Down the Aisle with Murder

by Auralee Wallace

  “I’d better get back,” Candace said, jerking a thumb in Lyssa’s direction. “We’re having trouble getting people to ride the bull. Lyssa’s talking about putting together a posse to just grab people and plunk them on.” She looked back at me. “Are you going to ride?”

  I waved my hands out in front of me. “Oh, no, no, no.”

  I watched as a montage of embarrassing Erica Bloom moments passed through Candace’s consciousness. I could tell that’s what it was by all the cringing she was doing. She knew about the beaver. “I get it,” she said with a smile. “Rhonda?”

  “I think I’ll pass too. My groin’s still bad from when I got cross-checked playing hockey last—”

  “Candy!” Lyssa once again shouted from across the room.

  “I’d better go,” Candace said, smile crumpling.

  “Yeah, we’ll catch up with you in a bit.”

  We dropped back down into our seats as Candace walked away.

  Rhonda shook her head. “I’ve never seen a woman look so unhappy wearing a tinfoil penis hat.”

  I sipped my beer. I wanted to argue, but I couldn’t. This was terrible. Sure, I wasn’t super into weddings, but Candace was. And she had every reason to be happy. She and Joey were deeply in love. She should be having the time of her life … at a bowling alley … without a tinfoil hat.

  I put my beer back down when an idea hit me.

  That’s what this party was missing. A toast!

  I could totally do that.

  A toast couldn’t be that hard. I was fine with drawing attention to other people. And Candace needed reminding of why we were all here in the first place. Two great people had found love and were getting married.

  I pushed myself to my feet just as Freddie returned to the table.

  Sure, I wasn’t naturally talented in the way of public speaking, but this wasn’t about me. It was about Candace. I tapped my knife against my beer bottle. Hard. The music was pretty loud. “Everyone? Everyone!” The din quieted just a bit. “If I can have your attention—”

  Lyssa and her group of men were still talking and laughing.

  “Everybody!” I tried again.

  “What are you doing?” Freddie asked.

  “Trying to breathe some life into this party,” I said.

  “Oh well, I can help with that. Hey, Lycra!” Freddie shouted.

  Lyssa turned around.

  “Erica here wants to ride the bull!” Freddie shouted, jerking a thumb at me.

  “Freddie!”

  “What? Someone other than Lyssa needs to do it. And you said you wanted to be more like her,” he said, stepping aside for the posse. “I’m helping you grow as a person. You’re welcome.”

  I tried to wave off the group of people coming for me, but it was too late. I was already being lifted into the air. I looked down at Freddie. “You’re going to pay for this.”

  “Meh. See you on the other side.”

  Chapter Two

  That had been a long night.

  I gingerly rolled over in bed, and curled my duvet under my chin. My shoulder hurt. I hadn’t landed the dismount. Not even a little bit. In fact, I was thrown so hard from the bull, I rolled off the mats and into the jukebox. But at least it didn’t start playing. That’s the type of thing that makes a story legend. And just when I thought the party couldn’t get any more uncomfortable for Candace, the stripper showed up. He wasn’t a professional. Nope, not a lot of professional strippers in Otter Lake, so Lyssa had convinced a local, Chris Williams, to dress up as a UPS worker and do a little dance for everyone. I say convinced but from what I knew about Chris, well, let’s just say I think he’d win the vote for most likely to end up drunk and naked at a bonfire. And even though he was still in his early twenties, he already had a real head start on his dad body. Big Don kicked him out before he had been able to deliver his package to Candace, thank God.

  It really hadn’t been her type of party.

  But that was all over now.

  Today was the big day, and judging by the light blazing through my closed eyelids, it was going to be sunny. Perfect day for a wedding.

  Just then my phone rang. I didn’t even have to look at it to know it was Freddie. My ring tone had been changed to … ah yes, that must be the theme song for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. He liked to keep his personalized phone signature fresh.

  I rolled over, eyes still closed, phone at my ear. “Why are you calling me so—”

  “She’s dead,” Freddie said, cutting me off.

