A Most Unpleasant Wedding

by Judith Alguire

  “So you decided to come too.”

  She leaned forward. “Yes. I knew he was surprised. I never want to go on his fishing trips. He tried to talk me out of it. He said I’d be bored. I told him I’d seen a brochure for the Pleasant, about all the wonderful art colonies nearby, the boutiques. He usually goes places you have to fly in by float plane. So I knew it was her. I thought if I was with him I wouldn’t have to worry.” She paused. “Then he signed up for the night fishing trip. I knew he was trying to get away to see her.” She laughed. “I didn’t know what to do.”

  “Why didn’t you go with him?”

  She looked at him, repulsed. “I hate fishing. Tee knows I hate fishing.”

  “So what did you do?”

  “I thought he’d probably planned to go to her house. So I waited until after dinner. Everybody was busy up at the inn. I thought nobody would see me. I walked up the side road. It wasn’t very far.”

  “You walked up the side road to Mrs. Hopper’s home.”

  “Yes.”

  “What happened next?”

  “There was nobody there,” she said. “Her car was gone. There were no lights on in the house. I waited. Then I decided she and Tee had planned to meet somewhere else.” She swallowed hard. “Maybe in a motel or something. I was just about to leave when I saw the headlights of a car pulling into the laneway.”

  “Then what?”

  “She went into the house. I didn’t know what to do. I hid beside the house. I almost went back to the Pleasant but, then, just as I was going to do that, she came out. I introduced myself. I said I wanted to talk to her about Tee.” Her voice shook. “She just gave me this look. As if I was nothing. She brushed past me and went on down to the stable.” She stopped, struggling to control her voice.

  Brisbois gave her a minute to compose herself. “Please continue, Mrs. Lawrence. Tell us what happened next.”

  Bonnie took a deep breath. “I followed her. She was saddling the horse. I tried to talk to her. She laughed at me again. She told me I was stupid, that Tee was tired of me and was going to leave me.” She dabbed at her eyes. “I couldn’t bear hearing her say that. She got up on the horse. I didn’t intend to hurt her. I was just trying to talk to her. I begged her to stay away from Tee. She gave me this smile. It was so condescending. She was so cold. There was a shovel. I grabbed it. I just wanted to get her attention. I wanted her to take me seriously. I didn’t hit her that hard, but the horse reared up. She didn’t fall off but she couldn’t control it. It ran off.”

  Brisbois waited.

  “I didn’t know what to do. I just wanted to get away from there. But I had to talk to her, to tell her I didn’t mean to hurt her. I didn’t want her to tell Tee what I did. I thought if I offered her some money. Most people…” She paused, then said in a whisper, “Most people like money.”

  “What did you do next?”

  “I followed her.” She sighed. “It was terrible. I kept catching my clothes on the trees. My clothes were ruined.”

  Creighton disguised a derisive grunt with a cough. Brisbois gave him a sharp look, then turned back to Bonnie. “Please, continue.”

  “I found her. She was lying on the ground.”

  “Dead?”

  “I don’t know. I said her name, but she didn’t answer.”

  “So you bashed her head in to make sure,” Brisbois said casually.

  She looked at him bewildered. “No.”

  He reviewed his notes, said without looking up, “Come on, Bonnie, half of her skull was missing.”

  Her voice rose in dismay. “No, that’s not true. I couldn’t have. I wasn’t close enough. I was afraid of the horse. It was standing right beside her.”

  Brisbois reached for an envelope. “I can show you the pictures, Bonnie. Her skull’s bashed in.”

  She stared at the envelope, brow furrowed. “She fell off the horse and hit her head on a rock. Somebody at the inn said that.”

  “But you must have seen that when you saw her lying there on the ground. That she had this big dent in the back of her head, blood running down onto her shirt.”

  “No,” she protested. “I told you, I wasn’t that close to her.”

  He put the envelope aside. “Her head was bashed in, Bonnie, and it wasn’t the result of her falling from the horse.”

  She didn’t respond.

  “So you went back to the inn,” he said.

  “Yes,” she said, subdued.

  “Which way did you go?”

  She looked up, confused. “I went back the way I came. On the side road. I didn’t know how to get there through the woods. I didn’t know it was so close.”

  “What time did you get back?”

