Weddings, Receptions, and Murder

by Stacey Alabaster

  I said a quick good-bye to Brenda and headed to the door. I saw her roll her eyes at me, but I just ignored it.

  On the way, I thought about how much I dreaded buying another car at the dealership. It wasn’t that I didn’t try to seek other alternatives. I did. I walked past the news agency and picked up a copy of the local paper and scoured the classifieds. There were a couple of vehicles for sale but most of them were farm vehicles or trucks, which weren’t really what I was looking for. The rest of them weren’t registered and couldn’t legally be driven on the road without extensive work; I needed something that I could pick up and drive away in.

  This time, I wasn’t fussy. Well, I was a bit fussy. But there were no cars that screamed my name this time, and none that charmed my heart the way my little red number had. “I basically just need something with four wheels and an automatic transmission,” I said to Margaret when she greeted me at the door. Well, I thought she was trying to greet me. Her ‘hello, may I help you’ came out as more of a squeak.

  She sort of scurried around behind me while I did a lap of the dealership.

  “This one will do,” I said to Margaret, pointing at one that seemed suitable enough. I’d been right—she really lacked the killer instinct. Rather than her giving me the hard sell on a car, I’d practically had to beg her to let me buy it instead.

  This one wasn’t red, unfortunately. It was a much more boring shade of blue. Actually, it was sort of a blue-green, depending on how the light hit it. But it was what I could afford. Cheaper than the other one, anyhow, so the payments wouldn’t cripple me. And hopefully, it didn’t come with any nasty surprises. I supposed that was really the most important thing: no dead bodies.

  I’d come to accept the fact that even when my car finally got released from police custody, there was no way I was actually going to be able to drive it. Adam and Brenda were right. It would feel haunted, even if it wasn’t. At the very least, it would feel very creepy to drive around in it. Bianca had already promised me that finance-wise, it wouldn’t be a problem to return the car to the dealership. She’d make sure that the loan agreement I’d signed was null and void.

  “Are you sure?” Margaret asked, looking up at me mousily. “This isn’t our most popular model.” Hmm, well, I could believe that. But I couldn’t believe she was actually saying it.

  I still had no idea how she had ever gotten a job in sales, and I had even less of an idea why Bianca kept her on. I might have had my misgivings about Bianca, but I could tell that she was a savvy businesswoman, at the very least. I wondered if I ought to have a word with her about her employee’s shortcomings.

  “Quite sure,” I said, still smiling and trying not to get too frustrated with the lack of quality service. “As long as it will get me from A to Z and there are no dead bodies lurking in the back.”

  Margaret smiled nervously.

  Actually, it’s always better to be safe than sorry, isn’t it? I walked around to the back of the trunk and popped it, just to make sure.

  Empty except for a spare tire. Just the way I liked it.

  “So, shall I get my checkbook out?” I hadn’t even tried to haggle her down on price. I was paying the full amount as stated on the large bright red sticker across the front window, and she was still unsure about whether she actually wanted to take my cash.

  “I’ll just have to run a few numbers,” Margaret announced before shuffling off. “I need to get permission before I make any sale now.”

  Run a few numbers? I was willing to pay the asking price! And who was she getting permission from? Bianca wasn’t even working that day.

  I shuffled over to the door of the office she’d squirreled her way inside of. At first, I thought she was talking to Bianca on the other end of the line, but on listening closer, it didn’t sound like her voice yelling on the other end of the line. It was deeper.

  I was getting into the habit of listening in on other people’s phone calls.

  “I can’t get away early today. I told you. Bianca never came into work. You know why she didn’t!” Margarette hissed into the phone, suddenly showing about ten times more personality than she’d shown to me during the past fifteen minutes. She was quiet for a few minutes while she listened to whoever was on the other end of the line.

  She sounded like she was on the verge of tears when she finally spoke again. “I just can’t keep doing this, okay? I don’t want to.”