  “Who’s dead?” I asked.

  “Somebody’s dead?” another voice asked.

  “Wah!” My eyes flew open.

  Twins. Hovering. Right above my face.

  “Who was that?” Freddie asked.

  “Kit Kat and Tweety are here,” I answered once I could speak over my beating heart. The twins were the only other inhabitants on my mother’s island. They were in their seventies now, but still built like wrestlers. They also had matching white perms and dentures. For some people, they might come off as a little rough around the edges—they always had a dirty joke ready to go, and occasionally took out their teeth to frighten misbehaving children—but they were good people, salt of the earth. But speaking of earth, their place had burned to the ground about a year ago, so they had moved into the retreat until it could be rebuilt. It had been the obvious choice. I mean, they had coexisted on the island with my mother for nearly thirty years in peace and harmony. We were like family. That being said, living in these close quarters had its challenges. “They’re both here. In my room. Watching me sleep, apparently.”

  “Well, that’s not creepy,” Freddie said in my ear as Kit Kat yanked the pillow out from underneath my head.

  “You weren’t sleeping. You’re flopping around that mattress like a fish on a dock. Now who is dead?”

  I cleared my throat and blinked hard a couple of times before I answered. Nothing was working right yet. “I don’t know. Hang on. Freddie, who is dead?” To an outsider it might seem strange that I wasn’t a little more alarmed by Freddie’s death announcement, but he called me at least once a week with a celebrity death.

  “Tell the twins to go away,” the voice on my phone said. “You know I don’t like competing for attention.”

  I sighed and looked back at the twins. “I don’t know what’s going on. Can I meet you in the kitchen after I talk—”

  “Are we going to find any bacon in the kitchen?” Tweety asked.

  Son of a …

  That. That right there was probably the number one challenge of us all living together.

  Meat.

  In the past, my mother had allowed meat on the premises for the guests, but after she’d lost her last cook, she decided to take on all the cooking herself—with some hired help from town—which meant no meat. For anyone. Well, except for my evil fur-sibling of a cat, Caesar. I had grown accustomed to my mother’s cruelty-free ways, and I was mostly okay with eating my meat products off the island. The twins, however, were not. To make matters worse, my mother had taken it on as her personal mission to cure the sisters of their diabetes. This was resulting in some tension in my living situation.

  “I forgot the bacon.” I scratched absently at my shoulder, eyes closed. “Actually I didn’t forget. I just didn’t buy your bacon. I was at a party. Where was I supposed to keep it? I didn’t know how long I would be out, and—”

  Suddenly my pillow whapped me in the face.

  “Hey!”

  “Told you she didn’t get it. That’s why she wasn’t answering our texts.”

  “Getting bored here,” my phone drawled.

  I snatched my pillow back again and tucked it safely against the wall. “I’m sorry, okay? Can you please now—”

  “Did you at least bring us back something from the party?” Tweety asked. “I betcha there was lots of food. Dessert? Man-shaped cookie?”

  “Yeah, no, I did not bring you back a … cookie.” I frowned. “You know what? Y
ou two are going to need to go now.”

  “Fine, but if I slip into a diabetic coma, I want you to know, Erica, that it’s your fault.” Kit Kat shut my door hard enough to make my clock—a frog with fishing poles—rattle against the wood wall.

  “Got it,” I said, rubbing my face. Nope, this was so not the life I had imagined for myself when I’d decided to move home. No, in that life, Grady would be bringing me naked coffee. Or coffee naked. Whatever. I ran my hand down over my face. “Okay, so who’s dead?”

  “What’s her name? Lycra. The maid of honor.”

  “You mean Lyssa? Candace’s Lyssa? Are you sure it wasn’t, like, Alyssa Milan—”

  “Of course Candace’s Lyssa!”

  “Hey, don’t you yell at me. I just woke up.”

  Freddie sighed.

