Lost and Gowned

by Melissa F. Miller

  Sage nodded.

  “She sure does,” I chirped enthusiastically.

  “She hasn’t wanted me to touch anything. I’m afraid I won’t do it to her specifications,” he worried.

  It was a legitimate concern. Rosemary could be … exacting. But this was no time to get hung up on perfection. We needed to keep him busy. And, from a realistic standpoint, the favors weren’t going to package themselves while Sage and I were running around looking for the missing bride.

  Sage was tapping on her cell phone. “I’m telling Roman to find Victor and come down here to help you,” she said.

  “Have them bring a bucket of beers, too,” I suggested, sweetening the pot.

  Dave nodded, considering. “Okay, I guess it won’t be too bad if I have company and some cold ones.”

  I smiled and gave him an encouraging pat on the arm. “You’ll finish in no time. Just make sure you cut those ribbons to exactly eighteen inches … or else.”

  We shared a chuckle at Rosemary’s expense.

  Dave had brightened considerably by now. “Will do. Will the three of you come join us when you’re done doing whatever it is you have to do?”

  “Definitely,” I promised. “We can play cards or something until dinner.”

  Sage inclined her head toward the door. “We should get going.”

  I suspected she didn’t want to have to attempt lying to Roman’s face. And I didn’t want her to. He’d be able to tell in a heartbeat that she was spinning a tale.

  We waved goodbye to Dave, who was inspecting the fabric shears as if they might be some sort of illegal contraband, and darted into the hall.

  I waited until we’d rounded the corner toward the main hall to speak. “Okay, I bought us some time. Now what’s your brilliant idea?”

  She pressed her lips together in a worried line. Then she said, “You said she ran into the Simons, right?”

  “Right. So?”

  “So, if they’re out wandering around the grounds, they may have seen or heard something.”

  “I guess it’s possible,” I said flatly, unable to muster any real enthusiasm for this plan.

  Unless a hawk had carried off our sister, I thought it was unlikely the bird watchers would be much help. But, seeing as how I didn’t have any better ideas, I kept my opinion to myself.

  We cut through the reception area on our way to the cottages on the other side of the property. Kay looked up from a phone call and gave us a little nod of greeting.

  Sage had her head down and was striding purposely through the lobby. I wouldn’t say she seemed eager to get to the Simons’ cottage, though. In fact, she seemed more nervous now than she was when we were busy lying our butts off to a trained law enforcement professional just minutes ago. She didn’t talk as we left the main house and followed the path around to the back where the individual cottages were situated.

  Her silence gave me time to wonder whether we’d made a mistake by keeping Rosemary’s disappearance from Dave. After all, he was a detective. He would probably be able to help us find her.

  But I didn’t want him to think she’d gotten cold feet and bolted. I was sure she wasn’t having second thoughts about getting married. Well, I was reasonably sure. I couldn’t help but remember how she’d reacted to Chelle’s story about the equivocating groom.

  We reached the walkway to the front door of the middle of the three cottages, the one we called the Rose Cottage. Sage stopped by the wild rose bushes as if she were steeling herself for battle.

  “Why are you being so weird? Just knock on the door and ask them if they saw anything,” I told her.

  She sighed, stepped up to the door, and raised her hand to rap on it. Just then, I heard a familiar meow.

  I turned in the direction of the sound and saw Parsley, the family cat. Our parents had left him in Kay’s care because even they must have realized a cat and the open ocean isn’t a match made in heaven. But I was surprised to see him sitting on the windowsill inside the cottage we’d rented to the Simons. As a rule, he wasn’t overly friendly with strangers.

  “Parsley, what are you doing in there?” I asked.

  The cat mewed in response and butted his head against the window screen.

  Sage gave the door three quick raps. There was no movement inside, and nobody came to the door.

  Parsley clawed at the window screen, his mews morphing into a strangled cry. He wanted to come out.

  I hated to invade our guests’ privacy, but Parsley had a bit of a destructive streak. I couldn’t leave him in there to tear the Simons’ belongings to shreds out of boredom.

