Killer Bridal Party

by London Lovett

  He looked up. "For what? That I'm not capable of love?"

  "No, I'm sorry that you had a father who would tell you something so cruel and ridiculous."

  It seemed the deep conversation was making him uncomfortable. His image wavered and grew dim. Aside from growing up in a time when honor was more important than love, he had grown up in a time when feelings and deep emotions were never discussed. I decided to drop the subject for the time being. But if I was ever going to figure out why Edward was stuck in limbo, I was going to need to scratch under his stony exterior and get to the heart of things.

  "Well, Edward, I've had a long day. I think I'll turn in for the night."

  "Good night." His tone was flat. It seemed I'd caught the inn's lingering spirit in a rare self-reflective mood. I needed to help him figure out why he was doomed to never rest in peace.

  Chapter 19

  I pulled the cotton quilt up over my legs and settled my back against the pillows. The house was quiet and the only sounds were Redford's soft snores and the crickets tweeting their love songs across the pastures. I moved my phone aside to reach for my book, then something occurred to me. I'd never checked the pictures I'd taken of Tory's text conversations. Since the snoop session had ended badly, with Detective Jackson catching me right in the center of it, I had apparently pushed it out of my mind. I'd only managed to catch a few back and forth texts between Brooke, Cindy and someone Tory had lovingly labeled 'Jerkface'. I doubted there would be much of significance, but I decided to check out the images I'd captured.

  I swiped through to the text photos and opened up the conversation with Brooke. As I predicted, the four or five back and forth bubbles were about the bridal shower. There was no date on the picture but it was easy to tell the conversation had happened a few days before the fateful camping trip.

  Brooke wrote, "Still can't decide which tent to put my cousin in. She's kind of grumpy when she's trying to sleep."

  Tory responded, "Then I say make Cindy bunk with her." She punctuated her suggestion with a smiley face emoji.

  "Lol, you two need to pretend to like each other. Pretty please. I'm the bride so I insist." Brooke added a heart to the end of her plea.

  "Did I mention that I failed drama class? Can't pretend. I'll just try and ignore her. Got to hit the pillows. I'm beat."

  "Nightie night."

  I rubbed my thumb across the screen and stopped on the picture of Tory's last conversation with Cindy. At the time, I was surprised to see that Tory and Cindy had been texting at all. But as I read the texts, it became clear they rarely conversed and the tone was far from friendly. In fact, it was downright alarming.

  The first text was from Tory, and it was a doozy. "I know your secret and it only confirms my hate for you."

  "How did you get my new number? And you don't know anything." Cindy responded.

  "Trust me, I know it all and if you don't want me to tell Brooke, then we need to talk."

  "I'll just deny it. You are such a monster. Which only confirms my hate for you. Not that it needed confirmation." Cindy added another text. "I don't want to talk to you about anything. I can barely stand to look at you. No wonder everyone at Stockton Tools hates you. And delete this conversation or else."

  Tory responded with a curt answer. I could almost hear an evil laugh to go along with it. "Ha, you are hardly in the position to be telling me what to do."

  There was no further response from Cindy. I sat back with a deep breath. While I hadn't expected to see a jovial conversation between the two women, I had hardly expected the sharp, rage-filled chat either. Apparently Cindy had some enormous secret that she was hiding from Brooke, and Tory had somehow discovered it. She said she wanted to talk to Cindy about it. Was there some sort of blackmail in the works? The limited screenshot on my phone only allowed me to see a few inflammatory texts. The date and time weren't visible, leaving me in the dark about when the conversation had taken place. For all I knew it was from months or even a year ago. Either way, it shed some light onto just how deeply they despised each other.

  I stifled a long yawn with the back of my hand. It seemed I wasn't going to be doing any reading. I had just one more conversation to look at, the one between Tory and her friend 'Jerkface'.

  The first text was from Tory and she had used all caps to get her point across. "YOU ARE LATE!"

  "Yeah, yeah whatever," was Jerkface's response. "One day, big deal."

