Death at the Dog Wedding

by Stacey Alabaster

  “Not exactly the way you wanted the day to pan out, I bet,” Ryan said.

  I shook my head.

  I told him about Felicity already hightailing it out of there. “She was gone before I could stop her,” I added, trying to show that I was doing my best under the circumstances. “I know she must look like the top suspect.”

  Ryan frowned and started furiously taking notes. “And why is that?” he asked. “Did you see her before the body was found? What about before the ceremony?”

  I stopped and bit my lip, trying to think.

  “Well, no,” I said. “Now that I think of it, I’m not sure where Felicity was during the ceremony preparation. Adam took care of most of it, with a little bit of help from me.”

  Ryan looked surprised. “You didn’t see her? Not all day?”

  I shrugged, feeling a little embarrassed about how seriously we had all taken the wedding preparation. It all felt very silly now. “Well, we were tying to keep the bride and groom separated before the wedding.”

  Ryan paused for a moment before he jotted something else down on his notepad.

  “Don’t look at me like that,” I said. “I was just going along with the insanity of everyone else. It was Adam’s idea to have the wedding in the first place.” I sighed. “And trust me, I think he had ulterior motives there.” Which had ultimately failed. This day had done nothing to convince me that either weddings or marriage were a good idea. They always ended in disaster.

  “What did you say to him?” Adam asked me once Ryan had left to take a look in the woods. He had more witnesses to speak to. A distraught Elliot was sitting on a log and I noticed Ryan walk up to him and shake hands like they knew each other.

  I turned back to Adam, who was waiting for my answer with bated breath. For some reason, I held my tongue. I didn’t think he’d appreciate me suspecting Felicity, or suggesting her to the police like that.

  “Just the facts,” I said simply.

  Elliot was still perched on the log even after Ryan was done talking to him. He had Massie sitting on the ground in front of him, but he looked so rattled that he was barely paying attention to her. “Do you think that he’s in any fit state to take the dog home with him?” Adam asked.

  It didn’t look that way to me.

  I slowly walked over and cast Elliot a sympathetic smile.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, the leash limp in his hands. “I just don’t think I can have Massie at home with me. She’s going to remind me too much of Maxine right now.” He could barely even look at the dog. Poor guy, he was really broken up. I placed a comforting hand on his shoulder.

  “It’s okay, I can take Massie home with me for one night,” I said, tugging on her leash. I already had two dogs at home—what difference could an extra one make?

  Chapter 3

  “Looks like you are all out of room at the inn,” Adam commented as he walked into my living room and saw that there were two dog beds and three dogs in need of a place to sleep.

  Casper, my other dog, a small terrier, was curled up in a ball in a small bed that also doubled as a cat bed when sold at the pet store. Even if that bed had been free, Massie would not have fit on it. And Jasper was territorial over his dog mattress, an expensive bed that I had paid hundreds of dollars for at the pet store because apparently it offered chiropractic benefits and also repelled fleas.

  “Jasper could always sleep in my bed for a night or two,” I suggested.

  Adam shook his head. “You don’t want to get him in the habit of it,” he said. “Once you let him sleep in there, you’ll never get rid of him.”

  “Well, we can’t just let Massie sleep on the hard floors,” I pointed out. My living room and kitchen were all open plan with shiny wooden floorboards. And with the glass walls, the place could get a little chilly at night without the heat turned on. Massie needed somewhere to cuddle up after all she had been through that day.

  Adam came up with a solution and walked to the cupboard to get an old sleeping bag from the top shelf. Once he’d unrolled it and folded it up a few times, it was thick and plush enough to double as a dog bed. “There we go,” he said proudly, as he called Massie over and watched her settle into it. “At least someone will have a good night tonight.”

  He was being so nice and helpful that I was starting to feel a little guilty. He still didn’t know what I’d said to Ryan. Nor what I was privately thinking about Felicity. I knew the two of them were friends and I didn’t want to put him in an awkward position. He left to go outside for a moment and I was relieved that I didn’t have to think up anything to say. But when he came back inside, he was holding his phone and sighing as he pulled the glass doors closed just a little too hard.