  So I stood in the flowerbed and pushed on the window screen. It popped right out of the frame, just as I’d known it would. The cottage windows were on our long list of deferred maintenance issues to be addressed when we had the cash.

  Parsley crawled through the opening and jumped to the ground. He wound himself around my ankles and gave me a short, ticklish lick of thanks before prancing down the path back to the main house and his food bowl.

  Sage stuck her head through the open window and craned her neck, looking around the room.

  “Mr. Simon? Mrs. Simon?” she called loudly.

  “They aren’t in there, Sage,” I told her, stating the obvious.

  She sighed and picked up the screen. I helped her jiggle it back into place.

  “Now what?” I said.

  She shook her head. “I’m fresh out of ideas.”

  “Well, I have one,” I told her.

  “What?”

  “We need to call the police.”

  “We can’t.”

  Chapter 13

  Rosemary

  As I prowled around the inside of the storage container like a caged feline trying to burn off excess energy, I took stock of my situation.

  In the plus column: the container seemed to be climate-controlled; someone had stuck up a couple of those battery-operated lights people use in their closets, so it wasn’t totally dark; and, based on my rough estimate, the space was somewhere between one hundred fifty and two hundred square feet—so, not much smaller than Thyme’s expensive apartment in New York.

  In the minus column: I had been abducted, which was a pretty significant drawback; I was barefoot and wearing my wedding gown; there was no food, water, or access to a bathroom; and I had no phone, keys, weapon, or anything else that might prove useful if I managed to get out of here. Wherever here was.

  So, it was safe to say the bad outweighed the good.

  The abduction had happened so fast. I’d been standing around in the suite, waiting for Thyme to return with Sage so I could model the dress, when I’d heard a loud, rustling noise.

  It sounded as if it was coming from the wild blueberry thicket just beyond the end of the small patio. At first, I assumed the bird-watching Simons were out traipsing through the trees and shrubs again, but when I peered through the French doors, I caught a glimpse of black.

  I stared hard at the black blob, and waited for it to move. After a few seconds, it did, and, through the branches, I spotted a man in a black suit. I was sure he was the man who’d been on the beach earlier.

  I flung open the French doors leading out to the patio and darted outside. My heart was racing, but I had had enough. Whoever this guy was, he needed to get lost before my wedding tomorrow. I walked on my toes to the edge of the patio, holding the skirt of my dress up with both hands, like a princess in a movie.

  “Hey, you,” I shouted.

  The guy wheeled around, and we locked eyes. Then he turned back and dived into the bushes.

  I was mad, but I wasn’t crazy, so I didn’t follow him. Instead, I turned back to my room still shaking with adrenaline to wait for my sisters. But I never made it back inside.

  Rough, strong hands grabbed me around my waist and pulled me off to the left through an opening in the wild rose bushes. I started to scream, and one beefy forearm encircled my midriff while the other hand clasped hard over my mouth. I thras
hed and twisted, trying to get a look at my assailant, but failed. His movements were quick and clean. Professional. As if this probably wasn’t his first kidnapping.

  He tossed me unceremoniously into the back of a white panel van and locked the doors. I could hear him rattling the handle to make sure the doors were secure before he got in the cab and started the engine. For a moment, I tried to convince myself I was the victim of a surprise bachelorette party, not an abduction. But my sisters knew better than to manufacture a stunt like this. I had a to-do list a mile long.

  Of all the ways I’d contemplated spending my last night as a single woman, as a captive in the back of a van hadn’t been on the list. The van bumped along. I considered banging my feet and fists against the side, but it would be a fruitless waste of energy. Judging by the unevenness of the road, my attacker was taking the back road out of Tranquility by the Sea along an infrequently traveled, one-lane county road. There’d be no one to hear me if I kicked up a fuss. I slumped against the wall to conserve my energy and plot my next move. This guy had better think again if he thought he was going to prevent me from becoming Mrs. David Drummond tomorrow. But who would want to do such a thing?

