Wedding Day of Murder

by Vanessa Gray Bartal

  Michael walked around it. “I don’t see one. Has it always been like this? I don’t remember?”

  “Neither do I, but I’m not leaving until I see that pipe.” After another walk around the soffit, they found a small door. It stuck to the point where Michael had to help him open it. When the little door was finally open, they saw Lacy lying on the floor, staring up at them. In one hand she held a piece of brick she had pried from the wall. Absently, she tapped the pipe with it. She squinted, shielding her eyes from the glare of lights.

  “Is dat Jaime and Bobby Deen?” she asked.

  “Who?” Michael said.

  “Paula Deen’s sons,” Jason explained. He knelt beside Lacy and did a quick inspection. She looked miserable. “We’ll be anyone you want.”

  “Dat’s sweet,” she said. “But I have a boyfwend.”

  “You sure do, baby,” he said. He gathered her close, pulled out his phone, and called Mr. Middleton.

  Chapter 12

  Jason was a bull in a China shop. Worse, he didn’t care. After Michael helped him get Lacy downstairs and into his car, he slipped into the back seat uninvited. Jason didn’t ask him to leave, and he didn’t analyze why. They arrived at the hospital and the same doctors greeted him as the night before. They wanted to admit Lacy. He wouldn’t allow it.

  “She has an infection. She’s been through a trauma. I really think…”

  “I don’t care what you think,” Jason said. “I gave her to you before, and you lost her. Give her medicine, and give her back. I’m taking her home.”

  The doctor studied his expression, made fiercer by the traces of his fight with Michael, and gave in. If he wasn’t a cop, they probably would have thought he was a gangster or wife beater. If he wasn’t a cop, they undoubtedly would have called the cops on him.

  They didn’t want her to have food. Jason would have fought them on that, but Michael appeared with Jell-O as soon as the doctor left the room. Jason woke Lacy and fed her. The next battle came over pain medication. He refused it. He felt like an ogre for that one, but she had been out of her head for too long.

  “I’ll give her something over the counter,” he promised. “Whatever you’re giving her in the IV is making her nuts. I can’t have her wandering anymore, and she needs to stop hallucinating.”

  Realizing that Jason was intractable, the doctor gave in. They administered an IV with an antibiotic, handed him a prescription for more, and let her go. Michael was nowhere to be found. Jason wasn’t sure at what point he had vanished. He felt uneasy about the whole situation but determined to put it out of his overburdened mind. He hadn’t eaten since breakfast and had only slept seven hours of the last forty eight. Tomorrow he would have a fresh perspective on everything; he would deal with the situation then. For now he had tunnel vision on Lacy.

  She was awake on the drive to her house, though not necessarily alert. She peered at the landscape as if seeing it for the first time and followed him quietly inside when they arrived at her grandmother’s.

  Everyone was there—Mr. Middleton, Mrs. Craig, Frannie, Tosh, and Riley. Their presence grated on Jason’s already overwrought nerves. Frannie rushed forward and gave Lacy a hug.

  “Honey, I’m glad you’re all right. Let’s get you to bed,” she said.

  “No,” Jason said, and the room came to a standstill as everyone looked at him. “Lacy’s not staying here. I came to get some clothes and toiletries. She’s coming home with me until she’s back to normal.”

  “Jason, that’s a nice sentiment, but I don’t think that’s a good idea. She needs to be here with her family.”

  It was happening again; the short leash on his self-control was slipping, and there was nothing he could do to stop it. He opened his mouth, but common sense prevailed in the form of Mr. Middleton. “Frannie, let’s let the boy take her home. He’s the one who’s had the brunt of responsibility for her the last couple of days. He needs to reassure himself she’s all right. We’ll reevaluate the situation tomorrow after we’ve all slept and eaten.”

  Frannie frowned, petulant over Mr. Middleton’s interference, but she didn’t argue. Everyone was tired, Jason realized. It had been a trying few days. He led Lacy to her bedroom and asked her what she needed.

