by Tegan Maher
I scoffed. "Maybe some little girls. Personally, I dreamed of being a big horse trainer and rodeo star.” Big weddings seemed to be a big deal for a lot of women, but I just didn't see the point in wasting so much money on a dress you were only going to wear once, especially when you could put it toward a nice vacation or something more practical. For what Anna Mae paid for her dress, Hunter and I could go away for a couple of weeks to somewhere nice and still have money to spare. Besides that, I was happy with the status quo. Sure, I wanted to marry Hunter, but I didn't see where it was going to make a huge change in our everyday lives. The wedding was just a formality.
"And that is exactly why I love you." He grinned at me. "Besides, I'd rather take that money and go get a little cabin in Colorado or somewhere for a week. Just leave everything behind and take some time for you and me."
"That sounds absolutely delightful, though I don’t know about Colorado.” I said. The thought of getting away from everything beat wearing a beautiful dress, hands down, no matter how fancy it was, and we didn’t have money to do both. Besides I wasn't much of a dress girl.
We hit the outskirts of town. “You parked at Brew, right? Do you want me to drop you there, or do you want me to take you straight to Penny’s?”
"You can just drop me at Penny’s shop and I'll walk back to Rae's when I’m done with my errands. After all the sweets I've stuffed in my face lately, the exercise will do me good."
He kept driving past Rae’s coffee shop and made a left into Penny's parking lot. "Your wish is my command. I'll give you a call if I hear anything back on the credit cards, and you see what you can find out at Coralee’s.”
I scrunched up my nose. "I'm not going within a hundred yards of that place until I know that Belle’s through her temper tantrum and back to her normal semi-crabby self."
One side of his mouth curled up into a smile as he pulled to a stop right near the front door. "I don't blame you there, I suppose. What are your plans after you leave Penny’s?”
"I'm not sure. I might swing by Bobbie Sue’s and see how she's doing. I haven't talked to her in several days, and on the off chance that she doesn't know about this murder, she’ll be mad at me if I'm not the one to fill her in."
"Okay, go and fill in all the necessary people to keep yourself out of trouble. We can't have the gossip chain missing a link.”
I leaned across the console and gave him a kiss, then climbed out into the sunshine. He joked, but I've made the mistake a couple of times of not telling Bobbie Sue right off the bat when something had happened.
Since she was usually stuck back in the kitchen at her barbecue restaurant, she was often the last to hear about things. It really bent her nose out of joint, especially when all of her friends already knew and didn't bother to text. She, in turn, bent my nose out of joint.
Before I went into Penny’s, I stopped to admire the dresses she had in her shop windows. They ranged from cute sundresses to the most elaborate wedding gowns. I smiled, knowing how much she enjoyed making each one.
When I pushed through the shop door, the air conditioning sent a shiver down my spine, but not nearly as much as the screeching voice coming from the back did. I followed the shrill screeches to the back area where Penny usually did business. Sure enough, I recognized the termagant making such a ruckus. Olivia, my archenemy since kindergarten, was standing there with her hand slammed on her hips giving poor Penny what for.
"But I'm not going to use the dress. Kendra’s havin’ a baby, and obviously the one that you made for her is much too small for Barbie.”
Poor Penny looked like she was waffling between crying and tearing Olivia's hair out. "I told you, I can alter the dress so that it still fits Kendra, or even Barbie for that matter, but you'll have to deal with panels. There's only so much fabric in that dress, and I can only let it out so far."
"Then it won't look like the rest of my dresses," Olivia’s sour face was beet red with anger. "Besides, I don’t want somebody big and pregnant in my pictures. I paid you good money to make the dresses for my wedding, and I expect you to hold up your end of the deal."
Penny ground her teeth together, and I could see it was taking everything she had not to reach across the counter and smack some sense into Olivia, not that it would have worked.
The evil witch in me grinned. Picture that image of the Grinch slowly curving his mouth up, and you'll have a pretty good idea of what that looked like in my head. I muttered a few words as I rubbed the back of my neck, my arm in front of my face to muffle it.