  “Felicity still isn’t answering her phone,” he said in frustration, sounding far more upset than I’d expected him to. “There’s been no explanation from her at all” Boy, he was really taking the cancellation of this wedding to heart.

  “Hmm, I wonder why,” I murmured, checking through the mail, not checking the tone of my voice however.

  “What does that mean?” Adam asked sharply, putting the phone down on the counter as he sat down on a bar stool.

  I tried to drop the subject and started emptying the flower vase into the sink and refilling it with fresh water. People had been overly generous with the flowers before the wedding, even though dogs don’t care about flowers, unless it is to dig them up.

  Adam shot me a look. “Come on, George. It’s obvious that you don’t like Felicity.”

  I stumbled over my words now that I had been caught. “It’s not that I don’t like her,” I stated simply. “It’s that she left tire marks getting away before the police arrived.”

  Adam’s mouth was hanging open. “Surely you can’t be suggesting that Felicity had anything to do with this, George? Oh, now that is just crazy.”

  I shrugged. “We don’t know what she was doing before the ceremony,” I pointed out as I placed fresh flowers in the vase. “I never saw her. Not all day. Did you?”

  Adam kept his head down and I could have sworn his face was flushed. Probably because he knew that I was right. “No,” he mumbled in defeat.

  “Well, there you go,” I said, satisfied that I had won that argument. I placed the vase in the middle of the counter and admired it. There were still so many unused bouquets though that I planned to take them into the craft store in the morning and decorate the whole shop with flowers. But Adam still had one more thing to say.

  “Felicity wouldn’t even kill a spider if it was in her house. She is hardly capable of shooting someone in the chest.”

  I frowned and stared at him. How did he know so much about what Felicity would and wouldn’t do? “You don’t know her that well, Adam. Just because you plan a dog wedding with someone doesn’t mean that you know what they are capable of.”

  “What is this show?” Adam finally asked, even though we’d been watching the same program for forty minutes.

  “It’s a lifestyle show,” I pointed out. There was a woman on the screen adding ruffles to a pillow case. “I watch it to get ideas for the shop and the craft circle.”

  Adam was sitting with his arms across his chest, in a zombie-like state. “It’s not exactly my thing,” he grumbled.

  “Well, nothing is forcing you to stay here and watch it.”

  We had been sitting in silence for close to an hour, neither of us mentioning Felicity or anything that had happened at the wedding. But I knew the real reason Adam hadn’t gone home, and it wasn’t just to help Massie try to settle in like he’d said. He didn’t want to leave until he had settled the matter, even if it meant he had to sulk in silence for an hour before he was ready to broach the subject again.

  He finally uncrossed his arms, leaned forward, and opened his mouth.

  Here we go.

  I assumed he was just going to launch into another Felicity defense, but he had a slightly different angle this time. His voice was softer, and he sounded a lot
less angry at me this time.

  “You know, George, none of us actually heard the gunshot,” he said. “Maxine’s body was not that far from the reception. So it can’t have been anyone at the wedding who killed Maxine. It must have happened beforehand. Maybe before any of the guests even got there. Maybe it didn’t even happen today.”

  I struggled to sit up, I’d gotten so comfy in the sofa. But I also struggled to take in what he was telling me. Surely that couldn’t be right. “But I am sure that I saw Maxine at the ceremony,” I said, thinking back.

  Adam frowned at me. “Are you really sure? Or is this wishful thinking?”

  “I-I’m sure I saw her.” But my voice lacked conviction. Had Maxine actually been a guest at the wedding? I hadn’t been the one in charge of the guest list, nor the invitations. That had all been Felicity. The only part I’d really played in the preparations was turning up on the day and making sure the groom was ready to go.

