Murder Before Marriage

by Raven Snow

  Rowen and Coreen waited until their parents had gone. “That was interesting,” said Coreen, the first to speak.

  Rowen nodded in agreement. “My mother is an interesting woman.”

  “She seems nice.”

  “Oh, yeah. Sure. She’s nice. Dependable? Not so much.”

  “Well, it looks like Desmond and Gaby are getting what they want at any rate.”

  “Looks that way,” Rowen agreed, saying the words slowly.

  “You don’t sound so sure.”

  Had she sounded uncertain? Maybe she was. “I don’t know,” said Rowen with a shrug of her shoulders. “Something tells me that it’s not going to be as easy as all that.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. Time will tell, I guess.”

  “Well, let’s get out of here.” Coreen gave her half-sister a pat on the arm. “Horror movie marathon at my place, remember?”

  “Do we have to?” Rowen called after her with a sigh. “My mother being back in town is scary enough.”

  Chapter Two

  Coreen had actually done a lot with the house that had once belonged to Bertha Trainer, Desmond’s aunt and adoptive mother. It was a quaint house with a lot of historical significance. It was hard to tell if Coreen had kept that in mind when redecorating and remodeling the place. Gone was all the old, plastic-covered furniture. It had been replaced with more modern fare. Likewise, a lot of the appliances had been updated.

  “This would be a great place to live,” Rowen said on her way back from the bathroom. She hadn’t been able to help herself. She had peeked in the rooms she had passed by on her way down the hallway. “You’ve done a lot with it.”

  “I did a lot with it so that I could increase its resale value.” Coreen said like it should be obvious. “Desmond pitched in money for it, and I know he’s expecting a return.”

  “You don’t think he would let you live here?”

  “Sit back down.” Coreen pointed to the spot on the sofa beside her. She waved the remote she was holding. “You’re just trying to stall.”

  That was part of it. The movie they were watching was too scary and stressful for Rowen by half. She didn’t admit that though. “No, seriously. Would he let you live here? Would you even want to live here?”

  Coreen rolled her eyes. She took a deep breath though, like she was really considering the question. “I don’t know, Rowen. I’ve never really had the urge to settle down in a small town again. Staying in one place might be nice, but I’m not sure I want to do it here. Besides, this place is too big for me. I’m only one person. What would I do with all this space?”

  “Bertha lived here alone,” Rowen pointed out.

  “Yeah, and she’s a bitter old lady who’s dead now.”

  Rowen gave a low whistle. “Sounds like she’s not the only one who’s bitter. What’s up with you?”

  “Sorry. Her friends keep giving me trouble. You wouldn’t think a bunch of old ladies could be threatening, but it really is sort of disconcerting when they live on all sides of you.”

  “Need me to get Ben? You’re family, you know. I’m sure he would help.” Ben wasn’t just Lainswich’s Chief of Police, he was also married to Rose, Rowen’s cousin. They were close.

  “No thanks.” Coreen didn’t even pause to consider the offer. “I’m sure I’ll manage without calling the cops on little old ladies. I appreciate the offer, though.”

  “Any time.”

  “Now sit back down and watch the rest of this with me. Come on. I know you’re not a total coward.”

  ***

  Rowen sat through the rest of the horror movie and then another. She tried to put on a brave face but deep down she knew she would be leaving lights on everywhere she went for the next few days. Not that she planned on admitting that to anyone.

  Finally, it was late enough to where Rowen needed to head home. She had received more than one text from Eric, asking her if she would be home any time soon. He wasn’t rushing her, but it was definitely starting to get unreasonably late. “I need to get going,” Rowen said, when the credits of the final movie were rolling. She stood and went to get her shoes, already dreading the car ride home. Despite how many times she checked beforehand, she was certain to be paranoid someone was in the back seat.

  “We’ll have to do this again sometime soon,” Coreen said with a yawn. “It gets so boring around here. I mean, you’re the only person I really know here.”

