Love, Laughter, and Murder Ever After (The Wedding Planner Mysteries Book 1)

by Jeanine Spooner

  “Trust me,” she whispered back, as the in-laws to be stepped through the door. “This is Contessa on a good day.”

  The bride flitted over to her father, Duke von Winkle and wrapped her arms around his neck as though his arrival had saved her from the perils of deadly gluten, all grievances about the Lexus forgotten.

  Duke’s wife, Roxanne, a handsome blonde twenty years his junior, stood idly by, eyeing the exchange with a cool disinterest that told Kitty stepmother and stepdaughter didn’t exactly appreciate one another’s company.

  When she released her father, Contessa began groveling. “Tell them the cakes mustn’t have gluten. Mary Baxter’s wedding was gluten free and I can’t live in a world where Mary Baxter is tended to better than me.”

  Duke and Roxanne rode a wave of mutual embarrassment then guided Contessa to the table, comforting her all the while, as Charles’ parents arrived at the stroke of noon.

  The Astorias, Gerald and his wife Astrid, were amongst Greenwich’s wealthiest, though the von Winkles certainly rivaled their success. Unlike Duke, who’d worked hard, rising from rags to riches by hustling within the technology industry, the Astorias hadn’t needed to lift a finger. For all intents and purposes, they owned Astoria, an entire neighborhood in Queens, New York. And Kitty had learned enough about them and their dynamic with the von Winkles to know a deep-seated competition had been brewing between them.

  Gerald looked down his nose at Duke, though the men couldn’t have been farther apart. Gerald filled the entrance doorway and Duke stood beside the cake table. No words were exchanged. The air thickened, tension rising all around Kitty.

  “Wonderful that everyone’s here,” said Kitty, ushering the Astorias to the table. “Let’s get started, shall we?”

  Kitty aided Contessa to lower in her chair and showered her with compliments, which barely lifted the bride’s cross mood, but barely didn’t mean not at all, so Kitty took it as one small victory in the task of making her client happy.

  “Harry, would you like to do the honors?” she suggested.

  The baker began introducing the wedding party to each cake sample. He described in mouth-watering detail the lush ingredients, as he passed around the first option, Chocolate Berry Crush, a decadent five-layer mouse cake topped with fresh raspberries and some kind of edible flower.

  As the party mused over the flavors, Kitty assessed and analyzed everyone’s reaction. If working in event planning had taught her anything, it was that people didn’t always say what they most felt. And for Kitty, it was imperative that no one settled on an aspect that didn’t make their heart soar.

  Wrapping an arm around Contessa, who frowned down at the cake, Charles asked, “Would it be possible to have some gluten-free options? What if our guests prefer it?”

  Harry held his tongue, but his cheeks flushed red.

  “Certainly,” said Kitty. “Once we get through these samples you can let Harry know which ones you’d like in a gluten-free alternative.”

  Kitty made a promise to herself to binge gluten the second she got home that evening. Quite frankly, she found it delicious and refused to jump on the hysterical bandwagon.

  Harry grumbled, but agreed.

  “Roxanne,” said Duke, turning to his young wife who sat beside him. “You look stunning.”

  Gerald’s brow furrowed and he grasped Astrid’s hand, telling his wife, “You’ve never looked more radiant. I don’t know of a more beautiful woman on earth.”

  Contessa cleared her throat conspicuously and Charles was ready on the quick. “You’re breathtaking.”

  It was an odd competition, and though Kitty couldn’t tell who was winning, she felt a pang to have love in her life.

  “Oh! Mr. Von Winkle,” she exclaimed, remembering the lemon custard. “Harry has prepared a special dessert just for you!”

  Gerald was glaring at the man, but only Kitty noticed, as she passed the lemon custard cake to the man responsible for funding the entire wedding.

  Duke smiled with all the joy of a child, plucked the hearty piece between thick fingers, and popped it whole into his mouth.

  “Mmmm, exquisite,” he said with a full mouth. “Oh, heavenly.”

  Harry beamed, pride causing his chest to swell.

