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  "And learned that Kris Kringle Jingle might be missing," Kate added.

  Richard clattered a plate behind me. "The New Year's Eve wedding. Didn't you say the couple fired their first planner?"

  Kate snapped her fingers. "He's right. They did, but they didn't tell us who the first planner was."

  A feeling of dread came over me. "I'll bet it was Brianna. She probably heard we were taking it over and thinks we stole the wedding from her."

  "It's not your fault that she has no clue what she's doing," Richard said. "Just because you can take a decent photo of yourself in cute shoes holding a cup of coffee, does not mean you can plan a wedding. What is wrong with these Millennials?"

  "Hey," Kate said. "Not all Millennials are as awful as Brianna.”

  "If it is Brianna, what do we do about it?" I asked, gulping down the last of my chocolately, cold coffee and feeling grateful for both the caffeine and the sugar.

  "Do about it?" Richard huffed out a breath as he came to stand in front of me, both hands on his hips. "You don't do anything. It's not like you're going to turn down the wedding, and you can't let petty people change the way you live your life. The more successful you become, the more jealous people you'll have to deal with. Trust me, darling. It's a cross I've had to bear for years."

  I grinned at him, comforted by both his faith in me and my continuing success and his pep talk. "You're right. I can't let one person affect me so much."

  "That being said,” Richard waved one hand in the direction of my front door, "I might consider adding an extra dead bolt or two and perhaps one of those doorbell cameras."

  "You should add that just for Leatrice," Kate muttered.

  "I'm sure your hunky fiancé has it under control," Fern said. "I know I wouldn't worry if I lived with a cop that looked like that. You just know he's packing."

  My cheeks warmed as Richard rolled his eyes and flounced back into the kitchen.

  "I'm sure you're worrying over nothing," Carl said, his voice low and calm as he swirled pink blush over Kate's cheeks. "Most people are more bark than bite anyway. You just keep doing the good work you always do and don't worry about the rest. Karma will take care of that."

  I smiled at Carl. I'd missed his even-keeled manner over the past few years, although it was easy to understand why the first lady had loved having him around. "You're right. Thanks."

  "Anytime." He squeezed my shoulder. "Now, did you say something about Kris Kringle Jingle being missing?"

  "Do you know him?" I asked.

  He nodded as he stepped back, sizing up Kate's face and adding more blush to one cheek. "I worked at a Georgetown salon for years, remember? Kris Kringle Jingle always popped into the salon in December to say hello and sing a quick song."

  Fern chuckled. "He does that in my salon, too. You should see my old society ladies light up."

  I closed my eyes as Fern unleashed a cloud of spray over my head. "Did you know he's homeless?"

  "No." Carl sounded surprised. "I don't think he ever asked us for money."

  Fern stopped spraying. "He doesn't do Kris Kringle Jingle for money. It's his way of thanking the Georgetown residents."

  "Speaking of Georgetown residents," Kate said as Buster and Mack bustled in behind us, the jangling chains on their leather clothing alerting us to their arrival.

  "Sorry we're late," Mack called out. "It's been a crazy morning."

  "Don't worry," I said. In truth, I hadn't known they were coming over at all.

  "Thank heavens," Richard said. "I was worried I'd have to fashion some sort of candle centerpiece if you didn't get the flowers here in time."

  I twisted around to see that Mack and Buster held a massive floral centerpiece between them. I shot Richard a look. "You made them bring flowers?"

  Richard pressed a hand to his heart. "You expected me to set a table without fresh flowers? Really, Annabelle."

  I'm sorry, I mouthed to my burly friends before Fern turned my head back so I faced forward.

  "We're happy to do it," Mack said. "We were just running short on labor this morning, so it took twice as long to load the delivery trucks."

  Even though I couldn't see, I could hear the two men setting the arrangement on the dining table and Richard fussing over it and moving glassware.

  "Our usual guys were involved in the search," Buster added.

  Mack let out a long sigh. "Once we drop this off, we're going to head back and join them."

  "The search?" I wanted to turn back around but Fern held my head in place.

