Groomed for Murder

by Laura Durham

  “Not the rabbi,” Richard said. “He’s the new officiant. The original officiant is the one who was killed. Cher Noble.”

  Buster’s left eyebrow raised slightly, and the black motorcycle goggles on the top of his head followed. “At least that explains why we don’t have a chuppah for the ceremony. I saw the rabbi and started to worry we’d missed something on the proposal.”

  Mack took Buster’s hand. “We should say a prayer for Miss Noble.”

  Buster and Mack were part of a Christian biker gang and included all of us on their weekly prayer chain. Before I could tell Mack we didn’t have time for a prayer vigil, the entrance doors to the house swung open below us, and Detective Mike Reese stepped inside, followed by a pair of paramedics carrying bright-orange duffel bags.

  Reese wore black pants and a gray shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. I felt my stomach flutter as he moved his sunglasses to the top of his head and looked up at me, a dark curl falling onto his forehead.

  “Looks like someone’s prayers were answered.” Mack elbowed me as the handsome detective began walking up the steps toward us.

  “That’s my cue to go find the rabbi,” Richard said. “The last thing we need is to lose another officiant. And maybe I can talk him into the wig while I’m at it.”

  I started to tell Richard not to scare off our only chance at a legal wedding ceremony, but he’d already spun on his heels and left. I would have to talk to him about his jealousy issues as soon as I dealt with this wedding crisis.

  When Reese got to the top of the landing, he leaned down and gave me a quick kiss on the cheek. “You okay?” he asked, resting a hand on the small of my back.

  “I’m fine.” I gave him as much of a smile as I could muster.

  He shook Buster’s and Mack’s hands while I tried to ignore both men’s giddy expressions. Apparently my dating life had been on their prayer list for a long time, and they took shared credit—along with the Almighty and the other bikers on their prayer chain—for the fact I now had a hot boyfriend.

  “Where’s the body?” Reese asked.

  I pointed to the closed library doors and watched while he led the paramedics and another man I assumed was a plainclothes detective to the crime scene. They left the doors open, but I didn’t try to watch. I knew Cher was dead, and seeing the paramedics work on her was not a visual I wanted to add to the day’s memories.

  “How was she killed?” Mack whispered to me as blue uniformed officers filed into the house and up the stairs.

  “Strangled,” I said. “With her own boa.”

  Buster shook his head. “Who would want to kill a wedding officiant?”

  Mack’s eyes widened. “You don’t think we’re all in danger, do you? The killer could still be on-site.”

  I doubted someone would kill a person and stick around. Unless they were involved in the set-up—an unsettling thought. “I don’t think it has anything to do with the wedding. None of the other vendors knew Cher, and the schedule I sent out to the team didn’t have her name on it. I don’t usually put the officiant on the vendor list.”

  “We had no idea who was performing the ceremony,” Buster said. “Not that we need to.”

  “So no one here would have known the victim would be here,” Mack said.

  “Well, not no one.” I turned my body so I faced away from the activity in the library. “Kate and I both knew since we went with the couple to help pick her out. Richard knew because it came up during our three tastings, and Fern also knew.”

  “How did Fern know?” Mack asked. “Does he normally get involved with the ceremony?”

  “Never.” I tapped my chin as I tried to remember how Fern had known about Cher Noble. “But apparently Fern was also friends with the victim. He was pretty hysterical when he found out she’d been killed.”

  “So the only individual here with a personal connection to the victim was your friend Fern?” Reese’s voice made me jump.

  When I turned around and saw him with his notebook out, my mouth went dry. Had I implicated one of my best friends in a murder?

  Chapter 4

  “You’re going to have to tell Fern,” Kate said as we crossed under the brick archway leading from the linden grove to the house next door.

  I spotted the band’s white box truck idling in the alley between the houses as empty cases were loaded on. I breathed in the exhaust fumes and coughed. “Tell him what?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. That you let slip to your boyfriend he was connected to the victim, and now he’s a person of interest in the case.”

