Wedding Cake & Woe

by Beth Byers

  “The most likely killer is someone who is in town for the wedding. It’s too unlikely that that Brent comes back to Silver Falls the same time we’re having our wedding. Just randomly? And then is randomly murdered where Simon and I were supposed to get married? No way. Why would Brent even know where we were getting married? No way. I don’t buy it.”

  Simon nodded, but he sounded sick as he said, “Outside of my parents, the people in town for the wedding who knew Brent well enough to be on the suspect list are my friends. Hank, Justin, Liam, and Bobby.”

  “But why?” I asked Simon, searching his face.

  “We aren’t without our baggage and fighting, but up until Brent turned up dead, I would have laid money down on us never hurting each other. Not beyond a punch on the arm or some rude comment that hits closer to home than you’d think.”

  Zee cursed under her breath and said, “Carver said the same thing. He said he was thrilled you were gone when Brent died. You have a solid alibi. The rest of your friends don’t.”

  “But,” Simon took a breath and said, “I might be able to get them to talk. If we’re just chatting, I might be able to get information out of them.”

  “This is your wedding, Simon. Carver wants you to have that time. He wants you to be able to celebrate.”

  I jumped in for Simon. “He won’t be able to celebrate if he’s pretty sure one of his friends killed another one. For the wedding to be…well…perfect might have sailed, but as good as it can be, we need to find the killer. Before Sunday.”

  Zee sighed and said, “I told Carver you guys would say that. I solemnly promised to try to keep you out of it. I even got you dog drunk last night for that reason, but you can’t spend the next few days drunk. If you did, you wouldn’t remember your wedding.”

  “Or we could just work together,” I suggested. I took Simon’s hand, squeezing tight. “All of us.”

  Zee nodded and said, “Carver will say no. He has to since he’s the sheriff. But, you two start by ruling out Hank. He probably can be ruled out quickly. Carver thinks he has an idea of getting into Brent’s finances quickly. That might give some insight. Carver also has an idea of where Brent’s sister disappeared to.”

  The pills, the gatorade, and the focus on something else helped me to get moving. I didn’t feel good, but I was ready for maybe a Tylenol chaser, a massive coffee, and a very, very long shower.

  I got dressed while Simon made plans with Hank and Jane. When I made it to the kitchen, I drank a cup of coffee and took Tylenol to go along with the start of the ibuprofen.

  “Please don’t ever get me that drunk again,” I told Zee.

  “The only time getting that drunk is appropriate is divorce parties or bachelorette parties.”

  Simon smacked at Zee and she said, “I’m not saying you two. It’s appropriate to get sympathy drunk with a friend as well.”

  “I volunteer for being the DD from now until forever.”

  Chapter Seven

  The diner was its normal charming self with the cute little booths, the cake plates full of lovely things that my friends had baked since I hadn’t been to the diner to work for days. Carmen and Lyle were running the diner today with one bleary-eyed Az behind the kitchen window.

  “You ok, Az?”

  He blinked at me and then said, “I’m all right. You ok there, Rosie luv? Because you were drunk to a whole other level.”

  I shrugged and went back to the kitchen to help for a while. Hank and Jane hadn’t arrived yet and all I needed was coffee for the next few minutes. I poured a big cup on the way and brought one for him.

  “Thank goodness it’s the slow season and also a Thursday,” Az said. “Otherwise I might have died this morning when the early orders were coming in.”

  I poured a few sets of waffles into the waffle irons and started a new batch of hash browns while Az whipped up batch after batch of eggs. I got lost in the groove of cooking until Zee came and said, “Simon wants…get this…oatmeal. Apparently a night of beer is catching up to him. Hank wants dry toast. Jane did some doctor trick and seems like she might be able to perform an emergency surgery. She’ll have her usual of whole wheat pancakes and fruit.”

  I went ahead and made the food for all of us while Az moved through a few more orders. Zee and I both went with the scrambled eggs. I was trying the theory that a greasy egg sandwich would wrap up the last of my hangover and Zee just wanted something to go with a side of bacon.

