Wedding Duress (Events By Design Cozy Mystery Series Book 2) (5 page)

T
he catering truck
arrived promptly at eight. The flowers arrived according to the meticulously planned schedule at nine. The last chair was put in place and draped with tulle—in the proper shade of periwinkle, this time—at nine-thirty. Nathan appeared precisely at eleven, and was escorted off the grounds at exactly eleven-oh-three by the former motorcycle gang member turned security guard. Stacy was beginning to adore her boss, but she didn’t have any time for his attempts at wit today.

In between overseeing the different stages and signing off on different aspects of the event, Stacy thumbed frantically through her phone. Something about Heaven’s words… mystery solved… still nagged at her. The mystery, one that she knew involved the Barbers and their temporarily restrained family member, still bothered her. She knew she couldn’t rest until she sorted it out, either.

“Heaven,” she called out softly as the impostor walked past carrying piles of cloth napkins, forgetting to keep the girl’s real name on the down low but realizing that calling the cute brunette “George” sounded just plain stupid, “psst! Come over here!”

The girl put her stack of linens on a nearby table and looked around for a second before joining Stacy behind a giant topiary. She looked at her questioningly and waited.

“Tell me what you know about Diana’s sister, Brianna.” Heaven shook her head slightly, barely acknowledging she knew the girl.

“Not much, sorry. She seemed like a nice enough girl the few times I met her.”

“When did you meet her?”

“Here and there. Ben kind of had a thing for her, from what I remember, but there was the little age gap so Diana just must have made more sense in his mind. Besides, with their mother always intervening and keeping Brianna and Ben far apart, they never stood a chance. They probably only went out a couple of months, but I guess she’s pretty nice.”

Something’s not adding up
, Stacy thought, trying not to openly gawk at Heaven. Here this woman is willing to risk breaking the law to get back together with Ben, but didn’t see Brianna as competition? She’d actually called her “nice?” She might as well have been talking about which soft drink she liked better. She thanked Heaven and sent her back to her disguise.

It was time to call in a favor. Stacy scrolled through her contacts until she reached a number she was hoping she wouldn’t ever need to call again, mostly because he was more pigheaded than Nathan. He made her boss look polite and practically aloof, not in his romantic intentions, but in his absolute certainty that he was right one hundred percent of the time.

She jabbed at his contact with the end of her manicured index finger and waited with the phone pressed to her ear, moving her company headset out of the way so she could talk more quietly.

“Hi Rod,” she said sweetly when Detective Sims answered. Just because they’d worked one particularly strange and nasty case together when a celebrity wedding went horribly wrong didn’t mean she was going to put the man on her Christmas card list, but it also didn’t mean she had to be rude, either.

“Anastasia!” he called through the small speaker, using her full name ever since the day she’d refused to let him call her Stacy. “You calling for relationship advice, or have you finally snapped and killed that boyfriend of yours? ‘Cause I have to tell you that this call is being recorded and anything you say can be used against you in court.”

“Nice, Rod. Thanks for the reminder. No, I’ve got a whole new problem, and I need to call in a favor.”

“Oh really? Well, that would be neat if I owed you any favors. Instead, I’m eighty percent sure you owe me the favor since I helped sweep your part in that whole rapper-faked-his-own-death thing under the rug and out of the papers. But, I might be willing to just do you a favor because I’m a nice guy. What’s up?”

Stacy took a deep, cleansing breath and let the whole story out in a rush. She ended by telling the cop that she needed to talk to Brianna, but that she didn’t have time to try to see her in person.

“Can you do anything to get them to let her talk to me on the phone?” Stacy asked, trying not to sound so needy that she whined, but still sounding so needy that his “protect and serve” instincts would kick in.

“I think I can do that, it’ll just depend on who’s on shift today as acting chief. It’s a Saturday, so I can’t be sure. But what do you want to talk to her for?”

