by Jean Barrett
White Wedding
Jean Barrett
To Ginny and Paul for their friendship and support
CAST OF CHARACTERS
Lane Eastman—She had planned to be a bridesmaid, not a target for a killer.
Jack Donovan—He wanted a reconciliation with the woman he’d never forgotten.
Allison Whitney—The wealthy heiress loved one man and was marrying another.
Chris Beaver—The Native American had a volatile temper, especially when it came to Allison Whitney.
Judge Dan Whitney—The bride’s cousin was concerned about an increasingly dangerous situation.
Hale McGuire—The groom was not a happy man.
Ronnie Bauer—She would do anything to get Jack Donovan in her bed.
Stuart Bauer—The teenager had a hostile attitude and a fondness for lethal weapons.
Dorothy Asker—What secret was the housekeeper protecting?
Nils Asker—The caretaker was more than the uncomplicated man he seemed.
Teddy Brewster—What did the eccentric florist learn that cost him his life?
Contents
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Prologue
The door crashed open with a sound like gunfire, violating the stillness of the winter night. A panicked Teddy Brewster, as skeletal and awkward as a scarecrow, exploded from the lodge. His lungs were on fire from his wild flight through the sprawling house, but he didn’t dare to rest. Death was stalking him.
Teddy charged across the flagged terrace and down over the snowy landscape. Shapes loomed around him as he ran, dark and fantastic, their grotesque heads rearing on all sides. He welcomed their existence, permitted himself to be swallowed by their numerous ranks.
He was in the topiary garden, where cedars had been tortured into the forms of every mythical beast imaginable. He had been charmed by them during the light of day. They’d appealed to both the eccentric and the artistic in him. Now they were vital allies, providing a living labyrinth in which to lose himself.
But the moon was his enemy, Teddy realized with a whimper of fear as he dodged from shadow to shadow. Cold and silver, mercilessly revealing his presence. And his tracks... He was leaving tracks in the snow. Maybe they didn’t matter. He had already left a maze of confusing footprints, crossing and recrossing each other, when he’d thoroughly toured the garden this afternoon.
His appearance, however, was a definite handicap. He had taken pleasure in his outrageous flowered, flowing overcoat. One of a kind. Now this vanity, along with his long, flaming hair, marked him as a clear target.
Desperation clawed at his insides. He could sense his relentless pursuer not far behind him. He couldn’t hope to outrun him, and it was useless to confront him. Teddy wasn’t in the least athletic, and he was certainly no fighter. He was a creator of beauty. That’s all he knew, all he cared about. He didn’t deserve this senseless horror.
Rest. He had to rest for a moment. Had to think. His lungs were raw, burning. Gulping great mouthfuls of air, he huddled behind a winged dragon. He stood there trembling, his breath smoking on the frigid air. He tried to plan, but his mind was in a useless disorder.
Carefully he peered around the side of the dragon. The lodge crouched there, massive and forbidding. A black form glided across the terrace and melted into the topiary garden. He was coming for him. It wasn’t a game. It was real. Murderously real.
Where should I go? Where can I hide?
Sick with terror, he shrank away from the dragon, backing into another shape just paces behind him. He whirled and faced a leering troll perched on a low mushroom. The spreading mushroom cleared the ground by a foot or so. Urgency inspired Teddy.
Without hesitation he dived under the dense evergreen, wriggling on his stomach toward its stem. He reached the trunk of the cedar and curled around it in a fetal position.
It was dry under the mushroom. Dry and soft with an accumulation of needles. The odor of cedar was strong and pungent. Teddy pressed his gangling body into the bed of needles and prayed. He prayed to get off the island, to survive this gruesome nightmare. Prayed to understand.
None of it made sense. He had overheard one end of a conversation he wasn’t supposed to overhear. He had glimpsed a collection he wasn’t supposed to see. But he didn’t comprehend their importance or why his life should be at risk because of them. It wasn’t fair.
