You May Now Kill the Bride

by Deborah Donnelly

  “And to us,” she said distantly. She looked suddenly older, and as she reached for the phone her hand was trembling.

  I opened the door to leave, but if I had any thoughts about eavesdropping again, they were banished at once. Erik Nyquist was apparently busy loading something into his truck, but he straightened up to stare at me as I came down the lavender-lined walkway. I raised a hand in greeting but he didn’t move, and he didn’t take his eyes from me as I climbed into the SUV and drove off.

  Chapter Six

  I found the Owl’s Roost easily enough, at the end of a long gravel driveway, crowded with ferns, that ran through evergreen woods to the water. As I pulled carefully up to the front—the SUV felt like a tank—I hoped that my first meeting here would go more easily than the one at Lavender and Lace.

  My only meeting, actually, and a quick one at that. Mike had tried for a cabin at the Lonesome Cove Resort, but they were all booked. The Owl’s Roost was on the same beach and in the same price range, so he took a chance. I’d promised to check the place out and let him know ASAP if it didn’t look suitable.

  Beach suggests a broad expanse of pastel sand—at least it does to me—but shoreline was a better term for this part of the island. What sand there was lay in damp gray crescents between the rocky stretches pocked with tide pools. The shoreline of Lonesome Cove had both gray sand and rocky promontories, with lofty fir trees reaching almost down to the water’s edge.

  Set right at the tree line, the Owl’s Roost was a three-story A-frame of weathered shingles, the front wall entirely glass for floor-to-ceiling views of the water. I saw a porchful of Adirondack chairs, a clambake pit, and a plank dock with several canoes and kayaks tied to it. Quite a friendly, welcoming spot on this sunny afternoon, and the proprietors were sunny and welcoming as well.

  “Hello, down there!”

  A balding fellow in thick eyeglasses hailed me from high up the aluminum extension ladder that was propped against the window wall. He wore shorts and a pale green polo shirt over his paunch, and gripped a rag in one hand and a squeegee in the other. He waved the squeegee gaily. “Be with ya in half a jiffy!”

  As he made his way down the rungs I saw movement inside the top window, and by the time he reached me a woman had come bustling out the front door. She was fortyish, like the man, not fat but comfortably plump, like a pillow or a muffin. Her dark auburn hair waved back from a broad pale forehead and her mild brown eyes were wide and lustrous.

  She too carried a rag, and her baby-blue polo shirt was spattered with darker blue water stains. Both shirts bore a logo that said The Owl’s ROOst under a cartoonish bird whose eyes made the double Os.

  “Sorry to interrupt your work,” I began, but the man laughed merrily, his blue eyes darting behind his glasses like tropical fish in a tank.

  “Nothing I like better than taking a break,” he burbled, while the woman murmured, “Not at all, not at all.”

  Donald and Pamela Coe had been expecting me, and they showed me around their property with great pleasure and even greater solicitude.

  “Mind your feet along here,” said Donald, taking my arm as we crossed the little beach to the dock. “I’m always telling the missus, you never know what the tide’s brought in, and we don’t want to send you home with tar on your shoes.”

  “Would you like to borrow some shoes of mine?” asked Pamela. “Your sandals are so pretty. I could just run back to the cabin and get them. Mr. Coe and I live in the cabin just past the main building, maybe you saw it. That’s where the office is, too. It would only take me a moment to get you some—”

  “Thanks anyway, but I’m fine.” Helplessly helpful people get on my nerves. “As I said on the phone, I just wanted to take a quick look around.”

  “Can’t look quick at this view!” Donald marched me to the end of the dock and swept an expansive arm. “This view takes a look and half. That’s Speiden Island right across the channel there, and the big one past that is Saturna. Now, Saturna is in Canada, and if you could walk on water and you kept on going, you’d find yourself in downtown Vancouver, B.C.! Isn’t that something?”

  I agreed that it certainly was.

  “Now, if you keep a sharp lookout at this channel, you might see killer whales—”

  “Orcas, Mr. Coe,” said Pamela mildly, tucking a stray curl behind one ear. She wore large ceramic earrings shaped like owls. “They call them orcas now.”

