Arsenic and Ole

by Jessa Archer

  “No clue,” I told her, “but if so, this couple is going to be spectacularly unlucky.”

  “I’m really sorry for dragging you into the storm on your night off, Tig, especially when you’re trekking all the way out to Carova for the wedding tomorrow morning. But Phil won’t be in until after midnight—they didn’t wrap things up in Trenton until about an hour ago. And I can’t face any more of this alone. I need an ally. Kyla actually apologized to everyone for the fact that the meal is buffet-style. God forbid they have to stand for a couple of minutes and scoop the food they want onto a plate.”

  Melinda had been fretting for weeks over the details of this rehearsal dinner, the one part of her stepson’s wedding that was the exclusive responsibility of the groom’s family. Her husband, Phil, a New Jersey state senator, had been held up due to a last-minute crisis with a tax bill he was sponsoring, so the full burden of getting things ready had fallen onto Melinda’s shoulders. She didn’t really mind the dinner part—she’d organized much larger events as part of her work with her husband’s charitable foundation—but her relationship with her stepson was strained. And Melinda had told me numerous horror stories about dealing with the bride’s family over the past week during our backstage chats at the Coastal Playhouse. Most of those stories had featured Kyla Anthony, the stepmother of the bride.

  “It’s gotten even worse tonight,” Melinda said. “I don’t know if it’s the weather or what, but everyone seems on edge. I’m hoping things will lighten up a bit now that they have a drink or two into their systems, but…”

  “But that could also make things worse,” I finished for her. “And you might get stuck with them for longer while they sober up.”

  “Oh, no, I won’t,” she said with a grin. “They were brought here in stretch limos and stretch limos will cart them away, drunk or sober.”

  Well, that explained the empty driveway. “Can limos handle the beach road without getting stuck?” I asked.

  “Stretch Hummers can. And Kyla will tell you exactly how much it cost to have those brought down from New Jersey to shuttle the wedding party around while they’re here. I agreed to pay for one day of the rental, and that was mostly so I could order the drivers to be here at precisely nine-thirty tonight to haul the guests away. If they want to keep drinking, there’s booze in the limos. The bride needs to get a good night’s rest so she won’t be as grumpy tomorrow. In fact, they all do. I’ve never met such a surly crowd. At least now there will be one person in the room without a snarl on her face.”

  “That’s what friends are for,” I said. “But to be honest, I’d have come even if I hated you once you told me Silvia was doing the buffet.”

  My friends Bill and Silvia Gonzalez, owners of La Costera, were still clawing their way back from the bad press that followed a disastrous false accusation against them a few months before. Usually their catering orders were for taco bars, like the one I’d arranged for my daughter Paige’s sixteenth birthday party. This dinner, however, was a Mexican seafood buffet for forty people and Melinda didn’t have to pinch pennies by opting for the cheaper appetizers or whatever. The Gonzalezes would likely turn a decent profit on the event, which might help to make up, at least somewhat, for the rather lean summer they’d had so far.

  Melinda pushed the button for the elevator to take us up to the great room on the top floor. Like most beach properties, especially ones where the owners did any sort of entertaining, the Eastland’s house was designed so that the common areas could take maximum advantage of the scenery.

  “If you want to lighten the mood, we could make a grand entrance,” I joked. “Launch into one of our duets from the Playhouse when the door slides open.”

  She snorted as we stepped inside the elevator. “The bride’s father would probably get a kick out of it. Most of the plays his company produces are musicals. And I have to admit, “The Cell Block Tango” from Chicago has been running through my head all week, so it’s a miracle the wedding party is still alive. Every single member of the bride’s family has it coming in one way or another and I doubt any jury would convict me if I just offed the lot of them. But about half the people in that room are Phil’s constituents. And aside from Evan, they all assume I spend my time stretched out on the beach during my summers down here, not helping run a melodrama theater.”

  I winced. “Speaking of the Playhouse, I kind of feel like we’re skipping school tonight.”

