Gimme Some Sugar

by Kelsey Browning

  “Not exactly.” She touched the stone on her hand, then the ones around her throat. “My third husband, Marvin, loved me in green. And who was I to deny him a little pleasure?”

  “Aren’t you worried about wearing something that expensive? I heard you recently…”

  Stella was making a chopping motion across her throat, a gesture Lil had no problem understanding. She wasn’t ready for Lil to bring up Virginia’s missing necklace.

  They had to do something here. Maybe cut Virginia from the herd and get her alone.

  Surprisingly, Maggie and Abby Ruth were back much faster than Lil would’ve imagined with that bar line. “That was quick.”

  Abby Ruth flashed her sharp smile to the table at large. “It’s funny what flirting with an eighty-year-old man will get you.”

  “If you’re not careful,” Maggie muttered, “it’ll get you another four hundred-year-old dog.”

  Oh, Lord. That was all they needed.

  A waitress stopped and passed around generously sized glasses from a shiny silver tray. Lil lifted hers and took a sip. Not just sparkling wine, but excellent champagne. What a treat.

  If they served wine this delicious at all the receptions, Lil figured the wedding crashers might ought to drop in at least a twenty in the card box, but she politely kept that to herself.

  “So, Virginia, do you attend a good number of weddings?”

  “More than I can count,” Virginia said. “Better than hitting funerals. All you get at those are casseroles and fruit punch. Right, Juliette?”

  Juliette said, “Everyone needs a hobby.”

  Virginia had already tossed back her first glass of champagne and was flagging down a waiter. Instead of selecting one glass from his tray, she took one for each hand. Well, this was good news.

  Lil jerked her head toward the buffet table and said to Abby Ruth, “My that food smells delicious, but my bursitis is acting up. I don’t want to hold the rest of you back though.”

  Thank goodness, both Abby Ruth and Maggie seemed to understand her hint and they encouraged Stella, Juliette, and Penelope to join them in checking out—in Abby Ruth’s words—the vittles.

  To Lil’s luck, Virginia had somehow procured her fourth and fifth glasses of wine. She was chugging it back like fruit punch, smiling and waving at every man who walked by.

  Goodness gracious, if she always indulged like this, it was no wonder the woman was missing jewelry. It wouldn’t surprise Lil to see her jerk off her necklace, twirl it around, and toss it into the crowd.

  “You mentioned you’d been married three times. Were all your husbands generous when it came to buying you jewelry?”

  “Five.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Been hitched—” she gave a polite little hiccup, “—five ti-imes.”

  “Oh my.”

  “But to answer your question, getting men to give me pretty things is my superpower.”

  “I can imagine you’re very careful with your baubles then.”

  “Try to be, but sometimes things happen. Lost a necklace at a wedding not all that long ago.”

  “What happened? Do…do you think someone stole it?” Lil ventured, trying to draw out information.

  Virginia’s eyes went soft, and she heaved a sigh that threatened to let her girls loose from her neckline. “I can’t really be sure. It may have slipped off during the hustle bustle, if you know what I mean, but he was so worth it. The Pettiway wedding. Lord, that was a good one.” Virginia made eye contact with a passing waiter and gave him a wink. “Yes, indeed. So worth it.”

  Worth it? Stella had mentioned a flirtation with a younger man. It sounded like Virginia’s MO at these weddings was to slip away and have a rendezvous with a man. Maybe one of her paramours had taken her necklace. “So it was someone you’d seen before?”

  “No. I think maybe he was the florist. Calla and something. They’re out of Atlanta. I remember thinking there wasn’t anything flowery about him. He was more like a tree.” Virginia fanned her face and took another drink of her champagne. “Tuck. Yes. That was his name. He was one sweet, sweet oak tree, if you know what I mean. Big. Strong. And his eyes were greener than leaves in the springtime.” She shimmied her shoulders. “All my husbands have been either blond or dark-haired, but I had a yen for a ginger that night.”

  “A ginger?” Ooh, that matched Stella’s description of Possum Boy. This information was promising. “Did he happen to have a mustache?”

