by Tegan Maher
That she didn't get a massive migraine from rolling her eyes that hard was amazing.
She opened her mouth to say something, but closed it. "Never mind," she said after a couple seconds. "You've got it wedged in that thick-skulled melon of yours that you're physiologically incapable of making anything sweet, so if you're comfortable with no-bakes, far be it for me to curse it when I need ten dozen of them. We'll have this conversation another time."
She turned to the pantry and pulled out whatever she'd need to bake the cakes.
We worked for a half hour or so just shooting the breeze about everything and nothing. I'd just finished scooping the no-bakes onto a long strip of tin foil when Dee's phone rang from its place on the counter. She was using a melon baller to scoop batter into miniature cupcake foils, so she nodded toward it.
"Will you see who that is?"
"Sure," I said, wiping my hands on a towel. I frowned when I looked at it. "It's Jeremy. Isn't he working tonight?"
Jeremy was her kitchen manager and lead chef. He worried about how hard Dee worked, and he wouldn't call her from the cafe it it wasn't important.
"He is, but it's not quite dinner rush yet," she said, then motioned to her batter-covered hands. "Answer it, pretty please?"
I slid my finger across her screen. "Hey, Jeremy. This is Toni. Dee's covered in cupcake batter. What's up?"
"Actually, it's kinda good you answered," he said. "I'm calling to beg a favor of both of you."
"Anything for you, you know that," I replied. He'd done so much for Dee that if I could help him out somehow, I was more than willing.
"You may want to hold off on such a blanket statement," he said, his voice dry. "At least until you hear what I want this time. Can you put me on speaker?"
"Sure," I said, and did. "Go ahead, you've got us both."
"Soooo, my friend Lucas is getting married," he said.
"Okay," Dee said, shooting me a questioning look. I shrugged.
"He was getting married at the Catholic church over on East Street."
"That's a beautiful chapel," Dee said. "He couldn't have picked a nicer church."
"Yeah," Jeremy replied. "They thought so too, until his fiance's mom got down here from Boston and got them kicked out. She asked the priest if he could move the big statue of the Virgin Mary from directly behind the pulpit because it would dominate all the pictures of the ceremony."
"You gotta be kiddin' me," Dee said, stunned.
"I wish I were." Jeremy sighed. "Apparently, there was more before that, but that was sorta the final nail in the coffin. Now their wedding is this weekend, and they've got nowhere to hold the ceremony. Or the reception."
"Wait," I said, narrowing my eyes. "Did you say Boston? Your friend's fiance isn't by chance named Stephania is she?"
"Oh, no," Dee muttered, catching on.
"Yeah," Jeremy replied. "She goes by Stevie, though. How did you know that?"
I sighed. "We just had the not-so-pleasurable experience of meeting her mother. She came here and asked if we'd host the wedding."
"What did you say?" he asked.
"We said no," Dee said, her tone adamant. "Capitalized. Underlined. That woman's a nightmare, and we only talked to her for five minutes."
"Would you reconsider for me? Pretty please? She's raising the roof, demanding that they change their minds and go to Boston. All of his family is here and they can't afford to travel. Plus ... she's rich. You could pretty much set your price and she'd pay it. She's one of those folks who thinks that the more it costs, the better it is. She could brag to all the upper crust in Boston about how much she spent."
Dee scowled. As far as I knew, Jeremy had never asked her for anything. He'd worked for practically nothing when she'd first taken over the cafe, and it was mostly due to his culinary genius that the place was doing so well. For that matter, he'd put in a ton of free hours helping out with the lodge, too. He'd filled in a couple of days when one of the roofers was sick so we could get it done before a huge rainstorm hit, he'd helped us haul stuff out of the attic, and he'd helped Scout put a new floor on the porch.
"I'll owe you big," he said when we didn't answer immediately.
"No you won't," Dee said, sighing after we had a non-verbal conversation consisting of helpless hand gestures and much raising and drawing down of eyebrows. "Unless one of us kills her. Then our bail's coming out of your pocket."