  Since I had no idea what Jerkface was late for, it was hard to follow the gist of the conversation. Whatever it was, Tory seemed plenty steamed by it. The last text on the page made that abundantly clear.

  "You seem to forget that I am holding the one string that can unravel your entire life. TODAY or I give it a pull."

  "Yeah, yeah."

  Jerkface seemed to have limited vocabulary when texting. Another yawn overtook me. I put the phone aside and tried to scoot down on the mattress, a task made complicated by the placement of two sleeping dogs. I bent and turned my legs until I found a clear path to the end of the bed for my feet.

  I reached over and turned out the light with only one thought left behind from the long day. Tory was not exactly a fun-loving maid of honor, and she seemed to have a few enemies.

  Chapter 20

  Ursula's shrill tone was even more grating than the shrieking buzz of Henry's electric drill. Tiny as Ursula was, she always looked big and intimidating in her oversized overalls, particularly when she was standing with her strong little fists balled up and resting on her slim hips. She was in her usual pose of standing watch over her brother Henry as he kneeled down to drill a hole for a new electrical socket. Ursula was reminding him not to get close to the old wires and letting him know that he was turtle slow considering he was using an electric drill. She also insisted she could get the hole drilled faster if she was twirling through the plaster with a darn toothpick. I sometimes wondered who I admired more, Ursula for being daring enough to berate a man holding a power tool or Henry for totally ignoring the high-pitched lecture raining down on him from above.

  One thing was certain, I was regretting the decision to let them work on Sunday. They'd had a family event on Saturday and asked if it would be all right to finish up the electrical in the dining room on Sunday. At the time, I was just thrilled to know that they would be finishing the electrical. I hadn't considered that it meant listening to the two of them hammer, drill and yell through my entire Sunday. Normally, I was at work or out and about when they were working so I missed most of the circus. Although Edward always kindly filled me in on all the grueling details of the work day, making sure to include every argument and Ursula rant. Given Edward's naturally British accent and deep voice, he was astonishingly good at imitating Ursula's screechy tone.

  "Hey, guys," I said from the doorway, deciding I was safer at a distance in case Ursula stepped on one of Henry's last nerves.

  Ursula's scowl swished to a friendly grin. "Sunni, hope we didn't wake you with the drill." She motioned her head toward Henry. "Pokey here isn't very skilled with it."

  Henry ignored her and kept working.

  "I was thinking I'd start scraping the wallpaper in the entryway." I pointed unnecessarily back to the entry. "What do you think?"

  "Sure. That'd save us some time. I've got the perfect scraping tool right here in my tool box." Ursula was an entirely different person when she wasn't talking to her brother. She returned with a plastic handled tool that resembled a man's razor. It was topped with a sharp steel edge. "Make sure you don't touch this side," Ursula noted.

  "Do you think she's some kind of dummy?" Henry asked. "Why would she touch the razor edge?"

  "I'm just warning her. If you'd have gone to the safety class with me last month, you'd know that you always give out warnings where warnings are needed."

  I lifted the tool with a smile. "Thanks. This should work. I'll try and make you both proud." I headed quickly out of the room.

  "Someone needs to give her a warning that
she's as crazy as a rabid bat," Edward uttered from behind.

  "I wondered where you were at breakfast," I said without turning back. I reached the large entryway. In its earlier days, it had been an impressive grand entry into the manor, but the tattered wallpaper and lack of a magnificent light fixture hanging from the tall ceiling made it look anything but grand.

  "I was avoiding the downstairs area once those two arrived with their clamor." Edward drifted around the vast entry, looking almost lost in the house he had haunted for nearly two hundred years.

  "You seem out of sorts," I noted as I surveyed the walls for the perfect starting point for wallpaper removal. Since a good third of the paper was already hanging in long shreds, I decided anywhere was a good place to start.

  "I'm only out of sorts when those two are stomping about the place. Is all this really necessary?"

  I looked back at him. "Uh, yes. I don't think the Cider Ridge Inn in its current state will be much of a draw for paying customers. Even freeloaders and squatters would walk past it at the moment."