  She frowned as if having a hard time remembering. “No? Well, I’m not really for certain. No. Absolutely not. I prefer my men clean-shaven.” She squeezed Lil’s forearm. “I do hate a whisker burn. Don’t you?”

  Shoot, Virginia’s gentleman didn’t sound like a match to Stella’s, but before Lil could ask more questions, an obnoxious hee-haw song came blasting out of a nearby speaker, and the DJ said cheerfully, “Now c’mon, y’all! It’s time for that crowd favorite, the Chicken Dance!”

  Four squawking blasts from an accordion had Virginia rocketing from her seat. She grabbed Lil by the arm to pull her to her feet. “You heard the man, c’mon.”

  “No, dear, I couldn’t.” Lil tried to wrap an ankle around the leg of her chair, but that Virginia was one strong gal, yanking her right to her feet.

  The woman had the audacity to slap Lil on the rear end. “Live a little. Get out there and shake your groove thing because ain’t no man gonna take your poodle for a walk if it looks like he’d have to drag it around by a leash.”

  Why in the world did everything have to be about dogs these days? Her focus having slipped for a few seconds, Lil was dragged to the edge of the dance floor before she knew what was what.

  “Lil!” Maggie hollered. “What’re y’all doing?”

  Virginia yelled back, “Get your fannies on the dance floor, ladies.”

  No way was Lil going out there and making a fool of herself alone. She gestured wildly for Maggie and Abby Ruth to join them. Abby Ruth refused, standing at the edge of the dance floor with her arms folded, but the rest of the wedding crashers boogied their way into the crowd.

  Virginia was a steamroller, cutting through people to lead them to the middle of the dance floor. Lil was almost decapitated by one man’s wayward elbow, but she ducked at the last second and her hip spasmed. “You know what, I think I’ll just go sit over—”

  Virginia jerked her forward, and the group of them somehow made an unlikely circle around the bride, groom, and what appeared to be a set of their parents. Lil had never participated in this Chicken Dance before in her life, but elbows were flapping, hands were quacking, and people were doing a funky wiggle all the way to the floor.

  “Twist it, sister!” Virginia said to Lil.

  So she did, and goodness did her bursitis object to that, but then it became kind of fun. Still she sidled closer to Virginia as she clapped and turned with the beat. They needed more information about the man who’d taken her jewels. Lil swung her arms and spun around, colliding with a handsome young man who caught her by the hands.

  “Oh, I’m so sorry.” She steadied herself against his strong biceps, circled by a tattoo of some kind of flower. Normally, she wasn’t impressed by young men who put ink on their bodies, but this gentleman’s blue eyes flashed with intelligence, and his smile made her legs woozy.

  He brushed a hand through his dark hair before putting his hands under his armpits and flapping. “Go, girl!”

  Lil wiggled her bottom and turned her focus back to Virginia. “Have you bumped into your handsome ginger friend again?”

  “Not yet, but I’m counting on it. You see a lot of the same people at these things.” Then she flapped, shook, and spun like a human mixing bowl.

  That was too bad, but Lil still had some good information to share with the girls. Just as she was giving the I’ve-got-what-we-need signal to Maggie, Virginia had somehow danced her way out of their circle and in between an older couple. A shimmy and shake, and then Lil could not unsee the way th
at woman did a rodeo grind with the father of the bride.

  As anyone would expect, the mother of the bride didn’t cotton to all that. She yanked Virginia away from her husband and shouted above the music, “Who is this woman? Who invited this floozy?”

  The Chicken Dance music faded away with a squawk of the speakers, and the place went silent. The mother of the bride glared at Lil and the rest of the wedding crasher circle. “I don’t recognize a single one of you. Steven,” she said to the groom, “were these ladies on your mother’s guest list?”

  The groom looked them over and gave a definitive head shake. “Never seen them before in my life.”

  Lil had hoped to never have a law enforcement professional of any type ever take her by the elbow again, but before she could twitch an eyelash, a big burly man wearing a blue sport coat and an earpiece gripped her arm, and his colleagues were doing the same with the other women.

  She had to hand it to Burly. He moved a lot quicker than she would’ve expected of a man his size.