  Whoever was on the end raised their voice. Whether it was in passion or anger, I couldn’t quite tell.

  “I will see you when I get home. Okay, yes,” she said, finally sounding a little placated. “I love you too.”

  I hadn’t been able to hear the voice very well, but it had sounded male. And the way she had said “I love you too,” it didn’t sound like she was talking to a father or a brother.

  A boyfriend, huh? That was interesting.

  A soon as she ended the call, I sprinted away again, almost giving myself a hernia in the effort to get back to my blue-green car. “So, everything all right?” I asked, trying not to sound too short of breath. “Boy, am I excited about taking this baby home!” I said, thumping the hood.

  “Fine,” Margaret commented. “I’ll get the paperwork drawn up.”

  On the way, home I used the new hands-free device in the car to make a call. This car didn’t have a collapsible roof, but I rolled all the windows down and pretended anyway.

  “Hello?” the voice on the other end of the line called out.

  I hoped he could hear the wind whizzing by down the line.

  “Adam! You’re not busy now, are you?”

  “Just getting off a shift.” He sounded tired, although not completely displeased to hear from me.

  I laughed. “Well, I’m just coming home from the dealership!” I shouted, having to lean forward to make myself heard. “I’m calling you from my new car!” I said proudly.

  Adam laughed. “Well, I’m very pleased for you. No bodies this time, right?”

  “Right,” I said, taking a turn. I came to the real reason for my call, which hadn’t been purely to show off the fact that I could drive and make a call at the same time. “So get this, Margaret has a boyfriend. Or, an ex-boyfriend maybe, by the sounds of it… Someone she is very upset with anyway.”

  Adam hesitated for a moment. “I’m not sure that I am totally following, George.”

  “Well, Bianca has been very upset lately too. She got all teary at the winery the other day.”

  “I’m still not seeing the connection, George?”

  So much for Adam being the great detective. I explained it to him. “There is definitely frostiness between the two of them,” I said. “It looks like they can’t even stand to be at work at the same time. And they were both making tearful phone calls to a man.”

  “Maybe the man they are both crying about is the same man,” Adam said in a meaningful tone. “Just not the one you’re probably thinking of.”

  “Huh?”

  He paused for a second. “Maybe it’s Cain.”

  “Oh, come on, that’s not what I am talking about. You know that,” I said, trying not to get too frustrated. He was supposed to be my trusty sounding board, the person who listened to all my theories and more or less agreed with me, so that I knew I was right.

  Adam remained patient with me. “Well, he was just killed. That might be the reason they are upset. Seems pretty reasonable to me that both of them are going through a hard time right now.” I could hear the din of the supermarket parking lot in the background. Grocery carts crashing and cars honking their horns, trying to avoid hitting pedestrians. I sighed a little. Adam was so talented and artistic, he could get work anywhere. He could get work as a graphic designer, or an illustrator, if he would just apply himself a little.

  Maybe he did have a point. Maybe Cain was the common link after all.

  “Yes, but if you’re right, I think there’s more to it than that. I think he was involved in a love triangle. Between Bianca
and Margaret. That would explain the animosity between the two of them.” And it might explain why Margaret had been so upset when speaking to her boyfriend. I wasn’t willing to let go of my theory. I just knew there was a common thread between Bianca and Margaret that went beyond the obvious.

  “Maybe Margaret killed him and set up Bianca,” Adam said.

  I almost slammed on the brakes. “Shoot. Adam. I think you might be right.” My heart was pounding hard as I thought about it.

  Behind me, a car honked and overtook me, pumping a fist my way as the driver passed. I was going too slow on the freeway. I needed to find a place to pull over.

  But my mind was racing.

  It would have been the perfect setup. Margaret, knowing that Bianca was in a rush and that she didn’t do the proper checks. Knowing that she didn’t check the trunk.

  If they were both having a love affair with Cain, maybe Margaret discovered it and decided to get revenge on both of them.

