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

by Susan Santangelo

  Until she opens it and find out that the box is empty. Or the trinket that’s inside isn’t from Tiffany’s at all, but a plastic prize that came in a children’s cereal box.

  In other words, I’ve found all too often that the anticipation is better than the reality.

  But, what the heck. I clicked on the first result. And was led to a site which talked about a restraining order that had been issued three years ago against a client of Cinderella Weddings. I had to read it a few times before I understood what had really happened (when I get excited, I don’t think straight), but the gist of it was that a client of the wedding planning company – a bride with the unlikely name of Melody Butt – blamed the company in general – and the wedding planner in particular – for the immediate implosion of her marriage. And had waged a harassment campaign against the wedding planner – threats, stalking, you name it. To the point that Cinderella Weddings went to the police and had a restraining order issued against the bride.

  I had to scroll down and check out a few more results before the entire story became clear. It seemed that, while the Cinderella Weddings planner was meeting with the bride, Melody, to work out the nuptials, she was also having a hot and heavy affair with the groom.

  Bride Melody found out about the affair on her wedding day, when she inadvertently walked in on the couple having a “private planning meeting” during the reception. Needless to say, she went positively ballistic, and ended up throwing the top tier of the wedding cake in the groom’s face.

  Goodness. That must have been something to see. I was betting there weren’t pictures of that particular event on the official Cinderella Weddings website.

  Long story short, the wedding planner called the police, and the bride ended up spending her wedding night in jail. No mention of where the wedding planner and the groom spent the night, but I could probably hazard a guess as to what they did.

  Anyway, the marriage was over before it even started, and the bride blamed the wedding planner for seducing her groom. She vowed to get even, no matter how long it took.

  Hence, the eventual restraining order.

  I won’t keep you in suspense any longer, although you probably already figured out who the wedding planner was: the founder of Cinderella Weddings, the beauteous Tiffani Blake. Of course!

  Wow, what a story. I was surprised some Hollywood hot shot hadn’t made a movie of the week about it by now. Or, even better, a reality television show featuring jilted brides, with the public getting a chance to vote on who’d been humiliated the most. I even thought of a title. Instead of Four Weddings and a Funeral, it could be called Four Funerals and a Wedding. Or, even better, The Biggest Loser Gets Married. I’d bet the Nielsen ratings would be over the top. Heck, it’d probably draw a bigger audience than the Super Bowl.

  Back to reality, Carol. You’re not through yet. There are a few more stories to check out.

  I was reading the stories in chronological order – no easy task, since that’s not the way they came up on line – and was writing a timeline of the events on a pink (much more feminine than yellow) legal pad. I wanted to be sure that the theory I came up with was logical when I shared it with the authorities. Even my son-in-law-to-be gets impatient with the creative leaps my mind can take. I wanted the Nantucket police to take me seriously.

  According to the next story, the restraining order wasn’t enough to deter Melody from her self-appointed mission to make Tiffani’s life miserable. She merely changed tactics, and turned to the Internet to continue her harassment campaign. This story actually used the term “cyberstalking.”

  I made a note on my pink pad to research specifics about cyberstalking later. Right now, I was hot on the trail of Melody Butt, because there was no doubt in my mind that Melody had finally snapped and was the person who had killed Tiffani.

  Ok, that’s a little strong, even for me. I couldn’t be positive that Melody Butt had killed Tiffani. But she certainly had a good motive. And isn’t there a famous quote from Shakespeare about revenge, that it’s better when served cold? Melody could have been keeping a low profile after the restraining order was issued against her, biding her time and waiting for exactly the right time to get even.

  It made perfect sense to me. So, now all I had to do was give this information to the Nantucket police and let them take it from there. And since I had not seen the lovely Ms. Butt the night Tiffani died, when she was finally arrested and charged with murder and Bob Green was freed (I know, I’m being optimistic), I wouldn’t be called to testify.

