“What?” he said.
“If you only knew.” I wagged my head. “Natural course. Sure.”
Shouts erupted closer to the church, and Carolyn and her groom darted out. After the new couple traveled about three feet, Carolyn got a faceful of grass seed, grimaced, and then scurried back inside.
“Daddy!” was all that we heard, and then hushed whispers, as the bride and her parents huddled just inside the open doors of the church.
The groom stood red faced, planted momentarily as he looked at the sea of faces, and then he backtracked into the church. He never seemed to manage to gain access to the huddle. Instead, he loped awkwardly to the side.
“Hi, Audrey.” Little Joe had sneaked up on me. His polyester black suit, the same that he wore for all his work at the funeral home—or maybe he owned more than one of them—shone in the sunlight.
“Hey, Little Joe. Nice wedding.”
“Yes, you did a fantastic job on the flowers. Real pretty.”
“Thanks.”
“Going to the reception?”
“I’ll be there.”
“Good.” He smiled and pulled out his invitation—printed like an old 45 record with the names of the bride and groom as the song title. “I’ll be there, too. Save me a dance, huh? I’ve been studying up some new moves online.”
I’d live to regret what came out of my mouth next, but he was so hopeful and sweet, and I was so sleep deprived. “Sure, Little Joe. I’d be happy to dance with you.” What would be a few minutes wandering around the dance floor while he tried to remember something he read on the Internet, compared to breaking the man’s heart? I was a little leery of his new moves, but if Little Joe could learn it online, I was certain I could fake it for a few minutes.
Finally the huddle inside the church dispersed, and Mayor Watkins stepped outside.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, “we thank you all for coming today. And we appreciate you sticking around to send the couple off. However, the grass seed you’ve been given is much harder than the samples we were provided, and we’d ask that you not throw it at the bride and groom, to avoid injury. Please feel free to take it with you and fill in any bare patches in your lawn, as I was assured it is very fine grass seed.
“Thank you very much for your cooperation, and we’ll see you over at the reception in”—he glanced at his watch—“a little over two hours.”
The couple then sprinted to their car, a huge boat of a red convertible with loads of chrome and fins on the back end—a fully restored 1957 Pontiac Star Chief, Eric reported with awe—to a round of weak applause.
Eric shook his head as he stuck his grass seed back into his pocket. “I don’t know, Audrey. You got your work cut out for you.”
“Most of the work is done. All we have to do is run a few flowers over . . .”
“No, I meant keeping your perfect record. That boy needs to get some gumption, or this marriage might not last much past the reception.”
• • •
I was holding out for a cupcake.
Otherwise I would have been home in my bed, sound asleep, and would have missed the forty-five minutes of speeches and congratulatory toasts, plus the thirty seconds of the choreographed dance extravaganza that the bridal party had worked on for “simply months”—the mashed potato, the emcee called it—and that might have been better if they’d performed it before all those toasts. Aptly named because the bridal party was, at that stage, toasted.
The venue was spectacular—or a spectacle, depending on personal preference. I saw Kathleen Randolph, the owner and manager, peeking her head in a few times with a strained expression on her face. Whether she was not fond of weddings or if she thought the historic inn should only be decorated in the period-appropriate fashion, I couldn’t tell.
But for this reception, the inn looked more like it might be haunted by Arthur Fonzarelli than George Washington. The guests were seated at traditional round banquet tables, each replete with a tall peach arrangement. Diner-style tables were set up for the wedding party. Yes, 1950s chrome and Formica diner tables, and the bride and groom ate at a sweetheart table that looked like a soda counter with high chrome stools.
Instead of a DJ or band, they’d somehow appropriated an old Wurlitzer jukebox, chock-full of fifties favorites. Guests picked the songs, which were then pumped out over the sound system. “Jailhouse Rock” seemed to be a particular favorite among the groom’s friends for some reason.