  It was always the quiet ones you have to keep your eye on.

  And it would have been the perfect way to frame Bianca.

  It would have been the perfect way to implicate me in it all too, come to think of it.

  I had come to a stop right out in front of the gas station. Someone was waving to me through the glass and it wasn’t my old friend Jesse, who was scowling at me. I waved back even though I couldn’t really recognize who it was. He moved a little closer. Red hair. Oh. It was Kurt, Aaron’s groomsman. We’d met the day before when Bianca had saved my bacon.

  “I gotta go, Adam, I have a craft circle to get to.” I reached over to end the call.

  Adam was in disbelief. “You’re going to a craft circle now? After what you’ve just discovered?”

  Kurt finished paying for his gas and climbed into his car, shooting me another wave.

  “Craft circles don’t stop for anyone, Adam. Not even murder.”

  Chapter 9

  The Pottsville Library had recently undergone a refurbishment, modernizing it from the dusty, dank old place it had been when I’d first moved to town and almost had an asthma attack when I walked through the doors due to the decades of dust. Now, it was bright and airy, and all the old damp carpets had been pulled up in favor of slick tiles. There were plants everywhere and even a little water feature in the center that made you feel as though you were sitting near a rainforest while you were reading.

  If it had been a little earlier in the evening, we even could’ve sat out in the courtyard under the shade of the palm trees that had been flown in. The courtyard looked really pretty and inviting with all the shade that covered the bright orange seats. I made a note that I should come back in the daytime. Now that I had a car, it would be easy to zip back and forth.

  Things were really looking up now that I had wheels.

  When I arrived and walked through the doors, there was a little bit of confusion. The rest of the group were gathered around the front counter, in the middle of a small argument with a harried library worker. “Did you book the meeting room, George?” Melissa asked me.

  I dropped my purse to the ground and looked around at all dozen annoyed faces. “Meeting room? Was…I supposed to do that?” I asked, looking around at them all as they shook their heads and tutted. I saw a few rolled eyes in the crowd as well.

  Yes, apparently I was supposed to do that. And because I hadn’t, the meeting room had been booked by a group of young students, who, from the looks of it when I spun around to peer through the window, were spending more time eating bags of chips and dancing around to music.

  “Oh well,” I said, nodding to a large area that was not being used. There were rows of empty tables and chairs at the other end of the library. “Can’t we use that area instead? There’s no one else here at this time of evening, so I doubt it will matter if we make a little bit of noise. And I’m sure we can rearrange them all to form a circle.”

  There was silence for a moment, and I was a bit worried I was about to be thrown out for my indiscretion. But everyone agreed, so in the end I wasn’t in too much hot water for my booking mishap. Phew. I still felt a little on edge, though. I always felt like I was in trouble when I attended these things, and was never really sure why.

  I supposed they were just a little cliquey, and I was still an outsider. I’d only been in town a few months, and most of the other members were lifelong Pottsvillers. Melissa, the woman who had really taken over the circle, was born here forty-six years ago and told me that she’d only spent fourteen days outside of the town, total, in her whole life. She was very proud of this fact. It made me so claustrophobic, I could break into hives just listening to the anecdote.

  As I followed behind the group, double-checking, I was surprised to find that Brenda hadn’t made it. Perhaps it was too far for her to travel. Or perhaps one of her cats was sick. Maybe she needed a personal assistant to help her out.

  We all unpacked our various items and crafts that we were supposed to show off to the group. For her part, Melissa brought out a large Tupperware container full of various cakes and cookies. Luckily, we were squirreled away in the back of the library, so none of the librarians or assistants would notice that we were munching away. Actually, I caught a glimpse of a vending machine against the wall. Maybe they didn’t even mind if you ate in this particular library. Those kids in the meeting room certainly didn’t mind if they got caught.

  After we’d all refreshed ourselves with cake and cookies, Melissa took the reins and asked everyone in the circle what they had been up to lately. I sat and waited anxiously for my turn to come. Which it did, only too soon. “So, what have you been working on recently, George?”

