Marriage Can Be Murder -- Every Wife Has A Story (A Carol and Jim Andrews Baby Boomer Mystery)

by Susan Santangelo

  Some people have Restless Leg Syndrome.

  I have Restless Mouth Syndrome.

  “You’ve got to be kidding, Nancy,” I said. “There’s no way I can do that.”

  Just between you and me, a teeny part of me was thrilled that Nancy had such great confidence in my sleuthing ability. But my common sense won out over my vanity. (I do have some common sense, although Jim may deny it.)

  I raised my hand before Nancy had a chance to argue with me. “In the first place, the other two times I accidentally solved a crime, it was here in Fairport. I reminded you about that when you first brought this nutty idea up at Mary Alice’s the other day. I know this town, and I have a pretty decent relationship with the local police, particularly since one of them is about to marry my daughter.”

  “But…”

  “Stop. Let me talk,” I said. “If there’s a first place, there has to be a second place. Remember, the nuns always taught us that in school. So, in the second place, I am the only witness to Bob’s being present at the scene of Tiffani’s death. And if this goes to trial, I’m going to have to testify. Not that I’m looking forward to that. In fact, I’m dreading it.”

  “But don’t you see, Carol? That’s another reason why you have to figure this mess out. To save yourself from all the emotional upset of testifying at the trial of a man who is the husband of your very best friend. Think of how guilty you’ll feel if the case goes to trial, when you realize you could have saved him. All you have to do is start nosing around, asking questions. The way you’ve done before. And you’re so good at it!” I didn’t say anything. I hoped my unusual silence would show her that she was asking the impossible from me. But it didn’t.

  “You and I have been very best friends since we were kids, Carol,” Nancy went on. “I know you want to see me happy. But I won’t be happy unless Bob and I have a chance to save our marriage. Carol, you can’t deny us our last chance at happiness.”

  Sheesh, this was starting to sound like dialogue from a soap opera. Not that I have any first-hand knowledge of that stuff, you understand. I’m a Masterpiece Theater/Great Performances kind of woman.

  Besides, I didn’t buy Bob’s story for a minute. Seeing a mysterious man running out of the Grey Gull Inn at the crucial time sounded fishy to me. And wearing an Angels baseball cap, no less. (I had to admit, that was a creative touch.) I was betting he just made it up, on the spur of the moment, to convince Nancy of his innocence. So she’d strong-arm me into helping him.

  Rats.

  Nancy began shredding still another piece of The Paperback Cafe’s delicious pineapple bread. I snatched this one from her hand before it was completely inedible. And before the crumbs dropped all over my floor again.

  I couldn’t save Bob, but at least I could rescue an innocent piece of bread.

  “Stop it, Nancy,” I ordered, moving the bag closer to me. “Somebody may actually want to eat what you brought. Like me, for instance.”

  “You know how I get when I’m nervous,” Nancy snapped back. “I can’t stay still. And I’m certainly nervous now. Thinking of my poor husband, in jail and suffering because of something he didn’t do.”

  She glared at me.

  “As a matter of fact, Bob is suspected of something he didn’t do just the way Jim was suspected of murdering his retirement coach a while ago. You got all of us involved in proving his innocence, just in case you’ve conveniently forgotten that part. And I was the most helpful of all, with my real estate connections. I’m the one who found the coach’s wife. If weren’t for me, Jim’d be rotting in jail right now.”

  My very best friend glared at me and added the coup de grace. “It’s payback time, Carol. I helped you, and now you’ve got to help me.”

  “Jim’ll be furious with me if I get more involved,” I protested. “And Mark, my gosh, I can’t believe how angry he’d be if he found out I was snooping again. What if he calls off the wedding to Jenny because of me?”

  Nancy dismissed these misgivings with a wave of her perfectly manicured hand.

  “That’s ridiculous, Carol. As far as Jim is concerned, well, you’ve handled him for almost forty years. I’m sure you’ll do it this time, too. And if we’re really clever about this, he may not even find out what we’re up to.

