Weddings, Receptions, and Murder Read online

  Jasper began to bark loudly and jumped up again, almost knocking me over. “Okay, okay, I am trying,” I said, shaking my head. What was in the trunk, a year’s supply of dog food or something? Maybe Bianca had stored some steaks in there or something and forgotten about them. More than likely though, there would be absolutely nothing in there. I was happy to show Jasper though, so he could be reassured and we could get back on the road.

  After a few moments of fiddling with the latch, it popped up.

  I felt my knees go wobbly underneath me.

  Not dog food. Not a steak. And definitely not nothing.

  It was the body of a dead man.

  Chapter 3

  My day at the beach had suddenly turned into a day in the grim concrete parking lot of the local police station.

  Jasper was plonked down beside me, grinning from ear to ear like we were having a great adventure. “This is just as good as the beach as far as you’re concerned, isn’t it, Jasper?” I asked him wearily, shaking my head. “Well, I can tell you—I prefer the sight of blue waves to blue uniforms.” Suddenly, the fact that it was so warm and sunny seemed to taunt instead of invite.

  Outside the police station, I stared at my new car, which was now locked up and out of bounds to me. I wasn’t allowed to even go near it, let alone touch it. Only half an hour before it had been my truest source of joy in this world. Now it was the source of all my angst.

  Not to mention the fact that it was a crime scene.

  How could Bianca have let this happen? That was my first bitter thought as I leaned against the fence, waiting to see what the fate of my car was going to be.

  Making sense of it all seemed impossible, and it wasn’t helped by the fact that Jasper was now bouncing around, wild with excitement. He kept tugging on the leash that I was haphazardly holding, wanting to go inside, but the last thing he needed to do was tear through the police station while they were questioning witnesses.

  “Sit, Jasper,” I said gently, but he didn’t obey. “You’ll probably be pleased when they come out and tell us we’re not taking that car home any time soon.”

  Sure, it would need a good scrubbing. Especially in the trunk. But I could still drive it, couldn’t I? I kept staring at it forlornly. Kept trying to convince myself that I didn’t care if it had once housed a dead body or not—I still wanted my car back.

  “Oh good, maybe we’re finally going to get an update,” I said, seeing Ryan walk out of the front door of the station. When I tried to stand up and stop leaning, I felt my knees wobble and I tried to compose myself.

  Ryan was holding something as he approached us. He handed me a glass of cold water, which I gulped down gratefully. He must have known what I needed in that moment. He placed a bowl of water on the ground for Jasper as well. I told him to take a drink, but he was still trying to get free, straining to get inside.

  “Are you working on this case?” I asked Ryan, straightening up and thanking him for the water as I handed him back the empty glass.

  He nodded like he wasn’t too sure. I smiled though, feeling a little relieved. I was in safe hands now. Only, my relief was about to disappear.

  His voice turned solemn.

  “What was the body doing in your car, George?”

  The words dropped like a heavy weight. Oh my goodness. He thinks I had something to do with the crime.

  Well, to be somewhat fair, I supposed that when a dead body is found stuffed into the trunk of a car, it is usually the owner to blame. But I had only been the owner of the car for five minutes! This was hardly a fair accusation!

  “How am I supposed to know that!” I managed to remember to breathe. “I only got the car this morning. The ink on the paperwork will barely be dry.” I pulled the business card out of my purse in a hurry to explain myself. It had Bianca’s name and number on the front. “Here, this is the number of the dealer. You can ask her yourself.”

  Ryan mused over the business card, but handed it back to me.

  “I won’t be needing that.”

  Huh?

  This day just kept getting stranger and stranger.

  “Ryan, I just got the car this morning. At eight o’clock.” Why wasn’t he listening to me? “I called you as soon as I found…well, as soon as I opened the trunk.” I gulped for air. “I’d thought you were going to offer a little more help and support than this.”

