I spotted Hollis Goodnight, chief of the Flat Falls police department, next to the front door. When he saw me, he scrubbed his hand along his scalp. “Glory Wells, please tell me you were in the neighborhood and you had nothing to do with this.”
His gray hair was standing on end, a sign he had already reached his frustration threshold. I had walked that line with him more often than I cared to admit, and his hair stuck straight out for most of my teenage years.
“Not me,” I said, glancing between him and the people gathering outside the warehouse. “What happened?”
Just then, Mimi pushed the door open, letting it hit the metal wall with a clang that reverberated around the parking lot. She scanned the area, and when she spotted me, she rushed out and clutched my arm. Instead of lugging me inside, though, she guided me to an empty spot near the far corner of the building.
Over my shoulder, I saw the stunned police chief watching us with narrowed eyes. I lifted my hand and gave him a small finger waggle.
“Something came up.” Mimi’s breath huffed out in short pants, her eyes darting toward the emergency personnel rushing in and out of the door. “I need you to handle the wedding preparations on your own for a little while.”
“Okaaaay,” I said slowly, wondering what caused her to relinquish the overdeveloped sense of control that just that morning had her demanding approval rights between two almost identical shades of cream napkins. “Did something happen?”
“You could say that. We spent half an hour dealing with a photographer who was trying to sneak in past security, then we lost one of our grooms.” Then she pivoted and marched back toward the building.
“Wait,” I called after her. “What do you mean, you lost a groom? Which one? And how am I supposed to plan a…”
I surveyed the crowd, and by the time I decided this was not the place to break the show’s confidentiality agreement, Mimi had already slipped inside. I stared after her, wondering how she expected me to coordinate a wedding with a runaway groom.
“Glory, can I talk to you for a minute?” I looked up and found the Sheriff motioning to me.
“What’s up, Hollis?”
He shuffled his feet, and a blush crept up his weathered cheeks. “Listen, I planned to have dinner with Beverlee tonight. She was making chicken and dumplings.” He raked his gaze over the mob with a scowl. “But I can’t make it, after all.”
Hollis had been in love with my aunt for as long as I could remember. She had no idea, so she continued to invite him to dinner, usually along with a random woman from town who she said would make him a splendid wife. And he dutifully attended every time, showing up with wine or flowers, while Beverlee was oblivious to his smitten glances.
I patted his arm. “I’ll call her, and I’m sure she’ll save you a plate.”
A dark sedan pulled to a stop a few feet away from us. “Thank you,” he said, his voice low and somber. “Now if you’ll excuse me, the coroner is here.”
Hollis turned to greet the woman that climbed out of the car.
My scalp tingled, and alarm snaked down toward my stomach as I took in the bright lights and the police presence.
Coroner?
The groom hadn’t run away. He was dead.
I called Beverlee to relay Hollis’s message. When I mentioned there might be a corpse on set, she immediately whooped and said she’d meet me at the warehouse. There hadn’t been much excitement in Flat Falls since the last dead body, so this gave her an excuse to put on lipstick and head out for a night on the town.
After disconnecting, I surveyed the gawkers whispering in the parking lot. As an independent contractor for the show, I had a vested interest in knowing what was going on behind those metal walls. That, and I was nosy.
There was a fifty percent chance the dead groom in question was Josie’s ex-husband, so friendship rules required I get as much information as possible.
I moved toward the crowd, catching bits and pieces of their theories. Drug overdose. Romantic dispute. Alien abduction.
I wasn’t sure why suspected visits from extraterrestrials always topped the list when weird things happened in this town, but aliens were unlikely on a random Tuesday in the middle of October, so I pushed my way through the throng and searched for more reliable observers. A redheaded man with a camera threw an elbow, but I flashed a smile and a quick, “I work here” and continued forward.
When I made it to a clearing near the building, I spotted Gage Russell, a former high school classmate who now wore a Flat Falls Police badge pinned to his well-muscled chest. I gave a weak wave. “I hear you’ve got a dead guy.”