  Burly was herding them off the dance floor when Abby Ruth tried to intercede. “What are you doing with my friends, sir?”

  “Out of my way, lady.”

  Abby Ruth stood her ground, but Burly snagged her by the hand and pushed her along with the rest of them.

  In no time flat, Lil and the other ladies found themselves outside the botanical garden and in the parking structure across the way. They stood staring at one another until Virginia broke into laughter. “I do love weddings.”

  Stella looked over at Lil, Maggie, and Abby Ruth with a smile and a shrug as if to say see why we love this.

  Maggie leaned in and whispered to Lil, “At least we tried.”

  Oh no, dear. We did more than try. I got exactly what I came for.

  When Lil and her friends piled into Abby Ruth’s dually in the parking lot, she said, “Never in my life did I ever think I would meet a woman more forward than you, Abby Ruth. No offense. But that Virginia woman takes the cake.”

  “None taken. Damn,” Abby Ruth grumbled, “that reminds me I wanted some of the German chocolate triple-decker groom’s cake.”

  Maggie clicked her seatbelt into place. “Forget about the cake, what about the information we needed from Virginia?”

  Lil smiled and tapped her temple. “I have it all right here. I think I know…” She clapped her hands, and the feel made her gasp. Something was terribly wrong. “Oh, no. This can’t be happening.”

  Maggie twisted in her seat to check on her. “What’s wrong, Lil?”

  “My rings!” She rubbed her fingers, her very naked fingers. “My wedding rings are gone.”

  Chapter 10

  Saturday might’ve gone down in Abby Ruth’s list of best days ever if it hadn’t been for Lil getting robbed right under their noses. After the wedding, Abby Ruth had been hog wild to find the greedy numbskull who’d swiped the rings, but Lil had insisted Jenny’s wedding needed to take priority. Unfortunately, wedding planning wasn’t nearly as fun as crashing a wedding.

  Could one culprit be skulking around ripping off so many wedding guests? Hmm…probably not a bad gig if you could get it.

  She opened the garage door. “Ritter?”

  But not a single ear flop or tail wag. Great. Just as she was getting used to him, he’d up and died on her. Wouldn’t that just beat all. “Ritter?” But a walk through the whole garage didn’t turn up any sign of him, dead or alive. He must’ve gotten out somehow.

  With no luck finding Ritter, she moseyed around Summer Haven and across the lawn to where Maggie was overseeing the crew Sera had hired to work on the gazebo.

  “Mags,” she asked, “have you seen Ritter?”

  “Lil let him out this morning. She said it was too hot to keep him cooped up today.”

  “I guess I should’ve rigged up a fan out there. I bet she’s mad. Where is she?”

  Maggie never took her eyes off the workers. It had to be killing her not to be the one wielding that hammer. “She went somewhere to look for bubbles.”

  “Excuse me? I thought we were planning a wedding here, not a playdate.”

  “That’s what you do these days when the bride and groom leave—you blow bubbles or toss birdseed.”

  “What happened to good old rice?”

  “Sera heard it can hurt birds.”

  “Bull crap. It’s not like birds have boiling water in their stomachs. I swear, Facebook has made everyone an expert on urban myths. Birds are probably more likely to burp up soap bubbles. Dang wedding will look like an episode of The Lawrence Welk Show.”

  Maggie was barely paying attention to her because she was so intent on watching every move made on the gazebo.

  “I can’t believe Lil is working on this wedding when we should be finding her rings,” Abby Ruth said. “If we don’t track them down soon, they’ll be back in a pawnshop.”

  “I think she’s concentrating on the wedding so we don’t notice how upset she is about losing them.”

  “We’ll get them back. This may have started out about Stella, but it’s now become twice as personal. I wish I’d witnessed the crime. I’d have made a citizen’s arrest right then and there.”

  “You probably would’ve gotten us all arrested too,” Maggie said with a smile.

  Abby Ruth couldn’t argue with that. Thank goodness they’d only been kicked out of the reception. If she’d had to call her future son-in-law to come bail her out of jail in Atlanta, it would’ve been a real embarrassment. And she could hardly go to him for help in recovering Lil’s rings after crashing a wedding either.

