“I don’t have to, actually.” My voice was firm. “This is my wedding day and if you can’t be here to support me, then I don’t want you here at all…”
“I’m sorry,” Pippa said with pleading eyes. “I’m sorry for everything, Rachael. I never should have accused you of killing Rogan. That was the stupidest, worst thing I have ever said in my life.”
I put both hands on my hips, my head still spinning from what was happening. I had never expected Pippa to burst through the door of my dressing room like that. “So what? Now you believe that I am innocent?”
Pippa nodded. “Yes. I do. Because I know who really killed Rogan, Rachael.”
“Who?”
She paused and I waited, the air thick with electricity while she composed herself enough to give me her answer.
“It was Sue.”
“Where is she?” Pippa asked, spinning around. We were down in the garden trying to figure out which direction Sue would have gone.
“She must have headed toward the wetlands. It’s not like she could’ve walked straight through the lake.”
“Why did she even leave you alone?” Pippa asked. “Some maid of honor she is.”
“She went to get help,” I explained, showing her that the back of my dress was still open. “For this.”
Pippa frowned and made me stand still for a minute. “Let me have a go,” she said.
I crossed my arms. My first instinct was to stubbornly tell her to back off. That I didn’t need her help. But I relented a little and turned around. Within seconds, she had the first button done up.
“I don’t know why everyone else was having such a hard time with this,” she said as she threaded the last button. She’d managed to get all two dozen done up in five minutes.
I couldn’t help thinking, If only she had been here all along.
But I wasn’t about to say that to her face.
“I guess they don’t have your criminal skills…” I muttered, without even saying thanks, even though relief was flooding me. I had my wedding dress on. Now I could at least walk down the aisle without flashing the entire crowd of guests.
Pippa sighed. “I am going to choose to ignore that. Come on, we have to find Sue.”
I shook my head as we walked the pathway of the wetlands. She was nowhere to be seen. “Maybe she has already gone to the chapel. It’s insane, but it’s the only thing I can think of right now.” I glanced at the time. “Besides, even if she isn’t there, I need to be. I can’t wait around here another minute longer.”
I hadn’t wanted any of the guests to see me before I actually walked down the aisle, but tradition had to be done away with at that point. The limo dropped me off and I spilled out of it quite unceremoniously with Pippa, still in jeans, coming out after me. But I still needed to find my maid of honor before I actually walked down the aisle.
I spotted a familiar cascade of long, brown hair in the crowd of waiting guests in front of the chapel.
Simona.
She walked up to me and gave me a tight hug, even though her protruding belly came between us.
“I am so glad that you invited us,” she said
She turned around and pointed to Blake, who was sitting there looking a fair bit more glum than she was, but he did manage to contort his face into a smile as he glanced up at me. “Congratulations,” he said.
I figured that was about as close to warm and fuzzy as Blake was going to get.
Simona’s ankles were starting to hurt, apparently. She was fanning her face with a handheld fan.
“When is this ceremony actually going to start?” she said.
We couldn’t wait for Sue any longer. It was just going to have to go ahead without her.
“Right away,” I said, even though Pippa had already told me that the wedding was postponed until we had found Sue.
“You might have to sit at the back,” I said to Pippa, eyeing her outfit. “Where no one can see you.”
“No,” she hissed. “I can’t let you get married until all of this is settled.”
I still didn’t believe anything she was telling me. She was just jealous that I had made Sue my maid of honor over her. It wasn’t like she hadn’t had her chance.
Simona started to walk away from me. “I need to take a nap. Someone wake me if this wedding ever goes ahead.”
But something was starting to dawn on me. Oh my goodness.
I hurried over to her and spun her around.
“Um, is everything okay?” she asked with a nervous laugh. She glanced over her shoulder at Blake, but he was in conversation with Bronson and it looked like they were quite chummy these days.
Getting chummy with the boss.
It was never a bad idea.
I turned my attention back to Simona. Things had suddenly become so clear.
“Simona. I saw your bridal party. I was there the night of your bachelorette party, remember.”
“Yeah? So what?” She looked around nervously.
“It’s just a bit strange that your sister wasn’t invited. Seeing as she only lives two hours away.”
Simona’s cheeks flushed a little.
“It’s because Suzy is not really your sister, isn’t it?” I took a step closer. “You do still work for Bakermatic, don’t you?”
“Shh,” she said, keeping her voice low. “I don’t want Blake to hear that, okay?”
“That phone call you received, the night that Rogan was killed…”
Simona tensed up again.
But everything was coming together for me. “You were talking to Bakermatic, weren’t you? When you said that you would see how that night panned out, and then get back to them.”
From the look on her face, I could tell I was right.
I tilted my head a little. “But your plan wasn’t to kill Rogan, was it?” I glanced over to where her husband was sitting, so innocent of the plan. “Your plan was to hook up with Blake, to get on his good side, to get in his ear, so that he would agree to sell the bakery to Bakermatic.”
Simona grabbed my arm and pulled me away.
“Shh, Rachael!”