  “And how could she possibly be dead? What happen—”

  “Erica, honey, are you awake?” my mother asked, pushing my door open and floating into the room in a purple and pink caftan, holding two large glasses of something green. “Have you seen the twins?”

  “Oh my God, is that your mother now?” Freddie groaned. “When are you going to get your own place?”

  “I’m trying,” I snapped back before looking at my mother. “I think they’re in the kitchen.”

  “No, I was just there,” she said with a dramatic sigh. “They’re hiding from me again. They’re like big, white-haired children.”

  “Well, they don’t really like your smoothies.”

  “I know they don’t like the smoothies, but—”

  My mother cut herself off when she saw me pull my phone away from my ear as it shouted, “Helloooo?”

  “Is that Freddie?” she asked. “Why is he calling so early?”

  “I can’t do this,” Freddie said in my ear. “Be at your dock in fifteen. We need to get over there.”

  “Over where?”

  “Candace’s!” He hung up.

  “What’s going on?” my mother asked.

  I shook my head against my pillow. “Apparently Candace’s maid of honor is dead.”

  “Oh no, that’s terrible. Is Candace all right? Well, of course she’s not all right. She’s supposed to be getting married today.”

  I sat up and swung my feet onto the floor. “Maybe Freddie has it wrong— Ow!” I whipped my ankle back up to see a razor-thin slice in my skin. “Morning, Caesar,” I grumbled. The fur beast had taken to sleeping on the floor by my bed since I’d moved home. Some might think he was being sweet, but really it was because he knew I was slow and stupid first thing in the morning.

  “I hope so.”

  “Freddie’s coming to pick me up. I guess we’re going over there to see if there’s anything we can do.”

  “Of course. But darling…?”

  I blinked at my mother, still trying to process the news.

  “You haven’t forgotten about the retreat, right?”

  I froze for a moment. “Of course I haven’t forgotten.” I had totally forgotten. These days I helped out as much as I could with Earth, Moon, and Stars. It was the least I could do since I had been living rent-free in my mother’s lodge for a year now. Real estate was hard to come by in Otter Lake what with MRG buying up all the property for development.

  My mother had a best-selling author slash guru coming this week, and she was kind of nervous about it. All of our cabins would be up and running—a few attendees were even camping. On top of that, we had to bring some professional vegan caterers in to help with the cooking. If it went well, though, she might be able to attract even more big names in the self-help field.

  “I’ll be around to help. Promise.”

  “I’ve already had the first guest arrive,” she said.

  “Already?”

  She nodded.

  I pulled a light sweater over my head. These spring mornings were still pretty cool. “What’s the theme of this retreat anyway?”

  “Oh, Zaki is just going to be promoting his new book. I doubt you’d be interested.”

  Zaki. I don’t think he had a last name. He was too rock star. I looked up from the shoe I was trying to tie to meet my mother’s eye, but she was engrossed by staring at the … ceiling? “What’s his book called?”

  “Oh…” She twiddled her fingers in the air like she was trying to remember the name by … summoning a spell? “I think it’s called Why Are You Still Single?”

  My chin dropped to my chest. Okay, granted, my brain was half asleep and the awake part was still reeling from Freddie’s news, but— “Did you say you are having a retreat called Why Are You Still Single? but you doubt I’d be interested?”

  She nodded.

  I looked around my room just to make sure I hadn’t woken up in an alternate universe.

  My mother swatted at my arm. I guess Freddie wasn’t the only one who occasionally overdid the sarcasm. “Well, are you?”

  “Of course not.”

  “There you have it,” she said, swirling her hands.

  “But since when do you care about whether I’m interested or not?” My mom had once tricked me into attending a talk on the benefits of colonics. I definitely wasn’t interested in that one.

  “Darling,” she said, throwing her hands about some more. “You’re the one always saying I should respect your boundaries.”

  “But every time I say that, you say, That’s just your fear talking, Erica.” I shook my fist in the air. “Break down those walls!”

  “I do not.”

