Engaged in Death (A Wedding Planner Mystery) (14 page)

“You’re lucky.” Chief Truman stood before me, hands on hips. His bulky frame blocked me from leaving the ambulance.

“I don’t want to go to the hospital.” I tried to slide off the stretcher and make an escape.

“Hold on a second.” An EMS worker listened to my heart while another took my blood pressure.

“Any dizziness? Neck pain?”

I shook my head and gasped. Sharp needles danced up the back of my neck and made my head throb in time with my heartbeat.

“Yeah, right. You might have whiplash, or a concussion. We’ll take you to the hospital and they’ll check you out.”

I dared not move again, but my eyes strayed over Truman’s head. I had fared better than the little rental, which had obliterated a sturdy picket fence and was now embedded in a giant fuchsia azalea bush. The front end was crushed, and shards from the windshield sparkled all over the sidewalk. The air bags that had burst into action were now deflated.

I stared in disbelief through the space where the windshield had been. The little boy and his dog had safely crossed the street. The little boy must have dropped his ice cream, as his beagle was happily lapping it up when his mother emerged from a nearby house and pulled him and his dog inside.

The owner of the house with the azaleas had run out within seconds of the crash, and I’d crazily thought I was going to get a talking-to. I hadn’t realized I was sobbing into my air bag. The woman had been more concerned about me than her yard, and as I’d climbed out of the car on my own, she’d given me a once-over and gingerly embraced me, promising, “Oh, honey, that fence has seen way worse.”

“Your brakes were cut,” Truman said grimly. “We’ll talk later.” He reached out and patted my arm, the good one, in a fatherly way. I blinked back tears and tried not to be overwhelmed by the events of the day. Being threatened at work. Finding Sylvia’s diary. Seeing Garrett. And I missed my mom and stepdad. I wished for the first time I hadn’t convinced them not to come from Florida. I’d tried to hold it all together, but, in light of recent events, I’d failed miserably.

Truman retrieved my purse from the wreckage, and I texted Rachel to meet me in the emergency room, although I wasn’t sure how she’d get there now I’d totaled our wheels. I was shocked to see that the town hospital was the McGavitt-Pierce Memorial Hospital. Maybe that was why Keith had always had a sense of entitlement about him, one I’d tried to deny and ignore. He’d grown up with his family’s name splashed all over town. No wonder Helene acted like she owned everything.

I was told I had a mild concussion and my left arm was sprained. I was discharged by a hospital volunteer, who wheeled me out to wait for Rachel and Chief Truman.

“That poor woman. Her husband was murdered.” The volunteer clucked under her breath and motioned to a heavily pregnant woman making her way slowly over to an old-fashioned car that had pulled up to the curb.

“That’s Deanna Hartley?” Shane Hartley’s wife. I leaned forward for a better look, ignoring the muscles in my neck when they knotted up in protest. The car was nouveau vintage, a dinged-up, wood-paneled PT Cruiser. A man was driving, a baseball cap pulled low over his forehead. Curiosity got the best of me and I strained to get a better look, but he peeled away.

* * *

“Who would want to hurt you?” Chief Truman asked as he drove me home from the hospital.

I rode in the back of his squad car, and Rachel sat shotgun. My sister turned around every three seconds. Her mouth was pressed in a thin, tight line, her face pale and grim. She had morphed from a carefree twenty-two-year-old into our mother in the space of an afternoon.

“Who wouldn’t want to hurt me?” I wearily answered Truman’s question as I closed my eyes. It hurt to talk, to string together coherent sentences. “Helene Pierce, Keith Pierce, my law firm, Russell Carey? Take your pick.” My eyes fluttered open.

Chief Truman raised his eyebrows at me in the rearview mirror.

“Maybe someone connected to Shane Hartley wants me dead. Maybe they think I killed him. Where are you with that?” My question came out more harshly than I meant.

Chief Truman ran his hand through his thinning salt-and-pepper hair. “Frankly—”

“You don’t have jack squat, do you.”

Truman narrowed his eyes at me in the rearview mirror but said nothing. Rachel looked back at me nervously.

