“Is my car far enough out of the way?” Adam asked, looking a bit worried. “It’s going to look pretty out of place next to the limos. I don’t want to be responsible for ruining any wedding photos.”
I told him that I was sure it would be fine and that we’d better start unloading the items, or we wouldn’t just be ruining photos—we’d be ruining the entire thing. “As long as I don’t delay the bride walking down the aisle, I will be happy,” I announced, picking up an extra box of Mason jars that we’d brought just in case.
We hadn’t changed into our best clothes, not the ones that we would be wearing for the wedding, anyway. I was in jeans and t-shirt so that it wouldn’t matter if I spilled glue on them or had an accident, and Adam was wearing dark jeans and a sweater that made him look about ten years younger than he was.
We’d had to arrive at least five hours before the actual ceremony as there was still a lot of last minute decorating to do. I’d been hoping it wouldn’t be as bad as I was fearing, but I opened the door to the reception hall and gulped at the overwhelming emptiness. All twenty tables staring back at me had to be fully decorated. That included the lace tablecloths, the vintage style bows tied around all two hundred chairs, and every place setting needed a Mason jar for the guest, as well as extra jars for the flowers that we still had to arrange.
“Are you okay?” Adam asked.
“Sure. Just suddenly feeling a little lightheaded,” I said, smiling through gritted teeth. “Suddenly starting to think that even if I’d arrived at midnight last night, I wouldn’t have had time to get this all done.”
Shoot—why had I agreed to do all of this? It turned out Hannah was paying me, in the end, but it worked out to about five bucks an hour when all the time was added together.
“Why don’t we take a stroll around the grapevines before we start?” Adam asked, stretching.
“I don’t have time for that,” I said, pushing a large heavy box along the ground. “Can’t you see that there are a million things I have to do?”
“I don’t mind helping,” Adam said. “That’s all I’m here for after all, isn’t it?” He shot me a meaningful glance.
I didn’t respond. Instead, we got to work. I started tying ribbons around seats and became so involved in the task that I temporarily forget that Adam was even there.
Adam called out to me.
“Do you remember our wedding day, George?” Adam asked softly.
I stopped cutting ribbon. “Please don’t go getting all cheesy on me, Adam.” It was one of the reasons I’d been so hesitant about bringing him as my date--the fact that he was bound to go all cheesy.
“It was a long time ago. My recollection is a little foggy,” I said.
But the truth was, I was lying. I remembered our wedding as clearly as if it had happened the day before.
It had all been in a total rush, of course. Last minute. And none of our family—and very few of our friends—could make it. I didn’t care about that at all, though. All that mattered was that Adam was there. It didn’t even matter that a hurricane had torn through the town the night before and we’d had to get married in an old town hall with rain beating down through a hole in the roof. Nor did it matter that the cake we’d bought—from the supermarket, because it was all we could afford—got eaten by a dog that one of our random guests had brought along as their date.
“It was a crazy day,” Adam said. “Just too bad you can’t remember it. Maybe your memory really is fading in your old age.”
I threw a roll of ribbon at him.
I was eager to change the subject. To anything else.
“I just can’t shake the feeling that Bianca wasn’t being entirely honest with me,” I said as I unfurled another long row of ribbon. Of all the things we had to do, I hadn’t expected the bows on the back of the chair to trip me up the most. It was taking me at least five minutes to do each one and there were still 160 chairs to go. The math was making me dizzy. “I mean, I know she says she came clean with me. But why doesn’t it quite add up?”
Adam shook his head. “I think she’s taking you for a ride, if you’ll forgive the ironic pun. She’s trying to pass it off that Cain’s body just happened to get dumped in her car when she pulled into the gas station? The body of the man she worked with and knew well?” He raised an eyebrow. “It seems like a pretty random coincidence.”
I tossed my pair of scissors on the floor amid the mess of lace.