  Just as well. They could handle this situation as they had all the others in the past.

  A huff and moan made Abby Ruth look toward the house. Ritter had just settled his old bones down into a hole he’d dug near Lil’s treasured Chevalier de Malte irises. Which was, of course, when she came bumping up the drive in Maggie’s little truck. When Lil got out, her arms were full of enough boxes of bubbles to keep the birds in Summer Shoals burping for a good long time.

  Abby Ruth strode out to help her carry the load to the porch. “Lil, we need to get back on the case or we may never find your rings.”

  Lil set her purchases on the porch, then settled into a rocker and gazed out at the flurry of activity in the gazebo. “I’ve been thinking about that. The prettiest blue-eyed boy bumped into me while we were dancing. He had opportunity.”

  “You have a clear description then!”

  “Don’t get too excited. He didn’t look a thing like the people Stella or Virginia described. He did have a tattoo, but it wasn’t on his neck. It was around his arm.” She tapped her fingers against the arm of the chair. “Besides, my young man was a wedding guest or he wouldn’t have been on the dance floor.”

  “It’s enough to make my head hurt,” Abby Ruth said.

  “Maybe this thief is disguising himself,” Lil said.

  “Something’s sketchy here, that’s for sure,” Abby Ruth mused. “But we’re gaining ground, and we need to look closer at all these wedding vendors. Right now, it looks like our guy works for both the caterer and the florist, or he might’ve been a guest.”

  “What if Stella’s purse ending up by the caterer’s supplies was a coincidence? Maybe the man she thought looked suspicious was completely innocent.”

  “That still leaves us with Virginia’s guy and your blue-eyed boy,” Abby Ruth said. “You’re sure you still had your rings on when you hit the dance floor?”

  “Positive.”

  “None of us ever spotted a redheaded guy the entire night. So I think you’re right. Your wedding ring perp either had to be someone on the dance floor or one of the security guards who tossed us out.”

  “I think we have to start with Virginia and her tête-à-tête with the florist. Before she got too loopy on champagne, she mentioned the flowers at that wedding were done by Calla & Company out of Atlanta.”

  “Why didn’t you say so before now?” Abby Ruth turned toward the ga
zebo and yelled, “Mags, stop supervising. We’ve gotta hit the road!”

  Maggie had a quick conversation with one of the workers then jogged over to Abby Ruth. “What’s up?”

  “Following a lead. Let’s go.” Abby Ruth motioned for them to follow her to her truck.

  Lil hustled into the passenger seat of the truck, and off they went to Calla & Company florist to see if they could spot a man who looked like anyone they had suspicions about.

  “How much further is it?” Maggie asked after an hour.

  Abby Ruth glanced down at the navigation screen on her phone. “Says we’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

  “I brought some snacks along to hold us over,” Lil announced as she handed packs of nabs to Maggie and Abby Ruth.

  “I have to say, it’s moments like this when I don’t entirely miss Sera. That trail mix she used to make with anise in it was an acquired taste.” Maggie opened the pack and bit into the neon orange snack. “Give me a good old-fashioned peanut butter cracker any day.”

  “She means well,” Lil said, passing out a pack of wet naps to each of them. “A good Southern girl should never leave the house without a stash of nabs, though.”

  Abby Ruth tucked the wet nap into the cup holder. Nothing a good swipe of her hands on her jeans wouldn’t take care of, but she’d trade a pack of peanut butter crackers for a good Slim Jim any day of the week. At least the nabs would quiet Lil from wedding talk for a few minutes.

  “There it is.” Abby Ruth pointed toward Calla & Company, which took up the whole corner.

  “Oh, dear,” Lil said. “This will be a pricy choice. I bet this would cost four times more than flowers from Winnie.”

  “We don’t have to buy anything here. We just need information, so follow my lead,” Abby Ruth said.

  They piled out of Abby Ruth’s dually with Lil clutching a folder full of flower ideas.

  The front of the store had three large windows on each side of the front door—each dressed in a different color and theme.

  “Aren’t these flowers lovely?” Lil ogled the display of seasonal floral wedding bouquets and pew arrangements to match.