Sconed to Death

by Tegan Maher

  "Ladies!" Nikki barked. "Where on earth are your manners? The poor girl's been through enough without you all grindin' her through the gossip mill. Let her be."

  I took a deep breath and tried to place some expression other than deer in the headlights on my face. Unfortunately, the only other one I could seem to gather was my what the eff one, so I figured it was best to turn my back to them. That didn't work either, though, because they were all staring at me in the mirror, obviously bursting with nosy questions.

  Nikki saved the day. "Did y'all see where Kallie's pregnant, but she doesn't know whether it's Derek's or Jeffrey's? Personally, I think it's neither. I think it's the pool boy's."

  A low murmur of speculation began, then the conversation took a right turn to ... I have no idea where, but it was away from me, and that's all I cared about.

  Nikki smiled at me in the mirror as she slung the cape around me.

  "Who on earth is Kallie?" I asked low enough that nobody else would hear. Mercy wasn't exactly a pool-guy kinda place.

  "Soap opera," she whispered back. "That'll keep 'em busy long enough for you to settle in."

  Lily, however, wasn't distracted. "He ruined my wedding, you know."

  I turned to her, figuring it was best to pretend that I had no idea what she was talking about. "Who?"

  She rolled her eyes and snapped her gum before answering. "Duh. Charlie. He used baby blue roses instead of navy and they clashed with the dress colors."

  "I'm sorry," I said. "But you wore a blue wedding dress?"

  "Of course not," she said, sighing in exasperation. "We got hitched on the Fourth of July. My bridesmaid's dresses were red, white, and blue. The bodices were blue with a red off-the-shoulder ruffle, and the skirts were red-and-white striped with matchin' straw hats. Oh, and they wore the cutest little blue scarves and sashes. The flowers were supposed to be red, white, and blue roses to match. So obviously the lighter blue of the roses clashed with the navy on the dresses and ruined the whole look."

  "Obviously," I said, for lack of any better response.

  "Like I said, he ruined my weddin'. I'm glad he's dead. I can't even look at the pictures without wantin' to cry."

  I couldn't blame her there. I wanted to cry at just the thought, too, but it was more for the poor bridesmaids. I'd been the victim of a hideous bridesmaid's dress a time or two, but they were nothin' compared to this. This woman hadn't just committed a fashion faux-pas. She'd committed a crime against humanity.

  "Here," Lily said, reaching for an over-sized teal bag sitting on the stylist's station in front of her. "I have pics."

  She pulled out a photo album covered in glitter, hearts, and white lacy material and started flipping through, making sure I looked at each one before she flipped the page. Each picture was more ridiculous the last. It went from the the typical walking-down-the-aisle pictures—which were ridiculous enough by themselves due to the flamboyant themed hat and candy-cane veil she'd worn—to pictures of the cake cutting that featured her and her groom, resplendent in a tux with a red-white-and-blue cumberbund, to pictures of what appeared to be two of the bridesmaids mud wrestling. On the upside, the mud hid some of the ugly dresses.

  "That one wasn't supposed to happen," she said, snapping her gum again and pointing at the mud-wrestling maids. "Things got a little out of hand at the reception. I told Bobby we shoulda just stuck to a keg. Shayna can't hold her liquor and she thought Twila was hittin' on her man. You wanna see the pics of the honeymoon? We all went. You can still see part of Shayna's black eye, but just look over that. I'm still irked that they ruined those beautiful dresses. Mama worked hard makin' em."

  I had no idea what I was supposed to say. I looked into the mirror, hoping Nikki would throw me another lifesaver. Her face was burgundy, her eyes were watering, and her teeth were clamped down so hard on the inside of her lower lip that it had to be bleeding.

  "Excuse me for just a second," she squeaked, then ran into a door that must have been the bathroom, leaving me all alone with Lily. A toilet flushed, but that still didn't cover the gales of laughter that she was trying so desperately to muffle.

  "What's the matter with her?" Lily asked.

  I narrowed my eyes in the direction my so-called friend had gone, then turned and gave Lily my best syrupy smile. "She just found out she's not pregnant, but the results of the STD tests are still out. Maybe she's got syphilis and it's eating her brain."