  “You do t— You know what? I’ve gotta go.” I shoved my phone into my back pocket. This was just too weird, and, apparently I was off to deliver maid-of-honor condolences. It … was a lot of morning to take all in one shot. “Have you finished that list of supplies you wanted me to pick up?”

  “Not yet. I probably won’t get to it until tomorrow, but you’ll help me get the cabins ready later?”

  “Don’t worry, Mom. I’ll be there … or here.” I shook my head. “Then … not now. When I get back I mean.”

  She shot me a concerned look.

  “I’m just going to stop talking until I get some coffee.”

  * * *

  “Do you think we should have brought something?”

  I was standing on the edge of Candace’s property by the dock. I adjusted the little French bulldog in my arms so that I could take the goggles from his face. Stanley was Freddie’s dog, and he took him almost everywhere. Freddie said it was because if he left him alone for too long he’d pee everywhere, but really it was because Stanley was his baby.

  “Like what?”

  I watched him drop the anchor at the back of his boat, Lightning. It was so big, it needed the extra stability or it might drift off with Candace’s dock attached to it. On the bright side, Freddie had gotten us here in just under fifteen minutes. The roar of the engine would have woken the entire town by now, but at least he didn’t have the sound system going.

  “I don’t know, like flowers or … Oh! A casserole. That’s what people do.”

  Freddie stopped what he was doing to look at me.

  “You know, because grieving people can’t feed themselves?”

  “When would we have found time to make a casserole?”

  “I don’t know. I just feel weird showing up empty-handed.”

  “And you couldn’t have thought of this before we got here?”

  “I’m sorry. I—”

  “Don’t worry. It’s fine,” Freddie said, getting back to securing the boat. “Worse comes to worst, I’ll order them a pizza or something.”

  “A pizza?”

  “Pizza makes everyone feel better, Erica. Sometimes you have to think outside of the box.”

  Nope, Freddie’s mood had not improved from the night before. In fact, if anything he seemed even more down. He had barely spoken the entire boat ride over. I had racked my brain trying to think of something I might have done to upset him, but everything had been great between us. I mean, sure we spent most of our waking hours
together—which might be a lot for some people, but for us it was usually pretty fun times. We were like some classic buddy duo. Like … like Harold and Kumar … or Eddie Murphy and the blond guy in that cop film I’d never seen … or Abbott and Costello … didn’t really know much about them either. But, you know, like that.

  “Freddie, are you sure you’re okay?”

  “Yup,” he said, walking over to me and stooping to clip a leash on Stanley. The old pup was already half asleep in the sun. He then picked him up and headed for the path that led to the cottage.

  “Well, okay then.”

  I followed Freddie up the path that led to the cottage. Candace had been renting the place for over a year now. The owners had pretty much moved to Florida, but weren’t quite ready to sell. The cottage was tucked back into the woods. It was a cute little place. You couldn’t even see it from the water, so it had lots of privacy.

  “So is Sean still coming down even though the wedding’s … off?” I mean, I was assuming it was off.

  Sean and Freddie had been in a long-distance relationship for the last six months. They had met on New Year’s, and things had been going really well despite the distance. Like really, really well. Like so well, they were going to have to find a way to shorten the distance between them kind of well.

  “Bean … Sean was never coming to the wedding.”

  “What? Why not?”

  “I didn’t invite him.”

  “You didn’t invite him? Why wouldn’t you—”

  “He’s got exams this week.” Sean was in medical school. “I just didn’t want him to feel like he had to come.”

  “Oh.” I pushed my bangs back from my eyes. “So is everything all right between you t—”

  “Why are you asking so many questions?” Freddie said, whirling around.

  “I … don’t know,” I said carefully. I mean, of course I knew. I was trying to figure out what had turned Freddie into such a scary, scary man, but given that he was acting like such a scary, scary man, bringing it up seemed unwise.

  “Oh, stop looking like a scared little animal. You know you’re my favorite. I’m just having an off day. All this stuff with Lyssa,” he said, turning back around to resume his walk.

  Sure … except that didn’t explain last night.