You May Now Kill the Bride

by Deborah Donnelly

  “Can we not talk about this?” I hate feeling guilty. “Listen, there’s someone at the door. I’ll be right back.”

  I keep telling Eddie he can come in anytime, but he persists in treating the first floor of the houseboat as off-limits. Just now he was standing in my front doorway, fists on hips and chin jutting. Man on a mission.

  “What’s up?” I asked.

  “Louise called. Said you claimed to be too busy to go visit. I told her things have changed and you’ve got plenty of time.”

  “Eddie.”

  He held up a sinewy brown hand. “Just do me a favor and go, would you? It would make her happy.”

  I stared at him, openmouthed. Eddie Breen didn’t ask me for favors. Ever. I had a sudden sense of just how important my mother’s future was to him. Owen Winter, you had better care this much, I thought. You better care even more.

  “Come on,” Eddie grated, when I didn’t speak. “Spend a few days up there. It won’t kill you.”

  “OK, OK!” I knew when to surrender. “I’ll dig out a ferry schedule and call her back. You’re right, it won’t kill me.”

  Chapter Three

  Ferry travel is very civilized. Especially in Washington State, home to the largest ferry fleet in the country. A fleet of big, safe, steady boats.

  Unfortunately, I wasn’t on the ferry to San Juan Island the next morning. Instead I was leaning into a stiff breeze at Boeing Field, wistfully picturing that big steady boat as I gazed in dismay at an orange-and-white-striped airplane barely bigger than your average mosquito.

  Motion sickness is a bane of mine, and small planes are not my friends.

  Adrienne Winter, the plane’s owner and pilot, clearly didn’t plan to be my friend either. Owen’s older daughter was a short, angular woman perhaps ten years past my thirty-three, with a gravelly voice and coarse brown hair chopped into an outdated bob.

  Her bangs were ruler-straight above oversize red-framed glasses that declared “I am an interesting and unconventional person.” Behind the lenses, her stony gray eyes added, “But I don’t find you interesting in the least.”

  No kidding. When we met inside the terminal, I’d explained my occupation and babbled on about the details of Lily’s island wedding. Adrienne received all this with a pained and frosty expression and then a clipped statement that she was a funds manager herself and loathed weddings.

  What was I thinking? I wondered, as my hair flailed around in the wind. Why didn’t I just refuse?

  On the phone last night, Mom had been so pleased that I was coming to visit, and Owen had been so adamant about his daughter being “more than happy to give you a lift,” that I’d somehow agreed to this fiasco.

  But no one told me how petite the plane would be, and clearly no one told Adrienne the bit about being happy.

  “I’ve never ridden in a two-seater before,” I ventured. “It’s . . . cute.”

  She flinched. “It’s a 1946 Piper J3 Cub. Owen and I restored it ourselves.”

  “That’s nice. But it seems kind of small to fly all the way to—”

  “Seventy-five air miles,” she said flatly. “Ninety minutes max. Are you going to get in?”

  She swapped her specs for a pair of gogglelike sunglasses and stood unhelpfully by as I jackknifed myself into the passenger seat. It was directly behind the pilot’s, like a bicycle built for two. A tiny, enclosed bicycle that was going to dangle me thousands of feet in the air.

  I’m not saying I’m claustrophobic, but most coffins are roomier than that cockpit. I fumbled with my seat belt and double-triple-checked the buckle, trying to think comforting thoughts.

  Ninety minutes is nothing. Nothing at all. I need the time to think about Lily’s ceremony, anyway. Lavender bouquets, lavender corsages—

  I jumped as Adrienne slammed the door on us. She spoke cryptically into a headset, then revved the engine. The noise level was horrendous, but once the earth dropped away, my stomach started roiling and I was too scared to care. Not to mention too queasy.

  A straight line from Seattle to the San Juans crosses various landmasses in Puget Sound: the Kitsap Peninsula and Whidbey Island and such. But I didn’t see any of them. I was busy staring at the horizon and breathing slowly through my nose. Vomiting on the back of Adrienne Winter’s neck would hold a certain satisfaction, but I was determined to refrain for my own sake.

