Annabelle Archer BoxSet, page 66
part #1 of Annabelle Archer Series
“Don’t I know it?” Richard leaned against the marble counter and flapped his beige suit jacket open and closed, flashing his bright orange shirt as he tried to cool himself down. “I left those Colonial Dames and drove over here like a maniac.”
“Colonial Dames?” Kate asked as I pulled her up.
“It’s a monthly luncheon I cater for some very sweet and very old southern ladies. Mostly chicken salad,” he said. “But as soon as Leatrice called and said you might be in danger, I tore over here.”
I touched Richard’s arm. “Thanks. We’re fine now.”
“Leatrice said that you were coming to talk to the neighbor. Did he do it?”
“No,” Kate said. “The groom and maid of honor were in on it together.”
Richard’s mouth dropped open. “The husband and best friend killed the bride? How twisted.”
“It was twisted all right,” I said. “And planned for years.”
Kate hopped up on the counter. “So the long game must have been for Dave to marry Tricia for the money, kill her, and inherit her part of the company, marrying Madeleine after a suitable period of mourning.”
“You have to admire that level of dedication,” Richard said. “Most millennials don’t stick with anything very long.”
“Hey,” Kate said. “I’ve been through thick and thin with Annabelle for almost six years and you don’t see me going anywhere.”
“You’re special.” I put an arm around Kate and elbowed Richard before he could make a snarky comment.
“You’re alive,” Leatrice said as she rushed into the kitchen with Fern close on her heels. She shook her phone at us. “When you’re alive you answer your phone.”
“Sorry,” I said. “Our phones are over at Frank’s house.”
“Leatrice,” Kate gasped. “You’re blond.”
“I know. Isn’t it glamorous?” She patted her platinum flip, releasing a burst of ammonia scent into the air. “Fern thinks it makes me look like Marilyn Monroe.”
“If Marilyn Monroe had been put through a fruit dehydrator,” Richard muttered.
I shot him a look as his phone rang and he stepped away to answer it.
“Thanks for calling Detective Reese,” I said to Leatrice. “And Richard, I guess.”
“Well, when we couldn’t reach you, Fern and I got worried.” Leatrice looked up at Fern, who nodded.
“We wanted to come ourselves, but her head was covered in hair color and tinfoil,” Fern said. “I had to rinse and dry her. But after that we rushed right over.”
I’d seen Leatrice go out in stranger headgear than tinfoil, but I didn’t say so. “No, calling the police was the right move.” Not that Leatrice bursting in with a head decked out in foil wouldn’t have been a decent distraction.
Fern pulled out a pocket brush and began touching up Leatrice’s hair. “So the groom and the maid of honor were in on it together after all. See? I told you she was a tramp.”
“You call every bridesmaid a tramp,” Kate said.
Fern winked. “I’m playing the odds, sweetie.”
“How did you find out?” I asked.
“We saw the cute detective on our way in,” Fern said. “Double yum.”
“Such a nice boy,” Leatrice said with a meaningful look to me.
I felt my face flush. Why did the mention of the detective have such an effect on me? It wasn’t like we’d been involved and every time I saw him I was replaying a night of passion in my head. We’d never done anything more than flirting. I shook my head and tried to think of something other than the admittedly yummy cop.
“I told you not to let them get into the wine,” Richard hissed into his phone a couple of feet away. A pause. “What do mean you had to step out for a few minutes?” Another pause. “How many times have I forbidden you to bring that flying squirrel to work?”
“Sounds like a dustup with the Dames,” Kate said to me.
Richard sucked in his breath. “Well did you catch him, or is he still running loose in Edith Partain’s kitchen?” He let out his breath. “Then keep him in the pantry for now, and take the wine away from the women. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
Richard disconnected and dropped his phone in his jacket pocket, then turned to us. “I have to run. The Colonial Dames drank too much, and apparently some of them are falling out of their chairs, and one of them took off her girdle.”