  “Dis,” she said, picking up a necklace. It was the shiniest thing in the room. He let her look at it while he packed a few essentials in her overnight bag. When he tried to take the necklace from her, she jerked it away. “No, I need dis.”

  “All right,” he said. “Keep it.” He led her back to the kitchen, back through the maze of staring relatives, and to his car. At his house, he warmed a can of chicken noodle soup, fed her the broth, and ate the noodles. He was still hungry, but he was too tired to make anything else. They drank water, changed their clothes, and went to bed. Jason had just fallen asleep when he woke with a start. Lacy was gone.

  He ran through the house and found her in the kitchen, rifling his cupboards. “Where do you keep your Oreos?” she asked.

  “At the store,” he said. He opened a drawer and withdrew a collar he’d bought when he briefly thought about getting a cat. It had a bell. He fastened it on her ankle and led her back to bed. She lay down and held her ankle up in the air.

  “Dat’s nice,” she said, shaking her leg to make it jingle.

  “Keep that thought for when you’re lucid again,” he said. He put his arm over her, yawning. “Go to sleep, woman.”

  For once, she did what she was told, not waking until a few hours later. She sat up in bed. He did, too. “Where am I?” she asked.

  “At my house,” Jason said. Vaguely, he registered the thought that she sounded like the swelling had gone done.

  “How did I get here?”

  “I brought you.”

  She felt for his face, caressing his cheek. “Jason?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay.” She snuggled close and they lay down together. Lacy fell back asleep. Jason, despite his exhaustion, lay awake for a long time, holding her. He hadn’t needed her disappearance to make him realize how much he cared about her, but the experience did make him realize how indelibly linked to her he was. His emotional stability was dependent on her, and he didn’t like that; he didn’t like who he had become without her. He had no idea it was within him to break the rules or lose it so completely.

  Her fingers trailed his stubbly cheek again. “Mountain man.”

  “I need to shave,” he agreed.

  “You’re still pretty,” she said.

  He smiled, kissed her palm, and fell asleep.

  When Lacy woke again, Travis was there. He sat beside the bed using the iPad she’d bought him for Christmas.

  “What are you doing?” she said.

  “Helping angry birds ease their aggression,” he said.

  “Why are you here?” she asked.

  “It’s my turn to watch you.”

  She sat up and looked around. “I’m at Jason’s. Why am I here? Why are you here? Why am I wearing a bell on my foot?”

  “You’ve given us a run for our money the last couple of days. I’m surprised Jason didn’t have you micro chipped,” Travis said, not looking up.

  “What happened? And where is Jason?”

  “Duty called,” Travis said.

  “Travis,” Lacy said.

  He finally looked up and did a double take. “Wow, your hair is…special.”

  “What is going on? Why are you here? Why am I here?”

  “You don’t remember anything?” he asked.

  “It’s a little blurry,” she said.

  “You had your wisdom teeth removed,” he said.

  “Okay. That’s vaguely familiar.”

  “It didn’t go well. You disappeared twice.”

  “From where?”

  “Once from your house and once from the hospital. You don’t remember?”

  “I remember snippets of things, images, people. But it’s like a movie montage, everything is mashed together in no parti
cular order.” She flexed her jaw, rubbing. “Ow.”

  “If you think you feel bad, wait until you see how you look. And Jason kissed you goodbye. Love is blind,” Travis said. He returned to his game.

  “I’m going to shower,” Lacy said. She struggled to get out of bed.

  “Good idea. Need some help?” He paused his game and looked up. “Getting to the bathroom, I mean. Once you’re in there, you’re on your own.”

  “I can do it,” she said with more confidence than she felt. Everything was stiff and sore. Why did her body hurt if it was her teeth that had been removed? The shower felt heavenly. She used Jason’s toiletries, which were less luxuriant than her own, but being clean felt so good she didn’t care. When she was finished, she remembered to wash his shampoo and conditioner bottles and line them up according to order of use. Next she scrubbed the shower, knowing full well that he would redo it later so that it would be up to par. But the thought and effort counted for something, she hoped.