  “And Mark is not going to call off the wedding. He and Jenny are absolutely gaga about each other. Anybody with eyes can see that. Besides, he’s not really involved in this case, since it didn’t happen in his jurisdiction. Although he does know that Nantucket detective, Cynthia Sweet.”

  My eyes widened at this new piece of information. “How the heck do you know that?”

  “Why, before I left for the Cape, I called Mark. I had no idea how one goes about getting a pass to visit someone in jail. I haven’t had the experience you have.”

  Ouch. That hurts.

  “Mark was really helpful. And, in the course of our conversation, he happened to let it slip that he knew Detective Sweet. Apparently, she was one of his instructors at the police academy. But he hadn’t seen her for a long time.”

  “So you see, we already have a head start because of the Detective Sweet connection. Now, what should we do first? Should we go to Nantucket?”

  “There’s no way we’re going there,” I said.

  At least, I’m not.

  But I was slowly warming up to the idea of helping Bob. And I knew that Nancy wouldn’t leave me alone until I agreed.

  “I’ll see what I can do…”

  Nancy threw her arms around me and gave me a big hug. “Oh, Carol, thank you. I knew you wouldn’t let me down.”

  “Take it easy, Nancy. You didn’t let me finish. I’ll see what I can do to help Bob from here. In Fairport. In my home. I am not – repeat, not – going back to Nantucket. If you want to go and check things out there, good luck to you. You’ll be doing that part all alone.”

  “But how are you going to help Bob from here? I don’t understand.” “A lot of the amateur detectives in the mysteries I read start their sleuthing by finding out all they can about the victim,” I said. “Remember, that’s what we did when Jim was in trouble last year. Your Realtors network was very helpful.”

  As you just reminded me.

  “And when you found your house buyer dead in your living room the night before the real estate closing, we snooped around and found out all sorts of information about him,” Nancy said.

  I didn’t remember that we snooped around that time. But I let it pass. Let Nancy have her fantasies of always playing Watson to my Holmes.

  “So this time we’re going to use the same method,” I said, proud of myself for being so logical. “We’re going to find out all we can about Tiffani. I’m going to do it on the Internet.

  “And you, my dear friend, are going to do it with the help of your husband.”

  Nancy looked confused. “I don’t understand what you’re getting at, Carol.”

  “Oh, I think you do,” I said. I knew I was being extra hard on her, but it was the best way to get some intimate information on Tiffani. “You have to talk to Bob and find out all he knows about Tiffani. Where they met. How they met. How long they’ve been seeing each other. Who her friends are. Where her family lives. Anything he can remember.”

  Nancy’s eyes filled with tears. “Do you realize how painful this is going to be for me, asking Bob to give me all the sordid details of his affair? Isn’t there another way to do this?”

  “I’m sorry, Nancy. I know this is going to be tough on you. But I think we have to start with Bob. If you really believe he’s innocent. And you want to get him out of jail. You do, don’t you?”

  Nancy sighed. Then laughed. Then started to sniffle. Which turned into tears. And then back into laughter again.

  “Nancy, don’t have a meltdown on me now, the way you did when you first found out about Bob’s affair.”

  “I’m not having a meltdown, Carol,” Nancy said. “But it suddenly occurred to me that, the way you worded the
question, I was supposed to reply, ‘I do.’ And look at the trouble I got into the last time I said that!”

  Chapter 35

  I remember when being The Biggest Loser meant not having a date for the prom.

  “I thought I handled that rather well,” I said to Lucy and Ethel. “I didn’t commit to doing anything that could get me into trouble, but I’ll be helping Nancy clear Bob’s name. After all, how could I refuse her? She is my very best friend in the world.”

  Both the girls gave me their special doggy stare.

  “Correction,” I said, “Nancy is my very best human friend. You two are my very best canine friends. And the keeper of all my secrets.”

  That was good enough to placate Ethel, who found a comfortable spot on the rug near my desk and settled down for a snooze.

  Lucy, my sometime co-conspirator and perpetual conscience, continued to stare at me. Call me crazy (I’d really appreciate it if you wouldn’t take me literally about that), but I knew she was trying to tell me something.