  She carried out one tray, while I carried a second with our own private carafe of coffee. I slumped into the spot across from Jane who did look perky.

  She smiled at me, and I scowled at her.

  “What doctor trick did you pull and why didn’t you share with the bride? I am suffering here.”

  “The perfection you see before you,” Jane started, “Is medical school and later, children. It’s a mental state.”

  “Sounds like BS,” I told her. “Take your no butter, no syrup pancakes and choke on them.”

  “Your future wife is mean,” Hank said to Simon, grinning at me and Jane.

  “I know it,” Simon replied. He smiled back, but it didn’t quite reach his eyes. He shuffled his oatmeal around his bowl before he said, “You heard from Brent?”

  Hank didn’t even look up as he said, “You know I haven’t. I tried the old Facebook page of his sister when I realized we’d all be here. It would have been cool for the whole gang to be back together.”

  “Did you spend a lot of time with the boys, when they got here?” Simon asked. “I was bummed I missed out while I was getting my parents.”

  Hank sighed over his dry toast, eyeing my egg scramble a little enviously and then he shook his head.

  “Nah, I had lunch with them here. I thought I could get some of them to go out on the boat with me, but they all faded away. I took my boys. Bobby seemed almost interested until he realized I was bringing my kids. Liam said a boat would make him puke after that burger. Man, I think Liam might actually eat just greens and boiled chicken.” Hank shook his head and then shoved his plate away, picking up his coffee and breathing it in as if it were a fine wine. “Can you imagine living like that? He looked sick when he left here after we all had our old lunch of double burgers and shakes?”

  Simon winced and then both of them laughed. They seemed to be having the same memory, almost giggling over the details that only came out in fits and starts. When Hank wiped a tear away, I wasn’t even sure what they’d said. I glanced at Jane and she shook her head.

  “Did you go out on the boat with your boys then?”

  “Yeah I did,” Hank said. “Jane too. We went from the diner to the boat as a family and were out until the sun started to set. The kids made me take them to the new Marvel movie, and we hit the arcade. It was like the old days but with my boys. To be honest, man, it was better with the boys than it would have been with Bobby, Justin, and Liam. Bobby’s still a jerk. Liam’s so squirrelly. Justin sidestepped me hard and he’s staying with me. Kind of pissed me off.”

  “Justin is weird about kids,” Jane told Hank. “You know that. His ex is so good at keeping him away from them.”

  “That sucks,” Simon muttered. “Justin is a good guy. He’d be a good dad if she let him.”

  Hank shook his head and then took another drink of coffee. “Who’d have thought Bobby would turn out to be such a jerk?”

  Jane and Zee both raised their hands and then laughed. I wouldn’t have thought that Simon’s long-term friend would be a jerk. But I hadn’t known them in the old days.

  “So no word about Brent in all this time?” Simon asked as he stirred his oatmeal again.

  “Just rumors,” Hank said. “Weird sh…stuff that I never bought.”

  “Oh yeah? Like what?”

  Hank seemed to realize he was being questioned at that. Maybe it was how tense Zee and I were. Maybe it was the fact that Simon wasn’t as cheery as he usually was. “What’s going on, man?”

  Simon asked Jane, “Y
ou guys were together until when?”

  “Zee made me swear not to tell, but I didn’t think you’d be…suspecting Hank. How could you?” Jane shot us all a furious glare.

  “We’re all suspects,” Simon said, flatly. “But if he was with you, he’s cleared just like me being with Rose and my parents.”

  “Suspects of what?” Hank glanced between Jane and Simon and then said, “The dead guy? Why would I kill him?”

  “It’s Brent, man.”

  Hank set his coffee cup down slowly, staring at Simon and then said, “And you think I killed him?”

  “No,” Simon said, flatly. “It’s why I started my questioning with you. To rule you out and then enlist you to help me with the guys.”

  “Because you think they killed him? And you want me to help you trap our boys? Man, I don’t want to do that.”

  “I want his killer caught, Hank. So should you! You were Brent’s friend, too. Weren’t you? Don't you care that someone slaughtered him?”

