Wedding Day of Murder (15 page)

“Baby, if it meant keeping a piece
of you with me, I would never wash those sheets again.”

“You’re going to change them before
you go to bed, aren’t you?” she asked.

“I might boil them,” he said, but
he winked, so she didn’t know what was true. She would like to believe it
didn’t bother him to have her use his things, but germs were hard for him. She
would give him a pass for now, but someday…well, someday was a long way off.

He kissed her once more.
“Goodnight. Call me when you wake up. I love you.” He disappeared before Lacy
could reply, not that she had one anyway. The words were still lodged in her uncooperative
throat, and now Jason had said it twice. What was wrong with her? She wasn’t
going to find the answer to that tonight, and it was too late to try.
Reluctantly, she went inside and said hello to her mother.

Chapter 13

“Hey, sweetie,” Frannie said as
Lacy pushed open the door and stepped inside.

“Hey, Mom.”

“Feeling better?”

“Yes.”

“See? I told Jason you would be
fine,” Frannie said. “I didn’t take him for such a worrier. He needs to relax.”

“I’ll be sure and pass that along,”
Lacy said. She sat beside Frannie on the couch, prepared to watch mindless
television, but Frannie had other ideas. She turned off the television and
pulled out a notepad.

“We need to discuss Riley’s
bachelorette party. What have you done? Have you sent the invitations?”

“Well, Mom, since the last time we
talked about it was right before I had my teeth out, I don’t think I’ve done
anything. Unless I did it when I was delusional. But it doesn’t sound like me
to hallucinate efficiency and organization.”

“Lacy, the party is tomorrow.
You’ve known about this wedding for months. How could you have put this off?
This is your only sister and she only gets married once.”

“Actually this makes twice,” Lacy
said.

“She only gets one real wedding,”
Frannie said. “Stop being cute and be serious. If this party is a flop, it’s
not going to reflect badly on me; it’s going to reflect on you. Tosh’s family
is coming, and we’re trying to win points. You’re the maid of honor. Act like
it.”

Lacy massaged the joints of her
aching jaws. It was a terrible contrast to go from Jason’s tender affection to
her mother’s stinging criticism, but she supposed it wasn’t fair to compare.
She wasn’t dating her mother, and she and Jason were still in that gooey new
relationship phase. Would he one day be as annoyed and impatient with her as
her mother was? She hoped not.

“I’ll put something together
tomorrow, Mom,” she promised.

“Make it good,” Frannie said. “I
don’t care how much it costs. You can afford to make a nice party, so do it.”

“Fine, Mom. I’m going to bed now.”

Frannie nodded, not looking up from
her wedding to-do list. Lacy lingered, a momentary longing for some word of
kindness or affection from her disapproving parent. After a minute, she gave up
and turned away. Her grandmother met her in the hallway with an enveloping hug.

“Honey, I’m so glad you’re home.
Are you okay?” she asked.

“Yes,” Lacy said. “How’s your eye?”

“I’ll be winking in no time,”
Lucinda said.

“Grandpa will be so relieved,” Lacy
said.

“There’s cake,” Lucinda said.

“I don’t think I can chew anything
yet,” Lacy said.

“I could put it in the blender for
you.”

Lacy laughed and hugged her
tighter. “Oh, Grandma, I love you so much.”

“I love you, too, and if you need
anything in the night, you just call me. I’m a light sleeper, you know.”

Lacy did know. She also knew that,
given the opportunity, her grandmother would do anything for her. If she asked
for a kidney, her grandmother would drive to the hospital and demand to have
one removed.

They said goodnight. Lacy washed
her face, brushed her teeth, took out her contacts, and crawled between clean
sheets.
Grandma,
she thought. Even
though she’d had her own surgery and could only use one eye, she had spent the
last few days changing Lacy’s sheets and baking.
You are loved,
her grandfather had said. Lacy had never felt it
more keenly. She was drifting to sleep when she heard it, a slight scratching
sound on the window. She chalked it up to a branch and fell back asleep.

A bell jangled. Somewhere in the
fog of sleep, she understood that it was the cat collar from Jason. Was she
still wearing it? No, it was on the chair by the foot of the bed. Strange that
it would ring all by itself.
Wait, it
wouldn’t.
She sat upright and saw a shadowy figure standing beside her.
Slowly, a hand reached out and rested on her leg.

“Um, that’s not okay,” she said.
Her voice quavered. She reached for her phone on the nightstand. The figure
retreated and fled back through the window. She punched Jason’s number.