  "For Kris," Buster said. "The homeless in Georgetown have organized their own search party to look for him."

  I thought about the BOLO my fiancé had issued for Kris. I hoped between law enforcement and the search party, they'd locate him soon. It wouldn't feel like the holidays in Georgetown without the singing Santa.

  "Well, this isn't good," Kate said.

  "Agreed," I said. "I'd hoped Kris would have turned up by now."

  "Not that, this," Kate stared down at the phone in her lap as Carl leaned over his makeup table, swirling an eye shadow brush in a small pot of pale pink powder. "You know how our New Year's Eve bride already had her venue set? Well, I just got a text from the space manager, Trista. She comes to the wedding planner assistant happy hours. Apparently, Brianna signed the contract for the client, so it's technically her rental, and she just told them that the New Year's Eve event is no longer a wedding, it's a party for Brides by Brianna."

  My stomach dropped. "Can she do that?" I asked, even though I knew that she could. If she signed the contract, she was the client. I'd thought our new bride and groom had signed all their own contracts, but it looked like Brianna ran her business differently than we did. I assumed she did it so she could mark everything up, a practice I'd never believed in, but I knew some of our colleagues made a pretty penny doing it.

  "According to Trista, it's already done," Kate said with a groan.

  Fern made a disapproving noise in the back of his throat. "Looks like it's time to revive the tales about Madame Brianna."

  I was too worried to even attempt to talk Fern out of it. With only three weeks to go, our new wedding was back to square one. How were we going to find an available venue for New Year's Eve on top of everything else?

  Chapter 7

  “Try not to look like you're being held at gunpoint," Richard said, standing a few feet away as Kate and I posed on the sofa.

  I sat on one end, wearing the surprisingly appropriate pale green wrap dress Kate had chosen for me, while she perched on the armrest in a not-too-short winter white sheath. We both wore significantly more makeup than we usually did--including false lashes--but I knew it wouldn't look as dramatic in photos.

  "Which one of us are you talking to?" I asked, trying not to let my smile falter.

  "You," Kate, Richard, and Fern all said at once.

  I let out a breath and allowed my shoulders to sag. "Sorry. I can't stop thinking about the New Year's Eve wedding."

  "It's okay." The female photographer lowered her camera. "Take a minute while I readjust the lights."

  Fern rushed over holding a hair pick and a can of hairspray. "At least your style is holding up, sweetie."

  I gave him a quick once-over. Instead of the black pants and shirt he'd been wearing that morning, he now had on beige pants tucked into high black boots, a matching belted jacket, and a black beret. "Did you change?"

  Richard emitted an exasperated sigh as he joined us. "This is not a movie set, and you're not an old Hollywood director." He turned to face me, as Fern huffed something about Richard not having vision, then began fluffing Kate's hair. "I told you, darling. Don't worry. I'm making calls around town. If there's an available venue for New Year's Eve, I'll find it."

  "But what if there isn't? It's bad enough that we're going to have to reprint invitations and have them rushed, but now we might not have a location to put on the invitations."

  When I’d talked to the bride earlie
r, she’d been livid that her former planner had taken her venue. I’d been able to calm her down, but knowing brides the way I did, that calm wouldn’t last long if we couldn’t find a new site. Fast.

  Richard took my hand and gave it an awkward pat. "You worrying and making the photo shoot take even longer than it should isn't going to help anyone. I know it's hard, but you need to channel some of that patented Annabelle Archer Zen. Focus on nothing but getting these photos right. Then you can worry about the wedding venue."

  "And the wedding on Saturday and my engagement party?"

  “Both of which are already planned,” Kate reminded me.

  "That's why you have a team, right?" Richard asked. "No one can do everything single-handedly, even though you like to think you can."

  I managed a smile. Richard knew me too well. I did have a tendency to try to take on everything myself, even though time and time again I needed my friends to pull it all off. "You're right. Sorry I freaked out. I'm just rattled that a colleague would go after us and a client so blatantly."