“In the middle of the lunch?” Kate asked. “Maybe weddings aren’t so bad after all.”
Richard squeezed my hand. “Call me later, darling.”
I nodded and watched him walk out of the house as Reese stepped in, the two men acknowledging each other with a nod. Richard had never lost his initial nervousness around Reese after being a suspect in a murder investigation, and he’d uniformly disapproved of any man I’d ever been interested in. Even though nothing had ever happened between the detective and me, I knew that Richard didn’t like the idea that something could.
“How’s Frank?” Kate asked as Reese joined our group in the kitchen.
“Alive.” Reese ran a hand through his dark hair. “The bullet got him in the shoulder, but he should make it.”
I felt a wave of relief. I couldn’t help feeling guilty for suspecting the man and encouraging Leatrice to stake out his house, so I was grateful that he would be okay.
Reese’s eyes widened for a moment when he spotted Leatrice. “That was quite a makeover.”
“Do you like my new look?” she asked.
He smiled at her. “It’s the most unforgettable transformation I’ve ever seen.”
“That’s one way to put it,” Kate said.
Leatrice either ignored Kate or didn’t hear her. She elbowed Fern. “Unforgettable. What do you think about that?”
Reese beckoned for me to step outside with him, so I slipped away as Fern started explaining how he’d taken Leatrice’s hair from neon cranberry to blond.
On the front porch I could see police cruisers with flashing blue lights jamming the street and an ambulance with its back doors hanging open. I assumed the paramedics were inside the house working on Frank.
Reese cleared his throat. “I wanted to ask you something important before I need to leave for the station to process the groom.”
“Anything,” I said.
He paused as an officer walked past us into the house. Then he closed the distance between us until we were inches away. He put one hand on my arm as he leaned down until his mouth almost touched my ear. “I’ve meant to ask you this for a while. Are you free for dinner this Saturday?”
I couldn’t help smiling as I realized that Mike Reese had finally asked me out on a real date and, for once, I didn’t have a wedding on a Saturday night. Things were looking up.
* * *
THE END
44
“She’s an internet troll, too?” Mack clutched Kate’s arm for support.
Kate staggered a few steps since Mack had a hundred pounds on her, and then she steadied herself. “Just when I thought the bride couldn’t get any more charming.”
I’d texted Kate, Buster, and Mack to meet me downstairs in the Hay-Adams Room. We were using the smaller downstairs room for the ceremony, and then guests would go upstairs to the rooftop for the reception. I wanted to put the finishing touches on the ceremony and drop the latest bombshell in person. I needed to be sure none of them were standing on the balcony when they heard that our difficult bride had a penchant for the poisoned pen.
Kate and I had placed the ceremony programs on the chairs while Buster and Mack had draped ribbon across the back of the aisle we’d created using rows of rustic chairs with woven cane backs. Earlier in the day, they’d laid an aisle runner made out of jute and had lined the sides of it with a thick carpeting of moss and colorful tulips that appeared to be growing out of it. At the front of the aisle, they’d created a canopy out of branches and ivy in front of a solid wall of boxwood that was dotted with wire-basket window boxes crowded with lavender tulips and pink hyacinths. Candles had been lit, and the smell of burning wax mingled with the fresh smell of greenery.
Guests were gaping and angling for pictures with their phones as they entered the room, so I pulled my crew off to the side. “All we have to do is make sure that everything is perfect, and she won’t have any reason to write a bad review.”
Buster crossed his arms over his chest. “You know trolls don’t work that way. They do it for the attention, not because they’re actually trying to give an honest review.”
“Maybe I misspoke when I referred to her as an internet troll,” I said, keeping my voice low so the guests, also the troll’s friends and family, wouldn’t hear.
“You didn’t.” Kate looked up from scrolling on her phone. “I already found one of her reviews on the Wed Boards and it’s not good.”
The Wed Boards were an online forum where brides compared weddings, offloaded used wedding accessories, and shared what they called “picks and pans” of wedding vendors.