  Ryan sighed and looked around. “This is nothing personal, George. I wish I could do more, but I’m at work,” he said quietly. “I have to do my professional duties.”

  “I see.” I supposed it was better that I keep it all strictly business as well. Never mind the fact that four weeks earlier, we had kissed. If that fact didn’t matter to him, then it didn’t matter to me. “When can I get my car back?”

  Ryan stared at me in disbelief. “Get the car back? You’re kidding, right?”

  “Not at all,” I said firmly, pushing my hair out of my face. It was curly and wild on the best of days, but on this day, it was behaving in a particularly unruly fashion. “I’d be happy to drive the car right back home today if I am allowed to.”

  Ryan shook his head. He looked bemused as well as completely annoyed. “You really are a wild one, George. I don’t know many people who would want to drive around in a car where a dead body was just found.”

  “Yes, well, I’m not like most people.”

  He nodded. “I know,” he said softly. “The car is evidence. You know that. I don’t know when you can get the keys back, but I can promise you, it won’t be any time soon.”

  I stood up on my tiptoes and tried to look into the station.

  “Who are you questioning?” I asked Ryan, trying to make out the hazy figures.

  “You know I can’t tell you that George,” he said. His tone was gentle enough, but I could tell he was trying to swallow down his frustration. “I think that it’s better that you go back to work for the time being. I’ll be down to ask you a few questions later.”

  Now it was me who was growing frustrated. If the police weren’t going to do their job properly, then I was just going to have to do it for them.

  “Who was it?” I asked.

  “Who was…who?” Ryan asked, surprised.

  “In the trunk of my car. Well, it is my car, after all. Don’t I have a right to know who was in it?”

  But Ryan was practically pushing me out of the parking lot. “You really don’t need to worry about that right now. We’ll let you know what you need to know, George. You’ll just have to trust us to do our jobs. We’re here to serve, remember?”

  Somehow, Jasper and I had ended up chaperoned to the very edge of the lot. Going back to work was the last thing I wanted to do. I’d been amped up for a day off.

  “Can you at least tell me who the body belonged to?” I asked, sounding far more desperate than I liked.

  “George, this is a police matter now.”

  “But the body was found in my car! This is personal to me, whether you like it or not, Ryan…” I pushed his hand off me and he backed away, holding his hands up. I realized we might be making a scene.

  “I know it feels that way, but you really have to try and relax, George.”

  Relax?

  That was what I’d been planning to do that day, but events far outside my control had seen to ruining that.

  “Fine,” I said, pulling on my shades. I managed a grim smile. “I shall go back to work and relax. You happy now?”

  Ryan shook his head and backed away, while I pretended to leave. But I stopped right after I turned the corner and peered back around at the police station, trying to see if that hazy figure might take a sharper shape. I could see now that it belonged to a woman. A brunette woman. And she was coming out of the station.

  I blinked a few times when I saw it was Bianca.

  I wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or peeved. If Ryan had known that Bianca was involved all along, then why had he asked me what the body was doing in my car? “I guess that
’s why he didn’t take the business card off me,” I said to Jasper, who was straining to run toward Bianca. She’d been kind to him at the dealership, and he always remembered a friendly face.

  Ryan followed Bianca out of the station, climbed in his car, and drove off, while I pressed myself into the fence of a stranger’s yard, trying to make myself invisible. I couldn’t help shooting a glare at the car as it whizzed by me. He was probably speeding off to find the next witness or suspect. And, of course, he wouldn’t be able to tell me who any of those people were either.

  A voice in the back of my head, that annoying little reasonable one, told me that Ryan was just doing his job. He wasn’t supposed to give away leads and clues to me. And he was supposed to ask me if I had any idea how a dead body came to be in the car I was driving down the freeway.

  But I ignored that little voice. I had the right to take offense at such moments of heightened drama, right?

  “Georgina?” Bianca said, stumbling around the corner of the station looking incredibly shaken.