  I held up a finger. “First of all, the information Fern and Cher Noble were friends would have come out eventually. And second, Reese doesn’t think he has anything to do with the murder. He thinks Fern might have some special insight into the victim and why she might have been killed.”

  “You keep telling that to yourself.” Kate held up a glass vial. “In case Fern doesn’t see it your way, I brought the smelling salts.”

  I heard the crystals rattling against the glass as she shook it. “Smelling salts? Seriously?”

  “Don’t knock the smelling salts. They came in handy when the bridesmaid passed out in the church, and when the mother of the bride had an episode and didn’t want to walk down the aisle.”

  Over the years, we’d added items to our emergency kits until they contained almost everything you could possibly need on a wedding day. Kate’s kit contained a few items mine didn’t, namely smelling salts and Valium. To be fair, both had been used more than once to great effect.

  We reached the paved back terrace of the White-Meyer house, and I scanned the new ceremony setting created by the folding chairs and repositioned floral urns. Unfortunately, this house didn’t have an expansive lawn or towering tree to add to the garden feel—only beige paving stones overlooking the tops of houses—so the decor appeared sparse.

  I pulled out my phone. “Do you think Dale could get some trees over here in time if I called him?”

  “I don’t know,” Kate said. “It’s a Saturday in the spring. I’m sure our plant guy is busy installing palms and ficus trees all over the city.”

  I dropped my phone back into my dress pocket. “You’re right. I guess our biggest problem isn’t the ceremony backdrop lacking in greenery.”

  “I’d say the police investigation next door is a slightly bigger issue.” Kate paused and stepped out of one of her heels, dropping her height down a few inches. “By the way, does your cop boy toy know we’ve moved the entire wedding next door and plan to go ahead with it?”

  I swatted her arm and looked behind me to make sure no one had heard. “He’s not my boy toy.”

  “You seemed uncomfortable with the word boyfriend, so I thought I’d try out some others.”

  “Boyfriend is better,” I said. I hated to think of Reese’s smug smile if he heard himself referred to as my boy toy.

  “Fine. Does your boyfriend know about our switcheroo scheme?”

  “I told him the wedding was next door. I may not have mentioned it wasn’t always next door.”

  Kate raised one eyebrow. “Or we moved everything over?”

  “Or that part,” I said.

  “Excellent.” Kate held onto my arm as she slipped her foot back inside her high heel. “I look forward to the evening’s fireworks when he finds out.”

  “There won’t be fireworks this time, because I have no intention of getting involved in this case,” I said.

  “When have I heard that before?” Richard strode toward us from the back doors of the historic home.

  “I may have gotten overzealous in the past, but this time I’m serious,” I said once Richard reached us. “My days of poking around in criminal investigations are over.”

  Richard and Kate both stared at me without saying anything. It was true we’d had a surprising bit of bad luck when it came to dead bodies turning up at our weddings. It could also be argued I had a habit of getting sucked into the ensuing in
vestigations, and I’d sucked my friends in right along with me.

  I held up my palms in a gesture of surrender. “This time I promise. Anyway, if I did get involved, Reese would never talk to me again, which would make dating him a lot harder.”

  Kate tapped a finger against her chin. “But not impossible. I could go a long time ‘not talking’ to someone as hot as Reese.”

  Richard rolled his eyes. “Forget about the police for a second. We have a wedding starting in thirty minutes, and I had no luck with the rabbi.”

  I looked down and noticed he held a black wig in his hands. “That didn’t come from Cher Noble did it?”

  Richard gasped. “Are you suggesting I snatched a murdered drag queen bald-headed while she lay dead on the floor?”

  I paused for a moment. “Did you?”

  “No.” Richard put a hand to his heart before lowering his voice. “I couldn’t. Too many cops.”

  Kate eyed him. “Then where did you get the wig?”

  “Do you really want to know the answer?” Richard asked.

  I held up a hand. “I, for one, am fine not knowing.”