Of course, the fifth time it played, another chorus drowned it out, one that became familiar as the evening wore on. “Daddy, make them stop.”
Carolyn whined her line when the waitstaff tried to bring out the food during the dance time (which explained the cold chicken), repeated it when the groom’s brother started to tell an old story of his childhood, and perfected it when guests clinked their glasses, requesting the couple to kiss.
Of course, the evening did have its moments. Cocktail hour featured diner food of sliders, fries, and mini chocolate milk shakes. The nonalcoholic drinks were provided for the kids, I was sure, but popular with many adults. I had one. Okay, more than one.
It was the cupcake tower that kept me from sneaking out. About four feet of sugar overload, it sat near the dance floor on a round table draped with peach satin. The table itself was also covered with cupcakes, and Nick stood by it almost the whole evening, chasing away dancers who got too close and those who wanted to partake too early, mainly the pouty flower girl, who still held on to her basket of petals.
I wasn’t sure which was more scrumptious looking, Nick in a suit and tie or those cupcakes with mounds of swirly frosting—in white, chocolate, and peach hues. They just sang from the tower, topped by a small sweetheart cake for that ceremonial cut. Liv had also lent a few peach roses to augment the design.
Throughout the evening flashes went off as people took pictures of the cupcakes, the flowers, the jukebox, and, if they dared, the bride and groom.
“Daddy, make them stop,” Carolyn demanded as she shielded her eyes from the flash of a cell phone camera.
“How about you go ahead and cut the cake, now, peaches?” the mayor asked.
Yes, why don’t you?
“I want more pictures first. By the jukebox.”
I turned to Liv. “I wonder if there are any more of those little chocolate milk shakes.”
“I’ll come with you.” She patted a sleepy Eric on the shoulder.
As Liv and I approached the soda bar, I spotted Little Joe, the mad mortician, heading for me, so I pulled Liv into the shrubbery. Well, not really shrubbery, more of a forest of plastic ficuses. These seemed to be disguising an unused closet. A tad too tacky for the Ashbury. Maybe I should talk with Kathleen Randolph about fresh floral alternatives.
“What’s going on?” Liv spat a plastic leaf out of her mouth. “What are we doing in the bushes?”
“Little Joe. He’s been after me to dance with him.”
“Then dance with him.”
“My feet are killing me already. I don’t need his added weight on top of them.”
“He’s a bad dancer?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never danced with him before. But how good can he be if he learned to dance from an online course? Is he still out there?”
Liv peeked through the dense leaves. “Yes, he’s still there, talking to another man with a handkerchief over his face. I think it’s Chief Bixby.”
“Oh, great. Little Joe’s probably put out an APB on me, and Bixby is going to arrest us for some obscure excess pollen violation.”
“There’s no such thing.”
“Then he’ll make up something.”
“Audrey, what if they find us here? How are we going to explain hiding in these ficuses?”
“We’re not hiding. We’re conversing.”
“And of course we
like to do that in the privacy of silk camouflage. Um . . . Audrey . . . I hate to say it, but these plants are quite dusty. I think I need to sneeze.”
“Try to hold it in. Are they still out there?”
Liv braved the jungle once more. “I don’t see Little Joe, but Bixby’s headed this way.”
“Shhh.”
And so we stood, stock-still, trying to blend into the plastic jungle.
“There you are.” This was a female voice: Mrs. June’s. I could just make out the top of her poufy hair through the leaves in front of me. She stopped less than two feet away.
“June,” Bixby said. “Nice wedding.”
“So what are you doing standing out here like some party pooper?”
“It’s those blasted flowers. Must be a ton of them in there. I’d have stayed home if it was anyone else but the mayor’s daughter.”
“I thought the flowers were splendid. Mae’s girls did a nice job on them, didn’t they? Considering . . .”
“Considering?”
“Considering some rat absconded with half of their tools.”
“That’s funny, they didn’t report any theft.”
Mrs. June’s silence drove the point home.