  I was off the hook. Whew.

  I was congratulating myself on a sleuthing job well done when it suddenly occurred to me how lame my theory was. I had no proof at all that Melody’s cyberstalking and harassment had continued. I scrutinized my timeline and realized that the Internet result about the cyberstalking was more than two years old. And when I read the story more carefully – to the end, this time – it turned out to be based primarily on an interview with Tiffani, in which she accused Melody of continuing to stalk her. Which Melody, now married (I assumed it was to a different guy but you never know about these things) and the mother of twins, hotly denied.

  In fact, she filed a million-dollar lawsuit against Cinderella Weddings, and Tiffani, for libel.

  I got a kick out of Melody’s quote near the end of the article. “I’m spending every waking moment taking care of two colicky infants. Any spare time I have, I use to take a nap!”

  The article ended by saying that the Melody’s lawsuit against Cinderella Weddings was settled out of court for an undisclosed sum of money.

  I was betting the settlement was enough to hire a nanny for the twins. Maybe even send them to an Ivy League college.

  And, poof, just like that, my beautiful theory was shot to pieces.

  Or, was it? After all, I had no way of knowing that Melody hadn’t continued cyberstalking Tiffani after she became a wife and mother. In fact, if Melody was really unhinged, maybe she blamed Tiffani for the fact that she gave birth to colicky twins. When you’re sleep-deprived, anything – no matter how nutty – can seem rational.

  Don’t ask me how I know this. I just do.

  Maybe the out-of-court settlement Melody reached with Cinderella Weddings wasn’t a financial one at all. Instead, it could have been a lifetime supply of Pampers.

  I decided not to rule out the possibility of Melody Butt as Murderer Butt so quickly. And my safest course of action – otherwise known as passing the buck, or delegating said buck – was to turn this information over to Nancy and let her deal with it. After all, she was the one who’d begged me to do some sleuthing to save her unfaithful husband. Let her decide whether what I’d found was important enough – credible enough – to turn over to Bob’s lawyer. And, eventually, to Nantucket Police Detective Cynthia Sweet. I’d even give Nancy the pink legal pad with my carefully constructed timeline on it.

  That was a mark of true friendship.

  On second thought, I didn’t have to give her the whole pad – just that one sheet of paper. I’m not entirely selfless. Those pink legal pads are hard to find.

  Truth to tell, the information about Tiffani being stalked shook me up more than I wanted to admit. Because it brought me and my often wild imagination right back to my daughter and her own stalking fears.

  What if Jenny was right about Bert and Ernie? After all, dogs (with apologies to Lucy and Ethel) aren’t infallible judges of character. Most of the time, after an initial, negative reaction, they can be bribed with food. The same way lots of men can.

  Don’t ask me how I know this, either.

  I decided it was time I spent some serious computer time researching cyberstalking. Because an outrageous, terrifying idea had just popped into my head.

  What if Tiffani wasn’t the intended target of the murderer? What if it was really Jenny?

  Chapter 37

  It’s a known fact that women’s clothes shrink at least two sizes in a dark closet.

  I loo
ked down at my hands and realized they were shaking. I tried to talk myself out of this flash of…what…insight?

  “There is no way anyone could mistake Tiffani for Jenny,” I said aloud. “Do you honestly believe that two old men would spend the money to travel all the way to Nantucket to harm Jenny when they could have done something terrible to her right here in Fairport? And then, on top of everything else, do you think those two old coots would mistake one woman for the other?”

  I realized I was echoing what Jim would say to me if I shared my idea with him.

  Then, I remembered that terrible night on Nantucket, when I looked down the treacherous staircase of the Grey Gull Inn and saw the broken body of a woman lying at the bottom. At first, even I thought it was Jenny. And if her very own mother could make that mistake, anyone else could, too.

  Especially if it was dark, and the person was in a terrible hurry to do the deed and get out of there before anyone else saw him. Or her.

