The call rang through and Kitty immediately dove into a brief explanation of what had occurred. The 9-1-1 operator said help was on the way, but Kitty’s attention was stolen before she could thank the woman whose calming voice had given her some semblance of relief.
It was the sound of someone pouring a drink. Kitty turned and found Sadie returning the cap to the whiskey bottle then setting it down, while at the same time lifting her drink to her mouth. It was casual. Margie’s death seemed to have no effect on her.
Sadie must have sensed her staring, because the jeweler met her gaze and asked, “What?” as though she’d done nothing wrong then knocked her drink back like a shot even though it’d been filled to the brim.
When Kitty moved on from gawking at Sadie’s lack of manners, she noticed Sterling's gaze had turned sharp, locked onto Margie’s expression, which appeared pained. Kitty also noticed Margie’s right arm was clenched across her stomach, though now relaxed since there wasn’t a shred of life in her.
What did it mean?
Trudy dropped to her knee and took Margie’s left hand before Sterling could stop her, though he mumbled no and stop and come away.
It took Kitty a moment to realize what her friend was doing, but when Trudy selected Margie’s ring finger, she understood.
“No!” screamed Kitty, as she dove at Trudy. Kitty slapped her hands off the body.
“I need my ring, Kitty!”
“Don’t touch it!” She pulled Trudy up to her feet then stared at Sterling with wide eyes. “The engagement ring!”
He cocked his head, giving her his full attention.
She didn’t want to alarm the guests so she stepped in close, leaned in, and spoke softly.
“Margie didn’t drink anything. She’d only just gotten here. The only thing she did was put on that engagement ring.” Kitty stole a glance at Sadie who was munching on a pretzel and eyeing the few CD’s Kitty had stacked on the stereo. “What if the ring was poisoned in some way?”
“Do you have gloves?” he asked her.
Mittens? Came to mind then she realized Sterling was in detective mode and needed plastic gloves.
“No.”
“Pliers? A wrench?”
The question only confused her, but she had a small toolbox under the bathroom sink. Quickly, she deposited Trudy with Ronald then wove her way through the crowd and ducked into the bathroom.
“And a plastic bag!” He called after her.
That she had. She grabbed the toolbox then rounded toward her desk, opened a side drawer, and grabbed a small box of Ziploc bags.
When she returned to Sterling she handed him both and he kneeled down at once.
“Is he going to cut off her hand?” asked Sadie, highly interested.
“Lower your voice!” Kitty demanded as the horrific image Sadie had conjured rolled through her mind. “What in God’s name would make you think that?”
Sadie smirked wickedly then shrugged.
“Why not?”
Kitty glared at her, but shrank. The woman had a terrifying presence that Kitty thought best not to challenge, even now. And she breathed a silent prayer of relief when she saw the flashing red and blue lights of a police cruiser that was just now pulling up to the curb outside.
Kitty rushed past Sterling, who was using the pliers to gently work the engagement ring off of Margie’s finger, intending to isolate the prospective murder weapon in a plastic bag.
“She’s in here!” She called through the wind and snow once she’d stepped onto the icy sidewalk.
Two police officers labored inside as she held the door open.
“Is an ambulance coming?” she asked, following after them.
They seemed unconcerned and chortled, Killer Kitty under their breath, but hushed when they saw Sterling, who was rising to his feet, having bagged the engagement ring.
“Collect everyone’s information,” he ordered. “Let them go as you do so.”
The officers wasted no time shouting directives to the guests at large and getting their duty underway.
Trudy looked utterly bewildered, watching the scene unfold as if she were stuck in a surreal nightmare. Ronald held his arm around her, but Trudy had slipped off to a faraway place.
That’s when it hit Kitty. The engagement ring. It had been meant for her friend. No one could’ve anticipated that the pushy Margie McAlister would’ve put the ring on her finger. If the ring had been laced with poison, it had been intended for Trudy’s finger.