Mack craned his neck to see Kate’s phone. “How could she have a Wed Boards review yet? We’re in the middle of her wedding.”
“She’s one of those Weddies,” Kate said, referring to the brides who lived on the Wed Boards and thought that obsessing about weddings made them qualified to be wedding planners.
“You’re sure it’s her?” I asked.
She looked up at me. “The username is TriciaandDaveatTheHay.”
Mack gave a low whistle. “That’s pretty specific.”
“She trashed a florist she called before she hired us. Gave them one star,” Kate said.
Mack looked affronted. “She called another florist? I’m glad I didn’t know that before you brought her to us.”
Kate cleared her throat and began to read the review. “Even though we didn’t hire this florist, I was disappointed that they couldn’t bother to return my call within the same afternoon. Clearly this business can’t manage their time well.”
“The same afternoon? Are you kidding me? I can understand twenty-four hours but the same afternoon?” Buster said. “What if we have a long meeting with a bride or a walk-through off-site?”
I dug in my suit pocket for my stash of gummi bears and popped a handful in my mouth, savoring the comforting rush of sugar. “Well, she does spend most of her time in bed pretending to be ill, so I’m sure an afternoon feels like forever.”
“I can’t believe she hired us,” Kate said. “We’ve certainly let calls go for more than a few hours.”
“I think I just happened to pick up the phone the day she first called,” I said.
“Good thing, right?” Kate said.
“Is it?” I couldn’t help wondering if the florist who got the review for not returning a call got off easy. Were we all in for one-star reviews by a bride who loved getting attention for bad behavior?
Buster nudged me. “Groom at six o’clock.”
I turned around to see the tall, handsome groom in his white dinner jacket scanning the room.
“Are you ready to get married?” I asked as I approached, giving him my best “let’s do this” smile.
Dave rubbed his hands together and smiled without meeting my eyes. “Sure. It looks great in here. Very French.”
“I’m glad you like it.” I took in the room alongside him and had to admit that it looked spectacular.
“Not that I’m the one you have to please.” He laughed and went back to rubbing his hands.
“We try to make everyone happy on a wedding day,” I said. “Can I get you anything before we start the processional? Water? A beer?”
I hoped the groom held some sway with his future wife, and I hoped it wasn’t too obvious that I was kissing his ass. What I really felt like offering him was a new identity and a one-way ticket to Papua New Guinea so he could run away from Tricia Toker forever.
He shook his head and a brown curl came loose and dropped onto his forehead. “No, Tricia would be livid if I drank before the ceremony.”
My phone vibrated with an incoming text and I pulled it out of my pocket to look. Fern had the bride ready and was bringing her and the maid of honor down.
I put my hand on the groom’s elbow. “Why don’t I go ahead and get you tucked away with the officiant for the ceremony?”
He jumped at my touch. “It’s time?”
I nodded and felt like apologizing. But I reminded myself that it wasn’t my fault this nice guy was marrying an awful woman or that he’d gone all in and worked for her family company, too. I was only the wedding planner, not the idiot who’d proposed to her. Whenever this scenario played itself out in my work, I told myself that the seemingly terrible bride or groom must have some wonderful qualities they kept hidden from the world and only their betrothed saw. In Tricia’s case, the qualities must have been hidden very deeply.
I steered the groom back to his holding room then pulled Kate outside the ballroom with me to wait for the bride. “Where are Buster and Mack?”
“They went back upstairs when I told them the bride would be coming down soon.”
“Cowards,” I said.
“Lucky cowards,” Kate said under her breath.
I recalled the bride’s aversion to Kate’s bounciness. “Why don’t you go stand next to the harpist, and I’ll give you the cues from the door?”
“And avoid an encounter with Tricia the Troll? You don’t have to tell me twice.” Kate headed back into the Hay-Adams Room before I could tell her not to call the bride that out loud.
