Where There's A Witch, There's A Way (Witchless In Seattle Mysteries Book 13)

by Dakota Cassidy

  “I’m fine.” I dismissed the importance of my wounds. People were dead and Cleo was jailed. It was all I could think about while these festivities went on around me.

  “Anyway, I didn’t know Fallon at all. She’s Mrs. Burns’ cousin, but it was awful to find out she’d been killed, too.”

  Yeah. I bet it was awful. I caught myself almost saying the words before I clamped my mouth shut. “It was definitely awful.”

  “Either way, no one’s said anything to Leslie about what Tammy told you, and I don’t think the police have questioned her about it, either.”

  Why hadn’t someone questioned Leslie? What the heck was going on?

  Win sensed my tension and spoke up. “Your secret’s safe with us, I assure you, Linda.”

  Linda smiled at Win. “Gosh, your accent is so cool. I’m glad you two decided to come. If no one else does, I sure appreciate what you guys are trying to do for Cleo.” She peered over my head then and nodded to Tammy’s mother. “Duty calls. I’m the maid of honor in place of Cleo. So I’d better skedaddle. Enjoy the party. I hear there’s going to be a flamethrower!”

  Linda swished away in her pretty dress, leaving Leslie to pound past us and shoot us dirty looks.

  It took everything I had in me not to stalk after her and pummel her with questions, but her temper and how easily she became agitated made me think twice.

  I wasn’t worried I couldn’t handle her. I was worried she’d make a bigger mess than everyone was already in.

  Win grabbed two flutes of champagne from a waiter and handed me one. “Dove?” he offered with a tilt of his head. I took it and we clinked glasses. “To our pending nuptials.”

  I grinned and kissed his lips. “To us.”

  “Now, let’s go find the location of the ceremony so we can take our seats. I imagine it should be starting soon.”

  Hooking my arm though his as I sipped icky champagne, I let him lead us to the sprawling set of multiple French doors leading outside by the golf course.

  The scene before us was breathtaking. Even as cranky as I was, I managed to appreciate the beautiful setting.

  Facing the ocean, there was a small gazebo tied in pink and cream tulle, with cascades of roses falling down the sides and over the top. Layer after layer of flowers graced every surface. In vases along the aisle, in taller white containers on either side of the podium where Tammy and Jay would say their vows.

  The water bobbed and swished in dark sapphire, the last vestiges of sun glinting off the waves. Seagulls called out and the breeze somehow managed to be warm and soft.

  All of the chairs, in row after row, were covered in white, with white tulle bows and a bouquet of flowers attached to the back of each. A white velvet carpet was spread down the center aisle and pink petals were scattered everywhere.

  Battery-operated, dove-white candles and lanterns ran the length of the center aisle in small vignettes of varying height, and as the sun began to fade completely, the glow cast a romantic hue over everything.

  “It’s beautiful,” I whispered with a coo. It was as though we’d entered some kind of fairytale ball.

  “’Tis indeed, Dove. It sets a lovely mood. Maybe we should find out who Tammy’s wedding planner is.”

  “We don’t need a wedding planner. We have me and Pinterest. We need all the money we can get our hands on if we have to pay the Backstreet Boys to perform.”

  Win cupped his ear. “I’m sorry, did you say Adele?”

  I giggled as one of the ushers asked where we’d like to sit. “Toward the back, please. Weak bladder,” I explained. But what I really meant was, this was all gorgeous, but if I felt the walls closing in, I wouldn’t disturb anyone making my escape.

  As we found chairs in the back row, I settled in, gulping the champagne so I didn’t have to hold it. Seeing as it looked like we were early, I decided to do some more research on some of these people with my phone.

  I went to Tammy’s page first to see if she’d posted about today or if her pictures were locked down, as well as her friends list. And naturally, there were already pictures of her in a silky white bathrobe, having dewy-soft makeup applied to her gorgeous skin.

  There were several of her hairdresser, doing her hair in a soft, partial updo. She’d tagged the same woman from Lida’s Locks, and because she’d done such a beautiful job on Tammy’s white-blonde, sunshine-highlighted hair, I decided to look up her page, too.

