Killer Bridal Party

by London Lovett

  "Sorry, boys, I've got to make sure Lana and Raine are all right." Redford was far less disappointed than Newman to be trudging back home already. As we passed through the boulders another car whipped onto the adjacent road. It was easy to recognize Detective Jackson in his detective's car, mostly because there just weren't that many men floating around town, or the country or the world, for that matter, who looked like they'd just stepped out of every woman's romantic daydream. He was wearing dark sunglasses, but I got the sense that his eyes locked on mine as he spotted me coming off the trail. Then he returned his focus to the road ahead and disappeared around the curve.

  The three of us ran back to the inn. I was breathing hard as I swept up my keys and phone. After a brief interrogation by my house ghost as to why I had raced into the house with a red face and panting like a madwoman, I climbed into my car and headed toward the campground.

  My heart was back to a major flurry of palpitations when I reached the campground and found that all the police and emergency activity was centered at the bridal party's campsite. Lana's truck was parked near the site, assuring me she and Raine were still there. I did a quick scan of the other cars and quickly catalogued the ones I'd seen in the last few days. It seemed that the truck Brooke and her bridesmaids arrived in and the groom's nice BMW were the only other vehicles, which meant none of the bridal shower guests had arrived yet. That really narrowed down the list of people who might be sick or hurt or worse. I tried hard not to let my mind shift back to Raine's dire prediction, but it was impossible. Especially as I came upon a makeshift wall of emergency vehicles. My stomach balled like a knot as my eyes landed on Detective Jackson's car. I was certain Jackson would not be called to the site for an ankle twist or chest pains. He was the department's lead detective. Something serious had happened.

  I parked far enough back not to be shooed away by the police. I craned my neck as I walked toward the activity and felt a massive rush of relief when I saw Lana's brunette hair and Raine's colorful headscarf. Even though it seemed something terrible had happened, at least I knew that my sister and friend were safe.

  As I neared the tents that had been set up for the party, I caught a glimpse of what seemed to be the entire bridal party, the groom and one of his friends. The night before, at the barn, there had been two friends. Had the third man gotten hurt? The men were doing all they could to console the women. Brooke looked particularly distraught and close to crumpling into a sobbing heap. A few of the officers were standing near the cars, but I couldn't see Detective Jackson. I skirted around the back side of some trees that would get me to the campsite without passing the police officers.

  Lana spotted me emerging from the trees. She hurried toward me looking as if she'd been up all night binge watching horror movies. "Sunni, you're here." Raine rushed over to join us, shaking her head in an 'I told you so' manner. Her expression matched.

  "I heard the sirens. Did something happen to the second groomsman?" I asked.

  Lana's brows knitted together. "The groomsman? No. Bryan left last night. Jeremy and his best man, Tom, stayed the night. After they surprised the women during their campfire, Brooke and her friends were feeling uneasy about staying out in the woods alone so Jeremy and Tom stayed."

  "Well-planned," Raine said, wryly as a side note.

  "I don't understand." I looked past Lana to the picnic tables where the distraught campers were huddled. This time I took a better count of the women. One was noticeably absent. I turned back to Lana. "The maid of honor? Tory?" I said her name as a question. Lana knew exactly what I was asking.

  Lana's rueful nod followed. "Dead."

  Chapter 10

  "How? Where? When?" I tossed one word questions at my sister in an attempt to garner as much information as possible before I figured out a way to get closer to the crime scene.

  Lana was a smidgen amused by my deep line of questioning, but she tamped down her smile quickly, remembering it wasn't the time or place for amusement. "Raine and I arrived literally minutes after they discovered her. Apparently Tory wasn't in her tent this morning when everyone woke, so Jeremy and Tom went looking for her. They found her lifeless body on the rocky embankment overlooking the lake."

  "So it was an accident? A fall?"

  "It seems so."

  I looked at Raine. She didn't seem quite so certain.

  "Raine? You look unconvinced."

