costing, forecasting, inventory, the whole enterprise,” he explained.

  “Except that it didn’t work,” Pamela interjected.

  I could tell by the irritated look on Bradley’s face that his patience with Pamela’s comments was growing thin. He chose his words slowly and carefully. “The software didn’t consistently perform as advertised, periodically producing erroneous results that were not immediately recognized.”

  I digested this statement. “The software didn’t provide an auditing method?” I asked.

  Bradley frowned. “The package didn’t come with any reports. That was up to the client to
develop, since each individual company had unique reporting needs. The database design was complicated, to say the least, with over seven hundred tables. Redundant data in multiple tables was sometimes conflicting, due to a failure to properly rollback all transactions when there was a problem. It’s the most de-normalized database design I’ve ever seen. The package relied heavily on triggers to update tables, especially in the inventory module, which caused more problems because of the rollback issue,” he explained.

  I cringed as he described problems caused by programming practices that should never have been implemented in a commercially available package—especially one with a price tag in the millions of dollars. The computer lingo went over Pamela’s head, but the fact that she knew the software didn’t work meant that Bradley had probably put it to her in simpler terms some time before tonight.

  “So, because you were a reseller, you were named in the lawsuits?” Craig guessed.

  “Exactly. I no longer endorse the software, but the damage had been done,” he said.

  I glanced around the expensively furnished house. He was obviously still quite solvent. “You must have fared well in the suit,” I noted.

  “Oh, they settled out of court,” Pamela reported.

  I noticed Bradley’s fist clench. He aimed his stare at Pamela, then picked up his dinner plate and shoved it toward her. “This has gotten cold. It needs to be heated up,” he said.

  “Certainly, sweetie. I’ll just pop it in the microwave for a few seconds,” she replied. I gaped as I watched her carry it, with a smile, into the kitchen.

  Craig caught my expression and touched my leg under the table. “Can you pass the butter please, honey?” he asked, diverting my attention and helping me to maintain some self-control.

  It would take every ounce of restraint I could muster to keep from giving Bradley a piece of my mind. I bit my tongue and continued eating. “You settled out of court? Must have been expensive,” I pried.

  “I survived,” he said, taking another drink.

  Pamela returned from the kitchen. “The insurance money helped,” she said, placing the warmed dinner plate in front of him.

  My ears perked up. “Insurance? Do you have some sort of coverage for lawsuits?” I inquired.