I pulled my arm free. “Except it all worked out better than you ever would have planned, didn’t it? With Rogan dead, your plan accidentally fell into place without you having to do anything.”
Simona looked over her shoulder and made sure that Blake wasn’t listening. “You can’t tell him any of this,” she said
“So, it was all fake,” I said, shaking my head. “The whole relationship. I knew it!” I couldn’t help exclaiming, so excited I was that I had finally been proven right. “That’s why it all moved so fast…”
“Maybe it was all just fake at first,” Simona said, desperately pulling me away so that Blake wouldn’t know what we were talking about. “But then I genuinely fell in love with Blake. Please, Rachael, you can’t tell him any of this. It doesn’t matter now. I love him and we’re starting a family.”
I shook my head. Who was I to get in the way of their relationship?
“Don’t worry,” I said. “Your secret is safe with me. But I can’t believe you were going to sell us out to Bakermatic, Simona. And you succeeded!”
She looked confused. “No, I didn’t. Bakermatic never put the offer in, in the end.”
“Yes, they did!” I exclaimed, only semi-aware of the fact that people were staring at the woman in the wedding dress who should have been preparing to walk down the aisle but was instead grilling a pregnant guest. “Akos Touring is the company who put the offer in.”
“Oh. Akos touring has nothing to do with Bakermatic anymore.”
“What are you talking about?”
Simona shrugged. “They sold their share of Bakermatic last quarter. If Abraham Butterworth wants to buy your bakery then he probably just wants to set up his own business.”
Pippa pulled me away. “We have more important things to worry about,” she said.
“Yes. Like me getting married,” I said, taking my arm bac
k. “And since you are not a guest at this wedding, I think you should leave.”
She looked at me with tears in her eyes. “Do you really mean that?”
I couldn’t drop the stubborn act. Yes, I meant it. But no, I didn’t.
Pippa looked down at her outfit. “As a matter of fact, I was always going to attend today, but then I found out about Sue and I had to rush to get here in time. That is the only reason I am not dressed. I didn’t think you would care about such things, Rachael. But I suppose I was wrong.”
The guests were starting to go inside the chapel. The music was starting. I hesitated. “What did you find out about Sue?” I asked, willing to hear her out, if just for a moment.
Pippa took a deep breath and composed herself. “Remember Tegan and her cards?”
“Oh, geesh, not this…”
Pippa stopped me. “The card had your name on it, right?”
I couldn’t even answer.
But Pippa pressed on. “What if the pendulum only stopped above your name because that was the closest option? To Sue’s name, I mean.”
I felt a little chill go up and down my spine, but I shook it off. “I can’t have this conversation now, Pippa…”
Finally, I spotted Sue’s short black hair across the field.
“Sue…” I hurried over to her, leaving Pippa. “Where have you been?”
“I am so sorry,” she said. “There was an emergency down at the gallery. It flooded, apparently. My phone died and I didn’t have a charger so I had to come into town to get one. And I couldn’t call you.”
“It’s okay,” I said, feeling shaken up. I couldn’t believe she would run out on me like that on my wedding day, even if her gallery had flooded. “We have to get the ceremony started.”
There was no sign of Pippa as I waited for the doors to fling open. I told myself that it made me happy, that that was what I wanted.
I glanced at Sue. It was insane what Pippa had said, right?
There was no way that Sue even had access to the bakery that night.
Except that I had lost my keys.
I remembered how quickly Sue had arrived on the scene when I’d called her to pick me up and suddenly, a cold sweat broke out over my chest.
The doors started to open.
I took one slow step as the music started to play over the speakers, and the chapel doors pulled back. I caught a glimpse of Jackson standing there at the end of the aisle, but he hadn’t quite spotted me yet.
Sue cleared her throat a little. “Is everything all right, Rachael? You’re not having cold feet, are you?”
I slowly turned around. “I am, actually. But not about marrying Jackson.” I shook my head. “I’m having cold feet about having you as my maid of honor, Sue.”
She smiled nervously, gripping her bouquet. “What are you talking about, Rachael?” She glanced nervously into the chapel, where we were now being stared at by a hundred people. There were low murmurs and gasps coming from the guests.
“The day after Rogan died, I couldn’t find my key for the bakery. And you’re the one who had it, aren’t you?”
“Well, we lived together, Rachael. You left things laying around the house all the time. I had to pick up after you sometimes…”
“You are the messy one, Sue. You are always leaving your cereal laying around. And you left me with a murder to clean up! Pippa figured the whole thing out… She knows what you did…”
She dropped her bouquet and bolted for the hills while the guests looked on in horror.
Carine was standing there, shaking. “Are we still…are we still going down the aisle?” she asked.
I looked in at Jackson, who was staring at me with questions and expectations in his eyes. He would understand, wouldn’t he?
I bolted after Sue and this time, the gasps were more like shouts. “She’s doing a runner!” I heard before I headed down the hill. There was no way I was letting Sue get away.
By the time I got to the bottom of the hill, I was out of breath and I had to fall down to my knees, a stitch in my side as the buttons on the back of my dress flew open again. I felt a gentle hand on my shoulder and I looked up and gasped.
