In-Laws & Outlaws

by Ally Gray

  “Anything at all,” Stacy said unhelpfully before turning to the unhappy couple with a sympathetic look. “Porter, Priscilla, the time for lying and sugar-coating is way behind us, so far back there it’s just a speck in the rearview mirror. So I’m gonna tell it to you straight: your families went way overboard with the credit cards to pay for this wedding. At first I thought it was because they loved you so much, but now I know it’s because they were trying to one-up each other. What can you tell me about their finances?”

  The bride and groom exchanged a questioning, curious glance before turning back to Stacy with blank looks. “Nothing,” Porter said with a shrug. “They don’t have any money. I mean, not serious money. They have enough to get by and be comfortable, I guess, but I’ve been trying to tell them all along that we don’t need fancy centerpieces or doves released at the moment we exchange vows. We’d have been just as happy with a cake from the grocery store and some barbecue from Smokin’ Hot. They just wouldn’t listen.”

  “No, they didn’t!” Stacy said with a laugh. “Your cake alone costs more than a year’s tuition at your alma mater… well, in state tuition, that is. But this money had to come from somewhere. I really hate to ask you this—I mean, you cannot begin to know how much I don’t want to ask you this—but who was planning to pay it all off?”

  Porter and Priscilla exchanged another blank look. “I don’t know,” Priscilla answered. “I wasn’t in on all the goings on, and once I’d had my say about how I didn’t need any of this kind of stuff to enjoy my wedding day, I stayed out of it. Mama just said they were taking care of it. You know, just between all of us, Mama never got to have a fancy wedding. She got pregnant in the tenth grade, when Daddy was only a junior. They got married at the courthouse one day after school, and neither one of them ever went back. But they worked really hard to make a good life for us, and they still love each other so much. I just figured this was kind of like the wedding Mama never got to have, so I stepped back and let her run with it.”

  Porter put his arm around Priscilla’s shoulders. The fear was written clear across his face, just as much as if someone had put it there with a permanent marker. He was afraid he’d never get that same chance with his bride if Stacy didn’t hurry up and do something.

  “Okay, it’s a long shot, but I say that’s a good start. Porter, not trying to air your family’s dirty laundry, I promise nothing will leave this room. It’s in the wedding planner code,” she joked solemnly. “How are things on your family’s end?”

  “Well, we’re probably pretty much in the same boat as ‘Scilla’s family. My dad graduated high school and joined the Army where he trained as a mechanic. He’s comfortable, but he never would open his own shop. He’s worked for the same garage for almost thirty years, even though Mom has nagged all this time to start his own garage. He always said he just wanted to tinker with the cars, not run a shop full of employees.”

  “As much as it hurts to say this, my opinion is that the money in this wedding has been coming from your family, Priscilla. Both your mom and your dad—and your grandparents, if I’m being honest here—would suggest the most outrageous, over the top accoutrements, while your parents, Porter, would argue over each expense. I don’t mean to point fingers, but I got the impression that your mom was playing keep-up and your dad was fighting her tooth and nail.”

  “Yeah, that sounds about right,” he said quietly, nodding his head. “But if we still think someone in the family murdered Great Granny, do you really think it would be someone in her own family?”

  Stacy saw Priscilla stiffen at Porter’s question. “Wait a minute, you said my grandparents were in on it?” she asked, her eyes becoming impossibly sadder. “They don’t have any money! My grandfather is… well, let’s just say… no, that’s not right.” She sighed in defeat. “My grandfather has a gambling problem. I can’t tell you how many times my parents have had to get him out of trouble. There’s no way he was paying for all this.”

  Stacy was dying inside, even though no one in the room ever would have known it. What am I doing? I’m no detective! she thought miserably. I might as well just try my hand at driving a manure truck for a living as being a detective!

  “Wait a minute…” she began, and it was her turn to become silent as she thought. Someone started to speak but out of the corner of her eye she saw Jeremiah hold up his hand, telling the person to give her a minute. “Nobody go anywhere, I really need to go check something out.”