"Agreed," he said, and we could hear the smile in his voice.
The thing was, we weren't kidding.
CHAPTER THREE
"SO WHO'S GONNA RUN point with her?" I asked once we hung up.
Dee flung her finger to the tip of her nose in the universal not it gesture, and I shook my head. "Oh, no. We're not deciding who's gonna fold the laundry or do the dishes here. Nosies doesn't work on this one."
Maisey slowly appeared, looking back and forth between us.
"I thought from the way you two always go at it, nosies always worked," she said, then zipped over to look at the rows of no-baked cookies. "Oh, man. I miss these things."
Dee gave her a surprised look. "You had no-bake cookies back then?"
"Well," Maisey, replied, "not exactly like these, but pretty close. We didn't have peanut butter, but we did have the rest of it." Her watery blue eyes twinkled. "Two of the things I did enjoy about bein' rich. Sugar and cocoa. But even when we didn't have sugar, we had honey and maple syrup, which do just as well."
Dee creased her forehead in thought. "Maple no-bake cookies. That's going on the list. I've made maple candy, so I don't see why it wouldn't work."
"Now," Maisey said, "enough about cookies. What were y'all tryin' to decide when I popped in?"
Dee and I looked at each other, knowing the news wasn't going to sit well with our third roomie. She'd barely adjusted to the idea of running a B&B because she didn't care for strangers. I was afraid to see how she'd react when we told her the old termagant from earlier was gonna have the run of the place.
With an evil grin, Dee slammed the tip of her finger to her nose again and I glowered at her. "Mature. Real mature."
She lifted a shoulder. "But effective."
I turned to Maisey. "Remember the woman from earlier?"
"Yeah," she said, suspicious.
"Well, it turns out her daughter is engaged to one of Jeremy's friends."
She flickered a little. She liked Jeremy almost as much as she liked Scout, so I was hoping that would weigh in our favor. I explained the rest of it to her.
Sighing, she shook her head. "Talk about rocks and hard places. I reckon you got no choice." Her gaze turned stern and she shook her finger at me. "But you don't take no guff from her. You're the one doing her the favor, and she better not forget that. If she does, don't burn any daylight remindin' her, no matter what she's payin'."
I held up a hand. "I know, I know. Believe me—I'd rather stick a fork in my eye than deal with her, but Jeremy's been good to us."
"So when's the weddin'?" she asked.
"Yeah," Dee said, brow raised. "That may be good information to have. You know, seein' as how the great room is only half-painted and we're gonna have to decorate. And where will we have the reception? What about flowers? Are we expected to arrange for the flowers and cake and chairs and all that, or does she do it?"
I huffed. "How should I know? I've never done this before in my life. I'm an editor, remember?"
"Looks like you two better jump on it, then," Maisey said. "Don't wanna keep the queen bee waitin'."
"Grab your laptop," Dee said as she shoved the cupcakes in the oven. "Let's see what other places are charging so we at least have a general idea before we call her."
A quick search netted us several lists of B&Bs that offered wedding services, but the prices varied wildly.
"There," Dee said, pointing at an ad for a graceful old Victorian. "They look similar to us, and they're in rural South Carolina. What do they charge?"
Scrolling through their pics, it be
came obvious that though their house was a tad nicer, our grounds had them beat by a long shot.
"Six grand for a wedding with fifty guests," I said, glad we'd decided to look. I'd had half that in my head.
"Yeah, but does that include everything?" Maisey asked, hovering over my shoulder.
"Do we want to provide anything more than just the lodge?" I asked.
"Check it out both ways," Dee suggested. "From what I see, we're going to have to provide at least the tables and chairs, so we may as well have a number in our heads for both."
I read through, but it didn't offer many details. Instead, it had that infuriating contact us to discuss your event button.
"I don't know," I said, reading further. "It says here that you can only use approved caterers and licensed bartenders, so I have to assume that means they don't provide everything."
