Weddings Can Be Murder

by Christie Craig

  “How about let’s not,” Carl said.

  “Why the fuck don’t you just call her?” Ben’s cell phone rang and he answered it. “Hades. Yeah.”

  After a long pause, Carl’s brother’s eyes shot to him. The look on Ben’s face set off all kinds of alarms. Carl had only seen that look once, the night Ben had met him at the hospital door and told him his mother had already passed.

  Carl shot to his feet. “What is it?”

  Carl, with Dr. Pope, stepped into the cold, anesthetic-smelling room. The morgue held no color; everything seemed to be either white or chrome. He waited for the flood of emotion to hit him, but it was as if he’d received a shot of novocaine in his heart. The organ lay behind his chest bone, big, fat, and numb, and he wanted to claw at it as one might chew at one’s lip to make sure it was still there.

  The body lay out on the metal table, a white sheet covering it, but he could still make out the feminine form. Then he saw it. The only damn color in the room. A strand of red hair hung over the back of the table. Even it looked dead.

  He had loved her. He hadn’t wanted to, but he had.

  Dr. Pope moved to the other side of the table. “Such a waste.” He pulled the sheet down. “Is it her?”

  Carl forced himself to look at her face. “Yeah. Her name is Amy Bentley.”

  “Looks like it’s a clear-cut OD. Needle marks in the arms tell the story. We’ll know more when the tox screens come in.”

  Carl closed his eyes. His heart started feeling again. Not love, but regret. And guilt.

  “You know,” Dr. Pope spoke, “if I had fifty bucks for every OD victim I’ve seen, I’d be a rich man. Why do they do it to themselves?”

  Do it to themselves. Carl forced himself to look at Amy, her face so still, so devoid of expression or emotion. So dead.

  Right then he remembered begging her not to leave. To stay. To let him help her. She’d refused. He recalled her parting words: Stop trying to save me, Carl. I’m not your mother.

  He looked again at the track marks running up her arm and something about seeing them, about seeing the ugly truth, brought some clarity. This wasn’t his fault. Amy had made her choice.

  She had. Not him. It wasn’t his fault. Something started to shift inside him. Then the last bit of numbness faded to just a big pit of understanding, and then some old pains. Right then he heard Amy’s words again. I’m not your mother.

  Had he wanted to save Amy because he couldn’t save his mom? Was that why he couldn’t take a chance on Red—because he was afraid he couldn’t save her, either?

  Katie’s doorbell rang. She put down her paintbrush and eyed the painting of a single red rose in a glass vase. Then she looked at the rose and vase on the table. Something wasn’t right. But what? Then she saw the problem. The problem was that she sucked at painting.

  The doorbell rang again. She walked out of the study. A quick glance through the peephole brought a moan to her lips. She’d called Lola this morning and asked if she could stop by. But now? Did she want to hear Lola tell her she wasn’t an artist?

  Katie opened the door. “I’ve changed my mind. Goodbye.”

  Lola pushed her way inside. “It can’t be so bad.”

  “But I think it is,” Katie said.

  “I’m not believing. I think you have talent. And I know these things, remember?”

  Katie sighed and led her to the study where Lola stared, really stared, at Katie’s work.

  “Well, chica, you are a smart girl.”

  “Smart?” Hope flared inside Katie.

  “You are right, the painting sucks.”

  “See, I told you,” Katie said, and in the back of her mind she could hear her parents saying, I told you so.

  “Not that you don’t have talent.”

  “Just don’t give up my day job, huh?” A knot crowded Katie’s tonsils. It shouldn’t have hurt this bad, but somehow this was the last dream she’d held on to.

  “It’s as if you are trying to make it perfect. Art, like life, is not perfect.” Lola pointed to the vase and rose. “You paint a perfect silk rose. You paint it almost as perfect and artificial as it looks. Why not take a picture?”

  Katie wanted to curl up in a ball and cry.

  “You need to paint what you feel, not try to make it perfect. Perfect is boring. Art needs passion. Take a risk.”

  Katie studied Lola. “I’m a Ray. We either make things perfect or we don’t make them.”