We finally reached Thistle Park, and Truman drove excruciatingly slowly, probably to soften the ride on the uneven gravel driveway. My neighbor’s curtains fluttered again.
Great. Now I’m the town spectacle again.

I reached into my purse. Rachel had gone through it at the hospital to ferret out my health insurance card. I expected to feel the rough, cracked leather of Sylvia’s diary. Instead, I felt my wallet and the cold metal key ring to Thistle Park nestled among other bits of purse detritus.

“Sylvia’s diary! It must’ve fallen out of my purse in the accident.” It was gone.

Rachel leaned over the front seat and gently pushed me back in mine. “You need to calm down.”

“We need to go back to the accident. Where is the Mini Cooper?”

Chief Truman raised his bushy eyebrows. “The car is impounded, and there was nothing on the ground except remnants of the windshield and front end. If anything was in that car, we’ll have it as evidence.”

I sat back in the seat and closed my eyes as we came to a stop.

“Has anyone cut this grass since you moved in?” Truman surveyed the lawn.

“We don’t have a mower,” Rachel began.

“Cut the grass? I’ve been a bit busy, what with hosing down the blood from the
murder
, attempting to clean up this dump, and trying to save my job! Not to mention canceling my wedding, trying to find a bride to take it over, and kicking out people I’ve caught trespassing, looking for God knows what. Cutting the grass—I’ll get right on that!” I burst into tears.

Truman gently lifted me out of the backseat, hoisted me into his arms, taking care to avoid my left arm in its sling, and carried me up the front walk.

“I’m fine,” I snuffled into his shoulder, getting his uniform wet. “You can put me down.”

“Just relax.” He gingerly patted my back, which made me cry harder.

Rachel opened the door, and he set me down on the fainting couch.

“Get her something to drink and eat,” he commanded, and Rachel scurried off.

He handed me an old-fashioned cloth handkerchief. It was embroidered with a small
TD
.

“Thanks.” I marveled at his solicitousness and honked into the handkerchief. All a girl had to do was cry to turn this cranky man into a doting teddy bear. “Sorry.” I waved the hanky. “I’ll wash this.” I was embarrassed by my outburst and back to people-pleasing mode.
That didn’t take long.

“Don’t worry about it. We have bigger things to worry about now.”

“Yup. Someone tried to kill me.”

Rachel returned, her face a sickening yellow. “Chief Truman?” Her voice trembled. “Can you come check something for me?”

I sat up, my temples pounding with the rush of blood.

“You stay right there,” he said sharply, hot on Rachel’s heels.

I didn’t listen, of course, and found them both in the dining room.

On the wall, above the fireplace, where the Sargent portrait of the McGavitt family had once hung, was a smeary message, written in blood:

“Ketchup.” Chief Truman licked the red substance from the tip of his index finger. “It tastes like the cut-rate stuff too, not Heinz.” He seemed more put out by the fact the perpetrator used something other than Pittsburgh’s finest ketchup to paint a threatening message on our wall than the contents of the message itself. It was half an hour later, and we had all calmed down enough to contemplate the message.

“Not your ketchup, is it?” He tilted his head in the direction of the dining room.

Truman had called Faith for back up and she was now busy dusting for prints.

“Nope.”

“They came in through the dining room window, is my guess.” He pulled out a kitchen chair. “You ladies leave that window unlocked?”

We’d noticed the curtains fluttering in the breeze over the dining room’s bay window, right after we’d gotten over the shock of the death threat on the wall.

“Absolutely not!” Rachel said shrilly. “I made sure everything on the first floor was locked. We only leave the upstairs windows open, because it’ll get too hot for Whiskey and Soda. Since Mallory found Keith in here, we’re not taking any chances.”

I tossed my sister a grateful look.

“Anyone else have the new keys to the house?”

“No. Keith, and I presume Helene, had the old set, but now that the locks have been changed, it’s only us two.”

My sister set down a tarnished silver tray with some toast and tea, her hands shaking.

“You need to eat.” She buttered a slice. “What if someone tried to kill me, not you? Maybe they thought I was the one driving the Mini Cooper.”

“The brakes worked just fine when I drove to the historical society.” I forced down a bite. It was probably delicious, since Rachel had made the wheat bread, but it tasted like sand. “They were cut while I was there.”

