The Final Vow

by Amanda Flower

  “We may not be able to have the wedding in the church, considering what happened,” I began, deciding just to get to the point. “The police don’t know when the church will be released.”

  Teresa covered her mouth with her hand, and her husband shook his head. “Surely, the police will be done cleaning everything up by Friday evening,” she said. “It’s only Wednesday. I’m certain that by then it will be like nothing ever happened.”

  Like Vianna never happened.

  I swallowed. How terribly sad that this family, who’d been working with Vianna for months, could so easily dismiss the wedding planner now that she was dead and no longer of any use to them.

  “There has to be a way the wedding can be in the church.” Teresa went on. “People are flying in from all over the country for this wedding, and the church was on the wedding invitation. The wedding has to be at the church.”

  I winced. “As I said, I don’t know if that’s possible.”

  Teresa flattened her hands on the picnic table. “You have to make it possible. There is no other option.”

  I shifted back in my seat, creating as much distance between Teresa Pumpernickle and myself as was possible, which wasn’t much considering we were seated at a picnic table. The picnic table had been a bad idea. “I’m so sorry about this. I’m really am. But I don’t know how I can help.”

  “You can make the police release the church,” she said.

  I raised my eyebrows at her. “What makes you think I have that kind of power? I can’t make the police do anything. They have to follow their procedures and protocols.”

  She wasn’t convinced. “Eddie said you were friends with the police.”

  I thought of Detective Brandon. I wouldn’t call us friends. Then there was Chief Duffy, but he wasn’t a friend either—he was Chase’s uncle. Eddie had misled her with that statement. The question was, had he misled her accidentally or on purpose?

  “I know many of the people on the police force,” I said, “but I wouldn’t say we’re friends. More like tolerable acquaintances. I can’t make them do anything.”

  “Isn’t your boyfriend a cop?” Henry jumped into the conversation. His elbows were on the table, and the tips of his fingers were pressed together in a steeple pose. I wasn’t sure I’d have seen a steeple in the shape of his hands if it hadn’t been for Vianna’s fall from the bell tower.

  Surprised he knew I was dating anyone at all, I turned to him. I’d certainly never told him about Chase. I reminded myself that New Hartford was small, but still, the thought that Henry was keeping tabs on me—even if his information wasn’t accurate—was unsettling. He could have heard this news from any number of sources, of course. The question was whether or not he’d stumbled on the information about me or if he’d been spying.

  “Chase is an EMT, not a police officer,” I said coldly.

  Teresa’s face fell so much I almost lost my resolve and offered my help.

  “I know the wedding is important, but I think we should all remember that a young woman lost her life last night,” I said. “I’m sure she has family that’s mourning her.”

  “Vianna was an only child and both of her parents are dead. She doesn’t have any real family to speak of,” Henry said, with such certainty that I blinked at him. How would he know this much about the wedding planner?

  “And what about our daughter?” Teresa riffled through her tiny purse, came up with a tissue, and dabbed it in the corner of her eye where a tear was threatening to spill over onto her cheek. “She’s our only child. You must understand how upset we are, and how we don’t want anything to ruin her big day. You have a son.”

  What was with the Pumpernickle family and laying the mother guilt on me? I stood up. “I’m so sorry. I wish I could help you, but I can’t. Chief Duffy is a good man, and Detective Brandon … ” I paused, searching for the right word. “Well, she’s a smart cop. They’ll find out who did this. I have no doubt.”

  Mr. Pumpernickle slammed his hand on the picnic table top, and the rest of us jumped. “But our daughter has to worry and wait while the bumbling police stumble onto the right conclusion? This is her wedding week. Our blameless princess has to suffer until this detective of yours has it all figured out.”

  I wouldn’t call Krissie a blameless princess, but then again, I wasn’t her parent. However much I loved Hayden, I would never call him a blameless prince. I knew what my child was capable of.

  I was starting to see why Krissie was the way she was. Spoiled to the tenth degree. If the wedding ever did come to pass, Eddie would be in for a treat farther down the line. I can’t say I felt sorry for him.

  Krissie’s mother had covered her mouth as if I’d sworn in her presence. Her husband took her hand in his and glared at me. “The wedding must go on,” he said. “Our princess needs this. She has to have something to look forward to. She’s been planning for this wedding for years.”

  Years? I bit back a smart retort.

  “And it has to be here at Barton Farm,” his wife added as she touched a tissue to the corner of her eye. “It’s Krissie’s dream.”

  “If you insist on going forward with the wedding on Friday, I can agree to that. When Krissie is ready, she can meet with me and I’ll show her alternative places on the Farm grounds where we could host the ceremony, just in case we need them. We could even have it here in the visitor center. There’s plenty of space.”

  “No,” Mr. Pumpernickle yelled. “It must be in the church, just as the princess wanted it to be.”

  “I understand that’s what Krissie wanted,” I said more slowly, hoping that my message would sink in this time. “But unfortunately, that’s not my decision. The police closed off the church. It’s up to them to reopen it. As much as I want to, I have no authority over the church at the moment. I’m happy to tell Krissie that directly.”