  Serafina’s page wasn’t private, allowing me to feast my eyes on all the beautiful wedding hair she’d done. Tammy, of course, was featured prominently in several of her pictures. In the most recent one, she’d added extensions to her hair with the tag, “Serafina Hair Extensions. Looks and feels just like real hair and won’t break the bank!”

  It did look real. I’ve always wondered what it would be like to have extensions added to my difficult-to-manage, frizzy hair, so I made a note of Serafina’s page.

  I went back to Tammy’s in order to connect to Cleo’s page, but decided to peruse her pictures one last time.

  As I did, I noticed some info in the About section under nicknames, where she’d jokingly called herself the Babe Ruth of softball.

  Apparently, Tammy had played college softball.

  Interesting.

  Oh, wait…

  Chapter 18

  “Dove, whatever are you doing? The ceremony’s about to start,” Win chided me.

  My pulse throbbed in my chest, but I didn’t want to jump to conclusions, and I really had to go to the bathroom.

  I couldn’t explain now when guests were arriving because I wasn’t one hundred percent sure my instincts were right. I’d mull as I used the restroom. “Give me one second. I have to run to the ladies’ room.”

  “Hurry back, Dove. Yo-Yo’s just taken his place by the pianist. You mustn’t miss this.”

  I dropped a quick kiss on his cheek. “Be right back. Promise.”

  I ran back into the country club, where it had grown quiet, and headed for the bathroom so I could use my phone without disturbing anyone.

  Pushing my way through the mahogany door of the bathroom, I passed the row of mirrors and sinks with gold faucets and sat down on one of the poofy chairs, forgetting all about going to the bathroom as my mind churned.

  I opened Tammy’s page again and reread the nickname. The Babe Ruth of Softball.

  And in softball, they used a bat.

  My phone dinged with a Facebook message. I clicked on messenger and discovered it was from Marie. I very plainly asked her where she was the night Doug was murdered, and she wasn’t at all hesitant to tell me she’d been visiting her mother.

  But she also said something else that I found quite curious. Doug told me he couldn’t get involved right now. Not that I cared. I wasn’t looking for a relationship. Just a hook-up from time to time, and let’s be honest, he’s hot. But he said he had a lot going on and it wasn’t good. That he was going to be in big trouble with his wife and this time it wasn’t just his cheating.

  I texted a Facebook message back and asked her if she knew what he meant by that, but she said she didn’t stick around to find out because she didn’t really care.

  But one thing stuck out to me. Marie called Doug hot. But then, so had Tammy.

  No. No. No way.

  Had Tammy…?

  I gasped out loud. I had to grip the side of the chair to keep from falling over.

  With shaky hands, I scrolled to Luis’s text to us about the hair they’d found on the hoodie, but he didn’t mention color. Only that Cleo’s hair was on the hoodie, which of course made complete sense, and an unidentified strand of hair.

  Shooting off a text to Luis, I asked him if he knew the color of the hair found on Cleo’s hoodie and waited, almost dizzy with the rush of information flooding my brain.

  Thankfully, Luis was always on the case. Win paid him well, and the result was he always answered—no matter when.

  Didn’t Win tell you no results on the unidentified hai
r yet?

  He did, but that’s not what I want to know. Do you know the color of the unidentified hair?

  Let me get right back to you.

  My stomach began to somersault as I went over everything I’d heard up to this point.

  Because if Tammy had…

  I gulped. No. No. I didn’t want to believe it. I needed more.

  Thinking back on our first conversation, when the women had been arguing at Madam Zoltar’s, Tammy had accused Linda of wanting “all the boys,” but Linda had shot right back that she was the one who chased after Chip Carter. So it wasn’t as though Tammy was impervious to infidelity.

  But would she kill Doug if she’d slept with him? It made perfect sense that she’d slept with him because of what Ryan Gimble had heard.

  I have to tell her. I’m gonna tell her, and I don’t care what you say. She has a right to know. It’ll blow it all up, but I’m gonna tell everyone.