  “Of course, Jim is my husband,” I said, “so he’s my very best human friend, too. I guess I never really thought about this. One last time – Jim is my very best male human friend, Nancy is my very best female human friend, and you are my very best canine friends. Are you satisfied with that?”

  Lucy padded across the floor, curled up in a ball next to Ethel, and went to sleep. I took that as a sign of approval.

  Time to prioritize, Carol. Once again, you’ve allowed yourself to get off track. When you sat down at the computer, you were all fired up to do a cyberstalking story. And now, Nancy’s talked you into doing some online sleuthing to clear Bob. You are such a doofus. No wonder you rarely accomplish anything. You start one thing, and get diverted by something else. Like when you go into the refrigerator looking for something to cook for dinner, decide it needs cleaning out, spend the whole afternoon doing that, and then, when Jim comes home, there’s nothing ready for him to eat.

  Of course, that’s not such a bad ploy, come to think of it.

  I decided I was being too hard on myself. And there was no reason why I couldn’t research both things, maybe even simultaneously. I’m pretty clever at multitasking, provided that I remember what the tasks are in the first place.

  “I’ll start with the Cinderella Weddings website,” I announced to myself and the dogs. “Maybe there’s some information there about Tiffani.”

  I typed “Cinderella Weddings” into my web browser and was rewarded with several hits. The primary one was the official website, www.cinderellaweddings.com. Basically, it was a lot of hype about how wonderful the company was, gushing testimonials from brides and grooms, gorgeous (I have to admit this) photographs from over-the- top weddings that must have set each couple (or their parents) back a fortune, and a list of suggested wedding vendors such as caterers, florists, makeup artists, dress designers, venues, and on and on. There was a whole section devoted to “Planning The Destination Wedding Of Your Dreams,” which boiled down to a blatant pitch to hire Cinderella Weddings to do it for you. “All of our Cinderella Weddings planners are experienced destination wedding specialists, passionately committed to giving you the wedding you’ve always dreamed about. Start your journey with Cinderella Weddings and together we’ll find the magic.”

  Hmm. I wonder how many brides and grooms actually fell for this stuff. Then I remembered that my own daughter did.

  I clicked on the icon labeled “Destination Weddings – What Every

  Engaged Couple Needs To Know.” I assumed that, as the mother of the bride, I had the right to know, too. This was another pitch for hiring Cinderella Weddings, but in a much more clever way. Instead of listing the pros of hiring the company, this section was a laundry list of all the things that could possibly go wrong at a destination wedding, with (supposedly) true nightmare stories documented in a variety of short videos. I wondered if these brides and grooms knew their wedding bloopers were now on the Internet for all to see.

  But I had to admit that some of the stories were entertaining, as long as they hadn’t happened to anyone I knew. There was one do-it- yourself bride who arrived at the hotel in Barbados she had booked for her wedding, only to find out that the entire hotel had been taken over by a dental convention from New Jersey. In another instance, the couple hadn’t gotten the proper paperwork filed for an out-of-the United States wedding. Plus, the parents of the groom had been left at the airport for hours because the bride and groom forgot to pick them up and no one at the airport spoke English.

  Now, that last one was patently ridiculous. In this age of instant communication, I couldn’t believe that story had actually happened.

  But at the end of this list of nightmare weddings (I won’t bore you with any more examples), there was the real point of the blooper list.

  “YOU CAN DO IT YOURSELF, BUT IS IT WORTH THE RISK?” Sheesh. Talk using about fear tactics to make money! I was glad

  I hadn’t bothered to check this website out before. I would have discouraged Jenny and Mark from using this company.

  Of course, I had no say in those decisions. Sadly. And, sadly, I still have to remind myself about that.

  There was no hint about pricing on the website. No wedding packages or special deals. “Every wedding is unique,” proclaimed Cinderella Weddings still again. “Every bride and groom is special. All our weddings are custom designed by a member of our expert staff to make the hopes and dreams of each couple come true on their very special day.”

  I went back to the home page and found an icon for “Our Fairy Tale: The Story of Cinderella Weddings.” The company had been founded in 2001 and, big surprise, the founder was the now-deceased Tiffani Blake.

