Something Borrowed, Something Blue and Murder

by Patti Larsen

  Mom rushed forward, clearly upset, but I grabbed for her arm and handed her off to Dad, determined to deal with this personally. I hadn’t heard that Thea was an alcoholic, but apparently that was the case. And if even Mom didn’t know, she must have been hiding it very well. Looked like, despite I wished otherwise, Alfred would be the better choice after all.

  I was about to say as much, to ask Katelyn and Andrew to escort the inebriated minister home and sober her up, oddly not all that worked up because, again, this was my life we were talking about and why should my wedding go off without a hitch, when Thea caught herself suddenly and met my gaze with hers wide, her breath gurgling faintly in her throat.

  Before her eyes rolled back into her head and she collapsed to the floor, out cold.

  Crew moved before I did, hurrying to reach her side while everyone stared and I did my best not to sigh in irritation. Except, as my fiancé took a moment, I watched the set of his shoulders, the way he tensed, his body tight and rigid even as Liz and Jill joined him in a quick move of matching police women, their heads down next to his.

  Oh. Dear. Lord. No. Not today. Not here, in Petunia’s, at my wedding rehearsal. Please, if there was a benevolent and loving Universe or God or whatever looking over me, could this not be what I thought—nay, what I knew—it was?

  It only took one glance at Crew’s face as he spun on the balls of his feet, still crouched over Thea, to tear a groan of despair from my lips. Because I knew that expression, that forehead vein, that tight jaw and faint tic under one eye. Had caused it many times, been the source and the soothing.

  “Someone call Dr. Aberstock,” he said. “Thea is dead.”

  ***

  Chapter Seven

  Well, at least it wasn’t just me on the hook this time. Nope, my whole freaking family, my closest friends and a few assorted sorta strangers got to take part in the fiasco of body discovery. Reminded me with a twinge of unhappy nostalgia this time about the afternoon Skip Anderson collapsed in my lap at the parade in his honor after pissing off the bulk of Reading’s residents with a drunken tirade about how much our home town sucked.

  Yup, wasn’t alone then, either. Just felt like I was.

  Normally, I didn’t get upset over dead bodies anymore. Not that it wasn’t tragic and heartbreaking and all that stuff that typical people muttered behind their hands when they heard someone died. Sorry to be cynical and all, but this made twelve corpses for me, and I was so over it, I couldn’t even.

  Thing was, I did feel upset, and for obvious reasons that had zero to do with the poor, expired minister Dr. Aberstock examined, lying on the hardwood floor of my dining room. Was it wrong I was grateful she hadn’t passed on anywhere near a carpet because scouring wood was so much easier than throwing out antique rugs? Yes, Fee. The answer is yes.

  So wrong.

  I’d accepted the doc’s brief arm squeeze on his way by, though I’d done my best to stay out of the way when Robert arrived, the only remaining member of the Reading Sheriff’s Department that wasn’t at the wedding rehearsal (again for obvious reasons) sauntering into my bed and breakfast like this was just the best freaking thing that had ever happened to him. The smirk he tossed my way made my blood boil. A woman was dead, for goodness sake. Sure, right, like I wasn’t more focused on the fact this was going to delay my wedding, wasn’t it, than on the simple truth Thea Isaac was no more.

  Crew held me, one of those strong arms of his around my shoulders, the other stuffed deep into the pocket of his black dress pants, as Robert proceeded to make a total ass of himself.

  “Only you, Fanny,” Robert chuckled. “Killed off your own minister, huh?” His beady eyes narrowed, that hideous mustache of his now grown to handlebar status, though the effect wasn’t benefiting his face in the least. “Guess that’s a sign, right? Of how your marriage is going to turn out?” He guffawed, that ridiculous sound men made when they thought they were being funny but they were just being awkward and jerkish. Maybe I should have been more offended, but I couldn’t tear my eyes off that fur on his face. If anything, the long and disgusting bars of dark hair that now trailed down to his chin reminded me of melting asphalt mixed with old grass clippings.

  Just gross.