  I'd gone instinctively into journalist mode. Raine was the perfect interviewee. She was always happy to say what she thought or give her opinion. Or, at least, most of the time. She seemed to hesitate under the watchful eye of her boss, my sister. I decided I would pull her aside later and get her take on it when Lana wasn't in earshot. For now, I needed to get closer to the activity. If it was murder, I wanted to be at the center of the investigation.

  The paramedics were returning their equipment to the ambulance, signaling there would be no attempt at revival or any kind of medical intervention which signaled that the person Detective Jackson was studying on the steep side of the embankment was unquestionably dead.

  Tory was curled on her side, almost as if she had just decided to take a nap there on the rough, rocky edge. Her shoulder length brown hair seemed to be matted into a nasty tangle of hair, dirt and a thick substance I was sure was blood. There were several rips on the back of her coat. Her hands, which were stark white and stood out against the gray granite and soil background, were crossed limply at the wrists, again making it look as if she was just curled there for a nap.

  For no important reason at all, I noted that Jackson's longish brown hair looked particularly wild and there was dark beard stubble on his chiseled jaw. Had he just been pulled from bed? At this hour? Maybe he'd had a late night out on the town. I pushed the entirely unnecessary thoughts from my head and surveyed the area.

  Knowing how these kinds of tragedies normally progressed, I was certain Jackson had already placed the obligatory call to the local coroner. While he waited for them to arrive, he was assessing whether or not he was looking at an accidental death or a homicide.

  Detective Jackson had pushed his dark sunglasses up on his head affording me a better read on his thoughts. Although the man was irritatingly hard to read. He must have been very good at poker. He kept his expression composed. His extraordinary looks made it seem as if he was just an actor or model at the center of a photo shoot instead of an investigation. The other officer who had been by his side, a woman I remembered from Alder Stevens' murder case, Officer Reed, a weapons expert, had hiked back up to the campsite, possibly to wait for the coroner or to retrieve an evidence kit. A third officer was now stationed at the table where the other members of the party were sitting, consoling each other and making various phone calls. Lana and Raine were sitting nearby on the open tailgate of Lana's truck. I could only conclude that everyone had been asked to stay for a line of questioning. Another indication that there was more to Tory's death than a fall down a steep, rough incline.

  One thing was for certain, I wasn't going to find out any details lingering up top at the campground. Fortunately, I was still wearing my hiking boots. Even their thick, grabby soles were no match for the slippery slope leading down to the body.

  The initial few steps took some careful foot placement and calculations and a lot of balance. I managed to get about halfway down before the terrain grew slippery with loose debris and rocks. I managed to dislodge enough small stones to start a mini avalanche.

  The small river off pebbles alerted the detective below. Jackson had been crouched near Tory's head. He straightened and crossed his arms over his chest, watching with a droll smile as I finished the difficult trek down the slope. His scrutiny was not helping my technique. Twice, I had to stoop down and brace my hand back against the slope to keep myself from somersaulting head over heels right into the victim or the detective, who seemed both amused and irritated about my bold, clumsy hike down the hill.

  "Hey, Bluebird, I'd tell you to swing yourself around
and head back up the hill, but something tells me you'd just end up down at the bottom anyhow."

  I'd forgotten about his annoying nickname, something I'd earned (ridiculously) by wearing a blue shirt while climbing a tree. I had been trying to get a scoop for a murder story. I was sure I was completely concealed in the tree, only to discover that leaves had not been the best camouflage for a blue shirt. Apparently, Detective Jackson had no intention of letting me forget the incident.

  For the last few feet, I squatted down and slid on my boots as if I was on an invisible skateboard. Putting on the brakes took a little more thought and planning. I skidded right past the detective and the victim and finally noticed a jutting tree root to use as a brake. I stretched my leg out and my foot braced against the root, stopping my downward slide. I used the same root and a fellow root to wedge myself into a solid position and pushed cautiously up from my crouch. The angle of the slope was so sharp I was standing nearly face to face with it. I glanced up to the top of the hill and swayed backward a bit before steadying myself.

