Enchanted Events was throwing her pre-wedding celebration this Friday, and I was quite nervous about the details. “I think I’ve got a fun evening lined up,” I said. “At least I hope it will be.”
“Well, of course it will!” Sylvie slapped her knee. “You are a natural at this event planning stuff. Now, tell me what we’re going to do. A hot dude will leap from a cake in his skivvies, of course.”
“No!” Emma and I shouted in two-part harmony.
“I trust you completely,” Emma said. “I know it’s going to be a blast, and I’m so glad you two will be there with me.”
While I was grateful to be celebrating with family, I wasn’t so certain the party would be up to Enchanted Events standards. Henry was either generous or insane to let me take lead, and except for some pointers, he’d left all the planning completely up to me. It was both thrilling and stomach-churning.
“Turn left here for the church.” Emma pointed from the backseat, her garment bag crinkling as she leaned forward and pointed.
We had spent the morning with her at Sugar Creek Formals, helping her with her final fitting. When she’d stepped out of the dressing room in that gown, Sylvie and I had gasped right on cue. Emma was one of the most beautiful brides I’d ever seen, and I experienced a twinge of regret that we hadn’t been in each other’s lives in the last decade. We’d been such good friends growing up, but the music business had taken me away and life had moved us in different directions. I certainly hadn’t done my fair share of maintaining contact, but now that I was in Sugar Creek, I’d been totally blessed to reconnect with my cousin. Not seeing her would definitely be high on the list of things I would miss about this town when I left, a list that was growing by the day.
The Sugar Creek Chapel was a glass structure that sat at the top of the hill overlooking the greenest valley in our corner of Arkansas. With its ability to be both sophisticated and comfortable, it was a popular spot for weddings and attracted brides from all over the state.
“Can we get back to the topic of Beau Hudson?” Emma’s voice carried over the radio I had just turned up. “Maybe if you’re so distracted with thoughts of him, you should do something about it. Like, I don’t know—date him?”
“No!” I said a little too urgently. “No need for that.”
“Paisley, there’s nothing wrong with a little flingy-ding while you’re here in Sugar Creek,” said Sylvie. “You two spark like bomb oxidizer to fuel. You would be a fool not to follow up on that.”
“There will be no flinging or dinging.”
“Frannie and I endured bullets, torture, and way too many costume changes to protect this great nation, to protect all your freedoms—life, liberty, and the pursuit of hot dudes.”
I parked my Camry in an open spot near the door of the chapel. “Just drop it, you two. Leave it alone.”
Sylvie nudged me with her pointy elbow. “I hear Beau planted a big smooch right on your lips at the gala.”
“How do you know that?”
“This is Sugar Creek, sugar,” Sylvie said. “You can’t blow your nose or launch a spy satellite on your cheating ex-boyfriend at the Dixie Dairy without everyone knowing about it.”
“It was quite the kiss,” Emma said. “Noah and I saw it from our spot on the dance floor. We gave it at least a 9.5.”
Was everything in my life gossip fodder for this town? “Look, it’s nothing. It was just a kiss.”
“It looked like more than a kiss to me.” Emma stepped onto the sidewalk. “Way more.”
Sylvie chortled. “This is better than anything we’ve ever read in Sexy Book Club. Even that book about the amnesiac viscount who forgot he loved the lowly chambermaid who was on the run from her dastardly stepbrother.”
I marched up the sidewalk to the chapel, my pink flats swishing against the concrete. Today was a rare day in which I’d left the high heels at home. I was tired, out of sorts, and just needed the comfort of a good flat.
“There’s nothing between Beau and me, so just leave it alone. Please.” I flung open the door and stepped inside, the overzealous air conditioner of the chapel immediately soothing my heated skin. This conversation had gone out of control. Just like everything else in my life.
“I think we should talk about this.” Sylvie’s voice echoed in the hollow of the church.
I turned around and shushed her. “No, we should not. Topic closed. We’re here to finalize chapel details, not delve into my love life, analyze the intentions of a kiss, or scrutinize where all hands were located.”