“I don’t even know. But something’s not right, and I’m afraid there are more pranks coming if I don’t find out who’s behind them. I’m hoping Brianna has some insight, and can tell me what’s going on before something really serious happens again.” She decided this might not be the time to mention the stranger who’d camped out in her back seat and ordered her to drive to the wedding. “So can you help me or not?”

“Let me see what I can do. It sounds like it will work, but remember that it’ll take a little while if she’s in a cell.” They hung up, and Stacy got back to work, trying to put hopeful thoughts about resolving the situation before the bride showed up out of her head. There was no sense in planning for a happy ending, so she’d might as well prepare for the worst.

There was enough to do to keep her mind well off Brianna and her family, so Stacy jumped when her phone buzzed in her blazer pocket. She didn’t recognize the number, and it only took her a few seconds to realize that an unknown number could be the answer to her questions. After all, she counted it as a source of pride that she didn’t know the number to the county jail by heart.

“Hello?” Stacy asked quietly, stepping away from the flurry of activity to the relative privacy of a fountain.

“Um, this is Brianna Barber. Someone from this number wanted to talk to me?” the girl said in a squeaky voice, nothing like the confident bellow Stacy had heard as the girl was shoved into a squad car. That protesting person was long gone, replaced by someone who’d just spent a few days in jail making all kinds of new friends.

“Brianna? This is Sta— I mean, Anastasia East, the head of Events by Design. I’m staging your sister’s wedding today.” Stacy heard sniffles through the phone, sniffles which threatened to become all out sobs if she didn’t hurry up and get the girl talking. It had to be hard, she realized, not just being in jail for a crime Stacy didn’t think she’d committed, but also missing her only sister’s wedding for a wrongful accusation. “I have some questions, and I was hoping you could answer them.”

“Did my mother put you up to this?” Brianna demanded through her tears. “Is she trying to get a confession out of me, or something?”

“No, I assure you, my only goal here is to figure out what exactly is going on, and clear up a lot of misunderstandings. If it serves to get you out of jail, and solve Sandrique’s murder at the same time, then all the better.”

“Fine. What do you want to know?”

Stacy breathed quietly for a second as she collected her thoughts. There was a part of her brain that hadn’t been sure Detective Sims could come through for her, so truthfully, she didn’t have all of her questions prepared. She decided to start at the beginning and work her way up to the present, giving the younger sister a chance to explain her side of the story.

By the time the girl had finished, Stacy was ready to kill herself a mother of the bride.

“
Y
ou do realize
you will lose your job if you do this,” Jeremiah whispered in Stacy’s ear. She nodded stoically, aware that justice had to be served at all costs, even if those costs included her income, her expense account, her company car, and the tidy little IRA she’d been tucking money into every month.

“And you realize we won’t get to sneak you bottles of chardonnay at your desk at lunch anymore since you’ll be working at the title pawn place on the highway,” Tori said. Stacy nodded again.

“This isn’t about you and Nathan not getting to be together because you’re too stubborn to date someone who technically owns the company, is it?” Stacy started to shake her head, but instead gave up and shrugged.

The day had gone well enough, up until the point where Stacy was about to intentionally destroy her own career. The preparations had been made, the wedding party had arrived, the families had brought a gorgeous bride and a stunning groom to the venue, and everything was going so well.

Until Heaven disappeared, that is.

Stacy thought back to the look of pure determination on the girl’s face—granted, it was in the pre-dawn dark of an unlit backseat, but in Stacy’s memory it was really determined—and had done her best to stay out of Heaven’s way all day. If the girl just “happened” to arrive on the property and stop the wedding, that wasn’t Stacy’s fault… after all, the announcement had been made in every newspaper in the southeastern United States. How could Stacy be expected to run interference for crazy, jealous ex-girlfriends?

Only Heaven was nowhere to be found. She must have gotten to have her say with Ben, and ended up jilted again. She’d already said that if he was happy with his choice despite the truth she had to share, she would step back and let him make his own mistakes. She must have had her say and left before she could embarrass herself. And Stacy’s heart broke just a little bit at the realization that true love sometimes wasn’t enough.

