“Oh, hi. Can I help you?”
“I was wondering the same thing,” Hannah said. “I guess I need to get used to having strangers in my living room, though. It’s about what I expected when I agreed to host a wedding party.”
“Oh, this is your house,” the woman said. “I’m so sorry. Jennifer described you to me, but there are so many people, I lost track. I’m Lorelle Fisher, the photographer. Jen asked me to take some pictures of everyone while you’re setting up and get some candid shots before the wedding. Just let me know if I’m intruding or if there’s anything you don’t want me to photograph.”
“It’s nice to meet you,” Hannah said, shaking her hand. “You are welcome to take pictures of whatever you want, just don’t intrude on anyone’s privacy. Feel free to help yourself to drinks and snacks in the kitchen, and let me know if you need anything else.”
“Will do. Thanks so much for your hospitality.”
Hannah left her to take her photos and went outside to see Jennifer and Jasmine carrying a large table across the lawn. Jennifer spotted her and put the table down long enough to wave. Hannah meandered her way over, eager to find something helpful to do.
“Sorry for the mess,” Jennifer said. “I didn’t realize quite how much there was when I made the order. We’ll get everything out of your hair soon enough, though. I checked the weather and it’s not supposed to rain until this weekend, so we should be able to set everything up early.”
“Don’t worry about the mess, I know we’ll get it cleaned up in time for the wedding and that’s my main concern. Do you guys need any help out here?”
“We’re just trying to find the right place to set up the tent for the reception,” Jennifer said. “Some of your yard is on a slight hill, so we’re going to have to set up closer to the house. The ceremony will be in the back, and I don’t want to wreck the view with the food tent and the tables.”
“How about we have the reception along the side of the house?” Hannah suggested. “On the left, between the house and the trees. We can set up some solar lamps to make a path to the back door. We can put some fairy lights on the trees, too. It will be pretty, spacious, and private.”
“We’ll go check it out,” Jennifer said. “Thanks, Hannah.”
Hannah went back inside, hoping to find some way to help, but her guests seemed to have it covered. She had a growing suspicion that they had decided to collaborate and not let her lift a finger to help set up for the wedding, probably as some sort of thanks to her for hosting. Amused and just a bit frustrated, she decided to check on some reports from the restaurant on her computer in her home office. She opened the door and was immediately met with a startled, “Hey!”
With a squeak of surprise, she jumped back and slammed the door shut on Rudy’s equally surprised face. He had been half in the middle of pulling a shirt on, though, thankfully was otherwise dressed.
“Sorry,” she called through the door. “I didn’t think anyone was staying in here.”
A moment passed and he opened the door, now fully dressed and with an embarrassed expression on his face as he ran a hand through his messy hair.
“Yeah, sorry about that. Kiersten and I had an argument, and I remembered you saying you had an air mattress down here in the office, so I decided to sleep in here. I probably should have asked you first, but everyone else was asleep by then.”
“It’s no problem,” she said. “I was just surprised.”
“Do you know if anyone needs help with anything?” he asked. “I can carry things, or… well, carrying things is probably where I’ll be most useful.”
She chuckled. “Feel free to find someone else and ask. I haven’t had much luck, which is probably for the best since I’ve got to start brunch soon.”
Deciding that work could wait, she left Rudy to find a way to make himself helpful in setting up for the wedding and returned to the kitchen, where she began pulling ingredients out. She had left a basket of fruit on the counter for the early risers, and someone had made coffee, but it was getting toward late morning and fruit wouldn’t fill her guests up for long. If they wouldn’t let her help set up, well then, she would just get the food ready for them for when they were done. Physical labor was a great way to work up an appetite.
No sooner had she opened the fridge than she heard someone say, “Excuse me?” from behind her. She turned to see Lorelle, the photographer, standing in the kitchen doorway.
“Oh, hi,” Hannah said. “How can I help you?”
