Page 144 of Mile High Ex's Dad
“The champagne. I need to know who brought it in.”
He thinks for a second. “It wasn’t part of the original breakfast flow. It was specially requested.”
“By who?”
“The groom’s family.”
My grip tightens on the clipboard. “Do you have a name?”
“Yes,” he says, then frowns. “I don’t remember it now, though.”
I wait.
He rubs at his temple, trying to pull it back. “I think it was the groom’s aunt.”
I look at him. “Are you sure?”
He nods once, uncertainly. “I think so.”
“She wasn’t here yesterday morning,” I say.
That stops him. For a second he just stares at me.
“Really?” he says.
“Yes,” I say, thinking about my encounter with Anna yesterday. She had arrived. Or had she? Maybe she was intentionally missing from the ceremony.
He looks away, searching his memory again, and now I can see the confidence draining out of it. “Then maybe I’m making a mistake,” he says. “It was definitely a woman, though.”
“That narrows it down to half the house,” I say.
That gets the faintest nervous smile out of him. “She was with the groom’s side,” he says. “That much I’m sure of. Or at leastshe acted like she was. She said the family wanted champagne added in after the first coffee service.”
“And no one questioned it?”
He gives me a look. “At a wedding like this?”
Fair. People with the right voice and the right clothes don’t need to sneak. They just give instructions and expect the room to move around them.
I glance toward the lawn through the service doors, then back at him. “If you saw her again, would you know her?”
He hesitates. “Maybe,” he says. “Not by name. By face, I think.”
That’s something.
I nod once. “All right. Don’t mention this to anyone else yet.”
“Actually, someone already came asking about it last night.”
“Who?” I ask, frowning.
“Didn’t catch his name, a tall, bald guy.”
Yuri, I think. So, they are still investigating whatever happened yesterday. So that means Viktor’s life is in danger.
I wince, vanishing the thought before it can take over. But why am I so upset? He’s a hardened criminal, a pakhan, as they call him. He’s a bad person. And yet.
Another thought occurs to me. If the chef told Yuri what he told me, then Yuri has the same description I do. A well-dressed older woman from the groom’s side. Someone confident enough to give instructions and be obeyed.