  "It's not hard to see how she might have slipped and fallen to her death on this treacherous hillside." I decided to pretend that I believed it was just a terrible accident, hoping he'd fill me in on more details.

  "There's no story here, Sunni. You just risked your own neck coming down that hill. Besides that, you already know it wasn't an accident."

  I shrugged. "Maybe." I was close enough to see the matted, wet clump of hair on her head. "Guess it was head trauma," I noted.

  "I forgot you fancy yourself a murder sleuth." Detective Jackson took latex gloves out of his pocket and pulled them onto his large hands.

  "I think fancy is an awfully frilly term for the woman who pieced together the puzzle of a convoluted murder just a month ago."

  "It wasn't all that convoluted, but you did put the pieces together. I guess I can give you that." The worn knees on his jeans stretched white as he crouched back down near Tory's head.

  My stomach made a few unpleasant twists and turns as I watched him carefully part the sticky mat of hair. He spread the hair farther and pressed his fingers along the her exposed scalp. Blood smeared the latex gloves as he continued his search.

  "Are you looking for a bullet hole?" He hadn't asked me to leave yet, which I took as a sign that he didn't mind me standing there.

  "I was until I found this." He glanced up. I'd forgotten about his unearthly amber eyes. They were quite remarkable, but I was sure he knew that. "Are you going to stand over there? If you really want to solve a murder, you've got to get involved with the nitty gritty stuff." He lifted his hands to show me the blood smeared gloves. I swallowed back the bitter taste of my morning coffee and muffin. He knew darn well what he was doing. He thought he could just scare me off the hillside with the nitty gritty stuff.

  "You're right, Detective Jackson. Can't very well solve a murder from ten feet away." I took my first step but loathed the idea of leaving my nice secure tree root. I had no choice. I took one careful step and another, occasionally using my hands as two extra feet to climb the unstable slope. "No wonder monkeys haven't joined our strictly bipedal way of life. Much easier on all four."

  I reached Tory's body. From ten feet away, it was a woman lying still on a hill, possibly deep in sleep, but as I neared, it struck me how utterly lifeless she was. There was nothing, not a twitch of a finger or a movement of shoulder or foot that let you know she had been a living, breathing individual. It took me a second to collect and steel myself for what he was about to show me. The last thing I wanted to do was prove to him I couldn't handle investigating a murder by throwing up at the crime scene.

  "If you're going to toss your breakfast," Jackson interjected as if he'd been reading my thoughts, "turn your head that way. Away from the evidence area and away from my boots."

  I held my breath, deciding that might help keep me from feeling sick. Detective Jackson spread the hair to reveal a deep, circular dent in the skull. I found that if I focused just on the skull and pushed aside the fact that the skull belonged to a dead woman, a woman I'd just recently seen alive and well, it kept me from feeling nauseous.

  I looked up at him. "Someone struck her in the head. Something with a round end. A walking stick?" I asked.

  He took his hands away from Tory's hair. He pulled an evidence bag from his pocket and carefully removed the gloves and disposed of them in the bag. We both pushed to our feet. The angle of the slope, the crouched position and the sight of a ghastly skull wound made me sway. Detective Jackson's long fingers wrapped around my arm to steady me. I stared down at his hand for a second. It was big and his grip was strong.

  "Going to stay on two feet, Bluebird? I don't want to have to chase you down that hillside."

  "I'm fine."

  He released my arm, but I could still feel his firm grip, even after his fingers were gone. A few seconds of awkward silence followed, which I broke up with a question.

  "Could it have been a walking stick? People use them a lot up here."

  "No, unless they jammed it at her like a spear, a walking stick would leave a much different mark, a long dent most likely. This looks more like the end of a hammer." He mimicked the use of a hammer and he was right. Naturally.

  "Ironic," I muttered to myself.

  "How's that?"

  "It's nothing. It's just that my sister mentioned that Tory was a salesperson for Stockton Tools. So death by a hammer seems like a bit of dark irony."

