Susan didn’t have time to puzzle over that one. The next call was from the rental company that was providing the cars for the wedding party. The time they were confirming to pick up Chrissy and her bridesmaids was wrong—as was the number of cars. Susan starred that note. Transportation was Jed’s department.
Then two other calls from guests. Another plan change and a friend of Chrissy’s from NYC who had lost her invitation and needed times, locations, and, please, directions.
Then a call from Chrissy. “Mom. Dad. I’m going to be a little late. Don’t worry. But be sure I’m up at eight a.m. tomorrow. Even if I plead to stay in bed, don’t let me sleep. I need to be up at eight tomorrow.”
And then. “Mrs. Henshaw? Susan? Uh … Mom … I think I need to talk—”
The tape was filled.
“Susan? Hon? Do you want a cup of decaf?”
“Jed! Listen to this!” After some fancy button pressing, she found the spot she was looking for and replayed the final message.
“Well, what do you make of it?” she asked, when her husband didn’t respond immediately.
“Is the machine broken?” he asked, leaning over his wife to look more closely.
“No. It’s filled. But what do you think?” she repeated.
“Of what? I can’t even tell who the message is from,” Jed insisted.
“It has to be from Stephen. You heard how he didn’t know whether to call me Mrs. Henshaw or Susan or Mom.”
“Well, I guess there isn’t anyone else who might consider those three particular options,” Jed agreed. “But aside from knowing who called, I don’t think there’s anything to discuss—actually, there isn’t anything there at all.”
“Do you think he’s found out that the wedding present is a dead body?” Susan asked.
“I haven’t the foggiest …” Jed sat down on the couch and put his hands over his eyes. “But I’ve been thinking—ever since Tom explained that Stephen has the box—we have to tell Brett about all this—”
“Jed! You promised! You agreed! You—”
“That was before the kids got involved,” her husband answered. “Susan, we sure don’t want Stephen getting in trouble with the police the night before he’s supposed to be marrying our daughter.”
“Supposed to be marrying your daughter! And what sort of trouble? Daddy, what are you talking about?”
Their daughter had returned to spend her last night in her parents’ house as an unmarried woman.
Susan was the first to recover. “We were just talking about … about your wedding gown. It seems to have disappeared.”
Chrissy appeared to forget all about her fiancé and any possible problems with the police or otherwise. She screamed and seemed to levitate about two feet into the air. “Disappeared! What do you mean? What happened to it? Where is it?”
“That’s exactly what I want to know,” Susan said, loudly enough to stop her daughter’s frantically rising voice. “I … I feel like I’ve been following it all over town today. Claire said it was here. But first I thought … thought it had been delivered to the Yacht Club … and then—” Fortunately, her daughter interrupted, because Susan had absolutely no idea how to go on.
“Of course, it was here. I tried it on for Grandmother. Didn’t she tell you?”
“She did, and she said it was the most beautiful wedding dress she’s ever seen.” At this point, Jed discreetly left to get his cup of decaf.
Chrissy seemed to relax slightly. “It is! It’s the most beautiful dress in the world. I have to admit, I was worried when Sophie decided on a new design and new material at the last minute. But, Mother, it really is the most gorgeous thing. And it fits perfectly! That’s why I took it over to the Inn to show Blues …” Suddenly Chrissy’s confidence seemed to dissolve. “I guess I should have shown it to you first … I …”
“Well, no time like the present,” Susan said, standing up. “I can’t tell you how I’ve been waiting for this moment …” She glanced at her daughter and stopped moving. “What’s wrong? Chrissy, what is it? You did bring the dress home with you, didn’t you?”
“I … um … The dress is back at the Inn. Blues brought it back here when she came for cocktails earlier. But then, tonight, the Archangel wanted to … asked if she could … she’s going to sew a … a sort of talisman into it.”
“A what?”
“A talisman … Or a charm. Something for good luck. She didn’t explain, she just said it was important to her—and that it is so small it wouldn’t be possible to see it.… You know, walking down the aisle or dancing at the reception. So I came home and picked it up and brought it back to her at the Inn.” Chrissy stopped speaking, twirling her hair around one finger with a gesture Susan hadn’t seen her daughter use in years.
“It’s lovely of her to want to do that for you,” Susan said, a bit tentatively. Actually, she thought the woman had a lot of nerve—especially since Susan had been planning to offer her daughter a sort of good-luck charm of her own. But Chrissy had slumped down on the sofa with a frown on her face.
“Chrissy? Is something wrong?” It was a silly question: obviously something was bothering her daughter. But was it just prewedding jitters or something more serious? Something like a dead body?
“It’s Rhythm and Blues,” Chrissy answered quietly. “They keep telling me how they’re so thrilled they’re going to have a daughter. How they’ve always wanted one. How if they could have chosen a person to be their daughter they would have chosen one just like me. And I’m really crazy about them. You know that I am.”
“I do,” Susan said, wondering if she should admit to being jealous.
“But they don’t seem to realize I’m a grown-up!” Chrissy exploded. “They not only want a daughter. They want a child. They want to control my life.”
