Engaged in Death (A Wedding Planner Mystery) (21 page)

“It was priceless.” I leaned back in my chair and stretched like a cat in the sunshine, happy to have something finally go my way.

“Garrett didn’t even need to say anything. Judge Frank read Helene and Keith’s motives from a mile away. If I had testified, I would’ve admitted we haven’t found anything, and that’s all they wanted to know.”

Garrett and I had gone our separate ways outside the courthouse. I’d floated to my car, floated home, and floated to work today through the tunnel and over the bridge.

A knock interrupted us, and a young woman opened the door, a timid look on her face. “Miss Shepard? Can you come with me?” She might have been a summer associate.

I stared at my half-finished lunch. “Sure. May I ask what this is about?”

“We’re eating lunch.” Olivia dismissed her a bit rudely. “I’m sure it can wait.”

“The managing partner wants to see you.” It clicked in my brain. The woman was from human resources.

I exchanged a frightened look with Olivia and stood to follow the woman on shaky knees.

She led me to the bank of elevators. My heart was pounding in my ears. At Russell Carey, it might be better to get a summons from the grim reaper than someone from HR. The elevator doors pinged open with a peal of finality, and I followed the woman in. I was nearly crushed by the weight of her silence.

I stepped out into a gleaming black marble reception area.

“This way.” She walked quickly through the halls. I had to move fast to keep up.

My calves balled up with tension. We reached a closed door.

“Here we are. Just make yourself comfortable.”

She deposited me in the doorway and scurried away down the corridor, not meeting my eyes as she left.

I swallowed the bile at the back of my throat. I was in a small conference room, with a bank of floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the Allegheny River. The walls were covered with framed lithographs and charcoal drawings, depicting gruesome scenes of swirling water sweeping away screaming people. There were rivers of fire, with wood and bodies poking out amidst fire and destruction.

I was in the Johnstown Flood room. I’d heard all the Russell Carey lore: this was the room where people’s careers ended. I stared at the macabre artwork, transfixed. My heart was beating so fast and hard I could see my chest rise and fall. I settled myself into a leather chair and tried to calm down.

“Mallory Shepard.” Gordon Nagel strode into the room.

I jumped in my chair, the muscles in my neck nearly twanging. He sat across from me and folded his hands, his countenance thoughtful and practiced.

Gordon was the managing partner of Russell Carey. A friendly-looking, portly man in a gray suit, with gray at his temples and in his complexion. He carried himself like a benevolent administrator, but it was a bad sign to have an unannounced meeting with him. I was certain that before today, he couldn’t even have picked me out of a lineup of hundreds of associates.

“I hate doing this. It’s never pleasant.”

Tears had already begun to prickle in my eyes.

“The time has come to let you go, for reasons that are known to you.” He began to enumerate, in a calm voice, the fact that my work had been slipping, even before the personal problems of my broken engagement. “What it comes down to is this. Your work was found to be lacking.”

“That’s not true!” I nearly rose out of my seat. “Ask the partners I work for about my work! I’ve always gotten fantastic reviews, and I’ve billed nearly two hundred hours this month, despite my ‘personal problems.’” My jaw dropped open when I realized why this was happening. “Helene Pierce is behind this, isn’t she? What a client wants, a client gets, and she wants me out.” I was hyperventilating, but I caught Gordon’s quick swallow, a brief lapse from his litigator’s poker face.

He motioned me to stop. “You’ll get three months’ severance. Your name will remain on our website, to help you as you look for another position.” He studied the lithograph above my head, not deigning to look at me. “You have an hour to collect your things. If you’re not off the premises by noon, security will escort you out.”

I gripped the table in disbelief.

“I’ll distribute my client matters,” I whispered.

“Oh, don’t worry,” Gordon said patronizingly. “We’ll take care of that.”

He personally accompanied me to my office, where they were indeed collecting my work, the files and folders stacked high on a cart. A documents team glanced at me sheepishly as they wheeled the cart out of my office, KGB style.

I tried to log on to my computer. I’d been frozen out.

“Oh, my God.” I moved toward the door, as if to run out, then thought better of it.

The document team had left a large box for me, and I slowly filled it with my things: my framed degrees, books and plants and a picture of me, my mother, Doug, and Rachel from the day I graduated law school, beaming and assured of my fabulous legal career to be. I even found a picture of Keith hidden in a drawer. I threw this last item into the trash. It made a hollow
clunk
as it became garbage, much like my job prospects. My secretary bawled and Olivia swore as they both helped scrub any vestige of myself from the office.