After all, it certainly wasn’t enough for her and Nathan. No matter what she thought of him and how playfully devoted he seemed to be to her, somebody had to be the adult and keep work and romance separate.

Which is probably why Stacy was about to destroy her job, this wedding, and the company’s entire reputation.

There were magical words that were spoken at every wedding, just a formality really, that magical part where the officiate asks the assembled onlookers if anyone knows any reason why these two shouldn’t be joined in holy matrimony. No one ever said anything, as it would be the height of low-class behavior to say something, even as a joke. But Stacy was prepared to. There had been something convincing about both Heaven and Brianna’s stories, something that made Stacy wonder what was really going on behind the scenes of this wedding of the century. It just wasn’t adding up…

Here goes
, she thought to herself ruefully and with a touch of sadness.
Here’s the part where he’s gonna open the door for me to ruin my life.

The pastor—the one who’d christened Diana as a tiny infant and was now marrying her to the specimen who was arguably the man of every woman’s dreams—asked the gathered friends and family if they knew of any reason why…

“STOP!” Heaven shouted in the general direction of the pastor. People around her screamed at the sight of her, blood and rust-colored dirt splattering her work shirt, and something that looked like motor oil smudging her cheek. She dragged a logging chain behind her, one that was still locked around both her ankles despite the slack she’d managed to work in their line by untwisting one of the wraps. Stacy choked back her own shout that had been about to escape, and only managed through years of Abigail’s careful tutelage to close her mouth.

“Stop the wedding!” another female voice shouted, bringing up the rear. She too was in chains, but hers were issued by the state of Georgia and were still being held at the end by an officer in a smart-looking uniform. Detective Sims brought up the rear, grinning at Stacy’s shocked expression when he passed her.

The bride and groom turned in shock, but the expressions on their faces were a one-hundred-eighty-degree separation. The groom was pleasantly surprised by the sight of both women, leading Stacy to wonder how many broken hearts he’d stomped over in order to reach that altar. The bride looked ready to commit homicide with her bouquet, her knuckles white where she clutched it in an iron grip.

“What’s going on here?” Mrs. Barber demanded, already looking over the tops of the crowd’s heads for the security detail, waving them over with a wiggle of her fingers, jerking her head at the two unwelcome women. As the muscular men began to inch forward, Stacy snapped out of her haze and jumped into action.

She shook her head at the security officers and raced up the aisle, intent on catching up to the two girls. But instead of looking relieved that the event planner was finally intervening, Mrs. Barber narrowed her eyes at Stacy, looking around quickly to see if she could find a murder weapon of her own. Stacy couldn’t help but notice the look that passed from Diana to her mother, silently demanding that she do something.

“I’m terribly sorry for the interruption, ladies and gentlemen,” Stacy began in her most refined voice, “but it seems we have some uninvited guests.” Instead of removing them, though, she waved the officer away and guided both young ladies to the front of the procession, gently shoving some bridesmaids aside to make room for the fugitive and the… the… what exactly had Heaven been doing? “Now, I’m sure if we all just take a moment to pause and reflect and give these ladies an opportunity to explain why they’ve come here, we can move forward quickly.”

She gestured for them to begin. Heaven and Brianna exchanged a look, then Brianna jerked her head in the direction of the happy couple, indicating that Heaven could go first. Instead, the girl froze, suddenly aware that she was way out of her league with this crowd. Stacy jumped in again.

“I think what this young lady would like to say is that she feels Ben needs to… do what, exactly?” she asked, guiding Heaven along and then waiting for her to answer. Heaven only stammered softly, until Stacy added, “Perhaps you came here today to explain to Ben how you think he’s making a serious mistake, and you’d like to tell him how you really feel about him?” That seemed to snap Heaven out of her panic, as both she and Ben grimaced at Stacy’s suggestion.

