“I think so,” I said.

  “Yes, well, money is no object. I don’t mean to be vulgar, but I know you are a businesswoman and you need to know that there really won’t be a budget. Clark has a huge trust fund and his father is on the Forbes list. So, as you can see, we have to make this huge. Think reality-show huge. I want a press release to go out and I want reporters invited. I want diamonds and gold and sparkles. I want romantic settings and only the top-shelf chef to cater. I’m certain you have resources that can make this happen.”

  “Okay, well, we will have to set up an initial meeting where I flesh out ideas for the proposal. When would you like to meet? I’d like Clark there as well. I want to find out what he and Samantha Lyn like to do, some of the dates they went on, how they met, et cetera. It really helps to plan a very personal event. Then I’ll also need at least a semblance of a budget. I charge a nonrefundable retainer of 50 percent of that budget the day we sign the contract.” I chewed on my bottom lip thinking that nonrefundable and 50 percent of an unlimited budget would make her stop and think about this crazy idea.

  “Perfect,” Sugar said, completely unfazed by my outrageous proposal. “I can meet tomorrow. Does that work for you?”

  “That works,” I said, and scribbled it into my date book. “Where would you like to meet?”

  “Oh, how about the Pavilion tearoom on Wabash. We can have tea and discuss all the details.”

  “Okay, great. I’ll make reservations for you and Clark.”

  “Add Josie as well,” Sugar Fulcrum said. “She’ll want to be a part of the planning, and no one knows Samantha Lyn like her mother.”

  “Great, I’ll get a table for four tomorrow at noon at the Pavilion on Wabash.”

  “Perfect,” Sugar trilled. “This is so exciting. See you then.”

  I hung up the phone and frowned. Samantha Lyn seemed like such a nice girl, but so very young. I was worried for her. It seemed as if her parents were more excited about matching her with the sullen Clark than Samantha Lyn was. I frowned. If I were a good businessperson, I’d suck it up and plan the proposal. This was clearly going to be a big-ticket event.

  I started Old Blue and drove her out of the parking structure. I frowned as I inched my way out onto the road. A fat bank account was nice, but I wanted my reputation as a proposal planner to be impeccable. Which meant that I wanted all of my proposals to generate a true yes. And for the marriage to last as long as possible . . . I suppose that was asking a lot in today’s day and age of massive weddings and quickie divorces.

  I honked at a taxi that tried to cut me off and ignored the insulting gesture that followed as I took the exit back onto the Kennedy Expressway. If money wasn’t a stumbling block to this proposal, maybe talking would be. I chewed on my bottom lip and picked up my phone. While crawling along in bumper-to-bumper traffic, I Googled the Pavilion. When the number came up I hit the link to dial it and sent the call to my earpiece.

  “The Pavilion tearoom.”

  “Yes, I’d like to make a reservation for four tomorrow at noon.”

  There was a pause. “I’m sorry but we have no openings at that time.”

  Huh. “Okay, well, I’m making the reservation for Mrs. Sugar Fulcrum and Mrs. Josie Thomson. Should I have Mrs. Fulcrum’s secretary call you?”

  “Mrs. Sugar Fulcrum? No, no, we always have a table for Mrs. Fulcrum. You want a table for four?”

  That’s what I thought. “Yes, please,” I said. “You can put the reservation under Pepper Pomeroy for Mrs. Sugar Fulcrum.”

  “Perfect, we will see you then.”

  I hung up and shook my head. I wished I didn’t have to resort to name dropping, but if Sugar Fulcrum wanted to meet at the Pavilion, then I needed to use her name to make that happen.

  The traffic started to clear up the closer we got to the O’Hare Airport interchange. The sky was a brilliant blue with a weak light due to the time of year. The cold made the sky haze free and really gorgeous. But there wasn’t a lot of light in a Chicago winter. It had snowed last night and we had three inches on the ground. The plows had come through early and hit the side roads, leaving a foot of mounded snow near the sidewalk, but the rest was soft, perfect snow that frosted the neighborhood in a blanket of fresh white.

  I got off the highway and made my way home, thinking about the Pavilion tearoom. It was downtown and not one of the places I usually met people to discuss business. But then I had a feeling this particular account was going to be far different than any of my proposals so far. I mean, a press release? Really? Maybe I should look into a film crew following Clark and Samantha Lyn around. Ridiculous, right? Or maybe it was smart. Think of the publicity if this turned out to be the engagement of the century. Samantha Lyn deserved it . . . but not with Clark. Maybe that was an opinion that Ashley had given me. I really didn’t know Clark or his parents. Maybe there was more to the boy than I got from my first impression.

  Or maybe he was the prankster and lazy troublemaker that Ashley had hinted at that night.

  I decided that the thing to do was to call Samantha before this got too far. I pulled into my driveway and used my smartphone to do some sleuthing. Gathering up my things, I got out of the car, waved at Mrs. Crivitz, who peered out her dining room window, and unlocked my back porch door. The curtains fell shut as I entered the house and closed the door behind me. I dropped my things on the small dinette table near the back door, took off my coat and hung it up. I unwrapped my scarf from around my neck and tossed it up on a hook on the wall.

