fight-or-flight response kicked in, raising my pulse and respiration rate, as I considered the possibility that Wanda had been sent by my mother. An ambush on my own turf.
“She’s not alone,” Darcy added.
“Please tell me my mother’s not with her.” I gazed at the second-story window and contemplated a jump as my only means of escape.
Roger, now wide awake and on alert, watched me with an eager look, as if reading my thoughts. He flashed his full-focus grin and wagged his tail. If I jumped, Roger would follow. The crazy pooch was game for anything.
I considered my options. The fall probably wouldn’t kill me, but I might break a leg, so I couldn’t run. Unable to flee, I’d be completely at Mother’s mercy. I abandoned the idea of a header onto Main Street and sucked up to face the music.
“The other woman isn’t your mother,” Darcy said. “She’s younger than your mother, but older than you.”
“Not Caroline?” I could probably get rid of the wedding planner, but I didn’t want to be double-teamed by my persistent older sister.
Darcy shook her head. “I’ve met Caroline. It’s not her, but whoever she is, she’s too distraught to give her name.”
Distress could be real or an act. I wouldn’t put it past Mother and Caroline to stoop to a ploy to reel me in, but I could handle Wanda and a stranger, who’d be more reasonable than my family members. Everyone was more reasonable than my relatives. I told Darcy to show them in.
Darcy went to fetch them, and I called Roger and set him on my lap. He’d never met a leg he didn’t love, and his humping could be bad for business, so when clients arrived, I kept him on a short leash.
Wanda Weiland breezed through the door, looking as fresh and blushing as a bride herself in a clingy floral dress, strappy sandals and makeup that gave her a perfect healthy glow. Her long auburn hair swung as she walked, and she flung it off her shoulders with a snap of her head and took a chair across from my desk. She looked to be in her late thirties or possibly even forties. These days it was hard to tell whether a woman had good genes or an excellent plastic surgeon.
In contrast, the woman with her looked like an emotional wreck. Although she was neatly dressed in tailored slacks, a silk blouse and pearls, her complexion was splotched from crying, her eyes red-rimmed. She clutched a damp Kleenex in one hand, her purse in the other. She stopped just inside the door and appeared dazed and disoriented. She didn’t sit until Wanda patted the seat of the chair next to her.
“Thank you for seeing us on such short notice,” Wanda said.
“It’s an emergency,” the other woman added with a shiver, her voice hoarse from tears. “My daughter’s missing.”
“I read about you in the newspapers,” Wanda said, “how you solved Senator Branigan’s murder. I told Jeanette you could help us.”
“Jeanette?” I said.
“Jeanette Langston,” the distraught woman introduced herself. “I hope you can help me. I don’t know where else to turn.”
“You’ve been to the police?” I asked.
Jeanette nodded. “I spoke with the sheriff’s department. They told me there’s been no sign of a crime, and since Alicia left messages assuring us that she’s all right, they won’t get involved.”
I eyed Jeanette and estimated that she was older than me, somewhere in her mid-to-late fifties. Years ago, I would have assumed her daughter to be a grown-up, but with current advances in medical science and women having babies later in life, I took nothing for granted.
“Tell me about Alicia,” I said.
“She’s supposed to be married at the end of this month,” Jeanette said with a hitch in her voice.
Unless something kinky was going on, that fact made Alicia an adult. And it also explained the presence of Wanda, the wedding planner.
“Here’s her picture.” Jeanette slid a four-by-six photo across my desk.
I picked it up and studied the pretty girl posed on a seawall, long blond hair flowing in the wind, hazel eyes smiling at the camera. Tall and slender, she had an air of seriousness lurking beneath the happiness on her face.
“Alicia’s disappeared?” I said.
Jeanette nodded. “Four days ago. She left a note saying not to worry about her. And a voice mail a day later, assuring me that she’s okay. But I’ve tried calling her cell phone and she doesn’t answer. Garth, her fiancé, hasn’t heard a word from her, either.”
“So she’s a runaway bride.”
Even I, who never went to the movies and seldom turned on a television, was familiar with the Julia Roberts chick flick. I’d watched it late one night in the throes of insomnia and had felt a special kinship with the character who couldn’t commit.
“She’s not a runaway,” Jeanette said with obvious conviction.
Wanda, so far, had nothing to add but a reassuring pat of Jeanette’s hand.
“Not cold feet?” I said. “You’re sure?”
Jeanette shook her head without ruffling a strand of her honey-colored dye job. “Alicia loves Garth. They’ve been engaged for three years. A year ago they began planning this wedding to take place when Alicia finished graduate school.”
“Still,” I said reasonably and with a strong degree of empathy for Alicia, “she could be having second thoughts.”
“She did say in her note to cancel the wedding plans,” Wanda interjected.
“Big wedding?” I asked.
Wanda nodded. “Six bridesmaids, flowers by the truckload, and 250 guests, including a sit-down dinner with a string quartet and a deejay at the Osprey Country Club.”
“Refundable?” I pried.
Wanda shook her head. “Not at this point.”
I turned to Jeanette. “That must hurt.”
“I don’t give a damn about the money,” she insisted, then paused. “Although we’re not that wealthy, and we’ve had to borrow money for college, graduate school, and the wedding. But I’m scared for Alicia. This behavior isn’t like her.”
“Where did she disappear from?” I said.
“Home,” Jeanette said with a sniff and dabbed her nose with a tissue. “She was living with us to save money and commuting to the University of South Florida in Tampa.”
“Is her car missing, too?”
Her mother nodded.
“Did she say why she left?” I asked.
Jeanette rolled her eyes. “She said she wants to find herself. After a B.A., M.A., and a Ph.D. in philosophy, how much more self-discovery does she need?”
