Wedding Mints and Witnesses

by Kelsey Browning

  “Thank you.”

  “What are you going to do now? About Jenny, I mean.”

  “I have no idea. She won’t accept my phone calls. I hate to upset her any worse than I have. For the first time in my life, I’m out of ideas.”

  He didn’t bother to try to pep talk her. He knew her well enough to know some rah-rah speech wasn’t what she needed. Instead, he placed a gentle kiss on her brow. “I’m here for you, Ru, and I always will be.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Abby Ruth waved her hand through the buttery-smelling haze hanging in Summer Haven’s kitchen. On any other day, she’d consider the scent a good sign and would grab a plate and napkin. Because it meant Maggie had cooked green tomatoes in the cast iron skillet to make fried green tomato and pimento cheese sandwiches, but today Abby Ruth had no appetite at all.

  “Come on in and sit down,” Maggie sang out and gestured toward where Lil was sitting at the kitchen table. “I have your favorites.”

  Maggie was a believer in comfort food when things went wrong, and Abby Ruth just didn’t have the fight to argue today, so she took a seat.

  Maggie slid a plate in front of her then joined them at the table.

  Abby Ruth pretended to nibble and enjoy the high-calorie concoction while slipping bites to Ritter every time Lil and Maggie engaged in conversation. Lil had become strangely willing to let the old hound dog have occasional house privileges.

  The doorbell rang.

  “I’ll get it,” Abby Ruth said, waving the rest of her sandwich at Ritter under the table. He snagged it and swallowed it in one hungry bite, but when she made a hasty exit from the kitchen, he stayed behind. Guess he figured snacks were all she was good for these days.

  She hustled toward the foyer, anything to distract her from thoughts of her daughter never speaking to her again. When she pulled the front door open, to her surprise, there stood Stella and her friends. What in the world? “Hi, there. I didn’t know we were expecting visitors.”

  “Lil did,” Stella said, breezing past her into the foyer. “We need to talk to the three of you.”

  Abby Ruth stepped aside to let the other ladies enter as well. Thank goodness for a diversion. “Is everything okay?”

  “Hardly.” Virginia sashayed past Abby Ruth. “My, this place is lovely.” She sauntered over to the portrait of Lincoln William Summer. “Who is this good-looking hunk of Southern man?”

  “My late father,” Lil said, her smile obviously strained as she approached their guests with Maggie behind her. “And although he was handsome, he was a very faithful husband.”

  “Too bad for him.” Virginia tossed her short hair back, her eyebrows waggling as she gave the portrait a second glance.

  Lil scowled at the woman.

  Abby Ruth placed herself between the two women, just in case things got catty, and asked Stella, “So what brings y’all here?”

  “Well, when Lil called to say the three of you were still looking into the missing items, I knew I had to tell my best friends everything,” Stella said. “It wasn’t fair to let y’all continue the search for Virginia’s necklace when she hadn’t agreed to it.”

  “Oh, darlin’,” Virginia drawled. “Some secrets are good for the soul.”

  “Not secrets between friends.”

  Lord, if that was the truth, Abby Ruth and her best friends probably had some little black spots on their souls.

  “Anyway,” Stella continued, “when I finally confessed why y’all showed up at that reception, we realized we’re not the only ones who’ve had bad luck at these weddings.”

  “Really?” Maggie gestured from behind Lil. “Please come in and have a seat in the parlor. This story sounds like it deserves a batch of my special tea.”

  They paraded into the parlor and took seats.

  Juliette spoke first. “When we compared notes from our shenanigans, we realized some of the things that have happened may not have been accidents after all.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “A couple of weeks ago I slipped a hundred-dollar bill to a sweet bartender one night to get us drinks and bring them to the table, but he never came back with the drinks or the money.”

  “You know about my purse,” Stella said.

  “And my necklace,” Virginia added. “And I recently overheard a woman mention that her earrings went missing after she danced with someone at a wedding last month. Didn’t think much of it until Stella put the pieces together for us and told us you ladies suspected these losses might be related.”