  “They’ll be fine. Ben Baker could run the place all on his own if he had to. And he’s got Raymond there if he has questions. Bethany, too.”

  That really didn’t make me feel better, since the last two individuals she mentioned had attitude problems. She was right that Ben knew what he was doing, however...probably better than I did. And the cell phone in my pocket was a comforting weight, much as it had been the first time I’d left my teenage daughter alone without a sitter. If there was a problem, Ben would call. Still, I was very glad that Melinda would be there next week while I was away on my very short vacation in New York.

  “And all three of them have already had the Playhouse Plague,” she added, referring to the nasty cold that had been making the rounds. “So stop worrying, okay?”

  A few people glanced our way as Melinda and I stepped out of the elevator but most were too preoccupied with their food, their conversation, or both to pay us any mind. I was the last guest to arrive, since everyone else had been at the house for the wedding rehearsal. It was originally scheduled to take place on the beach out front, but Mother Nature intervened about ten minutes before they were ready to begin, and they’d been forced to move everything inside.

  The ocean view from this level of Melinda’s house was magnificent. I’d been here a few times since she arrived in town to work the summer season at the Playhouse, which she owned and which I managed as part of my duties teaching theater at Southern Coastal University. Tonight, however, the view from that stretch of windows was quite different. While I was certain that the sand and the sea were still out there somewhere, the only thing currently visible was a solid wall of water rippling down the glass, punctuated occasionally by a brief flash of lightning over the ocean. You couldn’t even see the deck outside.

  This much rain was going to make for a soggy ceremony, even if the storm ended soon. The wedding itself was being held the next morning, about ten miles north at the Ocean Pearl, an enormous event house on Carova Beach, accessible only by four-wheel-drive vehicles. At the rate the rain was coming down currently, I was afraid that getting there the next morning was going to be less like a typical beach drive and more like going mudding.

  Choosing Ocean Pearl as a wedding venue had been the act of a total bridezilla, according to Melinda, and I was inclined to agree. The entire wedding party, along with most of the guests, lived in New Jersey. Jade Anthony, soon to be Mrs. Evan Eastland, had been to the Outer Banks of North Carolina precisely once, when she accompanied Evan to visit Melinda and Phil over the previous Thanksgiving weekend. On that visit, Evan had booked a tour to show his new fiancée the wild horses that roam the 4x4 beach. Jade was instantly captivated and seized on the location as the perfect spot for her dream wedding, despite the fact that everyone she invited, aside from Melinda, would have to travel from New Jersey to North Carolina.

  This would be the third marriage for Evan but the first for Jade, and Jade’s father, a Broadway producer for whom money was apparently not an object, was catering to every whim of his oldest daughter. If Gilbert Anthony’s baby girl wanted a destination wedding with wild horses on an isolated, barely accessible beach hundreds of miles away, then that was precisely what Gilbert Anthony’s baby girl would get.

  The ponies in question, however, officially called Banker horses, do not perform on command. Even the tour buses can’t guarantee that customers will see them, and they go to areas off the beaten path where the wild horses are known to congregate. Melinda had tried to tell her prospective daughter-in-law that the ponies rarely approach large gro
ups, but Jade was adamant that they would grace her wedding. Daddy had promised.

  “I’m over there with Evan and Jade’s family,” Melinda whispered, nodding toward the second of three long banquet tables that had been set up for the occasion. “I’ve saved you a seat next to me once you fix your plate. There’s wine on the table, unless you need something stronger.”

  I told her that wine would be perfect, and grabbed a plate from the buffet. The food smelled heavenly. It would have almost been worth braving the monsoon outside even if Melinda hadn’t needed me to come for moral support. I scooped shrimp in green mole sauce, cilantro rice, salad, and something that looked a bit like a crab cake onto my plate, and then carried it over to join Melinda.