  I heard Crew’s molars grind together, his jaw next to my ear, his reaction clearly doing the job for both of us. But Robert either didn’t notice or didn’t care or had absolutely no sense of self-preservation because he ignored his boss and kept his nasty focus on me as he tapped his open notebook with the stub of his pencil.

  “So, want to tell me what happened this time?”

  Wow, the trained ape had learned to write, had he? Oh Fee. So petty.

  “If I can interrupt before you get started?” Dr. Aberstock didn’t know it, but he likely saved Robert’s life and Crew from going to prison on the eve of our wedding. At least, if the way my handsome love’s arm had begun a boa constrictor-like contraction around me was any indication of just how carefully he was holding himself in check. The moment the doc stood, coming between me and Robert and turning his back to the clearly annoyed deputy, Crew’s arm relaxed and, as if only then realizing what he’d been doing, his big hand gently massaged where he’d just recently been cutting off the circulation to my upper body.

  All good. The things we do for those we love when we want them to not murder people and stay out of jail.

  Did Dr. Aberstock have an idea of what he’d interrupted? I’m sure he did. He might have looked like a jovial Santa Claus in a white disposable coverall, with eyes that twinkled and round, rosy cheeks and white beard and hair to match, but he was one smart cookie, our doc, and firmly in Camp Fleming. Um, Turner? Turner-Fleming?

  Oh, dear.

  “I don’t have a cause of death yet,” he said, completely cutting out Robert while addressing me, Crew, Dad, Jill and Liz like we were the only ones that mattered (um, yeah. Right?). “However, I am detecting a familiar scent on her breath.” He wrinkled that button nose a moment, so adorable I wanted to boop it. Shock. Okay then, I was in shock. “It’s reminiscent of the bittering agents used in rubbing alcohol.”

  Well now. Wasn’t that interesting.

  And well now. There was something clearly wrong with my brain that instead of horror I immediately reacted with interesting.

  Sigh.

  “I caught the same scent from her water bottle.” The doc gestured at the empty container near the body where she’d dropped it before collapsing. “There’s an excellent chance she was poisoned.”

  Wait a second. “Wouldn’t she have tasted it?” The smell alone was eye watering.

  Andrew spoke before I could finish my thought, clearly distraught where he sat in a chair in the corner with Daisy rubbing his back and his daughter perched next to him.

  “Thea couldn’t smell,” he said.

  Dr. Aberstock refocused on the widow. “Ah,” he said. “How severe was her anosmia?”

  Andrew was shaking, but he pulled himself together, wiping at his eyes, averting his gaze after a quick glance at the sheet the doc had pulled over his wife’s body after his examination. “Complete loss,” he said. “She could barely detect bitterness. Which is why she loved grapefruit juice.” He gestured with ineffectual despair at the bottle on the floor. “She drank it because she said it was one of the only things she could actually connect to her old sense of taste.”

  Dr. Aberstock nodded. “Thank you, Mr. Isaac,” he said, that genuine and sweet-hearted bedside manner of his seeming to help. Andrew slumped into the chair and wept again, hands over his face, but without the choking sobs he’d been uttering until now, I realized.

  I’d zoned out, apparently, all but my own needs. Nice going there, Fleming. Way to be selfish and all that.

  Thank goodness for Daisy—and Mom, too, apparently—as they comforted the widow while Dr. Aberstock spoke again, a little more quietly.

  “There’s a chance she would have simply equated the bitterant additives with the acidic nature of the juic
e, if her anosmia was that severe,” he said.

  “She was complaining of a cold,” I said. “Sore throat, coughed a lot.” I flushed, knowing then I was watching the woman slowly die in front of me and had done nothing but worry she might get me sick, or Crew, or disrupt my wedding.

  Holy crap. I really was a horrible person.

  But the doc was nodding with enthusiasm, eyes bright again. “You may have nailed it, Fee,” he said. “The additives they use in isopropanol would definitely have given her such symptoms while the quick inebriation effects would have lowered her ability to realize what was happening to her.” He shook his head then, grim but oddly still adorably cherubic. “A terrible way to die, my friends.”

  “So we’re talking murder,” Crew said.