  Had he been talking to Tammy that night? Did they have an affair? It wasn’t as though Doug hadn’t dipped into many a lady’s pool—why wouldn’t he take a dip in Tammy’s?

  Was I conclusion hopping? Was I rushing to judgment? Was I doing that thing where I could turn something into nothing?

  And who had killed Fallon? Were there really two killers?

  I vaguely heard the pianist begin the wedding march, and Yo-Yo Ma’s violin strike up, making me hightail it out of the bathroom.

  As I stepped out, a large man with rumpled clothes and tired eyes approached, grabbing my arm. “Are you that ghost lady? You look just like the picture on the Facebook page they showed me at the motel.”

  I yanked my arm away and frowned at how he’d manhandled me. “I am. Who are you?”

  He held his beefy hands up in the air. “Sorry. I just got in from a fishing trip where I had no cell phone coverage and found out…found out my wife…” He choked a bit, but recovered and said, “I’m Richard Merriweather.”

  “Fallon’s husband?”

  “Yes,” he said, his blue eyes filling with tears. “She’s…she’s dead. But you were there, right? You know that.”

  I took him by the hand and led him to a gold-tufted chair. “Oh, Mr. Merriweather, I’m so sorry for your loss.”

  “The folks over at the motel said you were who I should talk to.”

  My pulse sped back up. “About?”

  “Fallon left me a message last night. I didn’t get it until just a little bit ago. You need to listen.”

  Before handing me the phone, his big, hand shaking, he typed in the code for his voice mail and Fallon’s voice rang in my ear. “Honey, it’s me. I hope you’re having a good trip. Something really bad happened here at Tammy and Jay’s wedding, and I’m worried. One of the bridesmaid’s husbands was murdered! And…”

  She went on to explain, in a terrified voice, about finding Doug with the cake server in his head—but her last words left me stupefied.

  “I don’t know if it means anything, but I have to tell someone. I wish you were here to talk to so you could help me decide if I’m doing the right thing. Anyway, I saw Tammy early in the day with a cake server in a box she said she had to bring to the country club later…but later that night, the night the man was killed, I was going to get a snack at the vending machine, and I saw her coming inside from the pond where that poor boy was killed. She was wearing a jacket and the hood was up. It looked like she was trying to cover her face—and I’m afraid she saw me! I’m afraid to go to the police. She’s going to be family, Richard. What if I’m all wrong?”

  The call cut off after that, her message clearly too long for his voice mailbox. “Oh, Mr. Merriweather, I’m so, so sorry…but we need to let the police hear this call.”

  He nodded, his windblown hair shrouding his weathered face. “Of course. I’ll do whatever needs to be done. I don’t care if she’s going to be family!”

  “Stephania?”

  I turned to see Win heading in our direction when my phone beeped with an incoming text.

  It was from Luis.

  And it read: Got lucky and found a friend who was in the lab late to take a look at the sample. The hair was blonde and synthetic.

  And then I remembered what I’d read on Serafina’s page. Serafina Hair Extensions. Looks and feels just like real hair and won’t break the bank!

  Holy. Crow.

  A rush of dizziness assaulted me before I realized, I needed to do something—and fast.

  “Win, this is Mr. Merriweather, Fallon’s husband. He just heard the news about his wife. Stay with him, would you? Help him get in touch with Dana.”

  “Where in the blazes are you going, Dove?” he yelled, concern riddling his voice.

  But I didn’t have time to answer as I ran toward the back of the country club just as Tammy Parker made it to the altar.

  My feet were on fire, my bladder was full, and my head throbbed, but it didn’t stop me.

  I burst through the open doors and launched myself down the velvet-covered center aisle, screaming, “Waaaaaait!”

  “Stop the wedding!” I barked against the wind.

  Tammy, resplendent in her Cinderella-esque gown, complete with puffy, off-the-shoulder sleeves and a bell-shaped, flowing bottom of silk and rhinestones, turned around, her face shocked.

  “Stop!” I screamed. “Don’t marry her! It was you!” I pointed an accusatory finger at her as I raced down the aisle.