  “About ten-thirty, I think.”

  “And you told everybody you’d spent the whole evening in your cabin going through wedding magazines.”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you ever think of calling an ambulance for Mrs. Hopper? In case she wasn’t dead? ”

  She looked at him, round-eyed. “I couldn’t do that. Then everybody would have known.” She wrung her hands. “I did do something.”

  “What did you do?”

  “ When Tee came home, I told him.”

  “And what was his reaction?”

  “He told me she was lying. He said he knew her but just because he’d met her at a convention, that she’d wormed her way into some meetings with him. She wanted to get a contract to redecorate his offices.” She looked at him, defiant. “You have to see it was her fault. She was forcing herself on Tee.”

  Brisbois considered this. “You know, Bonnie, men don’t usually have trouble fending off these sorts of advances.” He paused. “If they want to.” She opened her mouth to protest. He stopped her with a question. “So you told Tee. He denied having a relationship with Evelyn Hopper. Then what?”

  Her gaze drifted to the wall over his shoulder. “He asked me if I was sure she was dead. I said I wasn’t. Not a hundred per cent. He said he’d have to check because, if she was still alive, we would have to call an ambulance. I didn’t want him to go, but he insisted. He waited until the lights in the other cabins were out, then he went up there. When he came back he said she was dead. We put our clothes and shoes into a garbage bag. Tee pretended he was going fishing the next morning. He took the bag and dropped it in the lake by those shoal markers.”

  “So Tee was involved.”

  She looked at him, smiled. “All he did was get rid of the clothes. He didn’t do anything wrong. He did it for me. Because I’m his wife and he loves me. Wouldn’t you do that for your wife?”

  He didn’t answer. He knew in his heart he’d break every law on the books to protect Mary, especially if, like Tee, it was his behaviour that had set the tragedy in motion.

  “So,” he said finally, “you thought you were home free and then you started to worry that Elizabeth Miller knew too much.”

  She nodded. “I’d heard others — the staff, some of the guests — talking about how smart she was, about how she had helped solve crimes before. Tim, the waiter, said she’d have this one solved before the police.”

  Brisbois kept his expression neutral.

  “Then, at the wedding, I saw her looking at that hobo and at me. Right in the middle of the ceremony. She couldn’t keep her eyes off us. I knew then that she knew.” She looked down at the table, defeated, then said quietly, “I suppose I panicked. But I couldn’t keep pretending. It was too much. Trying to hold things together, trying to act as if nothing had happened. I’d been doing it so long. Mrs. Hopper, then that awful Mr. Arnold.”

  Brisbois straightened. The lawyer shook his head, puzzled.

  She shivered. “He was watching me all the time. At first I thought he was just being flirtatious. Then he told me he had seen me going up the side road that night, when I’d told everybody I hadn’t left my cabin. He said if I paid him fifty-thousand dollars, he’d forget he saw me.”

  The lawyer put up a hand. “One momen
t. I want to confer with my client.”

  Bonnie shook him off. “No, I want to explain.”

  “I must advise you…”

  She turned to him, eyes blazing. “I’m tired of all this. Besides, when you hear…”

  Brisbois sat back. “How did it happen, Bonnie?”

  She paused to compose herself, looked him straight in the eye. “We agreed to meet the night of the bridge tournament. I pretended I didn’t know Blackwood’s convention.” She smiled. “That was hard, after all the afternoons I’ve played bridge. I made sure we lost the hand so I could excuse myself. I knew Norman was glad to see me go. I slipped out and went to Mr. Arnold’s cabin. Everybody was so busy they didn’t notice me leaving. Even Tee didn’t notice.” She pressed her lips together for a few moments, then continued. “I had some Benadryl capsules. I’d taken them apart and emptied the powder into my compact. I knew he used Benadryl. I heard that boy tell him he shouldn’t, that he shouldn’t mix it with alcohol.”

  “What did you do with the capsules?”

  “I flushed them down the toilet.”

  “What about the blister packs?”

  “I cut them into little pieces and flushed them, the package too.”

  Brisbois nodded. “Go on.”

  “I went to his cabin. He had been drinking. A lot, I think. He always drank a lot. I told him I would write him a cheque. He laughed and said maybe I could throw in something extra. He touched me.” She shuddered. “I played along. I told him I’d need a drink. He poured the drink. I said I needed ginger ale. While he went to get it, I put the Benadryl in his drink.”

