Died to Match: Chapter 1

Masks are dangerous. The merest scrap of silk or slip of cardboard can eclipse one’s civilized identity, and set loose the dark side of the soul.

Trust me. You take a pair of perfectly well-behaved newspaper reporters, or software engineers or whatever, dress them up as Spiderman and a naughty French maid and whammo! It’s a whole new ball game.
Which is why this party was getting out of hand. Free drinks can make people crazy, but free costumes make them wild. Two hundred big black envelopes had gone out to Paul and Elizabeth’s friends and colleagues, inviting them to a Halloween engagement party in the Seattle Aquarium, down at Pier 59 on Elliott Bay. And tucked inside the envelope was a very special party favor: a coupon for the persona of one’s choice at Characters Inc., a theatre-quality costume shop.

So tonight, more than a hundred and fifty reasonably civilized people were living out their fantasies among the fishes. And the fantasies were getting rowdy. It all started innocently enough: Madonna flirting with Mozart, Death with his scythe trading stock tips with Nero and his violin, Albert Einstein dirty dancing with Monica Lewinsky. And everyone toasting the engaged couple with affection and good cheer.

Paul Wheeler, the groom-to-be, was news editor at the Seattle Sentinel; he made a skinny, smiley swashbuckler, sort of Indiana Jones Lite. His fiancée, Elizabeth (“not Liz”) Lamott, was a tough-minded Microsoft millionaire who had retired at twenty-nine. Dressed as Xena the Warrior Princess, Elizabeth looked drop-dead sexy, and more than capable of beheading barbarian warlords. The Wheeler and Lamott families would all be at the wedding in two weeks-an extravaganza at the Experience Music Project-but tonight’s bash was more of a co-ed bachelor party.

And like so many bachelor parties, headed straight to hell. Mister Rogers was juggling martini glasses, quite unsuccessfully, near ‘Principles of Ocean Survival.’ A well-tailored Count Dracula had knocked over the sushi trays at ‘Local Invertebrates.’ Various members of the Spice Girls and Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band were disappearing into the darkened grotto of ‘Pacific Coral Reef’ and returning with their costumes askew. And at all the liquor stations, masked revelers had begun pushing past the bartenders to pour their own drinks-a danger sign even when the crowd is in civvies.

I wasn’t wearing a mask, and I certainly wasn’t fantasizing, except about keeping my professional cool and getting our damage deposit back from the Aquarium. It was my hands the party was getting out of: “Made in Heaven Wedding Design, Carnegie Kincaid, Proprietor.” I usually stick to weddings, too, but business had been iffy ever since I’d been a suspect in the abduction of one of my brides. Everybody reads the headlines, nobody reads the follow-up, and now my name, besides being weird in the first place, had a little shadow across it in the minds of some potential clients.

So an extra event with an extra commission had been hard to turn down. And the formidable Ms. Lamott had been impossible to turn down. When Elizabeth wanted something, she got it, whether she was launching products for Bill Gates or, more recently, harvesting charity donations from Seattle’s crop of wealthy thirty-somethings. Elizabeth asked me to manage her engagement party in person, I explained that I really don’t do costumes, and suddenly, somehow, there I was in a long jaggedy-hemmed black gown and a crooked-peaked witch’s hat, stationed by the champagne at ‘Salmon & People: A Healthy Partnership,’ and reminding my waiters that cleaning broken glass off the floor comes first, no matter how many guests are demanding more booze.

“Carnegie!”

“What?” I snapped. “Oh, sorry, Lily. I’m losing my mind here.”

Lily James, my date for the party, was a statuesque black-skinned Cleopatra, rubber snake and all, with her wide, high-lidded eyes elaborately painted into an Egyptian mask of gold and indigo. By day, Lily staffed the reference desk at Seattle Public, but tonight she was every inch the voluptuous and commanding Queen of the Nile. Of course, Lily could be voluptuous and commanding in sweatpants, I’d seen her do it any number of times.

Why was my best friend also my date? Because I’d had a spat with Aaron Gold, my who-knows-what. The spat was about Aaron’s smoking, which I found deplorable and he found to be none of my business. But it went deeper than that. We were teetering on the brink of being lovers, and life on the brink was uncomfortable. At least it was for me; I kept hesitating and analyzing and wondering if we were right for each other. Aaron’s view was that we could analyze just as easily lying down.