  I clicked on Tiffani’s photo (taken a few years ago judging by her hairdo), and read her personal wedding story, a.k.a. “How I came up with this great idea to make a lot of money.” Which boiled down to the fact that she and her intended groom (no name mentioned, unfortunately) decided it would be fun to forgo a huge wedding extravaganza and have an intimate event in a tropical paradise (once again, specific location omitted) instead. It turned out to be a nightmare experience. The wedding, I mean, not the marriage. Although since Tiffani was no longer married, I gathered that the marriage itself was not a huge success, either.

  There were a few photos of Tiffani and her groom showing a variety of things that went wrong during the wedding. My own particular favorite was the one of a waiter spilling one of those fancy cocktails garnished with a cute umbrella onto the lap of the bride.

  “My own wedding was such a stress-filled experience, that I decided then and there to devote the rest of my life to saving other couples from the same terrible ordeal.”

  Oh, Tiffani, how noble of you. What a bunch of baloney. I bet all your so- called wedding photos were cleverly staged for maximum negative effect.

  I wondered what would happen to Cinderella Weddings now that the Cinderella-In-Chief was no longer at the ball.

  So to speak.

  I scrolled down to the bottom of the website. “Don’t delay! Let’s get started planning your dream day! And don’t forget to register for a chance to win the honeymoon of a lifetime for you and your own Prince Charming!”

  Well, that was just about all the hype I could take at one sitting. I’d certainly gleaned some interesting information about Tiffani. But nothing juicy enough to make someone want to kill her.

  I congratulated myself (I try to do that as much as possible) on making a good start, then spent the next 20 minutes or so clicking on a variety of Internet hits that featured either “Cinderella” or “Weddings.” That’s one of the things I find frustrating about surfing the Web. The Internet can select sites that are a complete waste of time.

  I had reached that point. I’d found some interesting tidbits about Tiffani for Nancy, which might or might not be helpful to Bob’s case. Which, of course, she could just as easily have found out for herself, if she had taken the time to check the Web.

&nbs
p; But, at least, I hadn’t gotten myself into any trouble trying to help her. So far, any way.

  It was high time I took a break. My eyes were burning from so much reading. And my back was bothering me from sitting in one position for too long.

  Before I went to the kitchen to write out the much-needed grocery list, I decided to set my web browser to my original search, cyberstalking.

  And that’s when I hit pay dirt. So to speak.

  Chapter 36

  Housework never killed anyone, but why risk it?

  I have a theory that a little man lives inside my computer. Sometimes, he’s a real pain, enticing me to waste my precious time when I have much more important things to do. A case in point: I log on to the web and there are all these teaser stories like “Hollywood Couple Heads To Splitsville”; “Six Ways To Lose Weight Without Dieting”; “Can You Identify This Child? Hint: She’s Now A Famous Movie Star.” Or, my own personal favorite, a photo of a handsome young guy and a caption underneath the picture that proclaims, “Fairport singles are looking for you.”

  Doubtful. Especially since I knew I wasn’t lost.

  But in a few rare cases, my little friend inside the computer does me a big favor. And this was one of those times.

  Evidently, when I typed in “Stalking,” I had neglected to delete “Cinderella Weddings.” And I got several results that combined them both.

  I sat back in my chair, took off my glasses, and rubbed my eyes. Then I stood up and stretched my back. Carefully. So I wouldn’t have to make a rush trip to the chiropractor.

  Slow down. Just because you somehow got to these stories doesn’t necessarily mean they involve Tiffani. Don’t jump to conclusions, the way you sometimes do.

  Correction: the way you always do.

  I allowed myself another stretch. You may think this is weird behavior. Why take so much time before clicking on the results my inadvertent search had discovered?

  The only way I can explain my hesitation is to liken this experience to getting an extra special present, all wrapped up in beautiful paper and topped off by a big bow. Or, better yet, getting a gift in the famous robin’s egg blue Tiffany box. That box is guaranteed to make any red- blooded American woman’s pulse race.