  “She’s not up to it today. She’s just devastated by her ordeal last night. Eddie is with her. He’s such a thoughtful and loving man,” Mrs. Pumpernickle said.

  He was a good father. I had to remind myself of that fact often, and much more regularly since I’d been roped in with helping plan his second wedding. Hayden loved Eddie. That was the most important thing. That was the thing that I had to keep telling myself in the midst of this crazy situation, which was becoming crazier by the minute.

  Henry folded his hands on the top of the picnic table. “Mr. and Mrs. Pumpernickle,” he began. “I can assure you Kelsey will do everything within her power to make your daughter’s wedding as beautiful and memorable as she dreamed it would be, because Kelsey knows how important this wedding is to the future of the Cherry Foundation and Barton Farm. I personally will talk to the police chief to find out if we can get this business with the church sorted out.”

  I opened my mouth, but Henry was faster. “In the meantime, she might just find the person behind this terrible incident.” He eyed me. “Finding killers is something she excels at.”

  thirteen

  The Pumpernickles and Henry left soon after that. I sat at the picnic table for a few minutes after they’d gone, gathering my bearings. Henry had trapped me. Game, set, match. If anything, I hated the feeling of being trapped. Whenever I felt trapped, like for example in my marriage, I bolted as fast as I could in the opposite direction. I didn’t know how to escape this snare Henry had set and in which I was so deeply entangled, but I would, given time. He couldn’t continually threaten the Farm when I balked at doing something. I had to find a way to stop him from using it as a weapon. With the Pumpernickle wedding apparently still just a few days away, time wasn’t a commodity I had.

  I needed my assistant to back me up on this. I radioed Benji. “Benji, Benji, come in.”

  There was just enough static on the other end of the radio to make me believe her radio was on. I frowned at the device. Then I remembered Benji’s love of the word “over.”
“Benji, Benji, come in. Over.”

  Still nothing. I repeated my request, and the radio crackled.

  “Kelsey?” It was Jason’s voice to come over the radio. His was the last voice I’d expected to respond, considering his aversion to using his own radio. “This is Jason.” His voice was tentative, as if he was uncertain even of his own name.

  “Jason, is Benji around? She was coming over to the village.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “She’s in my trailer now.”

  This was an unexpected announcement. “In your trailer? Why on earth would she be there?”

  Nothing but static came over the radio.

  “Jason?” I asked.

  He still didn’t answer.

  “Are you in your trailer?”

  “No,” he said finally. “Benji is in there.”

  I felt my forehead wrinkle. I couldn’t think of any reason why Benji would go into Jason’s trailer. She barely tolerated Jason.

  “Can you come here? I think you’ll want to.” His voice was shaking, but I didn’t know if it was his normal nervousness, the police interview, or heightened for some other reason. I knew Jason liked his routine and his privacy—he wouldn’t like Benji being in his trailer, but he wouldn’t have tried to stop her if she was determined to get inside of it. Not many were about to stop Benji when she made up her mind, myself included.

  “I’m on my way.” I hooked the radio back onto my belt and jogged in the direction of the village. My head felt the jarring of my footsteps every time my sneaker hit the pebbled path. If any day was destined to give me a migraine, it was today. We still had time before opening; hopefully, I could discover what was going on with my assistant before the visitors arrived.

  As callus as it felt, considering Vianna’s death, I had to get a jump on Krissie’s wedding, which now lay more heavily on my shoulders than ever. I needed to find out if Piper knew all the arrangements for the wedding.

  I reached the village in time to see Detective Brandon on the green, crossing the crime scene tape with several other cops and entering the church. I was dying to see the interior of the church myself. I hoped there wasn’t damage to the historic building beyond the broken window in the bell tower.

  Assessing the damage would have to wait, though. I needed to know what was going on with Benji at Jason’s trailer.

  I followed the path behind the large barn and through the trees to where the trailer was located. The mobile structure was set far enough back that unsuspecting Farm visitors could never guess that there was a twenty-first-century trailer by this nineteenth-century village. It had been a battle to convince the Cherry Foundation board to allow the trailer to be placed near the village. But Jason had been living on the Farm grounds long before I knew about it. Homeless, he secretly slept in the barn with the oxen and sheep every night. When I discovered this and learned his story, I did what I could to give him a home on the Farm. Henry Ratcliffe had not been amused. Despite working for a nonprofit, Henry wasn’t much for charity.

  Jason was pacing back and forth in front of his trailer, giving it furtive glances. His long thin limbs swung back and forth with every stride. When he saw me, his shoulders slumped in relief.

  “Where’s Benji?” I asked, without a greeting.

  He pointed at the trailer.

  Remembering my manners, I asked, “Are you okay? Sorry about the police interview. You look a little wired.”

  “A little wired” was putting it mildly. The skin across Jason’s thin face was tight, and he looked like he wanted to bolt. I knew that he didn’t like people in his personal space, but his visceral reaction to Benji in the trailer seemed a tad extreme even to me, and I was accustomed to his antics.

  Jason licked his lips. “It’s fine. But Benji won’t let me in.”

  I frowned at the trailer. “Did she say why not? Did she say why she went in there in the first place?”

  He shook his head. “She’s not alone,” he whispered.