Bixby sighed. “Just part of the investigation. I have to do my job.”
“No, I think you took pleasure in it.”
Bixby grunted. “Maybe a little. But between all those flowers at the crime scene and our other growing problem.”
“You still think someone is farming that marijuana around here?”
“Yeah, I do. We’ve never had such a problem before. And you have to admit, the flower girls are new in town, and they’d know how to grow the stuff.”
“Preposterous. They’ve been here five years—and a lot longer than that if you count summers. You just want it to be them so you can blame it on someone you don’t consider local. You’ve got no evidence. Oh . . . is that why you took a bunch of their plants? Using the murder investigation to get a look around their back room? Don’t you know what marijuana looks like by now?”
“I do, but that Lafferty kid doesn’t. I told him to bag up anything that looked suspicious. Still, we’ll see what the state lab says about the residue on the cutting tools.”
Liv reached over and squeezed my hand. I swallowed hard. It stank to be suspected for something like that, not to mention to be called flower girls and worse: nonlocals. But at least Bixby’s tests should exonerate us.
“So that’s why you took all their tools,” Mrs. June went on. “They were pretty worked up over that, you know. Look, if you’ve got allergies, you’ll have to find some way to cope. You can’t blame everything that goes wrong in Ramble on Audrey and Liv, like you’re on some crusade to rid the world of flowers. There are medications—”
“I’m sensitive to a lot of medications. You know—” His argument was interrupted by several quick inhalations, followed by one humongous sneeze.
A split second later Liv sneezed as well.
Mrs. June turned around and locked eyes with me through the bushes. I shrugged.
“Did you hear that echo?” Bixby said.
“Yes. Yes, I did.” Mrs. June took Bixby’s arm. “Odd acoustics in here. Say, I want to find that wife of yours and say hello.” Mrs. June was a dear and led him away back into the reception room. Now Bixby’s actions made a little more sense. If someone was growing and distributing marijuana in Ramble, I supposed we’d have means. It could be a pretty lucrative side “business,” too, considering the number of retired hippies who’d bought up the struggling farms outlying the town and now raised organic crops, meat, eggs, and cheese and sold them at the local farmers’ market under tie-dyed psychedelic tents.
“Is the coast clear?” I asked.
“Clear enough.” Liv grabbed my hand and pulled me out into the open.
“Oh, hello. Audrey, was it?” Sarah Anderson, Jenny’s roommate, stood gazing at us, tottering a bit on those high peach heels.
“Hello, Sarah.” I wiped a couple of dust bunnies from my shoulder.
“Is there anything good back there?” Sarah, still decked out in her polka-dotted peach bridesmaid dress, leaned into the ficus, losing her balance. “Just a door.” She giggled and wagged a finger at me. “Trying to get away? Trust me, it’s not going to work. Nobody leaves until little Miss Peaches gets all her stupid pictures. C’mon, I’ll buy you a drink.”
We followed her to the bar and helped her onto a stool. “Any milk shakes left?” I asked the server.
“Ooh. Good idea,” Sarah said. “It’s a little warm in here. How about a wee bit of schnapps in mine?”
The server smiled and scooped more ice cream into the blender carafe. “You?”
Liv and I declined the addition.
“I’m going to need an extra hour on the treadmill to work this off,” Sarah said as the server sprayed whipped cream on top of her schnapps-laden shake and presented it. Sarah tore one end from her straw and launched the remaining paper across the room. “I think I hate weddings now. Don’t you hate weddings?” She twirled around on the stool.
“They’re okay.” And then a thought hit me. “A good chance to run into old friends. I’ve been looking for one person in particular, but I can’t remember her name. You probably know her. She was a friend of Derek’s, too, I think. A redhead?”
“Nope. Never saw Derek with a redhead.” She scrunched up her nose. “Not that I didn’t see him with horses of every other color.”
“So Derek was unfaithful to Jenny?”
