“No,” she said, her breath jagged. “But it all started with the cookies.”
“You’re losing me here, Josie. What started with the cookies?”
She sniffled, then blew her nose. She crumpled the tissue onto the ground, then lifted another one from the pile, holding it up in front of her mouth. “The murder,” she said in a muffled voice. “Beau’s murder.”
I squinted toward the door. “Gage doesn’t think you had anything to do with it, does he? You were here.”
She hiccupped. “Was I?” she asked, her voice low and raspy.
“It’s not like you can go out anytime you—” I paused, thinking back to yesterday’s visit to the health food store, when Josie had left the apartment for the first time in ages and wound up wandering onto a murder scene. “Oh,” I said, drawing out the word on a long exhalation.
“I was there. I had the idea to go to the health food store for the walnuts so I could slip over and talk to him. I heard the noise. I didn’t know what happened until later, but I was probably less than fifty feet from Beau when he was…” Her voice trailed off and she continued to take uneven breaths.
“Surely they don’t think you had anything to do with it.”
“But they do,” she said with a whimper. “Gage stopped by to tell me I’m officially a suspect in Beau’s murder.”
After I made a box of macaroni and cheese from Josie’s pantry and settled her on the sofa, I headed over to Beverlee’s house.
I found her lying on her stomach in a patch of sunshine in the backyard, her bare feet stuck up in the air and a cellophane bag of trail mix spread out on the ground in front of her.
When she saw me nudge open the garden gate, she raised a hand. “Stop,” she warned. “Don’t move.”
Alarmed, I froze mid-step, scanning her yard for the source of danger. “What is it?” I asked, hoping she wasn’t about to point out a Copperhead poised to strike my ankle. Nothing ruined an already bad day faster than a venomous snake bite.
“Watch this.” She crinkled the bag, then pushed herself into a sitting position.
I shook my head and let my foot touch the ground. “Beverlee, what are you—”
She pointed toward the far corner of the yard, where Matilda and her chicken pals were hanging out in the shady area near their coop.
Beverlee crinkled the bag again, and Matilda’s beak popped up. “Come on, baby girl. You know you want it.”
She made a loud snapping noise with her tongue, like the brisk tap of a finger on the stretched skin of a drum.
I closed the gate and crossed the yard, mindful of the grass in case Beverlee had forgotten she was saving me from being attacked by a rabid possum or an incoming flood. “Are you still trying to train your chicken?”
She sighed. “I even got the good stuff. A lady down at the feed store makes homemade trail mix for her grandkids, so I knew I could do the same for Matilda.”
“You made trail mix for a chicken?”
“Sure. It’s mostly mealworms, but I added some dried veggies for crunch and a handful of raisins to liven it up.”
“I thought you hated raisins,” I said, remembering how she had baked a double batch of oatmeal raisin scones for the ladies at the Methodist church when they hadn’t invited her to their potluck poker night.
“For people,” she scoffed. Rising, she brushed off the back of her red linen shorts. “They say, ‘I despise you’ in food form.”
I checked out the bag and fought a ripple of nausea at the collection of crispy worms, oatmeal flakes, and dried fruit. “And for chickens?”
Beverlee tilted her head to the side. “For chickens, raisins are love. But I accidentally left the bag open last night, and they got a little stale, so I put it back in the oven this morning to freshen them up. Now they’re just stale and warm.”
I plucked a raisin from the bag and rolled it between my fingers, stealing a glance across the yard at Matilda, who was pecking at the ground and ignoring Beverlee’s homemade treats. “And how’s it going? Is she trained yet?”
She grunted and sprinkled a handful of granola on the grass. “I don’t get it. There’s a man on YouTube whose chickens jump through hoops when he blows a whistle. I’m only asking her to come when I call, not write a nuclear peace treaty. How hard can it be?”
“Have you ever thought about getting a dog?”
Beverlee refused my suggestion with a swish of her wrist, a wide stack of metal bracelets jangling on her arm. She motioned for me to follow her into the house. “Aside from insulting Matilda, what brings you by this afternoon?”