  Not those two old guys, though. I didn’t believe it.

  But why would anyone want to harm Jenny? Everybody loved her. She was pretty, loving, smart, generous, and compassionate. She received an Unsung Hero Award from our local hospital when she was just a freshman in high school for organizing a community blood drive. She was a wonderful teacher who really cared about her students. If she had any faults at all, it was putting other people’s needs and wants ahead of her own. She always looked for the good in people, and overlooked the bad.

  But, I had to admit that sometimes Jenny’s assessment of people could be a little skewed. She had a tendency to get herself into relationships with men that were, to put it bluntly, bad choices. She was a rescuer, a champion of the underdog, always trying to save people. Not the best thing in an adult relationship – choosing someone with obvious problems and trying to reform him.

  Thank God she was going to marry Mark.

  Whoa! Maybe my feeble brain was on to something here. What if one of Jenny’s old boyfriends had it in for her?

  But why? And how in heaven’s name could I possibly track any of them down?

  I had a feeling that I was onto something very important. I just hadn’t put the pieces together properly. Yet. And where the safety of the people I love was involved, I’d do anything to protect them.

  Anything.

  Usually I look forward to dinner out with Jim. Any chance to let someone else plan the menu, do the cooking, and – most important – take care of the clean-up – was okie dokie with me.

  But not tonight. I was so preoccupied worrying about Jenny’s safety that I hardly participated in the conversation. And when my main course arrived – veal saltimbocca – I just took a few bites, then laid my fork down beside my plate and sighed.

  “Earth to Carol,” Jim said. “Come in, please.

  “What’s the matter with you, honey? Why aren’t you eating your dinner? When we go out, you usually clean your plate like a good girl.”

  “What you mean is, I finish everything on my plate as fast as I can before you have a chance to help yourself to whatever’s left,” I said, laughing to show I wasn’t really criticizing him. Much.

  I sighed again.

  “That’s enough, Carol,” Jim said. “You obviously have something on your mind and I want you to tell me what it is. Come on,” he said, reaching across the table and grabbing my hand, “you’ll feel better if you talk about it. Is it Jenny and Mark’s wedding? Tiffani? What?”

  “All of the above,” I said, “plus….” “Plus what, Carol?”

  “Nancy stopped by today. She had just come back from seeing Bob in the Barnstable House of Correction. She decided after talking to him that he had nothing to do with Tiffani’s death. And she’s determined to prove it.

  “She asked me to help her.”

  “Carol, it should be crystal clear why you need to stay out of this,” Jim said in a loud voice. Then he remembered we were in a public place where anyone could overhear our conversation.

  “Sorry. I didn’t mean to overreact like that,” he said, then leaned forward and whispered, “but you can’t get more involved. You’re the prime witness against Bob, for God’s sake.”

  I didn’t say anything. I knew he was right.

  Jim continued to make his point in a low voice, just in case I was a complete idiot. “I don’t know what the exact law is, but I’m betting you could land yourself in big trouble if the police find out you’re helping the very person you may be asked to testify against.”

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Enough already.

  “I agree with you, Jim,” I replied. “I know I need to stay out of this one. But try telling Nancy that. She expects me to clear Bob, just the way I was lucky enough to clear Mary Alice, when she was suspected of killing the buyer of our house. I was the person who put the pieces together and figured out who really killed him, and why. Remember that?”

  I don’t like it when Jim (or anyone) tells me what to do. Even if he’s right and I’m wrong. It’s a sure way to make me dig in my heels and not budge. Stupid and stubborn, that’s me.

  I took a sip of water, then added, “It seems to me that I remember helping out another person who was falsely suspected of committing a crime. Who was innocent. In case your memory is failing you.”

  “Keep your voice down, Carol.” my tablemate said. I glared at him.

  “Nancy begged me to help her husband, and she reminded me that she’d helped me clear you, dear. What was I supposed to do? She backed me right into a corner and hit me over the head with Catholic school guilt.”