  Rowen hadn’t given that much thought, but it made sense. Anyone connected to the Greensmith family wasn’t exactly popular around Lainswich, and Coreen wasn’t terribly well-loved among the Greensmiths either. Not that this was through any fault of her own. They only distrusted her because of Desmond and because they were protective of Rowen, but Rowen trusted Coreen. At least, she thought she did. She liked her, at any rate. It didn’t feel like Coreen was trying to take advantage of her.

  “Have you thought about getting a job?” asked Rowen.

  “A job?” Coreen repeated, raising an eyebrow. “Where? And what for? I don’t even know how long I’m going to be in Lainswich. No one is going to want to hire me.”

  “Well, I was thinking… Maybe you could go into the family business.” It was something Rowen had thought about before though she hadn’t actually discussed it with the rest of her family. She had been a little afraid to, afraid they would reject Coreen outright due to her connection with Desmond.

  “And what family business is that?” asked Coreen, an eyebrow raised. It was right to need Rowen to specify. As far as family businesses went, the Greensmiths had three.

  The first was the paper. The Lainswich Inquirer had been the first Greensmith-owned establishment. Eric had paid for the place and Rowen had run things at first. Rose had taken over for her since, after she had shown a better knack for journalism. Rowen still helped out at the Inquirer a lot. It was just that her time was often spent between there and the detective agency next door. Eric owned that as well. They worked as private investigators when Lainswich needed them, which was surprisingly often.

  The third Greensmith-owned establishment in Lainswich was Odds & Ends. That was a little new age shop downtown that Rowen’s aunts owned. Her uncle Norman helped as well. It didn’t see a whole lot of foot traffic, so it was doubtful they actually needed help. Besides, Rowen had a feeling that Coreen would get along better with her cousins anyway. They were closer to the same age.

  “I was thinking, maybe, that you could help out at the paper.” Rowen hadn’t expected to bring it up that night, certainly not now that she was half asleep and ready to go home. Maybe it was because she was half asleep that the offer had jumped to the front of her mind, begging to be asked.

  “The Inquirer?” Coreen asked, like there was another paper in town run by the Greensmiths. “I don’t have a background in journalism. I don’t know the first thing about papers.”

  “Neither did my cousins, not really.” Rowen shrugged. She had offered them jobs much like she was offering Coreen one now. “I was the only one with a background in journalism. I did some stuff online back before I moved here. It was for a click-bait site and mostly I was just a glorified intern. Turns out my passion is more in sniffing out the truth than it is in the reporting part. Rose is a lot better at that than I am. Peony and Willow cycle between what’s needed: editing, articles, pictures, printing, the blog. Margo handles a lot of the PR stuff. Willow has a boyfriend who does video for the blog, if we need it. Mostly it’s just my cousins, though. Everyone does what needs doing, including me. I don’t have an official job title or anything. Not anymore. I help out when I’m not tied up with investigative work. Sometimes the two overlap.”

  “And what? You want me to jump into all that? Do whatever needs doing?”

  When Coreen said it like that, Rowen began to have her doubts. “I’m sure Rose would be fine with it.”

  “You haven’t even asked? You’re offering me a job that might not exist?” Coreen didn’t sound angr
y or even annoyed. She was smiling, like she was touched Rowen was making the offer at all.

  “It’s not like we’re going over budget. Our printed media doesn’t sell a lot of copies, but we don’t make many. Production costs are low. A lot of what we do is online and, whether Lainswich likes to admit it or not, they’re interested in what we have to say. We could afford to add another employee.”

  “I don’t really need the extra income.”

  Rowen wasn’t sure why Coreen didn’t need the income. She didn’t know how Coreen made the money she lived off of from day to day. Maybe it came from Desmond, but she doubted it. Coreen had made a point to differentiate her investments from her father’s when it came to remodeling the house she was currently living in. Rowen decided not to ask. “Go for the company then,” she suggested instead. “It has to get lonely around here. Go when you want, help out when you can, and take a paycheck if you’re so inclined. At the very least, it’ll help you meet new people.”