Kitty gasped at the revelation then scanned the crowd, which had formed into two lines in front of each officer.
Sadie Francis wasn’t in either, but instead she lingered around the refreshment table getting her fill of alcohol. The woman seemed entirely unconcerned, which unnerved Kitty, but only because her laissez-faire attitude didn’t imply outright guilt. She simply wasn’t taking this seriously. Yet it was bizarre.
Kitty walked with a heavy heart toward the back of the first line where Trudy and Ronald had joined the queue.
“Trudy,” she began, speaking quietly. “Would anyone want to harm you?”
The eyes that had looked devoid of spirit suddenly ignited with fiery rage the second they snapped to meet Kitty’s gaze. Words didn’t come. Trudy only shook her head, as her mouth twisted into a hateful frown.
“No?” Kitty asked as though the reaction had anything to do with her question and not the overall predicament they all found themselves in.
“I should’ve never let you plan my wedding,” she scorned through a clenched jaw, as Ronald stroked her arm to hush her before she could fly into a rage. “You’re cursed.”
Kitty felt her expression droop, as she stammered to reassure her friend, but she couldn’t. Part of her feared Trudy was right.
“She didn’t mean it,” said Ronald to smooth things over.
“Yes I do,” snapped Trudy. Tears were spilling from her eyes now. “I had a bad feeling about this. I didn’t want you to plan the wedding. Margie and I could’ve put the whole thing together just fine. But I felt sorry for you. I wanted to help. And look where it’s gotten me.”
It was like a punch to her gut. It took the wind right out of her. Nothing hurt like the truth.
Trudy could no longer look at her and turned her vacant gaze to the line ahead that was slowly creeping forward as guests gave the officers their information then left the store as fast as hostages being released from a bank on lock down.
“I’m sorry, Trudy.” The statement, though heartfelt, had fallen on deaf ears.
Ronald offered a grim smirk of his deepest condolences for Trudy’s reaction, but the stocky, bald man conveyed only a darkened grimace that pained Kitty even more than Trudy’s harsh words.
When they stepped forward with the moving line, Kitty remained.
The classical music that was still playing felt wrong and struck a nerve, as though it were mocking the tragedy taking place, so Kitty made herself useful and rushed to the stereo to turn it off. As soon as she did, the silence that took its place was like nails being dragged down a chalkboard. It seemed there was no relief.
Still at a total loss for making any of this less painful, Kitty gathered up the bouquets from the table, carried them to the exit, and handed them to each lady as she left, though every recipient had a look of wild and grim confusion as she accepted the odd, displaced token.
When it was Trudy’s turn to approach the door, she didn’t grace Kitty with a held gaze. She refused the bouquet. Ronald attempted to apologize, but it came out weak and muddled. And soon Kitty found herself in an almost empty room, winter wind blowing snow at her back.
She started with a jump when two medics barreled through rolling a rickety gurney toward the body where Sterling was now standing. He instructed them to get Margie in for an autopsy, but Kitty couldn’t really hear him. She was consumed by the curse she could no longer deny. She was harrowed by Trudy’s condemnation.
Sadie Francis was the last person the police
dealt with, but the interaction was just as casual as Sadie’s attitude up until this point. Sterling hadn’t taken notice as far as Kitty could tell. And he wasn’t paying attention now, as Sadie waved her whiskey around, rattling off her legal name, home and store addresses; every tidbit with an odd smirk on her face, as though these officers were the men she’d been waiting to meet.
The police finished up with her at approximately the same time the medics had moved Margie from the floor to the gurney. Under instruction from Sterling, the medics then carted Margie off but not before the police released Sadie.
Sadie didn’t so much as give Margie or the medics one glance, but brushed past them so she could leave first.
“Anything else, Slaughter?” One of the cops, a trim man in his early thirties whose duties had energized him, asked. The man had come to life in the twenty minutes it’d taken to clear the store of guests—or witnesses, as it were.