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  THAT WAS BARELY OUT of my mouth before I regretted it, but I didn't have too long to feel guilty. When Nikki had bolted from the room, the rest of the vultures saw their chance to pounce. They all started asking questions at once, and it only took me a minute to decide looking at more pictures of Lily's wedding was most certainly the lesser of two evils.

  I held up my hands. "Ladies! I'm not answering any questions about the murder, and Lily was trying to show me pictures of her wedding. And besides, shame on all of you for some of the stuff you asked. What did Charlie ever do to deserve that?"

  The energy in the room shifted from chaotic to dark, but I didn't care. Some of the questions they'd asked were just downright vicious, and I wasn't putting up with it. I'd learned a long time ago that if you gave women like that an inch, they'd take a mile, so I figured it was time to draw my line in the sand.

  Without another word, I turned to the ditzy blonde and told her to continue.

  "Well, I already told you what he did to me. He ruined my wedding'," she said.

  I rolled my finger. "Yeah, so you've said, but let's see the pictures."

  It took a solid five minutes for Nikki to come back from the bathroom. By the time she did, Lily had shown me her whole honeymoon photo album, maintaining a steady stream of chatter the whole time, and I was wondering what all the negative fuss about day drinking was about.

  "You okay?" Lily asked her, while I just glared at her in the mirror.

  "I'm just fine,Nikki said. "Just choked on my donut."

  Lily cast her a cynical glance, but didn't say anything else.

  "So Lily, did you go talk to Charlie about the flowers?" My mind flashed back to the blue scarf I'd nearly killed myself on at the flower shop.

  Guilt flashed across her face, but she quickly schooled it back into righteous outrage. "I did, right after the wedding, but not since then. We decided to just let sleepin' dogs lie, even though he only gave us a partial refund. Mama still thinks he should have gave us all our money back, but she's a good woman and forgave him."

  Nikki gave me a cynical look in the mirror and said, "Well wasn't that generous of her?"

  Lily seemed to realize she was being sarcastic, but wasn't sure how to respond. She settled with, "Yes. That's mama—generous."

  I did my best to avoid eye contact with everybody in the salon for the fifteen minutes it took Nikki to trim my hair, and had never been so glad to leave a place as I was when the door clicked shut behind me, the little bell giving a incongruous, happy little tinkle as I did. The humidity slammed me in my face, but blessed air conditioning didn't hold a candle to what else was in the room behind me.

  "I definitely got the bad end of the stick here," I said when Gabe answered his phone three minutes later. "I felt like a lamb in a room full of wolves."

  "I have no doubt," he said. "Thanks for takin' one for the team."

  "Oh, I took more than one, but I did learn that Lily's holding a grudge."

  "You don't say," he replied. "What makes you say that?"

  "Aside from the fact that she flat-out stated she was glad he's dead, I think she may have been out there that day." I explained about the scarf.

  He was quiet for a minute. "I've known that family for years. In case you didn't notice, Lily's not exactly the sharpest knife in the drawer, but I've never known her to be violent. Her mama, on the other hand, is meaner than a snake. I think maybe we outta talk to her."

  "So you don't think Kristina had anything to do with it?"

  "She couldn't have,"
he replied. "She's out of town at a florist's conference and has been since Monday."

  "Far enough away that she couldn't have driven back?"

  "Yep, plus the girl she's roomin' with swears she was in a class when he was killed, and the professor validated that with the sign-in sheet."

  I sighed. "So all we have is Lily."

  "Looks that way. I'll drive out to her aunt Aggy's house and see what she has to say after I drive out to Walmart and talk to some of her coworkers. That's where Lily works."

  "Why Aggy's rather than Lily's mom's?"

  "Because her mom—Lynn—lives five miles past the middle of nowhere, and Aggy's place is right outside of town. Besides, usually where you see one, you see the other. I can get an initial feel for the situation well enough from Aggy. If I pick up on anything suspicious, I'll drive out to Lynn and George's place."

  "Okay then," I said. "I've gotta get back out the lodge and see how things are going."

  I did my best to push the memory of the last hour out of my brain so I could focus on the food. I had two days, and if I timed it just right, I had plenty of room to do up some roasts for a carving station and make up seven or eight sides and hors d'oeuvres as long as I kept them simple. I was counting on the standard covered dishes that guests always seemed to bring to any event, though I figured I'd better check with Dee about that.