  “If the police get wind of this…” Jim argued, not willing to let his point die.

  “Let me tell you what I did this afternoon,” I said in a more reasonable tone, trying another approach to the same subject. “No, hear me out,” I said, as Jim started to argue with me before I could get any further. “I had to do something to get Nancy off my back. I think you’ll be proud of the way I’ve handled this. I may even be able to write a news article about it.”

  Jim held up his hand and stopped me in mid-sentence. “Let’s talk about this at home,” he said. “I’ll get the check and we’ll get out of here.” “Don’t be silly, Jim,” I said. “I want to finish my dinner.” I looked down at my plate, which was mostly untouched. “I mean, I want to start, then finish, my dinner. There’s no reason for us to leave. What I have to tell you isn’t top secret.”

  Jim looked incredulous. He knows me too well.

  “All I did,” I said, raising a forkful of now-cold veal saltimbocca and pointing it at my husband for emphasis, “was to go on the Internet this afternoon and research Cinderella Weddings. And Tiffani. You won’t believe what I found out. She was being stalked by a woman who blamed her for stealing her fiancé. Tiffani was hired to plan the couple’s wedding, and in the process, got into a torrid affair with the guy. Which Melody Butt – that’s the name of the woman, if you can believe it – found out about on her wedding day.”

  I paused and chewed some veal. Then swallowed and resumed my story.

  “And when Tiffani got a restraining order against Melody for stalking, Melody began to cyberstalk her instead.

  “That means she used the Internet to harass Tiffani, in case you didn’t know that,” I explained to Jim, who nodded patiently.

  “Where are you going with this, Carol? How do you expect this information will help Bob Green?”

  “Well, it’s clear to me that Tiffani could have been killed by this Melody person. She could have tracked Tiffani to Nantucket, waited for her chance that night, and finally got her revenge.”

  You’ll probably notice that I left out the part about Melody now being married and the mother of twins. No sense in confusing Jim when I was on a roll.

  “And this must be public information, Jim,” I said. “I found it very easily. You’ve always told me that if it’s public information, it can be shared with anyone. All I’m going to do is tell Nancy what I found and let her take it from there. I don’t know if thi
s will help Bob or not, but at least I’ve done something. ”

  “What about your story idea, Carol?” Jim asked, calmer now after my brilliant presentation. “I hope you’re not planning on writing a story about Tiffani and this Melody Butt person. You know you can’t do that.” “Honestly, Jim,” I said, “give me a little credit. I want to find out more about cyberstalking. I never realized that someone could be stalked through social networking sites. Apparently it’s a lot more common than most people realize. And a lot more dangerous. It could happen to anyone. I think it would make a terrific story.”

  “Just don’t go getting yourself into trouble again, Carol,” Jim said.

  “Of course I won’t, dear,” I said. “I’m going to do some Internet research right in my own home office. And I’ll let you know what I find.” I thought this was a brilliant ploy. I doubted if I’d need Jim’s input, but I’ve learned after all these years of marriage that if I make him feel like he has a say in my already-made decisions, like choosing living room furniture, for instance, it makes life easier.

  You may say that I should have shared my concerns about Jenny’s safety with her father and enlisted his help. But I was afraid he’d tell me I was overreacting. Once again.

  So instead, I changed the subject before I let something else slip. “How about some dessert, Jim? I’m in the mood for something chocolate.” Jim’s eyes brightened at the very thought, and he asked our server for a dessert menu. End of discussion.

  Am I good or what?

  Chapter 38

  When it comes to texting, I’m all thumbs.

  Despite my display of confidence, coupled with my pretense of innocence, at dinner the night before, I was anything but sure of myself when I sat down at the computer the next morning. If I wanted to admit the truth to myself (something I rarely do), I was afraid of what I might find. Especially where it concerned Jenny’s safety.