“Let’s get this into evidence and test it for possible poisons,” he said, handing the Ziploc bag to his subordinate.
“So you think I’m right?” Kitty asked him quietly once the officer started for the door.
She shouldn’t have credited herself. She knew he hated it. It’d slipped out, though, so she tried to soften the assumption. “I mean you think it was the ring that caused Margie to keel over?”
“Like you said,” he responded in a level tone. “The ring was the only change she’d undergone. It’s worth looking into.”
“You know what that means, right?”
“That the killer didn’t succeed at hitting their target,” he supplied.
“And that Trudy could be in danger.”
Their eyes met. Both were nervous and exhausted by the ordeal.
“What did you think of Sadie?” Kitty asked, treading carefully so as not to step on Sterling’s investigative toes.
He furrowed his brown so she clarified, “The jeweler. The biker chick.”
He cocked his head unsure of what she'd meant to imply. Kitty didn’t elaborate. She didn’t want to press. What she wanted most was to get home—and hopefully with Sterling—before she could go off the deep end, worrying and panicking and over-analyzing every blink and raised brow she’d observed that evening.
“Do you have to go back to the station?”
She searched his eyes, having developed a skill for finding his answers before he spoke them.
“I won’t be able to do anything until the autopsy report comes back,” he explained, which made her tense muscles relax. “I’m parked out front. I’ll follow you. Drive carefully.”
Kitty nodded and quickly made her way to the back of her store where she turned off the majority of the lights and threw on her peacoat and hat. The cakes were still out, and she didn’t want a rodent problem, so she returned the leftovers to their boxes she’d tucked under the table, and began stacking them. Sterling didn’t let her get very far before he lent a hand and loaded as many as he could into his arms.
Together they made their way to the door where Kitty juggled three boxes against the wall to set the alarm and flip off the last lights. She followed Sterling out and then locked the door.
“Don’t take this personally,” he stated when he gathered her sickened expression.
Kitty assumed a statement would follow then she realized he was referring to Margie McAlister’s untimely death.
“How can I not at this point?”
The question hung between them as thick as the falling snow. With a sigh, Kitty stalked up the snowy sidewalk, unlocked her Fiat, and carefully set the cake boxes in the backseat. When she stepped back, Sterling placed the remainder he’d been holding inside then shut the door.
“I’ll be right behind you,” he told her.
She could’ve used a hug or a kiss or more reassuring statements, but he only offered a grim smile then strode off to his Jeep three cars down.
They drove slow and steady through the twinkling streets of Greenwich. Often Kitty checked her rearview to be certain he was still behind her and he always was, following her so closely that no car had a chance of squeezing in between.
When they reached her quaint, blue house on Orchard Street, Sterling helped her carry the cakes inside where she stacked them precariously among the crowded items in her refrigerator.
“Shoot, we forgot the whiskey,” she noted, concerned she had nothing Sterling would want to drink.
“Did we? I didn’t see it on the table when we left.”
“You didn’t?” She closed the fridge then grabbed a bottle of Merlot from the cabinet, as Sadie Francis came to mind. The woman was unusual. “I hope red’s okay,” she added, as she popped the cork.
Sterling grabbed two stemless wine glasses from the cupboard, a slightly more masculine option compared to the long stem variety, which was his way of confirming that, yes, he liked red wine.
Kitty resolved that confronting Sadie about whether or not she stole the whiskey during the height of a virtual crisis would be her pretense for paying the jeweler a visit tomorrow. It set her mind partially at ease by the time she and Sterling sat down on her living room couch.
She studied Sterling’s face, trying not to be obtuse about it. She was feeling desperate. If their relationship hadn’t evolved into something serious, she’d have no qualms about snooping and rustling up her own clues and evidence, anything to win Trudy over and keep her safe. But she’d gotten to know Sterling well enough to know he’d never stand for it. She didn’t want to risk losing him, and her prior snooping had compelled him to draw a line in the sand. As much as she’d helped him, he maintained the boundary. Put bluntly, her methods of solving a murder had never been appreciated and they never would be.
