He was still grinning. “Well, I hate to be the cliché of the retired cop who becomes a private investigator…”
He told me about the plan he had for us. That we could start a new business, as a couple, putting our combined skills to good use. He pointed out that he had all the technical knowledge from his time in the police force, and I had all the expertise of an amateur who had to use her natural skills without the resources of the police. We could start a detective agency together.
“Is this really what you want?” I asked him. “You don’t have to do this just to please me.”
I had to admit, I hadn’t managed to find a job so far in Lakes Entrance, although I had put my resume in at all the restaurants and cafes. But part of me just couldn’t stand the idea of not being my own boss after running my own business for so long, so I thought maybe I had deliberately sabotaged my job-seeking efforts. It was tempting, of course, to start our own business. But I still hadn’t sold my last one.
Jackson tried to sell the idea to me. “We would get to work our own hours, our own cases…”
I got what he was saying. Truly, I did.
“I’m not sure this is quite right,” I said, turning around to see the disappointment on his face. I hurried to qualify my statement. “It’s not that I don’t appreciate the gesture. I really, really do. It’s just…this place needs an awful lot of fixing up. And it’s so far out of town.” If we were going to start a detective agency—and that was a big if—then didn’t we need our office to be somewhere a bit more professional than a rickety old cottage that was covered in mold?
Jackson smiled through his disappointment. “Well, we can keep looking for the right place.”
I put my arm around his waist. “I think it’s a brilliant idea, really I do. Let’s just not rush into it just yet, okay?”
“It’s something we can figure out after the wedding,” Jackson said.
I sucked in a sharp breath. We were only a week away now. I was really getting married. I was really going to be a bride. And nothing was going to stop the wedding day now.
14
“Hello, Miss Bride!”
My best friend—by default, I supposed, but it still counted—stepped out of the car and grinned at me. Sue looked like she had been on a bit of a diet before the wedding. She was wearing her usual fifties style shades that looked like cat’s eyes and on this day, she had on a white dress with yellow polka dots. I felt like I needed sunglasses on as well to block the glare from the hundreds of tiny suns shining off her.
“It’s so good to see you!” I said, wrapping Sue in a tight hug. She laughed and told me all about her new roommate, Adele, the one who had turned my bedroom yellow. That wasn’t the extent of the changes. Apparently, Adele was a big green thumb and had turned the house into something of a greenhouse, with potted plants and bulbs everywhere. “The whole place smells a little of damp soil,” Sue said as she screwed her nose up, telling me that Adele wanted to repaint the living room as well. Yellow. Of course. The cursed color.
“I think maybe you need to find a new roommate,” I said, laughing.
Sue shrugged. “She’s not so bad,” she said. “She came to my art show last week and helped out with some of the catering in the end.”
“Oh, shoot,” I said, slapping my forehead. “I totally forgot to come to that, didn’t I? And I promised I would be at the next one too…”
Sue shook her head, but I could tell that deep down, she was actually a little hurt. I had missed the last half a dozen events. “You’ve had so much on your plate with the wedding, and you live a hundred miles away now.”
“But you’ve been such a good friend to me,” I said, leading the way into the house. I felt truly guilty at how forgetful I’d been about the shows. I just never seemed to remember when the next one was coming up.
“Well, after your honeymoon, you can be at the next one.”
“Of course.”
In the end, I had chosen Carine and my cousin Lacy for the two bridesmaids, and Sue as my maid of honor.
“I’m not going to spoil the whole thing for you,” Sue said, getting a piece of paper out of her luggage. “But I just want to make sure that all of the key points of the speech are okay. I don’t want to embarrass you on your big day.” Once she had been over the main parts with me, she excused herself to the garden so she could work on it some more and practice it so that she wouldn’t need to read from the sheet.
It still felt so strange to have Sue give the speech, to have Sue standing beside me as I said my vows. To have Sue as my maid of honor. When I’d always assumed it would be someone else.
But I couldn’t think about all that.
Jackson seemed a little put out when he stumbled into the kitchen the following morning. “Why has she filled the kitchen with so many boxes of cereal?” he grumbled like an old man as he picked up his book and started to read, not really concentrating on the text because he was too busy complaining about Sue. “And her clothes are everywhere…”
“She loves her cereal,” I said, clearing some of the boxes from the countertop. There were five different varieties.
“But she is only here for a week, isn’t she?”
“Believe me, that is just how much cereal she goes through,” I said. “And she likes to have a large variety to choose from.”
Jackson stuck a spoon into his own plain bowl of cereal. “I don’t see what is so wrong with good old-fashioned wheat.”
I tried to suppress a laugh. “Sue prefers the more sugary varieties.”
“But don’t you find all her little quirks quite irritating?” he said, putting his book down at last, giving up on the pretense that he was actually reading it.
But I giggled. “No. I lived with her for almost a year, remember. I’m quite used to all her eccentricities.”
He was quiet for a moment.
He picked his book back up and I thought that maybe this time he was actually going to read. “You lived with Pippa for even longer than that, right?” He said it casually, like it was just a thought that had floated through his mind.