  I wasn’t sure I should be speaking to her. After all, it was either her or I going down for this crime by the sounds of it. I shouldn’t be colluding with her.

  Besides, Ryan had told me it was a police matter. So talking to her out front of the station was definitely not a very good idea. Of course, that didn’t stop me from doing it in the end.

  I crossed my arms. “What the heck, Bianca? Was that part of the deal? We struck five hundred dollars off, free power steering, oh, and a dead body in the trunk.”

  “Georgina…” She was shaking. “I didn’t know that Cain’s body was in the trunk. Obviously,” she whispered in a little hiss. “I mean, I thought that ought to be obvious to you.”

  At least I had a name now. So far, Bianca had been twenty times more helpful than Ryan.

  I crossed my arms. “Who is Cain?”

  Bianca was fighting off tears. “He works—well, worked—at the dealership, with me,” Bianca whispered.

  “I see.”

  So he was an employee of hers? And she was still going to claim she had no idea how he wound up dead, and in the car she was driving?

  “Oh, this has just been the worst day of my life,” Bianca whispered in a tearful voice so low that I barely even heard it.

  “I’d better be getting back to work,” I said flatly, backing away and pulling Jasper with me, even though he wanted to get to her. To comfort her, probably. He was that sort of dog.

  But Bianca called me back. “Georgina, the cops aren’t…” She stopped to catch her breath. “They aren’t listening to anything I have to say.”

  I pursed my lips. “Yes, that seems to be a problem with them today.”

  I glanced over my shoulder toward the precinct.

  “Let’s go get a coffee.”

  Chapter 4

  If I couldn’t go to the beach, then lounging outside in the sun in the courtyard of my favorite cafe was going to have to be the next best thing. “The usual, George?” my favorite waitress asked me. I nodded, but then I called her back. “Actually, it’s boiling hot today. Make it an iced latte. With extra ice cream.”

  Bianca was a little less jovial and ordered a strong black coffee without any sugar or cream, wrapping her palms around it as though she was freezing cold.

  “Georgina, I swear, I did all the proper checks before I left the dealership with the car. I got the mechanic to check the brakes and engine, like I always do before a customer gets the car. Then, when he was done, I double-checked everything was in order. Vacuumed it out and made sure it was clean. I don’t get to be the owner of a car dealership without being diligent and responsible. And I don’t cut corners.”

  I was quiet for a long time while I plunged my straw in and out of my coffee, letting the ice cream melt in the sun. Her story just didn’t add up.

  “And what about the drive over to my house? Did you make any stops?”

  She shook her head firmly. “No. I drove straight from the dealership to your house.”

  How could that be possible?

  “I’m as stunned about this as anyone. I was good friends with Cain. I’m good friends with all my employees,” she said, sniffling. “Well, most of them,” she muttered. Then she looked back at me like she hoped I hadn’t heard that bit.

  I just stared at her. How could she possibly be being honest with me? If she had checked the car properly, she would have seen a dead body lying in the trunk. I mean, I understood maybe missing a few bits of lint with the vacuum cleaner, or not noticing a dead fly or something, but this was the body of a six-foot man!

  I finished off my iced coffee, then started to stand.

  “Wait, Georgina, where are you going?”

  “If you’re not going to be honest with me, then I can’t help you, Bianca.”

  “I am being honest with you. I swear,” she said, staring at me like a desperate, caged animal who just wanted someone to take mercy on her.

  I sat back down. “Then how did Cain’s body get into the trunk of the car you were driving?”

  She shook her head. “I have no idea,” she whispered desperately. “But you can help me find out, can’t you, Georgina? You’re a detective, right?”

  I sat back in my seat, a little stunned. Well, not in any official capacity, no. What, exactly, had this woman heard about me?

  “I run a craft store,” I said, a little wary now. “I told you that, when I came to sign the paperwork.”