  “—or a sea lion or even a bald eagle, isn’t that something?”

  He looked at me expectantly, pushing his glasses up on his nose, so I hastened to say “Wow!”

  Lonesome Cove really was a wow setting. The woods made a backdrop of cozy seclusion, and the shoreline opened out to an endless and ever-changing vista of sky and sea. No wonder Mike chose it. And if Donald was a bit chatty, Pamela seemed warm and hospitable. With any luck, she’d be the one who provided the breakfasts. I wasn’t sure Lily would want to face Donald first thing in the morning.

  “Would you like to see the honeymoon suite?” she said now. “We don’t call it that usually, but if anyone comes here after their wedding we always call it the honeymoon suite.”

  “That would be great, but is it vacant today? I thought at this time of year you’d be full up.”

  “Oh, we’ve got guests in it, the Quillins, real nice folks,” said Donald, once again assisting me on the perilous journey across six yards of level sand. “But they’re out kayaking, and they know we’re up there washing windows today. The last owners used to hire people to do it, but the missus is always saying, if you want a job done right, you do it yourself and save money to boot. She is just a bear for saving money. Watches every dollar and every dime! Come on upstairs.”

  We crossed a comfortable lounge area with a broad fieldstone fireplace and took a short flight of stairs to the second-floor hallway. There Pamela unlocked a door to reveal another set of stairs up to the third level.

  “We keep it real private up here,” Donald explained, and Pamela chimed in, “Like a little love nest.”

  Love nest, indeed. The suite took up the entire peak of the A-frame, with an enchanting view of the channel and islands that you could enjoy right from the four-poster bed. A velvet love seat faced a smaller version of the fireplace downstairs, and the breakfast nook in back had lace-curtained windows looking into the trees. Fine old lamps, soft quilts, braided rugs . . .

  “It’s perfect!” I told the Coes. “I wish I was staying here myself.”

  “Well, it just so happens that we had a cancellation this week for our little downstairs room,” offered Donald eagerly. “Isn’t that something? We haven’t filled it yet and we’d love to have ya!”

  I explained that I was staying with Owen Winter, and it was clear that they were impressed. He must be a big name on this small island. Then on impulse I mentioned Guy Price, curious to see if they’d react to the caretaker’s name the way the Nyquists did. But no, not at all.

  “Now, Price is one heck of a handy guy,” said Donald, while his wife fluffed pillows that looked perfectly fluffed already. “Do anything, fix anything. He was helping the missus with her cuckoo clocks just the other day, while I was at the dentist’s.” He leaned in closer to stage-whisper “Queer as a three-dollar bill, you know, but a real nice fella.”

  Scandalized, Pamela blushed bright pink and said, “Hush now, Mr. Coe, you shouldn’t say things like that.”

  But her husband just gave me a wink—it was comically exaggerated by his glasses—and led the way downstairs. I drove away from the Owl’s Roost with a smile on my lips, my headache lifting. Dinner with Mom and her own “real nice fella” would banish it entirely. Especially if Adrienne and Kimberly had other plans.

  And before then I’d have time to send e-mails to the bride and groom. Mike was taking the boys to a matinee, I knew, and Lily was working all weekend. So I wouldn’t bother with phone calls, and they’d both read the good news about the wedding plans as soon as they had a convenient moment. I
hummed “Chapel of Love” all the way back to Afterglow Drive.

  Adrienne and Kimmie were on the veranda when I got there, nursing what looked like mint juleps. Adrienne sat upright and unrocking in a rocking chair, while Kimmie languished fetchingly across the porch swing, her capris exchanged for long-slung shorts and an overflowing tube top.

  From the way they fell silent as I reached the top of the steps, I was sure they’d been discussing the Kincaids, mother and daughter. And not favorably.

  Well, to hell with them. I was all the more resolved to make friends with Owen, starting tonight. A leisurely dinner, a long chat with him and Mom as we watched the sun go down—

  “Bulletin from the front, ladies!” Guy leaned out from the main door and flashed a quick smile at me. “Owen just called. He and Lou are staying on Orcas for supper with friends and won’t be back till late. So it’s just us dining on my fabulous Westcott Bay oyster stew. Girls night in, won’t that be fun?”