“What? Ew, no! That’s gross! I don’t have feelings for Ben! He’s my brother!” Heaven yelled, looking at Stacy as though she’d just suggested an incestuous wedding should be on the agenda. In a way, Stacy had, much to her embarrassment.

“I’m confused, what was all that you told me about how he’s making a big mistake, and you had to tell him how you really feel?”

“Yeah, he IS making a mistake! But that doesn’t mean I’m in love with my brother! Ew!”

“Okay then, well next time you can do your own talking!” Stacy said through gritted teeth. Brianna stepped in before any more confusing love triangles could be uncovered.

“Ben, I’m the one who still has feelings for you,” she said softly, stepping forward as much as the chains connecting her ankles would let her. Her arms were still pinned behind her back according to protocol for transporting a prisoner, but instead of making her look dangerous, it made her all the more vulnerable.

“You do?” Ben asked, a look of hope on his face, coupled with the constant mask of confusion he wore from taking a few too many hits to the head. She nodded, but Diana quickly got between them, blocking the mesmerizing view of the woman Ben loved wearing an orange jumpsuit and prison-issue flip flops.

“That is enough out of both of you!” Mrs. Barber screamed. “Where is the security here? I cannot believe my daughter’s wedding has been crashed by criminals and trailer trash!” Just then, Mrs. Curry, the mother of the groom, stood up across the aisle from Mrs. Barber in what looked like a show of solidarity, but instead, she stormed across the aisle not caring as she ground her heels into Diana’s twenty-foot train, and lunged for the mother of the bride, grabbing her around her neck with both hands and shaking her violently.

The hired security watched the two women squabble and claw at each other without moving, finally turning to look at Stacy for direction. She watched for a moment in horror, then resigned herself to the outcome. “If Mrs. Curry starts to lose, you can step in,” she whispered blithely into her headset microphone. The security guards received the message with wide eyes, but did as they were told.

Diana did her best to pull her would-be mother-in-law off of her mother, but only succeeded in getting in the way and taking an elbow to the eye, knocking her wig off in the process. She clutched her face with both hands, trying and failing to hide her appearance behind her massive bouquet. The beauty queen finally threw down her flowers and raced for the privacy of one of the upstairs rooms, followed by a bevy of bridesmaids.

Stacy smirked mirthfully at the sight of hundreds of guests recording the entire scene on their smartphones, knowing this would be uploaded to YouTube before she could do anything to stop it. She leaned against the stone wall and watched her career evaporate as two southern mama cats battled it out at the front of the church.

“I have put up with all of your mouth I intend to take!” Mrs. Curry screamed between slaps at Mrs. Barber’s face, holding her victim by her recently frosted hair. “You will not talk about that girl that way! I knew you had something to do with this mess!”

Mrs. Barber called out indignantly for help, but no one moved, not even her own father, who sat frozen in place as he watched in amused surprise. It was finally Brianna who took Christian pity on her mother and asked Mrs. Curry to stop, tapping the woman on the shoulder and helping her pat her carefully coifed hair back into place. Mrs. Curry smiled at Brianna and pulled her into a hug.

“You cannot know how sorry I am. I had no idea your own mother could be capable of such a thing.” Brianna could only nod tearfully. They moved to leave the church through a side door, Mrs. Curry holding the younger girl close to her side in an embrace as they walked. The uniformed officer looked around confused before getting up and following them.

As they passed Heaven, Mrs. Curry stopped and frowned, then softened her gaze and reached out to the girl. She dissolved in the woman’s arms, clinging to her as she cried. The three of them exited, leaving Ben to look sheepishly at the shocked crowd of guests.

“Well, as you can imagine, there probably won’t be a wedding today. But the food’s paid for, so go eat up!” he called out with a sly smile. His teammates, filling the first ten pews in the massive church due to the fact that each row could only accommodate four or five of them, cheered loudly and led the charge to the outdoor reception. Ben followed after his mother, his sister, and the woman who was apparently his one true love.