  “Oh, my compliments,” Duke went on once he’d swallowed the sample. “Now we must have that at the wedding!”

  “But Daddy—”

  “Contessa, I’ve worked hard my whole life to give you a wedding as extravagant as the one you’ll receive, and there’ll be no objections to serving my favorite dessert!”

  Without warning, Duke’s hairline broke out into a cold sweat and his face turned deathly pale.

  “Daddy?”

  His chin bucked to his neck and Kitty realized the man wasn’t breathing. Her heart was in her throat as she scrambled to pour a glass of Perrier water, assuming Duke was having difficulty swallowing the cake. Is he choking?

  With a shaky hand she set the glass in front of him.

  “Mr. Von Winkle?” she asked, trying desperately not to panic.

  “Oh my God!” screamed Roxanne, as she leapt to her feet, slapping his back and holding him. He’d gone limp.

  “Call an ambulance!” Kitty ordered and soon Harry was fumbling with his cell, placing it to his ear, growing alarmed.

  Duke quaked and gasped for air. His eyes rolled up into his head, the sight of which had Contessa shrieking. And in the next instant, he dropped face forward, planting into a piece of Chocolate Berry Crush.

  He was still. Too still. Kitty stared at him in disbelief. The store fell silent in horror.

  Kitty rounded the table then pressed her fingertips to Duke’s throat and felt for a pulse.

  There wasn’t one.

  Duke von Winkle was dead.

  Chapter Two

  Sterling Slaughter saw the ambulance from across the street as he exited a small espresso bar, an Americana hot in hand, and stepped into the warm spring sun.

  The commotion was palpable.

  He noted the store, Happily Ever After, a new establishment that had cropped up seemingly overnight. That was Greenwich for you. Low lease rates pulled them in and increasing rate hikes drove them out. Whoever was renting there wouldn’t last long, he mused. Poor bastard.

  He strolled a few paces up the block so as not to block the coffee shop doorway, but his interest in the scene across the street was too great to press onward toward his car.

  Through the storefront window, Sterling observed a few uniformed officers talking to customers, he supposed. The customers looked confused, bleary eyed and shocked.

  Ideas theorizing what might have happened would be forming in Sterling’s mind if he weren’t hungover. For the time being, he’d hang back, take in the entertainment, and speculate. After all, that’s what days off were for, that and getting into the fun kind of trouble that kept a brooding man in his thirties on his toes—trouble in a glass, trouble in a skirt—you know, only the best sorts. With a last name like Slaughter, if you didn’t look for trouble, it found you and easily. Why play coy when you could play rough? And Sterling was one of the roughest men this side of Greenwich had ever seen.

  Sterling fished a soft pack of Camel’s out of his jeans, tapped a cigarette loose and lit it, disregarding the no smoking sign posted to the building at his back. Nothing like a cool stream of nicotine hitting his lungs as he watched a show—and the frenzy across the street was certainly that.

  A young woman spilled out of the store and it took Sterling all of two seconds to peg her as a Waspy, beauty-queen brat. She tossed her blonde hair dramatically over her shoulder, sucking up her astonishment and choking back tears. A man trailed over to her, caught her, and then pulled her close. The guy looked like a Ken doll consoling his Barbie. Sterling half expected a pink convertible to roll up the street of its own accord. They’d climb in, plastic smiles, vacant eyes, and stiff arms that wouldn’t bend well enough to grasp the steering wheel.

  He real
ized he was laughing and at someone else’s misery no less. His cell would ring soon, he figured. Something about the commotion told him as much, and when he saw the gurney, body bag resting atop, he knew he was right.

  Two medics rolled the body out of the store. It clanked without grace over the sidewalk’s curb, as they maneuvered it toward the back of the ambulance. Someone killed the siren at that moment. No need to rush, the man was dead.

  With the kind of careless ease that announced to the world he owned it, Sterling crossed the street at a casual clip, pulling drags from his cigarette like a cowboy, and getting a bit lost in the notion there could be more than one damsel in distress. Trouble indeed.