Sterling’s gaze was soft as he sipped the wine in silence. His fast thinking mind was hard at work in such a way that disturbed her. The shirt he wore, a thin, black knit sweater, hugged his musculature, while his weathered jeans clung around his legs with a relaxed fit. Under any other circumstance she’d be all over him, but given all that had transpired commingling with his dark loss for words, Kitty suddenly realized there was so much she didn’t know about him or understand. He was open, but only on certain topics. When it came to his work, the walls shot up and there was just no getting through.
Still, Kitty had an impulse to try.
“If it was the ring that killed her, then you’ll want to look closely at Sadie Francis.”
“Is that why you asked me what I thought about her?”
She nodded then nervously gulped her wine.
“I’ll talk with her tomorrow.” He sounded resolute, which wasn’t unlike him except for the fact she was accustomed to him fighting her on these very types of suggestions. She didn’t trust his candor.
“Her store is called Adorned,” she supplied, unsolicited. “It’s a few doors down from Happily Ever After.”
“I said I’ll look into her.” He didn’t look at her, but swirled the Merlot in his glass, staring vacantly at it.
“Margie wasn’t widely liked,” she went on, subtly pressing and testing and prying.
“Trudy liked her.”
Kitty tried not to snort.
“You’re not going to stick your nose in this one, are you?” It was a harsh question that she mostly deserved, but wasn’t pleased with.
“What’s wrong? I mean really?” Kitty studied his face now that he was looking at her. He was being harder than usual. He seemed somber in a way that didn’t seem appropriate given his chosen field and the fact that he hadn’t known Margie.
Sterling polished off his wine then filled his glass and took another long haul.
“Stressful upbringing.”
She waited for more, confused at how random the statement was, but he didn’t go on.
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“I lost my mother when I was twelve.” He downed his glass then refilled it, lifted it to his mouth, lowered it, pausing, as she waited, unsure about offering apologie
s when it seemed the details were pending. “Then...” he trailed off, inhaled deeply, held his breath, and exhaled. He didn’t want to tell her, but the can of worms had already been popped open. It was only a matter of time before the mess of them sprung out. “I didn’t want to have to tell you that I was married.”
Kitty’s heart skipped a beat and as it thumped into proper rhythm, raw shock rolled through her. He glanced at her as though he was afraid to see her reaction. He shook his head, disgusted with himself, and added merely, “She also died.”
Like a bomb going off, there was nowhere Kitty could hide. It had blown her apart.
“So similar,” he mused then shook the notion out of his head to explain the context that wasn’t so random after all. “I guess Margie reminded me of it. You try so hard not to think about these things, then something happens and it all comes flooding back.”
He laughed at himself, but it was forced.
Kitty noticed he’d drained his glass again. She grasped the bottle and poured Merlot for him then topped her own glass off.
“I can’t believe you were married,” she said, pondering the reality of what she’d always assumed would have been impossible. It explained so much when she thought about it: his distance, his reluctance to get involved or even sleep over, a hurtle they’d long since overcome, but still. If she’d known he’d been married, if she’d known his wife had died leaving him a widower, she might not have pushed him in the same ways she had, or at all.
Sterling drew in a deep breath.
“I can’t believe she was killed.”
Chapter Four
Kitty was stunned, but it came in waves. Sterling’s mother and wife had been killed, and Margie’s death had brought it all back, not just the knowledge, but also the feelings of loss, grief, and chaos.
It seemed like a cycle. The information struck her, took her breath away, then receded and panicked confusion set in like a tremble. When the tremble subsided she felt empathy for Sterling so extreme it brought tears to her eyes. Then that too faded away and she felt numb for a brief respite before the information struck and stunned her all over again.
ENGAGED TO BE MURDERED (The Wedding Planner Mysteries Book 4) Page 3