“So it was a handsy kiss.” Sylvia grinned. “I like it.”
The chapel manager, Lynn Rigsby, met us in the foyer, thankfully ending this train wreck of a conversation. “Ladies, welcome. Would anyone care for some tea?”
Would it be rude to ask her to spike it? “None for me, thanks.”
“How about we start from the top and discuss the rehearsal?” Lynn led Emma away, leaving Sylvie and me to sit in one of the pews.
Sylvie watched a man near the altar climb on a ladder and replace a lightbulb. “It’s okay to let yourself feel something for Beau,” she said.
“I don’t want to talk about this.” I consulted my to-do list on my iPad.
“At some point you gotta get back on the horse again. Take a chance.”
“Next week I need to confirm the menu for the rehearsal dinner. And I’ve been working on ideas for the welcome baskets for Emma’s out-of-town guests. I was thinking strawberry jelly from the House of Webster, kettle corn from Bentonville Poppers, maybe some stationery from that place on Second Street.”
Sylvie patted my hand. “Not every man is out to break your heart, Paisley.”
“Maybe we could get Beau to donate day passes for Fox Falls. It would be a great way to cross promote.” I made a note to discuss this with Henry.
“Paisley.”
I stopped typing and looked at my grandmother. “Yes, Sylvie?”
“There are worse things than taking a chance on a man and failing.”
“And what is that?”
Hands that had probably snuffed out a life gently patted my cheeks. “Missing out on the chance of a lifetime.”
* * *
“Paisley, where is my dress?” Emma dove into the backseat after our meeting, only to reappear, her face drained of color.
“What do you mean?” I asked. “It’s in the car. You left it in the back.”
“It’s gone.” Her voice rose in hysterical alarm. “It’s not here!”
“It can’t be.” Dread poured over me like lava.
“Didn’t you lock the car?” Sylvie asked.
“Of course I did.” Didn’t I? Sweat prickled my brow, and my stomach turned nauseous. This couldn’t be happening. “I’m pretty sure I locked the car.” I ran around to the trunk and flung it open, knowing full well we hadn’t stuck the dress in there. Sure enough, when I looked inside, all I found was an old magazine, two grocery bags, and a faded towel with the words Redondo Beach.
“Don’t panic, Emma.” My words sounded lame even to me. “It has to be around here somewhere.”
“I bet the Russians got it.” Sylvie nodded her blonde head with certainty. “They’re still mad at me over our little tussle in Moscow, and they’ll do anything to get to me.”
At this point I would accept any theory if it would bring the dress back.
“I don’t understand how this could’ve happened.” Emma shook her head, her eyes wide and watery. “That’s my dress—the dress I’m getting married in in two weeks.”
“I’ll fix this. I’ll take care of it.” I didn’t even know what I was saying. I just tossed out promises and assurances like confetti.
“I can’t believe you didn’t lock your car door. How could you do that? You knew the dress was in there.” Emma paced with a fury hotter than the sun above us.
“I’m sorry,” I said again. “I don’t know what happened, but we need to call the police.”
“Hmph.” Sylvi
e snorted. “As if you can trust them. They’re probably in bed with my Russian friends. Do you want me to activate my underground network? I can have every home in Sugar Creek turned inside out by this time tomorrow. Linda Dithers borrowed my ice cream scooper last month and never returned it. It would give me a chance to get it back.”
“No,” Emma cried. “We’ll call the police.” She sniffed indelicately. “But that doesn’t change the fact that the dress is gone. Someone took it. Who would do such a thing?” She turned her accusing eyes to me. She didn’t have to say the words, but I heard them all the same. Once again I had screwed up, and this was all my fault.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Emma’s dress was nowhere to be found.