“Hello to you, too, Glory,” he responded with a lifted brow. “And where did you hear that?”
“Everybody knows, Gage. Don’t play coy.” I tipped my chin toward the door. “Can you tell me who it was?”
“All I’ve heard is they were filming something, there was a loud bang, and a big chandelier fell on an actor’s head. Took him right out.”
I scanned over my shoulder to make sure nobody was listening and whispered, “What did he look like? Brown hair, sort of nerdy?”
A vein throbbed in his neck. “He looked like a man pancaked in a Looney Tunes cartoon, if you want the truth.”
Frustrated, I dangled my secret weapon. “Gage, you’ve met Josie, right?”
I already knew the answer to that. Gage had been sniffing around Josie for the last few months under the guise of welfare checks. But making googly eyes at a criminal when you delivered takeout to her apartment after your shift every Wednesday didn’t normally fall under official jurisdiction.
His eyes flicked to me with interest. “What does she have to do with this?”
“Mimi, the producer, said a groom died.” I pointed toward the warehouse, then bent in so only he could hear me. “One of those grooms was Josie’s ex-husband.”
“The same ex-husband that had her thrown in jail?”
“That’s him.”
“The one who is responsible for her being on house arrest?” he asked, his expression hardening.
“Yep.”
He crossed his arms, and a slow smile spread across his handsome face. “Now that you mention it, I believe the deceased did have brown hair.”
I was about to confirm my suspicion that Beau was under that chandelier when Beverlee’s yellow convertible skidded to a stop near the edge of the crowd. The horn sounded two peppy beeps, then she popped out of the driver’s side.
“Glory!” she shouted as she barreled forward, greeting townspeople and strangers alike with quick hugs and big smiles as if she were walking a red carpet instead of skirting police baricades. She halted when she reached me. “What’s the scoop? Is it somebody we know?”
I peeked over my shoulder at Gage, who was now speaking in hushed tones with a crew member, and bit my lip. “I’m not allowed to talk about it.”
Beverlee crossed her arms and cocked her head. “Glory Ann Wells, I raised you from the time you were no bigger than a flea in a tick circus. I have changed your diapers. Don’t start hiding things from me now.”
I steered her to the side of the group. “Listen, you didn’t hear it from me,” I said. “But a chandelier fell from the ceiling and landed on a contestant.”
“Which contestant?” she demanded. “What aren’t you telling me?”
I sighed. “I think it was William Beauregard Lyons, the third.”
Beverlee stared down at the ground and wiggled her toes like she always did when she was deep in thought. I used to wonder if she was obsessed with her pedicure, but a few years ago she told me something about her feet being connected to her brain chakra, so I let it slide. Finally, she focused on me and snapped her finger. “Isn’t that…”
“Yes, it’s Josie’s ex-husband.”
She made a sound that was part cough and part chuckle, then covered her mouth with her hand. After she regained her composure, she pulled out her cell phone. “It’s a terrible shame when bad guys get w
hat’s coming to them, isn’t it?”
She stepped over to a concrete wall near the edge of the parking lot and held out her arm. “Here, help me up.”
I eyed the gravel lot and the four-foot divider looming above it. “No. I’ve got enough to deal with. I don’t have time for your broken femur.”
She huffed. “I’ll have you know I joined a senior rock-climbing league down at the Flat Falls YMCA.”
“You did what?” I asked. “And why?”
“Ernie Kellerman invited me,” she said with a grin. “And I thought if he stood underneath me as I climbed, it might be the excuse he needed to put his hands on my bottom.”
“You became a rock climber to get felt up by the man who takes his teeth out and leaves them on the counter at the Grind and Go while he drinks his coffee every morning?” My jaw ached from where my molars were smashed together. “We have higher standards than that, Beverlee.”
“I don’t want to marry him, Glory. I just want to have a good time. Something you might consider now and then.” She pinned me with a glare. “Help me up.”
