Wildflower Wedding

by Becki Willis

  The woman’s ramblings made no sense, and her mood swings were concerning. Madison had gone along so far, but now Collette wanted both her hands over the vent hole. “What are we doing, Collette?” she practically snapped. “I don’t understand why—”

  “We’re almost done. Derron, if you could just slip your hands a bit further… yes, like that. I’ll use this rope to secure everything in place.”

  Madison couldn’t see what was happening. Neither could Derron, with his hands beneath the cannon as they were. He felt her drape a rope gently against his hands, the fibers tickling the tender skin along his wrists.

  “Give me just a minute, and I’ll be done.” Collette did something with the thin length of rope, chattering as she worked. “This is a crucial step in the process. I suppose all steps are crucial, even the ones that seem so mundane. Without changing your positions, can either of you read the label on that top box? Can you tell what powder strength we’re using?”

  Madison had to twist a bit to read the label. She didn’t see anything about powder strength, just a warning about being Highly Flammable. As she squinted to read the words beneath Extreme Danger, she felt something cold touch her wrists. Madison heard a double snap, followed closely by Derron’s exclamation.

  When Derron attempted to move, the loose ropes against his wrists immediately tightened into a constrictor knot. “What the—!”

  “Now, now,” Collette chided in a playful voice. “Watch your mouth. There are ladies present.”

  Madison stared in horror at the handcuffs around both her wrists. Even as she jerked, Collette snapped another lock in place. A chain circled the circumference of the barrel and hooked onto the handcuffs, effectively binding her to the cannon.

  “Collette! What are you doing?” Madison cried.

  “I’m tying up a few loose ends before I collect on Jeannie’s inheritance. I mentioned that earlier, didn’t I? With Bobby Ray dying so suddenly, I become the sole beneficiary.”

  Derron was aghast as he put the pieces together. “You killed your husband so you could collect on his mother’s insurance policy?” His voice rose on the last words.

  “Not an insurance policy, you imbecile. Inheritance. There’s a difference.” Her sniff sounded truly offended.

  Madison tried reasoning with her. “Collette, think this through. You can’t seriously intend—”

  “Believe me. I’ve thought of nothing else for the last six months. It started out so simple—get the mother-in-law out of the picture, inherit the millions, then have the hubby go into anaphylactic shock and kick the bucket—but, I swear, it’s just been one complication after another.” She shook her head like a person vexed with bad luck. She could have been naming off minor complications in her day, not reasons she had committed murder.

  “First, Bobby Ray did that stupid DNA test behind my back and stirred up a whole string of potential relatives. I had to speed things up and get rid of Jeannie before she hosted a family reunion. Can you imagine how that would have diluted our inheritance, sharing with all those people?

  “Then, Bobby Ray up and died. I should have expected as much. The fool never could hold his liquor. Or his pee. Or his performance in the bedroom. Why should his allergies be any different? Total wimp.”

  While Collette shook her head in disgust, Madison and Derron tugged in vain to get free.

  “Then,” Collette continued, “Nigel went and did a DNA test, too! That really complicated things.”

  “Nigel?” Madison’s cry was one of total surprise.

  Collette laughed at her stunned expression. “You really didn’t know? And you fancy yourself a detective? How utterly stupid of you.”

  Bending to retrieve something from the lower shelf, Collette’s tone turned conversational again. The woman’s moods changed as easily as the wind.

  “We’ve always known Jeannie was related to the Barrett family in Juliet. But according to Grandma Betty Jean, they were dirt poor. Lorie Jean—or Jeannie, as she preferred—never knew her family had struck oil. I thought it best if she died not knowing what she was missing.”

  “So you killed her.”

  “I had to.” Collette blinked her eyes, looking almost as innocent as she sounded. “She knew she had cousins. Once she heard about the family fortune, she might insist on sharing. She was funny that way, always wanting to do the right thing. It seemed easiest to thin the family forest down to a single branch.”