“I was just wondering if you’d seen my camera,” Lorelle said. “I put it down for a second, and when I went to pick it back up, it was missing.”
“I haven’t,” Hannah said. “I’m sorry. I’ll keep an eye out for it, though.”
“Thanks,” Lorelle said. “I must’ve just misplaced it. I’ll keep looking.”
With a sigh, Hannah turned back to the open fridge. She hoped that things would calm down once everything had been set up, but she had a feeling peace would be hard to find until after the wedding was over.
Enjoying the quiet in the kitchen compared to the general hubbub of the rest of the house, she began cracking eggs into a bowl, intending to make a quiche. She had more fruit in the fridge, and plenty of bread for toast. With some sausage on the side, the meal would make for a decent brunch.
She hummed to herself as she whipped the eggs and a bit of milk together. Once they were well mixed, she stirred in baby spinach, quartered cherry tomatoes, onions, minced garlic, and feta cheese. A dash of salt and pepper, and she decided the mix was good to go. It only took a moment to press one of the pre-made pie crusts that she had in the fridge into a pie pan. Then, after double checking that the oven was preheated, she began pouring the egg mix into the pan.
She was halfway through when she heard a scream. It made her jump, but she ignored the drops of egg mix she spilled on the counter and hurried out of the room. She had only just made it past the doorway when she collided with Jennifer.
“Who screamed?”
“I have no idea,” Hannah replied. “Did you hear where it came from?”
“Outside, I think?”
They traded a worried look, then hurried outside. They weren’t the only ones – Eliza hurried down the stairs and joined them, and when they rounded the side of the house, they saw Rudy and Jasmine coming from the direction of the back door. One of Rudy’s cheeks was flushed.
Hannah only had a second to glance at them before her attention was taken by a form on the ground. It was Kiersten – she was lying on the grass below the second-story window of the guest room she was staying in – with the window screen pushed out of its frame and on the ground next to her. Beside her was a camera, the lens shattered, just out of reach of her still fingers. Her arms were sprawled to the sides, her gold bracelets sparkling in the sunlight.
Chapter Three
Kiersten was still alive when the ambulance took her away, but it didn’t look good. The police questioned each of them, but no one had an answer for what had happened. Hannah had been in the kitchen when she heard her scream, and Jennifer had been in the living room looking through the decorations, while Sean was still in town, picking up more drinks. No one else admitted to being near Kiersten’s room. The fact that Kiersten had been found with Lorelle’s missing camera made Hannah glance sideways at the photographer, but she overheard her admitting to the police that she had misplaced the camera, and she had no idea what Kiersten was doing with it. She sounded like she was telling the truth, and really – who would push someone out a window just because they had borrowed her camera?
By the time the police left, the consensus was that Kiersten had fallen out of the window by accident, somehow. No one seemed completely comfortable with that explanation, but no one was willing to point fingers and call someone else a murderer, either.
“She’ll be able to tell us what happened when she wakes up,” Jasmine said as they all gathered in the living room. “I’m sure it was just an acciden
t.”
“If she wakes up,” Eliza corrected. “You heard the paramedics. They were struggling just to keep her heart beating. I don’t know if she’s going to make it.”
“I’m sure she’ll be fine,” Rudy said, looking pale. “She has to be. She can’t… she can’t just die.”
Everyone in the room shot him sympathetic looks. Hannah still wasn’t sure if they were dating, engaged, or something else, but they were definitely close.
“Do you want any of us to come with you to the hospital?” Eliza asked. Rudy nodded.
“I would appreciate it,” he said. “I doubt they’ll tell me much, since we aren’t related, so I will probably have to wait for a while. I don’t want to have to wait alone. It could be all night.”
Everyone in the room hesitated, looking each other. Hannah bit her lip, but she thought it might be strange if she volunteered to go. She didn’t know either of them, after all. She did, however, wonder why everyone else seemed reluctant to go with him. At last, Jennifer straightened up.
“I’ll go with you, Rudy.”
