I gagged on my gum.

"TURN AROUND! NOW! DO IT!"

My heart had leapt and exploded, and I was barely able to turn around, let alone speak.

Brent Bell stood there, blinking. "Wait a minute. You're...you're the caterer we met."

"That's right!" I said, by now gushing adrenaline. "We met at the flower shop, remember? I'm Madeline Bean. Please," I said, still in shock, "put that thing down."

Brent Bell stood in his stocking feet holding a raised baseball bat.

"What the hell are you doing here?"

I noticed he did not lower the bat.

"Sara gave me her key."

We stood like that in the brand spanking new kitchen for a few more seconds. My racing pulse made a stab at slowing down. Where the hell had he been hiding? I had looked in most of the rooms. Finally, Brent lowered the bat and I could feel my heartbeat begin to drop below 300 beats per.

"Look," Brent said, with a lot of force, "I don't know what you think you're doing here, but you better leave." He was breathing pretty hard, making me guess his adrenal glands were surging just like mine.

"Okay," I agreed. "Okay. Let's be calm." I took a few measured breaths. "I want you to know," a few more breaths, "I did try knocking."

"I thought you were somebody selling something. I thought you'd gone away."

"Sorry."

"Yeah, well...shit!" Brent gestured with the bat like he'd really like to smash something. "I'm sorry, too. I've been sacked out in the laundry room, and..." He rested the bat down again. "If you don't already know, I've split with Sara. Look, I don't really want any company right now. I don't want to talk about this."

"Everybody is worried. Can't we sit down for a minute, as long as I'm here? Would you care for a drink or something?"

My mesh bag, which featured an unopened two-liter bottle of soda along with a few chocolate bars, seemed to catch and hold Brent's attention.

"I haven't really been...eating anything, I guess."

"That's not good."

As my initial shock was wearing off, I began to notice little details. Like, for instance, young stud Brent Bell looked like last Thursday's leftovers. He stood there in a dirty T-shirt and those formal tuxedo pants with the black satin stripe up the sides. In stocking feet. Looking at the blond stubble of his unshaven face, I had to guess he'd either been overly influenced by some Miami Vice rerun, or he hadn't changed in days. He looked pretty dazed.

"There's fresh fruit," I said, trying not to spook him. "Why don't I get you some?"

I opened a few of the sleek brushed aluminum cabinets and drawers and discovered about fifty place settings of brand new Royal Crown Derby wedding china and an equally impressive supply of designer silver and Waterford crystal. The never-been-used refrigerator's new icemaker provided the perfect half-moon cubes for our Diet Coke, and soon I'd fixed up a relatively humble fruit plate on a thousand-dollar English platter. I added the Nestle Crunch bars, for fiber. From a gourmet's standpoint, I had committed sacrilege, but I was positively desperate for a shot of caffeine and Brent needed some carbs, quick.

He watched me slice up the last of the ripe cantaloupe. As soon as it was cut he grabbed a piece, popping it into his mouth.

"You don't have to do this," he said, eating off the platter with his fingers.

"It's fine," I said. "Let's go sit down in the dining room."

"No!"

I stared at him, alarmed.

"It's just," he said, looking worried, "I shouldn't be here. I'm trying not to use anything. What I mean is, I don't want to mess anything up. I've been staying on the floor of the laundry room."

"Brent," I said, "isn't this your place, yours and Sara's?"

"I shouldn't be here. Man, if Sara found me here she'd have me arrested. I just needed a place to think. I'm out of school, you know. And I wasn't ready to...I didn't want to talk to anyone. Promise me you won't tell Sara I'm here."

"Brent, honey...she already knows."

"Damn it!" Brent Bell looked as much like a man who is at the point of tears as I've ever seen. "Damn it!" He picked up the bat again, gripping it hard, and for a moment I thought the gleaming new toaster might be history.

"May I make a suggestion? Why don't we sit down? Maybe we could just sit here at the counter."

"No! I don't want to touch the chairs or anything."

"Then we can sit on the floor."

"What?"

As I moved the plates and goblets to the kitchen floor, I kept talking. "You know, a picnic on the floor. You've gotta eat, Brent. You look...well...not great."

I sat down and unwrapped a Crunch bar.

He stood there staring at me. I took a bite. Then he sat down on the green tile next to me and grabbed a plate.

"Oh, God." He picked up a strawberry and ate it whole.

I kept my eyes on him and took a sip of Diet Coke. What the hell was going on here? Bride heartbroken. Bridegroom acting weirder than shit. I was at a loss. What, I wondered, would Vivian Duncan have done if confronted with this loony? I couldn't imagine. But one thing seemed certain. Vivian would not be sitting cross-legged eating chocolate on the cold floor.

"This is good. Thanks." He reached for the grapes. "I guess I was a little out there."

"Just a little."

"This reminds me of when I used to work parties and we'd get to eat all the leftovers back in the kitchen. Thanks."

"Brent, may I ask you a question?"

The guarded look returned, but he didn't say no.

"Are you really sure about this breakup with Sara?"

"Listen, it's not like that. It's just gotten out of control, you know? I don't want to hurt anyone. I mean, I love Sara."

This was not sucking. I must have a gift.

"So you love her. And you married her. But, well, something must have gone pretty wrong because now you're living in a laundry room, starving yourself, and attacking people with a baseball bat."

He stopped eating and looked ill.

Oops. Perhaps I had to work on my technique.

"I'm desperate," he said. "I have no other choices."

Desperate? What if...? For a moment there, I began to have a second thought.