  The minutes stretched out to half an hour, then an hour, and both the plane and my stomach stayed steady. Finally I ventured a peek earthward—and gasped in delight.

  I’d never seen the San Juans from the air, and the panorama ahead of us was like a scene from a fairy tale. Early explorers called Puget Sound “the sea in the forest,” because of the dense trees growing down to the waterline. The San Juans looked like a forest in the sea.

  Islands of all sizes, humpbacked and darkly furred with trees, crouched on the shimmering cobalt blue of the water below us. The islands’ edges were scalloped by sandy coves and rocky points, and here and there a deep green hillside was sliced by a sandstone cliff that glinted gold in the September sun. On the bays and channels throughout the islands, dozens of sailboats were scattered like bright white scraps of cut-up paper.

  “It’s gorgeous!” I shouted, over the engine noise.

  “Want a closer look?”

  “No, that’s all ri—eee!”

  The nose of the plane rose like a rearing horse, then the right wing rose even higher and we plunged to the left like an elevator gone insane. Ignoring my shrieks, Adrienne repeated the maneuver to the right, which would have made for a marvelous view if my eyes hadn’t been clamped tight shut.

  “Stop it!” I hollered. “Please!?”

  Finally my sadistic driver leveled us off, and I tried to calm myself and my innards by doing the horizon thing again. When I finally managed to look down, the islands were much closer, and we began to descend. I could see plowed fields like patches of corduroy, and clusters of toylike buildings stitched together with roads.

  Not many roads, but then San Juan Island is only five miles across and twelve or so long. It’s shaped roughly like North America, with Friday Harbor on the east coast where Boston would be, a stretch of sandy bluffs called American Camp down south in the Yucatán, and Roche Harbor, where the Winters lived, up north in the Arctic.

  The Roche Harbor airstrip was minuscule, which worried me a little. Then as we banked for a landing the engine started to cough, which worried me a lot.

  “What is it?” I shouted. “What’s wrong?”

  Adrienne shook her head and didn’t answer. More coughing and sputtering, a wobble of the wings, and the hard, unforgiving ground rushing up at us faster and faster. . . . I buried my head in my arms and prayed.

  Then we were down and rolling to a halt, and I was clambering out of the cockpit, shaking all over. The airstrip was cracked asphalt with weeds sprouting from the cracks, the green shoots spangled with tiny yellow flowers. I know this because I studied them closely as I bent over double, heaving in great lungfuls of air and trying not to heave out my breakfast.

  “Surprise, Dree!” trilled a silvery voice. “I came to meet you. Eww, what’s wrong with her?”

  “No idea,” called Adrienne at a distance. From the sound of it she was chocking the wheels. “I did a few wingovers and she panicked.”

  “We . . . almost . . . crashed!” I gasped to the asphalt.

  “Did you really, Dree?” The silvery voice came nearer.

  “Don’t be an idiot. Take her home, would you? I want to run into town.”

  I straightened up woozily to see Adrienne marching away toward a parking lot, and a curvaceous young woman in tight white capris and a well-filled bikini top coming toward me.

  “Kimberly?” I said weakly. “I’m—”

  “It’s Kimmie.” She flashed a dazzling smile and tossed long honey-blond tresses. Her eyes were gray like her sister’s, but large and liquid and thickly fringed by curling lashes.

  The smile didn
’t reach her eyes, though. They were guarded, almost calculating, as she looked me up and down.

  “And you’re Carrie. So, welcome!”

  I tried to explain that only my mother, and now her father Owen, called me Carrie. But Kimmie swept me into a cushioned hug—her breasts were the finest money can buy—then broke off abruptly and jiggled away toward a zippy little sports car, bright yellow.

  I hauled my tote bag out of the plane—Lily was bringing my gown along with her own on the ferry—and followed, puzzled by the mismatch between Kimmie’s effusive behavior and her chilly eyes. Welcome to the wonderful world of the Winters.

  Kimmie drove the way her sister flew, so I missed much of the scenery on the short drive to the house. The general impression was an uphill route of leafy trees with an occasional flash of sunbeams on water, then a dip down to a harbor and a glimpse of a street sign reading Afterglow Drive.

