Weddings Are Murder

by Valerie Wolzien

  Kathleen was on the other end of the line. “Susan, how many of Stephen’s relatives are you expecting to come to the rehearsal dinner?”

  “Ah … let me check my list. Seven, I think.” Luckily her notebook had made it to the top of the pile. “Yes, seven. Stephen, of course, his parents and his father’s mother, his father’s sister and her husband, and the minister who is sharing the service with our minister. That’s seven, isn’t it?”

  “That is. But there are eleven people in your living room right now, and Rhythm just said something about six more on the way. I think you’d better get home right now.”

  Kathleen hung up before Susan could ask any more questions, which might have been fortunate. She had no idea exactly what question she would have asked first. Who were the eleven people? What were they doing in her living room half an hour before they were invited for cocktails? Had Kathleen bought enough food? Who or what was Rhythm?

  And then there were the questions Claire, cigar smoke streaming from her lips, was asking.

  “Susan, what exactly do you know about Stephen’s parents? What do they do out there in California? What is it that they call themselves?”

  All good questions. Almost as good as whether Stephen’s mother was dead or alive.

  TEN

  Susan was so upset that she was halfway to her car before realizing it had started to drizzle. Luckily, she had stocked up on little Kleenex purse packs, and she drove home with one hand on the steering wheel, leaving the other free to gently dab the moisture from her face and hair.

  As Kathleen had reported, her company had arrived. The driveway and the street in front of her house were filled with cars. And the drizzle had become a deluge. By the time she had dashed from her parking spot in the next-door neighbor’s driveway into her home, she was soaked. Maybe she could sneak past the living room without attracting any attention and spend a few minutes upstairs with her hair dryer before greeting her guests.

  If you’re going to make an unobtrusive entrance, it’s a good idea not to knock a pile of beautifully wrapped boxes against a large crystal vase of yellow roses. There were at least two dozen people crowded into her living room. And they all were watching as Susan walked by the door.

  “Susan! Come on in and say hello. We were just talking about where you might be.” Jed’s voice, uncharacteristically hearty, alerted her to his discomfort.

  “Hi, Jed. Hi, Kathleen,” she greeted the only two people she knew in the crowd. “I spilled some flowers in the hall.” Susan ran her fingers through her wet hair, a polite smile on her face.

  “I’ll clean it up,” Kathleen volunteered, hurrying off to do just that. “And I’ll take care of that other thing right away,” she added mysteriously to Jed, as she left the room.

  Jed, carefully setting the champagne bottle he was holding on the mantel, moved to his wife’s side without answering. “Good to see you, Susan,” he said, kissing her on the cheek. “Our guests have been here for quite a while.”

  “But we all know how very busy you must be less than twenty-four hours before your lovely daughter is to be wed.”

  Susan smiled uncertainly at the speaker, a tall, lean man with an extraordinarily long gray ponytail, dressed entirely in black. She assumed from his stilted speech that he was the Canfields’ family minister. How he would get along with the straightforward man who led the congregation at the Henshaws’ church was something that Susan decided didn’t concern her. “I … I know … you know I want to meet you all, but I was … uh, outside—”

  “Either that or the local swim club,” suggested an elegant woman, with not a hair out of place, sitting in the window seat at the far side of the room. There was a slight smirk on her immaculately made-up face and Susan wondered, a mite spitefully, how the woman would feel when she stood up and realized that her elegant black-silk-encased derriere was covered with Clue’s golden hair. “I got caught in the rain,” Susan said.

  “We can see that, hon,” Jed said. “Why doesn’t everyone introduce themselves and then you can run upstairs and change? I can take care of things down here for a while longer.”

  Susan picked up the cue immediately. Jed either hadn’t caught or had forgotten the names of their guests. “What a good idea! You all know who I am,” she began, feeling more than a little like an overly enthusiastic camp counselor assigned a group of young children.