I heard the lobby elevator doors ping open and rushed around the corner to meet it. The small elevator was filled with a mass of netting with a navy blue beret peeking behind it. Tricia stepped out, her full tulle ball gown rustling as she moved. Her dark hair spilled over her bare shoulders in waves and she carried the white tulip bouquet ringed with green nerines. If she weren’t such an unpleasant person, I would have thought she looked beautiful.
She clutched my hand in a grip surprisingly strong for someone always so weary. “The wedding needs to start now. Right. Now.”
I darted a glance at Fern, who was nodding vigorously behind her. “You got it.”
I ran to the door of the Hay-Adams Room and caught Kate’s eye next to the harpist, giving her the signal to start the processional. Luckily, the processional consisted only of the maid of honor followed by the bride walking with her mother. I pulled the maid of honor to the doorway as I heard the harp begin to play and spotted the groom and officiant moving into place under the floral canopy. I smiled at Madeleine in her pink satin Vera Wang sheath, noticing that her hair had been pulled back so tightly her eyes now turned up at the corners. I didn’t think she looked like a ferret, but it didn’t look comfortable. I gave her a nod, and she set off down the aisle.
I turned to the bride and her mother. Fern had draped the blusher over the bride’s face and stood behind her fluffing the thick layers of tulle in her skirt. The mother of the bride, her pale green dress hidden almost completely by the wedding gown, held her daughter by the arm and kept her nervous eyes trained on her face.
I smoothed the blusher so that it fell behind her bouquet. “Are you ready?”
She let out a breath, and the single layer of tulle that was the blusher quivered. “I don’t know if I can make it down the aisle.”
Oh, no, I thought. We did not work this hard and get this far to have the bride flake out at the last minute.
I put my hands around hers on the bouquet stems. “I know you can do this.”
The mother raised her bitten thumbnail to her mouth. “Maybe we should postpone for an hour or two.”
Was she crazy? If we postponed, we wouldn’t be starting the reception until ten o’clock at night and we had to be out of the rooftop ballroom by midnight. Even I couldn’t squeeze a four-course dinner, dancing, toasts, and cake cutting into two hours. I shot Fern a desperate look.
He dropped the back of the bride’s dress and came to stand next to her, linking his arm in hers. “You’re going down that aisle right now if I have to drag you myself. Understood?”
Tricia and her mother both nodded mutely, and I stepped aside as the threesome walked through the door and down the aisle, with Fern jerking the bride forward every time she slowed down.
Kate had edged her way to the back of the room and joined me outside where we could watch the ceremony through the glass panes of the wooden doors.
“I can’t look,” I said. “Is he still up there?”
“I think he just gave away the bride,” Kate said. “I did not see this one coming, although I like Fern better as the father of the bride than as the priest. He was blessing me for weeks after that wedding. Now he’s shaking the groom’s hand. You’ve got to see this, Annabelle. The groom looks so confused.”
I looked up to the ceiling. “Why can’t we have one normal wedding? Just one?”
“Because there’s no such thing,” Kate said. “Weddings are crazy. Period.”
I hated when Kate was right.
Bonus Epilogue
I dropped my black purse on the floor as I stepped into my apartment and surveyed the scene. Aside from the piles of papers and client folders blanketing my glass coffee table, the living room wasn’t a total disaster. The pale yellow couch cushions could use some fluffing, and it was time to recycle the pile of wedding magazines accumulating in the rack beside the overstuffed chair, but these were fixable problems. Not so bad, as long as I ignored the dust bunnies gathering in the corners of the hardwood floors and the faint musty smell that told me I needed to open a window, even though it was a hot, sticky summer day in Washington DC.
“Nothing a little lemon Pledge can’t fix,” I muttered to myself as I headed for the rarely touched cleaning supplies under my kitchen sink.
I glanced at the clock above the stove and felt a flutter of panic. I had less than an hour before Detective Mike Reese was supposed to pick me up for our first official date. I’d intended to have plenty of time to tidy up my apartment and get dressed, but my meeting to pick out wedding linens with a bride had run long.