There! The crunch of a boot in the snow close by! The hunter was coming this way, searching the garden for him. Teddy kept very still, tried not to shiver, tried not to make any betraying sound.
The voice of his stalker, low and silky, taunted him. “It won’t do you any good, Teddy. You can’t get away. I’ll find you.”
The heavy boots approached, came to a stop just beside the mushroom. Teddy stuffed a fist to his mouth to prevent himself from sobbing aloud.
“Where are you hiding, Teddy? I know you’re here somewhere. Come out and talk to me. We’ll work it out,” he promised. “We’ll make a deal.”
Teddy didn’t believe him. He waited. An eternity of waiting. The boots moved on, faded through the garden in the direction of the path toward the shore. His pursuer was on his way to the dock. He must be thinking Teddy was headed for the ice, making every effort to cross to the mainland.
There was silence in the topiary garden, a long and terrible silence. Was it safe? He crawled slowly from beneath the mushroom, rose cautiously to his feet.
There was another trail in the opposite direction along the edge of the bluff. It passed behind the chapel. It was a longer, indirect route to the beach. His stalker wouldn’t expect him to go that way.
If he could just reach the snowmobile...
His mind in a frenzy, loose coat flapping around him, Teddy loped out of the garden, heading toward the thick woods massed behind the chapel. The woods would offer a cover for his escape.
He was nearing the path that rounded the tiny, dark chapel when his dreaded enemy moved out of the thick shadows of the porch where he had been lurking, cutting off his flight. Mewing his alarm like a trapped animal, Teddy came to a petrified halt.
His stalker chuckled. “Gotcha,” he whispered triumphantly.
There was a compound bow in his gloved hands. Powerful and accurate, an efficient killing machine. He raised the weapon slowly, directing it at his target. Teddy could see the aluminum shaft of a lethal arrow glinting in the moonlight. Understanding gripped him in an agony of icy fear.
I’m going to die! I can’t die!
“Please,” he begged, his plea a humiliating squeal for mercy. “Please—let me live.”
“You’ll tell.”
“I won’t...oh, I won’t.”
“Promise?”
“I swear.”
“Liar.”
There was a soft hissing sound. Nothing else. Teddy never realized the arrow had left the bow. He felt a strange burning sensation, and when he looked down the arrow was protruding from his chest. He clutched at it, struggling with it in a ghastly disbelief. Too late. He was already sinking to his knees, already choking on his own blood.
The pale moon wheeled overhead, then went dark.
Chapter One
Lane knew that the setting was something she was supposed to be enjoying, not fearing. It had all the elements of a perfect Christmas card: a dazzling blue sky on a l
ate-December afternoon. Snowy, wooded bluffs hugging the shores of Wisconsin’s Door Peninsula. And tucked between those bluffs the village of Ephraim, as charming as any traditional New England village.
But Lane was unable to appreciate the appealing scene as she stood at the foot of the dock gazing out over the vast, frozen expanse of Green Bay. The prospect of crossing all that ice in an open sleigh was making her increasingly anxious.
The five other members of the holiday party gathered with her at the dock apparently didn’t share her concern. They were busy exchanging a lively dialogue as they waited for the arrival of the sleighs. But then, she thought, they weren’t struggling with her painful memory.
You don’t have a choice, Lane reminded herself sternly. This whole weekend is necessary, and that means enduring the ice.
Among the company was an individual who threatened the happiness of someone she loved. She had promised that, if it was possible, she would find a way this weekend to ease the critical situation. The promise worried her, however. After all, this was not her prime reason for being here.
“There,” said an affable male voice close behind her. “Can you make it out?”
An arm extended over Lane’s shoulder. Its hand, wearing a distinctive silver-and-onyx ring, pointed helpfully toward a smudge far out on the horizon.
“Thunder Island,” he said.
He had misunderstood her preoccupation with the view, regarding it as anticipation for their destination. He didn’t know about her fear of the ice. She wanted to keep it that way.