Aaron was at the party, of course. All of the Sentinel’s reporters were there, gleefully adding to the pandemonium. I could see a laughing, breathless bunch of them now, escorting Paul and Elizabeth up the tunnel from the underwater dome room, where the dancing was. As they headed for the martini bar, Aaron put his arm around Corinne Campbell, the paper’s society writer. A handsome couple: he was quite dashing in a Zorro mask and cape, and she made a blonde, bosomy Venus in a filmy white gown criss-crossed with silver cords.

I knew Corinne professionally, of course-she often wrote about my brides-and I’d been seeing more of her now that she was one of Elizabeth’s bridesmaids. She wasn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer, but she could be pleasant enough, in an overeager kind of way. Especially to men. I bet she found the scent of cigarettes manly and exciting.

“I said, I’m having a fine time.” Lily’s voice broke through this sour speculation. “You’re not listening, are you? You’re mooning after Aaron.”

“I am not! I’m keeping an eye on all the guests. He just happens to be one of them.”

“Whatever you say.” Her glittery make-up caught the light as she gazed around and let loose the deep, provocative laugh that often startled the library’s patrons. “This is a fabulous place for a party!”

“You bet your asp it is,” I said, scanning the crowd over her shoulder. “But it’s tough to supervise, with all these corridors and cul-de-sacs. I’ve got a couple of off-duty cops here as security and I haven’t talked to either one in hours except on the two-way radio. Makes me nervous.”

I was especially nervous about ‘Northwest Shores,’ a narrow grotto behind the martini bar. I’d already had to shoo some Visigoths off the handrail of the shorebird exhibit down at the end. The water in the little beach scene was only a foot deep, hardly a drowning matter, but if anybody tumbled over backwards it would terrify the long-billed curlews and they’d never let me rent this place again. The management, I mean, not the curlews.

“Well, everyone but you is having a blast,” said Lily. “Even Roger Talbot, in a quiet sort of way. I’m surprised he came.”

Talbot, publisher of the Sentinel and a prominent Seattle Democrat, was making a brief appearance to toast the happy pair. It was generous of him; he’d recently lost his wife to cancer, and could hardly be in a party mood. We watched him join the little crowd of newspaper people, shaking hands with Zorro, giving Venus a quick hug, raising his glass to lead a toast to Xena and Indy. In his black tuxedo and carrying a black topcoat, Talbot looked grave and distinguished among all the gaudy costumes.

“He’s really fond of Paul,” I told Lily. “And he’s on his way home from a medical fundraiser. I guess if you’re going to have a public career, you’ve got to put your private life aside.”

Not long before his wife’s death, Talbot had announced his candidacy for mayor of Seattle. He had a fighting chance, too, despite the incumbent’s popularity. He looked like a statesman, for starters, with the height and grace of a former college basketball star. More than that, he had a scholar’s grasp of detail and a reporter’s knack for crystallizing ideas. The word around town was that if Talbot did make it to the mayor’s office, he’d soon be packing a suitcase for the other Washington, the one back east.

“Carnegie, there you are!” Talbot raised a hand to me above the crowd and came over. Even with his air of strain and fatigue he was a handsome man, with a bold Roman nose and dark eyes and brows below thick, prematurely silver hair. “I understand you created this wonderful event. You do good work.”

“Thank you, Roger. Thanks very much.” I’m leery of politicians, as a rule, but still I found myself glowing at the praise. There was something about Roger Talbot’s gaze that made you feel special, singled out. I introduced him to Lily, and watched the magic take effect on her. That kind of charm must be money in the bank to an ambitious man. Talbot listened intently to Lily’s comments on the controversial design of the new downtown library, added a few well-informed remarks of his own, and then moved on.

“Well, he could eat crackers in my bed,” pronounced Lily, as we watched him walk away.

I was about to agree when we heard an angry shout from the martini bar. A knot of people tightened suddenly, their backs to us, intent on a scene we couldn’t see.

Over their heads, arcing high in the air, rose the scythe of Death.