Weddings Can Be Murder (3 page)

Between bites of melt-in-the-mouth cookie, I
tried to ascertain what times Gladys was up and whether she had
actually looked out her front windows at all during the night.

“Well, I always do,” she said. “You know,
just keep an eye on things and make sure the neighborhood looks all
right.”

The tea scalded my tongue and I didn’t even
mind. I took a second cookie.

“My brother brought Victoria home after
their rehearsal dinner and stayed until around midnight. Did you
see him leave?”

“I think I must have been asleep then. See,
the thing about getting older is that you fall asleep at the oddest
times. I drift off in front of the TV then go to bed and can’t
catch a wink.”

I wanted to hurry her up. I could only eat
so many of these cookies before I’d have to unbutton my jeans.

“But last night I actually went to bed
around ten-thirty, right after the news. It was about two o’clock
when I woke up and couldn’t go back to sleep. I got up and started
my baking about three in the morning. I noticed a light on over
there, across the street.”

“Was that unusual?”

“Yes. Come to think of it, it was peculiar.
I don’t know the young lady all that well, but I do have to say
that I’ve never seen her lights on late like that. She’d told me
she was getting married. I suppose I thought she was doing
something to get ready for the wedding. Or maybe she was just
sleepless, like me.”

We could speculate along those lines all day
long and I really did need to get going. I thanked her for the
treats and edged my way back through the cluttered dining and
living rooms. The icy blast at the front door actually felt good
and I raised my face to the breeze before realizing I’d better put
my coat back on.

Across the street, I saw Ron and Drake
sitting in Drake’s truck in Victoria’s driveway. I started toward
them, pausing at the curb when a sterile-looking white car came
slowly down the street. I recognized it as belonging to Kent
Taylor, an APD detective.

Homicide. The realization sent a chill right
through me.

The car pulled to the curb in front of
Victoria’s, parking behind my Jeep. Ron’s startled face showed that
he, too, had recognized Taylor’s car. He got out of the truck and
the two of us approached Taylor as he started toward Victoria’s
front door.

“Ah, the Parker duo,” the detective said. He
seemed older than when I’d last seen him, the lines in his face
more pronounced and his fringe of hair grayer. He wore a flat cap,
like a golfer’s, and a long wool overcoat against the chill air. “I
thought that was your Jeep.”

Ron spoke up. “Kent, why are you here?”

Realizing how abrupt that sounded, I
inserted that there had not been a homicide, that Victoria was
missing. That was all.

“I can’t speak to the facts until I’ve been
inside,” Taylor said. “I came because the responding officers
reported finding a significant amount of blood and some bullet
holes. The Crime Scene Team should be along any minute and we’ll
see what the evidence shows.”

As if they’d heard his voice calling out to
them, a large black van turned the corner and pulled in behind
Taylor’s plain sedan. This was becoming all too real, all too
quickly.

Bullet holes? “Kent, are you sure?” My
breathing felt ragged.

He turned to me. “We aren’t sure of
anything, Charlie. That’s our job, to gather evidence and put it
all together and then to catch whoever is responsible.”

He started walking toward the van and I
automatically trailed along, until he spun around and pointedly
asked me to wait at my vehicle. I didn’t realize Ron had also
followed; when I turned I ran solidly into his chest.

Detective Taylor began issuing orders to the
crime scene folks using a low voice that, frustratingly, I could
not hear. Ron and I stood frozen in place, huddling there, our eyes
fixed on the police team. Thoughts ricocheted through my
head—bullets, blood, crime technicians—along with the picture of
Victoria’s white gown I’d found on the floor inside.

All the officials disappeared into the
house. I wanted so badly to go along, to explain and show what I’d
found earlier, but even I realized they would never go along with
that. Although the sun had come out, the air had not warmed much at
all. Without consulting each other, we three climbed into my Jeep
and I started the engine for some heat.

A very long half-hour passed before Kent
Taylor came back outside. He held a small notebook in one hand and
a cell phone to his ear with the other. He stared toward us as he
talked for about a minute, then stuffed the phone in his pocket and
strode over to the Jeep.