  "I'd forgotten that you fancy yourself an innkeeper." Edward had perfected the gentleman's scoff. It was dismissive without being vulgar and rude, and I'd heard it more often than I liked.

  "That's right, I fancy myself exactly that. And I'm looking forward to it." I pressed the blade against the ripped edge of wallpaper and pushed the tool up the wall. Only the top layer of paper scraped away, leaving behind the thin white sticky remnants that were firmly glued to the plaster. "Huh, this might be harder than I thought."

  "Why don't you wet the paper?" he suggested.

  I stepped back to survey the mild damage I'd done to the wallpaper. "That's not a bad idea. Of course, it'll be much messier. But it might save me some blisters." I opened my hand and saw that the small amount of pressure on the handle had turned my palm red. "I'll get a bucket of water." Before I left the entry, I looked back at Edward. His image was faded in the morning light streaming through the string of windows running along the transom over the front door. "When did you ever take off wallpaper?"

  This time his scoff had a dry laugh added to the end of it.

  A knock on the front door made Edward vanish completely, but I could sense he was still in the room. I walked to the door and swung it open. "Just in time, Lana. Roll up your—" I stopped and blinked a few times to make sure I wasn't imagining the man standing on my front stoop. "Detective Jackson. I thought you were my sister." A sudden case of nerves took over. "I was going to ask her to help scrape wallpaper." I hadn't noticed my wild and exaggerated arm movements until Jackson leaned back out of the way of the sharp edged tool as it swung past his face.

  I quickly pasted my arms to my sides. "Sorry, I forgot I was yielding a weapon."

  Detective Jackson pushed his dark sunglasses up on his head. They nearly disappeared in his thick head of hair. "I was just up at the campsite and thought I'd stop by to see how the inn was coming." He was wearing jeans and a t-shirt but his badge was hanging on his belt.

  "It's all right. It's a mess with all the work being done."

  Jackson glanced back out to the driveway. "I see you've got some work going on today. The Rice siblings?"

  I smiled at the way he said their name. It seemed anyone in the vicinity knew Ursula and Henry Rice. They certainly had personalities big enough to make them well known, especially in a small town.

  "Yes, they're working in the dining room." Just as I finished, a loud crashing sound came from the dining room. Ursula's angry tirade followed. "Please come in. I can give you a quick tour." The initial case of nerves had subsided. I decided the only reason I'd reacted with a bit of tremble in my hands and knees was because Jackson was the last person I expected to see on my doorstep.

  Jackson walked into the entry.

  "I'm working on scraping wallpaper off the walls."

  "That would explain nearly losing my nose to a razor blade." The sound of an unfamiliar voice in the entry brought both dogs bounding out of the kitchen. "Cool. Border Collies?" They took to him immediately, not that Redford and Newman had an ounce of snobbery in their big slobbery personalities.

  "Yes. The black and white one is Newman, our tennis ball pro. And the tri-color is Redford."

  "Newman and Redford," he repeated with an appreciative nod. "Well, I don't want to keep you from your wallpaper, but I thought I'd let you know we found the murder weapon in the lake."

  "You did?" I had to tamp down my enthusiasm, but it was hard. Jackson was not only letting me in on a major detail in the investigation, he had gone out of his way to tell me about it.

  "The hammer theory proved correct. The victim was killed with a framing hammer."

  "A framing hammer?" I asked, suddenly mad at myself for not paying more attention to tools. "Is that different than a regular hammer?"

  He headed toward the clamor in the dining room. "They are heavier and have a straight claw. I'm sure Henry has one in his tool box."

  Ursula nearly spun right out of her giant overalls when she saw Detective Jackson walk into the room. The fake, cheery almost flirty tone that followed made it hard to stifle a laugh. It certainly brought Henry up from his crouched position.

  "Detective Brady Jackson," Ursula chirruped as she glided over to meet him.

  "Detective." Henry saluted him and nodded his hello.