  "I saw Jeremy Stockton up at the campsite. He's the one who called in the accident." Jackson walked back around to the front of the body. "How is your sister involved with them?"

  "She's not," I said probably far more abruptly than I needed to. "I mean not really. My sister plans events and parties. She set up the camping trip for the bridal shower." I was talking fast, like I was giving some kind of confession. I stopped and took a deep breath. "There were definitely some strained relationships between the bridesmaids. You should probably start with them for questioning."

  His dark brow was perfectly smooth as it arched high over his pale eyes. "Thanks for the advice. But I think I'll be able to handle this from here."

  "Hey, Jax," Officer Reed called down from above. "Coroner's here."

  He waved to acknowledge he'd heard her, then turned back to me. "You should probably—" He paused and reached for something on the front of Tory's coat. He pulled free a twig with flat, waxy leaves.

  We both instinctively looked around the hillside for a matching shrub but the steep, gritty slope lacked much plant life.

  Detective Jackson held the twig up to get a better look at it.

  "Privet," I said quickly. "There's some growing up near the campsite. I saw it yesterday when I was helping Raine gather kindling. That privet shrub is a good ten feet back from this embankment. Maybe someone killed her up there and then sent her down the hill to make it look like an accident. Only they didn't realize the hammer print on her skull would give it away."

  Detective Jackson pulled out a baggie and put the twig inside of it. "You do good detective work . . . for a journalist."

  "Thanks. I think." We both started the precarious, arduous hike back up the slope.

  Chapter 11

  I'd finished my snooping about and had no choice but to vacate the area when the coroner and his crew arrived. Jeremy was talking rather harshly to a young officer as I walked past the bench where the others had grouped together for comfort.

  "I need to get my fiancée home. I don't understand the delay." Jeremy spoke in an entitled, arrogant tone that didn't seem to have much sway with the officer. In fact, probably the opposite. The officer, a young twenty-something guy who looked more than pleased to be wearing a badge, seemed to bristle at Jeremy's almost condescending tone.

  "Mr. Stockton," he replied through a tight jaw and then seemed to collect himself. "I understand your concern. I assure you, Detective Jackson will be speaking with you shortly. But until that time, I need all of you to stay on t
he site."

  Brooke looked miserable and pale, like a wilted flower, compared to the day before. Cindy and Kyla sat on either side of her on the picnic bench. Cindy was holding her hand. I couldn't help but notice that her mouth was tilted up and her expressive brown eyes looked shiny with the morning sunlight. Cindy and Tory were apparent enemies but her serene demeanor was not appropriate for the situation. Trina, the cousin from California, looked more than a little miffed that she had just spent good money on a plane flight across the country to sit on a picnic bench and wait to be questioned by police. However, her face did brighten as the young officer pointed out Detective Jackson, who was standing with his impossibly broad shoulders and movie star profile fifty yards away from the picnic tables.

  Lana had backed her truck up to the campsite to easily unpack the party goodies, goodies that were no longer needed. I noticed that she and Raine were now sitting in the cab of the truck waiting for the police to give them the go ahead to pack things up. Jackson's team was still searching around for a possible weapon, a hammer or some type of heavy object with a round end. It seemed like a daunting task considering the amount of brush and rugged landscape. Then, of course, there was the body of water below the hillside. I'd heard the words 'dredging the lake' being tossed about.

  I walked up to the passenger window and looked inside. Raine and Lana were secretly snacking on the tea sandwiches they had whipped up for the shower lunch. They both stopped chewing and stared at me through the glass with wide eyes and cheeks stuffed like hamsters.

  Raine opened the door and I climbed inside. The cab was steamy warm and filled with the aroma of herbal cream cheese and onions.

  "I know this looks bad." Lana swallowed and handed me a tea sandwich that was topped with a pretty radish curl. She had gone through a lot of trouble to make sure the shower was lovely. Now, it was never going to happen. "We didn't want all this food to go to waste."