  I wracked my brain but came up with no answers. We must have driven for about forty minutes before the van lurched to an abrupt stop. The sudden force jerked me back, and I cracked my head against the side panel. As I rubbed the tender spot, I heard a loud creaking. It sounded as if a gate in need of oiling was being raised. I strained to listen over the sound of the idling engine, but I didn’t hear voices.

  The van inched forward, slowly now. A few moments later, it swung in a wide half circle and reversed. Then we came to a complete stop. The engine cut off. I heard the slam of the door from the passenger cab. I scooted forward and stood, in a low crouch, waiting for the doors to open. I didn’t have much of a plan beyond jumping out and running for the hills as soon as I hit the ground, but even that turned out to be undoable.

  After some banging and muttered cursing on the other side, the doors swung open and the late afternoon sunlight flooded the darkened interior of the cargo hold. My eyes watered and I blinked rapidly, missing any opening I might’ve had. When my eyes adjusted, the sight of a large, loutish man with a shaved head holding a baseball bat in his right hand and slapping it into the palm of his left hand was enough to persuade me not to make any attempts to flee. It also drove away any remaining hopes that he was a stripper getting ready to break into a routine.

  I trained my eyes on the bat and tried to steady my voice. “Who are you? What do you want?”

  He shook his head. It was impossible to tell if he couldn’t answer, didn’t want to answer, or didn’t understand the question. He grunted and gestured for me to get out of the van. I exited and scanned my surroundings. We were in some sort of storage facility. Rows of storage pods stretched out in every direction as far as I could see. He pointed with the bat to an open storage container about four feet in front of me.

  I swung my eyes from the large box back to his face. “You don’t think I’m getting in there, do you?”

  By way of answer, he smacked the bat into his hand again.

  My stomach dropped and my knees threatened to buckle.

  “I’ll take that as a yes,” I muttered, reluctantly shuffling forward. The sharp rocks and gravel cut into my bare feet as I trudged toward the storage container. When I got close to the unit, my new friend gave me a rough push forward. I stumbled inside and he rolled down the metal door. I heard the snick of a padlock clicking into place. Then, silence.

  The silence stretched on and on. I was glad to have the lights, because being trapped in the space in total darkness would have been unbearable. But, as it was, I was edging closer and closer to hysteria. With each minute that passed, my breathing grew more shallow and rapid. I did not want to live out my days in my wedding dress trapped in this pod like some horrible, modern Miss Havisham.

  I closed my eyes and tried to meditate my way to calmness. Or at least a state of lesser panic. I sat crossed-legged on the floor and focused on my breathing until I heard footsteps crunching along the gravel, the babble of voices, and the unmistakable grunt of my not-overly loquacious abductor.

  My heart thumped with anticipation and I hurried to my feet. The padlock clanged open, and the metal door rolled up.

  The bald man tossed an armload of bottled water into the pod. Water bottles rolled around my feet. I snatched one up and took long, greedy swigs of lukewarm water. The man herded two people toward me. A man and a woman. Both wearing khaki vests, knee-length hiking shorts, and floppy hats. A pair of binoculars hung from around the man’s neck; a thirty-five-millimeter camera from around the woman’s. I recognized them as Mr. and Mrs. Simon from the resort. I couldn’t imagine why they were here, but I wasn’t going to complain about having some company.

  As they shuffled into the pod, I took a closer look at their faces and a jolt of shock tore through me. The water bottle fell to the floor with a dull thud, and I stared, open-mouthed, certain for a moment that I was hallucinating. But, no, I wasn’t seeing things.

  “No. Oh, hell, no. Listen, you can’t put them in here with me. Please.” I begged the mute giant standing just outside the storage unit.

  He stared at me blankly for a second. Then he rolled down the door and replaced the lock.

  Inside, the three of us looked at one another in the shadowy light. My father broke the silence first.

  “Hello, Rosemary.”

  I held his gaze for a moment. “Dad.” Then I turned to my mother. “Mom,” I said flatly.