  But she immediately realized why Jed was so confused. Was everyone in the groom’s family named after something—as opposed to someone? Not the men so much as the women, she realized, when they had gone about halfway around the room and she was trying not to be surprised to find a woman named “Rivermist” sitting between a man called “Freedom” and another woman who referred to herself as “Moonbeam.” But the entire group was certainly good-natured, she had to admit. By the time everyone had introduced themselves, all her guests were smiling and a few were laughing. A tall, good-looking man stood up as they finished and walked to Susan’s side.

  “I’m Stephen’s father and you both must be terribly confused.” He included Jed in the statement.

  “Definitely.” Jed smiled back. “I’ve been sitting here wondering how to admit I caught only a couple of your names—and yours wasn’t among them.”

  “My name is Robert. Of course, you know that. It was on the wedding invitation you and your wife sent out. But what you don’t know is that everyone has called me Rhythm for the past twenty years or so.”

  “Everyone except his son, of course.” A woman, who combined bleached hair with such a dark tan that she looked almost like the negative of a photograph, jumped up beside Robert Canfield and took his arm in hers. “My real name is Jennifer, but everyone … everyone here, that is,” she added, looking around the room, “calls me Rivermist. But what we all want to tell you is how … how enchanted we are with your daughter. Chrissy is one of the loveliest young ladies we’ve ever met. And we’ve all been looking forward to this wedding so much! It’s almost a reunion for the group. We’re so happy, we just can’t tell you!” And, much to Susan’s surprise, she found herself being warmly embraced.

  “Now, Rivermist. thrilled as we all are that you haven’t lost your enthusiasm for life, this poor woman must be desperate to go dry her hair. Why don’t we just have another glass of this delicious champagne and then we’ll be ready to toast the young couple when she returns.” Robert—Rhythm—Canfield had a warm smile on his face.

  “An excellent idea!” Jed agreed, grabbing the bottle from its resting place and filling the flutes of the two men nearest him. “I’ll just go get more champagne.”

  “I thought Kathleen …” Susan began. But Jed swept by her on his way, and grabbing her elbow, carried her in his wake before she could finish her sentence.

  “I need to talk to you. Where’s the Mumm’s we were given last Christmas?”

  “We drank it on Valentine’s Day.”

  “What about the leftovers from our New Year’s Eve party?”

  “I think you and I finished those up early on January first.…”

  “But—”

  “And there wasn’t a single bottle left from the three cases we ordered for Chrissy’s engagement party,” Susan answered the question he hadn’t yet asked. “Jed, don’t tell me we’re running out of champagne already. How long have these people been here?”

  “Less than an hour. And we don’t have very many bottles left. Kathleen was going to call Jerry and see if he could bring some over.…”

  “Kathleen did that and also called the liquor store. Don’t worry. Supplies are on the way.” Kathleen appeared in the hallway, three bottles of Dom Pérignon in her arms and a smile on her face. “I also talked the Hancock Gourmet into dashing right over with two platters of vegetarian munchies.”

  Susan gasped. “Some of them are vegetarians? What are they going to do at the reception tomorrow? There are a few vegetarian dishes because some of Chrissy’s friends don’t eat meat, but it never occurred to me that some
of the adults would eat like that, too. Not that Chrissy’s friends aren’t pretty grown-up … but I should have known that with so many people coming from California … But they do seem nice, don’t they, Jed? I mean, they have some pretty strange names, but—”

  “They’re commune family names,” Kathleen muttered.

  “They’re what?”

  “They were all in a commune together in the mid-Sixties and they still seem to consider themselves a family group of some sort,” Jed explained. “I’ll fill you in later.” He glanced down at his watch. “You’d better get moving if we’re going to get to the church on time.”

  “I …”

  Kathleen thrust the bottles at Jed. “You go serve your guests and I’ll go upstairs with Susan and fill her in until either Jerry or a delivery truck arrives—I can see the street from your bedroom windows.”