  Hank sighed and then admitted, “Look Si, it isn’t that I don’t care. I just don’t like that we’re the suspects. We’re friends. Blood brothers. All that stuff.”

  “Friendship ends when it comes to murder, Hank,” Simon told his friend.

  Hank hesitated and then said, “Yeah it does. I…shoot. Look, I wasn’t as close to Brent as you were. But you know I dated his sister for a while. Jenny drunk-called me for a while after Jane and I were together. Off and on for years. Jenny had said some weird stuff about Brent, and I’d seen him be nasty to her for a while.”

  Simon leaned back and asked, “Weird like what?”

  “Jenny said he was blackmailing her. He knew something about her that would make it hard for her to work and live here. She finally ended up closing everything down. She changed her number. Shut down her Facebook. All of it. Maybe she changed her name? Look, Jenny took off and I haven’t heard from her since and everything she told me, she told me while drunk. I haven’t heard from her since she packed up her car and her cat and drove away.”

  Simon didn’t want to believe the rumors about Brent. I could tell just by looking at him. I took his hand under the table and then I said, “Ok. Do you think she was telling the truth?”

  Hank started to answer and then paused, “I don’t know. She was pretty convincing, but it didn’t seem like Brent.”

  “Were they close?”

  Everyone who had known them shook their heads and Zee said, “They hated each other, Rose. It was so obvious that everyone knew.”

  Hank glanced at Jane and then back at Simon. “One of the reasons I broke up with Jenny was because she was so hate-filled. It was like you couldn’t be with her and not hate who she hated. I couldn’t stand the negativity.”

  “So you think Brent might have blackmailed his sister?”

  Hank nodded and then sighed, “I told her time and again that she should just out whatever he had on her on her own terms. Surely that would have been better than paying blackmail. Face the music. Why let someone control your life like that?”

  I very, very carefully didn’t look at Jane who’d paid blackmail for years. She took her coffee cup with shaking hands. I could see the cup slosh out of the corner of my eye, but neither Simon nor Hank noticed.

  “What did Brent do for a living?” I asked Hank, squeezing Simon’s hand.

  “That’s the thing,” Hank said, “Brent never seemed to work regularly. While his mom was still around, he just had his same bedroom and mooched off of her. Every time I talked to him about what his plans were, he had something crazy. I kind of wondered if he was growing illegally.”

  “You mean? Like…marijuana?”

  Hank nodded. “Brent was high a lot. He had too much cash, too often. It seemed plausible.”

  I sighed and glanced at Simon who shook his head, “I don’t know. I…he was high a lot when we were kids. Maybe. But you know…I was at college during that time. I didn’t know the details of his life then.”

  I laid my head on Simon’s shoulder, squeezing his hand tightly.

  “Yeah man, look…Brent didn’t get into college. He didn’t like fishing. There aren’t good jobs around here. His life was crap after you all left.”

  Simon shifted and I turned to him, “Listen, this isn’t your fault. It’s not your problem that you got into college and worked hard. This friend of yours isn’t some underprivileged person that you left behind. This is Silver Falls. No one here is all that under privileged. The high school you went to was the same. If he chose not to work hard and get into college, he could have gone to community college.”

  Simon sighed and nodded and then said, “I mean…Hank do we look back on those days with…rose-colored glasses?”

  Hank hesitated and then said, “Yeah, man. I think we do. We were buddies with them because we were in baseball together and there weren’t thousands of kids as options. We had who we had. We had good times, but it wasn’t like we were…”

  “Discerning?” Jane suggested when Hank stopped.

  “You were teenage boys,” I told them both, “Of course you weren’t discerning. You played video games and baseball together. That’s all you needed.”

  “Damn it,” Simon muttered.

  “You are discerning now,” I told him. “You have awesome friends. Me.”

  He grinned at that and kissed the side of my forehead as I added, “Hank, Jane, Mattie, Az, Zee, Carver, the rest of the folks at the force.”

  Hank shifted again and said, “You know what. We’re gonna catch this guy. And we’re doing it before your wedding is messed up.”