  Stacy bolted from her chair, grabbed her purse and keys, and stormed out of the building. No one moved until after she’d jumped in her car and skidded down the long driveway, sending a shower of tiny pebbles smattering against the outside wall. As she drove, she punched in the number for the only contact she knew of who could make sense of this.

  I just hope he’s willing to break down the door, Stacy thought, taking a peek at her red leather pumps and realizing she’d need the back up pair since she wasn’t dressed for this particular occasion.

  She reached her destination just as the sun was setting but she couldn’t risk turning on her lights and giving herself away. The cover of darkness gave the place an eerie feel. She wracked her brain, but couldn’t think of a single slasher film that took place at a pig farm, so she breathed a brief sigh of relief. Stacy stepped carefully, considering the location, and was relieved to know that the ear-splitting squeals of the residents would cover up the sound of her shoes crunching on gravel.

  Using her phone as a light, Stacy looked around the property until she found the trucks, the very same ones that had only a day or so ago been tearing up the grass in front of her office. She looked around, trying to tell them apart, but finally decided she’d just have to look in each one. Trying the first door, she found it locked, and knew there was no point in bothering to try the other doors. Instead, she took a deep breath and stuck the toe of her expensive, beloved shoes into the grill of the truck and hoisted herself up by climbing the massive grate on the front. She kept moving until she was walking precariously on the hood of the truck, high enough to peek into the cab through the windshield.

  Still relying on her phone and hoping against hope that no one called and gave her away, Stacy shone the tiny light around the interior of the truck. When it turned up empty, she blew out a breath and climbed back down to the safety of the ground. She was careful not to let her phone illuminate the massacre that must have taken place to her shoes.

  She repeated the climbing process on the second truck and the third, but finally hit pay dirt with the fourth truck. Just as she squinted at her phone to try to call Detective Sims again, a flashlight beam lit up around her, causing her to squint into the light. The surprise of it threw her off balance and she lost her footing, only to slide down the sloped of the truck’s hood and land on her rear end. The absence of any pain at falling only confirmed what she already suspected even before she smelled it… she’d landed in manure.

  “What the hell are you doin’ climbin’ on my truck?” the old man with the flashlight demanded, shining the light directly in Stacy’s face. She held up a hand to shield her eyes, but the stench was unbearable. She was prevented from answering the question by the sound of approaching sirens.

  Chapter 12

  “I don’t know how you did it, but you came through like a champ once again,” Rod told Stacy over the phone around nine the next morning. “Turns out, Great Granny’s son—the grandfather of the bride—has some serious gambling debts through several online poker sites. He’s always had a gambling problem, according to his daughter—sorry, aunt of the bride—and he thought taking it to the world wide web would help keep him safe from bookies showing up at his house and demanding payment. When they tracked him down and paid him a visit, he panicked. Helping Great Granny into the ground would give him the money he needed to pay them off. He cracked like a rotten egg the moment we put some pressure on him. But how did you know it was him?”

  “Remember how he looked, with his hair
all wild and standing on end?” she asked, jarring Rod’s memory. “He never looked that way whenever there was wedding prep taking place. He always looked neat, with his hair slicked back. At the time I thought he was just trying to put on airs and show up the Lancasters, but it was really peanut oil in his hair. I think he was trying to trigger an attack in Great Granny all along.

  “The day he sent over the manure, I smelled it and even got some oil on my hands from the steering wheel when I climbed in the truck to honk the horn. The smell of peanuts somehow managed to overpower the perfume of fresh poop, but only in the truck. I guess that’s why I forgot about it as soon as I got back out.”

  “That’s some pretty savvy thinking there,” Rod hinted. “Don’t go getting any ideas about taking my job now.”