  Chapter Seven

  I felt a little dazed, and not just from lack of sleep. I love oysters, but the notion of dinner with the flinty-eyed Adrienne was unappealing, to put it mildly. And judging by the eye-rolling glance she exchanged with Kimmie, the feeling was mutual.

  I also felt a little slighted. Mom had been so eager to see me, but apparently an evening with her new man’s friends trumped her daughter’s arrival. Trying to hide my disappointment, I said something polite and entered the house.

  As Guy closed the door behind us, leaving the sisters to stew, he murmured, “Chin up, darling. Dree doesn’t actually bite.”

  At least he’ll be good company, I reflected on the way to my room. And I could use this opportunity to find out whether Guy’s “mere joke” about Adrienne was true. If so, I’d do my best to dispel her ill will about Owen’s new girlfriend and try to cast my mother in a more favorable light.

  I always figure, when life hands you lemons, serve a glass of lemonade to someone else. My stay on Afterglow Drive might not be a treat for me, but if I could do Mom some good I’d be happy.

  My little room was stuffy and the window still stuck, so I left the door open while I sorted my notes and went to pull out my laptop. The only trouble was, in the rush to Boeing Field I’d forgotten to pack it.

  “Damn!” I surveyed my luggage once and then again. Suitcase, jacket, purse, my spiffy new canvas tote bag with the red rope handles . . . and nothing else. “Hell and damnation.”

  “Trouble?” A voice at the door startled me. Not only did Guy Price move like a cat, he made even less noise.

  “Nothing major, but I need to send some e-mails and I forgot my laptop. There must be an Internet café in Friday Harbor?”

  “No need. There’s a PC in the study.” He frowned a little. “Which I think Dree was planning to use this afternoon. Tell you what, come use my little toy. You’ve got to see this thing, I just bought it. . . .”

  Guy led the way into his room and pulled out a gray plastic gizmo about the size of a checkbook, only thicker. It opened like a clamshell to reveal a tiny keyboard and screen.

  “That’s so cute!” I said. I’m quite sophisticated, technologically speaking.

  “Isn’t it? Here, I’ll set you up with a message screen, and you can type away.” He tapped a few keys and set the device on his desk. “Then we couple this little e-mailer to the telephone and it just chirps its little code and you’re done. Magic.”

  “Guy?” Adrienne’s peremptory voice came up the stairwell. “Something’s boiling over down here.”

  “I wonder who?” He gestured toward the desk chair. “Back in a sec.”

  I wrote to Mike first, gushing about the Owl’s Roost, but somehow I hit the wrong key and my message disappeared. I went hunting around and found it in the Deleted folder—which, I couldn’t help noticing, was at least half full of missives from women.

  The sender’s name just above mine was Katy, whose subject line read You must be kidding! while AnnJ’s note was headed About next week, and someone named Penny had sent a message today that was simply titled Please. Three-dollar bill, my eye.

  I didn’t open any of the messages, of course. I do have some scruples. I just retrieved my own and then started a new one to Lily, gnawing my lower lip as I tried to word the directions clearly while getting the hang of this diminutive keyboard.

  Still, I finished with the e-mailer before Guy returned, and spent a few minutes admiring the view from his window. It looked down on the back deck, which boasted an outdoor dining table with seating for eight, and beyond that to the tennis courts and a wide swath of smooth grass. Croquet, anyone?

  Partway down the property was an artful little flagstone terrace built around a capacious hot tub. Terrace and tub were framed by a trellis bearing clouds of pink blossoms from some summer-flowering vine. Nice, very nice.

  I left the window, and after a moment’s hesitation I took a quick peek into the bedroom. That watch was still on the bedside table. Not that you could always tell a man’s watch from a woman’s. This one was sort of in-between, with a sturdy stainless-steel band that was rather masculine and a sprinkling of diamonds around the face that was rather not. I edged a little closer . . .

  “Hey, Pricey, it’s me!”

  I whipped around to see Kimmie standing in the doorway, one hand raised as if to knock. She stared at me curiously.

  “Where’s Guy?” she asked. She didn’t come right out and say “What the hell are you doing here?” but she might as well have.