  Madison paled. “Barb62,” she whispered. “Barbara Motte was her cousin. I—I told you where she lived.” Realization washed over her, and she cried out in utter dismay, “You didn’t!”

  Collette put her hands to her mouth in an overplayed gesture of chagrin. “I did.” The words came out guiltily, but her eyes danced with delight. “Again, I had to. She’d already made the connection to her uncle, and then she would be standing there with her hand out, wanting part of the inheritance. From what I understand, she runs some sort of inmate rehabilitation center in cahoots with her brother. He didn’t really die in prison like I told you. Turns out, he’s reformed and works in the center. They would probably take their millions and waste them on those undeserving prisoners,” she used a dramatic tone, as if the thought were utterly tiresome, “and then it would cut into my share.”

  The more she talked, the harder Madison and Derron pulled on their restraints. Neither budged.

  “By stroke of luck, my friend told me who you were. Once you and I became friends, you were so easy to manipulate! A pathetic look here, a sniffle or two there, and you fell all over yourself being nice to me. Once you invited me to the reception… well, my plans just fell into place.”

  Now she was smiling again, obviously quite pleased with how everything had worked out. “Like I said,” she continued, “a plan of this magnitude took a great deal of planning. Right down to the tiniest of shrimp.” She affected a pose, paraphrasing that famous line from Oliver Twist. “Please, sir, would you like some more?”

  Derron’s expression of disbelief said it all. The woman was insane.

  “You killed Nigel,” Madison belatedly realized. Where did that put the body count? Jeannie, Bobby Ray, Nigel, and possibly Barbara, if she didn’t pull through. And unless they came up with a plan—and quick!—that number would soon increase by two. She struggled to get her hands free, but every movement tightened the chain. Her hands were now snug against the cannon’s barrel.

  “Again, I had to,” Collette explained. She pushed Madison’s bound hands aside and jabbed a wire into the vent hole as she continued, “Things were simply getting too complicated. The sooner it was all said and done, the better. Originally, I had planned to wait him out. I mean, he was eighty-six, and he had cancer. How long could it have been?” She gestured with her hands. “But then he went and hired you to find his relatives! I tried running you off the road—”

  “That was you in the burnt-orange car!”

  “—which would have taken care of both you and Nigel in one easy step. When that didn’t work, I tried handing you the answers on a silver platter. I thought it would look better if Nigel discovered us, rather than the other way around. I let you look up Jeannie at the courthouse. I flat out told you RR78 was the best match. I did everything I could to lead you down a straight, easy path to our family. But noooooo, you insisted on making things complicated!” She glared at Madison before she replaced the wire with a long, braided match cord, talking as she worked.

  “When the DNA hits started popping up, I knew someone would get greedy and try to move in on my claim. That night at the reception, Tony Sanchez made it almost too easy. He gave me the perfect opportunity. While everyone was watching their big argument, all I had to do was slip a tiny little shrimp or two into Nigel’s sandwich. All done.”

  Collette crossed her arms over her chest and glared at Madison again. “Or, it would have been, if you had only let things go! I could have suddenly ‘discovered’ the family connection between Nigel and my husband, and no one would h
ave been the wiser. And no one else would have tried to horn in on the fortune I worked so hard to secure.”

  “How did you find out Nigel was loaded?” Derron wanted to know.

  Madison answered before Collette had the chance. “She overheard him and Frank Fuller talking in the doctor’s office. People often forget who might be listening to their conversation. In this case, it turned out to be a deadly mistake.”

  Collette nodded, confirming Madison’s assessment. “I really hope that Frank is too slow to make the connection. Believe it or not, I don’t like killing people. It’s more of a necessary evil, like going to the dentist. As long as he doesn’t remember their conversation and doesn’t bring up the family Bible, I may just let him live.”

  If there was any doubt before —and there wasn’t—Collette’s statement confirmed she was certifiably insane. Sane people did not equate murder to a dental visit.