  “They aren’t exactly new though, are they?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, they’re your family. They’ve been around this entire time. If they wanted to meet me, they would have by now.”

  Rowen’s family had met Coreen, but Rowen didn’t point that out. It wasn’t like any of them had made plans to meet with her again. They really didn’t talk about her much and just sort of smiled and nodded when Rowen brought her up in conversation. They were happy that she had a sister now that she got along with, but that was about as far as it went. “They would like you if they got to know you. They haven’t really gotten a chance to get to know you yet.” That sounded like a cop out, but Rowen meant it. Coreen was a likable person. As far as she knew, she wasn’t at all like her father. Rowen certainly hadn’t caught her trying to take advantage of people like he did. She hadn’t stolen a will or tried to marry anyone for their money… at least not yet. “Come on,” Rowen urged when Coreen didn’t respond for a few seconds. “At least give it a chance. Give them a chance.”

  Coreen busted out with a sudden laugh, her bare feet tucked beneath her on the sofa. “You say that like you have everything set up already.”

  “Well, tell me you’re interested and I’ll see what everyone thinks.” Rowen was getting a bit ahead of herself, but she wasn’t going to admit that. “They don’t even have to know you know. I’ll bring it up like it’s my idea.”

  “It is your idea.”

  “And it’ll stay an idea if you’re not the least bit interested.”

  Coreen’s eyes lowered down to the carpet. She was silent for a few seconds, like she was really giving the matter some thought. “Fine,” she said, finally, looking back up. “But I’m just saying I’ll think about it. Even if they’re okay with it, I might change my mind. I mean, I don’t want to go in and work with them if they’re reluctant about it. I don’t want things to be awkward, which means you’ll have to be there too.”

  “I will be,” Rowen promised. “Maybe we can go in together tomorrow. What do you think?”

  “I think that’s short notice.”

  “Maybe.” Rowen still hadn’t asked Rose, after all. Springing it on her tomorrow and bringing Coreen in when she did probably wasn’t the best sort of thing to do in the span of a single day. “I’ll talk to Rose and see how things go, and I’ll let you know.”

  Coreen nodded. “All right.” There was still a certain hesitance to her words. It was difficult to tell whether she thought Rowen’s idea was a good one or not.

  ***

  Rowen and Coreen both said their goodbyes and headed home. True to Rowen’s prediction, she spent the entire drive glancing in her rearview mirror. She had forgotten to check the backseat before backing out of the driveway, an oversight that had made the ride home immeasurably worse.

  Finally, her house was in sight. She had sped the last mile there and was lucky she hadn’t been caught by the police. Rose really wouldn’t be in the mood to listen to her tomorrow if she earned herself a traffic ticket tonight. Being connected to the Greensmith family already made Ben’s position as Chief of Police a controversial topic.

  As it turned out, Rowen’s relief didn’t last long. She noticed a second car in the driveway as she pulled in. It was just behind Eric’s sleek black sports car. A sedan, Rowen noted as she pulled in beside her husband. It was hard to make out the details of the thing as she pulled in alongside it. Rowen parked and picked up her phone. You recognize the car, she told herself. You’ve seen it somewhere before. Besides, what kind of slasher movie villain drives a purple sedan? The voice in Rowen’s head was talking a lot of sense, so she headed for the door.

  This is how horror movies start. You should at least call Eric. Who cares if he thinks you’re being silly? Just call. Make sure everything is all right. It’s better than getting murdered. That same voice in Rowen’s head was talking a lot of sense again, just a different kind of sense. Her key was already in the lock, though. Mention of Eric just made her worried for her husband. It made her want to hurry inside heedless of her own personal safety.

  Phone held tightly in one hand, Rowen eased the front door open, only to find Chester wasn’t there to greet her. That was the first thing out of place. The old black lab was almost always there to greet her. He had that sixth sense a lot of dogs seemed to have when one of their humans was nearing home.

  Most of the house lights were off. That wasn’t too odd. Around this time of night Eric would be switching lights off. It didn’t necessarily mean anything bad was going on, but it did make navigating the hallways a little more difficult and a lot more sinister.

