by Ruth Moose
It landed in Malinda’s arms and everybody laughed. Malinda looked embarrassed, flushed. Her face reddened. Elvis reached for the bouquet and she gave it to him.
“Thatta boy,” somebody said. “Give Mama a head start.”
Then the crowd chanted, “Garter, garter, throw the garter.” All the guys gathered at the base of the stairs.
Juanita lifted her leg. Someone said, “Woohoo.” She slid down her garter, then lifted it high, twirled it around and finally let it fly.
The garter landed in Ossie’s hands. He actually blushed and everyone applauded.
The bride and groom, and PooPoo, left in the rain, dashing to the curb and into the limo that had brought Juanita to the Dixie Dew earlier. It was too wet to light sparklers, not that I had bought any, and nobody had confetti, for which I was eternally grateful not to have to try to pick that stuff up afterwards. Nobody threw rice anymore. Somebody had said if it was picked up and eaten by birds, it killed them, so I saved some songbirds’ ugly deaths. Everyone followed the bridal couple’s exit in a flurry of raincoats, umbrellas, goodbyes and good nights.
As I started to close the French doors to the dining room, something or someone moved behind me, grabbed my arm. “What? Who?”
Chapter Fifty-one
Crazy Reba had been standing behind the door. She was crying. “Best man,” she said. “He was a better man.”
“Who?”
“My God,” she said. “I killed God’s best man.” Reba wore her own makeshift wedding dress and held the bridesmaid’s bouquet. Tina Marie must have given it to her. And where had she found her bridal dress? I had left it with her flip-flops and cell phone in the backseat of Lady Bug. And she must have seen it, knew it was hers. Of course. Somehow I had not seen Reba in the wedding crowd. She must have been at the back of the room, blended in. She handed me the cell phone, which had died long ago.
“Reba,” I said. “Honey, it wasn’t your fault. You didn’t kill that man, whoever he was. Don’t you worry anymore. Ossie has gone away and he’s not going to put you in jail again. We don’t even have a jail anymore.”
She hugged me. I could feel she didn’t have a thing on under that length of lace. Not even a pair of Verna’s long-legged bloomers.
I cut a big piece of the wedding cake and put it in a box for her. She clapped her hands as I gave it to her. “June bride,” she said. “I’m a June bride.” I noticed she had her big glass gob of a ring on. Good for her. At least she had a keepsake from all this misadventure.
“It’s raining. Too wet for you to sleep outside. Why don’t you go over to Verna’s and that bed you like upstairs. Verna won’t care.” I helped Reba into a raincoat someone had left. With a piece of cake in hand, she meandered down the walk. I saw her turn toward the house next door and felt better knowing she was in the dry. I had started to tell her to put the piece of cake under her pillow and she’d dream of the man she was to marry, but I didn’t want to confuse her. She was confused enough already.
I picked up, cleaned up, and Scott helped put the leaves back in the dining room table and move it back in place. Ida Plum did the breakfast setup and I figured Mr. Fortune might forgo his daily run and sleep in. I hoped so. Ida Plum was spending the night in one of the empty bedrooms upstairs. Three were empty since Ossie had sent Bruce over earlier in the day to take off the crime scene tape. I didn’t know what it meant, but hoped it was good news. Debbie’s funeral was being televised and I hadn’t decided if I’d watch over at Verna’s, maybe sit on that bed upstairs and eat some cake with Reba. So much better than trying to fight the crowd for parking places at the church. Tomorrow I’d decide. And tonight it didn’t seem so far away.
“Did anybody say where Ossie and Juanita are going on their honeymoon?” I asked Scott as we pushed the last chair in place.
“Somebody said South of the Border,” Scott said.
I laughed then he opened his arms and folded them around me for the nicest kind of celebration, as if to say, we’ve done a good job and a half. I felt his chin on the top of my head, his breath warm on my ear. “Mm,” he said. “I love your ears. So little and pink. Like seashells.” He ran his finger around the rim of my ear.
Did he have any idea what a turn-on that was? Was he being a tease?
“Come on,” he said. “I want to show you something.”
“What?” I asked. He took my hand and I followed him through the kitchen, the back porch and down the back stairs to the yard. The soggy yard was slick with wet grass.