It was just before noon when I got in the elevator and turned in my security badge at the front desk. I marched out of the building, and I didn’t spare a backward glance at the place that had monopolized almost every waking hour of my days for the past six years. I dumped the contents of my professional life in the backseat of the Volvo and drove like a zombie until I reached the tunnels. I tossed a glance over my left shoulder just in time to see the city skyline, a jumble of variegated glass, chrome, and cement stalagmites rising up out of a seam in three rivers. I disappeared through the tunnel and out the other side of the mountain, effectively closing one chapter of my life.

Call me anal retentive, but I like nothing more than trying to solve life’s problems with a good spreadsheet. The problem was, no matter how much I fiddled with the figures from my bank account, the house-related expenses, my student loans, and the cost of health insurance after my severance ran out, I couldn’t make the math work. The spreadsheets of doom revealed a Hokusai wave of debt cresting ever closer, and no Excel manipulation could change the outcome. I’d be able to hang on through the three months of severance. After I raided my meager retirement, I’d be officially screwed. So, I pretended this wasn’t my life and took a nap instead.

“Mallory!” Rachel ran over and fumbled for my wrist to take my pulse. It was still dark out.

“I’m fine.” I’d woken up with a start in the middle of the night and come downstairs to tinker with my finances. I’d fallen asleep on my laptop keyboard at the dining room table. The spreadsheet was filled with row after row of keys I’d pressed in with my face. “Just trying to figure out how to avoid bankruptcy.”

Today was D-Day. The day I was supposed to marry Keith. The day Kayla would be marrying Travis. I snapped the laptop shut and pushed my personal problems to the back of my mind. The sun hadn’t even risen yet, but I had so much to do. I’d made it this far through this crazy month. I could handle one more day and make it a good one for Kayla.

An insane thought skittered through my brain. What if this was fate? What if I was destined to turn Thistle Park into a B and B and host weddings and events? The main thing holding me back had been my job. And I had an opportunity to pull off a lovely wedding for Kayla and Travis and show the town I could do it. There was just the small matter of money.

Forget it.
I pushed the fantasy out of my mind. I didn’t have the money to renovate, so I’d look for another job. I shook the thought out of my head and launched into the day.

Rachel followed me around the house for the next few hours before the sun rose as we tied up loose ends for Kayla’s wedding. Maybe my sister was worried I’d fall apart since I’d been fired, but I was strangely numb. I barely registered this was to have been a day of celebration, a date for anniversaries and remembrances. I was now focused on giving Kayla the most spectacular wedding she could have dreamed up.

“Maybe this isn’t the time for this.” Rachel sat next to me when we took a break. We’d carried flower arrangements, favors, and programs back and forth from the porch to the station wagon. “You didn’t like your job. You worked really hard at it, but your heart wasn’t in it. To be honest, I thought after you and Keith got married, you’d quit.”

“I think I became a lawyer to make Mom happy.” I shrugged. “And I worked at Russell Carey to pay off my loans and to make partner. It doesn’t matter now. I need to get a new job, and fast. This place is hemorrhaging money already, and we haven’t even really done anything to fix it, just clean.”

It was true. Yesterday I’d barely made it home, to be greeted by the sight of a plumber’s truck in the driveway. Rachel and the plumber had been in the second-floor bathroom, where he had been fixing a busted pipe. The ceiling below had been dripping and stained with rust-colored water, bowing the creamy tin roof of the butler’s pantry. I’d waited until he’d left to tell Rachel about getting fired. The plumber had asked, “You okay, lady?” as I wrote him out a check with hands so shaky it was hard for him to read the amount.

I turned back to my sister. “I hate to even think of it, but if Zach can’t find a buyer who actually wants to live in this house, I might sell to a developer. Or a gas company.”

Rachel sighed. “I know you want to carry out Sylvia’s intentions, but it’s not like you can ask her permission. You have to take care of yourself. Do what’s best for you.”

I was about to agree when the kernel of a crazy idea germinated in my tired brain.

“What if I did ask Sylvia?”

Rachel giggled. “Like hold a séance?”

“Sort of. Maybe I’ll visit her grave. We ran out of the funeral, and I haven’t been there yet.”

Rachel shrugged. “It’s worth a try. D’you want me to go with you?”

“I feel like I should do this alone. I’ll go tomorrow. Let’s set up at the country club.”

Rachel gave my arm a squeeze. “If you hurry, we’ll still have plenty of time to set up. Just make sure no one sees you talking to yourself at the cemetery. This whole town already thinks we’re wacky enough.”