  Lola shot her a disgruntled look. “Then I would say that Rays lead a very disappointing life. Perfection is a myth. People who hunger for it die hungry. Look at your work, Katie. Your talent shines, but you are trying to force it to be what you think others will want to see. Follow your heart, paint what you feel. Do you not know what you feel?”

  Katie heard Lola, but she was no longer thinking about her art. Was this what she’d done with Carl? Gave up on them because…because he wasn’t her version of perfection?

  Oh, fuck. Yep, she’d said fuck again. She’d given up on Carl because he didn’t meet her standards. She had a stupid picture in her head of what life was supposed to be. Two kids, the suburbs. And when he didn’t fit into her nice neat little perfect dream she’d rejected him. Rejected him because…because it would have meant taking a chance.

  She looked back at Lola. “You’re right. Life isn’t perfect. And right now I would love to sit down and visit with you, but I’ve got to fix the big picture in my life.”

  Lola smiled. “Does it have anything to do with a sexy PI?”

  “You bet your sweet bottom it does. Can you give me some more of your mojo?” Katie laughed as she walked Lola to the door and for the first time in…a long time, she felt happy.

  “What kind of magic you need?”

  “The kick-ass kind,” Katie said.

  Carl walked into his brother’s office.

  Ben looked up from his desk. “Hey. You okay?”

  “Yeah. I think I am.” He sat on the edge of the desk. He picked up a pen, turned it in his hands, and met his brother’s questioning eyes again. “The other day, you said if you’d been in my shoes with Mom, you’d have done the same thing.”

  Ben’s eyes widened at the unexpected conversation. “Yeah, and I meant it, too.”

  Carl pulled the top of the pen off, then recapped it. “I should have told Dad, but she believed the new doctor was going to make a difference.” He closed his eyes for a second. “She kept telling me, ‘Love will make it all okay.’” He shook his head. “Now it seems stupid. I mean, I know love can’t really heal. But at fifteen I thought anything was possible.”

  Ben leaned back in his chair. “Mom wanted to spend her last days without being used as a guinea pig. Without being sicker than the cancer was making her. So, in a way, love did make it better. Her last month was easier.”

  “I know that. I think I knew it then, too. But when she died I…” He felt his throat tighten.

  Ben leaned his elbows on the desk. “Cancer killed her, Carl, not you.” He paused. “Tami’s right, isn’t she? Mom and…even Amy, it’s the reason you let Red get away, isn’t it?”

  “I wanted to save Amy. Maybe because I couldn’t save Mom. And I tried. Today, seeing her…it made me realize she made her choice, not me. But how do I stop being afraid?”

  “Afraid of what?” Ben asked.

  “Afraid I…afraid I can’t save the next person I love. Afraid of losing someone else.” His chest tightened.

  Ben leaned his elbows on his desk. “I think about it sometimes. About something happening to Tami or Benny. Talk about a kicked-in-the-nuts kind of pain.” He sighed. “But even if something did happen, I wouldn’t trade what I have now. It’s life.” Ben studied him. “You love Red, don’t you?”

  “I do.” Carl tossed the pen back onto the desk. Ben leaned in and his elbow nudged a folder, from which a few contents slipped. Carl’s gaze caught a nude photograph among the typed notes. A very artsy nude photograph.

  “What�
��s that?”

  “Copies of the pictures we found at Edwards’s place. Ms. Jones wasn’t bad looking for forty.” Ben laughed. “Though I doubt she’d compare to what you were watching this morning.”

  Carl ignored Ben, his mind churning. “Did you talk to Mel Grimes, the photographer, about his relationship with Ms. Jones?”

  Ben’s brow puckered. “Why?”

  “Because I saw pictures almost exactly like that at his house. He shoots nudes. And I think he took this.”

  “I interviewed Grimes,” Ben said. “He said he and Tabitha had a professional relationship and nothing more.”

  “Did you get anything on Grimes’s background check?”

  “Some stuff came in yesterday, but we haven’t looked at it.”

  “Let’s look.” Carl didn’t like what his gut told him.