  "Brianna is a not a colleague." Richard's voice was low. "If you ask me, she's a wannabe who's gotten too big for her britches."

  "Whatever she is," Kate said as Fern sprayed a final cloud of hairspray over her bob and moved away, “she's a horn in our side."

  I suppressed an urge to laugh at the mental image of horns sprouting from our sides. "Or a thorn."

  "Intolerable." Richard waved his hands in front of his face to disperse the high-end spray, although he could have just as easily been referring to Kate's habit of mangling expressions, which I sometimes suspected she continued to do just for his benefit.

  Kate shrugged. "The only reason she can take over the venue and have a personal party there is because she doesn't have a New Year's Eve wedding. I'm sure no one important will go to her party."

  "Not when we hire them for your client's wedding," Richard said with a wicked grin. "And Miss Malaprop is right. Brianna doesn't have any business. I mean, she's never once called me, and I'm the best caterer in the city."

  I knew that Brianna would never call Richard because she knew we were best friends, but I didn't want to remind him that I was a reason he was missing out on business, even if he was correct and there wasn't much to be had.

  "Ready?" the photographer asked from a few feet away.

  I straightened my shoulders. "Let's do this."

  Richard moved quickly out of the shot, standing next to Fern and Carl behind the light stand. He returned to tapping away on his phone, and I knew he was sending out his feelers for a venue. Richard had been in the DC wedding industry for far longer than I had and knew all the movers and shakers, as well as those who were off the radar. If anyone could track down a venue in a matter of hours, it would be him.

  "We need to do something about Brianna," Kate said between shots, her face frozen in a smile. "She's gone from annoying to problematic to disastrous for our business."

  "Chins down, ladies," the photographer said, moving in closer.

  I lowered my chin as the shutter clicked rapidly. "Like what? We had no idea she was the planner our new client fired or that she'd signed their contracts. I feel like this is an isolated occurrence."

  "What about all the times she spread rumors about us being murder magnets?"

  "To be fair," I said, “that's kind of true."

  The photographer moved to the right as she continued snapping. "Now turn your heads toward me."

  "We haven't been involved in a murder in months," Kate said, sounding affronted. "Practically a lifetime."

  I almost giggled. What did it say about us that we considered eight months without finding a dead body to be a good run?

  "Perfect," the photographer called out. "Those are great smiles!"

  "I agree that Brianna has been nothing but trouble for us, but it's not like we can run her out of town on a rail," I said.

  "I don't care what she's on, as long as she leaves," Kate said. "Fern will have some ideas, I'm sure."

  I glanced at Fern, fully expecting him to be holding a megaphone by his side and yelling 'Action'. "We don't have time to add 'blood feud' to this week's to-do list."

  "Fine," she sighed. "But don't expect Brianna to back down. That Southern belle is a Southern bi--"

  "That's it, ladies." The photographer lowered her camera. "I've got what I need."

  "Thank you," I said, sinking back on the couch.

  Kate flopped down next to me, her eyes sweeping the room. "This new look is kind of growing on me, although this couch is definitely not as comfortable as your old one."

  "That’s called structural integrity," Richard said, walking over. "Which those sad, old, yellow couch cushions barely have."

  "Say what you will about my furniture," I said. "It's comfortable. I don't think I could live in a place as perfect as this."

  "Pearls unto swine," Richard muttered, turning on his heel and walking over to thank the photographer.

  "I hope you have plans to do something fun later," Carl said, joining us on the couch. "You're all made up for date night."

  Kate raised her hand. "I do. I'd never let these long lashes go to waste."

  "Every night is date night for some people," I said.

  Kate twisted to face me. "If you tell me you and Reese are staying in and ordering Thai again, I'm going to go ballistic."

  "I don't know what we're doing. I didn't think I'd be so done up, so we didn't even discuss it."

  Carl nudged me. "Make him take you somewhere fabulous. You've got the smoky eyes to pull it off."

  Kate held up a warning finger. "And not a sports bar. I've seen how much your fiancé loves ESPN."