I offered my sister a weak smile, gathered my keys, and went out the back door.

I wandered around the grounds of Thistle Park for a good ten minutes, gathering flowers for Sylvia’s grave. We’d performed the same task yesterday after I was fired, to make the centerpieces for Kayla’s reception. The flowers bloomed in wild bursts around the edges of the backyard. There were flowers native to this part of Pennsylvania and cultivated ones, long abandoned to fan out over the many years. I arranged all of the bounty in a loose bouquet: crown vetch, honeysuckle, tiger lilies, black-eyed Susans, waxy rhododendron leaves, and some thistles for good measure. My legs were scratched from wandering through the thickets of weeds, yet I didn’t feel a thing.

This was to be my wedding day, and instead I was marching through Port Quincy with a gorgeous bouquet of flowers. For some reason, this made me laugh instead of cry. I cradled the bouquet, the big bunch of flowers resting in my achy left arm. This bouquet was closer to the one I’d wanted for my wedding—vibrant, fragrant, and wild.

“Roses look best,” Helene had commanded imperiously. The florist had looked at me expectantly, prepared for a fight. I had shrugged and allowed Helene to steam-roll me. I hadn’t thought it was worth a spat, and by that time, pink and white roses would fit in better with the traditional, staid wedding I was executing for Helene. It was fitting that I now got my wish but was no longer marrying her son.

As I reached the church, I swear I heard
Lohengrin
’s march in my head. I shook the illusion out. Instead of turning into the building, I bypassed the entrance and unlatched the iron cemetery gate. The hinges creaked in protest and flaked brown rust. The air was damp and cloying, like a wet shirt, with heavy clouds above threatening to spill their contents.

I was glad Shane Hartley wasn’t interred here and had been buried back in Texas. It was easy to find Sylvia’s resting place in the empty cemetery, crowded with old-fashioned headstones and whole rows of families with the same name. Sylvia’s grave stood out as the only one with a modern headstone.

The earth had settled a bit, yet still appeared newly turned. A few blades of tender grass poked up, but otherwise, Sylvia’s grave was untouched. I sat before it and looked around to confirm I was alone.

“Hi, Sylvia,” I awkwardly addressed her. “Um, thanks for leaving me Thistle Park. And for telling me the truth. About Keith.” I placed the big bouquet from her beloved garden by her headstone and traced the letters of her name, freshly chiseled in a sleek black granite slab.

“I’m trying to do what you would have wanted me to do. Things are kind of in flux right now, and it’ll be hard, but I’ll make the right decision. Thanks for trusting me.” I leaned back on my heels and closed my eyes. Bits and pieces of our last conversation floated back unbidden.

“You know, I married a damn fool,” I recalled her saying, bright blue eyes twinkling. “But at least I followed my true heart. The first time. The second time, I married for propriety, and for money, and to save my father’s company. And Helene married my son for his money, and you see how that turned out!” She’d burst out laughing, drawing in a labored breath from her oxygen mask. “But you’ll be okay, sweetie. You can take care of yourself.”

I’d looked at her like she was crazy for telling me this.

She’d pressed on. “It’s never too late to listen to your intuition. To change one’s mind and set off on a different path.”

“I’ll make you proud, Sylvia.” I finally stood.

It began to rain, the drops cool and fat. The hot asphalt beyond the cemetery hissed as each bead of water hit and a Jurassic mist rose from the pavement. I laughed and peered at the sky above me. I’d take it as a good sign. Rain was good luck for a wedding day, and I wanted Kayla to have all the luck she could get.

The graves surrounding Sylvia’s were older, more worn. I touched the one to her left, the limestone letters illegible from years of exposure and acid rain. To Sylvia’s right was a taller marble headstone adorned with frilly scrolls and carvings, whimsical birds, and angels. This one read E
VELYN
R
OSAMUND
M
C
G
AVITT
. Sylvia’s mother. Evelyn’s date of death was the same day Sylvia had run off.

I touched Sylvia’s headstone one more time and shut the cemetery gate behind me with a clang. I started off down the hill, my heart lighter than it had been for weeks. I was sweaty and my legs were nicked from picking flowers in the backyard, but I felt purposeful and clear.

Things might be a complete mess, but I promised myself I’d do things my way.

I’m not alone
. A little smile tugged at the corner of my lips.
I have my sister right here, and Mom and Doug are a plane ride away. And I have something I haven’t had in a while, a place that feels like home. I’m right where I belong.
I turned onto Main Street and gained speed in my haste to get home, to set up the country club for Kayla, to give her a beautiful day.