I tensed up a little. “Yes. Years, on and off. For a long while, she was just sleeping on my couch.”
I had lived with Pippa longer than I’d lived with anyone. I had known her longer than I had known anyone, except for my own family. As an only child, she was the closest thing to a sibling—to a sister—that I had.
The next morning, Sue was up at the crack of dawn, pouring cereal so loudly that it woke both of us up at 6 am. Jackson rolled over and looked at me. “It’s not too late, you know.”
I rolled over onto my side and nodded, just a little.
I knew he was right. There was still time.
I had sent the wedding invites out weeks ago, but I held a small stack of freshly stamped envelopes in my hand. I counted through all the invitations. One. Two. Three. Four. That covered everyone I had left out.
We had enough room set aside. Enough seats spared. And even though I didn’t expect to get all the RSVPS in time, there would still be the chance for the last-minute guests to text me or email me to say they were coming. With just a week to go, I knew I wasn’t going to give them much time.
But I had to send them.
There was one addressed to Blake and Simona, the latter of which would still be able to travel as she was only six months pregnant. Did I expect either of them to turn up? No. But I had to at least send the invite.
There was one addressed to Laura. As far as I knew, she was on a trek overseas to southeast Asia though, so she would be unlikely to even get the invite.
I also had one addressed to Bronson, which I tossed into the open mailbox. He was more likely to come, especially if there was free food and an open bar, and I had no hard feelings against Bronson. It was Pippa who’d thought he was the killer, not me.
Speaking of Pippa. There was one envelope left.
For a moment, I wasn’t even sure I was going to send it. If I invited her and s
he didn’t come, wasn’t that worse than not inviting her at all?
I took a deep breath and stuffed it into the chute.
What would be, would be.
“So, you really invited everyone?” Sue asked, both surprised and impressed by my sudden change of heart. She was also a little skeptical.
“Yep. Every last one of my dearest Belldale friends,” I said with a slightly sarcastic laugh. I had to laugh about it, didn’t I?
Sue was a little hesitant. We were in the hall that we would be using for the reception in two days’ time, organizing the candy display where the guests could make up their own candy gift bags. “Even Bronson?” she asked.
I looked up at her in surprise. Of all the names, I hadn’t expected Bronson to be the one that shocked her.
“What about Bronson?” I asked, picking up the tongs and finding an empty jar. We had elected to do it ourselves rather than pay for a professional candy caterer. Even though the wedding was going to be in a chapel, we were holding the reception at the hall in the vineyard.
“He came by the gallery asking for a job,” Sue said as she sliced open another bag and the blue frogs spilled out onto the table. I could smell the blueberry flavoring and the sugar. My stomach rumbled a little and I realized I’d been so busy organizing all day that I hadn’t even eaten.
“I’ll get you something from the bar,” Sue said, returning with a bag of nuts. She told me she had ordered me a proper meal that a waiter would bring over soon. “That’s what maids of honor are here for, right?”
I ate a handful of peanuts. I couldn’t drop the Bronson subject, though. “Why were you surprised I would invite Bronson?”
“It’s just that he didn’t have very nice things to say about you,” Sue said, peering at me like she was unsure of whether she should have said anything.
I felt a little hurt.
“I, um… I always thought that Bronson and I got along okay,” I said, feeling a little flustered.
Sue shrugged. “I don’t think he knew that you and I were close, or he probably wouldn’t have told me what he did.”
I stopped counting out candy snakes. “And what did he tell you, exactly?”
Sue busied herself with the lemon drops. “He was a little annoyed that you planned to cut his shifts when he became fully qualified, that’s all…”
I stopped and put down the large glass vase I had been holding. “No. But Bronson didn’t know about that.”
Sue looked up at me like she had said something she shouldn’t have. “Apparently, he had seen a schedule when you left your computer open at the bakery.”
My head started to swim a little. If Bronson had known all that time, that I had planned to cut his shifts and give them to Rogan… Well, that changed everything. I completely forgot about the task in front of me.
“Hello?” Sue asked with a laugh. “You seemed to go into a little bit of a daze there. Don’t worry. I’m sure that Bronson doesn’t really hate you or anything. I’m sure he was just blowing off steam.”
I tried to shake it off. “What did you say you were even speaking to Bronson about in the first place?” I asked, my detective’s hat back on.
“He wanted a job,” Sue said. “I suppose with the bakery in decline, he needed some extra cash.”
“A job?” I asked with a little laugh. “What could he possibly do at a gallery?”
She picked up the frogs, one by one, with a pair of silver tongs and placed them into the glass jar. “I always need caterers for the events I hold on the weekends,” she said.
“Oh.” I hadn’t known that Sue used caterers for her events and shows. Or even that she served food.
“Maybe I will have to drive down one weekend and cater one of your events, not just simply attend,” I said with a bright smile, deciding to drop the Bronson topic for the time being. But now I was hoping, more than ever, that he would RSVP yes and come to the wedding. It was starting to feel like my wedding day was going to double as an investigation. I wondered how Jackson would feel about that.