"How about eight grand?" Dee mused. "I could do the cake for a grand, the flowers won't cost more than five hundred, surely. We can rent the tables, tents, and chairs from the party place, and the community center probably has enough dishes and flatware to get us through, assuming there aren't going to be more than fifty guests or so. We'll make a donation. We may have to buy some tablecloths, though."
"Yeah," I said, looking around at the half-painted walls, "but we're gonna have to hire somebody to help us get all this done, plus we won't be able to set everything up or cook enough food in that amount of time."
Dee chewed on her lip. "I think we could do the food as long as it's just appetizers and finger foods."
I blew a breath out through my cheeks, thinking, then pulled up the calculator on my phone and did some quick number-crunching.
"We could do it for that, but barely," I said.
"Tack on an extra thousand bucks for the pain of dealing with the old bat," Maisey said, looking back and forth between us.
Just the thought of working with her gave me indigestion, and apparently I wasn't the only one.
"Each," Dee sai. "And add a couple thousand more just in case. Nothing ever goes according to plan, and we only have a few days to pull this all together.
"Twelve thousand?" I asked, skeptical. "You think she'll pay that?"
Maisey shrugged. "If she won't, she's welcome to find somewhere else to do it."
True enough.
"Okay, then," I said, pulling in a deep breath and slipping her business card from my pocket.
She answered after just one ring.
"Hi, Amelia, this is Toni Evans from Mercy Lodge. We've discussed your request and have decided to host your wedding." I'd opted to use her first name rather than her last because I was determined she view me as an equal, not an employee.
"I had a feeling you'd change your mind," she said, her tone smug. "People usually do when they smell money."
I clenched my teeth and counted to five before I responded. "It wasn't about the money. A friend of your soon-to-be son-in-law asked us to do it as a favor to him. Otherwise, we wouldn't even consider it."
Maisey, who was hovering near my ear eavesdropping, frowned. "Nip that crap in the bud right now. You take that, and she'll plow you over the whole time."
She was right.
"Before we enter into any kind of agreement, let's get one thing straight. We're doing this for a friend. That doesn't mean you're going to come in here and high-hat us. This is our place. We'll gladly honor your wishes, but only if they're reasonable. We expect you to be polite and courteous to us and to our contractors and employees. If you can't do that, we'll pull the plug and you can find yourself another venue. Am I clear?"
She gave the standard gasp of outrage and I cleared my throat.
"Crystal," she said, though I could practically hear her teeth grinding.
"Now," I said, opting to throw out the all-inclusive cost first, "about our cost ... we charge twelve thousand for—"
"Double that, and you deal with everything. The cake, the flowers, the whole nine yards. I'm sick of dealing with you people. I'm flying back to Boston until it's time for the ceremony. Stephania's agreed to let me organize a reception up there when they get back from their honeymoon. Unlike here, that takes significant advanced planning."
Dee'd been hovering near my other ear listening, and her eyebrows shot into her hair. Double what we'd planned to charge and we wouldn't have to deal with her? Cha-ching!
"Okay, then. Just tell me what you've already arranged and we'll take care of the rest," I said.
"Nothing," she replied, her voice acidic. "Trying to do business in this place is insane. I went to see that podunk florist this morning and he had the absolute nerve to suggest carnations in the bouquets rather than roses. Can you believe it? He got his, though, let me tell you. I'd had it. I promise you, he won't be making such an asinine suggestion again."
"Okay, Amelia," I said, using the same tone I did with anybody who was six inches shy of falling off the crazy train. "Just calm down. Can you give me Stephania's number so we can contact her?"
She didn't exactly calm down, but she did stop ranting. Small blessings. "I'll leave a check at the front desk of my hotel. I'm leaving on the next flight out. Try not to screw it up any worse than you have to," she said, then disconnected.
So much for respect. Oh well. I'd let her have her final shot if it meant I didn't have to deal with her again.
"Poor Charlie," I said, referring to the podunk florist she'd apparently eviscerated. He was a great guy and knew his way around a greenhouse better than anybody I'd ever met.