  The three men at Melinda’s end of the table rose briefly and everyone gave a perfunctory smile of greeting when she introduced me. I hadn’t met Evan yet, but would have been able to pick him out of a lineup pretty easily. He looked a lot like his father—tall and thin with gray hair, somewhat prematurely so in the son’s case. He was around my age, handsome in a preppy way, and looked like he spent a lot of time on the golf course.The bride was also tall and thin, with dark hair and a button nose that didn’t quite match her long narrow face.

  I took a vacant seat between Melinda and the bride’s father. Gilbert Anthony was almost the polar opposite of his new son-in-law—short and rather squat, with hair so dark that I was quite certain it was dyed. The willowy platinum blonde on his other side was his most recent wife, Kyla, a former stage dancer.

  Gilbert frowned as Melinda said my name. “Antigone Alden, hm? Were you named after the play by Sophocles?”

  “Indirectly, yes. My parents got married around the time my father was working on the movie adaptation of the play, so—”

  “James Alden!” he exclaimed, clapping gleefully. “I didn’t make the connection at first. Oh my goodness. I watch him every day on The Sands of Time.”

  “That’s actually true,” Kyla said. She had a pronounced Jersey accent, and there was a subtle hint of surprise in her voice as if she were amazed that her husband had said something honest. “If I stop by the office at lunchtime, he and Cryssie are glued to the TV. Silly storylines, in my opinion. Did they ever figure out which one was the werewolf?”

  The introductions hadn’t extended to the far end of the table, but the young woman two seats down from Kyla turned when she heard the name Cryssie, so I assumed that she was Crystal, the bride’s sister.

  Gilbert waved away his wife’s question about the werewolf. “Oh, they solved that mystery months ago. Now they’re dealing with an outbreak of a virus that causes amnesia.”

  “Really? Too bad it’s fiction. They could bottle that and make a fortune.” The look Kyla gave her husband left little doubt as to exactly what—or rather, who—she’d pay a fortune to forget.

  Her husband gave her a slow, serpentine smile. “You might want to hold off on spending my money for a dose of the virus, dear. It’s a nasty little bug. First, you lose your memory. But then you lose your life. ” He turned back to me. “I suspect your father is behind the entire thing, as usual?”

  I laughed, knowing he meant my dad’s character on the show. “That’s quite likely.”

  He wrinkled his nose. “You almost sound proud that he’s involved. As I said, people are dying.”

  I resisted the urge to point out that the “people” in question were also characters on a soap opera, and undoubtedly very minor characters if they wound up permanently dead. Major characters on Sands seem to be like cats, with at least nine lives.

  My father had played the villainous Vincent Coletti for well over a decade, but he really had only two things in common with his long-running alter ego. First, both of them were hiding something under their suave, handsome exteriors. Coletti was hiding the fact that he funded almost every evil enterprise that preyed on the beleaguered town of Amberly. My dad was hiding the fact that while he often portrayed brilliant, devious men, he was both an absolute pussycat and not exactly the brightest bulb on the marquee. I was beginning to suspect the latter trait was something he might have in common with Gilbert Anthony.

  The second point of commonality my father shared with his fictional character was that he had multiple ex-wives. Coletti’s exes frequently tried to murder him, and vice versa, sometimes while under the influence of an amulet that turned them in zombies or because one of the wives believed—correctly, as it turned out in one case—that Vince Coletti was sharing consciousness with an alien. My father, on the other hand, treated his entire entourage of ex-wives and their current partners to a cruise each June. I hadn’t been able to make it that summer due to my work at the Playhouse, but Paige went, taking her friend Delaney in my stead. Everyone had a wonderful time with no squabbles, which is more than most extended families can claim after a week of constant contact. While it was true that James Alden had a difficult time sustaining a marriage, he was the unrivaled master of amicable divorce.

  “I don’t just remember your father from The Sands of Time, of course,” Gilbert continued. “I saw James Alden onstage back when he starred in a revival of Carousel. Before you were even a twinkle in his eye, Antigone.”

  “Please call me Tig.”

  “Tig...Alden?” his wife asked. “ Aren’t you on TV, too? The name seems familiar.”

  “I was. But that was years ago. I teach college now.”