  She searched through the toiletries he had packed for her, smiling when she found her anti-frizz serum. He might say that he didn’t care how she looked, but she found it interesting that he had remembered the only hair product that worked to tame her mass. And he had packed her makeup. Not only that, but the items were neatly arranged in her case like a game of Tetris. If she had tried to organize them so precisely, it probably would have taken the better part of an evening. Jason did it without thinking in less than a few minutes. She missed him, which was odd since she had apparently been with him all night, but she didn’t remember any of it. She felt like she hadn’t seen him in days.

  When she emerged from the bathroom, Travis was asleep in the chair. He wasn’t wearing his uniform, but he had probably come straight from work. She put her hand on his shoulder, and he jumped. “Travis, go home.”

  “Are you insane? If I left you here alone, Detective Incredible Hulk would rip my head off with his bare hands.”

  “Jason’s been grumpy, huh?”

  “The worst,” Travis said. “He’s gone off the deep end for sure.” He yawned and glanced longingly at the bed.

  “At least lie down,” Lacy said.

  “I can’t sleep in Jason’s bed. He’s my senior officer. That’s weird.”

  “Then lie on the couch,” she said.

  “Only if you put the bell back on your foot,” he said.

  “What? You’ve got to be kidding.”

  “I’m not. You’ve had a bad habit of disappearing lately. You seem better now, but who knows? If you wandered away on my watch…” He trailed off, but she got the point. Jason would kill him.

  “Fine, but I’m doing this under duress.” She sat and fastened the cat collar around her ankle again. Travis grinned as he watched her.

  “Relationships,” he muttered, shaking his head.

  She smiled and ruffled his hair. Together, they walked to the living room. Travis lay down on the couch. Lacy went to the kitchen and tried to find something non-nutritive to eat. It wasn’t easy, both because Jason liked healthy food and because her jaw ached. In the end, she decided on a glass of milk. Skim milk. She had to hold her nose to drink it. At her house, they drank whole milk. Milk should not be blue, that much she knew for certain.

  She sat in the chair and picked up Jason’s book. He was reading a political thriller set in the Middle East. Three pages in, she fell asleep. When she woke this time, Travis was gone. Instead her grandfather sat on the couch reading the paper.

  “Your turn to watch me?” Lacy guessed.

  “My privilege to watch you,” he said.

  She chuckled. “Charmer. How’s grandma?”

  “Better at handling medication than you,” he said. “She’s fine; her pain is gone, and she gets the eye patch off soon. I’m going to miss it. Lucinda’s looked downright exotic lately.”

  Lacy laughed and clutched her jaws. “Ooh.”

  “Do you want some aspirin? Jason left precise instructions that I should mash it up in a teaspoon of jam if you have trouble swallowing, as if you’re a puppy and not a grown woman. The boy’s gone out of his gourd.”

  “That’s what Travis said.”

  He shook his head. “I wasn’t sure which one of you I should worry about more—you because you were missing or him because he was losing his mind.”

  “Jason can be intense,” Lacy said.

  “That’s one word for it,” he agreed. “Are you hungry? Your grandma sent a feast.”

  “Lead on,” Lacy said. She followed him to the kitchen and found that he wasn’t exaggerating. He had carried in an entire laundry basket filled with food. Better still, it was all soft food—chocolate pudding, bread pudding, banana pudding, Jell-O, soup, noodles, applesauce, and yogurt.

  “There’s ice cream in the freezer,” he said.

  “I’ll start there and work my way up to pudding,” Lacy said. “It’s best not to start with the hard stuff after an illness.”

  “You are your grandmother’s child,” he said. He poured himself a cup of coffee, grimacing at the staleness.

  They sat at the table. “So, how bad was it?” Lacy asked. “Tell me everything I missed.”

  “I would say your mother and Jason can spend about thirty more seconds with each other before turning to fisticuffs,” Mr. Middleton said.

  Lacy groaned. “Was it that bad?”

  “Worse. Jason was dismayed by your mother’s total self-involvement, and she couldn’t understand his overprotective, proprietary attitude. I think she was certain that the two of them would be on the same side. To realize that they’re adversaries was a confusing blow for her.”