“’Lo’,” he said, sounding so
exhausted that even in the midst of her panic she felt guilty for waking him.
If she waited to tell him, however, he would be irate.

“Someone was in my room.”

There was a thump, a groan a
clatter, and then he was back. “What?”

“What happened?”

“I fell out of bed. What happened
to you? Are you okay? Is someone there now?”

“No. They came in my window and,
um, touched me.”

“Touched you?” he roared, and she
realized how bad it sounded.

“No, not like that. I mean they
touched my leg. It was weird.”
And
terrifying.

“I’m going to need a description,”
he said.

“It was kind of a gentle caress,”
she said.

“A description of the person, Lacy,
not the touch,” he said.

“Oh. I don’t know. It was dark, and
I wasn’t wearing my glasses.”

“Male or female?”

“Probably. Does ‘shapeless blob’
help you in any way?” she said.

He stifled a sigh. “There’s a
uniform at your door. Let him in and try hard to think of anything you can
remember to tell him. Another uniform is combing the neighborhood, and I’ll be
there in less than five minutes.”

“Don’t drive crazy,” she said.

He grunted and disconnected.

“By the way, I love you. I’m
completely crazy about you. I can’t imagine spending a minute of my life
without you. I accidentally drew your bare chest on a tax form last week
because it’s basically all I think about. If we weren’t dating, I would be
labeled a stalker.” Why couldn’t she say any of that when he was actually
listening? Why were the words perpetually lodged in the back of her throat?

The patrol unit knocked on the
front door; she grabbed her glasses and she scurried to answer. Her mother
still sat on the couch, making notes on a seating chart.

“Who could that be at this hour?”
she muttered, not looking up. Lacy didn’t answer.

“Are you okay?” It was Clyde, one
of her favorite deputies.

“I’m fine. Come in.”

“What can you tell me?” He pulled
out his notebook and pencil, prepped to write.

“Not much more than I told Jason,
unfortunately. I heard a soft scraping sound and woke up to see someone
standing in my room. I didn’t get a good look. It all happened so fast.”

“I understand,” Clyde said. “Let’s
see your room.”

“Lacy, what’s this about?” Frannie
said. She set aside the seating chart and followed them to the small back
bedroom, the one that now tried to contain Lacy and her things since Frannie’s arrival.
It was bursting at the seams, a jumble of clothes, shoes, and jewelry. “It’s a
mess in there,” Frannie called. “Lacy’s never been able to keep a clean room.”

Clyde ignored her and stepped to
the window. He grunted. Lacy understood from Jason that the grunt was male
cop-speak for, “I found something.”

“How’s it going?” Jason asked. He
arrived and surveyed Lacy. Then he surveyed the room before purposely shutting
it out. To him, the mess was probably equivalent to a loud buzzing sound.

“Take a look at this,” Clyde said.
Jason went over to assess and made his own speculative grunt.

“What is it?” Lacy asked.

“The window was definitely
jimmied,” Clyde said. “By these chips in the paint, I’d guess they used a putty
knife. I’ll go take a look in the bushes and see if I can find it. Maybe I’ll
get lucky and there will be some prints.”

“There won’t be,” Lacy said. “He or
she was wearing gloves. Oh, I guess that’s part of the description. Dark blob
with gloves. And a hood. Or maybe it was a ski mask. The head was definitely
covered. Or the hair was dark and shaggy.”

“What are you talking about?”
Frannie asked. Clyde eased by them and went outside.

Jason turned in a slow circle and
scanned the room. He pressed his hands over his ears, whether to block out Frannie
or the mess Lacy couldn’t be sure.

“The intruder didn’t do this,” Lacy
confessed. “The closet is filled with Grandma’s things, and I don’t have
anywhere to put stuff.” It was a lame excuse. The truth was that Frannie was
right; she had always had a hard time keeping her bedroom clean. It was an ugly
truth both she and Jason realized but didn’t talk about. If there was a someday
for them, it would have to include a shared bedroom. Either Lacy would have to
learn to keep things clean or Jason would kill her because she didn’t foresee
him changing his ways anytime soon.

Frannie huffed impatiently. Without
conscious effort, Jason began picking up. It was as if he were a robot who had
been set to auto-clean mode. “Lacy,” Frannie said. “What is this about?”

“Someone came into my room through
the window,” Lacy said. She watched as Jason began folding her shirts, wrapping
them around a large book to make them uniform. He was like a Gap employee gone
wild.