  “Nigel brought his family Bible to the clinic, didn’t he?” Madison guessed.

  “Frank couldn’t make it out to see him, so Nigel brought the Bible to him. And then he proudly showed it to me. When I saw the notes, the ones that confirmed the stipulations in the old deeds, I knew he was sitting on a fortune. That was about the time I realized that Jeannie’s family and Nigel’s family were one in the same, and that I was married to a goldmine. That was when my plan first came together.”

  Collette stood back from the cannon and the two people chained to it.

  “If it’s any consolation,” she told Madison, “I think we really could have been friends. And you don’t need to worry about Brash. I’ll be there to console him and comfort him in his time of grief. I really feel we can form a tight bond, borne of our mutual grief for our beloved spouses. In time, with your house and my fortune, I think Chief Hottie and I can be quite happy together.”

  The growl came deep from within Madison’s throat. Blinded by hatred for the evil woman and her heinous deeds, she lunged for her. She rammed her head into Collette’s, knocking the other woman to the ground. If she weren’t still chained to the cannon, Madison would have crawled over the table and gone after the woman again. She could ignore the throbbing pain in her forehead. The double vision from the head butt was a bit harder to cope with.

  Collette scrambled to her feet with an angry curse. “Just for that, you can forget what I said about being friends! I won’t even try to be a good stepmother to your little darlings.” A hateful snarl curled her lip. “Now both of you listen to me very carefully. You’re standing in a room full of gunpowder. It doesn’t matter what strength it is. I’m about to light a match, and if you even think of making any fast moves or doing anything smart, we’ll all be blown to smithereens.”

  “We will be anyway!” Derron cried.

  “Some of us will be,” Collette agreed smugly. “I’ve used a slow match fuse, same as they did back in the day, so I’ll have time to get out to the car and be on my way before it goes off. You’ll have time to make your peace with God. Good luck with anything after that.”

  Madison wasn’t above groveling. “Collette. Collette, please, I beg you. I’m a mother.”

  “You can’t do this to us!” screamed Derron, bucking against the table.

  “Be still, you fool!” Collette hissed. “I’ve already lit the match.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Collette backed out of the room, deaf to their cries for mercy.

  Madison wasn’t sure what was loudest: the pounding of Collette’s footsteps as she ran away, the maniacal laughter trailing behind her, or the echoes of their thudding hearts as she and Derron realized precious seconds ticked away.

  “Help! Someone help us!”

  With any luck, a neighbor would hear and come to their rescue, but time was running short.

  Waiting wasn’t an option. “We’ve got to do something!” she yelled at Derron.

  “I know, but what?” he yelled back. They were only inches away from each other, and the room around them was silent, but the fear between them was deafening.

  The tabletop weapon was built to scale and looked authentic, right down to the cannon wheels it sat upon. Each time Derron moved, the ropes binding him tightened more, biting into his flesh. Like the chain attached to Madison’s handcuffs, the rope was woven through the spokes of the wheels. Neither he nor she could simply slip their hands down the barrel of the three-foot cannon and be free.

  Madison looked around the room for some kind of tool they could use, some means of escape. There were instruments on Bobby Ray’s reload table, but none looked particularly helpful. She mostly saw boxes of black powder stacked against the wall, waiting to explode.

  “Black powder doesn’t just explode on contact,” she remembered. “I heard Brash explain it to Blake. It will flash and burn, but it won’t explode unless it’s under pressure. Something about the gasses. Unless it’s in a tight, confined space or under extreme pressure, it burns out quickly.”

  “Is a cannon pressure enough?” Derron shrieked, using his chin to point to the vessel he hugged. The barrel pointed directly at the stack of boxes.

  “Right.” She gulped, trying to think of a solution. “We have to defuse it.”

  He stopped yelling for help long enough to ask, “But how?”

  “We pull the fuse out.”

  “I don’t know about you, but my hands are a little occupied at the moment.” He turned his head and bellowed again for help.