“Like giving you those dogs,” Susan said, nodding seriously.
“The dogs! Oh, no, that’s the best wedding present anyone could possibly have given us. Stephen and I are even thinking of breeding bull mastiffs.”
Susan, who had never known her lovely, talented daughter to voluntarily pick up after Clue, wondered what the girl was thinking—and then remembered that Chrissy would be a married woman living on her own. “Then what do you mean?”
“Well, like finding me the job in an art gallery. I mean, I was thrilled—I am thrilled. And grateful, too, but now I don’t know if I could have found one on my own.”
Susan, who had known for years exactly how much Chrissy’s independence meant to her, had to resist smiling. “Have you told Stephen how you feel?”
“Of course, but it’s different for him. He just says to ignore them and go on and do what I want to do with my life. I know he’s right about that, but … but it’s different for him,” she repeated.
“He’s their son. He knows they will love him, no matter what he does,” Susan said quietly.
“Exactly. You know exactly what I mean!”
“You don’t have to be so surprised. I got married once, too.”
“But Grandmother hasn’t ever tried to take over your life. She’s such a cool lady!”
Susan wondered if Claire had told Chrissy about her wedding gift before she continued. “You know, these things will work out. The first year of your marriage will involve lots of different decisions. Like where you will spend Christmas,” she couldn’t resist adding. “And sometimes your in-laws will approve and sometimes they won’t.”
“They’re saying they’re going to take us all to Baja for Christmas vacation,” Chrissy confided. “But I talked to Stephen and he said, no way. That we have our own lives, and he’ll have school and I’ll have a job by then and we won’t be able to be gallivanting all over the country on long vacations. So, I think we’ll just have a few days off. And we’ll come here, of course.”
For the first time all day, Susan felt like jumping up in the air and shouting hooray. But her joy was short-lived.
“Unless we can afford to go up to Ver
mont and ski,” Chrissy concluded.
“So when are you going to get your dress back?” Susan, having returned to earth, asked.
“She’s going to come over first thing tomorrow morning. I invited them to brunch. You don’t mind, do you? I know you’re having people in—both grandmothers and all.…”
“There’s going to be plenty of food for everyone. What time are they going to be here?”
“Nine. I could call if that’s too early, though.”
“No, I told everyone to be here between eight-thirty and nine-thirty, but I’m sure my mother will be early. She can keep them entertained. They can tell her about their life in the commune. She’s been asking me questions about that ever since she heard about Stephen’s childhood.”
“Good. Rhythm loves telling stories about their protests and arrests. What was Daddy talking about when I came in? He said something about Stephen and the police.”
Why had she spent the last few minutes trying to give her daughter good advice instead of dreaming up an answer to this question? Susan asked herself, thinking furiously. And why didn’t the phone ring? Or someone arrive at the front door? How come there was never a good distraction around when you needed one?
NINETEEN
Just when Susan thought she had no alternative but to tell her daughter the truth, all hell broke loose.
First, (naturally) the phone rang. Susan picked up the receiver attached to the answering machine. “Hello?”
Then the phone in her purse rang. “Don’t bother with that. Its battery is too weak to get anything.… No, I wasn’t talking to you,” she said to the still unidentified person on the other end of the receiver.
Then the doorbell rang.
Before anyone could possibly have answered it, two absolutely filthy puppies ran into the room. Tom Davidson followed them.
Jed, the front of his new Armani shirt betraying an incident involving either a coffee cup or a coffeepot, entered then, and announced the presence of the Hancock police department in the Henshaws’ backyard.
And then Dan Hallard appeared. How quaint, Susan thought, to have a doctor who sleeps in old-fashioned nightshirts. That’s when she realized her caller had hung up and that the strobe lights flashing in her windows did not mean that a rock concert was taking place in the front yard.
Her entire family seemed to be frozen in position. Then …
“What the hell is that dog doing?” Jed yelled.
“No! No! Give that back to me!” Chrissy cried, running over to the corner and yanking the leg of an antique English draw-top table from the animal’s mouth.
“Susan, I think we have everything under control.” Brett Fortesque stood in the doorway.
“Then you’re the only person who does,” she replied, replacing the receiver and standing up. “What is happening? Why are all those police cars out front?”
“Actually, that’s the Hancock fire department,” he explained.
“Wha—?” Jed began, heading out of the room.
“Your alarm went off. Apparently someone, or something, broke one of your connections and the silent alarm contacted the firehouse and police department.”
Jed turned and looked at his wife.
Susan and her husband didn’t agree about this particular aspect of their life. Jed thought he was protecting his family when he had a state-of-the-art burglar and fire alarm installed. Susan thought the constant false alarms and the time spent resetting the system was a complete waste, and the noise more than a little annoying. “I know what you’re thinking, Jed. But I only turned off the siren for the weekend—I just thought that with so many people around, the alarm might be triggered and … and I didn’t want to annoy the neighbors,” she finished, glancing out the window toward the mayhem taking place on the street.
“You turned off your alarm?” Brett asked. “Susan, don’t you know that burglars have been known to break into houses during weddings and steal the gifts?”
