Bloom and Doom (16 page)

“Maybe not, but you weren’t at the reception hall this morning.”

I crossed my arms. “Where you steered the conversation in my direction.”

“No steering necessary. He coasted right into it. Hard to talk to him about anything
but
you.”

“To quote Grandma Mae, ‘pshaw.’” I held the door open and we exited to the porch. Even though the temperature soared outside, it felt much more comfortable than the overpacked, stuffy church.

An usher handed each of us a little tulle bag of grass seed encased in peach-tinted fluff.

“I’m telling you,” she insisted in a whisper, “he’s interested.”

“Interested in collaborating. In having a business relationship.” I found a spot in the shade of a cherry tree where we could launch our grass seed without getting doused with it ourselves. Eric squeezed through to join us.

“No, he didn’t have the business look in his eyes,” Liv insisted. “Eric, you were there. You saw it, too. Tell her.”

Eric exhaled. “Liv, don’t go doing this.”

“What?”

“This infernal matchmaking.” He eased the tie about his neck. “It never works, and someone is bound to get hurt every time. Why don’t you let it go? If it’s meant to be, it will take a natural course. Like you and me.”

Liv and I burst into hysterics that drew the attention of those around us. And Eric only knew the tip of the iceberg. Liv had been matching up couples, with uncanny success, since her first junior high dance. Of course, I’d since forgiven her for pushing Brad in my direction.

“What?” he said.

“If you only knew.” I wagged my head. “Natural course. Sure.”

Shouts erupted closer to the church, and Carolyn and her groom darted out. After the new couple traveled about three feet, Carolyn got a faceful of grass seed, grimaced, and then scurried back inside.

“Daddy!” was all that we heard, and then hushed whispers, as the bride and her parents huddled just inside the open doors of the church.

The groom stood red faced, planted momentarily as he looked at the sea of faces, and then he backtracked into the church. He never seemed to manage to gain access to the huddle. Instead, he loped awkwardly to the side.

“Hi, Audrey.” Little Joe had sneaked up on me. His polyester black suit, the same that he wore for all his work at the funeral home—or maybe he owned more than one of them—shone in the sunlight.

“Hey, Little Joe. Nice wedding.”

“Yes, you did a fantastic job on the flowers. Real pretty.”

“Thanks.”

“Going to the reception?”

“I’ll be there.”

“Good.” He smiled and pulled out his invitation—printed like an old 45 record with the names of the bride and groom as the song title. “I’ll be there, too. Save me a dance, huh? I’ve been studying up some new moves online.”

I’d live to regret what came out of my mouth next, but he was so hopeful and sweet, and I was so sleep deprived. “Sure, Little Joe. I’d be happy to dance with you.” What would be a few minutes wandering around the dance floor while he tried to remember something he read on the Internet, compared to breaking the man’s heart? I was a little leery of his new moves, but if Little Joe could learn it online, I was certain I could fake it for a few minutes.

Finally the huddle inside the church dispersed, and Mayor Watkins stepped outside.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, “we thank you all for coming today. And we appreciate you sticking around to send the couple off. However, the grass seed you’ve been given is much harder than the samples we were provided, and we’d ask that you not throw it at the bride and groom, to avoid injury. Please feel free to take it with you and fill in any bare patches in your lawn, as I was assured it is very fine grass seed.

“Thank you very much for your cooperation, and we’ll see you over at the reception in”—he glanced at his watch—“a little over two hours.”

The couple then sprinted to their car, a huge boat of a red convertible with loads of chrome and fins on the back end—a fully restored 1957 Pontiac Star Chief, Eric reported with awe—to a round of weak applause.

Eric shook his head as he stuck his grass seed back into his pocket. “I don’t know, Audrey. You got your work cut out for you.”

“Most of the work is done. All we have to do is run a few flowers over . . .”

“No, I meant keeping your perfect record. That boy needs to get some gumption, or this marriage might not last much past the reception.”

• • •

I was holding
out for a cupcake.

Otherwise I would have been home in my bed, sound asleep, and would have missed the forty-five minutes of speeches and congratulatory toasts, plus the thirty seconds of the choreographed dance extravaganza that the bridal party had worked on for “simply months”—the mashed potato, the emcee called it—and that might have been better if they’d performed it before all those toasts. Aptly named because the bridal party was, at that stage, toasted.