  “I’ll try. I have a little wiggle room.”

  The chain held her hands close against the cannon, but by lifting her shoulders and shifting to the left, Madison managed to slide it sideways by a few links. It was enough to work the tips of her fingers over to the fuse. One end of the fuse was stuffed through the vent hole and into the charge. The other end was still a few inches away, but it sputtered and sparked like a firework on the Fourth of July.

  Madison tugged, but bound so tightly against the barrel, her grip was tenuous and unsteady. Nothing happened.

  “Pull harder!” Derron said.

  “I’m trying!” she hissed. She wiggled some more, getting a fraction of an inch closer to the vent hole and its stem. Levering the strength of her upper body, Madison gripped the cord best she could and jerked her entire arm.

  Hard.

  The slow match popped out of the hole. Relief danced through her, weakening her knees, as the crisis was averted.

  Madison’s relief was short lived as she watched the fuse sail through the air.

  Still sizzling, it landed on the carpet near the box of black powder.

  The room now smelled of sulfur, melting synthetic fibers, and fear.

  “Uh, Maddy,” Derron stuttered, his voice sounding increasingly worried. “That—That didn’t work so well.”

  “I can see that!”

  “What now?”

  “I’m open to suggestions.”

  Derron eyed the shortening fuse as it burned. Beneath the glittery sparks, the fibers of the carpet melted into a dark puddle, its edges already smoldering and spreading wider. Stomping out the fuse didn’t mean stomping out the danger. Who knew how much gunpowder burrowed into the carpet and the padding below? Who knew how unstable it might be? The tufts of smoke churned ever closer to the boxes, silently ticking down the minutes of their lives.

  Derron looked at the cannon and then to her tense shoulders. “How strong are you?” he asked.

  “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

  “I don’t think we have another choice.”

  Blowing out a deep breath, Madison prepared herself for the task to come. “The back door is just down the hall. Think we can make it?”

  “We have to.” Derron gave her a weak smile. “We can do this, dollface. On three.”

  Her hands were bound too closely to get a good grip on the barrel, but she curled her hands the best she could and, on the count of three, heaved with all her might. Even though Derron pulled more than his share of the weight, Madison could have sworn that all two
hundred pounds of the cannon hung from the chains on her wrists. She stifled a cry as the metal bit into her skin.

  Their progress was slow and awkward. Madison staggered backwards as they hefted the bulky load, inch by inch, across the room. Reaching the interior door was only the first challenge. Getting through the door was a feat unto itself.

  “I—I need to rest,” Madison rasped, leaning into the doorframe to gather a deep breath. She hiked her knee and tried to help balance the weight, nearly falling over when she did so.

  “There’s no time,” Derron warned, looking over his shoulder. The smoke was getting thicker as the puddle of melting carpet grew. He had no desire to test Brash’s theory on open flames and contained spaces. The boxes—and this room—were more than enough containment for him. “Explosion or not,” he told her, “I’ll take my chances of burning in hell, not here. Keep moving, dollface.”

  It took sheer determination and strained muscles, a generous dose of grunting and groaning, ripped clothes and ripped skin, but they managed to squeeze through the narrow opening.

  “I swear,” Madison panted, as they broke past the splintered doorframe and stumbled into the hall, “my arms are pulled from their sockets. I have to set it down.”

  “We’ll push it from here,” Derron agreed. “Easy down.”

  “Can’t. Move back.”

  She dropped her end unceremoniously, forgetting that she was tethered to the heavy barrel. When it clattered to the ground, so did she. Derron staggered down with his end, collapsing on top of her. They indulged in a few brief seconds of respite, dragging in deep gulps of air and allowing their fatigued muscles to quiver in peace. But as the stench of melting carpet permeated the hallway, their rest was over. Crawling on their knees, they pushed the cannon as much as they rolled it. With the attached chain and rope constricting movement, the wheels couldn’t turn the way they should.