  “There was a lot of noise and chaos with the dogs,” Adam said, starting to get a little smug. “You can’t be sure that you saw Maxine at all.”

  I hated losing any argument. Especially against my ex-husband.

  He was right, though. We hadn’t heard a gunshot. Maxine could have been killed at any time.

  Adam finally stood up and said he was calling it a night. “I’ve got to be up early to mow the lawns.”

  When Adam was gone, I wheeled in my dry erase board and sat in front of it with Jasper there beside me for moral support, the other two dogs sleeping after a long day. I should have been sleeping as well, but my mind was racing. It seemed like my theory had counted for nothing. I wrote the word “Wedding.” If Adam was right, the person who killed Maxine was not even there that day. I had no idea who it could have been. “Looks like we might be back at square one, Jasper.” I shook my head. “Looks like we are going to have to look outside of the wedding guests, and figure out who else in this town might have wanted Maxine dead.”

  But Jasper had his head down and his ears were all floppy. He didn’t seem like his usual self at all. “Maybe it’s bedtime,” I said, packing up the board. “For both of us.”

  The next morning—fresh from mowing the lawns, I could only assume, although he was cleanly dressed and there was no scent of freshly cut grass coming off him—Adam jangled the leash and called out for Jasper to come to the door. “Where is he?” Adam asked.

  “He’s been a bit lethargic last night and this morning.” I said, patting my knee to try and get Jasper to run to us. But he just stayed on the mat, staring up at us with sad eyes. “I’m worried he might have eaten something bad at the wedding,” I said, finally giving up. “It’s like I told you—it’s those cheap treats.” Adam worked at the grocery store as a bagger and he got a discount on certain items. He was always bringing home weird discount brands. He had chosen to have these treats as the primary food at the wedding. For the dogs, not the people.

  “I don’t think it was the food at the wedding,” Adam said, seeming impatient with me.

  “Well, what else could it have been?” I asked him. “He’s clearly not well.”

  Adam shook his head at me as if to say, are you seriously not getting this? “Don’t you think that there’s something else that happened at the wedding that could be affecting him?”

  I stared at him blankly. “What are you talking about?”

  Adam paused for a second and then tried to explain it to me as patiently as possible. “The little matter of him being stood up. His bride taking off like a flash as soon as she spotted him.”

  “Oh, don’t be ridiculous,” I said slowly. “Are you honestly suggesting that Jasper is depressed because his bride bolted?”

  Adam rolled up the leash and put it back in his pocket before leaving. It was clear that Jasper did not want to go for a walk that day and he was not going to be dragged.

  “You can turn your nose up at the idea all you want,” Adam said. “But the fact is that Jasper misses Flora.” He shot me one last knowing glance and then left.

  This was an argument I didn’t want to lose. I’d already lost one and I wasn’t going down without a fight this time. I knelt beside Jasper with a bowl of dry dog food to see if his appetite was back. When he turned his face away, I decided I would have to try something a little more tantalizing. I went to the fridge and pulled out a prime piece of fillet, the kind that would cost you thirty bucks if you ordered it at a restaurant and cooked it medium rare. When he still turned his nose up, I started to get worried.

  Then I had a brilliant idea. I leapt up and found the phone book, looking through it for Felicity’s number. I’d never had any reason to call her before so I didn’t have her number in my cell. “Hey, Jasper,” I called out while the phone was ringing. “How would you like me to arrange a play date with Flora?” When his ears didn’t pick up at her name, I was sure I was right—and taking him over to see Flora would only prove it. I was sure there would be no change in his demeanor when they were actually face to face. Then Adam would have to admit that I was right. I even planned on inviting him along on the date so that he could witness it firsthand.

  But there was no answer.

  Of course there wasn’t. She was still in hiding.

  Chapter 4

  “Where have you been?” Brenda asked me on Tuesday morning when I finally wandered into the shop, my hair less wavy and more frizzy after a morning spent trying to wrangle three dogs down to the dog park. I hadn’t exactly had time to style it. I’d had to bring Massie into the shop with me because she could not stand to be left alone without human company. What was it with me and clingy dogs?