Olivia always brought out the worst in me, but that was because she never showed anything but the worst of herself. I knew exactly when the spell took effect because the expression on Penny's face changed. She pinched her lips together, and her eyes widened in disbelief as she glanced at me and put two and two together. She choked out a garbled laugh, then covered it by clearing her throat.
Penny was one of the relatively few people outside my immediate circle who knew for sure I was a witch, and she also knew I loathed Olivia. Her jaw worked, and her eyes were watering, and I knew it was taking everything she had to keep from laughing. At that point, I had to stroll around the counter to see my handiwork.
As soon as Olivia saw me, he face screwed up into pure hatred. Of course, it was sorta hard to tell considering I’d magicked away her eyebrows. Unlike Penny, I didn't bother to muffle my laughter. As a matter of fact, I about busted a gut. Most people look funny with no eyebrows, but Olivia was especially delightful, especially considering I'd moved one of them down to her upper lip. The more she scowled and changed expressions, the funnier it got. I had no idea how much a person used their eyebrows for expressions.
Olivia curled her now-furry lip and snapped at me. "What are you laughing at, you redheaded cow?”
I tried to answer her but couldn't; I was gasping for breath from laughing so hard. All I could do was point at her and hold my gut. To Penny’s credit, she was still holding it together rather well. She coughed again and held up her finger like she was choking and needed a minute. Tears were starting to run down her face from the effort it was taking her to keep from laughing.
"I'm sorry, Olivia," she said her voice thick, "but my policy firmly states no custom dresses can be returned. Like I said, I'll gladly alter it for you, but I'm not giving you your money back."
Olivia's gaze was thunderous. "I'll ruin you. I know everybody in this town, and I sit on half a dozen committees. If you don't work with me on this, you'll never sell another dress."
Even eyebrowless and with a mustache, that stopped my laughter. I turned to Penny rather than addressing Olivia directly. "Speaking of doing business, I'm here to check on Anna Mae's dresses, and also to talk to you about designing my own. I'll also need six bridesmaids dresses, and I wanna get them booked now because I know you’re slammed for the next six months." I shot a pointed look at Olivia because I was aiming that one at her ability to hit Penny in the pocketbook.
She looked down her nose at me. "Six? How on earth do you even have six friends?"
I arched a brow at her. "Unlike you, I actually have a personality, and I treat my friends well. If I wanted, I could have twenty bridesmaids. However, poor Penny here doesn't have that kind of time, and I'm trying to keep everything small."
She scoffed. "Yeah, because everybody in this town knows you're a witch, and nobody wants anything to do with you. You have no choice but to keep it small because you can't get more than fifty people to come see you get married. And even those are the town freak shows."
That pissed me off, and I narrowed my eyes at her. Say anything about me that you want, but don't you dare ever talk like that about my family. I briefly debated making her hair disappear too, but I figured that would be taking it a little too far. I did, however, consider leaving her eyebrows gone and her mustache in place.
I had originally intended to fix it before she left the shop, but maybe it would be good for her to walk around like that. If nothing else, it
would give everybody else in town a good laugh with the added bonus of humiliating her. I couldn't do that, though.
Though Olivia had speculated for years that I was a witch just as most of the rest of the town had, she didn't know for sure. I supposed leaving the place with no eyebrows and a fresh mustache would probably be a dead giveaway that something wasn't exactly right.
Still, I wasn't going to let her get away with bad mouthing my people or being mean to Penny. I lowered my brows, a look Olivia should have known from experience was a precursor to something bad happening to her. Usually, it was just a fist to the nose, but I figured something a little more in line with her behavior would be appropriate. Since she was being such a cheapskate, I messed up all the magnetic strips on her credit cards and sealed her change purse closed. I hope she had enough cash, or enough gas in her tank, to get home because there was no way she was going to be able to use any of her credit to do it. And the beautiful thing was that she'd never be able to trace it back to me.