The venue was spectacular—or a spectacle, depending on personal preference. I saw Kathleen Randolph, the owner and manager, peeking her head in a few times with a strained expression on her face. Whether she was not fond of weddings or if she thought the historic inn should only be decorated in the period-appropriate fashion, I couldn’t tell.

But for this reception, the inn looked more like it might be haunted by Arthur Fonzarelli than George Washington. The guests were seated at traditional round banquet tables, each replete with a tall peach arrangement. Diner-style tables were set up for the wedding party. Yes, 1950s chrome and Formica diner tables, and the bride and groom ate at a sweetheart table that looked like a soda counter with high chrome stools.

Instead of a DJ or band, they’d somehow appropriated an old Wurlitzer jukebox, chock-full of fifties favorites. Guests picked the songs, which were then pumped out over the sound system. “Jailhouse Rock” seemed to be a particular favorite among the groom’s friends for some reason.

Of course, the fifth time it played, another chorus drowned it out, one that became familiar as the evening wore on. “Daddy, make them stop.”

Carolyn whined her line when the waitstaff tried to bring out the food during the dance time (which explained the cold chicken), repeated it when the groom’s brother started to tell an old story of his childhood, and perfected it when guests clinked their glasses, requesting the couple to kiss.

Of course, the evening did have its moments. Cocktail hour featured diner food of sliders, fries, and mini chocolate milk shakes. The nonalcoholic drinks were provided for the kids, I was sure, but popular with many adults. I had one. Okay, more than one.

It was the cupcake tower that kept me from sneaking out. About four feet of sugar overload, it sat near the dance floor on a round table draped with peach satin. The table itself was also covered with cupcakes, and Nick stood by it almost the whole evening, chasing away dancers who got too close and those who wanted to partake too early, mainly the pouty flower girl, who still held on to her basket of petals.

I wasn’t sure which was more scrumptious looking, Nick in a suit and tie or those cupcakes with mounds of swirly frosting—in white, chocolate, and peach hues. They just sang from the tower, topped by a small sweetheart cake for that ceremonial cut. Liv had also lent a few peach roses to augment the design.

Throughout the evening flashes went off as people took pictures of the cupcakes, the flowers, the jukebox, and, if they dared, the bride and groom.

“Daddy, make them stop,” Carolyn demanded as she shielded her eyes from the flash of a cell phone camera.

“How about you go ahead and cut the cake, now, peaches?” the mayor asked.

Yes, why don’t you?

“I want more pictures first. By the jukebox.”

I turned to Liv. “I wonder if there are any more of those little chocolate milk shakes.”

“I’ll come with you.” She patted a sleepy Eric on the shoulder.

As Liv and I approached the soda bar, I spotted Little Joe, the mad mortician, heading for me, so I pulled Liv into the shrubbery. Well, not really shrubbery, more of a forest of plastic ficuses. These seemed to be disguising an unused closet. A tad too tacky for the Ashbury. Maybe I should talk with Kathleen Randolph about fresh floral alternatives.

“What’s going on?” Liv spat a plastic leaf out of her mouth. “What are we doing in the bushes?”

“Little Joe. He’s been after me to dance with him.”

“Then dance with him.”

“My feet are killing me already. I don’t need his added weight on top of them.”

“He’s a bad dancer?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never danced with him before. But how good can he be if he learned to dance from an online course? Is he still out there?”

Liv peeked through the dense leaves. “Yes, he’s still there, talking to another man with a handkerchief over his face. I think it’s Chief Bixby.”

“Oh, great. Little Joe’s probably put out an APB on me, and Bixby is going to arrest us for some obscure excess pollen violation.”

“There’s no such thing.”

“Then he’ll make up something.”

“Audrey, what if they find us here? How are we going to explain hiding in these ficuses?”

“We’re not hiding. We’re conversing.”

“And of course we like to do that in the privacy of silk camouflage. Um . . . Audrey . . . I hate to say it, but these plants are quite dusty. I think I need to sneeze.”

“Try to hold it in. Are they still out there?”

Liv braved the jungle once more. “I don’t see Little Joe, but Bixby’s headed this way.”