“Which was when?” Chief Truman took out a small notepad.

“I met Tabitha around four. I was only there for an hour. Then I got in the car, turned out of the alley, and straight down the hill.” I left out an explanation as to why I’d visited Tabitha.

“Why were you there? You and Tabitha Battles are friends?”

Rachel stiffened at the mention of her presumed rival for Zach’s affection, and as she poured tea, the arc of pale gold liquid wavered, sloshing the kitchen table. “Sorry.”

“Yes, we are friends.” I left it at that.

“Maybe”—Rachel didn’t dare to look up as she buttered her toast with excessive care—“Tabitha cut your breaks.”

“Rachel.” I dropped my teacup and tea spilled over the edge of the table and scalded my thighs. The delicate china hit the floor, the impact knocking the foot of the teacup off.

Chief Truman mopped up the table and rescued the poor teacup from harm’s way.

“She knows about the paintings, and she has as much motive as anyone.” Rachel stared at me fiercely. “She salivated over the antiques the first day we met her, and she mentioned that she wished Sylvia had donated the whole house to the historical society. She has an unhealthy interest in Thistle Park.”

“You just don’t like her because she dated Zach for years!” I no longer felt a rush of sisterly love. No way would Tabitha cut my brakes. She was helping me find the paintings. That didn’t mean she wanted them for herself.
Did it?
She’d stepped out of her office for five minutes to make copies down the hall, just long enough to cut my brakes. “She’s the town historian. Of course she’s interested in this house and whether the rumor about the paintings is true.” But I was no longer sure.

“Whoa, what paintings are you talking about?” The chief looked up, his pen poised. “Ladies?”

I sighed and, for five minutes with no pause, I wearily told him the whole tale, beginning with the note we’d found in the dining room pocket door. I tried to do the story justice, and Rachel didn’t break in to correct me. I lingered over the incident of Keith’s trespass and attempted not to rub it in that Truman hadn’t taken it too seriously. I included the Helene-induced threat I’d received at work this morning and the fact Alan Brinkman had mentioned a business relationship between Helene and Lonestar Energy. I ended with Helene’s personally delivered threat to sue me for the house while we were at the veterinarian’s office.

“That’s quite a story. But I don’t see how it connects to Shane Hartley’s murder.”

“It might not. But he’s dead, and someone just tried to kill me, too. And if it wasn’t Tabitha”—I ignored my sister’s dagger eyes—“then it was obviously Helene. She was at the historical society. She could have slipped out and cut my brakes.”

Truman burst out laughing. “You think Helene Pierce got down on her hands and knees, in an alley strewn with litter, crawled under the car, and sliced your brake line?” He chuckled again and finally helped himself to some toast.

It
was
preposterous to try to picture Helene under the car. “You have no idea what she’s capable of when she wants something. Don’t let her genteel old lady act fool you.” I shivered and recalled how she’d pinched my waist the day of the wedding tasting, stinging me like a wicked bee.

“Or maybe it was Keith.”

Truman had raised his brows when footsteps startled us.

“Keith might be a jerk, but he doesn’t want to kill you.” I did a double take as Garrett Davies walked into the breakfast room and stood by Truman. “Faith let me in.” He pulled up a chair. “You guys really need to get that doorbell fixed.”

“What brings you by?” I tried to muster a smile. I failed miserably, but at least my tears were now quelled.

“Dad asked me to cut your grass. I’d be happy to.” He gave me a smile in return that would melt a glacier. “Are you all right? I heard about the accident. It couldn’t have been more than five minutes after I saw you.” His eyes were tender as he surveyed my arm in its sling.

“He’s your dad?” I swiveled my neck to look at Chief Truman and instantly regretted it as my muscles ached and twanged in protest.

“Of course.” The chief wore an amused look.
A familiar face
. Gears clicked into place.
Duh
. Garrett looked a hell of a lot like the police chief. The chief had a big belly and salt-and-pepper hair that was balding at the crown. But both men were tall, and they had the same eyes, electric smile, and initially gruff manner. Garrett would be the spitting image of his father in about twenty years. What was with Port Quincy? There were zero degrees of separation between everyone.