I groaned and gave her a boost to get on the wall, then stood nearby in case she lost her footing. Within three minutes, she had invited a strapping young production assistant to hoist her down, which he did with a friendly smile.
Once she was back on the ground, she beamed at me. “And that’s how it’s done.”
“What?” I asked.
She flipped her phone around to show me the screen. “My blog readers like to keep up with the action in our charming town, so I snapped a few pictures of the crowd. Hollis might be able to use them as evidence, too.”
Although Beverlee’s Bites had a substantial following in Flat Falls, I doubted Hollis would require the insight of a geriatric food and party blogger to solve a crime. She might be nosy, but she wasn’t Columbo.
The mob around the warehouse had continued to grow, and when the mobile video crew from the mainland cable station entered the lot in their large, flashy van, I turned to Beverlee with a frown. “Somebody needs to tell Josie before she hears about it on the news. I know there’s no love lost between those two, but I can’t let her be alone when she finds out Beau finally got what was coming to him.”
It was after dark by the time I climbed the rusty metal stairs behind the pawnshop to the porch between our apartments. The breeze carried the smell of seaweed and salty air instead of the usual decaying trash stench from the rusty dumpster that occupied the small alley between the building and the pier that lined the Intracoastal waterway.
Part of me wanted to go hide under a blanket in my living room so I didn’t have to deliver bad news. But Josie was a friend. I crossed the porch and knocked softly at her apartment door instead.
She opened it, pressing a red-tinged tissue to her lips. “Did you get in another fight?” I asked.
“Who am I going to fight with around here, Glory? The dust bunnies are pretty docile.”
“Then why are you bleeding?”
“I’m not. It’s hibiscus mint,” she said, lifting a scarlet popsicle with her other hand. “I got it from the health food store on the waterfront. Want one?”
My stomach dropped. “The shop next to the warehouse?”
She nodded, lifting her ankle and waggling it around. “I needed a reason to go down there, so I asked for permission to shop at the specialty store.”
The conditions of Josie’s house arrest allowed her to visit the grocery store and go to medical appointments, but any other destination required sign-off from her corrections officer. “They let you make a special trip for popsicles?”
“He thinks I’m a vegan, and I made it a point to tell him the Food Barn down the street doesn’t carry heirloom walnuts or organic tofu.”
“But you’re not a vegan.”
Josie grinned and slurped the melted syrup as it dripped down her fingers. “He doesn’t know that. And besides, I just needed an excuse to be down there.”
“At the warehouse?”
She dipped her chin. “I was trying to find Beau. To apologize. He’s a jerk, but I shouldn’t have attacked him like that. The camera crew made me think he wanted to make amends to look good on TV.”
“Josie, there’s something I need—”
“It was chaotic down there today, so I couldn’t get through. I’ll try again tomorrow when the frenzy from filming has died down.” She wiped her lips with the tissue. “And the barbecue tempeh burgers the butcher ordered for me will be there, so it will definitely be worth the trip.”
I shifted on my feet. “The mayhem down there wasn’t because of filming. There was an accident on the set of the show today.”
“The pickle princess hit a sour patch?” She snickered.
“No, that’s not it.” I rolled my shoulders to loosen the knot of tension that had settled in my neck. “Josie, something happened to Beau.”
She swayed side to side, her brows furrowed in confusion, and the color draining from her cheeks. “My Beau?”
“Yes. A chandelier fell and landed right on him.” I inhaled slowly. “I’m sorry, Jo, but he didn’t make it.”
“My Beau?” she repeated. “Are you sure?”
I nodded.
She dropped her head into her hands, and her shoulders trembled. I had always been awkward around grief, but I wanted to comfort her, so I reached over and patted her gently on the arm. “Hollis and Gage are down at the warehouse trying to figure out exactly what happened.”
Josie lifted her chin, and I realized her shoulders weren’t shaking because I upset her. She was laughing. She dabbed the corner of her eye with her dirty tissue.