  A third dog had ended up being far more work than I’d anticipated. Massie wasn’t exactly low maintenance. She didn’t sleep very much and always wanted attention and companionship. That included humans, not just other dogs. I was hoping that if I left her alone with Jasper and Casper, it would be enough to entertain her. But the Collie still needed more attention—and time—than I’d had to spare. Hence, I hadn’t been at work for a couple of days. But I couldn’t help thinking that Brenda had some nerve asking me that question considering that she herself had been a no-show at the wedding.

  I placed my purse on the counter and ran a hand through my hair, trying to tame it. I had a bouquet of flowers that I handed to Brenda, letting her know to empty the old ones out of the vase. “I could ask you the same thing,” I said to her. “Why weren’t you at the wedding?” I’d sent her an invitation, and even though she hadn’t technically RSVP’d, I’d assumed she’d be there. Otherwise, it would be incredibly rude of her.

  “You can’t seriously expect me to spend my Saturday at a dog wedding,” she said, tossing the old daisies into the trashcan. The flowers were as dry as the look on her face.

  “Brenda. This was important to me,” I said. Well, I was stretching the truth a little. Maybe I had found the whole thing a little ridiculous, deep down. But at the end of the day, it was important to Jasper, and it was important to people I cared about, and that meant it was important to me.

  I pulled a paper out of my purse and looked into the window to make sure there was room for it.

  If I wasn’t dealing with one depressed dog, it was another. I had no idea what I was supposed to do with Massie long-term. She could stay for a day or two longer, but after that, she was going to need a more permanent home.

  Two dogs I could handle, but adopting a third was going to be too much. So I had a plan I was about to put into action

  I had captured Masse’s likeness perfectly on the poster—I’m quite the artist. It was so accurate, it could have been a photo of her.

  “What is that?” Brenda asked once she was done with the flower arranging.

  “I’m trying to find a good home for Massie,” I said, explaining the sign I was attaching to the front window.

  “Oh, don’t tell me you are turning this place into a pet store again,” she said, trying to rip the sign down. I stopped her. She was referring to
the time a few months earlier where I’d rescued a dozen cats from the shelter and had to rehome them all. “Well, it worked last time, so why not again?” I asked. I had confidence that there would be a good person in Pottsville to take care of Massie. And that person might just be one of our customers.

  Brenda remained unimpressed, her lips pursed like she had been sucking on sour lemons. “Well, I hope you’ve put your cell phone number on there so I won’t have to field any calls here at work.”

  I rolled my eyes, then took out a marker to correct the sign. I hadn’t actually had my cell phone listed. “Happy now?”

  I knew the answer was no. Brenda was never happy. That was just the way her brain was wired—she looked for reasons to be miserable, I was quite sure of it.

  “Oh, geez, not already,” I heard Brenda mumble while I started to put some stock—yellow yarn—onto the shelves.

  As soon as I’d put the sign up and turned my back, we’d gotten an eager looker, with someone already stopping to read the sign. My heart skipped a beat but then I realized the person was wearing a police hat. Then it started fluttering a little harder. Ryan. I knelt down and tried to fix my hair in the glass of the shelf. It was no use—it still looked like a bird’s nest. Ryan didn’t seem to notice or mind, though.

  “You’re going to give Massie up for adoption?” Ryan asked, sounding a little surprised. “I thought that you were the town’s resident dog lady.”

  “I wish I could keep her,” I said to Ryan as I tried to pat down my hair again. “But two dogs is enough, seeing as I’ve got the store to run as well.” I saw Brenda raise her eyebrows. I ignored it and turned back to Ryan. “Anyway, is there any news on Maxine’s killer?”

  Ryan looked a little amused. “You cut right to the chase, don’t you?” He suppressed a little smile. “Nice try. No info that I can share.”