  “Yes.” Lil nodded, a slow and thoughtful motion. “My wedding rings went missing between the time we left the table to do the chicken dance and when we were tossed out on our fannies.”

  “Your wedding rings?” Virginia said, sounding sincerely distraught. “That’s a real crime! Insured or not, you can’t replace sentimental pieces. No amount of money can soothe that loss.”

  “Did you file an insurance claim on your missing necklace?” Abby Ruth asked Virginia. Now that was a motive she hadn’t considered. Was it possible these ladies were committing insurance fraud?

  “Heavens, no. I didn’t tell a soul about it disappearing. My husband would kill me if he found out I was crashing weddings. That would be hard to explain.”

  Abby Ruth was relieved to hear the excuse. She hadn’t really pictured Virginia as that type of schemer. A husband stealer maybe, but not a thief or a liar. Abby Ruth glanced around the room. “I hate to say this, but I’m beginning to wonder if older women are the target.”

  “I certainly hope not. How about you?” Lil asked Penelope. “Anything odd that you can recollect?”

  “I’ve got nothing. I’m just here for moral support.”

  “What are the odds that three out of four of you would lose something at a wedding?”

  “Apparently pretty good,” Penelope said. “We just need to be a little more careful. I think we’re so worried about not blowing our cover as wedding crashers that we’re getting careless.”

  “Not the case,” Virginia said. “I’m never careless.”

  Lil sat down in the chair across from Penelope. “No jewelry missing after a wedding?”

  “No. I always wear my classic pearls.” She ran her fingertips across the necklace. “My father brought these back from Spain for me.”

  “How about money out of your wallet?”

  “Never. I don’t carry a purse into those parties. I just tuck some money in my bra.”

  “Good idea,” Lil said. “Nothing out of the ordinary? Ever?”

  “No. Not unless you count the fact that my nephew’s twit of a bride didn’t send me a thank-you note for the high-dollar silver service I gave them. Of course, kids these days don’t know good manners.”

  “So true,” Lil said.

  “And that was a very expensive gift. I bought it at Everything Elegant Bakery & Gifts. They only carry top-of-the-line items.”

  “I told you not to spend so much money on them,” Virginia said. “Probably won’t be his last wedding.”

  “I love that place,” Lil said.

  Maggie added, “They bake the cakes for the weddings E-lite Wedding Planning coordinates too.”

  “How do you know that?” Abby Ruth asked.

  “If you’d given more than a passing glance at the vendor list from that sweet couple you’re sending off to Hawaii, you’d know all this too.” Lil pursed her lips. “When I called the bakery, the young lady helping me mentioned it. I can’t help it if people open up to me more than you.”

  Fair enough, but since Jenny had fired her, Abby Ruth had been even less inclined to look at all that wedding paperwork. She was fine with Lil checking in with the vendors and gathering the information on what Hannah Huckleberry had set up with them so they could integrate it into the plans for Teague and Jenny.

  “Isn’t Everything Elegant Bakery & Gifts the place that wraps everything in shiny paper and ribbon?” Maggie asked.

  “Sure do,” Stella sai
d. “Almost as on brand as a Tiffany blue box these days, at least around Atlanta.”

  “When we were at that wedding with y’all, I remember seeing several gifts from Everything Elegant,” Maggie said.

  “They have an excellent online registry,” Penelope jumped in. “My nephew’s wedding planner insisted they use it. He’d have much rather registered at Bed, Bath and Beyond or Lowe’s, but that money-grubbing bride of his wouldn’t hear of that.”

  “Interesting,” Abby Ruth said.

  “I swear the cheapest thing on that registry was over a hundred bucks,” Penelope said. “Seriously, no thank-you notes. That makes me smoking mad.”

  “Thank you so much for sharing all this with us,” Lil said.

  Stella glanced around the room at her friends, then settled her gaze on Abby Ruth. “Do you think you can help? I mean, I’d hate to think others are getting swindled and someone’s getting away with it.”

  “You can believe we’ll handle it,” Abby Ruth said. Wasn’t like she had anything else to do since she wouldn’t be at Jenny and Teague’s wedding. “I’ll be on this full-time until we resolve it. Stella, have you remembered any other details?”