“Adam, you’re the one who told me that Bianca couldn’t have done it! That it was too obvious. Why would she kill Cain, then leave the body in the car and drop it at my place? Right in front of my house? She would have to know her fingerprints would be all over it. Both literally and metaphorically.”
I stopped, dropping the heavy roll of ribbon. It unfurled over the floor of the ballroom. Of course her fingerprints would be all over it. And she could use the perfect excuse for why her prints were all over the crime scene. Because she had been delivering the car. All just as part of her job.
What if Bianca had killed Cain before I’d even looked at the car?
What if I was just her perfect alibi?
Maybe she didn’t even stop at the gas station after all. Perhaps that explained why she oh-so-conveniently pulled off into a ditch where no one saw her. Maybe the whole exchange with Jesse was made up. He had a reputation as a rip-off merchant throughout town.
I gasped. “It’s because she thought the blame would go to me,” I whispered.
Adam was dishing out the Mason jars, counting each one carefully to make sure he wasn’t missing any place settings. “Huh?” he asked, a little distracted by the task at hand.
I shook my head. “Think about it, Adam. She already knew about my ‘reputation’ in town. She told me that on the day that this all happened. Said that murder follows me. That it looks suspicious.” I stared at him. “She’s the one who told Ryan to suspect me. She was already at the station that day before Ryan came out and asked me that question,” I muttered.
Adam placed the last Mason jar down on the table. “There,” he said, looking like a load had just been lifted off his shoulders. “I think we’re finally all done in here.”
Oh, we weren’t all done in here at all.
“Adam, did you hear what I just said to you? Bianca has been trying to set me up this whole time.”
Adam sighed and placed his hands on his hips, shooting me a you’re not really doing this now, are you, George? “Come on,” he said. “It’s time for us to change into our Sunday best. I’ve spent a fortune renting out that suit that’s still hanging in my car.” He scratched his head. “We can’t do this now, George.”
I tried to take a few deep breaths. Was he right? Did I just need to put a pin in this until after the wedding ceremony?
We were done decorating the hall, but Hannah and Aaron would still be expecting me to attend the ceremony and to do last minute checks of the hall. Not to just hightail it out of there in a rusty car seconds before the bride stepped out of the limo.
Aaron popped his head around the door to check in with us. The hall was a mess, but we’d actually managed to get most of the work done. We’d pulled it off.
“You look nervous,” I said with a laugh, trying to pretend we hadn’t just been talking about a murder investigation, and definitely not letting on that I was about to sprint out to go after the prime suspect. This was his wedding day, after all, and I was a professional.
He nodded and adjusted his cufflinks. Shoot, that meant that it was just about time for Adam and I to think about getting changed. I looked down at my blue jeans and white tee with holes in the stomach area. Definitely not appropriate for a fancy vintage DIY wedding. Well, maybe the holes kind of were.
“I am,” Aaron replied. “But I am marrying the love of my life. And I’ve waited a long time for Hannah to agree to marry a slob like me,” he said with a soft laugh. “It’s been a long road for us. Who can blame me for being nervous?” He actually looked a little
sweaty, like the poor guy thought his bride might not actually turn up at the aisle.
I shot him a sympathetic smile. “Don’t worry. Hannah will be here. She’s a lucky lady, if you ask me.”
Aaron nodded and stopped fiddling with his cufflinks. “I’m sure you’re right,” he said, some color returning to his face. “Pretty sure it’s just wedding day jitters. Thanks, George.”
“Well, we’d better get back to it,” I said with a smile, not wanting to seem rude. “We want this wedding to go off without a hitch, after all.” Or was that with a hitch?
As soon as Aaron was gone, Adam turned back to me. “Well?” he said, looking me up and down. “It’s not that I don’t think you look great, George—the casual look has always been my favorite on you--but you’re going to have to get changed before the ceremony. And you’ve got about five minutes,” he said, raising his eyebrows.
I knew this meant more to Adam than just being professional. If I agreed to put my thoughts about Bianca to the back of my mind and went and got changed into my gown, it meant that I was agreeing to attend a wedding with him as a proper date. It would mean that there was a proper chance for us to start again.