  Bianca’s eyes were shiny. “I know that’s what you do officially, but I’ve heard the rumors about you, George. I didn’t want to mention it before, it seemed in rather bad taste, especially when I was trying to sell you a car. But now that all this has happened, well, I might as well come out and say it.”

  “Come out and say what, precisely?” I asked, leaning forward.

  She suddenly looked less like she was desperate for my help, and more like she was happy to let me know she had something over me. “This sort of thing seems to…follow you around, George. Death. Murder.”

  I didn’t like the way she said that. Didn’t like anything about the situation.

  “I think I’d better go,” I said, placing a ten-dollar bill on the table. “It’s been a terribly trying day. I should go to work.”

  “George!” Brenda said. “I wasn’t expecting you in so soon. I thought you had a visit to the beach planned today.” She looked me up and down. “Well, you look like you’ve been washed up by the waves onto sharp rocks anyhow.”

  I could always rely on Brenda to shower me with compliments.

  “Yes, well, a trip to the beach didn’t exactly work out,” I mumbled, untying my scarf.

  She looked extremely self-satisfied as she peered at me over the top of her bifocals. She was going through a book of inventory, trying to decide how much new stock we had to order. “Hmm, yes, well, I knew it wouldn’t.”

  I didn’t have the energy to bite back right then. And I didn’t even have the energy to remind her that she’d better order a few hundred more Mason jars to replace all the ones she’d stolen or misplaced.

  I waltzed down to the back of the shop and called for Jasper to follow me, making sure he sat down in his bed and stayed. Then I busied myself in the glue section for a while, barely even noticing when the bell above the door jingled and a customer walked in.

  Brenda walked over to me, hunting me down.

  “Well, I’m glad you’re here, anyway. George, I want you to meet Aaron,” she said, beaming as she introduced a tall man, thirty-five years old or so, and dressed a little like he was headed to the beach himself, in shorts and a white tee.

  I really wasn’t in the mood to be making new friends. Or to be getting set up with anyone. I mean, believe me, I was shocked that Brenda was even trying to set me up. Maybe I was sort of flattered…but this was just not the day for it.

  Brenda cleared her throat. “This is the man who bought all the Mason jars the other day. Our best customer.”

  I put
down the glue I’d been inspecting. Not a prospective date then. “Oh,” I said, sizing him up. “All one hundred and fifty of them?” I asked, still a little skeptical.

  He looked sheepishly down at a list he was clutching in his hands. “Yes, well, Hannah—my fiancé, that is—decided that we were going to have a D.I.Y wedding, you see. And reception. Decorate the entire thing ourselves.” He let out a long sigh. “But it’s all a little last minute, you see, so I’m scrambling to get all the materials ready.”

  “Ah,” I said, starting to get the picture. DIY weddings were becoming incredibly popular these days. Of course, back in my day, we often ‘did things ourselves.’ My first wedding, to Adam, was entirely home-crafted. And done on a shoestring budget of about $200. These days, “DIY” was big business, and brides and grooms often spent more on the materials and ‘making it themselves’ than if they’d just gotten someone else to do it for them.

  “See, she gave me this list the other day,” Aaron said, leaning over to show me the long list of carefully typed items. “At first, I thought she must have made a typo. I mean, a hundred and fifty Mason jars is a lot, isn’t it?”

  I caught sight of Brenda standing there with her arms crossed. “Yes, it is.”

  “But it turns out a hundred and fifty isn’t even enough!” He went on to explain the logistics of the operation, how many guests they had, and how large the ballroom was that they had booked at a local winery. It was practically the size of a football field and it all needed to be filled with decorations.

  “So, you see, there’s twenty tables, each with ten guests, and then we need an additional ten jars for each table to put flowers. Plus extra—and I mean, a lot extra—for the party favors we are giving our guests at the end of the night when they leave. So I need an extra three hundred jars. At least.”

  I looked around. “Well, I’m sorry to deliver the news, Aaron, but you sort of cleaned us out the other day. But there’s another order on the way. It should be here by Thursday.”