  “And he didn’t notice?”

  “No. I distracted him. I got him talking about how we would launder the money.”

  “So he could account for the sudden jump in his bank account.”

  “Yes. I told him we would write up an agreement for some work at the cottage. I wrote the cheque.”

  He nodded. “Please continue.”

  “He finished that drink and had two more. I said I was ready but that I had to go to the bathroom. I waited.” She took a deep breath. “I was so frightened. I thought he might come and drag me out. After a while, I didn’t hear him moving around, so I came out. He had passed out on the bed.”

  “Was he dead when you left?”

  “He had passed out,” she repeated. She paused, a look of revulsion crossing her face. “Then he started to vomit.” She put a hand to her mouth. “I never could stand to see anyone vomit. I took the cheque and left. I just prayed.”

  “That he wouldn’t make it.”

  Her jaw trembled. “I felt so relieved when I heard he was dead. I know that was wrong. But after what he tried to do, he deserved what happened.”

  “What did you tell Tee?”

  “I didn’t tell Tee.” She leaned forward, gave him a desperate look. “Detective, you have to understand. I did this for us. I did it for Tee. Everybody wanted him to run in the next election. He would have won.” She stopped. “Maybe he still can. Someday, when people forget.”

  Bonnie had been taken away. Brisbois sat, staring at his notes.

  “Do you think people will forget?” Creighton asked. “Make Tee our next prime minister?”

  Brisbois snorted. “Sure, give them a year or so. The public has the attention span of a snail.”

  “I’ll bet that lawyer’s already started working on the insanity defence.”

  “He just might be successful with that,” Brisbois murmured.

  “Do you think she’s insane?”

  Brisbois thought about that. “I think she has a one-track mind and a skewed sense of morality.”

  “I don’t think that counts as insanity. I think that’s what they call a character flaw.”

  Brisbois smiled. “You really got into that course, didn’t you?” He was quiet for a few moments, then said, “Just between the two of us, I think Bonnie Lawrence is as crazy as a loon.”

  “When are we going to see Tee?”

  Brisbois closed his notebook. “I think we’ll let him stew a bit. It’ll pump up his imagination.”

  “He’ll probably start making noise if we don’t let him see Bonnie soon. He’s probably been tying himself in knots, wondering what she’s been saying.”

  Brisbois smiled. “I’ll bet he has. We’ve got to stall him long enough to get a report from the dive team.” He paused, opened his notebook. “Who went out with them?”

  “Maroni and Petrie.”

  “Good.”

  Creighton stretched, yawned. “I suppose if they don’t come up with the goods before Tee blows his stack, we could wing it.”

  Brisbois smiled. “We could and we could make ourselves” — he hooked his fingers in quotation marks — “unavailable.”

  “Could we grab a bite while we’re being unavailable?”

  Brisbois looked at him in mock surprise. “You know, I think we could.”

  Chapter 20

  A subdued Tee Lawrence sat in the interview room.

  “Bonnie told me what she’d done,” he said. He stared at the table. “When I got home, she was just sitting there in the dark. I know I should have contacted the police. You have to understand, I was trying to protect my wife.”

  Brisbois nodded. “Of course. Tell us what happened, Mr. Lawrence.”

  Tee moistened his lips. “After Bonnie told me what had happened, I went up into the woods. I was hoping” — he shook his head — “praying that Mrs. Hopper was still alive.”

  Brisbois made a note. “So you just went up through the woods?”

  Tee shook his head. “No, I went around on the side road. I knew the Rudleys were camping out back of the inn. Everybody had been talking about that.”

  “So you took the road. Did you drive? Walk?”

  “I walked.” Tee paused, his jaw muscles bunching. “Every step, I was afraid of running into somebody coming home late. It was unnerving.”

  “Where was Mrs. Hopper when you found her?”

  He gulped, took a moment to respond. “She was lying on the ground, face down. The horse was beside her. I guess I spooked him. He bolted when I approached her.”

  “And what about Mrs. Hopper?”

  Tee shook his head. “She was dead. I couldn’t do anything. I went back to the cottage. I told Bonnie.”