“Okay, fine, you’re right,” I said. “I’ll run to the car and get my dress.” I’d decided on a long lavender-colored dress, which wasn’t my usual color—a bit more muted than I usually go for—but I hadn’t wanted to outshine the bride.
There was a bit of a hill to climb to get from the reception hall, which was in a bit of a valley, to get back up to the car where we’d parked out of the way to not ruin any wedding photos.
I was running a little short of breath as I tried to heave my way up, knowing that the wedding was about to start. At this rate, I really was going to have to attend it in jeans and a tee.
But when I saw Hannah coming out of the small cabin that she and the bridal party had been getting ready in, I began to panic. I was too late.
“What is she doing coming out already?” I said to myself, coming to a stop in the middle of the hill.
She wasn’t followed by any of her bridesmaids, though. It was a solo trip and her hair was coming loose from her head, pins flying everywhere as she began to run toward me, hitching up the hem of her dress as she ran.
Hannah was distraught.
Maybe Aaron was right. It looked like we might have a runaway bride on our hands.
I braced myself as she ran toward me and stopped.
“Oh my goodness,” I said, looking her up and down. Her mascara was running down her cheeks, undoing all the good work of an expensive makeup artist. Talk about your something blue.
“What happened?” I asked her. “Oh, don’t tell me you’re thinking about calling the whole thing off? Aaron is a lovely man. He’ll be devastated.” I thought about how nervous he had been and knew that no matter what else happened, it was my sworn duty to convince this bride to get down the aisle and say “I do.”
She shook her head. “I can’t find my bracelet,” she said frantically. “I mean, I don’t have my bracelet! I need my bracelet!”
My heart calmed down a little. This was an easier problem to remedy than cold feet. If she didn’t love Aaron, I wouldn’t know quite what to say to get her down the aisle. But jewelry I could deal with. “Well, what does it look like?” I asked her. I looked around the grass on the hill we were standing on. “Maybe you dropped it out here on your way to the cabin?”
Hannah shook her head in frustration. “No, it was never here today in the first place! Only I just found out about it now!” she said, growing a little petulant as she crossed her arms. Well, it was fairly common for a bride to turn into a sulky toddler on her wedding day when things weren’t running smoothly. “Because Aaron kept it from me until right now!”
She was in danger of growing hysterical. I looked over her shoulder at the cabin. “Is there someone else I can get to help out?” I asked, hopefully, thinking that her mother or one of her sisters would be much better equipped to deal with all this than I was.
She shook her head. “Oh, they don’t understand how much the bracelet means to me,” she said, beginning to sob. “And they don’t understand how furious I am at Aaron for keeping this from me right before I’m supposed to walk down the aisle!”
“Just…try and keep calm,” I said, placing a hand on her back in order to try and comfort her. Not that it was doing any good. Her back was heaving with sobs and I just felt overwhelmingly useless. I craned my neck around, looking for Adam. He was usually better in a crisis than I was. Maybe he’d know better what to do.
But there was no sight of him.
Looked like I was just going to have to deal with this problem on my own.
“Come on, sweetie,” I said, helping Hannah straighten up. “Let’s think about this clearly. Now, is there any way—any chance at all—that we can still get the bracelet here today?”
She shook her head. Even though the sobbing had ceased, she was still sniffling. “No. It’s not that the bracelet just isn’t here today, George. It’s that it’s lost.”
I started to get a funny feeling in my stomach.
“It’s lost?” I asked softly. “How did that happen?”
Where did it happen? That was really what I was thinking.
I handed Hannah a tissue and she wiped away her tears. With a little bit of a touch up, her makeup would be fine to walk down the aisle. “It is a family heirloom, George. It was my great grandmother’s and it was the only thing she ever gave to me before she died. I’ve had it since I was a little girl. I didn’t think there would be any issue with it, but when I went to try it on late last week, I found that it had slipped off my wrist.”