  Rowen knew her way through her own home, at least. She put her purse down near the door but kept her phone clenched tight in one hand. She listened. There was the sound of someone talking. Rowen thought that, perhaps, it was the television. That was the most likely answer, wasn’t it? She moved toward the sound and was able to pick out the words a bit better. Someone wasn’t just talking, they were ranting. They were doing so in a quiet speaking voice, but the words were all rushed, tumbling out on top of each other. It was hard to pick out entire sentences.

  Rowen’s mind conjured up an image of Eric tied to a chair while a woman ranted at him. It’s the television, she told herself. This time, she really did decide she was being a coward for no good reason at all. She rounded the corner… and then she let out a scream.

  A woman screamed right back, spinning to face Rowen. Eric cursed loudly, a hand flying to rest over his heart as he nearly fell off the sofa.

  Rowen stared at Eric and at the woman whose back had been to her as she rounded the corner. She hadn’t expected to nearly run into another human being, not after she had convinced herself that it was the television. Nope, she had been wrong. There was a real live human in her house, a human who didn’t live there. Fortunately, she had also been wrong on the serial killer front. Tina wasn’t a serial killer. At least… Rowen didn’t think she was.

  “You scared me.” Tina looked Rowen up and down. Her eyes were huge, drawing attention to her dark and smudged eye makeup. Tina was her cousin, Peony’s, girlfriend. Rowen considered her a friend, but not the sort of friend who showed up at her house without Peony. She definitely wasn’t the kind of friend who showed up unannounced in the middle of the night.

  “I scared you?” Rowen didn’t wait for a response from Tina. She looked past her and to Eric. “What’s going on here?”

  “I didn’t know you were on the way home.” Eric stood up and walked from the sofa to his wife. There was a frown on his face, but he gave her a peck on the cheek anyway. “You should call when you’re leaving. That way I know where you are.”

  “Well, you should call when we have late night guests. That way I don’t have a heart attack.”

  Eric moved from Rowen and toward the kitchen. The light was on and she could smell the coffee brewing. “It was sudden, and… I didn’t really get a chance to call you.” The pause was a polite one. What he meant was T
ina had been rambling this entire time. He hadn’t gotten a chance to do anything but listen. “Do you want coffee?”

  “Yes, please.” Rowen supposed she’d better drink a cup. The way Tina was pacing said she’d be up for a while yet. “You want to sit down?” she asked Tina, taking a seat herself.

  Tina shook her head and kept right on pacing. “I’m anxious. I need to pace when I’m anxious.”

  “All right.” Rowen wasn’t going to argue with Tina. With any luck, she would wear herself out soon and head home. Not that Rowen wasn’t curious as to why her cousin’s girlfriend was pacing a groove into her living room floor. “So, to what do we owe the pleasure?”

  Tina stopped pacing then. She took a deep and shuddering breath. “I already told Eric all about it.” She sounded almost angry when she said that, like she didn’t want to repeat herself, like Rowen should be able to intuit information her husband already knew.

  “Her brother is in town,” Eric called from the kitchen.

  “Oh.” Rowen didn’t really know Tina’s family. She didn’t know how to take that piece of information. Badly, she supposed. Tina certainly didn’t look happy. “I’m… sorry?” she ventured.

  Tina nodded. Apparently, sympathy was the right response. “He moved away after high school. Our folks paid for him to go to a fancy college. He was the baby and he was into sports and stuff. They thought he would make it into major league football.” She snorted at that. “He ended up slacking off, getting some degree he didn’t care about. It’s something business related, I think. Whatever. He’s a glorified secretary. Mom and Dad just treat it like it’s a big deal because he gets to travel.”

  Rowen wasn’t sure what was wrong with being a secretary. She didn’t point out that Tina worked in a library. They seemed like similar jobs when you took travel out of the equation. Rowen guessed the work itself wasn’t in question. There was some other reason Tina disliked her brother. “Okay,” she said, slowly.