Both Eliza and Jasmine jumped up at the same time. “No, no,” Eliza said quickly. “Jen, you don’t have to do that. Let me go. I’ll stay with Rudy, and I’ll keep you updated. You should stay here and talk to Sean when he gets back. The two of you have to talk about whether or not you’re going to go ahead with the wedding.”
Jennifer raised a hand to her lips, aghast. “I hadn’t even thought of that. I… I should cancel it, right?”
“You and Sean have been planning this for over a year,” Rudy said. “I’d be a terrible best man if I let that happen. Please, don’t cancel it on account of me.”
“I’ll talk to him,” Jennifer said reluctantly. “We’ll decide once we hear back from the hospital about how she’s doing.”
With that temporarily settled, Eliza and Rudy left to go to the hospital and wait for news on Kiersten. Hannah belatedly remembered the quiche and hurried to take care of the food. She would have to start from scratch, but somehow, she didn’t think anyone would be that hungry anymore, anyway.
When she heard a knock on the door half an hour later, after she’d gotten a new quiche into the oven, she only belatedly remembered that Ben was supposed to be coming over. She hurried to pull the door open and usher him in. He took one look at her and said, “Wedding jitters getting to you already?”
“I look pretty terrible, don’t I?” she asked. “And no, it’s not the wedding. Well, I guess it is tangentially, but mostly, it’s due to the fact that one of my guests either fell, jumped, or was pushed out of a second-story window just over two hours ago.”
Ben’s eyes widened. “Wow – is she okay?”
“She’s in the hospital right now,” Hannah said. “It was pretty bad – we’re not sure if she will pull through.”
“You have no idea what happened?”
“No one admits to being in the room with her when she fell,” Hannah said. “I’m not sure what to think, to be honest. I hardly know these people – most of them, I just met yesterday.”
“Well, I’m glad I came over. I’ll stick around for as long as you want. If you don’t feel safe here, I can crash on the couch. I don’t want you to have to be in an unsafe situation just because you’re hosting.”
“Thanks,” she said, giving him a tight smile. “We’ll see how things turn out – with luck, she’ll pull through and will be able to tell us what happened when she wakes up.”
Luck, however, was not on their side. They got the call an hour later, when they were just finishing up the last of the quiche, that Kiersten had passed away. Rudy and Eliza were on their way back to the house. Lorelle had long since left, taking her broken camera with her. There had been no reason for her to stay since she had no way to take photos and the wedding setup was on hold. She promised to return tomorrow with a backup camera, but now Hannah had a sneaking suspicion that the wedding was off.
A little while later, Eliza led a shaking and pale Rudy into the house. He perched on the edge of the couch, gazing at nothing.
“He’s been this way since he got the news,” she said, looking down at him with a frown. “I’m not sure how to snap him out of it.”
“He’ll be okay,” Jasmine said with a shrug from one of the sitting chairs. “Just give him some time to process it, and I’m sure he’ll be back to normal soon. None of the rest of us are about to break down over her; we can manage without him for a little while.”
Hannah blinked, shocked at how casually Jasmine, and even Eliza, seemed to be handling this. Not even Jennifer had shed a tear over the fact that Kiersten just passed away. Of course, Hannah hadn’t either, but then she had only met the woman the day before.
She glanced over at Jennifer, who looked irritated. “I know none of us liked her, but can you have a little more respect, Jasmine? The woman is dead. Now isn’t the time for grudges.”
“Do you really think she would spill a tear for any of us?” Jasmine asked. “Well, she might, but they would be fake tears, and only so she could post pictures of her crying online for sympathy.”
“Hold on,” Hannah said. “I feel like I’m missing something. I didn’t expect this level of venom toward a woman who just died.”
“Sorry, Hannah.” Jennifer sighed, turning toward her with a soft expression. “I know how horrible this must seem. Trust me, I’m absolutely shocked by what happened. I didn’t like Kiersten much either, but she didn’t deserve to die. She has a long history with our friend group, though. You have to understand, she wasn’t a good person.”