  “I …”

  “We’re supposed to meet the wedding party in the narthex in less than a hour,” Jed said, putting a smile on his face and turning back to the room where their guests waited.

  Susan and Kathleen trotted up the carpeted stairway.

  “Is she here?” Susan whispered the question she had been wondering about since she walked into her living room.

  “If you mean Mrs. Canfield, I have no idea. Rhythm—that’s what Robert Canfield calls himself—has had a woman hanging on either arm ever since he arrived. I couldn’t tell you which one is his wife—if one of them actually is his wife. Maybe Jed managed to sort out who everyone is better than I did.”

  “Not a chance.” Susan hurried into the bedroom she shared with Jed, removing damp clothing and tossing it on the bed as she went.

  “So you still don’t know the identity of the murdered woman in the ladies’ room.”

  “No, but she’s not in the ladies’ room anymore. She’s in the back of Tom Davidson’s van.”

  “Tom Davidson? The young man who reports for the cable news station?”

  “Yup. But he’s freelancing as a photographer and taking photographs of the church for Erika tonight.”

  “Why did he want a dead body in the back of his van?” Kathleen looked suspiciously at Susan. “You didn’t just slip her in and not mention it to him?”

  “Of course not! He put her in himself. Although he thinks she’s a rather unwieldy wedding gift.” Susan, opening the drawer where she kept her underwear, frowned. “You know, I think he has a sort of crush on Chrissy.”

  “You must be the last person in town to notice. He’s been in love with her from … from the first time he met her,” Kathleen said, peering out the window.

  “Really?” Susan stopped ripping into the cellophane that covered her stockings and stared at Kathleen. “Does Chrissy know?”

  Kathleen shrugged. “I have no idea. Did he ever ask her out?

  “Oh, wait! That’s Jerry’s car. There’s no way he’s going to make it into the driveway,” Kathleen added, not allowing Susan time to answer her. “I’d better run out and help him.”

  “Carry everything in through the kitchen,” Susan said. “I don’t want my guests to realize we weren’t expecting them. Or so many of them,” she muttered to herself, snagging the stockings on a torn fingernail as she pulled them from their packaging. “Damn!” Luckily, she had planned for this particular emergency; there were three more pairs waiting in her dresser.

  She wasn’t congratulating herself quite so enthusiastically when she got down to the last pair in the pile. A voice from an old Seventeen article read in her teens seemed to whisper in her ear: “Always wear gloves when putting on stockings.” Unfortunately, the only gloves available were a pair of ski gloves she had been meaning to put up with the winter things in the attic for the past few months. But they worked! She stood up, dressed and ready to face her hair in the bathroom mirror.

  “Are you planning to strangle someone?”

  Susan, startled, looked up at her son standing in the open doorway. “What do you mean? There aren’t any dead bodies around here.”

  “Mom! For Pete’s sake. I was just kidding you. You have to admit it’s a little strange to see a person wearing those things in Connecticut in the middle of June.” He glanced down at the bulky, neon-colored nylon covering her hands. “Oh, by the way, Dad is wondering what the hell is taking you so long—I’m just quoting him,” he insisted quickly, before she could comment on his choice of language.

  “He didn’t say that in front of our guests!”

  “Not really. He was in the hallway, but he was sort of loud. I think most of them were probably able to hear him. Oh, by the way, I helped the deliverymen from the gourmet store carry two large platters of food into the kitchen.”

  “Oh, thanks, honey. Could you go tell Kathleen they’re there? They should be brought out to our guests as soon as possible.”

  Chad sprinted off before she could be sure he was going to do as asked. Susan decided she had accomplished as much as possible and went into the bathroom.

  It was worse than she thought. Her hair was pinned up in the back and falling down on the sides. And the top … She sighed. There was nothing to be done but start from scratch. She began to take off the clothing she’d just put on. It surely wouldn’t take more than fifteen minutes to wash and blow-dry her hair. And put on fresh makeup. And make a few phone calls to see if anyone at the Hancock Inn knew if Mrs. Canfield had left the place in the company of the man who called himself Rhythm.