  “Don’t worry, I’m more than fed up with crime fighting! But what I don’t get is all the pranks. They were just secondary to the real crime? Because if that’s true, somebody owes me a pound of flesh for all the property damage and stress they’ve caused,” she complained. And a new pair of shoes, she thought angrily.

  “No, that was still him. He ramped up all the bad blood between the families to cover his tracks, thinking he’d make it all look like part of the plan to break these two kids up. It backfired big time, since the groom’s mother is a registered nurse. She knows you never, ever play around with food allergies, especially not peanut allergies, no matter how bad you want to get back at the other guy. It’s not like putting laxatives in the chocolate icing on the cake, I mean. Anyway, we couldn’t get her to crack in the least. No matter how hard we pressed, she insisted she oversaw every bit of the rehearsal dinner food herself. Once she learned the bride had a family member with allergies, she didn’t even have peanut products in her house while she and the other ladies were cooking, just to make sure no one accidentally used something that could hurt Great Granny.”

  Stacy shook her head and frowned, despite the incredible shoulder massage from Nathan taking place at that very moment. It was supposed to be his way of waking her up and energizing her for this horror of a wedding, but instead it was putting her to sleep. She’d only managed to clock a couple of hours of shut eye after meeting with her staff and the happy couple, and she had to imagine that Rod had had even less sleep since he’d worked through the night interrogating the members of the two families.

  “I just can’t believe one of those people would kill an old woman because he had a gambling problem. How much help could that actually be?” Stacy thought back to the elderly women she knew in her own life and couldn’t picture their Social Security checks being all that helpful in a financial crisis.

  “Well, when you’re as loaded as Great Granny, it can solve a lot of problems,” Rod replied. “They may not have looked or acted like they had all that much, but her late husband owned stock in Coca-Cola, and she inherited all his shares when he passed away. Of course, those shares would transfer to her son and his siblings when she passed away, unless she had a will that stipulated otherwise. Turns out, she didn’t.” He cleared his throat and mumbled self-consciously. “You really saved the day with your theory, Stacy. We could have spent months digging all this up, but you came through for us in a big way.”

  “No, Rod, I’ve got to say, you’re the champ here. Thanks to you and those long hours last night, I’ve got a wedding to put on today. You’re the best, I mean it.” Behind her, Nathan squeezed her shoulders a little harder and cleared his throat dramatically. “I’m sorry, on that note, I’m going to have to hang up because my boyfriend takes issue with me calling other men ‘the best.’ I’ll talk to you later, and thanks again!”

  She clicked off her phone and laid it on her desk before spinning around in her chair to face Nathan. He scooped her up under her arms and slid beneath her before cradling her in his lap. He pulled her close and kissed her softly, smiling to himself when he felt the tension in her muscles slowly fade. She wound her arms around his neck and deepened the kiss, but jumped up only seconds later.

  “What are you doing? We’ve got a wedding today! Let’s go, let’s go! Get moving, mister!” she cried, clapping her hands and marching out of her office. Nathan hung his head in defeat for a moment.

  “I’ve created a monster,” he said with a happy sigh before following her out into the bustle of activity going on outside her office at that very moment. He ducked when a large table came down the hallway over the heads of two moving crews, and pressed himself against the wall to avoid being smacked with the long arms of flowers extending from a centerpiece that a florist was carrying. Instead of moving on, he ducked back into Stacy’s office to wait out the storm.

  By the time the somber-faced bride arrived at noon, most of the accoutrements were in place for a beautiful wedding. A simple but elegant gown hung in the bride’s parlor, a replacement of the one that had been destroyed in the police raid, courtesy of the department. A light lunch array of treats had been prepared by Chef Pierre, the in-house head of catering, and was waiting under its silver domed cloche for her to enjoy while she dressed and prepared.

  Instead, Priscilla stood in the middle of the cozy but elegant room and looked around at the emptiness. She turned to Stacy with tears in her eyes, her thin shoulders shaking from the effort of trying not to cry.