  With a single blink of Kyla’s improbably long lashes, I was dismissed. She turned back to talk to man on her other side with a speed that bordered on comical.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, placing her hand on his arm. “What were you saying, Mace?”

  Gilbert seemed amused at her reaction. “I’m afraid my wife isn’t a fan of higher education,” he told me in a confidential tone that was still plenty loud enough for her to hear. “Education of any sort, really.”

  Kyla gave her husband just enough side-eye to make it clear that she had heard, then continued her conversation with the other man, a blond muscular type with a military haircut who looked like a former offensive tackle. He seemed to be there as the date of the bridesmaid who was seated on his other side, but most of his attention was focused on Kyla. Judging from the looks the bridesmaid was shooting him out of the corner of her eye, she must have regretted inviting him.

  Gilbert was still chuckling at his little joke. He opened his mouth, probably hoping to get in another insult, but Jade began tapping her glass with a fork to get everyone’s attention.

  “I almost forgot with the storm and everything, but Evan and I have another little gift for everyone in the wedding party.” Evan held a cloth bag in each hand, one orange and one white. He handed the white bag to Jade and then the two of them began circling the tables, passing out tiny fragrance bottles.

  Evan pulled a tiny, dark gray bottle from the bag and placed it on the table next to Melinda. “You can give that to my father. Assuming, of course, that he arrives in time for the wedding.”

  Melinda gave her stepson a tight smile. “Negotiations on the tax bill ended a few hours ago, Evan. He’s on his way.”

  “These were made especially for our wedding by a parfumier in New York,” Jade said as she passed the tiny orange and white bottles around, first to Kyla and Melinda, and then to the women I assumed were her bridesmaids. “This way, our scents won’t clash tomorrow!”

  “What a great idea!” one of the bridesmaids said.

  “You might want to reserve judgment until you smell it,” Crystal said.

  Gilbert shook his head in warning. “Cryssie.”

  “I’m sorry, but I’m not wearing that. It smells like someone peed on a decaying rose. And Jade knows I only wear Sinner by Kat Von D.”

  Jade slammed the bottle down next to her sister’s plate. “Oh, is that what it’s called? All I know is that you smell like you just bathed in a vat of patchouli.”

  Gilbert sighed heavily, and then went off to grab something from the dessert tray. As he stood up, I was
surprised to discover he was far shorter than I’d thought— about my height, which put him nearly six inches shorter than the bride.

  On her way back to her seat, Jade leaned down and whispered something I couldn’t hear to her sister.

  “You wouldn’t dare,” Crystal said as she glared up at Jade.

  Jade’s dark eyes flashed. “You think I won’t tell him? Just try me. I’ve got proof, too. Check your phone later.”

  A couple of the other bridesmaids laughed. One said, “I wouldn’t cross her, Cryssie. Just wear the perfume.”

  Melinda shot me a pained look, and mouthed kill me now. Then she uncapped the bottle of women’s fragrance that Jade had given her, sniffed it, and smiled politely before handing it to me.

  Crystal’s assessment, although a bit harsh, was largely accurate. The stuff stank. I wasn’t familiar with the brand Crystal said she wore because I steer clear of anything with patchouli. It tends to make me sneeze if I’m around it for too long. But it had to smell better than this swill.

  And dictating the perfume worn by members of your bridal party? Definitely a bridezilla move.

  Gilbert returned a few moments later with a slice of decadent-looking chocolate caramel cake and a refilled wine glass, and began asking me the usual questions I’d been getting most of my life as soon as someone realizes I’m James Alden’s daughter. Every few minutes, I tried to shift the conversation back to something more inclusive of Melinda. Gilbert would go along for a moment or two each time, and then yank the discussion right back to my father. That normally doesn’t bother me in the slightest—I’m very proud of my dad—but the guy was being rather rude to Melinda. If she was bothered, however, she didn’t show it. I think she was glad to just be able to sit there and nod. It had been a long week for her.

  “Do you know if your father has considered returning to the stage?” Gilbert asked. “My partner and I…”