  “In the kitchen, I think. I was just—”

  Both our heads turned as Guy’s light steps sounded in the stairwell. He gave Kimmie a little pat on the backside as he entered the room.

  “All finished?” he said to me lightly. “Anything else I can do for you, anything at all?”

  There it was again, that little electrical tingle. Guy’s hands slid into the back pockets of his jeans, and I had a sudden flash of them sliding into mine. Aaron had been away too long.

  “No,” I said, amused at him and annoyed at myself. “Not a thing. Well, you could show me how to send these messages.”

  “Oh, I’ll take care of it.” He winked. “My cell phone’s on the blink, and I’ve got a little chatting to do myself before I get back to the kitchen.”

  And you’re also going to read my mail, and maybe show it to Kimmie too. What was it he’d said, “Nobody knows more than me”? Well, they wouldn’t get much satisfaction there. I was saving all my pointed observations about the island dwellers to share with Lily in person.

  “Have fun,” I told them both, and went off to take my long-delayed shower. Then I put on the nicest casual outfit I’d brought, took extra care with my hair and makeup, and went downstairs to have a drink before dinner.

  I should have had two, or maybe three, because dinner was a disaster. Not the oyster stew, which was sublime, but the conversation.

  To begin with, I was dismayed to find only three place settings at the long rosewood dining table, with Kimmie and Adrienne already occupying chairs on one side. I sat opposite, feeling like a job applicant, and made a remark about the weather. That brought a mechanical smile from Kimmie, a bored sigh from Adrienne, and not a single word in reply.

  The silence stretched out, and I drank my glass of excellent sauvignon blanc far too quickly to do it justice. Then Guy made a grand entrance with an antique soup tureen and proceeded to amuse himself with a bit of mischief—something that seemed to come all too naturally to him.

  First he managed to brush Kimmie’s bare shoulder and chest, provocatively and more than once, as he placed the tureen on the table and ladled up our bowls. Kimmie kept giggling, and the more she did, the more Adrienne’s face turned sour.

  “For heaven’s sake—” she finally muttered, and Guy and Kimmie snorted and sniggered like little boys misbehaving in church.

  Guy’s next trick was to needle Adrienne directly, as he stood at the ornate sideboard slicing a baton of sourdough bread. “Dree, darling, I under
stand you’ve been up to no good in that plane of yours. It’s not nice to frighten the guests, is it?”

  Adrienne stared daggers at me through her red-framed glasses. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Have it your way,” said Guy airily. He placed the bread basket before me and refilled my glass. He had changed into a wine-colored dress shirt, quite the look with his dark hair, and wore a subtle cologne, the kind that makes you want to lean close and inhale. “Salad coming up, and there’s raspberry sorbet in the freezer for later.”

  “Aren’t you joining us?” I asked hopelessly, as if the wolf could save me from the dragon. “You said we’d all be dining on—”

  “Oh, I’ve already eaten. Cook, serve, and wash up, that’s what Owen pays me for. Can you girls manage your own coffee?”

  “I suppose you have a date?” asked Adrienne dryly.

  “Perhaps, perhaps. Night, all!”

  As he rounded the table toward the door, the amusement on Guy’s handsome face was replaced by a certain excited anticipation. Sexual anticipation, if I was any judge. A date indeed, and an especially hot one. But with a man or a woman?

  I glanced at Kimmie. She made a pouting face at Adrienne, who merely lifted a supercilious eyebrow.

  “So,” I said brightly, making lemonade like crazy, “Mom and Owen are on Orcas Island. That’s the only one of the islands I’ve been to, before now. Did they take the ferry?”

  Adrienne made a dismissive sound with her lips. “They took the Dreamer.”

  “That’s our yacht,” Kimmie explained kindly, as if to a rather stupid child. “Beautiful Dreamer.”

  “Ah.” I would have asked some sort of intelligent question, except that I know little about yachts, and care less. “Mom must be enjoying herself. She loves the water.”

  “No doubt,” said Adrienne. She managed to make the simple comment sound quite offensive.

  “But then she loves any kind of travel,” I soldiered on. “She and a friend went to Italy last year.”