The fragrance of cinnamon and honey hit me as soon as I walked in the door, and I shot Matilda a glare through the glass. I sat down at the table and dropped my head into my hands.
Beverlee shuffled through the kitchen, slamming cabinet doors and rifling through the refrigerator. “Does this funk of yours have anything to do with that new job you refuse to talk about?”
“It’s more about what happened at the job than the job itself. Although, that’s a little weird, too.”
She placed a frosted glass bowl overflowing with warm granola in front of me, then filled a mug with milk.
I looked around for the yellow ceramic planter where I used to dispose of Beverlee’s culinary experiments when I was a kid. I wasn’t above hiding chicken food in a Ficus if that meant I didn’t have to eat it.
Beverlee gave a smug chuckle. “I got rid of that thing when you were ten. All those leftovers you tried to stuff in there started to smell like feet. Relax. It’s worm-free.”
I took a hesitant bite, failing to hide a moan of pleasure when the burst of cinnamon and sugar hit my tongue.
“So, are you worried about Josie's ex getting squashed like a bug by the light fixture?” She jabbed a spoon in the air. “Because you haven’t lived your life right if that’s the way it ends for you.”
I couldn’t argue. I didn’t know much about Josie’s ex-husband, but it took a special brand of jerk to let his wife take the fall for his criminal activity.
Beverlee plucked a piece of granola out of the bowl and popped it into her mouth. “Hollis said it was a crazy sight. There was no blood, just a giant glass chandelier that fell from the ceiling and then… lights out.” She chuckled at her own joke.
“Did he tell you anything else?” I leaned forward onto my elbows and earned a hard stare from Beverlee. “Anything about, say, who was responsible? Or what made him think it wasn’t an accident?”
“Just that he was out there most of the night trying to put all the pieces together. He said it seemed like somebody had gone after the rope that held up the chandelier because light fixtures don’t crash to the ground on their own.”
I sucked in a breath and flashed to a picture of Josie’s apartment, which overflowed with incense, crystals, art supplies, and a very capable knife.
But Josie wasn’t the slice-and-dice type. If she were going to kill somebody, she wouldn’t stage an engineering accident. She’d just knock them over the head with one of her oversized Himalayan salt lamps.
“Why all these questions?”
I wasn’t sure how much information to share with her. But Beverlee was better at getting secrets out of people than the CIA, so I figured she already knew more than me, anyway.
“It’s Josie,” I said. “She’s in trouble.”
Beverlee’s bright red lips paused midway through a sip of the tea she had been drinking out of a mason jar. “Because she might have killed her husband?”
I nodded.
She slowly lowered the glass and drummed her fingers on the table. “Seems to me like he might have deserved it.”
“She didn’t kill him,” I replied. “At least I don’t think she did.”
“Of course not,” Beverlee agreed. “Hollis said they requested the GPS records from her ankle monitor. Hopefully, once those come in, she’ll be off the hook. They should prove she wasn’t there.”
“Are you supposed to know
all of this?” I asked.
Beverlee shifted her cleavage and winked. “Probably not.”
6
I arrived on the set that afternoon to find Jason and Hazel filming in a corner of the studio that had been transformed to resemble an upscale bistro. Because the show’s contract specified the couples couldn’t appear together in public before the official airing date, the designers had worked overtime to create the intimate scene.
The two contestants sat on the same side of a mahogany booth lined with black leather upholstery. A watercolor painting of parrots hung on a faux wood-paneled wall behind them, and long strands of ivy trailed from a basket hung in the corner to disguise the microphones capturing their conversation.
They were leaning toward each other, Hazel’s hand resting on Jason’s arm, his well-defined biceps on display even through the charcoal fabric of his blazer. She watched him with intensity, occasionally throwing her head back in an exaggerated laugh.