  Maybe race is the wrong word. There was a little hobbling, if I’m being truthful, but my feet were still torn up from yesterday and my bladder felt like I’d consummed ten gallons of water instead of one stinkin’ glass of champagne.

  As everyone turned around to see the madwoman in a pink floral dress, screaming like a banshee, I raced toward Tammy, ignoring everything but stopping the wedding.

  “Don’t marry her, Jason!” I yelped. “She killed Doug—and I have proof!”

  Tammy’s eyes went wide—and then they narrowed. She didn’t even bother to deny it. Instead, she threw down her stunning bouquet of roses and began to run toward the docks at the water’s edge.

  “Tammy!” I heard Jay bellow after her. “Come back!”

  Why does everyone always run, and why are they always so good at it?

  And why did I feel so sluggish after only one glass of champagne? I should remember it always goes straight to my head.

  Remembering Tammy was once a softball player, who obviously knew how to run bases, I hopped as I pulled off my sandals and ditched them, lifted the skirt of my dress, pounding down the never-ending dock with my aching feet.

  I don’t know what her plan was, but there were a ton of small motorboats at the end of the dock, and if I was reading this right, she was headed for one of them.

  No way I was going to let her escape and get away with this. Cleo wasn’t going to stay in jail any longer than she had to.

  I heard people screaming behind me, but above everyone else, I heard my amazing fiancé bellow, “Stephania! Wait!”

  But I had a huge lead on him, and even if he was the bionic man, there was no way he’d catch up to us now. So I kept pumping my legs as fast as I could even though I felt dizzy from that glass of champagne.

  My chest heaved and my muscles ached, but I kept moving. “Tammy, stop! There’s nowhere to go!”

  Oh, but there was. As I recall, some of the boats were loaners from the club. Often, they left the keys in them for easy access to club members while a valet looked on and monitored the activity.

  I don’t know where the valet was today, but he was absent from the booth and Tammy was headed straight for the first boat she could get to, her billowy white dress flying behind her in a cloud of white.

  That was the moment I realized I didn’t have a choice if I planned to keep her from getting away. So I went for it—a little sluggish on booze and all.

  Wow, did I ever go.

  Honestly, folks, I didn’t know I had it in me. I wasn’t terribly athletic in school, nor was I terribly agi
le, but I’d learned a lot from Win and my experiences with killers—chasing them and being chased by them.

  She was at the end of the dock, the wind tearing at her hair and dress, her veil, as she eyed the boat tied to the dock before jumping.

  As I reached the end of the dock, knowing I needed to cover the distance, I took the biggest leap I’d ever taken in my life, hurling myself at Tammy’s back, my thigh muscles on fire from the effort.

  “Nooo!”

  I successfully attached myself to her back like some demented crab. I wrapped my legs around her waist as we tumbled head over heels into the boat, smacking every hard surface we could find to pummel our bodies along the way.

  We landed with a thunderous thunk on the boat’s floor, but before I could gather my wits, Tammy broke free. Jumping up, she reached for a bottle, cracking it on the side of the boat and spraying whatever was in it all over us.

  I scrambled backward, my heart thumping in my chest. “Tammy! Stop! Don’t make this worse!”

  But she came at me with the jagged end of the bottle, waving it in my face. My feet hurt so much, I couldn’t seem to get my balance and push myself off the floor of the boat.

  And you know what that meant. It meant I had to bond with a psychopath or die.

  Chapter 19

  “Tammy, stop and listen to me! Everyone knows it was you. Look at everyone running toward the dock. They know.”

  “I don’t care if they know!” she yelled against the rising wind. “Doug was a pig! He deserved to die! We all hated him!”

  As the boat rocked and the wind tore at my dress, I knew I had to get her talking or she was going to attempt to slice me to ribbons.

  Inching backward a little more, I cried out, “But you were going to let your best friend go to prison, Tammy. Maybe for life! Why? Why would you do that to someone who was so good to you? Who loves you?”

  Tears of the crocodile variety began to fall down her face. “He should have just shut up and gone away and let everyone think it was Jay’s! Doug should have just shut his stupid mouth!”