  ELEVEN

  Well, to judge by the noise level in the room, her guests were certainly starting the wedding weekend off with a bang. In the hallway, Kathleen had cleaned up the flowers and glass and neatly piled the presents on the table where the flowers had been.

  Claire walked out of the living room as Susan was about to enter. There was a glass of champagne in her hand. “Susan, what a wonderful family Stephen has!” she cried. “I don’t think we have to worry about anything!”

  “Is that Susan?”

  Susan recognized the less enthusiastic tones of her mother’s voice floating out the door. “Yes, it is, Mother. Is there anything I can get—”

  “Susan, I need a moment of your time. Just a moment.”

  “Mother, I …” But she had no choice. Her mother grabbed her arm and tugged her out into the hallway.

  “Susan, did you know your daughter is marrying into a family of flakes? And what have you done to your hair?”

  Trust her mother to get right to the essentials. “I was caught in the rain. And what do you mean ‘flakes’? Is there something wrong with Stephen’s family?” Other than the fact that one of them might have been murdered recently, she added silently.

  “Well, probably nothing you would think wrong, but they belonged to a commune in the Sixties—and they still keep up with those people.”

  “What people?”

  “Their commune-mates or whatever you call them.”

  “But—”

  “And you know what they did in those communes …” The frown on Susan’s mother’s face deepened.

  “What?”

  “Communal sex!”

  “I don’t think—”

  “Susan, it was in Time and Newsweek. I remember reading the articles and being so thankful that you and Jed were such a serious young couple.”

  “Mother, I visited communes and I don’t think …” Her mother gave her a piercing glance, and Susan changed her tactics. This was going to get her nowhere. She started over. “Mother, what people do when they’re young …” The look on her mother’s face convinced her she was still on dangerous ground. She tried a completely different tactic. “Mother, I need your help.”

  “Susan! Why didn’t you say something right away? What do you need?”

  Nothing like her mother—the woman drove her crazy, but she could be depended on in a crisis. “I don’t know who Stephen’s mother is.”

  Susan’s mother nodded seriously. “That’s exactly what I was talking about—indiscriminate sex …”

  “No,
I don’t mean he’s illegitimate or anything. I just don’t know which woman is his mother—or Rhythm’s wife,” she added, hoping they were one and the same.

  “I think I met her. She must have one of those strange names. I don’t quite remember. But I’ll find out and give you a sign.”

  “Mo-omm …” Susan was amazed to hear the tone of her own voice. First she sounded like her mother. Now she was sounding like her daughter. And it wasn’t yet dinnertime.… Dinner! She had to call the Inn and make sure there were vegetarian entrées available.…

  “Susan, where are you going?” her husband demanded, joining her in the hallway. “Those people are going to think there’s something seriously wrong if you keep disappearing.”

  Well, she certainly didn’t want anyone to think that! She spun around and, putting a smile on her face, entered her living room.

  “Ah! Here she is. The lovely mother of the bride.”

  Happily, the man who spoke was Stephen’s father. Susan turned up the wattage of her smile and headed across the room to him, scooping up a glass of champagne as she passed the coffee table. “I can’t tell you how glad I am to meet you. I’ve been following you around all afternoon.”

  “Ah! What would Blues say about that, I wonder?”

  “Who?”

  “My wife. Blues. You know, Rhythm and Blues. R and B. Robbie and Barbie. Robert and Barbara.”

  “Oh! How clever!” Susan looked around the room, wishing there were some sort of name tag tradition for wedding guests.

  “But we need to talk immediately,” Rhythm insisted. “About the present we’re giving the kids.”

  “A box did arrive the other day,” Susan said vaguely.

  “Oh, good. Excellent. But that’s not the present. That’s more the wrapping for the present.”

  “Well, we didn’t know what …” Susan began to explain the lost packages, but he interrupted her.