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lucky."
Right through him? April thought. Another hollozv-point went through someone? That was rare.
"Any ideas?" Mike asked.
"Not yet. Everybody in the victim's family was in front of her in plain view. So was her intended and all his family. That excludes family members. We've been in contact with the wedding planner. She has a guest list and vendor list."
April glanced at Mike. They had a wedding planner.
Hollis smiled. "This is Riverdale," he told her. "They have somebody to do everything. The wedding planner, a woman called Wendy Lotte, has all the details, knows everybody's name and everybody's story. She was there the whole time. She can fill you in on personalities. Doesn't have an alibi for the moment of the shooting. Claims she was in the ladies' room." He arched an eyebrow. "I'm still talking to her."
"Really? She a suspect?" April found the idea downright weird. It wasn't a woman's crime.
"I don't know. She gives me a creepy feeling, what can I say?" He lifted a shoulder. "Nobody else stands
out."
April frowned. "Motive, background check?" "Oh, yeah, working on both." "Okay, what about the community, any anti-Semitic stuff going on here?" Mike's question.
"Inspector Bellaqua's been all over me about this." Hollis flipped the Mickey Mouse tie up and down. "Nothing. Believe me, we'd be on it if there were anything in it."
Mike glanced around at the crowded space and the noisy detectives all pretending to ignore them. "Where do you want to set up the charts? Let's figure out how wide we have to go on this." "Yeah, no problem." They were down to business.
Eleven
A nthony Pryce shot the cuffs in his summer uniform and adjusted his chauffeur's hat. He was a tall, slender Welshman, good-looking, with intelligent blue eyes and sandy hair that straggled over his collar in a London-late-Beatles-era shag. His gray uniform was just as smart as the wing collar, striped trousers, and tails that he wore when butlering in the house. He finished prepping himself for the ride to Manhattan and went down the back stairs to see to the cars. He couldn't stop thinking about that bride on the news, shot dead in the Bronx just before she took her vows. He moved through his chores, feeling an odd tingle of excitement about the possibilities such a murder presented: If someone wanted revenge on any bride in New York, now was the time to get it. It was all about knowing everything.
Anthony had worked on the Hay North Shore estate for eleven years, ever since his twenty-first birthday. And there was nothing he did not know. He was the butler, the driver, the cook when only Hays pater and mater were at home. He was the horticultural expert who directed the gardener in all his endeavors, the official head of the kitchen garden, and expert in all areas of social protocol. Along with Wendy Lotte, he was practically in charge of Prudence's wedding.
Anthony's knowledge of the family's doings extended to the secret places where in jealous rages Alfred, the toy poodle, tinkled against the priceless antiques. He knew that Lucinda Hay hid packages of forbidden foods like Twinkies and Ding Dongs along with acceptable ones in her room and nibbled between her hearty breakfast, tea, luncheon, tea, cocktails, and dinner. Mrs. Hay had once been a great beauty as well as a socialite, Anthony was proud of telling his friends. Now, alas, she had run to fat.
Anthony also knew that Terence senior was very rich and loved the bottle at least as much as his wife, and Terence junior was following in his father's footsteps, with hardly a sober moment since his junior year in boarding school, despite a sterling record at Yale and Harvard Law School. The Irish legacy. He now worked at the venerable firm of Hathaway, Harold, and Dean on Wall Street. What Anthony knew about Prudence was everything. And more than anything in the world, he hated the idea of her marrying that creep Thomas, an unexciting boiled potato of a young man, who knew nothing about her at all. And
John B. Garvey, Mary Lou Widmer