  Before Dr. Aberstock could respond, Robert cut in, one beefy hand on the doc’s shoulder, tugging him back away from us while the normally sweet-faced old gentleman glared at the deputy like he’d rather it was my cousin’s body under that sheet.

  Nice to know he had that effect on everyone I considered quality.

  “I’m running this investigation.” Did Robert really just belly up to Crew and stick his bristling facial anomaly in my fiancé’s vicinity? Yes, he did, and it was only by the (startling but hopefully not painful) pinch I gave to the back of his arm that kept my darling from punching that piece of wasted space right in the kisser.

  I didn’t want Crew to hurt his hand.

  The sheriff knew when to back off, though it looked like doing so was agonizing. Maybe I should have let him hit Robert. We had a house full of witnesses I was positive would say my cousin fell into a doorway or something. That was, until she sauntered in and we lost our home-team advantage.

  Wait, was that a badge clipped to Rose’s belt?

  Crew saw it the same moment I did, his reaction far more violent than my simple staring and swearing in my head.

  “What the actual hell,” he snarled, jabbing a finger at the other half of Rosebert who smirked and crossed her arms over her chest, “is that?”

  No. Way. She had a gun. I glared at her, partially in fury that Robert was arrogant enough to deputize his girlfriend without telling anyone and partially because, quite frankly, I’d been deputized in September and my dear, darling friend Jill? Refused me a sidearm.

  And I’d almost died, could have used said weapon when I’d been attacked by the murderer I’d cornered. Alphonse Brunbaugh wouldn’t have gotten the drop on me, the British cad, if I’d had a good old six shooter at my side.

  So how come Rose had one?

  Crew didn’t seem to care about the gun at all, spluttering while Robert watched with the sort of nasty darkness I’d become accustomed to. Was he waiting for my darling to lose it? Looked that way. Another pinch, this one likely to leave a bruise (forgive me, my love), cut off Crew’s spiral down into more punching and possible killing before he could go any further and give Robert what he wanted.

  What he needed, I was then sure. To get his boss fired.

  After all, there was no real love lost between Crew and the town council, was there? Dominated as it was by the Pattersons and their new agenda. Helmed by Vivian or not, I was positive all it would take would be one false move—reasonable or not—on Crew’s part and it would be all over, sayonara, the fat lady gushing her heart out while he did a rapid exit stage left.

  No way was I letting him go out that way. Not when there was a very good possibility the next sheriff of Reading would be none other than the craptastically disgusting douchebag standing in front of us.

  Maybe I was overreacting. There was a possibility of that. Except, of course, when the door to Petunia’s opened and three council members decided to poke their noses into my dining room, an active crime scene, none other than Geoffrey Jenkins at their head?

  Yeah. Suspicions confirmed loud and clear.

  “I take it you have things well in hand, Deputy Carlisle?” Geoffrey smiled his shark-like grin at Rose. “Deputy Norton?”

  Rose simpered back at him but Robert replied before she could. She actually glared at her boyfriend when he cut off her attempt to bat her eyelashes at the married-to-the-Pattersons. Yuck. Although, considering her taste in men to this point, I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised.

  I was going to throw up.

  As for the council members, I noted the discomfort and regret on Terri Jacob’s face, her little wiggle of fingers at me like the owner of Jacob’s Flowers would have rathered be anywhere but here at that moment. Not so for Sophia Bell, the owner of The Bride Boudoir. Sure, she’d been happy enough to sell me that overpriced white gown upstairs, but she didn’t mind sniffing around the murder of my minister, did she? Like some kind of critter who cleaned up after the big predators had their way.

  Speaking of which, Geoffrey looked far too delighted in his cold and murky way to be at the death of a Reading resident.

  And they called me a busybody. Crew’s body vibrated next to me, and I knew an explosion was imminent. He’d put up with a lot, being Reading’s sheriff, including having to deal with me and Dad all this time. But he’d been trained by the FBI and he had certain standards he’d done his best to uphold since I’d met him, even under very trying circumstances. And while visitors to a crime scene wasn’t uncommon, the three council members appearing the way they did, after Rose’s deputization and the fact that our wedding likely wasn’t going to happen on schedule?