She held out her wrist for me to look at. “I guess I have lost a bit of weight lately, wedding stress and all that, but I didn’t expect the bracelet to just slip off like that. And you know how busy I am with my career? That’s why Aaron was helping out with wedding stuff so much, more than most grooms do, anyway.”
I nodded. “He has been very helpful,” I said.
But her face was like thunder. “Has he? Now I am starting to think that the reason he was even trying so hard is that he was trying to prove to me that he was better than…” She trailed off and shook her head. “It doesn’t matter.”
“Better than who?” I asked, frowning.
She sighed heavily. “Better than my ex-fiancé.” She could barely say the words. “And believe me, that really doesn’t matter now. There’s no way he’s going to turn up today and stop the wedding.”
“Oh, I see.” I hadn’t realized that Hannah had been engaged before. Not that it was that surprising, really. She was a very pretty young woman, and a sweet, successful one to boot. She probably had her pick of just about any man she wanted.
Hannah shook her head. “I wanted to believe that Aaron was the one for me. That’s why I trusted the bracelet in his hands earlier this week. He was supposed to get it refitted and then have it ready for the wedding. But he lost it, George! He lost my most precious possession.”
That funny feeling was growing stronger. “Hannah, did…did the bracelet contain square cut diamonds, set in gold?”
She nodded. “Yes,” she whispered tearfully. “How-how do you know that?”
That was the one, then. The one I had handed in to the police station. Or at least, it sounded very much like it. A silly little part of me in the back of my mind wanted to have doubts, though. I mean, until she could prove it was hers, nothing was certain, right?
I sighed. If the bracelet had an owner, then I was never going to inherit it. Not unless Hannah changed her will and included me in it.
But there was something else that troubled me about the whole thing.
I’d found it at the gas station. The very gas station where Bianca had said she’d stopped.
I frowned. Maybe it was all just a coincidence. These things happened, didn’t they? I mean, it wasn’t like Pottsville had hundreds of gas stations. There were only two in t
he entire town. Aaron, or anyone from his groom’s party, could have been at the gas station at any time during the days before or after Cain’s death. It could have gotten dropped any time.
“It’s okay,” I said to Hannah, pulling my phone out of my pocket. I was about to say, “I think I know where the bracelet is,” but I hesitated. Maybe it was better not to get her hopes up before I’d called Ryan and we knew for sure.
But at that moment, Hannah’s mother stuck her head out of the cabin and shouted for Hannah to, “Get right back here, young lady!”
“I’d better go,” she said tearfully. “There’s been so much loss this week. I think the bracelet just sent me over the edge. Aaron is a good man, really. I can’t let this destroy the wedding.”
She ran back to the cabin and I just stared after her.
“What was all that about?” a breathless Adam asked, catching up with me.
I shook my head. “Long story.” I still had my phone in my hands, ready to make the call.
But it turned out I didn’t need to.
It flashed with an incoming call. From Ryan. Adam was staring at the screen over my shoulder, but trying to pretend that he wasn’t.
“Who is that?” Adam asked, like he didn’t already know.
“It’s Ryan,” I said. “Maybe he knows that I brought you as my date and he’s calling to give me an earful.”
I’d been joking as I said it but when I took the call, I suddenly worried that might indeed be the case.
“I’m hoping you’re calling to tell me that no one has come forth to claim that bracelet…” I suddenly stopped. What was I talking about? Who was I trying to kid? I could try and convince myself all I liked, but that bracelet had an owner and I was never going to get my grubby hands on it. I sighed. “Actually, I have a confession to make. I know who owns the bracelet. She needs it right now, actually. Is there any chance, at all, and I know it’s a long shot, that you could drive it over to the winery?”
“I wasn’t calling about the bracelet, actually, George.”
“Oh?”
Ryan hesitated for a moment. “Actually, that’s not entirely true. I am calling about the bracelet. Just not in the way that you think.”
Weddings, Receptions, and Murder Page 8