  “No, but I was able to have the credit card charges removed. I still can’t believe that someone bought almost two hundred pounds of birdseed.”

  “That’s suspicious as heck. Who could possibly need that much?” Abby Ruth muttered the words, then it struck. Maybe a wedding planner would need a kajillion pounds of that stuff. She sure did seem like the common denominator in all this.

  “We have to run.” Virginia hopped up and shimmied her skirt straight. “Afternoon wedding at the tea house in Cartersville. I love those cucumber sandwiches.”

  “You love the waiters,” Stella added.

  “Well, they seem to love me too. I do hope that cute man will be playing the piano again. When he sings ‘Forever Young,’ I absolutely melt.”

  “I hope they serve the Italian wedding cake from Everything Elegant. It’s my favorite.”

  Stella leaned in to Abby Ruth. “We see a lot of the same workers at these things. It’s like visiting family. They kind of have our backs because we tip them. Probably why we don’t normally get kicked out. ”

  “Sorry about that,” Abby Ruth said.

  “That was Virginia on champagne. We all know to never let her drink it. Not your fault.”

  After a mess of hugs and goodbyes, they walked the ladies to the door.

  Abby Ruth closed the door and turned to lean her back against it. “Are you girls thinking what I’m thinking?”

  “Wedding planner has opportunity,” Maggie said. “Does she have motive?”

  “We need to figure that out,” Lil said.

  Abby Ruth nodded slowly. “I still think she’s up to no good.”

  Maggie’s lips spread into a wide grin. “I’ll get the paper and the markers.”

  * * *

  Lil grabbed another plate of cookies from the kitchen. She and the girls would need fuel to work through the logic surrounding this mess of a case.

  Ritter whimpered at her bedroom door as she walked by. She’d gotten to know the difference between his sounds for attention and his whimper to go out and do his business. This was the latter. She quickly set the cookies down and whisked him outside. He ran out to the yard, took care of things and came straight back to the door.

  “You’re such a sweet boy.” She gave him a head scratch and led him back to her room. “Now you stay quiet.” She clicked the door closed and rushed back to meet the girls.

  Maybe they were out of practice, because these wedding thefts sure seemed harder than their last case. Hopefully, they still had their crime-solving edge because it would be a crying shame to let all that pretty G Team stationery go to waste.

  It was high time they got back in gear.

  We can do this. She returned to the dining room to find Abby Ruth sitting with her elbows on the table, her body leaning toward the long stretches of paper Maggie had affixed to the wall. Still made Lil wince when they taped it to her flocked wallpaper, but Maggie had assured her painter’s tape wouldn’t do any damage.

  Maggie was brandishing a marker close to her nose, waving it back and forth like one might a wine cork.

  “Maggie Rawls, are you trying to get high?”

  “Good Lord, no. Sera sent us a package of these markers from California. The red one smells like strawberries. A bunch of fruit flavors. I was hoping the brown smelled like chocolate, but I think it’s figs or something. If you write with them all at once, it’s like you’re making fruit salad.”

  Lil had to experience this for herself, so she picked up a bright green marker. Sure enough, it smelled like key lime. Yum. Reluctantly, she capped it again and set it aside. “Okay, since Sera isn’t here to direct us, we’ll just have to muddle through ourselves. Let’s start with a list of all our suspects.”

  In her bold print, Maggie labeled a column with “PPs”. “Possible perps,” she explained.

  “Excellent.”

  “My bet’s on Elisabeth with an S,” Abby Ruth said. “I just can’t warm up to a woman who’s that much of a snob.”

  “Or her assistant, Honey,” Lil added.

  “Not likely,” Abby Ruth said. “That little gal is as sweet as her name. Plus she’s helping us.”

  “No one is innocent until we clear them,” Maggie said.

  “Okay. Put her on the list.” Abby Ruth’s mouth twisted like she’d swallowed a glass of unsweetened lemonade.