“Why is he doing that?” Frannie
asked. She stared at Jason as he moved on to another stack of shirts and began
sorting them by color.

“He’s practicing for the shirt
folding Olympics,” Lacy said.

“What?” Frannie said.

“He just likes to clean, Mom. It’s
not that big of a deal.”

“It is if he plans to mar…” Frannie
began, but Lacy interrupted with a loud yelp.

“Mom, do you think the intruder
might have gotten into your room, too? All of Riley’s centerpieces are in
there. You’d better go check them.”

“Her veil and wedding dress are
there, too!” Frannie cried before scurrying out the door. Lacy heaved a little
sigh of relief. All she needed was to have her mother mention marriage in front
of Jason. At least he wouldn’t run screaming out the door until after he
cleaned her room.
 

She sat on the chair he’d unearthed
and watched him work. “You’re a cleaning hummer,” she remarked.

“That’s not a thing,” he said.

“I think you invented it. I’ve
never met anyone else who hums while he cleans. What’s going on in your mind
while you do that?”

“I don’t know. It’s a good feeling
to put things right. Don’t you ever get that?”

“Sure,” she lied. She cleaned
because she had to, because it was the responsible and hygienic thing to do,
not for the sheer joy of cleaning.

“Are you okay?” he asked as he
matched and rolled her socks. She lacked the courage to tell him they weren’t
clean.

“Yes. It was freaky, but nothing
happened.”

“I’m not so sure about that,” Jason
said.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

He moved on to a pile of underwear and
began folding them into tiny little squares. Lacy was glad they were clean,
though she was disturbed by how little passion they provoked. When a man held
his girlfriend’s underpants, should efficiency be the driving emotion? For all
the attention Jason gave them, they might as well have been a stack of
pillowcases. “When you were gone the first time, you had a bottle of water. You
said someone gave it to you. Do you remember anything about that?”

“No. I remember bits and pieces of
everything, but it’s a nonsensical jumble. What kind of water was it?”

“Does that matter?” He picked up a
bra and showed it more interest than her underpants. She snatched it away and
sat on it.

“Grandma heard a radio sermon on
caring for the environment. She bought earth-friendly recyclable water
bottles.”

“This was not one of those. It was
a store bought generic brand.”

“That definitely didn’t come from
this house,” she said. “Where did I get it?”

“There are two options: either you
found it along the way or someone gave it to you.”

“Do you really think someone took
me and locked me in the baseball shed?” she asked.

“I didn’t, but now I don’t know.
This is not good.” With nothing left to fold, he started making her bed.

“I’m getting back in that in a
minute,” she said.

“It will feel even better if it’s
made,” he said. “Trust me.”

There was no arguing with him when
he was in an obsessive cleaning mood. “Who would take me? And why?”

“I don’t know. Somehow this relates
to the murder. When was the last time you swept under this bed?”

“Ten minutes before you arrived. I
do it every night before bed,” she said.

He nodded as if that were a
reasonable thing to say and not a joke. Frannie ambled back in and stood in the
doorway. “Lacy, I still don’t understand what this is about. Why was someone in
your room?”

“I don’t know, Mom,” Lacy said.

“Why would someone break in here?”
Frannie asked. “There’s nothing of value.”

“There’s one thing,” Jason said.

“What?” Frannie asked.

“Lacy,” he said.

She laughed. “What are you talking
about? Why would anyone steal Lacy?”

“I don’t know, but I’m not leaving
here tonight.”

“I’d like to be there when you run
that by Mom,” Frannie said.

“Fine,” Jason said, rising to the
challenge. “Are you coming, Lacy?”

“No, I’m going to stay here and
curl into the fetal position until the conflict stops,” Lacy said.

“There won’t be any conflict,”
Jason promised. He squeezed her knee as he breezed past her. He returned less
than three minutes later and began taking off his shirt. Next door, Frannie’s
door closed with a bang. Lacy watched in amazement, stunned, until he took off
his pants.

“Stop. What are you doing?” She
shot to her feet. Her bra caught on her back and dangled behind her like a
lumpy tail.

“Going to sleep. I talked to Clyde.
They haven’t found anything, but they’re going to stay in the area. They’ll
call if they need anything. I’m exhausted. Aren’t you?”

“Yes, but you’re in your underwear
in my grandma’s house,” she said. “We’re ten seconds from being struck by
lightning. We’re going to be smited.”