  Richard smoothed the long black hair of the wig. “It doesn’t matter. Rabbi No-Fun refused to wear it.”

  He pointed to a small man in a blue suit standing between the two large urns of flowers and arranging items on the round ceremony table between them.

  I put my fingers to my twitching eyelid as I watched Rabbi Hoffman set out the kiddush cup and the glass for the couple to break at the end of the ceremony. I twisted to face Kate. “Did you tell him the couple was Jewish?”

  Kate bit her lower lip. “I didn’t say they weren’t Jewish.”

  “This should go over well,” Richard said.

  Even if our balding rabbi decided to don a Cher wig, I felt confident our grooms would notice part of their ceremony was in Hebrew.

  “Hey, you said find a legal officiant.” She waved a hand in the rabbi’s direction. “Voila.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” I said with more confidence than I felt. “At least we have someone to perform the ceremony. The important thing is our grooms get married today.”

  “Speaking of grooms, shouldn’t we check in with ours?” Kate asked. “If the champagne isn’t doing the trick, I’ve got backup methods.”

  Richard glanced at Kate’s glass vial. “Your smelling salts?”

  She patted her dress pocket. “And Valium. We crush a few of these babies into their bubbly and they won’t notice if the pope marries them.”

  “Let’s hold off on drugging our clients unless it’s absolutely necessary,” I said. “Let’s call the Valium the last resort plan.”

  “Suit yourself,” Kate said. “But I think we’re fast approaching last resort territory.”

  As we walked into the back doors of the White-Meyer house and crossed through the library, I had to admit Kate was right. So far, this was far from a smooth wedding day. I shouldn’t have been surprised. The more high-maintenance and micromanaging the client, the greater the chances of disaster. It never failed.

  I took a breath to steel myself as Richard opened the tall wooden doors leading into the side dining room where he’d stashed the wedding party and Fern. For a quick solution, Richard had done an impressive job. A rectangular table draped in a black-and-white wedding linen, topped with silver champagne buckets and trays of hors d’oeuvres, stood at one end of the room. Light poured in from the many floor-to-ceiling windows throughout the room, and Fern stood by one as he styled the hair of a blond woman in a shimmery gold cocktail dress. Other women—equally blond and all wearing various shades and lengths of gold—sat around a few cocktail tables with two tuxedo-clad men.

  “We’re almost ready,” Fern called out when he saw us. “Don’t these tramps look flabulous?”

  “Does he mean fabulous or is that a new hip word I don’t know?” I whispered to Kate.

  “I think he’s drunk,” Richard said under his breath. “Which is an improvement over sobbing and wailing, so I’ll take it.”

  I eyed Fern’s red-rimmed eyes and the empty champagne flute on the table next to him. I made a quick scan of the room, but no one else appeared to be drunk. Then, again, no one else knew about the dead officiant.

  Stefan stood and walked over to us. He was tall, blond, and tanner than anyone should be in early spring in Washington, which made his ice-blue eyes look even more striking. He was too Nordic for my taste. I preferred his slightly shorter, broader, and dark-haired partner, Jesse, who had warm brown eyes, naturally bronze skin, and was a thousand percent less terrifying. Jesse gave me a finger wave from where he sat.

  “I am not happy about this change, Annabelle.” Stefan folded his arms tightly across his chest.

  “I understand completely,” I said. Validating my brides and grooms was key to their happiness. I’d learned that early on in my career as a wedding planner. “If there was any way to avoid it, you know I would have.”

  “Are we going to be behind schedule?” he asked, only slightly mollified.

  “We’ve managed to move everything over, so we should be able to start the ceremony right on time.” I watched as Richard walked over to the champagne buckets and pulled out the empty bottles. It looked like they were all empty, which was either a good thing or a bad thing.

  “I hope Meridian doesn’t expect me to pay for this.” Stefan waved his arms in the air. “This is not what we contracted for.”

  “True,” I said, “but some things are out of the house’s control, and Mary was flexible in letting us take over White-Meyer house on short notice.”