  Ben rolled his eyes. “We got the guy, Carl. Relax.”

  “What would it hurt to look at the info?” Carl growled.

  Ben left to get the file. Carl pulled out his cell phone and dialed Red’s number. He had so many things he wanted to say to her that didn’t involve the case, but keeping her alive came first. The phone rang and then went to the recorder. He dialed her cell phone. It went to voice mail.

  His gut continued to churn his morning coffee. He told himself Red was probably at work. That she was okay. Then Ben walked back into the office and the look on his face told him nothing was okay. “What?”

  “The guy has a long list of mental illnesses. He was in and out of institutions the first twenty-two years of his life.”

  “Fuck.” Carl called the gallery. A receptionist answered and said Katie wasn’t there.

  Lola left, and Katie started shedding clothes as she went to the bathroom. Her phone rang, but she ignored it. Whoever it was would leave a message. She had a list of to-dos:

  Shower.

  Find something sexy to wear.

  Dress in something sexy.

  Go see Carl and have him remove something sexy.

  Maybe, talk him into doing some dishes, too.

  Tell Carl she no longer needed promises. She just wanted to be with him. For today and as many tomorrows as she could have.

  She turned the shower on and stepped into the soft spray. One minute later—the important parts clean—she went to work on her makeup. Minimal makeup. She had just finished drying her hair when she heard a noise.

  She stuck her head out of the bathroom. “Uh, Les?”

  Then she heard the sound of glass breaking.

  “Les, please tell me you just broke a glass or something.”

  Chapter Thirty-two

  When Les didn’t answer, Katie grabbed her robe. “Les?” She stepped into her bedroom. Still nothing.

  Pulling her robe around her, she walked out into the hall. As she passed her study, she saw the easel on the ground. And her still-wet painting lay facedown on the carpet. Not the biggest loss in the world, but…She knelt to pick it up, and when she did, a pair of man’s shoes came into her peripheral vision, and those shoes were attached to a pair of legs.

  She looked up. Connected to the legs was a stranger’s torso, and connected to his torso was a face. A face she didn’t recognize. “Who…are you?”

  He stared at her with cold green eyes. Eyes so cruel Katie pretty much guessed he wasn’t there to try and sell her candy bars for a Little League team, or to ask if she had clothes to donate to some charity.

  He pulled his hand from behind his back. And in that hand he held her best butcher knife. Panic arrived in waves. Time stood still and her brain started chewing on bits of information.

  Bit Number One: The creep hadn’t even brought his own weapon, but had planned to borrow hers.

  Bit Number Two: Did it fucking matter what he used to kill her?

  Bit Number Three: Today just wasn’t a good day to die. She had her to-do list already made, and it included getting sexy and getting laid. Dying wasn’t on that list. Rays always followed the list!

  Bit Number Four: She was going to throw up.

  He grabbed her arm and yanked her to her feet. “I saw your picture in the paper. You were laughing at me, weren’t you? And you thought you fooled me at Tabitha’s that night, didn’t you?”

  The answer to both questions was obviously no, but sadly Katie didn’t feel a reply would do any good.

  He held the knife in front of her face. “Tell me you’re sorry.”

  She reached back to the art table holding her supplies, reached back until she found what she wanted.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, but that was a big, fat fucking lie. She wasn’t one bit sorry.

  With everything Katie had, she hit him with the cast-iron frying pan, splattering him with paint in the process. The knife dropped from his hand, but because she’d seen too many scary movies where someone should have hit the bad guy again, she did it. She hit him again. He collapsed facedown on her carpet and, uncontrollably, her stomach lurched and she threw up all over him. She let out a scream that could have curdled cream and took off at a dead run.

  Frying pan still clutched in her fist, she ran down the hall, swerved around the corner, just in time to see her front door swing open.

  Lola’s kick-ass mojo must have really worked, because Katie didn’t stop to think about what she was doing. She’d be damned if she let anyone take her down. The skillet started swinging.

  One man ducked one way. And the other…“Red!”

