ENGAGED TO BE MURDERED (The Wedding Planner Mysteries Book 4) (8 page)

              “We’ll take your word for it.”

              “We? Who’s we?” Kitty expected Greer to name Sterling, but the tightlipped woman kept mum.

              “The investigative team.”

              “Are you going to get a warrant? Arrest Sadie? She wasn’t fond of Margie, you know. Not that they knew each other well, but I’m sure Sadie wouldn’t hold back her true feelings if you questioned her.”

              “Sterling’s already questioned her.”

              “Before or after he learned of the poisoned tincture?”

              Greer smiled coolly.

              “Kitty,” she began in a tone so tight it served as a warning. “This is the forth murder committed around your weddings.”

              Kitty blinked and Sterling’s prior concern for her, which he’d voiced during the Marcus Joseph murder, surged to the forefront of her mind.

              “The department has noticed that you can’t seem to keep out of any of these investigations.”

              “That’s because they concern me. I’m only trying to keep the weddings on schedule.”

              “You’re being watched, Kitty.”

              “They can watch all they like. I’m not doing anything wrong. And I certainly haven’t committed any of these crimes.”

              “You aren’t understanding me,” Greer went on, leaning forward in her chair so she wouldn’t be misunderstood. “You’re being watched, closely, by the one man you’d never suspect to be keeping tabs on you.”

              “Sterling?”

              “Are you picking up what I’m putting down?”

              Kitty stared at her and felt her brow knit tightly. “No, I’m not sure I am.”

              “Whether you encourage it or not, people have come to know that if they want to kill, the best place to do it is at one of your weddings.”

              “But that’s insane. I’m the biggest reason the killers are caught.”

              “Is that what you think?”

              Being questioned like this made her unsure, but it had been what she thought...until now.

              “There’s a reason Sterling has inserted himself into your life... personally. He’s under orders.”

              “But-but-” Kitty stammered, as she went flying, the rug having been ripped out from under her. “No,” she murmured. “We’re in a relationship.”

              “You certainly are,” said Greer with a cold smile. “Just not the one you think.”

              Suddenly the room was spinning. Kitty couldn’t get her bearings or her balance. The walls were closing in. Images filled her mind—Sterling dressed well to see Sadie, Sterling refusing to sleep over, Sterling only offering his affection to distract Kitty from meddling in his cases; it all made sense, and the second it did she felt her heart split open.

              Without warning she gasped, keeling over. Greer was shouting something, but she couldn’t hear it. She grabbed Kitty, preventing her from falling and drawing attention to the fact that Kitty felt numb, as though she’d lifted out of her body and was entirely beside herself.

              “He said he loved me,” she mouthed the words, but couldn’t actually hear them.

              Greer looked pained, as though it disturbed her to see Kitty’s frailty, desperation, and perhaps naïveté.

              Kitty shoved the woman off and fell toward the door, caught herself by the doorframe, gasped for air, and thrust herself onward, spilling down the hall. She cried, gulping sobs of panic and confusion, as she staggered to the elevators and slammed to the far wall inside.

              By the time the door closed, she was absolutely swimming in stunned confusion, parts of her not believing Greer, and parts of her knowing the woman was right, and all of her suffering from knee-buckling devastation, while the silent carriage swooped gently down to the ground floor.

              As soon as the elevator released her she raced through the lobby and was met with the freezing, winter chill of falling snow. She didn’t bundle up, didn’t return her hat to her head. She needed the cold to jar her like a slap in the face back into her right mind, because she was so afraid she’d lost it.

              When finally she slid behind the wheel, doors locked, she felt an odd sense of peace. Snow had accumulated on the windshield, masking all the windows around her, and Kitty felt safe except for her disturbed, tortured thoughts.

              Her cell phone was where she’d left it on the passenger’s seat. Her first instinct was to call Trudy for support. She needed to get in touch anyway. Trudy would surely be wrapped up at Delectable Desserts by now. But when she took the device in her hand and saw no flashing lights, and an even worse feeling that the one Greer had given her, swept through.

              Trudy always responded to her texts. A half hour had passed since she’d sent that message. And still there had been no reply.

              Focusing on hearing Trudy’s voice was all she could do to keep her hands from trembling so she dialed urgently, but it only rang and rang then went through to voicemail.

              “Trudy?! It’s Kitty! Where are you? Pick up!”

              Kitty hung up and chucked the cell back to the passenger’s seat then peeled out of the snowy parking lot, wheels spinning manically until the tire treads caught, and her Fiat bucked fast in reverse. She swung around, threw the Fiat into gear, and barreled forward, her gaze locked on the icy road ahead, and Sterling’s betrayal burning a hole in the pit of her stomach.

              For as rattled as she was, Kitty drove slowly and with caution through the heart of Greenwich where the streets couldn’t be plowed quickly enough. The snow had been coming down heavily and accumulating. In most areas it was nearing two feet, but with snowbanks and drifts, the city looked buried in heaps of white.

              She parked at an awkward angle in front of Delectable Desserts just as the sun sank behind the horizon and darkness swept in, bringing with it an icy chill like none she’s ever known.

              Kitty banged loudly on the glass door then pressed her face to it to see through the glare of twinkling lights that lined the awning overhead.

              “Harry! Harry, are you in there?!”

              With her ear to the glass she heard the heavy, labored footsteps of her lifelong friend.

