Chapter 4
When Libby glanced down at Leeza Sharp her first thought was: this is a practical joke. Her second thought was: I don’t have time for this nonsense. Her third thought was: Amber and Bernie are dead meat.
“Not funny,” she said whirling around to face Bernie. Then she saw the horrified expression on Bernie’s face and Libby’s stomach lurched. Oh, please God, not again, Libby prayed. Not another murder.
Libby took another look at the body sprawled out on the floor. Leeza’s eyes were staring straight up. Her mouth was opened in an expression of surprise. An arrow was protruding from her chest. And then there was the blood. It was everywhere. On the floor. On Leeza Sharp’s no longer white robe. On her nightgown.
No, Libby told herself. This isn’t a joke. Leeza was definitely dead. Not mostly dead. Not nearly dead. Dead dead. No doubt about that. No doubt at all. No one could survive an arrow through the heart. At least not in real life.
Libby heard the words, “And on her wedding day too,” coming out of her mouth. What a stupid thing to say, she told herself as Bernie turned towards her. Like it would have been better if it had happened the day after. Well, in a sense it would have been because then they wouldn’t have been here.
“Yeah,” her sister said. “She should have eloped.”
“Bernie!”
“Well it’s true.” Bernie tucked a curl back behind her ear. “Weddings never bring out the best in people and that goes double for Leeza.”
“She was a pain,” Libby conceded.
“Just a pain?” Bernie echoed. “How about annoying, vexing, and aggravating, not to mention galling and grating?”
“Fine. She was impossible,” Libby said thinking of all the napkins in the shape of swans they’d had to fold which were now going to go to waste.
“She was a Bridezilla stomping on everyone.”
“Even so that’s not a reason to shoot someone in the chest with an arrow,” Libby said as she reached up and wiped the sweat off her cheeks. Why she had to sweat when she got upset was something she’d never know.
Bernie pulled up her bra strap. The damned thing kept sliding down. “It’s as good a reason as any,” she noted. There was something about that arrow. Now what the hell was it? She almost had it in her grasp when Amber stepped back inside the tent and the thought vanished.
While Amber still looked a little shaky, Bernie noticed that she’d managed to reapply her lipstick and fix her hair. For the photographers? Bernie thought uncharitably as Amber ran up to her. Because they’d certainly be here as soon as the word got out. She could see the headline in the New York Post now. SHOT THROUGH THE HEART AND WHO’S TO BLAME? Or SIMMONS SISTERS CATER ANOTHER SLAY. Bernie shook her head to clear it. She didn’t want to think about the last time she and Libby had been involved in something like this. The press had pestered them for weeks.
“See,” Amber was saying. “I told you there was a homicidal maniac around here. I did,” she told Bernie. “Ask her”—Amber gestured in Libby’s direction—“if you don’t believe me.” Amber began wringing her hands; a gesture Bernie had never actually seen anyone do before except in the theater. “And now we’re all going to die.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Libby retorted when she heard a crack. Amber’s right, we are going to die, she thought as she dropped to the ground. “Get down,” she yelled at Bernie who was looking at her and Amber and shaking her head in disgust.
“Guys get a grip,” Bernie said. “That was a willow tree branch breaking.”
Libby looked up at her sister from the floor. If the murderer didn’t kill her, she would. “It was a gunshot.”
“How do you know? You’ve never heard one,” Bernie retorted.
“Neither have you.”
“Of course I have. Remember, I’ve lived in L.A. Besides,” Bernie continued, “I saw the branch falling.”
“I didn’t.”
“That’s because you were facing the wrong way.”
“Just get down,” Libby hissed at Bernie.
“And grovel in the dirt for no reason whatsoever? I don’t think so.” When Libby didn’t get up, Bernie said, “You don’t believe me. I’ll prove it to you.”
“Wait,” Libby cried as Bernie turned and started to march outside. “Don’t go out there.”
But Bernie wasn’t listening to her. No big surprise there, Libby reflected as she heard her moving outside the tent. For a moment Libby debated staying on the floor but then she decided, no. If anyone was going to have the pleasure of shooting her sister, it was going to be her. Libby jumped up. She’d taken about five steps when Bernie reappeared dragging a willow branch behind her.
“See,” she said.
Libby cringed. Bernie would never let her forget this. Ever. “It could have been a gun shot,” she countered. “How did you know it wasn’t?”
Bernie put the branch over to the side of the tent wall. “I saw it. Anyway, I went with probability. Most violent offenders, despite media reports to the contrary, do not commit multiple homicides. Ergo, it’s safe to assume that whoever killed Leeza is not here at the crime scene. At least not now. Although according to what I read he may revisit it at some later date.”
“Maybe you should stop reading,” Libby said to her sister.
Bernie turned to answer but before she could Amber said, “What about a serial killer? A serial killer could have done this.”
Bernie snorted.
“There are less than one hundred of those operating in the United States at any given year so that’s highly doubtful. Isn’t that right Libby?”
“Oh, absolutely,” Libby said, vigorously nodding her head.
In truth, she didn’t have the vaguest idea whether what Bernie was saying was true or not, but if agreeing with Bernie calmed Amber down and kept her sister from lecturing Libby was willing to go along. And then for some reason Mrs. Centra, Amber’s mom, popped into Libby’s head.
Mrs. Centra was so protective of her daughter—smothering was the term Bernie used—that she hadn’t let Amber go on a sleepover until she was almost sixteen. Libby couldn’t imagine what was she going to say when she found out that it was Amber, her precious flower as Mrs. Centra liked to call her, who had discovered Leeza’s body. She’d probably never let her work in the store again Libby gloomily reflected as she suggested to Amber that it would be better if she waited outside.
“Alone?” Amber shrieked. “You want me to wait outside by myself with a homicidal maniac armed with a bow and arrow running around?”
“There is no homicidal maniac. There’s a murderer,” Bernie interjected. “I thought I explained that to you.”
“Like that’s so much better.” Amber crossed her arms over her chest and planted her feet on the ground. “I’m staying with you guys.”
Libby tried again. “Amber,” she began. Then she stopped because Amber wasn’t paying attention to her.
She was raptly staring at Leeza’s body. Libby noticed that Amber no longer looked even slightly upset.
“You know,” Amber confided to Libby and Bernie. “I’ve never seen a dead person before in real life.”
“You’re lucky. I wish I hadn’t,” Libby said. I could use a chocolate cookie right about now she decided.
Her mind drifted to her backpack. She usually kept some in there along with a bottle of water, a fifty-dollar bill, and a needle-nose pliers, but this wedding had made her so crazy she’d forgotten to check her supplies to see if they needed to be replenished. Oh well, she thought as she went back to listening to Amber.
“My mom wouldn’t even let me go to my uncle’s wake because it was an open casket,” Amber was saying. Then she wrinkled her nose and indicated Leeza Sharp. “She looks like something from a wax museum, doesn’t she?”
“A little,” Bernie agreed. “Well, a lot actually.”
Libby made herself look at Leeza’s body again. Unlike Bernie she was squeamish and always had been. It wasn’t the dead part that got her. It was all those bodily fluids oozing out where she could see them that did her in. But now that she’d disgraced herself by acting like a total dweeb and dropping to the floor she felt as if she had no choice but to suck it up.
“What are you thinking?” Bernie asked her.
“I’m thinking,” Libby replied, “that Leeza looks like Wendy in Peter Pan.”
“Well,” Bernie replied, “Wendy was shot by one of the lost boys.”
Libby nodded. “Only I don’t think this was an accident.”