Chapter 36 #2
Bo’s eyes flick to my tablet. “That’s your focus?”
“Not solely,” I say.
“Here we go. Here’s the set.” He invites us to stand next to him as images of groomsmen in the foreground and the champagne tower in the background fill the screen.
There are a lot of them.
The first one is actually just the groom standing there alone.
In the corner, you can see the Stanley people finishing the tower.
More of the groomsmen get into the shot, and the tower is there in the background.
Later images show the groomsmen raising glasses in a toast, drinking, making faces, and then play-fighting.
The tower is still visible in the background corner.
“These men would be utterly unfit for battle,” growls Alexandru.
“To say the least,” Bo says in his judgey way. Definitely one of the fake carefree moments he disdains.
I spot a shot of Kip talking to the Stanley Catering people. And he’s right near the table. I lean in. “Would you be able to enlarge that part with Kip?”
Bo hits a few buttons, and we study the shot.
“Can you zero in on Kip’s hand in all of these?”
Bo complies. Kip touches the table now and then, and at one point, he crouches down and looks at something, but you can’t see his hands.
“I wish we had another angle,” I say.
“Those caterers are both watching him,” Alexandru says. “They would see if he did something to the table, would they not?”
“So you think it’s Kip?” Bo asks.
“Anybody interacting with this table is a suspect,” I say.
“I see,” Bo says in a tone of voice that suggests he really, really thinks Kip might be a suspect.
The images sharpen, shift. Kip’s mouth freezes in mid-sentence here and there. “Seems like he’s trash-talking,” I observe.
“I wouldn’t doubt it,” Bo says.
Sadly, there’s nothing that shows Kip up to something, though the one where he’s crouching is a bit suspicious. But according to Lisa, he’d have to be affixing something to the table and the men are staring at him.
We spot one where Whitney comes into the frame, and I ask Bo to zoom in on her as she places the vignettes, as Lisa called them. We ruled her out because she wasn’t at the wedding with the curtain fire, but I want to see the vignettes. They’re a perfect place to hide something.
Bo’s voice is sharp with interest. “Whitney, huh.”
“As Ms. Renfield said, anybody interacting with this table is a suspect,” Alexandru says.
Is Alexandru annoyed with Bo, or is it his hunger?
Bo gives me a confused look. “Ms. Renfield?”
“My father was a Renfield,” I say, though that doesn’t really explain it because... NOT MY NAME!!
There’s a shot where goth Lisa brings one of the caterers a drink and toys with one of Whitney’s garlands, chatting.
It couldn’t be her, though, being that she was only present at two of the weddings, though she’d be an amazing suspect, considering her engineering and tech gadget know-how.
None of the guests on our short list show up, though there are gaps when Bo wasn’t shooting.
“Can you recall Harlan being there?” I ask.
“Harlan.” Bo stares at a window, thinking. “Not specifically, but he is everywhere.”
“Where is the actual collapse shot?” I ask, eager to see the picture that Kip was so excited about.
“Here.” Bo enlarges a shot of the glasses in a low pile with blurs above it.
“This is the picture Kip was so enthralled with?” I ask.
“I suppose,” Bo says.
“Wow. Okay. No offense, but he acted like the collapse shot was the most amazing photo he’d ever seen. Like it belonged in a gallery.”
Bo smirks. “I think there was a bit of schadenfreude happening there. Kip is usually the one to build these towers, but the groom wanted the Stanley Catering crew to do it. Kip was pissed that he was passed over, so he loved that it fell.”
“So you didn’t get any shots of the cleanup?”
Bo screws up his lips. “Wasn’t really the kind of moment I was hired to photograph.”
“Can you describe what you saw?”
He furrows his brow at the wall where there’s a giant print of a bride and groom swinging on a swing set. “People were crowding the perimeter, though some idiots walked in it. Staff went in with brooms and towels, trying to contain the damage. Bride was crying.”
“Anyone stepping in to help in a way that seemed off?”
Bo shakes his head slowly. “Not that I saw.”
Then I ask him about the fireworks wedding.
“My god, how many weddings did this person ruin?”
“A lot,” I say.
Bo hits a few buttons. “Looks like Roy hasn’t gotten them into the cloud yet. So these are your suspects? Kip and Whitney? That’s who you wanted me to zoom in on.”
“Whitney wasn’t at all the weddings in question, such as the curtain fire wedding,” I tell him. “One of her employees was the planner there, so we’ve ruled her out.”
Bo winces theatrically. “I hate to say this, but if Grace was there, Whitney was there. She would’ve at least stopped by.”
“They only hired Grace. For the day of,” I say.
“Doesn’t matter. Whitney doesn’t trust her staff.”
I perk up at that. “Really? She wasn’t on the list...”
“Trust me. It’s a known thing among brides that when you hire one of Whitney’s assistants the day of, you get at least a little bit of Whitney.
It’s a cheap way to get Whitney involved in your wedding without paying for Whitney.
She’s a notorious micromanager. Always manages to sneak in and critique things. ”
“Really?”
“Notorious. They hate it.”