  "What brings you to the Cider Ridge Inn?" Ursula sidled up next to him. "Are you here to inspect our work? Guess they don't have enough other crimes in our town if they're sending the lead detective around for building inspections."

  "Just visiting, Miss Rice," Jackson said politely. "I wonder if you have a framing hammer in that tool box? I wanted to show it to Miss Taylor."

  It was hard to focus on the murder weapon when inside I was doing a happy dance about the fact that Detective Jackson had taken the time to include me on the details. Maybe I'd impressed him with my sleuthing skills after all. I would have loved to tell him about the text conversations, but since I wasn't supposed to have them, I decided to keep my lips sealed. I was certain he'd taken the phone for evidence anyhow, so he knew all about the angry text messages.

  Ursula practically skipped to her tool box to retrieve the framing hammer. She handed it to him with a gracious smile, a smile I'd never seen before.

  "Thanks so much." Jackson turned to me. "If you hold it you can see it's an extra heavy hammer."

  I took hold of it and my hand lowered from the weight. "I guess it would take someone with a lot of strength to not only wield this but bring it down hard enough to smash a human skull." I was so giddy about being included in this sliver of his investigation that I forgot we were not alone.

  "Goodness gracious." Ursula placed her hand against her chest in shock. "I may yell and scream at the man, but I've certainly never thought about hitting him in the skull with a hammer." Of course the fact that she voiced a vehement denial only made it seem more than likely that the grisly scenario of smacking her brother on the head with a hammer had occupied her daydreams more than once.

  Detective Jackson seemed to come to the same conclusion as we both exchanged a secret wink. "Miss Rice, we know you wouldn't hurt your brother. I'm just using your hammer as an example for Miss Taylor." He handed it back to Ursula. She was just as anxious to put the thing away as she had been to hand it over to the detective in the first place. Our conversation seemed to have alarmed her enough that she walked over and complimented Henry on the job he was doing. Henry stared at her as if she'd grown a pair of silver horns.

  Detective Jackson surveyed the work being done in the room. "This place will look great once it's done. I like working with my hands."

  "I'm sure you do," Edward's distinct drawl rolled through the room. His disembodied comment stopped Jackson cold and made me nearly break into a million frozen pieces on the floor.

  "What's that?" Jackson asked, looking more stunned than I felt, which was saying a lot.

  I shook my head fervently. "I didn't say a word."


  Jackson glanced back at Ursula and Henry. They were both deep in their respective tasks and seemingly unaware of Edward's comment.

  Jackson turned back to me. I forced what I was sure was an entirely clownish fake grin.

  "These walls and floors are constantly creaking and groaning. Some of the most annoying noises just come out of nowhere," I said loudly to the air, hoping a certain ghost would hear.

  "Those groans and creaks sounded amazingly close to the English language." Jackson shook his head, possibly deciding he was hearing things after all.

  My heart was still pumping at full pace. I decided it was time to walk the detective out. "Thanks so much for letting me know about the murder weapon. You know how I take an interest in these things."

  We reached the entry where the unexpected visit had begun. It seemed the unexplained voice was still bugging Jackson. He looked back toward the room we'd just come from and stared into it for a moment. His broad shoulders rose and fell with resignation.

  "Must have gotten up too early," he said more to himself than me. His extraordinary amber eyes fell back on me. "Just remember to leave the rest of the investigation to the police. Whoever did this is a dangerous person, so keep to your keyboard and let me find the killer."

  Some of the earlier excitement dissipated with his warning. It made his visit even harder to explain. If he didn't want me involved in the murder, then why did he go out of his way to tell me about the murder weapon?

  I nodded. "I'll keep this reporter's nose clear of any dangerous killers." I opened the door and watched his long legs carry him down the porch steps and out to his car. Then I snapped the door shut and searched around for Edward. "Smooth move there, buddy. You almost revealed yourself. And to a detective at that."

  Edward's image wavered in and out of focus for a second before popping sharply into view. He drifted to the front window and watched as the detective drove away. "I spoke only to you. He should not have heard me."

  "Really? Because from the look on his face, he heard every syllable."