  “We need to know where Justin went on the night of the murder,” Simon told Hank. He nodded, pushed out of the booth. “I’m going to track him down. He’s sidestepped me enough. With Brent gone…Justin can just explain why he’s been so shady.”

  “I’ll go with you,” Simon said.

  Jane and I looked at each other and then Jane said, “You guys take care of that.”

  Chapter Eight

  As soon as Hank and Simon left Jane said, “How can I tell him now?”

  Zee smacked Jane’s arm and then said, “Every day you leave it, every time the opportunity presents itself and you don’t tell Hank, you are making it that much more unforgivable.”

  Jane took in a breath and then asked me, “How are you doing?”

  “You’re changing the subject,” Zee told Jane.

  I shrugged and answered to give Jane space. She was the captain of her own fate, and if she wanted to run her ship aground—that was her choice. “I’m freaking out. My wedding is on Sunday. I’m letting Joyce figure out where my it’ll even happen. Who is going to tell our guests where it is? Holy crap, at this point, it’s going to be in Zee’s garden with all her cats looking on and the memory will give me nightmares.”

  Zee snorted at that and I was the one shooting meaningful glances.

  “You’d be lucky to have my sweet kitties at your wedding,” Zee told me.

  “Mmm.” I stretched my neck and then admitted, “Simon is upset. Way more upset than I am. I think? Most of the people at the wedding are Simon’s. The wedding is what he imagined when he thought about getting married. I don’t have enough people to have imagined this big thing. I’d have been ok with something way smaller.”

  “Are you upset about the wedding? That it’s what Simon wanted?” Jane asked me. “Did you want something else?”

  “No, of course not,” I said, rubbing my forehead. “Weddings, like babies, deserve to be celebrated.”

  Jane nodded and then said, “Call Joyce, Zee. Get her here. She had those boys over all the time. She’d have kept mothering them even after Simon left. She might know.”

  Zee called Joyce while I cleared the table. I went into the kitchen and asked Az, “Remember how you told me that you’d be a kid again if you saw your old friends from when you were a teenager?”

  He nodded and then said, “I sure do, Rosie luv.”

  I took a slow breath
and then said, “Would you be surprised if one of them killed another of them?”

  Az’s brows rose and then he said, “Delroy. He’d kill someone.”

  “Would it mess you up?”

  Az sighed and then said, “Yeah it would. It’d change everything wouldn’t it? I’d look back at my life, all of my teenage years, and then I’d think about how Delroy killed my friend.”

  “Az, how do I help Simon? This was supposed to be happy for us.”

  “You be happy, Rosie luv. You tell him how much you love him and that nothing can take your happiness away. That no matter what his friends did, this is still the best day of your life and that no matter what happens or who killed who, you are happy to be his.”

  I hugged Az again and then said, “I love you, Az. I never knew I needed a brother until I had you.”

  When Joyce showed up at the diner, I gave her a big hug and said, “I don’t care where the wedding is. I don’t care what it looks like. I want Simon to be happy. Whatever that takes.”

  Joyce nodded quickly and said, “I have the best plans. It’s going to be great. I did have to bribe someone, but…it’s going to be amazing. You’ll be happy. I need your staff to make calls though. Someone needs to call everyone and tell them the new location.”

  “No problem,” Zee said. “They’ll be happy to. Now tell us if Brent was a blackmailing, pot-growing, criminal who drove someone to murder him.”

  Joyce hesitated and then said, “Brent? Brent Morgan? Simon’s Brent?”

  I nodded and Joyce’s eyes widened and then she slowly bit her lip. “Brent…after the boys were gone—well, except Hank—but he was pretty gone because he would leave for so long fishing. Anyhow, Brent…well…he floundered for a long time. Then his parents left. And Jenny just up and disappeared and…well…it wasn’t pretty. I wasn’t all that sad when he moved away. Simon was going to come back, and he’d have tried to help Brent, you know. Brent being gone…well…” She shuffled around and then admitted, “I might have encouraged him to go. I kept coming up with some ideas for him to move on, you know?”