  Then we pulled into a semicircle driveway and squealed to a stop. Despite the balmy afternoon, my skin was still cold and tingling with nausea.

  “Here we are! Don’t you love it?”

  “It’s . . . amazing.”

  The “summer cottage” I’d imagined was a huge Victorian, painted a satisfying teal blue, with a flight of wooden steps sweeping upward to a broad white-columned porch. Stately mullioned windows ran across the second story, and a line of small dormer windows indicated a third. And I thought we’d be crammed?

  Kimmie’s high heels rap-tapped as she scampered up the steps, leaving me behind with my luggage. I hauled it from the car and followed.

  Porch, I could see, was too pedestrian a word. This was a veranda, with generous wicker rocking chairs, an old-fashioned porch swing, and a jungle of potted plants. Sweaters were draped here and there, evidence of the cool September evenings, and a tangle of tennis rackets and other summery paraphernalia was piled by the grand front door.

  Kimmie had left the door open, giving me a glimpse into the high-ceilinged, oak-floored entrance hall. But I took a long look behind me before going in.

  The front of Owen’s property sloped down to the road in lawns and terraced flower beds, with a line of dense green woods on the other side. Beyond the woods, the silver-blue water glittered in the sun, and in the distance, a welter of islands overlapped each other across Haro Strait and on into the Gulf Islands of Canada.

  Lots of Spanish names up here, Haro and Lopez and San Juan, from the early explorers. Even Orcas Island, the biggest of the San Juans, is named for some eighteenth-century lord and not for the orcas, the big black-and-white killer whales that delight the tourists.

  Lots of history, and lots of wide-open waters and salty breezes in the tranquil afternoons.

  Maybe this wasn’t such a bad idea, I thought dreamily. Maybe I should have come sooner.

  “Are you just going to stand there?” Kimmie called from inside.

  “Sorry, I was admiring the view. I bet you can see all the way to—”

  “Whatever. Come on, I’ll show you around.”

  Differ as they might in appearance, the Winter sisters seemed to share an impatience with other people’s dawdling. Or maybe just with mine. Kimmie hurried through the house, chattering nonstop, and as I trailed in her wake I was surprised, not to say stunned, by the opulence of the place. My mother’s beau was wealthier than I’d realized.

  The house itself was grand enough, a mansion built for some turn-of-the-century mogul with a taste for large chandeliers and dark woodwork. But beyond that, every object in every room was the most expensive version of that particular object, from the ten-foot Steinway in the parlor to the genuine Monet over the fireplace to the filigreed brass wastebaskets and the art-glass light-switch plates. Not a scrap of plastic in sight.

  “There’s a full bar in that cabinet, help yourself, and the Jacuzzi and tennis courts are out back. . . .”

  As Kimmie whisked me from room to room, I had a curious vision of an underground river of money flowing through the bedrock beneath the house. The river had percolated upward, lapping over the floors in the form of Persian carpets, splashing up against the walls in gilt-framed artwork and ornate sconces, jetting into the air in fountains of cut-velvet pillows and pleated silk lamp shades and goose-down duvets.

  Someone had perpetrated some serious shopping here, and that someone had exquisite taste. Dutiful houseguest that I am, I oohed and aahed about everything.

  “It’s lovely, Kimmie. Did you decorate the house, or you and Adrienne together?”

  “Mother picked everything out herself, even when she was sick.” Again, that odd mismatch between her bright, mechanical smile and her guarded eyes. “She died two years ago. But I guess ‘Lou’ didn’t tell you that.”

  Lou was Owen’s nickname for my own mother, and Kimmie pronounced it so bitterly that the light finally dawned. Of course! The Winter sisters weren’t any happier about this senior romance than I was, though for different reasons. Undoubtedly they still missed their mother, and they’d had Owen all to themselves since he was widowed. Mom was a rival for his affections.

  I felt a sudden rush of sympathy for Kimmie, and even Adrienne. My own father was many years gone now, but my grief had been heavy and slow to lift.

  “She didn’t tell me,” I said warmly, “but I’m so sorry about—”

  “Your room’s on the top floor.”