Lane turned her head, summoning a smile for the man at her elbow. He had a kind but unremarkable face, except for a pair of alert gray eyes and a quiet humor that seemed to perpetually hover around the corners of his mouth. Judge Dan Whitney was the bride’s cousin.
“Looks pretty far out,” Lane observed, hoping her casualness masked her worry.
“About six miles,” he indicated. “Wouldn’t you say, Allison?”
The bride, to whom Thunder Island belonged, joined them. The presence of Allison Whitney, a striking, elegant blonde, reminded Lane of her main purpose for being here. She was to be her friend’s attendant at tomorrow’s ceremony.
“At least,” Allison agreed. “But don’t let all that remoteness fool you, Lane. The lodge has every modern comfort, including a phone.”
Lane considered Allison and decided she wasn’t mistaken. There was a definite quality of overbrightness in her quicksilver smile. Of course, every bride was entitled to a degree of nervousness on the eve of her wedding, but this seemed to be something more. She could swear, too, that Allison had been sneaking anxious glances at her ever since their arrival at the dock.
Something was up, but Lane had no chance to question it. Allison captured their attention by declaring enthusiastically, “Oh, look, my caterer!”
A young couple had emerged from a rambling old inn directly across the highway and was headed toward them.
“Dick and Nancy Arnold,” Allison explained as the couple approached the dock. “He opened the place last summer. Cooks like a dream. We’ll eat royally this weekend.”
She performed quick introductions all around as the Arnolds reached the group.
Nancy Arnold greeted them and said, “Just came to extend our best wishes to the bride and groom.”
“And,” Dick added, “to assure you, Allison, that all of the meals you ordered were picked up by your help this morning before they drove out to the island.”
“The wedding cake is to die for,” Nancy promised, obviously proud of her husband’s accomplishment. “Dick outdid himself.”
“Don’t oversell me, sweetheart,” he cautioned, grinning as he slid an arm around his wife.
It was then that Lane noticed Nancy Arnold was radiantly pregnant. She had never seen a happier couple. Allison must have been equally aware of their joy in each other. She hooked an arm through her fiancé’s arm and drew him close, as though to prove her own happiness.
Her small action troubled Lane. She eyed the groom standing silently beside Allison. Hale McGuire was tall and classically handsome, but there was something about him that lacked substance. What bothered Lane, however, was Allison’s determination about him. It struck her as missing a natural conviction. She hoped she was wrong.
Allison thanked the Arnolds, then asked, “Do you know if Teddy Brewster finished the flowers on the island?”
“The florist?” Nancy nodded. “Must have. He rented a snowmobile from us for the crossing, and it was back in place this morning and his car gone.”
Dick frowned. “The funny thing is, though, he never stopped in to collect his deposit. Made me wonder.”
“I wouldn’t worry about it,” Allison assured him. “Teddy is unpredictable, definitely an eccentric, but his arrangements are award winners.”
An impatient Hale interrupted the exchange. “Here comes our transportation,” he said, indicating a pair of horse-drawn sleighs cutting along the edge of the ice in the direction of the dock.
“Bells and all,” Nancy observed with an expression of envy. “A Christmas wedding in a marvelous old lodge on a winter-wonderland island, and with horse-drawn sleighs to get you there. Now, you can’t get much more romantic than that.”
Dan Whitney chuckled. “Not to mention slightly impractical, considering the place was meant chiefly as a summer retreat, but our Allison here has been stubbornly insistent about this weekend.”
Rather mysteriously so, Lane thought, agreeing with him. In fact, there were too many little intrigues connected with this whole situation. Including her own involving that promise, she supposed. But Nancy Arnold was right. The concept of Allison’s Christmas Day wedding on the island tomorrow was wonderfully romantic. She just wished it didn’t require crossing the ice.