  “Poor Mom. And poor Jason. I should talk to him. Or her. Or both of them.”

  “I would let it play out,” Mr. Middleton said. “If you run interference now, you’ll always be doing it. Let them establish their boundaries early and get it over with. Now tell me what you remember about the last few days.”

  “Not much,” Lacy said.

  “Do you remember the murder?”

  “Sort of. Is that why Jason had to leave this morning?”

  “Yes. I think he’s been under a bit of a strain.”

  “They’re not exactly staffed to handle a murder,” Lacy said.

  “That may be true, but I think his stress comes from somewhere else. It turns out that the man who was killed was a reporter. He had talked to your mom.”

  “He talked to Mom? About what?”

  “About you. I think he was working on a story about you when he was killed, and then you found him and called it in. He hasn’t said as much, but I think Jason’s afraid you’re going to be somehow implicated in this mess.”

  “But I didn’t have anything to do with it! I didn’t even know the man. I had never seen him before the protesters arrived,” Lacy said.

  “I know that, and Jason knows that, but there are people who might not see it that way.”

  Detective Arroyo. Jason would now be stuck between her and his work, a place she had never wanted him to be. “I’ve put him in a terrible position,” she said.

  “You did no such thing. Besides, Jason is a grown man fully capable of taking care of himself. If he’s running interference for you, it’s because he wants to, not because he has to.”

  “It’s possible that you may be a bit biased in my favor,” she said.

  “Always,” he agreed. “However, in this case I’m also correct. Jason will tell you the same thing. It’s his job to figure out this murder. An added layer of motivation can only speed things along.”

  “Why was the man doing a story about me?” she asked.

  “That’s the question on everyone’s mind.”

  “What did Mom tell him?”

  “Some family stories,” Mr. Middleton said, dropping his eyes to his coffee.

  “I can only imagine what those were,” Lacy said. “A litany of my failures along with a heavy dose of how I have never lived up to my potential. If only I would stand up straighter, eat
more spinach, read fewer books and basically do everything opposite of the way I’ve always done it, then maybe I could pull my life together and be more like Riley, or so Mom believes.”

  “Your mom is,” he paused, trying to find the right way to frame it, “well, she’s a pill.”

  Lacy laughed and winced. “Grandpa, you don’t mean that. I thought you were on board with giving her time and space to get adjusted to your relationship.”

  “Yes, when it was just that, I was. I can handle the criticisms she throws my way, but I’m getting tired of seeing her trample you and Lucinda. I’m tired of tiptoeing around her bad mood and delicate sensibilities.”

  “Are you saying that you’re ready to tell her she’s adopted?”

  “Between you and me and this stale coffee, I would do it in a heartbeat. It would throw her into a tailspin for sure, but she would get over it. And then we could all stop pussyfooting around the issue. But it’s harder for Lucinda. She’s the one who kept the secret for so long; she’s the one your mother is going to be mad at.”

  “What a mess,” Lacy said.

  “Take a lesson, young lady: honesty is always the best policy. By coming clean in the beginning, you avoid so much heartache. I wish I had been adamant about telling Frannie when she was a little girl, at least that she was adopted. But things were different then. Adoption wasn’t as accepted as it is now. It was a stigma, especially in small towns like ours. Especially with a mother like Barbara.”

  “I understand,” Lacy said. She clasped his hand and gave it a squeeze.

  “That’s because you are a woman of compassion and grace. Your mother could take a lesson or two. Don’t tell her I said so.”

  “I could shout it from the rooftops; she still wouldn’t pay attention to me,” Lacy said dryly.

  “You are loved, young lady, and don’t you forget it,” Mr. Middleton said.

  “This seems like a good time for me to arrive home and chime in my agreement,” Jason said. Lacy turned to him with a smile. Today the ever-present flutters that erupted whenever she saw him were so powerful that they left her breathless. She stood, beaming. It felt like she hadn’t seem in weeks instead of days.