Ron started to get out but Taylor asked if
we minded talking in the car. Without waiting for an answer he
walked to the remaining empty passenger seat and let himself in. I
turned in my seat to watch.

“Ron, your registered weapon is a Beretta 9
millimeter, isn’t it?”

My brother nodded.

“Is it in your possession?”

“Well, considering I was at the wedding
chapel, no, I’m not wearing it right now.”

“Don’t get snide with me.” Taylor sounded
resigned, rather than angry. “I’ll need to test it. Where is it and
when was the last time you fired it?”

“It’s in my car back at the chapel. I went
to the gun range about two weeks ago and that’s the last time I
fired it. I cleaned it the next day.”

“Okay.” Taylor was jotting this down in his
little notebook. “Why the car? Don’t you normally keep it at home
when you’re out on social and family occasions?”

“I’m a little unsettled right now. I’ve
moved most of my stuff here to Victoria’s house, but there are
still a few things at my old apartment. It just felt safer to keep
it near me, that’s all.”

“Why does this matter?” I piped up.

“I’m afraid the bullet holes in the house
are nine millimeter.”

“There are at least a thousand nine
millimeter guns in this town. Probably more,” I said.

“Charlie …” Ron’s voice held a warning but
I’m not very good at staying quiet.

“You can’t seriously think Ron would go
shooting up his own home!”

A little smile formed on Taylor’s face.
“You’d be amazed at how often that very thing happens.”

“Wait a second,” Drake said. “Are you saying
Ron is a suspect in a crime?”

“I’m saying we have more questions than
answers at this point. We’ll do tests. We’ll do interviews. We’ll
find out what happened.” He flipped back to the beginning of his
notes. “So, for starters, tell me how you all happened to be here
this morning.”

I ran through the quick version of the
wedding day plans, how I’d arrived first, finding the door unlocked
and the bride missing.

“After the other officers kicked us out of
the house, we went to the immediate neighbors to see if maybe
Victoria had gone to someone’s house. I figured I’d look pretty
silly if it turned out she’d just run next door for a cup of
something and came home to find the cops all over her house.”

He sent me a look. “Charlie, there’s a lot
of blood in there. There are bullet holes. No matter where Ms.
Morgan is, there’s plenty of reason for the police to be involved.”
Taylor shuffled in his seat, reaching for the door handle. “Hang
out here until I get back but don’t go around questioning any more
neighbors. I mean it.”

The three of us sat in a thick silence as
Taylor got out and went back to the house. Before the door closed,
one of the uniformed cops came out and posted himself on the porch
to watch us.

“What the hell is this about?” Ron
fumed.

My mind was racing ninety miles a second.
The rest of the family and friends were still at the chapel,
thinking the wedding would happen any minute now. I’d purposely not
told Paul anything he could misconstrue, so his logical story to
the gathering was probably that there’d been a delay with the
bride’s dress or the flowers or something. The ceremony should have
started a half hour ago and I could picture the crowd getting
restless.

“Let’s think about what might have
happened,” Drake said, the one cool head in the bunch. “Victoria
has her own pistol, doesn’t she? She went to the range with us a
time or two. Maybe she was doing something with it, cleaning it or
something and it went off and injured her. But she was able to get
to medical care somehow.”

The idea of Victoria, the night before her
wedding, deciding to clean her gun sounded way far-fetched to me,
but it provided a ray of hope. I suggested we call the hospitals,
since we had nothing else to do but worry. With three of us on cell
phones, we went through the list pretty quickly, then the urgent
care centers in this part of town, receiving negative answers all
around.

“What else might have happened?” I asked
when the hospital scenario didn’t pan out.

“Maybe she heard an intruder, got out her
gun, wounded the guy …”

“And she wouldn’t call me right after this
happened?” Ron grumbled.

He was right. Victoria might have been
cool-headed enough to confront and get rid of an intruder on her
own, but there was no way she wouldn’t have reported this to Ron
and the police and—if I knew her at all—she would have immediately
set out to clean up the mess in her house. She was gone, and
although none of us wanted to voice the thought, it was beginning
to look as if someone had taken her. Dead or alive.