But she was not, Lane promised herself, absolutely not going to be a coward about it. Anyway, not an obvious one. Allison deserved to have her special holiday wedding without anything spoiling it.
The Arnolds wished the company a pleasant crossing and then retreated to their inn as the sleighs, decorated with wreaths for the occasion, arrived at the landing. The drivers began to load the luggage.
The fifth member of the party, silent and bored until now, muttered, “Finally we get to go. My cheeks are frostbitten standing around on this dock. And I don’t mean the ones on my face.”
Lane wasn’t surprised. Along with triple earrings in one of his earlobes and a badly scarred bomber jacket, fifteen-year-old Stuart Bauer wore the regulation torn jeans of a rebel teenager. The denim was so faded and thin that it barely covered his backside.
Veronica Bauer, mother to both Stuart and Hale and the sixth member of the group, favored her younger son with an indulgent smile. “I wouldn’t count on that, Stuie.”
Lane eyed the woman in her expensive mink coat, sensing she wasn’t the type to be concerned in the least about political correctness. Ronnie Bauer amazed her. She had to be well past fifty, but artful makeup and a head of glorious black hair took almost two decades off her age. That and a few surgical enhancements, Lane suspected. There was a flamboyant, hungry quality about Ronnie. Hale was plainly embarrassed by her, his much younger half brother barely tolerant.
“Yeah?” Stuart challenged his mother. “How come?”
“Because, pet,” she drawled, turning up the collar of her fur, “we’re still missing the best man. Or hasn’t anyone noticed?”
Lane was confused. She knew that Dan Whitney, as a Wisconsin judge, was scheduled to marry his cousin and Hale tomorrow. She had assumed, therefore, that Stuart would serve as his half brother’s best man. This was the first she had heard about an addition to the party.
And there it was again—Allison casting another of her swift glances in her direction. Lane was beginning to have a distinctly uneasy feeling.
“Allison?” she softly questioned her friend.
“He’ll get here,” Allison announced loudly to the company. “He promised.”
&n
bsp; She would say no more, but Lane noticed that the subject was completely uninteresting to Hale. Odd, since it was his best man they were discussing.
The luggage was loaded by now. They spent another five minutes waiting on the dock. Stuart complained again about the cold, which really wasn’t all that bad since there wasn’t a breath of wind.
Lane was about to tackle her friend again over the subject of the best man when a powerful, sporty car flashed onto the scene and swung sharply into the parking lot adjoining the dock area.
Stuart passed judgment on the gleaming red vehicle with an emphatic “Cool!”
And then it happened, the realization of Lane’s worst nightmare. The driver’s door popped open and a male figure, with a compact body still familiar to her after all these years, emerged from the car. Her heart went down to the vicinity of her knees.
Lane’s panicked gaze flew to Allison. Their eyes met, exchanging a silent communication.
You might have told me.
If I had warned you, you wouldn’t have come, and I need you here.
It was no explanation, and Lane meant to have one. However, this was hardly the time or the place to demand it, especially since she was here herself under a slightly false pretense. Besides, like it or not, the compelling figure at the car had recaptured her full attention. She watched him as he slung his suitcase with ease out of the trunk of the vehicle.
There was no question about it. Had Jack Donovan been born two hundred years ago, he would have been a buccaneer with a cutlass between his teeth and a struggling wench under his arm. No, make that willing wench. There were few women immune to the wicked grin he wore like an Irish charm, not to mention the sexual energy he radiated without will.
Veronica Bauer certainly wasn’t oblivious to all that masculine appeal. “Well,” she murmured eagerly, feasting her eyes on Jack as he strode toward them with his energetic gait. “The term best man is certainly no exaggeration in this case. The weekend is suddenly looking much more interesting.”
Lane would willingly have stepped aside in favor of Ronnie, but Jack was making straight for her. She had time to do nothing but caution herself: Careful. And suddenly there he was standing directly in front of her, all riveting blue eyes and hair black as midnight.