"I know," Dee said. "He's one of the nicest people I know. Being nasty to him is kinda like kickin' a sick puppy."
She wasn't wrong. Charlie donated flowers to the hospital and the retirement home on a regular basis, and he changed out the baskets on the gazebo in the town square as needed and when holidays rolled around. He said flowers brought people together, and he wanted to make the square as welcoming as possible.
All that made him sound sickeningly sweet, but he also played a mean game of poker, as I'd found out at the last charity tournament Don had hosted at the bar, and wasn't beneath throwing an elbow—accidentally of course—if there was only one slice of pecan pie left at a get-together.
I decided to start with him first since flowers would probably take the longest.
"You stay here and finish Sheila's cakes," I said. "Since it's almost four, I'm gonna call Stephania to get the color schemes and a general feel for what she wants on my way to Charlie's. I want to give him as much time as we can, and he closes in an hour."
"Yeah," Maisey said. "Good call. And you may need to talk him down, too. If that old bag was as awful to him as she said, he's probably gonna need some convincing."
"True enough," I replied, heading toward the door. "I'll be back in a bit."
Stephania didn't answer when I called, but about a minute after I left a voicemail, she called me right back. We discussed the details, and by the time we disconnected, I had a good idea of what she was looking for. Thankfully, she was a breath or fresh air after dealing with her mother, and for the first time, I had a good feeling about this wedding.
Charlie's colorful florist van was the only vehicle parked in the gravel lot when I pulled in. Usually, he was out puttering around, watering plants or making up bouquets, but he was nowhere to be found.
The building and grounds were huge, and after winding my way through a dozen rows of every type of plant imaginable, I was about to give up. A flash of neon-green caught my eye sticking out at the end of my current row and a finger of anxiety traced its way down my spine. Charlie always wore tennis shoes in that color and people affectionately teased him about which was greener—his thumb or his shoes.
"Charlie?" I called, creeping closer. "Is that you?"
When I got to the end of the row, I peeked around, holding my breath.
There lay Charlie, face down in a beautiful plot of colorful pink and purple petunias, a busted clay pot of miniature carnations scattered beside him.
CHAP
TER FOUR
I BENT DOWN TO FEEL for a pulse, careful not to disturb anything. Nothing. Yanking my phone out of my pocket, I dialed 9-1-1 and groaned when Linda, the world's most gossipy operator, answered.
"Hi, Linda," I sighed. "I need an ambulance out at Charlie's nursery, as fast as you can get it here."
"What for?" she asked. "Did the old fool fall off his ladder again? If I've told him once, I've told him a hundred times to toss that rickety old thing and get a new one."
"No, he didn't fall off a ladder," I said, knowing I was gonna have to give her details to get her motivated. "He's been attacked. He's not breathing and doesn't have a pulse. He has a head injury."
While I was talking, I was performing the standard body check I'd learned in my CPR class. His head felt squishy underneath a spot of blood, but since he had no pulse, I went by what training dictated and rolled him over to begin CPR, careful to try to roll him as one unit.
One glance at his blank stare once he was on his back told me I was way too late. A tear slipped down my cheek as I brushed a vibrant purple petunia off his forehead and ran my hand over his eyes to close them.
"I'll send the sheriff, too," she said, then disconnected.
My brain finally engaged, and I picked out a detail I hadn't before. Everything clicked into place. I started to call Linda back, but changed my mind.
"Maisey!" I called. "I need you!" I wasn't sure how she always heard me, but she did.
She popped in beside me. "What are you—oh," she said, taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly. "Is he dead?"
"Yeah," I replied.
He eyes darted around. "You need to get out of here. What if the killer's still here?"
I nodded toward the broken pot of carnations scattered about. "I'm pretty sure that's not an issue," I said, thinking back to Amelia Pennington's words. "I think our killer is the lovely mother of the bride. And she's catching the next flight out. Can you find Gabe and tell him so he can stop her?"