  “But all the wedding crashers believe the culprit was a man.” Regardless, Maggie printed Elisabeth’s name at the top of the list, followed by Honey’s. “And I think all the vendors had opportunity.” She wrote out each on a new line.

  Everything Elegant Bakery & Gifts

  Calla & Company - flower shop

  Touch of Class - caterer

  DJ Dicky

  Lil pointed at the paper. “Stella described the man she suspects as a red-haired man with a mustache.”

  “And Virginia said hers was a young, hard-bodied ginger, clean-shaven with green eyes.” Maggie talked as she wrote.

  “I don’t like the way that Elisabeth woman acts,” Abby Ruth grumbled. “I’m not willing to let her off the hook just yet.”

  “Hmm,” Lil mused. “She’s a tall woman. What if she’s disguising herself as a man?”

  “That’s a pretty good point,” Abby Ruth said. “I wouldn’t put it past her.”

  “Maggie, go ahead and jot down what we learned from Juliette and Penelope.”

  Once that was done, Maggie made another column with the heading “Reception Venues.”

  “They were all pretty upscale.”

  “I have a feeling the wedding crashers pick those on purpose,” Lil said. “After all, the food, drinks, and entertainment are all first rate at those events. Maybe that’s the same MO the thief has.”

  “So this dude knows the people there might have bucks,” Abby Ruth added.

  “Exactly.”

  “He’s not completely stupid then.”

  Lil decided not to point out that if he was an idiot he shouldn’t be that hard to catch, and they hadn’t caught him yet. “Then let’s talk about the crimes themselves.”

  At the top of the paper, Maggie wrote “Thefts” in bold block letters with a flourish on the tail of the S.

  “Stolen cash and credit card from Stella’s wallet.”

  Maggie wrote on the wall. “Didn’t she say the only fraudulent charge was bird seed?”

  Abby Ruth tapped a finger to her pursed lips. “Maybe the thief is one of those birdseed bag vendors from the bridal show.”

  “That’s not as farfetched as it might sound.” Maggie scribbled the notes on the wall.

  “Yes, she did say that,” Lil agreed. “We also have the one missing necklace.”

  “And your rings,” Maggie said.

  Lil had tried to keep her anxiety to herself, but her wedding rings weren’t only a
symbol of her marriage to Harlan and a family heirloom. Maggie had gone to great lengths to recover them when Lil had nearly lost them, overextending her loan to the pawnshop. Those rings represented the strongest friendship of Lil’s life.

  “What if Penelope never got a thank-you for that expensive silver service because it was never received? What if it had been stolen? We might factor that in too,” Abby Ruth added.

  “All those things would be pawnable,” Lil said. “I guess I should tell y’all that I did alert Rick at the pawnshop to be on the lookout for my rings.”

  “Smart of you,” Abby Ruth said.

  “Even Virginia’s fancy necklace?” Maggie asked.

  “A thief certainly wouldn’t get top dollar for it at a place like J&R Pawn, but he could turn it into cash. I’ll get the descriptions of the other items to Rick, too.” He’d be able to spot her rings immediately since they’d once graced a prominent spot in one of his display cases.

  “Yeah, that’s what this sounds like it’s all about,” Abby Ruth said. “Someone trying to score quick cash.”

  “Maybe he’s just trying to make ends meet,” Maggie said. “It’s hard to blame him for that.”

  “But why steal from older women then? If he were any kind of man at all, he’d realize they might be on fixed incomes.”

  “People do get desperate,” Lil pointed out. “And lots of people think we make easy marks.” After all, she’d certainly been taken for a ride like that once herself.

  “I want this guy to come for me,” Abby Ruth grumbled. “I’ll show him an easy mark. Right between the—”

  “That’s enough. We don’t need to stoop to that kind of violence.” Her own words made Lil smile because she had a feeling the last man they’d taken down—right here at Summer Haven—would warn others that older folks were not easy targets. Duct tape and an eighty-mile-an-hour fastball could convince a man.

  Maggie stepped back and gave the wall a careful once-over. “I’m just not seeing a real pattern right now except for the wedding coordinator, her preferred vendors, and the wedding crashers.”