“Derek was . . . Derek.” Sarah toyed with the straw. “Jenny shouldn’t have done that, though.”
“Done what? Been in a relationship with him or kill him?”
“Jenny and Derek weren’t in the same league. It was doomed from the beginning.” She stared into her shake morosely.
I’m not sure why people celebrated a wedding by consuming copious amounts of a depressant. Raised by teetotalers, I’d imbibed only once in college. I spent the majority of the evening weeping on a friend’s shoulder over the way my jeans fit and the next morning camped out in the bathroom with my head on the toilet seat.
“I tried to tell her,” Sarah muttered. “Tried to tell him. They liked each other all right, but it wasn’t love. Anyone could see that.”
Shirley came to fetch her. “We’re being summoned for more pictures. This time Carolyn wants us all in the car.”
Sarah saluted and then tumbled off the bar seat. “How do I look?” She plastered on a sad smile then followed Shirley to the exit.
“She’s going to be hurting tomorrow.” Liv pushed Sarah’s deserted drink back toward the server.
The milk shakes, or malteds, as the server explained the difference, were luscious and rich, and I relaxed as I drained the dregs from the glass. Unfortunately, that was when my guard fell.
“Audrey!” Little Joe’s excited voice cut straight through to my backbone, if I possessed one. “I’ve been looking all over for you. Where have you been?”
“Hiding.”
“Such a kidder.” Little Joe grabbed my hand and pulled me from my stool. “Ready to take that spin on the dance floor?”
I should have realized he meant “spin” literally. He stopped at the jukebox long enough to make a selection before leading me to the crowded dance floor. “The next song is a jitterbug,” he said, perhaps in way of apology for the awkward waltz. “Well, not really a jitterbug. It’s a swing dance. Jitterbug technically refers to the people who dance it and can’t stop. Did you know there was supposed to be a song in The Wizard of Oz about a jitterbug? I found that online, too.”
I tuned him out as we swayed to Elvis’s “Are You Lonesome Tonight?” A question I didn’t want to ponder, either. So when I heard an older couple mention the name Rawling, I maneuvered in their direction.
�
��At least we’re spared another wedding. It would have been appalling,” the woman said in an accent I could only identify as old money. Funny how economics often transcends geography.
“I heard that Whitney woman say they were planning the wedding of the century.”
“Not if the Whitneys were paying for it. And from what I hear, the Rawlings weren’t going to pitch in much, either.”
“I thought they liked that girl.”
“At one time they did, but I heard they’re a little strapped for cash.”
Little Joe tried a move in a direction away from the couple, but I stood my ground and yanked him back toward me. Misinterpreting my move, he drew me into a tighter embrace. “Maybe I like waltzes after all,” he said, his breath heavy with the onion rings from the diner bar.
“What do you mean, blackmail?” the man said.
The woman shushed him, and I steered Little Joe a little closer so I could hear. Good thing the dance floor was crowded at the moment.
“. . . business dealings . . . implicate the whole family . . .” I caught only a few words. So I pulled Little Joe and edged as close to the couple as I dared. If we were any closer, we’d be dancing a foursome.
“. . . million dollars,” the woman said.
“No way Jonathan would part with that kind of money.”
I wanted to hear more, but at that moment Elvis finished his crooning and the dancers applauded. The older couple headed toward their table.
“Here it comes!” Little Joe said, a maniacal fire in his eyes. I had just enough time to recognize the song as “Shake, Rattle, and Roll” before everything started shaking, rattling, and rolling.
First the shaking. Little Joe’s long legs started pounding the dance floor. I tried to keep up with him, mirroring the steps, but they were just too fast for me. I think I caught every other one.
Then came the rattling. That was my teeth coming together as Little Joe grabbed my hand and led a series of wild swings that sent me bumping into more than one person. Soon the dance floor cleared around us, and, between spins, I could just make out an audience forming around the perimeter, gaping at us. Any more spinning, and I’d not be able to walk.
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