“Oh, I know what happened,” she said, a knowing smile flitting across her lips. “Karma.”
4
I left Josie and her dead ex-husband afterglow and headed to my apartment. Even though the sky had darkened, and shadows covered the porch, I could still make out a lump of fur curled up on the worn straw doormat.
“Hey, Rusty,” I greeted the golden retriever.
Although he belonged to Ian Strickland, my once-upon-a-time, Rusty was our neighborhood mascot and had been visiting me every evening since I returned to town. I wasn’t sure if he was lonely because Ian worked nights at Trolls, the bar he owned, or if he just recognized me as the sucker who shared her dinner with him. Either way, I was thankful for the company.
I eyed Ian’s boat as it rocked gently under the glow of a full moon. I still couldn’t believe we were neighbors. I could stand on the porch and toss rocks across the alley at his boat, and if I had a better arm, I’d probably hit it. I was practically living in his lap, a thought that made me more than a little warm.
The boat’s on-board lights were off, and I released the breath I had been holding. Seeing him brought back feelings I wasn’t ready to face, and although Ian still hadn’t forgiven me for leaving town after high school and breaking his heart, he had been surprisingly kind in welcoming me home.
Rusty didn’t open his eyes as I rummaged through my purse for my keys. But from the rhythmic thump of his tail on the mat, he knew I was there.
I reached across him to unlock the door. Ever the gentleman, he waited for me to high-step over his sturdy body before getting up, retrieving his favorite pink tennis ball with his teeth, and lumbering into my foyer.
He dropped the ball from his jowls onto my ottoman before sliding back down to the floor with a groan. I nudged it off with my knee. “Thanks for thinking of me, buddy, but you can keep your slimy balls to yourself.”
The ball fell to the ground with a splat, then rolled across the room. Rusty studied it with one eye open. After he decided it wasn’t worth the chase, he watched me walk into the kitchen, tug open a cabinet, and pull out two cans of soup and a sleeve of crackers. “We’ve got chicken noodle and split pea. What’ll it be?”
Rusty let out a high-pitched yawp and jumped up to follow me. He focused on the cans, then on me, finally sounding off another quick bark.
&n
bsp; “Fine,” I said. “Split pea it is. But I can’t avoid poultry forever because you have a crush on Matilda.”
Matilda was Beverlee’s prized chicken and was the closest thing I’d ever had to a sister.
Sibling rivalry was complicated, especially when you’re sharing affection with poultry, but Beverlee took her role as Matilda’s caretaker every bit as seriously as she had when I was dumped on her doorstep at age five. She parented with love and baked goods, and we were both lucky she had rescued us.
Being an actual human didn’t make me the favorite, though. I got my hand slapped the week before when I tried to steal a pumpkin sugar cookie from the cooling rack in Beverlee’s kitchen. “Those are for Matilda,” she shrieked.
She had even knitted Matilda a bright red cabled chicken sweater to keep her warm during the upcoming Carolina winter. She’d never made me a sweater.
The chicken had everybody fooled. Even the dog, it seemed.
I heated the soup in the microwave and opened the crackers. I was about to sit down and enjoy my evening ritual of fine dining with a hundred-pound beefcake when a soft knock had Rusty on his feet announcing a new arrival with a series of short, sharp barks. With a sigh, I crossed to the door, expecting that Josie had finally come to her senses and was here to freak out about her ex-husband’s death.
Instead, Ian leaned against the doorframe, slightly disheveled in faded jeans and a wrinkled black t-shirt.
He glanced through the pass-through at the can of soup on the counter and cocked an eyebrow. “If I had known you were eating dog food for dinner, I’d have brought over some wings.”
My stomach growled, and I peeked at the clock. “Why aren’t you at work?”
“They had the area down by the waterfront closed because some guy died.”
Tying the Knot (A Wedding Crashers Mystery Book 2) Page 4