“I know one or two gifts I’d be happy to leave out on the front lawn for them,” Jed muttered, glaring at the two puppies Chrissy was holding. One seemed to be on the verge of falling asleep; the other was busy drooling.
“I guess I’d better take these sweet little guys back to the kitchen,” Chrissy said.
“Chrissy …”
“I’m going to put them in their crates, Mother. Rhythm and Blues also gave us crates for them, you know.”
Susan just smiled. So that explained what the box of bolts had been intended for. “I suppose we’d better find out who or what tripped the alarm,” she suggested.
“I’ll help you check that out,” Brett said.
“I could—” Jed began to offer his assistance.
“I actually have a few things I’d like to talk over with Susan,” Brett explained, as something crashed in another room. “Anyway, it sounds as though Chrissy might need some help in the kitchen. That is her voice, isn’t it?”
“Sure sounds like it. Well, I’d better go. She won’t be calling me for help after tomorrow afternoon.”
Susan looked affectionately at her husband’s departing back. “He’s going to miss Chrissy. Not that she’s been around much these last few years—”
“She’s only moving a couple of hundred miles away,” Brett said. “And she seems to be marrying a very nice young man. I think you’ll be seeing quite a bit of her.”
“I hope so.”
“Something bothering you?” Brett asked.
God, the last person in the world who she wanted to think something was wrong. “Just a bit of the empty-nest syndrome,” she lied. In truth, she wouldn’t mind her nest being just a bit emptier right now. “How do we go about looking for the problem?”
“Well, first, let’s see what your control panel says and then, if nothing shows up there, we can check the main box—these things are usually easy to track down. The last time we had a false alarm, the problem turned out to be a nest of mice sitting right on top of the fire detector in the ceiling of a house on the other side of town.”
“Oh, good. More pets,” Susan muttered, leading Brett into the hallway to show him the control panels.
Brett didn’t explain why he wanted to be alone with her until they were removing winter clothing from the attic cedar closet to peer into the control panel placed in the wall there. “I don’t suppose you’ve had a chance to talk with Erika tonight?” he asked, dropping Susan’s favorite Calvin Klein cashmere peacoat on the dusty floor.
Thank goodness, this had nothing to do with the murder. “She left a message on the answering machine, but I haven’t had time to respond yet. Why? Is something wrong? Frankly, I don’t remember what she said.”
“She called me about two hours ago. I guess you were eating dinner at the Inn then.”
“Well, I was there, at least,” Susan agreed. There was no reason to explain that she was still starving. “What did she want?”
“Would you mind if I asked you a few questions first?” Brett asked, trying to aim his flashlight at the box while opening it with the other hand.
Susan took the flashlight from him and pointed it in the right direction. “We’ve talked about adding a light fixture in here for years,” she muttered. “Go ahead and ask,” she added.
“Did you notice anything unusual about the rehearsal?”
Susan was silent for a few moments.
“Susan, this has nothing to do with Chrissy or Stephen—or probably even with their wedding,” Brett said, apparently thinking he was easing her mind. “In fact, it’s probably nothing at all.”
“The rehearsal was a little odd,” Susan admitted. As long as he didn’t want her to tell him about the body, she was happy. “In the first place, the minister who is sharing the service with Dick—Dick Price, our minister—didn’t show up until it was over. We thought she was stuck at O’Hare Airport after having missed her connection, but it turned out that she had been in town the entire time.” Now that she thought about it, this whole thing w
as very odd. She had been so surprised to find out that the Archangel wasn’t the dead woman, that she hadn’t stopped to wonder who had called claiming to be stuck in Chicago. “And the best man was drunk,” she continued, realizing Brett was waiting for more.
“A little early in the day for that, wasn’t it?”
“I’ll say. I sure hope he doesn’t do something stupid—like lose the ring.” She frowned. “I should have suggested that Jed keep it here overnight. Although Stephen probably has it. He really is remarkably responsible.”
“Susan? What are you thinking about?”
“Just something Stephen said earlier—it’s probably nothing—and it doesn’t have anything to do with the rehearsal,” she added.
“Anything else?”
“No. Chrissy didn’t rehearse, which isn’t all that unusual. And some flowers fell on Alice Gordon—she’s going to be the flower girl tomorrow.”
“That didn’t strike you as at all unusual?”
“No, but I can see the connection with Erika. She was concerned that it would happen during the service tomorrow. Not that I think that would be a disaster, either. There’s almost something magical about flowers falling from above. Of course, Erika’s such a perfectionist. She probably doesn’t see it like that.” Susan realized Brett had stopped looking for the problem with her alarm system and was sitting back on his heels, staring at her with a concerned expression on his face. “Is that what she called about? Is there something going on here that I don’t understand the significance of?”
“It may be just what you say—Erika’s tendency to be a perfectionist.”
“But?”
“But she thinks it’s something more serious.”
“Brett, Erika isn’t the hysterical sort. If she’s worried, there very well may be something to worry about.”
“I don’t want to worry you the night before Chrissy’s wedding, and Erika doesn’t want to either.”
Weddings Are Murder Page 14