Chapter 4

It felt like forever before Kent Taylor came
back out, a stretch of time in which I could only repeat to myself:
she’s alive, she’s alive somewhere.

“Okay, Ron,” Taylor said. “I’ll need you to
come with me and make a statement. We’ll stop by and pick up the
gun from your vehicle, then we’ll be downtown.” Something told me
he’d found out about the argument between Ron and Victoria last
night. There was a certain firmness in the detective’s
expression.

“We’ll come along,” I said to Ron.

“You can’t ride with us,” Taylor said. “I’ve
already got my hands full here. But I suppose I can’t stop you from
driving down to the station yourself.”

He had that right. While Ron got into
Taylor’s car, Drake and I quickly made a plan. We would swing by
our house and leave his truck there, then take my Jeep to the
police station. The extra stop was only a few minutes out of the
way.

While we were at it, I’d better accept the
fact that the wedding wasn’t happening today. That meant calling
Paul again and also contacting the country club and letting them
know the reception and luncheon were off, too. With a heavy heart,
I dialed Paul’s number. Officially calling off the wedding made it
too real.

“Let the guests know it’s time to go home,”
I told him. “Take Ron’s boys back to their mother’s house. This
isn’t the time for them to become an added distraction for Ron.
He’s, um, going to be busy for awhile. I’ll fill you in when I see
you back at Elsa’s place.”

I could picture the gorgeous cake Sally had
driven all the way to Taos to pick up at Sweet’s Sweets, my
favorite pastry shop on the planet. We were
not
going to let
that fabulous confection go to waste.

“I’m going to stop by the club on the way
home and save their cake,” I told Drake.

Forty-five minutes later, the two of us were
carrying the splendid three-tier cake into our house and setting it
on our dining table. If everything went well, we would have
Victoria back in our midst by tonight and could figure out some way
to pull off this event tomorrow, with the cake none the worse for
the delay.

I repeated it to myself as I hung my
matron-of-honor dress in the closet, as I set my makeup case on the
dresser, as I stared in the bathroom mirror at the newly formed
dark circles under my eyes. Face it, things were not looking good.
Our beloved Victoria was missing and my brother was being
questioned by the police. My haggard face reflected the
otherworldly feeling in my head.

“Hon, where are you?” Drake called out.

I dabbed at my eyes and applied fresh
lipstick to draw attention away from my reddened nose.

“I’m in the bathroom,” I said. “Almost
ready.”

Drake had traded his tux for jeans and a
sweatshirt and he handed me my warm parka as we headed for the
front door. Our casual clothing felt wrong, a symbol of the entire
day gone off track.

We were halfway to the Jeep when Elsa’s 1968
Mercury, quite the sporty thing in its day, pulled into the
driveway next door. My brother Paul was at the wheel, Elsa beside
him, with Lorraine and their two kids crammed into the narrow
backseat. Paul brought the car to a jolting stop when he saw we
were about to leave.

“What happened? Where’s Ron? What’s with
Victoria?” He didn’t stop questioning the whole time it took him to
cross the lawn.

My condensed version of the story was
becoming more concise with every telling. For this group, only the
very basics: Victoria had not been home when I got there this
morning, it appeared there’d been some kind of mishap, Ron was
talking to the police about it and we were on our way to pick him
up.

Elsa Higgins, my ninety-year-old neighbor
who has been more like a grandmother over the years, had followed
Paul and now stood shivering in the wan winter light because of her
lightweight flowered chiffon dress and beautiful-but-flimsy
matching autumn-gold coat. She obviously hadn’t figured out that
October has been gone for awhile now.

“Oh, dear,” she fussed. “Poor Ronnie. Will
Victoria be all right?”

I didn’t want to even begin to address that
question so I changed the subject.

“I’m so sorry about the cancelled luncheon,”
I told them. “Maybe when we get back we can get take-out food or
something.”

“Don’t you fret about it at all,” Elsa said.
“I thought about it on the way home. I’ve got a pot of chile that
I’d made for tomorrow. It’ll warm up in a jiffy and feed us all.
And it won’t take but twenty minutes to bake a fresh pan of
cornbread to go with it.”