“Sounds great! Speaking of…” Sue said, perking up a little. “Tell me you haven’t hired anyone to cater the wedding, have you? You’ll be baking everything yourself, right?”
“Um.” I shook my head and laughed. “No. I don’t have time for that.” I picked up the last empty jar and began to fill it with candied teeth.
“Aww,” Sue said. “I’m a little disappointed to hear that. I miss your cooking.”
I wanted to get back onto the subject of Bronson, without sounding too desperate.
“I guess Bakermatic isn’t going to give him a job…Bronson, I mean,” I added when Sue looked confused about being back on that subject.
She shrugged. “I’m not sure.”
“Well, they have no need for actual bakers in their stores,” I said, eager to tell Sue all about Bakermatic’s dodgy practices. “Nothing is baked fresh. It’s all imported in plastic and boxes, and just reheated on-site.”
I wondered if Blake had cared about Bronson at all when he’d made the decision to sell to a giant corporation. Probably not.
“Well, he seemed pretty desperate for work,” Sue said. “But the best I could offer him was one night a week, which won’t pay all of his bills.”
“No, not if he’s still living in that expensive townhouse.”
Sue mused over it for a second. “He was definitely agitated the day he came to see me. You could even say angry.”
“Sue,” I said, turning to her. I had emptied out the last of the candies and all the glass jars were full. “Take my advice. I don’t think you should give Bronson the job.”
A strange look came over her face, but the waiter returned with my food and cider, and no more was said.
Jackson pushed aside the box of cereal with an annoyed sigh. Gee, he really was turning into an old man! “I can’t stand all this sugary stuff,” he grumbled. “I don’t even like having it in the house. And what about those curlers that she leaves everywhere…”
I picked up the box and put it in the pantry. “She’ll be gone in two days. Besides, you won’t even be here for her final night.” It would only be the four girls staying in the house the night before the wedding. Jackson and his groomsmen were going to stay at a motel near the chapel so they would have only a short limo ride over when it was time for the ceremony to start.
Jackson kissed me on the forehead. “I suppose you are right,” he said. “One last night with Sue in the house won’t kill me.”
He asked me if I had gotten any RSVPS from anyone in Belldale as he rinsed out his bowl.
I shook my head. “No, but by the time the invitations went through the post office and then came back, I wasn’t really expecting to get any in time.”
He let the tap run a moment longer than it needed to. “But they could have just sent you a text if they were coming. And didn’t you give the option for people to RSVP by email?” He said it gently, I knew, so that I wouldn’t get my hopes up about anyone from Belldale attending. He was right, of course—if any of them had actually intended on coming, they would have let me know by now, only two days away from the wedding.
“It doesn’t matter anyway,” I said. “As long as you and I are there, the rest is only window dressing.”
15
Present Day
I was starting to sweat. The worried bridesmaids looked on, helpless, all out of their depth that day. I was starting to wonder if I might have over-indulged the week before. Was that why I couldn’t button the dress?
I had to get the dress on.
I couldn’t button it up no matter how I tried to suck in my breath or how much might Sue used.
Everything had come together in the end—if only my dress would. “I’ll go get help.”
With Sue still gone, missing, looking for help, Carine popped her head back in for a moment and tried her best with the buttons. But with her nervous disposition and shaking hands, she wasn’t any good either. She was fumbling so much
that she accidentally hooked a finger in my perfectly coifed hair and almost pulled out all of the hard work of the stylist, who’d taken two hours to do my up-do.
“I’ll get you a glass of water,” Carine said, happy to be able to escape with the rest of them, I could tell.
I was left standing there on my own, looking over the garden.
I was starting to get nervous. Jackson would think I was getting cold feet. He would think that all of his worst suspicions were coming true. That in my head, I was still in Belldale. That I had not let go of the past. Maybe he would even think I had run away back to Belldale, that that was where I was.
Where was Sue?
Finally, the door opened and I breathed a sigh of relief. “Finally—”
But it was not Sue standing there in the doorway.
It was Pippa.
I had to blink a few times. It was like I had seen a ghost. A pink-headed ghost.
“What are you doing here?” I whispered. I backed away a little and banged right into the wall.
“I…I couldn’t let you get married without me here by your side, without your best friend here to celebrate with you on your big day,” I thought I heard Pippa say. Or maybe that was just what I expected her to say.
But what she had actually said was, “I can’t let you get married with Sue as your maid of honor!” She was breathless, and her still bright pink, candy-colored hair was all ruffled. She definitely had not been to a hair salon that morning.
I looked her up and down. She didn’t look like she was dressed for a wedding. Unless she thought that jeans and a t-shirt counted as ‘cocktail formal,’ which was what I had put on the invitations.
“You’re not here for the wedding,” I said quietly, before I turned my back on her. “You never planned on coming, did you?”
I felt a hand on my bare shoulder as she spun me around. “Rachael, this is serious. You have to listen to me…” There was a wild, manic look on her face. Like she hadn’t slept.
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