“Shhh.”

And so we stood, stock-still, trying to blend into the plastic jungle.

“There you are.” This was a female voice: Mrs. June’s. I could just make out the top of her poufy hair through the leaves in front of me. She stopped less than two feet away.

“June,” Bixby said. “Nice wedding.”

“So what are you doing standing out here like some party pooper?”

“It’s those blasted flowers. Must be a ton of them in there. I’d have stayed home if it was anyone else but the mayor’s daughter.”

“I thought the flowers were splendid. Mae’s girls did a nice job on them, didn’t they? Considering . . .”

“Considering?”

“Considering some rat absconded with half of their tools.”

“That’s funny, they didn’t report any theft.”

Mrs. June’s silence drove the point home.

Bixby sighed. “Just part of the investigation. I have to do my job.”

“No, I think you took pleasure in it.”

Bixby grunted. “Maybe a little. But between all those flowers at the crime scene and our other
growing
problem.”

“You still think someone is farming that marijuana around here?”

“Yeah, I do. We’ve never had such a problem before. And you have to admit, the flower girls are new in town, and they’d know how to grow the stuff.”

“Preposterous. They’ve been here five years—and a lot longer than that if you count summers. You just want it to be them so you can blame it on someone you don’t consider local. You’ve got no evidence. Oh . . . is that why you took a bunch of their plants? Using the murder investigation to get a look around their back room? Don’t you know what marijuana looks like by now?”

“I do, but that Lafferty kid doesn’t. I told him to bag up anything that looked suspicious. Still, we’ll see what the state lab says about the residue on the cutting tools.”

Liv reached over and squeezed my hand. I swallowed hard. It stank to be suspected for something like that, not to mention to be called flower girls and worse: nonlocals. But at least Bixby’s tests should exonerate us.

“So that’s why you took all their tools,” Mrs. June went on. “They were pretty worked up over that, you know. Look, if you’ve got allergies, you’ll have to find some way to cope. You can’t blame everything that goes wrong in Ramble on Audrey and Liv, like you’re on some crusade to rid the world of flowers. There are medications—”

“I’m sensitive to a lot of medications. You know—” His argument was interrupted by several quick inhalations, followed by one humongous sneeze.

A split second later Liv sneezed as well.

Mrs. June turned around and locked eyes with me through the bushes. I shrugged.

“Did you hear that echo?” Bixby said.

“Yes. Yes, I did.” Mrs. June took Bixby’s arm. “Odd acoustics in here. Say, I want to find that wife of yours and say hello.” Mrs. June was a dear and led him away back into the reception room. Now Bixby’s actions made a little more sense. If someone was growing and distributing marijuana in Ramble, I supposed we’d have means. It could be a pretty lucrative side “business,” too, considering the number of retired hippies who’d bought up the struggling farms outlying the town and now raised organic crops, meat, eggs, and cheese and sold them at the local farmers’ market under tie-dyed psychedelic tents.

“Is the coast clear?” I asked.

“Clear enough.” Liv grabbed my hand and pulled me out into the open.

“Oh, hello. Audrey, was it?” Sarah Anderson, Jenny’s roommate, stood gazing at us, tottering a bit on those high peach heels.

“Hello, Sarah.” I wiped a couple of dust bunnies from my shoulder.

“Is there anything good back there?” Sarah, still decked out in her polka-dotted peach bridesmaid dress, leaned into the ficus, losing her balance. “Just a door.” She giggled and wagged a finger at me. “Trying to get away? Trust me, it’s not going to work. Nobody leaves until little Miss Peaches gets all her stupid pictures. C’mon, I’ll buy you a drink.”

We followed her to the bar and helped her onto a stool. “Any milk shakes left?” I asked the server.

“Ooh. Good idea,” Sarah said. “It’s a little warm in here. How about a wee bit of schnapps in mine?”

The server smiled and scooped more ice cream into the blender carafe. “You?”

Liv and I declined the addition.

“I’m going to need an extra hour on the treadmill to work this off,” Sarah said as the server sprayed whipped cream on top of her schnapps-laden shake and presented it. Sarah tore one end from her straw and launched the remaining paper across the room. “I think I hate weddings now. Don’t you hate weddings?” She twirled around on the stool.