  Crew was on a steady path to a meltdown.

  Okay, so I didn’t know that for sure and, in all fairness, he was his own person and had his own mind and I didn’t know what he was thinking. And yet, I knew him very, very well.

  So, intervention time, Fiona Fleming style.

  ***

  Chapter Eight

  “If you’ll all excuse me,” I said in my best bed and breakfast owner during check-in on a summer Sunday in July when the White Valley Lodge was overbooked voice, “thanks for coming, nothing to see here, time to move along.” I left Crew’s side and firmly and not-at-all politely headed right for Geoffrey and his two hangers on. If he was offended to be herded out by my no-nonsense and definitely not taking his crap attitude, he didn’t show it, that shark grin of his firmly affixed and not going anywhere while he tracked snow back toward the door and out into the December afternoon.

  Were they all raised in a barn? Did no one have the common decency of taking off their damned boots?

  “I’m sure everything will get sorted out in short order.” Geoffrey’s smirk told me otherwise. What, did he and Robert have some kind of plan up their sleeves I needed to know about? From the gleam of delight that made it to those cold, dead eyes, that was exactly the case. “The council was happy to approve the official inclusion of Deputy Norton to the roll call of the Reading Sheriff’s Department. We’re sure she’ll be a fine addition during this trying time.”

  So this had been a council move. Was that what had taken Vivian away earlier? But no, that would have meant they’d been planning this all along, maybe only using Thea’s death as an excuse, Crew’s distraction by our wedding, to swell the ranks of the department with their own brand of yuck.

  Sounded accurate enough.

  Rather than give Geoffrey any kind of satisfaction by commenting, I slammed the door on the three of them, ignoring Terri’s attempt to smile her apology at me, and hustled back into the living room, passing Dad on the way by as he headed for the door.

  Abandoning me? At a time like this? I could hear Robert’s strident voice, Crew’s rumbling retort, and knew I had to get back in there before my love lost his mind. But Dad? Really?

  “Better places to be?” I stopped long enough to punch him in the arm.

  He didn’t even pretend to flinch, the mountain of my father hugging me tight before letting me go again and leaving me a little breathless. I spun and watched him heave on his coat, slipping into his big boots, before he waved.

  “Don’t worry, kid,” he growled. “I got this.” And then, in typ
ical John Fleming patented SecretiveDad™ fashion, he was gone.

  Look, if he managed to sort things out in time for tomorrow? I’d forgive him. For now, I had other things to worry about. Namely the fact I’d left my agitated fiancé in the company of the one person on the planet I was positive he was capable of murdering and not feel a single scrap of guilt over.

  I’d be helping him hide Robert’s body, so there was that. I did love him, after all.

  Thing was, the moment I reentered the dining room with the intent of protecting my true love from the inevitable, I heard my deplorable cousin (why were we related again?) utter the words that signed his doom. And not from Crew.

  “You’ll just have to postpone the wedding.”

  Yup. I’d be murdering him personally.

  I needn’t have worried about me or Crew, to be honest, not with Lucy Fleming in shouting distance. Mom? She lost her mind.

  “Robert Eustice Carlisle!” She’d grown fond of using full names these days, though I wasn’t arguing her reasoning at the moment. I saw him flinch, visibly shrink from the diminutive redhead that was my incredible mother, knew then he was more afraid of Mom than he ever was of Dad. Or me. Like he was ever afraid of me. But my tiny little mother with her normally collected persona of sparkling kind goodness and caring understanding? Yup, he was ten years old again and she’d caught him stealing cookies from her kitchen.

  Not that it ever happened, that I know of. Though, I wouldn’t have put it past him.

  “It’s not my fault.” He actually sounded contrite in the face of her anger. His sideways glance at Crew didn’t last, Mom taking all of his focus as she stepped into Robert’s space, her hands on her hips, lips tight and green eyes flashing. “This is a crime scene now, Aunt Lucy.”

  Wow. He rarely called Dad Uncle John anymore (though, hadn’t he used that term when he spoke of my father to who I was guessing was Marie Patterson herself, just this past September?). I’d never actually heard him address Mom that way.