“Let’s take this conversation into the other room,” Eliza said. “We can explain what’s going on to Hannah so she doesn’t think we’re horrible people, but I don’t think Rudy needs to hear us bad mouthing her right now.”
Hannah glanced at the still-shocked Rudy and hesitated. “Should someone stay with him?”
“I’ll stay,” Ben volunteered. He had been quiet, since he didn’t know any of Hannah’s guests. “I’ll keep him company, while he processes. You can all go talk.”
“Thanks,” Hannah said. They filed into the dining room, where they were able to have a more private conversation.
“All right, I’ll start at the beginning,” Eliza said. “As you know, Jennifer and I have known each other since college. We met Jasmine halfway through our junior year and the three of us became pretty close. We kept in touch, and all ended up staying in the same city after we graduated. A few years ago, when Jennifer started dating Sean, he introduced us to Rudy. I’d been having some bad luck in the relationship department, and Rudy was a nice enough guy, so he and I started seeing each other casually. We weren’t exclusive or anything like that, but we’d go out to dinner and a movie, spend time with our friends on trips, and get together just to chat. Neither of us were ever in love with the other, but we liked each other quite a bit.
“Then, he met Kiersten. He told me that he was serious about her, so he and I agreed to only see each other as friends when our other friends got together. I was fine with it; like I said, I was never in love with him, and I think we both knew that we weren’t ever going to end up getting married or having a real future together. After a couple of weeks, he started bringing Kiersten around when we all got together. She seemed normal enough at first, but then she learned that Rudy and I used to see each other and… Well, she went off the deep end. She keyed my car, dumped the contents of my purse into a toilet, and even called the police on me – she tried to say I hit her, but literally everyone in the room had been able to witness that I hadn’t. Anyway, as you might have guessed, her behavior made all of us dislike her, but she apologized after the police incident and gradually started just ignoring me instead of being openly antagonistic. But then Jasmine got married, and I’ll let her tell you that story.”
“She got engaged at my wedding,” Jasmine fumed. “Somehow, between the toast and the start of the dancing, she managed to wrangle the DJ into delaying the first dance, which I
was supposed to have with my husband, and she and Rudy went on the dance floor where he got down onto one knee and proposed to her. And then, to make matters worse, she got up on stage, took the mic, and announced her engagement to the room. And yes, part of it is Rudy’s fault – he should have known better than to propose to someone at someone else’s wedding – but she was the one who made a big deal out of it. She did it on purpose; she could never stand having someone take the limelight from her. Rudy broke off the engagement just weeks later; I still think she manipulated him into asking in the first place.”
“She was also a thief,” Jennifer admitted. She looked a bit uncomfortable with all of this, but even she seemed to have disliked Kiersten enough to say something about it. “Just little things, for the most part, but whenever one of us hosted a gathering and she came along with Rudy, we noticed stuff went missing. Jewelry, figurines, sometimes even money if we left our wallets or cash sitting out. For the most part, we could never prove it was her, but Rudy would occasionally bring us something that had gone missing and claimed it had accidentally fallen into Kiersten’s purse. A necklace my grandmother gave me before she passed vanished the last time she was over, and I still haven’t found it. Suffice it to say, while I wouldn’t have wished her dead, she had no love lost with any of us. I would never have invited her to my wedding, but she and Rudy have been seeing each other again, and Rudy is Sean’s best man, so I felt like I couldn’t tell him not to bring her. Of course, all of that is a moot point now. The wedding is off.”
“Jen!” Eliza exclaimed, aghast. “It’s so close to the date. You can’t just cancel it. Think of all the guests who are flying in. And what about Sean? You haven’t even talked to him yet.”
“Eliza, I can’t have a wedding two days after one of my guests – no matter how unwanted she was – passed away.”
Wedding Woes Page 2