  I left my boots by the door and contacted Whitney for Samantha’s cell phone number. Once I had her number, I typed a brief text message into my phone. “Hi, Samantha Lyn, this is Pepper Pomeroy from the wedding Saturday night. Can we talk?”

  “Okay,” came a texted reply.

  I made myself coffee, dialed the number, and Samantha picked up. “Hi.” Her voice sounded wobbly.

  “Hi, Samantha.”

  “Hi, Pepper.” She sounded as if she were crying.

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  “No,” she said, her voice watery. “I just . . . I can’t believe Ashley died.”

  “Oh, honey, I’m sorry. I saw you talking to Ashley that night. Did you know her well?”

  Samantha sniffed. “Yeah, we met at a different wedding. She was nice. She took a lot of Clark’s crap without being mean about it. You know?”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “It’s just so weird. I’ve never known anyone who died. I mean, one minute she was there and the next she was dead.”

  “You’ve never known anyone who died? Not even, like, your grandparents?”

  “Yes.” Samantha hiccupped a quiet sad sob. “But they died when I was little. My parents never let me go to the funeral or anything. Pepper, I don’t know what to do. I mean, is there a funeral for Ashley? Should I go? What do you wear? What about like a visitation and stuff? I Googled funerals and it all seems so weird. There’s a protocol, right? Why don’t they teach you about these things at school?”

  “Oh, honey, it’s okay. I’ve been to a few funerals,” I said. “I have family in the area and my parents have older friends and such. People die. It’s not hard to go to a funeral.”

  “Can you help me? I . . . I just want to do the right thing for Ashley, you know?”

  “Sure, honey,” I said. “I can help.”

  “Can you meet me tomorrow afternoon?” she asked. “I’d like to see you in person.”

  “Sure,” I said. I bit my bottom lip. I wanted to ask her more about her conversation with Ashley but she was so broken up, now was simply not the time. I set up a time to meet her at a local coffee shop.

  “Wait, why did you call me?” she asked.

  “Can we talk about it when we meet?”

  “Sure,” she said. “See you soon, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  It was too bad I didn’t find out a bit more. It would have been nice to be able to tell Detective Murphy about Samantha Lyn’s connection with Ashley. But right now there was nothing to go on but the fact that they had talked and that Samantha Lyn was pretty broken up over it.

  Chapter 7

  “Thanks for stopping by the station,” Detective Murphy said as I stepped into his tiny office space. Detective Murphy had a big old wooden desk stuck in the farthest corner of the police station. There was a bookshelf behind him, stuffed with notebooks of cases and law books and other reference materials. His phone system was old and plastic beige. A bulky computer screen took up half the space on the desk, along with a keyboard and a mouse that battled for the rest of the space with papers, Post-it notes, and other office supplies. He had a dirty mug half full of forgotten coffee and another mug filled with pens and pencils and highlighters.

  The air in his cramped office smelled of old, burnt coffee and bad aftershave.

  Detective Murphy and I had developed a sort of father-daughter friendship over the last few months. He said I reminded him of his daughter, Emily, a bright young woman with a problem boyfriend. I’d done my best to hear his complaints and try to keep him from driving his daughter into defending the boyfriend. He wasn’t happy with the wait-and-see game plan, but I reassured him it was best.

  “Sure, no problem. You wanted to talk to me?” I settled back and studied the man. He was in his mid-fifties and had a hound-dog face with intelligent eyes. Today he wore a dress shirt with the collar open and the sleeves rolled up. His navy suit coat draped across the back of his old creaky chair.

  “How are things with you?” he asked. “I see you have a new boyfriend.”

  I felt the heat of a blush. “Gage, yes, I’ve known him since high school.”

  “Since high school? Did he know your ex?”

  “Yes.” My blush deepened. “They were best friends. When I broke up with Bobby, Gage got up the courage to ask me out.”

  “So you went from one guy to another?”

  “Wait.” I sat up straight. “I wasn’t seeing them both. Bobby and I were broken up. Gage was a friend first. It sort of morphed into something else.”

  He chuckled and raised his hand in a sign to stop. “Okay, okay, I wasn’t making any judgment. I was thinking of Emily. Maybe there’s another guy waiting for her loser of a boyfriend to fall out of favor.”

  “How’s that going?” I asked. “You didn’t say anything, did you?”

  “No, no,” he said, and sat back. “I’ve taken your advice and simply been a sympathetic ear.”

  “Sympathetic? Does that mean there is trouble in paradise?”

  “Let’s just say things are getting rocky.” He picked up his pencil and tapped the end on his desk. “I’m taking your advice and not saying anything. It’s tough though. I want to tell her to kick that lazy bum out of her house.”

  “You do that and she’ll hold on tighter,” I warned.

  “I know, I know,” he said.

  “How was your visit? Wasn’t she just at your house for a week?”

  “The visit was good,” he said with a smile. “She admitted that she misses me. That’s how I got the feeling that there is something going on. You’ll be proud of me, though. I didn’t tell her to move back. I asked how she liked her job and the area. She said that the job was okay, but she could get a job like that anywhere.”

  “Anywhere . . . as in Chicago?” I asked.