  “This isn’t how it was supposed to be at all,” she said as she wept quietly. “None of it was. It was supposed to be the best months of my life, months of showers and parties and good wishes from everyone who knew us, all leading up to the happiest day of my life. Instead, it’s been nothing but fighting, and crying, and feeling like I don’t have anybody in the world. And now, I really don’t have anybody. I’m all alone.”

  Stacy came forward and held the younger woman tightly. “They’ll be here, Detective Sims promised me that himself. It’s just been difficult since it’s a Saturday and he has to have a judge sign their release papers. He’s working on it, though.”

  “Oh, I know. But that’s not what I meant. The whole thing, from the moment Porter first proposed, has showed me just how little they all think of each other, and of me. Every family has its problems, but I’ve always stood by them. I’ve stood up for them. And I just figured out they couldn’t do the same thing for me. Like I said, whether they get here or not, I’m all alone.”

  “No, you’re not. You’ve got a wonderful young man waiting for you, waiting to make a whole new family out of the love you share for each other. If you two can’t depend on your own families to be there for you and support your happiness, you just look forward, honey. Look ahead of you to the joy you’re going to bring to the world as husband and wife!” Stacy smiled at her, wiping tenderly at Priscilla’s tear-stained cheeks in a matronly way.

  The bride smiled weakly and nodded, and Stacy gave her one last tight embrace before leaving her to begin getting dressed. She promised she would return with news of the suspects’ release as soon as she heard anything. In the meantime, she sacrificed having her own assistant for the busy day, sending Mandy in to keep Priscilla company in the way that all of her bridesmaids should have if they weren’t sharing a cell right that moment with two hookers and a DUI.

  “Porter, you still breathing in there?” Stacy called through the closed door to the groom’s suite a few minutes later. She knocked lightly when she didn’t get an answer, then knocked louder when she still didn’t hear stirring. “I’m not afraid to have a security guy break down the door if you don’t answer!”

  God knows we have enough of them standing around doing nothing right now, she thought to herself bitterly.

  Finally, Porter opened the door, looking like death. He had on his tuxedo trousers and his undershirt, a sad-looking white t-shirt that would have to be changed before the ceremony judging by the way he was sweating. Stacy’s mind immediately went to the possibility of another prank, wondering if someone could have slipped something in his food.

  “Porter? Are you ill?” she cried, pressing a hand to his forehead to see if he was
feverish. He shook his head, sending little beads of sweat flying off the ends of his damp hair.

  “No, just terrified!” he replied, opening the door and stepping back to let her come in.

  “Why are you terrified? You know Priscilla adores you! You two have been through so much to get to this day, and now that it’s here, it’s going to be wonderful!”

  “It’s not that, I know she loves me. But what if something else goes wrong? Face it, somebody died at my rehearsal dinner! What if that wasn’t the end of it?” He slumped in a wing-back chair and let his head fall to his hands.

  “Porter, I told you what happened, it had nothing to do with wanting to break you two up. That’s all over. And besides, I still haven’t been able to secure the release of your in-laws. You’re safe until a judge signs those pieces of paper. I promise!”

  “So you mean, they’re not here yet?” he demanded, looking up. He looked around the room as if that explained the absence of his groomsmen. “Priscilla is never going to go through with it! You don’t know her like I do, she’s stubborn as a mule. She’s a real fighter. It’s one of her best qualities!”

  Stacy looked around at the empty room and wondered how Porter would be holding up if his family and friends were here by his side. She somehow doubted he’d be feeling any better right now, and secretly wanted to tell him to count his blessings that he wasn’t surrounded by those idiots on his wedding day. Instead, she maintained her professionalism and held her tongue.

  “I’ve got this under control,” she finally announced in a voice that would have made Jeremiah proud.

  * * *

  It was time. Priscilla had initially balked at the solution Stacy had proposed, but in the end, even the bride had to admit it was the best they were ever going to get. Even better, it was probably the only way this wedding would ever happen without another murder taking place.