  Hearing the voice, she let go of the weapon midswing. It Frisbeed across the living room. She heard glass shattering, then she heard the voice again. Right then, she felt herself falling. Rays didn’t usually faint, but this one sure did.

  Then she felt someone grab her. Someone that smelled a little spicy. Someone that made her feel safe. “Carl?” Her rock.

  “Are you okay?”

  Okay? Okay? Okay. The words echoed in her head.

  “He was going to kill me,” she managed to say, and then her own words echoed in her head.

  “Where is he?” Ben asked, in a voice that sounded as if he yelled—or maybe he didn’t yell, maybe it was an echo. She pointed down the hall, feeling dizzy, seeing black spots float before her eyes.

  Carl leaned her against the wall and took off with his brother. Katie’s knees folded and she slid down the wall to the floor. Her teeth started chattering.

  The next thing she knew, Carl was lifting her up and moving her to her bedroom. As they walked past the study, she saw Ben standing over a crumpled form, a crumpled form that had come at her with her own butcher knife.

  Then a new thought exploded in her head. Had she killed a man with the cast-iron skillet? Rays were so not murderers. “Is he…is he…” She couldn’t say the word.

  “No,” Carl said. He forced her to keep moving until he had her in the bedroom. He kept walking her until he sat her down on the bed. Then he took her face in his hands and studied her. “Red? Did he hurt you? Did he…touch you?”

  She understood what he asked. “He didn’t rape me.” She immediately started shaking and her teeth started rattling.

  He held her against him and then helped her get dressed. She’d had so many plans for the day and they had included being naked with him, but not like this. Not like this.

  Before Katie was completely dressed, sirens started wailing and a few minutes later her house was wall-to-wall cops. Katie watched them buzz around her place and she couldn’t think straight; everything seemed to pass in a blur. At least she recognized what was happening this time. The shaking, the jitters. This was shock. But she would get over it, because she was a Ray.

  And because she had her rock.

  At least for now, anyway.

  Les showed up and sat on the sofa with her. Carl came over to introduce himself, and Les shot him a go-to-hell look. “So you’re the dickhead, huh?”

  Carl didn’t flinch. “That would be me.” He walked away.

  Katie and Les watched as ambulance drivers wheeled Mel Grimes away. The
creep tugged at the restraints and screamed about everyone laughing at him.

  “You kicked a serial killer’s ass!” Les said for the tenth time, and gave Katie’s arm a squeeze.

  She still felt numb inside. “It was Lola’s mojo.”

  Ben walked over, smiling. “I personally like the fact that you puked on him.”

  “Oh, that’s priceless,” said Les.

  “I didn’t mean to,” Katie said, not really seeing the humor.

  “You feel up to answering some questions at the station?” Ben asked.

  Katie met his eyes. “Haven’t we done this enough?”

  He helped her up. “Just my job, Red. I mean, Katie.”

  Katie promised to call Les as soon as she was released, then rode with Ben and Carl to the police department. Carl sat in the backseat beside her. He pulled her into his shoulder. She wanted to tell him that she didn’t need perfect, but the timing didn’t feel right. Nothing felt right yet.

  When they arrived at the police station, Mr. Hades waited in the parking lot. As she stepped out of the car, he came hurrying over to her and pulled her against his solid frame. For some reason, she chose that moment to completely fall apart. She sobbed into his shirt, then she sobbed some more, and he held her, held her as her father might have held her, if he’d been alive.

  When Ben led Katie away to get her statement, Carl looked at his dad. Carl had never believed he’d be jealous of his own old man, but when Katie had clung to the elder Hades as he’d wanted her to cling to him, he’d felt the green emotion gnaw at his backbone.

  Red had needed someone, and that someone hadn’t been him. Sure, he didn’t deserve to be her hero. He’d been an ass, but—

  A terrible thought hit him. What if it was too late for him to turn things around? What if Katie wouldn’t forgive him?

  No, he couldn’t accept that. He had to show her…show her that…that he really wanted to change. That he planned on changing.

  Carl jumped up, then swung around. “Call Ben and tell him not to let her out until I get back. Thirty minutes tops.”