  Great. It was always that awkward question. It was like the time I’d belonged to a book club in Paris. They would always go around the circle and ask what we’d all thought of the book and no matter how much I avoided eye contact, my turn would inevitably come. That was the problem with circles. There was nowhere to hide. Half the time, I had been too busy to read the book, and then there were weeks when I just misplaced the book, so I would always do a quick search online for what others had thought of the story and then try to bluff my way through it so that I didn’t come off as ignorant and illiterate.

  But this time, I was struggling to think of a good cover story.

  To be honest, half the time I missed the craft circle meetings on purpose and only used the lack of transport as an excuse. I just found myself so busy with the rest of life—running the store, dealing with dead bodies—that my personal projects tended to fall on the back burner. Of course, I was always working on my jewelry, but I’d spoken about that at the last three meetings, and I needed to come up with a new topic of conversation besides brightly colored beads. I spun them around my wrist wondering how I could make talking about them again sound interesting.

  “I’ve actually been working on a few projects…” I said. Solving a murder mystery, for one thing. “Oh!” I said, suddenly feeling excited. “I have been working on something, actually!” I caught the looks on their faces when they all realized they’d almost trapped me in a half-lie. “I’ve been doing the decorations for a wedding. It’s all D.I.Y, you see, lots of lace and ribbon and Mason jars full of flowers and candy.” I explained it all to the inner circle, feeling their interest pique.

  They all seemed pretty impressed with me. Well, there was a first time for everything, wasn’t there? Once I’d finished my story, I leaned back, satisfied.

  “How well do you know the bride and groom? Are they friends of yours?” Melissa asked.

  I shook my head. “I barely know Hannah and Aaron at all. They are customers at the store. They liked what they saw and asked me to help out.” I shrugged. Made sense, didn’t it?

  Melissa nodded a little uncertainly. “And you’re getting paid for all this help, right?”

  “I…um.” I sat back in my seat and frowned. It just occurred to me that I had never actually made that official with Hannah. I’d never even thought to a
sk. Was she maybe under the assumption that I was doing all this work for free, save for the cost of the materials?

  Goodness. I was going to have to clear this up with her first thing in the morning.

  But for the time being, I was going to bask in the glow of the approval of acquaintances that I barely knew. There was no other feeling that came close. “I’m sure I’ll be paid generously!” I said with a wide grin. “And I’m enjoying myself immensely in the process.”

  “Well, it’s wonderful to hear it, George!” Melissa said, leaning over with the open container to offer me another piece of cake.

  It was one of the first craft circles I’d genuinely enjoyed, and I left with a spring in my step, thinking that the night couldn’t possibly be spoiled.

  However, as I was exiting the library, saying goodbye to all of my new friends in the foyer, I had that sudden feeling you get in the pit of your stomach when you know that something is wrong. I frowned and leaned forward, trying to spot my new car in the sparsely filled parking lot. It was difficult to see under the dim light of the streetlights, but there appeared to be something wrong with my car.

  “Good night, George!” Angela called out. “Can’t wait to see you next week!”

  “Ah, you too!” I called out, distracted. I walked unsteadily toward my car, hoping that my eyes were deceiving me.

  They weren’t.

  There was glass all over the ground, crunching underneath my shoes as I hurried to check the damage.

  The front window on the passenger side was smashed in, shards of glass littering every last crevice inside. And then, when I looked over, I saw that the driver’s side window, and seat, had suffered the same fate.

  I shook my head. “Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me.”

  Chapter 10

  A friendly face jumped out of the car and came running up the driveway to greet me.

  “Jasper!” I said as he ran into my arms. I felt like I hadn’t seen him in decades. I wasn’t sure if I was imagining it, but his greeting toward me seemed slightly less enthusiastic than usual, like he didn’t really want to be there, like he wanted to go back to wherever he’d just come from.