The more I thought about it, the more the idea of her having to hoof it home or call a ride appealed to me. Her big pink Caddie was parked where I could see it, so I focused my intentions on emptying her tank. I couldn’t make things magically appear, but I was an ace at making them disappear. I left just enough to get her a block or two away from us.
"I think it's time for you to go Olivia," Penny said glancing meaningfully toward the door. "You have your dresses, and they've all been altered as much as they’re going to be. As far as I can tell, you don't have any reason to come back here."
"What?" Olivia gasped. "What if I need something else? What if one of the dresses busts the seam?"
Penny raised a brow. "I have enough faith in my skills that I can promise you, as long as the person who was meant to wear those dresses doesn't gain ten pounds in the next two days, the dresses will fit. As far as needing anything else, that's not my problem. Maybe in the future, you'll think twice before cutting off your nose to spite your face. I did you a favor by finishing your dresses after the scene you made in here last time. Not everybody will take your bullying, and I’m one of them. Now out." She snapped her arm toward the door, pointing in the direction of it to make her point.
Olivia snatched her purse off the counter and turned on her heel. "You haven't heard the last of this. I'm telling everybody on all my committees what a horrible seamstress you are, and none of them are ever going to use you again."
Penny huffed a little breath out through her nose and raised her brows. "Considering you're the only person on any of those committees under sixty, I'm not that worried about it. As far as the rest of the girls in your party go, there are only two left that are unmarried, and I seriously doubt they'd turn down the chance to wear one of my dresses just to give your ego a boost."
Olivia stomped out the door, and I gave a final giggle when she tried to slam it but couldn't because of the hydraulic arm on it.
Penny looked at me and smiled. "Are you gonna fix that before she gets out in the street? As hilarious as it is, and as much as other people would probably enjoy it, I think discretion is the better part of valor here."
I grinned. "All right, fine, party pooper." I twinkled my fingers at Olivia, undoing the magic and setting her back to as normal as she got. “But just so you know none of her credit cards are gonna work anywhere, and she’s about two blocks away from being out of gas.”
Penny shook her head, her mouth still curled into a smile. "And this is why I love you and why I'm giving you an extra ten percent off everything you buy for your wedding. Just looking at her with no eyebrows and that mustache was enough to make my whole day. She’d been ranting at me for twenty minutes before you got here, and I was about to do something that would've gotten me thrown in jail."
Since I'd been in that position more times than I could count with Olivia, I knew how she felt. I was just glad I'd been able to give her a laugh and get her out of the bad mood that Olivia had no doubt put her in. The woman could ruin anybody's day just by walking in the room.
We went over the final stuff for Anna Mae's wedding then talked a little bit about what I might like for my own. I'd been serious when I’d told Hunter I didn't want to do anything fancy, so Penny had been working on a simple sheath dress for me. She'd insisted on dressing it up with lace and beadwork even though I'd assured her that that wasn't necessary. She'd been working on a sketch for a couple of weeks, and as much as I was opposed to anything fancy, I fell in love with it as soon as I saw it.
"Wow. That's incredible." I stared at the picture, trying to take it all in. She’d respected my wishes to keep it simple, but she’d added little details here and there that really took the dress from simple to spectacular.
"So, are you really going with six bridesmaids, or did you just say that for Olivia's benefit?"
"No," I said, "I really am going with six bridesmaids. Coralee, Anna Mae, Bobbie Sue, Shelby, Levana, and then Raeann is going to be my maid of honor. We’ll probably just go off the rack for them, though."
"Speaking of Levana, she's an odd sort, isn't she?" She raised her hands. "Don't take that wrong. She's an absolute sweetheart, and I really like her, but she often uses strange turns of phrase. It's like she's from another century or something. She also seemed a bit scandalized when she came in with Anna Mae and learned that she wasn't going to be wearing slips and hoops and all that sort of stuff under her wedding dress."