The police filled out a report, but due to an old sow running loose on Halleck Lane, they didn’t have time to give it the concern we thought it merited. Chief Mark O’Hara probably chalked it up to my incompetence as a murderous human being. Sylvie and I had marched up and down the streets near the chapel, knocking on doors and asking questions like a vigilante justice league, but nobody had seen a thing. I left a watery-eyed Emma at Sylvie’s, then worked until close at Enchanted Events. My guilt over the theft was a shackle I dragged behind me all day until I couldn’t take it anymore. At five thirty, I got in my car and drove to Zoey Chandler’s, hoping she was home. I didn’t know how I’d replace Emma’s gown, but working on my own case would at least be a worthwhile distraction.
Zoey answered on the first knock. “What are you doing here?”
“I’d like to talk to you.”
“I have nothing more to say, Ms. Sutton. Leave my family alone.”
I pushed my hand on the door to stop her from closing it. “Zoey, I don’t want to hurt your family. I want to help them, but things do not add up with Sasha.”
“When have they ever?” she said.
“I know about the wreck.” A raindrop plopped onto my shirt, followed by dozen more. “I know you took the blame for Sasha’s DUI.”
Irritation sharpened her features. “My dad and his big mouth. He told me he’d spoken to you, but he couldn’t recall the conversation. Leave it alone, okay?”
I hated to throw threats around, but right now it was all the ammunition I had. “I think you need to let me in so we can talk. Otherwise . . . I relay your father’s revelations to the police.”
Zoey heaved a weary sigh and held open the door, revealing stacks of boxes behind her. “Come on in.”
“Are you moving?” I stepped around two pink suitcases.
“No, now that the police are done with Sasha’s apartment, Max and I cleaned it out and brought some of the stuff back here for my stepmother.”
I followed Zoey into the house, taking a seat on a couch covered with clothes that looked like they belonged to Sasha. “So do you want to tell me what happened the night of your car wreck?”
Zoey folded her long legs beneath her in a chair. “We ran into a tree and switched places. What else do you need to know?”
“Why would you take the blame for that? A DUI can ruin your life.”
“Because that’s the sister I’ve always been to Sasha—the one who takes care of her, who cleans up her every spill.”
“There’s a huge difference between helping her with her homework and spending a night in jail on her behalf. Nobody’s that magnanimous.” She didn’t seem to understand my point. “I’m not buying your story, Zoey.”
She reached for a stack of fabric samples on the coffee table beside her, her fingers tracing a lace pattern on one she placed in her lap. “I thought my dad’s money could get us out of it. I didn’t think it would be a big deal, and I thought it would just go away.”
“Sasha could’ve killed somebody. Why get in the car with her after she’d been drinking?”
“We both had. I just hadn’t realized she was that far gone. She told me she’d had two drinks.”
“What would prompt her to ask you to take the fall?”
“Why wouldn’t she? She was newly engaged to Evan, and she began crying hysterically, telling me he would surely break off the engagement if she were charged with a DUI, that a politician’s wife couldn’t have this hanging over her head.”
“You didn’t do this solely out of the goodness of your pure heart,” I argued. “What could you possibly have gained from taking the blame?”
“It’s about a dress, okay? I know it sounds stupid to you—and yes, it’s ridiculous.”
“A dress?”
Zoey leaned toward me. “I’ve been working my tail off trying to get my break as a fashion designer, and nobody will take me seriously. I’ve interned in Paris, Milan, and New York, yet I still can’t get my foot in the door at a design house. I’m good, Paisley. And I’ve been waiting for an opportunity show off my designs. In that time before the police arrived, Sasha told me if I would just trade places with her, she promised to wear one of my wedding dresses when she married Evan.”
I had a moment of gratitude for my brother and sister. They might’ve been obnoxious overachievers who got all the approval of my parents, but at least they’d never sent me to jail.
“I don’t expect you to understand,” Zoey said. “I mean, you did a choir competition as a teenager and walked right into an international career.”
Oh, right. Life had been nothing but rainbows and jackpots for me.