  But his sharp mind was also at work, nothing like a body bag to dust the hangover from his head. He’d worked through worse conditions, a triple homicide in New Haven springing to mind. His cell hadn’t buzzed, however. He’d no reason to presume.

  That’s when he saw her. Choppy, brown locks mussed just enough to remind him of a roll in the hay. She was pretty, but not his type, too short, too soft in the arms and thighs, but something about the woman gripped him. It was the eyes, perhaps the pout. She cared. That was rare in a staunch town like Greenwich where people tended to angle every exchange through financial motives, disingenuous in their tone, fake in their concern. Rich people were the bane of Sterling’s existence. He hated them. Money was the root of all evil.

  And the woman didn’t look evil.

  He was surprised he hadn’t seen her around town before, as he watched her convey something that seemed important to the medics after they’d closed the ambulance’s back door. She was wringing her hands, but she feigned a smile, to thank them he assumed.

  He sauntered up, drinking in the sight of her and knowing the effect he had on women would serve its purpose in the conversation to come, but when their eyes met, her face went long and stern.

  “I’m sorry,” she said firmly. “This is a private matter and I have to ask you to leave.”

  He’d never heard that one before, but grinned down at her, finding it somewhat amusing that she’d taken on a role far more authoritative than she’d earned.

  As she turned back to Barbie and Ken, motioning to soothe them, he said, “Free country last time I checked.”

  She whipped around to face him with round eyes that had his heart pounding. “I’ll have you know this is my store, and according to Greenwich law I own the sidewalk outside of it, so unless you have official business here, which I’m sure you don’t, I ask that you please move it along.”

  Sterling held his hands up to mock her and backed away, but only by a few feet, which unnerved her. He couldn’t help notice that he enjoyed putting her in a bit of a huff.

  “It’s ruined,” said the Barbie blonde. “My whole wedding is ruined.”

  “It doesn’t have to be,” said the woman in the pink sundress that Sterling was only just now truly assessing. The lines of the dress hugged her well, and though his vantage point was behind her, it gave him an eyeful of her best asset, her rump. “We’ve set the date a good four days from now,” she went on, her tone milky smooth. “We can push it back or keep it; whatever you want. I’m here to see you through this.”

  The blonde slapped the woman’s kind embrace off and then scowled at her, but Ken stepped up with apologies and drew his lady back.

  “She’s distraught,” he said, making excuses for the brat. “Kitty, let’s reschedule.”

  As the Barbie couple veered up the sidewalk away from Sterling he turned the woman’s name over in his mind—Kitty?

  She must have felt his eyes on her, because she turned to him and that’s when the steam really started shooting out of her ears.

  “Rubbernecker!” she accused, though quietly.

  But his cell was pressed to his ear. He’d received the order. It was time to check this out.

  Sterling flicked his cigarette into the street, which displeased Kitty greatly, and then stalked toward her with purpose.

  “What now?” she demanded, unnerved by his persistence.

  “I’m Detective Sterling Slaughter,” he said, tickled to stick it to her. “And it looks like I’m going to have to take a look around.”

  That shut her up. Her pink pout opened in distress.

  He’d found his damsel.

  Chapter Three

  “I don’t understand why?” Kitty asked, but all she could think was that some arrogant jerk with an ironic last name (Slaughter? A detective?) was going to make a bad situation worse. “Didn’t Mr. Von Winkle have a heart attack?”

  “I’m afraid I’m not at liberty to discuss.”

  He stared down at her, and Kitty sensed he was enjoying this. His eyes, dark almonds of indiscernible color, narrowed and his thick brows pulled toward one another, knitting. But his mouth—dangerously full lips that both allured and unnerved her—curled into a satisfied grin.

  She wondered his age. He certainly acted like a boy, taunting her by way of the glint in his eye, but the dark dusting of growth along his chiseled jaw and unkempt mop of gray hair hinted he could be ten years her senior. Then again his choice of clothes wasn’t what she’d expect a detective should wear: jeans, a tightly fitted black tee, beat up leather boots, and smoking a cigarette no less, though he’d discarded it. And those tattoos! His arms were covered in them. There was one creeping up the side of his neck.