  “How did she take the news? That Mrs. Hopper was dead?”

  Tee gave him a look of incredulity. “She was distraught.” He took a deep breath. “I told her I’d do whatever I could to protect her. I put our clothes in a garbage bag and dumped the bag in the lake the next morning.”

  Brisbois paused. “Yes, Mrs. Lawrence told us.” He smiled. “And we found it.” He sat back in his chair. “You were smart to drop it by the shoal markers in one way, Mr. Lawrence. People tend to avoid shoal markers. On the other hand, those areas usually have rocks, some of them hidden. The bag ended up on a shelf about six feet down. It wasn’t hard to find. As I said, it wasn’t far down. And it was orange. It stuck out like a sore thumb. Our dive team barely had to get their flippers wet.”

  Tee looked hurt. “I’m not a seasoned criminal. I was just trying to help out my wife.”

  Brisbois pretended not to have heard. He flipped through his notes, stopped. “OK, up in the woods.” He looked at Tee. “Know what we found?”

  Tee looked annoyed. “No, Detective, I don’t.”

  “We found a gold star, you know the kind grade-school teachers hand out.”

  “OK.”

  “The night you went out on the charter, you got the gold star. You got all the gold stars because every fish you caught was bigger than anything anybody else caught.”

  Tee shrugged. “That’s right.”

  Brisbois smiled. “Congratulations. So” — he continued — “what did you do with all your gold stars? Did you stick them on your pole, the way you’re supposed to on Doretta’s boat?”

  Tee gave him a sheepish smile. “No, I threw them away as soon as I got off the boat
. I didn’t want them on my pole but I didn’t want to hurt the lady’s feelings.”

  Brisbois nodded. “That was thoughtful.” He waited a moment. “Would it surprise you to know we found one of those stars up in the woods near Mrs. Hopper’s body?”

  Tee sighed. “No, it wouldn’t, Detective. I was up in the woods. I told you that. I suppose one of the stars stuck to my clothing and fell off later.”

  “Hm.” Brisbois flipped through his notes, turned to Creighton, whispered behind his hand.

  Creighton took out his notes, checked them, nodded.

  Brisbois turned his attention back to Tee. “The shoes we found in the garbage bag, were those the ones you wore on the boat?”

  “Yes.”

  “Our people lifted part of a footprint near Mrs. Hopper’s body, not much but very well-preserved. It matched the tread and markings on your shoe.”

  Tee shook his head. “Detective, I don’t see the point of this. I’ve already told you I was in the woods.”

  Brisbois regarded him evenly. “Yes, you did.” He returned to his notebook.

  Tee broke the silence. “Look, I know I’m in trouble here — getting rid of evidence, not reporting a crime — but I was trying to protect my wife.”

  “Maybe you should have thought of that before you hooked up with Evelyn Hopper,” Brisbois said without looking up.

  Tee uttered an impatient sigh. “I wasn’t having an affair with Evelyn Hopper.”

  Brisbois looked up. “You weren’t?” Tee gave him a weary smile. “I met Evelyn a few times for lunch. I was thinking of having our offices redecorated.”

  “Why would your wife think you were having an affair?”

  Tee shook his head. “You want the whole story?”

  Brisbois nodded. “That would be refreshing.”

  Tee ran a hand through his hair. “I hate to say what I’m about to say. I feel as if I’m betraying Bonnie, making her look weak, foolish.”

  “We already know she’s a murderer, Mr. Lawrence. I don’t think it can get too much worse.”

  “OK.” Tee took a deep breath. “You have to understand, Detective, Bonnie is pretty insecure. She doesn’t have much education. I met her when she was working as a hostess at a boat show one summer. She had the right manners, knew how to dress. She presented well. Still, she had some trouble fitting in. She didn’t have the background. Then she started helping people out with weddings. She got a lot of accolades for that. It became her thing.” He paused, coughed. “I’m afraid I didn’t take that talent too seriously. I was pretty insensitive about it, as a matter of fact. She wanted children. She was told she couldn’t have them. We could have adopted, but I think she saw that as another failure. She got more insecure after that. If I didn’t return her calls right away, if I had to cancel a lunch date, if I was a few minutes late coming home from work, she assumed I was seeing someone. I didn’t pick up on how serious the situation was. I was working.”