“Sasha and Evan’s wedding was going to be the biggest social event to hit Arkansas in years.” Zoey’s wide eyes implored me to understand. “There would be state dignitaries, people from Washington DC, business associates of my father’s from all over the world, probably some press coverage by wedding websites and magazines. And what would they all see? The bride wearing my dress. It was a chance of a lifetime. So, yeah, I switched seats with her that night. Even with a broken arm and part of the windshield in my lap, I dusted the glass from my jeans and crawled out of the shattered window to put myself in the driver’s seat.” Silence pressed down heavy on the room, and for a long moment neither one of us spoke. How had Sasha Chandler managed to manipulate everyone in her life, and get every person close to her to do her bidding, no matter how vile? She was merely a puppeteer holding her friends and family by the strings.
“Zoey, remind me again where you were when Sasha was murdered?”
“I told you. I was at yoga.”
I needed to follow up on that, and I had an idea about how to make it happen. “So, I got a copy of Sasha’s college transcript. It reads a little strange.”
Zoey puzzled at the swift topic change.
“Did your sister have any artistic abilities?”
“None. She could barely draw a stick figure.”
“Then why does she have three advanced art classes on her transcript?” I handed over the record.
“That’s impossible.” She scanned the document. “She doesn’t even have Art 101 here. You can’t take higher level classes without taking basic art. And she certainly didn’t have the talent to take something like watercolors and Drawing II.”
“And if you hadn’t taken that prerequisite class, what would you have to do to still get into those advanced courses?”
“Probably get professor approval.”
Zoey squinted in concentration as she read each line, her finger following along. “This makes no sense. And look at her grades. A’s in the first two art classes, then a W on the third.”
“She withdrew from that final class.” I knew from Frannie’s info mining that Sasha had dropped out with only weeks left in that semester.
“I don’t know what this has to do with anything,” Zoey said. “But I do know that Sasha wasn’t capable of making an A in an advanced art class. It’s not something you can skate through. It requires talents and skill, and she didn’t have that. Like this one? Advanced water color?” She pointed to an entry on the transcript. “She didn’t even own any watercolors that I ever saw. Do you know who any of her professors were?”
“Each class was taught by
the same person—Professor Fielding.”
“It’s almost impossible to get into his classes. He’s so in-demand that he selects his students based on their degree of talent. Professor Fielding’s an incredibly hard instructor. I took one class with him, and I barely scraped by with a B. . . . And pardon my bragging, but I’m good. There’s no way my stepsister could’ve aced any of these classes.”
“What possible motivation would Sasha have for taking art? She was a business major.”
“I have no idea. I think I stopped questioning the strange things in Sasha’s life a long time ago. To know her was to shrug your shoulders and move on. Why are you even pursuing this?”
“I ran into Professor Fielding last week at the wedding you and I both attended. He said he barely remembered Sasha. Looking at her transcript, I find that very strange.”
“He’s an odd one.” She stood and stretched her back. “Very into himself.”
That was one detail we knew for certain.
Following Zoey to the door, I couldn’t help but pause at the pile of Sasha’s belongings. “She had a lot of books.” Four boxes were labeled as such in bold, black marker. Funny, I hadn’t pegged Sasha as a big reader.
“Mostly some nonfiction on weddings, politics, and former first ladies,” Zoey said. “More pictures than words. Her mom’s keeping a few outfits, but all the books, magazines, and excessive amounts of clothing will be donated to Samaritan House.”
“Have the police looked through these already?”
“Yep.”
“I know this is probably rude, but could I take a peek at the wedding books?”
She hesitated.
I glanced longingly at Sasha’s stuff. “If you’re just going to give them away . . .”
Zoey’s phone rang from the living room. “Yeah, er, I guess. Be right back.”
As she rushed to grab her call, I lifted the lid on a box and thumbed through the collection. The political tomes appeared brand-new, with unbroken spines. But the wedding books had dog-eared pages to mark favorite spots. While it was odd to flip through the pages Sasha had highlighted for her wedding to my ex-fiancé, I thrilled at the wealth of information here. I could really put these books to good use for my work at Enchanted Events.
Engaged in Trouble (Enchanted Events Book 1) Page 18