  “I didn’t push my luck,” he said. “I merely mentioned that things were picking up in the area and that I had heard her best friend Kendra had gotten a job downtown and that she was really happy.”

  “Nice,” I said. “Did Emily take the bait?”

  “The next day when I was on the couch watching the game, she plopped down beside me, put her head on my shoulder, and said that she wanted to move back,” he said, and his eyes sparkled. “I said, ‘Oh?’” He smiled, stretching his droopy jowls tight. “She leaned against me and acted all casual. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘but I’m afraid.’”

  “She’s afraid?”

  “Yes,” he said, and waved his hand. “She said she was worried I’d try to control her life if she moved back.”

  “Would you?” I asked, and leaned forward. “Don’t answer right away,” I said, and raised my hand to cut him off. “Think about it hard. Would you want to stop by at random times like you do to me?”

  “I don’t stop by at random times,” he protested.

  “What was last night?” I asked, and sat back.

  “I wanted to talk about Ashley.”

  “You could have called,” I said, making my point. “We’re friends, right?”

  “Yes,” he said. “You know I consider you a daughter like Emily.”

  “Then you need to think carefully,” I said. “If Emily moves back, you need to respect boundaries.”

  “Like?”

  “Like calling before you show up at her door,” I said. “Like giving her space and not expecting to see her every other day.”

  “I wouldn’t,” he protested.

  “Or even once a week.”

  That shut him up. His mouth worked but no words came out. “Not even Sunday dinner?”

  “Talk to her, ask her what amount of involvement would make her comfortable,” I said. “Be patient and let her include you in her life.”

  “This stinks,” he said, and put down the pencil. “All I’m supposed to do is stand back and let Emily run the show?”

  “Yes,” I said, and nodded. “My parents and I have worked out a nice system. They call if they need anything, but mostly I call and it works out well. You’d be surprised how often I call.”

  “I suppose this is your way of telling me that you want me to call before I show up at your door.”

  I smiled. “It wouldn’t hurt.”

  “Fine,” he said. Then he straightened up. “Listen, I didn’t ask you here to only talk about Emily.”

  “What’s up?”

  “I want to talk to you again about Ashley Klein,” he said, his dark eyes concerned. “You were the first to respond. You tried CPR on her, right?”

  “Yes, I did, but it didn’t work.”

  “Why?” he asked.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Why did you step up to do CPR? There were twenty people there.”

  “I don’t know,” I said, and shrugged. “It seemed like the right thing to do. I talked to her earlier that night and I felt like I knew her. I couldn’t just not try to save her.”

  “You talked to her?”

  “Yes, I sort of hung out at the bar. She seemed like a nice person, very intuitive.”

  “The preliminary lab results came back. It looks like she died of a drug and alcohol overdose,” he said, his expression tightening with disgust. “Did she seem high to you when you were talking to her?”

  “What? No,” I said, and shook my head. “She didn’t seem high or spacy. Her eyes were clear and except for the headache she seemed as normal as you and I.”

  “She had a headache?”

  “Yes,” I said. “She got a sharp pain and closed her eyes, pressing her temples. She told me it was a flash headache and she got them sometimes.”

  “So that’s what you talked about at your sister’s wedding reception?” he asked.

  I sat back and put my hands in my lap. “She made these great cocktails. I had never tried them before. Bobby was a beer guy. Anyway, I was interested in the cocktails because I thought I might do a 1950s theme at one of my proposals. So I talked to her about them. She told me she served them at a couple of weddings.”

  “So she was a regular at the country club,” he assumed.

  “No, weirdly, she told me this was her first country club gig and I believed her. She didn’t really look the country club server type. But then this strange thing happened.”

  “What strange thing?” he asked.

  “These two kids came up. They looked about eighteen or nineteen and the guy demanded that she make him a cocktail.”

  “Did she?”

  “No, she refused and the guy got upset and started to tell Ashley he was going to have her fired for insubordination, but the girl, Samantha Lyn, tells him to cool it. She orders them both sodas—Cokes, I think she said. Anyway, Ashley gave the kids a glass of soda each. The guy, Clark Fulcrum, made some threat—like he was going to tell his Mom that Ashley wouldn’t serve him and she would never work another country club wedding.”

  “That seems a bit extreme,” Detective Murphy said.

  “Yes, I thought so, but then Samantha Lyn apologized and she and Ashley talked for a while. It seems that Ashley had a run-in with Clark and Samantha Lyn at another event. Both times, I guess, the guy was all talk and no action. You know sullen, spoiled stuff.” I shrugged. “The weird part is these kids are so young and yet their parents are pushing for them to get married. Mrs. Fulcrum called me today to set up a meeting to plan their engagement.”

  “What?”

  “I know, right? As soon as Clark’s mom—Sugar Fulcrum—learned I planned Warren’s proposal, she searched me out at the wedding and asked for my card. She and Samantha Lyn’s mom are meeting me tomorrow at the Pavilion to plan ‘The proposal of the century,’” I said, and used air quotes.

  “What parent would want their kid to get married under the age of twenty-one?”

  “Apparently these two do. The kids should at least be of drinking age before they get married. Don’t you think?”