  Five minutes earlier, I would have said my circumstances were unspeakably bad. I’d have been wrong, though. As bad as it was to be held captive in a storage unit the day before my wedding, it was nothing compared to being held captive in a storage unit the day before my wedding along with my estranged, debt-dodging parents dressed up like bird-watchers.

  My mother looked me up and down. “Have you been eating, Rosie?” Her voice held a familiar lilt of nagging concern.

  “Now, Mary Jane,” my dad warned her.

  I dropped my head in my hands and stifled a groan. Forget Charles Dickens, this was way worse than being a jilted bride wasting away in an attic. This was French existentialism-level bad.

  I’d read Sartre’s No Exit in a French literature class in college—one of the few non-science courses I’d taken. The play and its premise had stayed with me ever since: three damned souls locked in a room together to torture one another in a private hell for all eternity? I’d thought the concept was scarier than the bloodiest of slasher movies.

  And now I was living it.

  Chapter 14

  Sage

  Thyme stared at me.

  After a long silence, she said, “What do you mean, we can’t call the police? We have to. The bird watchers aren’t around. There are no witnesses. And our sister is missing.”

  “We can’t go to the police because Mr. and Mrs. Simon aren’t just a couple of random bird lovers,” I began to explain.

  “They aren’t? Then who are they, Sage?”

  I gnawed on my lower lip, trying to decide how best to break the news to her. Unable to come up with a good way to do it, I just blurted it out. “Mom and Dad.”

  “Mom and Dad?” she echoed faintly.

  “I can’t believe you didn’t figure it out. Simon had to be the most obvious alias they could have used. I mean, except for Garfunkel, I guess.”

  Thyme gaped at me in confusion. “I don’t understand. What are they doing here?”

  “They wanted to see Rosemary get married. They realized they wouldn’t be welcome, so they decided to do it from a distance. You know, secretly.”

  “You helped them, didn’t you? You told them about the wedding and had Kay book them a room behind our backs.” Her voice was laced with bitterness.

  I counted to ten in my head before answering. “Look, we can argue about whether I overstepped or not later. Right now, we n
eed to find Rosemary. And since they were apparently prowling around spying on her, they’re our best hope. But we can’t go to the police until we know where Mom and Dad are because—”

  “Because they’ll be arrested if the police stumble over them,” she finished.

  I exhaled in relief that she understood our predicament. “Exactly.”

  She pierced me with a long, searching look that made me want to squirm. Then she said in a soft voice, “Rosemary’s going to kill you when she finds out.”

  “That’s fine. That’ll mean we’ve found her,” I told her, meaning every word of it.

  When we hadn’t found Rosemary in her room, I’d been sure she’d caught our parents spying on her. I’d painted a detailed, romanticized picture of how it would all unfold: She’d realize the bird watchers were actually Mom and Dad. Once she overcame her initial shock, she’d go back to their cottage so the three of them could talk and put the past behind them.

  I imagined them sitting around the small walnut table under the window drinking our mom’s iced herbal tea. Our dad would tell corny jokes to break the ice. As Rosemary gradually thawed, Mom would ask her questions about Dave, probing to learn more about the man who’d captured her heart.

  And, when Rosemary realized her wedding day wouldn’t be the same without our parents, I even hoped she might find a way to forgive them. The fairytale scene had played out, clearly and repeatedly, in my imagination—like a clip from a movie.

  Now, though, my optimism seemed, not just misplaced, but childish. If Rosemary had found out the truth about the Simons, I had to admit, she was far more likely to have taken off alone—upset, betrayed, and shaken—than to have indulged in a kumbaya moment with our parents.

  But I didn’t care how mad she’d be at me. I just wanted to find her. My chest tightened and I pressed my palms against my eyes to keep my tears from escaping.

  I was surprised when I felt Thyme wrap her arm around my shoulder. But I couldn’t bring myself to meet her eyes.

  “It’s okay, Sage,” she crooned as she rubbed my upper arm gently. “We’re going to find her.”