  Kitty realized she’d been taking in the sight of him for far too long. And his smile had grown because of it.

  “Would you mind stepping aside?” He asked, tone deep and smooth though it carried an edge of strained nasality, which had to be the only thing about him that wasn’t hands down handsome.

  Oh God, did she find him handsome?

  Kitty sidestepped, but only enough for him to slink by. Now who was acting younger than their age? She drew in a deep breath and glanced over her shoulder, as Sterling stalked confidently into her store and approached the mess of cake samples that poor Mr. Von Winkle had face-planted into. It wasn’t lost on her that her gaze was focused not so much on the table, the mess, or the scene (of the crime? That would be impossible, what kind of detective did he say he was? He hadn’t!) But on his broad shoulders, the length of his back, the way his jeans hugged the length of him nicely.

  Oh geez!

  She whipped back around, spotted Roxanne von Winkle where she stood beside Contessa and Charles, and scurried over quick like a bunny, all the while reminding herself—or rather making desperate attempts to convince herself—that Sterling Slaughter was just like her awful blind date, Grant Peterson: arrogant, self-centered, and provoking.

  Not one to interrupt, but rather assert her presence in case anyone sought her comfort, Kitty sidled up to Roxanne and offered her silent solace with a crestfallen smirk.

  The Astorias seemed just as rattled. Astrid blotted the corners of her eyes, though her tears came through a bewildered gaze. Gerald seemed steady, in fact the calmest of all. His arm cradled Astrid, but his eyes locked on the ambulance.

  “To think any one of us could be snatched from this world so easily...” Astrid muttered, and then a fresh wave of shock rolled through her, causing her to draw in a stuttering deep breath that quickly peaked into an emotional outpouring.

  Gerald patted her shoulder, but it seemed to come with little effect.

  “Do you think they’ll postpone?” Harry asked. She hadn’t realized the baker had been standing behind her, and she hoped the von Winkles hadn’t heard his misplaced concern. “Or cancel?”

  Kitty pulled him down the sidewalk to get a fair amount of distance from the von Winkles.

  “How can you ask that?” She barked, though it came on a whisper. “At a time like this, these people are in shock, Harry. They need time.”

  “Well, it’s an important question,” he pressed.

  “I already mentioned I’d do everything in my power to help them keep the date,” she asserted. “I won’t say another thing about it.”

  �
�Duke was the one who agreed to handle all expenses,” he pointed out. He was focused on the wrong issue, as far as Kitty was concerned, and he was unrelenting no less. “Do you want all of Greenwich to know your very first wedding was destroyed because of a death?”

  “Does that reflect badly on me?” She challenged. “I think it’ll sound much worse if I pressure Contessa and Charles into keeping the date.”

  “Maybe Gerald will take on the bills,” he pondered.

  “Look, Harry, I’ll pay you for your time,” she offered to ease his anxiety and it helped.

  Harry nodded, mouth pressing into a pained line that finally showed the tragedy at hand was hitting him.

  “I heard Gerald wanted to split costs, but Duke wouldn’t allow it,” he went on. It sounded like gossip.

  “The father of the bride pays. That’s tradition,” said Kitty, defending the deceased.

  Harry shrugged.

  “Come with me,” she insisted. “I’ll write you a check.”

  His eyes rounded at that and a humble smirk spread across his face, as Kitty led him up the sidewalk and then into her store where Sterling was examining each plate of squashed cake like a scientist peering curiously into a line of microscopes.

  When Kitty passed through, his gaze snapped up and their eyes met. She expected him to usher her out so she prepared herself to object and wished her racing mind would come up with clever wording, something that would really put him in his place.

  But he didn’t say a word, only held her gaze until she broke eye contact as a means to escape the rising tension that caused her heart to flutter and stomach to twist in knots.

  Kitty pulled open the lap drawer of her desk that was situated at the back of the store, plucked her checkbook out, and began the task of carefully making out a business check to one Mr. Harry Collins, as the baker watched over her shoulder, his fingers laced, and hands resting on his round belly.