  Kimmie turned away and preceded me up two flights of stairs—the first one wide and carpeted, the second narrow and bare—without stopping in between. The top floor was a narrow hallway with a window at the far end, lined on both sides with plain wooden doors, all of them shut.

  Kimmie yanked open the nearest, waved manicured fingertips inside, and said, “Dinner’s at seven. See you!”

  “Wait, please. Is my mother around?”

  “I thought Dree told you,” she threw over her shoulder. “Owen took her to Orcas Island. Back any time now.”

  “But . . .” But Kimmie was already clattering downstairs and slamming the front door, leaving me alone in the house.

  Damn. I was supposed to pick up a rental car this afternoon, and I’d counted on Owen to drive me into town for it. The village of Roche Harbor was just down the hill, according to the map I’d consulted last night, but Friday Harbor, the town in question, was several miles in the other direction.

  I’d just have to wait, and unpack while I waited. The bedroom was small but charming, the scent of roses rising from a dish of potpourri on the night table next to a milk-glass lamp with a hobnail-patterned globe. The bed was a little swaybacked, but the bedspread was old-fashioned chenille in the same blue-green as the house, and who could argue with that?

  I set my travel clock by the bed, and arranged my few clothes in a bird’s-eye maple dresser with squeaky drawers. Then I went to the dormer window, which looked into the branches of a huge madrona tree. The madrona’s crisp cinnamon-colored bark peeled back from the velvety pale-green skin underneath, and its leaves swayed and shuffled in the light breeze.

  Which was all very pretty, but the window itself was stuck tight. I gave it a final tug and gave up, then gathered my toiletries case and a fresh shirt and stepped into the hallway. There I peered around, wishing that Kimmie’s tour had included the whereabouts of a bathroom—surely there was at least one on this level. But through which door?

  The room next to mine held only packing boxes and dust, and the one after that was another bedroom, obviously unused for some time. Then the hall made a short bend to the right, toward the back of the house. A doorway at the end was slightly ajar.

  Aha. With happy thoughts of a quick shower to wake myself up, I pushed open the door—and gave a startled yelp to see a nearly naked man lounging on a sofa reading a magazine.

  “Well, well, well,” he said. A devilish grin spread across his dark and devilishly handsome face. “If it isn’t the gold digger’s daughter.”

  Chapter Four

  “I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean—dammit!”

  As I tried
to beat a retreat, the handle of my toiletries case caught on the doorknob, the case unzipped itself, and a volley of private items scattered across the floor. I kept my gaze downward as I crouched to retrieve them, my face burning.

  A pair of rather small but tan and tough-looking hands came into my field of view, deftly blocking an escapee lipstick and flipping it in my direction. I caught it one-handed, then we stood up and zipped up, me securing my belongings, the room’s resident slipping well-worn jeans over his bikini briefs.

  Since he was looking me over rather frankly, I did the same to him, and saw a fellow in his late twenties, about my height, with a bodybuilder’s physique and dark curly hair. Lots of dark curly hair. He wore the jeans low.

  “Sorry,” I said again.

  “Not at all. Guy Price, at your service.” He brought bare heels together and made a mock-formal bow. Rising from his well-muscled chest, his voice was not deep but rich and expressive, like a late-night DJ’s. “At the Winters’ service, actually, so that extends to you, assuming you are who I think you are. Who I am is the caretaker, cook, handyman, boat repairman, et cetera, et cetera. I do it all.”

  Guy Price had the kind of overripe good looks that play well in soap operas and perfume ads. But I decided they weren’t going to play well with me. I’d gathered my wits along with my makeup, and his opening remark had just sunk in.

  “Does your service include insulting Owen’s guests?” I asked, trying to keep my own voice level. “Because if that crack about my mother was supposed to be funny—”

  “But of course it was! Just a joke, a tiny little joke about darling Dree and her absurd attitudes. You don’t think I’d say a word against Louise, do you?” Guy cupped a hand to my elbow in a politician’s I-feel-your-pain gesture. “Louise is marvelous! An absolute breath of fresh air. And I see the resemblance. Was she a redhead once?”

  He lifted his other hand to my hair, but I stepped away and said curtly, “No, she wasn’t.”

  “Oh, I really have offended you. I’m an idiot. Forgive me?”