  “How do you know that?” I studied his narrow face.

  “I heard a voice, and it wasn’t hers. Someone else is in there.” He dropped his gaze to the ground.

  My brows shot up in surprise, and I realized that this was what was making him so visibly nervous. “Who’s in there with her?”

  Jason shook his head. I didn’t know if that meant he didn’t know the answer or just refused to tell me. I reminded myself I needed to be patient with my farmhand, and the fact that he’d told me on the radio that Benji was there was a big step in the right direction. Little by little, I was earning his trust. It wasn’t a good idea to throw it away now just for a little information.

  I tried a different question. “Have you been inside?”

  He shrugged.

  I sighed, knowing I’d gotten just about all I could out of him. “Thanks for answering the radio.”

  There was only one way to find out who was inside the trailer with Benji, and that was to go inside myself. I didn’t have time to waste asking Jason what was going on when he clearly didn’t know or wouldn’t say.

  I knocked on the trailer door. There was no answer. The door was cracked ever so slightly. I pushed lightly on it, and it opened inward. I stepped inside. The room smelled like clean hay and soap.

  As usual, Jason’s trailer was as neat as a pin. He was fanatical about keeping everything in its place. I’d known him to straighten books that sat askew on the counter at the visitor center, on the rare occasions that he was inside that building, which never happened when there were actual guests on the farm. Jason disliked the visitors to the Farm as much as Shepley did. However, while Shepley’s dislike stemmed from disgust, Jason’s stemmed from fear and uncertainty.

  Benji was sitting on the edge of Jason’s neatly made bed, next to a girl with blond hair highlighted with blue streaks. I immediately recognized Piper, Vianna’s intern. A thought hit me while looking at the girl—would Vianna still be alive if I’d said yes to her putting lights on the church steeple? If I had, she wouldn’t have been up there in the middle of the night. I swallowed and pushed the thought aside. I didn’t kill Vianna. It wasn’t my fault. At least, that was what I tried to tell myself.

  Piper wore a yellow dress with white birds printed all over it. She held onto Benji’s hand as if her life depended on it. Large tears slid down her pale cheeks.

  I looked from Benji to Piper and back again. Throughout the four months I’d worked on Krissie and Eddie’s wedding, Vianna, Piper, and Benji had been together many times in the planning process. In all that time, I’d never seen Piper and Benji so much as nod at each other, and here they were sitting on Jason’s bed holding hands.

  “What are you doing in here?” The question was more direct that I intended it to be.

  “Kelsey, we need your help,” Benji said. She leaned forward but didn’t release Piper’s hand.

  It seemed that a lot of people needed my help as of late.

  I raised my eyebrows. “We?” I tried not to stare at their intertwined fingers as I asked this.

  Benji stared at me with her big brown eyes. “The police think Piper killed Vianna. You have to prove to them that she didn’t kill her boss.” The words came out in a breathless rush.

  My eyes fell to their hands. I couldn’t help it. “Do you two know each other? I mean, I know that you know each other, but …” I trailed off.

  Piper removed her hand from Benji and folded it with her other hand on her lap.

  Benji glanced at her with such concern and tenderness I immediately understood their relationship before Benji spoke.

  “Piper and I are together.”

  My mouth fell open, even though what she said only confirmed what I knew to be true. I wasn’t so much surprised that Benji had a girlfriend; I knew she was gay. Everyone on the Farm knew. It wasn’t a secret, and I wouldn’t want it to be. What made Benji�
�s pronouncement so shocking was that Piper was her girlfriend.

  “How long have you been dating?” I asked. Again, the question popped out of my mouth sounding blunter than I wanted it to.

  Benji met my eyes. “Six months.”

  I stared at her. I was her boss, but I also thought I was her friend, a close friend. I thought she would have told me about her girlfriend. She’d always told me about her past relationships.

  Piper smoothed the skirt of her yellow dress. “You’re probably wondering why you didn’t know about us. I know you and B are close.”

  B? I’d never heard Benji called anything other than her given name. “We are,” I said.

  Piper tucked a blue strand of hair behind her ear. “I asked her not to tell you.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “I don’t have anything against Benji being in a relationship with whoever she wants.”

  “She knows that,” Benji interjected. “I told her that.”

  “Then …” I trailed off. I couldn’t think of any reason Benji would want or need to keep this relationship from me.

  “It all had to do with me,” Piper said, sitting up a little straighter. “I asked her to keep it quiet in general until this wedding was over. I was afraid of how Vianna would react. She was very strict about not mixing work with pleasure. She wouldn’t do it, and she wouldn’t want anyone who worked for her to do it. My internship isn’t paid, but Vianna was the best-known wedding planner in the area. If I interned for her for a year, I could take my pick of wedding planning jobs in the state. She was that good. Everyone wanted her to plan their wedding because she was so fully committed. Everything was about the weddings that she was working on.” She gave me a half smile. “You might have noticed that.”

  “I noticed,” I said, thinking of how obsessed Vianna had been with Krissie’s wedding. “But if you two have been dating for six months, that would go all the way back to January. I didn’t start working on the wedding with Vianna until the end of March.”