“What?” I asked again, not a minute sure he knew what he was doing. “It’s still raining.”
He clicked a tiny light on his cell phone and led me to the gazebo, the gazebo so newly finished I smelled treated wood, paint and varnish. “Shhh,” he said and reached down, rustled something in the dark. “Wait.”
“It’s pitch-dark,” I said. “It’s raining.” Rain began to beat harder on the metal roof. I was going to get soaked going back to the house to go to bed. Probably to sleep alone.
“Sleeping bags,” he said, and I felt something soft unroll at my feet. “Come.” He pulled me so close his bow tie caught on my ear. He flicked off the tie, and I heard him toss it to the floor. He took off his jacket and shirt, unzipped and slid off his pants. “Now,” he said. “Your turn. I’ll wait. We’ve got all night.”
Afterwards, I lay my head on the softest pillow I’d ever felt. Scott had even provided pillows for us. Amazing, wonderful man. Rain beat a steady, soothing rhythm on the metal roof and I thought yes, yes, this is what I came home for. Why had I waited so long?
Scott leaned so close to my ear I felt his warm breath. “I could love you the rest of my life,” he said.
And I said, “Yes. Me, too.”
Scott fumbled around in the sleeping bag, said, “I have something for you.” Then he handed me Reba’s ring. That godawful chunk of glass. He shone the cell phone on it, slipped it on my left-hand ring finger.
“Where did you get this?”
“From Reba,” he said. “Traded her a giant Heath bar for it.”
I laughed and kissed him soundly and then we slept.
Chapter Fifty-two
In the end, Bruce Bechner tied all the loose ends together. He said Ossie knew when they collected the stuff from that room in Motel 3, where Reba had been with her “God,” that something was not fitting together right. The clothes and shoes were too big for the body, the one Reba thought she killed.
Allison from Motel 3 saw the description of the mystery man in The Mess. She went into the police station, told them he was their handyman, a drifter they’d hired to do some of the demolition work at the motel. He had been there when Reba and her “God” checked in.
“So Reba killed the man that she thought was God’s best man.”
“We don’t think she knew,” Bruce said. “It was botulism. The green beans. We had them analyzed.”
“Green beans?” I asked.
“Reba’s picnic from Kentucky Fried. Those green beans were in a Tupperware bowl.”
I knew KFC didn’t send their beans out in Tupperware.
“But where did she get the beans?” As soon as I asked the question, I knew the answer. She could have gotten them from half a dozen or a hundred basements or fruit cellars anywhere in Littleboro. Verna’s? Mama Alice’s?
Bruce read the answer on my face, said, “And Debbie Booth? Same thing. Botulism. Could have come from any jar, anywhere at the fairgrounds.”
“But what about Mrs. Butch Rigsbee? The one making threats on my life and his? She dropped a hot corn stick on Debbie at the luncheon and was making green bean smoothies at the fairgrounds during the Green Bean Festival. And she shot up the green tin man, all the balloons. Kidnapped Lesley Lynn, shot down my hall light fixture. What about her?”
“Disturbing the peace. Destruction of property. She’s out on bail. Got a warning that she was never to roll her little red wagon down the streets of Littleboro again.”
“What
about the dirty business?” What was that all about? Allison was just in the middle? Butch a sort of runner?
“Ossie has been on this one for a while. That’s why he was sent here,” Bruce said.
“Sent here? You mean he didn’t come to Littleboro because he wanted to?” Maybe that explained some of his attitude.
“It’s ongoing. Allison and Butch are little players in something bigger than Littleboro.” He put his finger over his lips. “And you have to promise me that you don’t know a thing.”
“Is Mr. Moss involved?”
“I’ve said too much already.” Bruce put both hands in his uniform pockets.
“Can you at least tell me what all else was in God’s truck?”
“You want to see?” Bruce reached in his desk for a set of keys.
I followed him to the locked storeroom behind Wanda Purncell’s desk. Bruce unlocked, flung open the door and I saw stacks of boxes.
“What?”
Bruce opened one box and I saw smaller boxes, all neatly labeled. “Prescription drugs. Rigsbee was hauling them from Canada to Florida. Black market.”
“Oh,” I said. “But they’re legal, aren’t they?”