  “Because their air conditioning broke,” Stefan said. “That’s not our fault.”

  I shot Richard a look as he backed out of the room with his arms full of empty champagne bottles. “About that . . .”

  Jesse jumped up from the table. “Is it fixed?”

  “Not exactly,” I said. “It was actually never broken. Richard wanted to spare you the truth, but in light of everything, I think you need to know.”

  Fern gave a cross between a sob and a hiccup, and both men looked at him before turning back at me.

  Kate elbowed me. “Rip off the Band-Aid, Annabelle.”

  “The reason we had to move houses isn’t because of broken AC. There was a murder, and Meridian House is now an active crime scene.”

  Jesse’s hand flew to his face as he sucked his breath in sharply, while Stefan blinked hard a few times. I ignored Fern’s soft crying and the groomsmaids’ shocked murmurs.

  “Who was murdered?” Stefan asked.

  “Cher Noble,” I said. “Your officiant.”

  Jesse shook his head. “This is horrible. Poor Cher.”

  “So who’s going to perform our ceremony?” Stefan asked while his fiancé looked slack-jawed at him.

  I managed a weak smile but could feel my cheeks shaking from the strain of the manufactured expression. “We did find a replacement, but we were not able to locate another drag queen licensed to perform marriage ceremonies.”

  Jesse reached out and squeezed my arm. “I’m sure it will be fine. Thank you for finding someone so quickly, although I’m not sure if we should even go ahead with the ceremony at this point.”

  Stefan cut his eyes to him. “Of course we’re going through with it. We have one hundred and fifty guests on their way, and we will not disappoint them.”

  Jesse opened his mouth as if to protest then seemed to think better of it.

  Stefan turned to me. “I am not happy about this turn of events.”

  “Neither is Cher Noble,” muttered Kate, who had less patience for Stefan than I did.

  “Clearly, this is not ideal,” I said, “but we’re working with the police to keep your wedding as unaffected as possible.”

  “If it wasn’t for Annabelle’s connections, you’d all be in the middle of police interrogations right about now,” Kate said. “I don’t think you’d like us to tell all your society guests you’ve been taken down to
the police station would you?”

  Stefan’s eyes widened for a moment. “Obviously we’re grateful that’s not happening.”

  The door behind us opened, and Reese’s head appeared. “Can I talk to you?”

  “That’s the detective on the case,” I said. “I’ll be right back.”

  Kate pulled a pair of yarmulkes out of her dress pocket and slapped them in Stefan’s hand. “Here. You and Jesse are going to need to wear these for the ceremony.”

  Both grooms gawked at the black beanies as Kate and I turned around and slipped out of the room.

  “Is everything okay?” I asked once I’d pulled the wooden door closed.

  Reese cocked an eyebrow at me.

  “She means aside from the murder,” Kate said.

  “I’m going to need to talk to Fern,” Reese said. “Especially if he’s the only person who knew the deceased.”

  I glanced toward the doors. “Any chance we could wait until after the ceremony?”

  Reese looked at me.

  “Maybe until we get the grooms down the aisle?” Kate asked.

  Reese let out a long breath. “We have a victim who has been violently murdered. A murder trumps your wedding ceremony.”

  “I know, I know.” I let my shoulders slump. “I can’t imagine who could have gotten mad enough at our officiant to strangle her. If she’d already done the ceremony and messed up, I would have said our groomzilla could have done it, but he would never do anything to ruin the wedding he’s spent so long planning.”

  “And I don’t think strangling with a feather boa is his style,” Kate said. “Stefan would definitely shoot someone.”

  “I have news for you.” Reese pointed a finger at Kate and then me. “This is not to be shared with anyone else, but the victim wasn’t strangled with her boa.”

  “What?” Kate looked fixedly at him. “Why was her face purple and her eyes bugged out and bloodshot?”

  “Oh, she was choked alright, but not with a boa. Her neck had much deeper cuts than a bunch of feathers could make. Whoever killed her used wire.”