              “Hang on, hang on, I’m coming,” he said, wiping his hands on his soiled apron, huffing and puffing to meet her intensity.

              When he pulled the door inward, Kitty stumbled in, eyes wide with desperation.

              “Is Trudy here? She didn’t answer my call.”

              “Trudy? No, she left quite a while ago.”

              “Left? Where?”

              Harry assessed her state, as she paced up and down and without direction, searching and scanning in a futile effort to find the bride that clearly wasn’t there.

              “Where did she go, Harry?!”

              “I’m not sure. She ate a lot of cake, which gave her a great deal of guilt for reasons I don’t understand. She said she needed to walk it off. Something about calories and sugar and not being able to fit into her wedding gown.”

              Kitty grabbed Harry by his shirt collar and shook him.

              “Which direction?”

              “Is she in danger? Is this about that poor Margie girl?”

              “Harry!” She thrust him to his senses.

              “Alright! Alright! Let me go, you’re scaring me!”

              Kitty feigned a calming breath that only raised her blood pressure like putting a cork on a volcano.

              “I saw her head north up the street, but I didn’t watch her from the door. She simply left after thanking me and I went back to my business.”

             
Of course he did. That made sense. It wasn’t his fault.

              And Kitty wasn’t sure if her panic was stemming from the shadow of doubt Greer had cast over her relationship with Sterling, or the fact that even now she couldn’t be sure whether that poisoned ring had been meant for Margie or her beloved best friend.

              “I’m sorry.” She made herself breathe. “I’m sorry. She didn’t answer her phone.”

              “You mentioned,” he said dryly.

              Kitty paced.

              “I have a bad feeling, Harry.”

              “Call Sterling,” he suggested. “He’ll know what to do.”

             
He would. But would it amount strictly to eyeing her like a prime suspect in multiple murders? Oh the whole thing was ludicrous!

              Still, he was her only option, so Kitty produced her cell phone and dialed his.

              “Yeah?” he answered, curtly. She could hear officers shouting behind him.

              “It’s Kitty,” she said weakly.

              “I know, what’s up?”

              “I can’t find Trudy.”

              He held his breath.

              “Sterling?”

              “I’m listening.”

              “I’m not meddling. But Trudy was at Delectable Desserts. I dropped her off and was supposed to pick her up, but I’m here now and she isn’t.”

              “Okay.”

              Kitty held her tongue, as rage percolated through her.

              “Don’t treat me like just anyone, Sterling. Don’t tell me I have to wait seventy-two hours before you’ll take this seriously.”

              “What makes you think something’s wrong? She’s about to get married. Maybe she needed some time and space to herself?”

              “With a murder investigation going on? I don’t think so. Not when we both know that poisoned ring very well could’ve been intended for her.”

              “What can I do about it?”

              “Look, I’m not meddling,” she stated, as much to convince Sterling as herself. “But I happen to know there was a third party who worked on her ring, James Kimball. He goes by Jimmy. And a few years back,
he
proposed to Trudy. I’m just connecting dots.”

              Silence on the other end as Sterling absorbed the dark conclusion Kitty had already jumped to.

              “Where are you?”

              “I told you! I’m at Harry’s!”

              “Okay.”

              “Okay, what?!”

              She met eyes with Harry, who looked pitiful out of empathy or sympathy or perhaps embarrassment.

              “Ok, sit tight. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

              Finally, she sighed with genuine relief, but when she hung up the phone the unnerving rift between them sprung a new fault, wider and more volatile than ever.

              “Sterling will be here soon,” she told Harry. “Do you mind if I stay?”

              “Not at all.” He sounded exhausted. Harry had been through this before and Lord knew it wasn’t Kitty’s first rodeo. She’d always regarded her involvement in these murders with a humorous sense of gumption, even when Sterling had pointed out the bizarre coincidence that death had been following her from wedding to wedding. But ever since Greer had put it so plainly, Kitty had been feeling the eyes of the law glaring at her from dark corners every which way she turned. Even now.

              Kitty collapsed into a chair in front of the cake sample table. Her shoulders slumped forward. Her hair fell into her face, drawing attention to how sticky she’d become when the locks stuck uncomfortably to her cheeks.

              “What am I supposed to do?” she asked, meeting his gaze.

              “That’s just it, dear. There’s nothing you can do.”

              In the time it took Sterling to drive across town to Harry’s bakery, Kitty had called Trudy seven times, called the decorator, Jenny Johanssen twice. The first time to see if Trudy had made it there on her own and the second time to reschedule the appointment for another day, each call frazzled with the illogical ramblings of a woman terrified her friend had been stolen. She’d also managed to polish off the remainder of the cake samples Harry hadn’t yet cleared away after Trudy’s departure. The sugar rush helped, but the sugar crash sent Kitty into the depths of despair.

              Then Sterling burst through the door and Kitty didn’t know whether to be relieved or furious. After all, this was the man who’d lied to her for months on end, taken her to bed and told her he loved her, all of it for no other reason than to keep tabs on her for the harrowing coincidence that people tended to die at her weddings.

              Sterling stared down at her from where he stood edging into the bakery. His green eyes looked dark for her, as though her misery was reflected in each pupil. His lips and chiseled jaw looked tense, but circumstances being what they were, Kitty took the sentiment personally. She was his burden not his love. She knew here was the last place he wanted to be.