I laughed as I ran my fingers over some peach tulle she had laying on the counter. "Yeah, her family was old-fashioned. Her mama and her grandmamma lived in the house that she was raised in, and they were both very formal."
That wasn't exactly true, though she had been raised in a multigenerational household. The part where I stretched the truth was about them being formal. I suppose the way they talked was standard for somebody who lived in the 1700s. I couldn't hardly tell Penny that though. That wasn't my story to tell.
We discussed my wedding for a few more minutes, then made the final arrangements for Anna Mae's stuff.
"Now that we have Anna Mae’s stuff nailed down, have you picked a date for yours?" She crossed her arms and gave me a stern look.
It was a valid question. We’d held off on making a solid date until we could get through the crazy in our lives, but it was starting to look like the crazy was there to stay.
"Yeah, we actually have. We’re thinking of a December wedding."
She squealed and clapped her hands in delight. “Oooh, I just love a Christmas wedding. Now you got me thinking. Since you haven't come to a final decision on your colors, I think you should go with blue and silver. All of your girls will look good in those colors, and it will be so beautiful."
Her eyes took on a dreamy expression, and I decided then and there that blue and silver it would be.
Oddly enough, as I made the decision, a weight I hadn’t even realized had been there lifted from my shoulders. For the first time since we’d gotten engaged, I was actually looking forward to our wedding. It was time to start the next phase of our lives.
12
After I left Penny’s, I decided to go to Bobbie Sue's and make sure she’d heard the news. I was also about to thirst to death, so I figured I could grab myself an iced tea while I was there. Since I'd left my truck at Raeann’s, I had to hoof it, and even though it was only a couple of blocks, I was sweating by the time I got there. The sunshine on my face had felt amazing, though. When I walked inside, I flapped my arms a little bit to let the AC get in all the sticky places.
Sarah, a good friend of mine who I'd worked with back when I was working for Bobbie Sue, was taking an order from a family of four at table three. She looked up and gave me a wink then turned back to the table and finished taking the order. I gave her a little wave and headed to the drink station.
"Hey, girl," she exclaimed a minute later as she rounded the corner to the computer, where she began tapping the order in. "I haven't seen you in a coon’s age. How you been?"
S
he went to give me a little hug, but I waved her off and stepped back. "Trust me, you don't want to do that. I just walked all the way from Penny’s, and it's about nine-hundred degrees in the shade out." She pushed my hand away and pulled me into a hug anyway. "Oh, stop! This is Georgia. If just bein’ sweaty disqualified you from getting a hug, we'd all be shakin’ clammy hands. How you been? I thought you were on vacation."
I tilted my head at her. If she’d heard about the murder, she'd know why I was back, so I had to assume she hadn’t. "Wait, so you haven't heard what happened?"
She reached around me and grabbed four glasses, then filled them with ice. "What happened where? Did I miss something again? I've been out with Skeet workin’ on cars, and last night we took the kids to the movies."
"And you haven't heard anything here today?" Things are really slacking in Keyhole if word of a murder hadn’t made it through Bobbie Sue's.
She pressed her lips together and shook her head. "Nope, haven't heard anything at all. Are you gonna tell me, or are you gonna make me guess?
I handed her the tea pitcher. "Somebody was found murdered up in the woods behind the cabin where we were staying."
She tilted her head at me and studied me for a moment while I fidgeted. “Was found murdered, huh? Is that ‘you’ speak for you found another body?" She shook her head. "Girl, you have the worst luck ever when it comes to that. Who was it? No, wait. Let me take these drinks out.”
She zipped over and dropped them off, then hurried back, sliding her tray into the holder and leaning back against the counter. “Now, spill.”
"Curtis Boyd. He and his wife Valerie just got married a few months ago, and they were up there on a little stay-cay getaway for the week." I fiddled with the rows of red plastic cups stacked on the counter, making sure they were perfectly aligned with each other. It was a nervous habit that she recognized.