“Jackson, please, I can explain…”
“You don’t need to. I understand.” He helped me to my feet while I explained everything to him.
“I think she has Pippa, Jackson. We have to find them.”
He was holding me in his arms. “Don’t worry. I think I know where to find them,” he said, pointing down the hill toward the wetlands, where there was a rotunda near the water. I gasped when I spotted a dark-haired woman in a pink dress wrestling with a pink-haired woman in jeans.
“Jackson! She is about to throw Pippa into the water!”
Oh gosh, this was all my fault. I’d made it sound like Pippa had some kind of definitive proof, when all she had was Tegan’s pendulum. She may have been right about Sue, but drowning Pippa certainly wasn’t going to stop Sue from going to prison.
Jackson reached the water before I did and pulled Sue away from the edge, setting Pippa free. By the time I got there, Pippa was gasping for air.
“I’m sorry.”
Sue was sobbing on the ground. She was sorry for what she had done, I could give her that, but my priority was getting Pippa up and making sure she didn’t need to go to the hospital.
My wedding dress was muddy at the bottom thanks to my dash through the fields. Jackson was already leading Sue away, having called for backup. The real police would be arriving at any second.
I ran up to Jackson and touched his arm. “Please. Can I just talk to her?”
Jackson glanced around and sighed. “Well, I guess I’m not the police anymore. There’s no real protocol here.”
“I thought…I thought we were friends,” I said to Sue, once it was just the two of us, standing there by the water.
“So did I,” she said bitterly. Somehow the pink dress she had on didn’t have one speck of dirt on it, and it was still sitting perfectly on her shoulders. We’d never had our photos taken, in the end. I would probably never see her looking like this again.
“What are you talking about?” I asked Sue. “I was a good friend to you…”
She cut me off. “I asked you and asked you to come to my events. To my shows.”
I was speechless. “I told you I would come to your next one.”
“No,” she said, cutting me off. “You have been saying that for a year. And you always forget. You forgot the most important one to me, a year ago. After I reminded you again and again. And not only did you miss it—all of you did—but you actually scheduled a party of your own on the same night.”
The night of the party at the bakery.
“I didn’t know, Sue. It was just an oversight. I was so desperate at the time for everyone at the bakery to get along…”
She stared at the dirt. “Yes. All you ever cared about was the bakery.”
“Sue! That’s not fair…”
“You did something even worse that night,” Sue said. “You stole my caterer.”
“What?”
“Rogan was supposed to bake the food for the show that night. In the end, we didn’t have anything to serve the guests at all. If he hadn’t had to attend your stupid party…”
So, she’d taken my key and came into the bakery while we were all getting ready to leave, then killed Rogan in a fit of rage. “I was glad I ruined your night. You all had it coming.”
I stood up straight. “I’m sorry I wasn’t always the best friend I could have been, Sue. But nothing excuses what you did.”
I nodded at Jackson, who took that as his cue to get her away from me. “You’re under arrest, Sue…” he said, while I wondered for a moment if he still had the authority to say that. Maybe it only counted as a citizen’s arrest. Or maybe this kind of work really was in his blood.
He couldn’t let it go any more than I could.
As we walked back to the chapel, I squeezed his hand tightly
. “I do…” I started to say.
He nodded up the hill. “We aren’t quite there yet,” he said with a little smile.
I laughed. “I mean, I do want to start a detective agency with you,” I said with a grin that spread over my face. It was the right decision. “I mean, if that is still something you want to do.”
He squeezed my hand back. “I think that is a perfect suggestion.”
It was time to get married.
“Are you sure I look okay like this?” Pippa asked, her face aghast. “Surely I can’t walk down the aisle wearing jeans?”
“I don’t care what you’re wearing,” I said, giving her a hug. “I only care that you’re going to be standing by my side.” I looked down at the state of my own dress. “Besides, I am not one to talk right now.” My hair was a mess and there was still mud on my arm, but at least Pippa had managed to get my buttons done up again. “Jackson might take one look at me and do a runner of his own this time,” I laughed.
“You look beautiful,” Pippa said. “And If Jackson doesn’t want to marry you then he is a fool and I will take you back to Belldale to live with me.”
But Jackson didn’t care about the state of my dress. He just stared into my eyes, joyfully ignoring the mud as we said, “I do.”
And all I cared about was the fact that I was there, sandwiched between my two best friends, while the organ played. And outside, on the lake, the water glistened like a thousand dancing fairies.
Epilogue
Two Months Later
I could hear the sound of a tray being dropped and tried to hold my tongue. I wasn’t the sole boss any longer. This was a partnership. And we were only a week away from launching, so everything needed to be ship-shape. The guy from the sign company would be in the next day to finally put the name of the business on the front. Until then, the old sign still stood.
Jackson was doing his best trying to clean out the kitchen, but we did need an extra pair of hands. Or two or three.
“Where is she?” Jackson called as I heard another tray crash. We were either going to have to throw all those out or try to figure out a way to put them to better use. Maybe I could bake during the quiet hours.
A Fatal Finale Page 13