  It would be a shame to sit at home after having the former first lady's makeup artist do my face, although I didn't know how Reese would react to seeing me with such dramatic eyes. He was used to seeing me with barely a swipe of mascara and just a touch of face powder.

  "Speak of the very attractive devil," Kate said as the door opened, and Reese stepped inside.

  His eyebrows lifted as he took in the lights stands positioned throughout the room, Richard standing off to the side on his phone, Fern chatting with the photographer as she packed up her camera, and the multiple makeup cases and stools gathered by the door.

  I gave him a wave, and his eyes widened.

  "Is that your fiancé?" Carl asked in a hushed voice.

  "Mmm hmm," Kate answered for me. "And he's a cop. A detective, actually. He doesn't always look so scary, though."

  I stood as I registered the intense look on his face. We hadn't been living together for too long, but I knew when he was concerned.

  "How did the shoot go?" he asked, forcing a smile as I took his hand. "You look really pretty."

  "Thanks," I said. "It was good. What's wrong?"

  He released a breath. "That obvious, huh?" He scraped a hand through his hair. "It's about Kris."

  "Buster and Mack said they were joining all Kris's homeless friends to search for him. Maybe having all those people looking will help the search."

  Reese tightened his grip on my hand. "Actually, we found something."

  My stomach lurched. "Kris?"

  "Not exactly," he said. "We found his Santa suit covered in blood."

  Chapter 8

  “I should tell Jeannie," Fern said, holding a cold compress to his head as he reclined on the couch.

  We'd all been upset to learn that Kris Kringle Jingle's Santa suit had been found covered in blood, but Fern had taken it especially hard, slumping to the floor and having to be carried to the couch, where he lay sprawled from one end to the other. Kate had rescued his fallen beret from the floor and was now fanning him with it.

  Amid the hysteria, both the magazine photographer and Carl had made their excuses and left, so it was just the five of us.

  "I suspect she's heard by now," Reese said, sitting on the edge of one of the upholstered armchairs, his elbows leaning on his knees. "Word spreads pretty quickly
on the streets."

  Fern emitted a choked sob and mumbled something as Kate patted his shoulder and fanned faster.

  "Tell us again where you found it," Richard called from the kitchen where I knew he was quietly packing up his supplies. Not even a bloody Santa suit could slow Richard's instinct to tidy, although I knew he was trying to be discreet.

  Reese glanced down at his pocket-sized notebook. "Shoved in a dumpster in one of the alleys off M Street. It appeared sometime between late last night and this morning, because the beat cop didn't report seeing it on his patrol last night, and it was hanging out of the top."

  I paced a small circle behind the couch. "Just because the suit was found doesn't mean Kris is dead."

  Reese nodded solemnly. "No, but there was a lot of blood. If whoever was wearing the suit isn't dead, they're severely wounded."

  Fern made another strangled sound.

  "Why would someone hurt him, then dump the suit separately from the body?" I asked.

  My fiancé shrugged. "Maybe they're hoping his body won't be identified when it's found."

  "So you guys are searching for a body or a person?” Kate's voice was low and her brow furrowed.

  Reese didn’t answer.

  My throat constricted, and I blew out a breath. Who would want to hurt or kill a man who dressed as Santa and sang songs to cheer people up? It wasn't like he was panhandling, so he wouldn't have any cash on him for muggers. And according to Reese, he didn't have any sort of criminal record, so it wasn't like his past was catching up to him. As far as I could tell, Kris was innocent. If this had to do with something he thought he saw, whatever it was must have been pretty bad.

  "This is awful. The holidays won't feel the same without Kris Kringle Jingle,” Kate said, giving voice to what we all probably felt. "They should just cancel Christmas in Georgetown this year."

  I knew what she meant. Knowing that Santa was missing and might be dead didn't put you in the holiday spirit.

  Richard inhaled sharply from the kitchen. "Cancel Christmas? Are you out of your mind? I've got a half dozen holiday parties to cater in the next week. People overeating during the holidays is the only thing that gets my business through the horrific month of January when everyone is on a diet."