“Not as in you can get all you want when you want them if you know where to get them. There’ll be black market as long as there is a market,” Bruce said, and shut and locked the door.
“What happened to all the money? The cash Butch Rigsbee was carrying?”
“Swaringen had it in his backpack. Ossie’s got it locked up. I guess Swaringen planned to hightail it out of town after he ditched, or killed, Reba. We’ll never know now, will we?”
I looked at Bruce under a new light. He’d been in Ossie’s shadow so long I hadn’t really ever seen him.
We bumped fists.
Back at the Dixie Dew Ida Plum swept the front porch. Next door at Verna’s, Scott’s truck was loaded with stuff for the recycling. “Looks like they’re moving Hell and there goes the first load,” Ida Plum said.
“Miles Fortune still here?” I asked, hoping against hope he had paid his bill, packed his bags and taken his itchy heels and his dimple cross-country. Or even flown across the pond to another filming. I just wasn’t sure about him. Much, much too good-looking. Dimples had always been my downfall.
“Paid in full,” Ida Plum said. “And I’ve already cleaned his room.” She handed me the broom and I finished sweeping the walk.
“I know something you don’t know.” She stood with her arms folded across her chest, grinned wide.
“You know lots I don’t know.” I turned around. What I didn’t know was behind her grin. “So spill.”
“Our Mr. Fortune didn’t go far.”
I waited.
“He’s bunking with Miz Mayor, Calista Moss. Lesley Lynn may be an added attraction, too.” Ida Plum grinned. “He seemed real taken with her when they left. Wonder if he’ll film the turtle, Nadine? Make a nice nature documentary, wouldn’t it? Told me he was shooting the Moss house as the ‘after’ for his documentary. Going to show how all the run-down, shabby South can really be cleaned up, painted up, fixed up and look like a hundred million dollars. Which is probably what it all will cost.”
“Like God with money,” I said, and we both laughed and laughed.
Littleboro was all right. The real honest-to-God God was in His Heaven and everything on this little piece of green earth was okay. Or close to okay. At the moment.
Also by Ruth Moose
Doing It at the Dixie Dew
About the Author
RUTH MOOSE is the 2013 winner of the Malice Domestic Best First Traditional Mystery Novel Competition. She won the PEN award for Syndicated Fiction, the Robert Ruark Award for the Short Story, and the Sam Ragan Fine Arts Award. She has received three Pushcart nominations and a National Endowment of the Arts Fellowship. She’s published three collections of short stories and six collections of poetry. She was on the Creative Writing faculty at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for fifteen years and received the Chapman award for teaching. She lives in Pittsboro, North Carolina.
Visit her on the Web at www.ruthmoose.com. Or sign up for email updates here.
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Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Chapter Forty-Four
Chapter Forty-Five
Chapter Forty-Six
Chapter Forty-Seven
Chapter Forty-Eight
Chapter Forty-Nine
Chapter Fifty
Chapter Fifty-One
Chapter Fifty-Two
Also by Ruth Moose
About the Author
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
A THOMAS DUNNE BOOK FOR MINOTAUR BOOKS.
An imprint of St. Martin’s Publishing Group.
WEDDING BELL BLUES. Copyright © 2016 by Ruth Moose. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
www.thomasdunnebooks.com
www.minotaurbooks.com
Cover design by David Baldeosingh Rotstein
Cover illustration by Tom Hallman
The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:
Names: Moose, Ruth, author.
Title: Wedding bell blues: a Dixie Dew mystery / Ruth Moose.
Description: First Edition | New York: Minotaur Books, 2016. | “A Thomas Dunne Book.”
Identifiers: LCCN 2016003506 | ISBN 9781250067418 (hardback) | ISBN 9781466875722 (e-book)
Subjects: LCSH: Women—Southern States—Fiction. | Bed and breakfast accommodations—Fiction. | Murder—Investigation—Fiction. | GSAFD: Mystery fiction.
Classification: LCC PS3563.O69 W43 2016 | DDC 813/.54—dc23
LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2016003506
e-ISBN 9781466875722
Our e-books may be purchased in bulk for promotional, educational, or business use. Please contact the Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at 1-800-221-7945, extension 5442, or by e-mail at
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First Edition: August 2016