An actor with brown hair curling out from underneath a burgundy beret stood off to the side of the set with a bottle of champagne. Mimi acknowledged him as I shuffled past. “Make sure the label is out when you’re pouring,” she said, turning to me with a dramatic eye roll. “Sponsors,” she explained.
She snapped her fingers in front of my face and motioned for me to follow her. Since the entire staff was watching, I decided against tripping her on our way out. But it was a close call.
I trailed behind her until we reached the back corner of the warehouse, where several rolling carts of clothes formed a makeshift wall around a row of pleather styling chairs. In the center, a wooden stool sat in front of a full-length mirror surrounded by lights on tall metal poles. I swallowed. Either I was getting ready to face the inquisition or perform a striptease.
I jumped when Mimi’s hand clamped over my shoulder to push me toward a seat. “Rocco will do your hair and makeup for the shoot today.”
“Rocco?”
“He’s a genius. You’re in excellent hands,” Mimi gushed, then bent close to my ear. “A little advice, though. Don’t get him started on politics or whether women should have extensions after forty.” Her fingers mimed scissors that took a sinister turn as she circled them around her temples.
Great. Not only did I have to figure out who murdered Beau Lyons, but I’d have to do it while an age-phobic Edward Scissorhands applied my eyeliner.
I started to ask if I could call my own hairstylist for the shoot. Even though she gossiped like it was her job, at least she wasn’t crazy. But Mimi had abandoned me, her heels clicking on the concrete floor as she walked away.
For a moment, I stood there and pondered what to do. I was just about to make my escape when voices drifted from the far side of the warehouse.
“Did you see all the press out there this morning?” a female asked. “I haven’t seen that many photographers since I took my top off in Playboy. Who knew all it would take was a dead body?”
“The tabloids are having a field day with Beau’s death,” a man replied. “Be careful or you’ll end up on the homepage of The Enchanted Tattler like Lily.”
When they turned the corner into the makeup area, they halted and gaped at me with wide eyes, as if someone had pressed the pause button on their conversation, until I raised a hand in greeting.
“You must be Hazel,” I said as I took her in.
She was abnormally tall and had spindly thighs that conjured up memories of the granddaddy longlegs I used to play with when I was a child. Her glossy black hair was tossed up in a messy bun that appeared haphazard, but I’m sure had taken her a while to get perfect. Large diamond studs sparkled beneath the artfully arranged tendrils. She had pale, creamy skin, high cheekbones, and shiny red lips that looked like she had been stung by a yellowjacket.
Hazel didn’t respond. Instead, she crossed the room and sank onto the stool with a petulant whine. Too bad it wasn’t a fainting couch, because it was apparent this woman was used to causing a scene. I made a mental note of her behavior because dramatic clients required special handling.
Her companion stepped forward with a friendly grin and an outstretched hand. “Yes, that frosty wench is Hazel. I’m Rocco Sabatino.” He easily stood a few inches over six feet tall, and his wild mass of black hair looked like it had been ejected violently from his scalp. He walked around me in a slow circle, inspecting me from every angle. “And you are?”
“I’m the wedding planner,” I said, wiggling my fingers at Hazel. “I’m the one who is going to make your big day glamorous.”
That was all Hazel needed to hear. She sat up straighter on the stool and gave me a chilly smile. She offered her hand, palm down, and I wondered if she wanted me to kiss it like she was the Pope. I hoped not. I would do a lot for this job, but I drew the line at putting my mouth on a potential killer, even if she had skin like Snow White.
Eventually, she tugged her hand back into her lap with a pout. “Mimi told us she had hired the best wedding planners in the area,” she said, her tone crisp.
“Planner,” I corrected. “It’s just me.”
From behind me, someone cleared their throat. I turned to see Mimi standing with Magnolia Winters, my lifelong nemesis, and the only other wedding planner to call Flat Falls home.
“I realized I was asking an awful lot of you to get so much done in such a limited amount of time,” Mimi said. “So I reached out to the team at Weddings by the Sea, and Magnolia here was kind enough to agree to jump in and help.”