"Please don't tell me you killed Vivian Duncan, Brent, because I quizzed Sara on the subject and she explicitly assured me you have an airtight alibi!"

"Me? What are you talking about? I didn't kill Vivian. Are you nuts? But I couldn't stay married to Sara when...ah, shoot! I am trying to do the noble thing here, okay? I am trying to protect everybody. There's stuff I can't tell you. Stuff I wouldn't want anybody to know. Leave it alone."

"Stuff about you?"

"Maybe."

"Stuff you didn't want to talk to the police about," I said, starting to get excited. Of course! He was not expecting the police to arrive at his wedding and start asking questions about...

The rollers tumbled into place.

"Oh my God, Brent, did you ever work for Vivian when you were home from school?"

"What? What did she tell you?"

"Did you work as a waiter for Vivian's weddings?"

"So? What if I did? Lots of college guys pick up waiting gigs. The party circuit is fun. You can work whenever you're in town, no problem."

Didn't I know it. That's the sort of help I usually hired, myself, when I was catering parties. No problem with that. There had to be something more that Brent couldn't stand to have come out on the night of his wedding.

"Please," Brent said. "Please, leave this alone. I can't say any more. This is the whole reason I had to get away."

"Well, maybe this is something that will blow over. Maybe the police will find the man who killed Vivian soon, and you won't have to answer any questions."

"Do you think so?" Brent asked. "That's what I was hoping."

"So, aside from that 'stuff,' which we just won't talk about, is there any other reason you and Sara have to be apart?"

Brent looked at me, a slightly older woman drinking Diet Coke, sitting on the floor in my tight jeans and tan suede jacket How much of a threat could I be?

"Well, there's her grandfather, Jack Gantree. Know him?"

"We've met."

"I've always hated the jerk, but I could never explain it to Sara. All those animal heads he's got mounted all over the house. Have you been there?"

I nodded.

"Well, then, you've seen them. They're disgusting. I don't get it. Their whole family was supposed to be these famous naturalists, or something. And instead of protecting and preserving all these animal species, her granddad ends up stuffing them and displaying them like trophies. It always bugged me."

Well, I could see his point.

"But that isn't the worst part. Jack was always buying things for Sara. He could afford to buy everything in the world for her and he usually did."

"That must have been hard to deal with."

"Hard? I told Sara I could never marry her. I said I couldn't live up to all that wealth she'd been brought up with. But she kept pleading with me. She begged me not to be prejudiced just because her family had money. What was I supposed to do?"

I let him go on talking, letting the anger roll out.

"When we finally did decide to get married, I told Sara I wanted to elope, just the two of us. Who needs everyone else? But then her grandfather got wind of it and that was the last time I ever heard about our simple, private little wedding. The next thing we know, Big Grandpa Jack brings in Vivian Duncan, for God's sake! Just what was I supposed to do? And then Vivian swept right in and we're planning the wedding of the century."

What power did one young and handsome man have in the face of the bulldozer that was Vivian?

"Man, I don't know how it could have spun so far out of control so fast. First it was the wedding at the museum. Then it was this condo-a little wedding gift I never wanted us to accept. Then there was the surprise honeymoon, all planned by Grandpa Jack. We were supposed to go on safari or something. More of Jack's money. And what am I supposed to do? Just live off the fat? Just beg Grandpa Jack for another favor?"

The thing is, I really did know how he felt. I'd seen more party budgets spin wildly out of control than most. Families who spend more on one party than on their children's education. Money, even when there's a lot of it around, can cause some serious grief.

"So why didn't you tell Sara how you felt?"

"Are you kidding? You should have seen her face. She was like a princess. Every time I suggested we should turn something down, I could see the way she looked at me. She thought I was being silly. It was 'only a wedding' or it was 'only a gift.' Anyway, I told her it all ended after we were married-the gifts from Jack, the money."

"I realize there are problems, and they're none of my business, but you love each other. It doesn't seem..."

"Look, it's gotten too crazy. I think maybe I know who killed Vivian and it's somebody who is very close to Sara. Okay? Are you satisfied now?"

I looked at him, amazed. "You think Jack Gantree killed Vivian?"

"Don't you tell her that! He's the only one she's got. Don't you tell her I said..."

"But why?" I interrupted. "Why would Gantree...?"

"He could turn on people. He could be buddy-buddy one minute and then slam a guy the next. I heard him talking to Vivian, right before dinner, and he was really way over the top. He kept saying how he'd found out something. Well, I overheard that and I got worried. What had Gantree found out, you know?"

I could imagine how that might have made Brent nervous at his own wedding.

"He called Vivian a 'lying whore.' Nice, huh? But when I heard enough to figure out it had nothing to do with me, I stopped paying close attention. Then later, after they found her, I remembered one thing Jack had said. He said she'd wind up dead."

I felt a chill. Brent Bell may have had some sad connection to Vivian Duncan that he preferred his new bride never find out about, but what had really been upsetting him were his suspicions. He believed his grandfather-in-law committed murder. Now that could spook anyone into hiding out and thinking things over.

"Do you remember anything about their argument?" I was sure this would be the information I needed to make sense of Vivian's murder.

"He was upset about something that happened twenty-three years ago. And Vivian kept saying, 'Calm down, Jack. He's not going to say anything.'"

"I wonder what that was about."

"Jack is a tough guy. He likes to threaten people. But this time I think he lost his mind or something. An hour later, they found Vivian's body."

"So you took off," I said. "But why didn't you tell Sara?"