Maggie beamed next to her in a pale blue sundress with thin spaghetti straps and yellow wedge sandals, a sleek cream-colored leather briefcase clutched between her manicured fingers. She gave a breezy wave.
I took a deep, grounding breath so I didn’t inadvertently leap across the room to knock her down. “Maggie, how lovely to see you,” I said from between gritted teeth. “I was so glad to hear that your time in prison didn’t cause you too much grief.”
She had spent a few days behind bars when she got wrapped up in the last murder in Flat Falls. Unfortunately, they didn’t keep her.
Maggie shifted back on her heels and acknowledged me with a stiff nod and pursed lips. “Thank you for your concern, Glory. It was a trying time, for sure. But a Southern belle bounces right back after a challenge. It’s in our genes.”
Mimi seemed delighted that we knew each other and oblivious to the undercurrent of tension that stretched the length of the room. “Oh, good. I don’t need to make introductions.”
Flat Falls was a small town whose residents wielded an above-average capacity for holding grudges. Maggie Winters had been a dark cloud over my life since I was a child, when she stuck my hands in warm water at a slumber party. After I peed in my sleeping bag, she called me Potty Pants for the next decade. It was hard to let that kind of humiliation go.
“We’ve known each other for ages.” I glared at Maggie before turning to Mimi. “But you didn’t mention you might hire a second wedding planner for this project.”
Mimi glanced up from her clipboard. “We weren’t planning to hire anyone else. But then again, we weren’t planning on this turning into quite the media spectacle it has become, either. We figured with all the extra publicity we’re going to be getting, we might want to up the ante a bit. So we talked to the guys in the suits to increase the budget and… surprise!”
She opened her arms wide and grinned, entirely too cheerful for a woman who had just hand-delivered a demon and ruined my chance to pull this wedding off on my own.
The day passed quickly as we measured the warehouse space and documented the locations of power outlets and potential water supplies for the flock of doves Hazel insisted she wanted us to release just before the officiant declared the winning couple and ushered them down the aisle.
I rolled my shoulders and glanced at Maggie, who was staring into the corner chewing on the end of a pen.
“It’s not too late to back out,” I said.
She smirked. “Glory, backing out is not
my style. You’ll just have to deal with it.”
I crossed my arms. “If we’re going to do this, we need to figure out a way to divide and conquer. Mimi was right. This job is too big for one person.”
“Did she say that?” Maggie pursed her lips, then raked a gaze down the front of my body. “Or did she say one person was too big for the job?”
Sucking in my stomach to hide my fondness for cherry milkshakes and loaded French fries, I dropped my clenched fists to my sides. Where Maggie was all long legs and swan-like neck, I was shorter and rounder, and she had accepted every opportunity to remind me of that fact since we were kids.
I had just taken an aggressive step toward her when I heard several voices approaching. Instead of letting my new client find me sprawled on top of the other wedding planner in a World Wrestling Federation-style battle for ultimate domination, I quickly flipped open my notes, intently studying the only inspiration I had been able to muster that morning: a four-inch square box with the word warehouse hastily scribbled across it.
I feigned surprise when Mimi led a handsome man with shiny dark hair, glasses, and three-day-old beard scruff into the room. He resembled a high-school physics teacher—if your high school was in Beverly Hills or filled with superheroes.
Then he flashed straight white teeth and a chin dimple like he was brandishing a weapon. Clark Kent had nothing on this guy.
“Oh, good,” Mimi said. “You’re both still here.” She gestured toward the man. “Our savior has arrived.”
I raised a brow and greeted him with a handshake. “That’s a big title. I’m Glory Wells, the wedding planner.”
“I’m not sure about the savior part, but I am here to help.” Unlike Hazel, he shook my hand, his palm warm and soft. “Dan Nichols.”
He looked familiar, but I couldn’t place his name. Maggie distracted me when she straightened herself to her nearly six-foot height and ambled forward with a breathy sigh.
Tying the Knot (A Wedding Crashers Mystery Book 2) Page 6