  I swung by the community center to pick up the plates and other supplies we were borrowing from them, then pointed my SUV toward the lodge.

  My phone rang when I was almost home, and I answered via bluetooth.

  "Hey girl," Nikki said, her voice lacking her usual verve.

  "Hey," was all I replied.

  "Listen, I'm sorry about leavin' you at everybody's mercy like that, but watching your face while you were looking at those pictures—you looked like an owl. Your eyes were big as saucers and you kept blinking like you had something in them. It was priceless. Still, I know you're still not exactly used to life in rural Georgia, and it wasn't very nice of me."

  "No," I said, my tone flat, "it wasn't. Those women are a bunch of vultures."

  "Yeah, but to my credit, I have to deal with them on a daily basis."

  "Good luck with that," I replied, feeling just a tad guilty.

  "What do you mean?"

  "I may have thrown out the possibility that your odd behavior was because syphilis is eating your brain. I did let them know your pregnancy test was negative, though."

  She burst into delighted laughter. "I'm gonna get so much mileage out of that!"

  "You're not mad?"

  "Heck, no," she replied. "They're gonna be speculating for months, plus they still operate under the belief that you can catch crabs from a toilet seat. The worst of them won't book with me until the rumor clears, which—believe you me—is a blessing."

  I grinned. "Then you're welcome." I flicked on my blinker to turn onto the long drive that led to the lodge. "Listen, I'm almost home, so I gotta go. Stop out later if you're not busy. Just know that you'll likely be put to work."

  "Will do. I'm off tonight, so I'll pop out."

  I pushed the button on my steering wheel to end the call just as I rounded the curve. Half a dozen pickups in various stages of decay sat out front, and the yard was abuzz with activity. A twenty-something guy was painting the shutters, and another two were stringing twinkle lights under Annie's direction.

  The hanging baskets placed at intervals along the porch were thankfully bursting with petunias, but the plants that sat in large pots on each step were mostly dead. I made a point to grab some when I went to Walmart later for groceries.

  "Hey!" Annie said when I climbed out of the truck. "What do you think?"

  "I think it looks like we may actually pull this off, at least from the outside," I replied.

  A Cheshire Cat grin spread across her face. "Oh, you ain't seen nothin' yet."

  She led me into the foyer, where two girls were hanging streamers and another was just finishing up the paint. A man dressed in bib overalls was slathering mortar onto a stone and affixing it to the fireplace.

  Her eyes glittered with excitement as she motioned around the room. "We're gonna run silver ribbon up the staircase and weave blue wisteria in at intervals, with the stems covered by bows. Or maybe bells. Or maybe we'll just hide them under the ribbon. I'm not sure yet. We're gonna put bouquets of snowballs and carnations—"

  I held up my hands, laughing at her exuberance. "I'm sure everything's gonna be gorgeous."

  "Sorry," she said. "I'm just so excited. I have so many ideas, and I know just how I want everything to look."

  "Don't apologize!" I exclaimed, smiling at her. "You have no idea how grateful I am. I just want to see how the garden's coming, then I need to sit down and come up with a menu. Is there somebody who could carry the boxes in from the back of my car?"

  "I'm sure there is, she said, patting me on the arm. "Go do what you gotta do." She turned back to the girls who were hanging the streamers. "No, Katie, sweetie. Drape it a little more so it matches the rest. There, yeah, like that."

  She was managing the process like a conductor at an orchestra, and I had no idea how she was keeping all the sections going at once. But she was, and I was glad all over again that she'd been willing to do it.

  Things in the back, however, weren't going quite so smoothly. As soon as I stepped into the garden, Maisey swooped in on me, flustered.

  "Oh, Toni, they're ruining it all. They're destroying everything we worked so hard to do. Tearing up the brick, knocking a hole in the side of the fountain ..." she wrung her hands, panic etched across her translucent face.

  Scout approached and sighed, then glanced over his shoulder to make sure we were out of earshot before he addressed her. "Ms. Maisey, I promise that everything will be right as rain when we're finished. Those bricks were crumbling and had to be replaced in a few sections. He's been doing this for twenty years, and I've seen before and afters. Trust me—you'll love it."

  I peeked around him and put my hand over my mouth in shock when I saw that the side of the fountain did, indeed, have a hole in it. "Scout, she's right. How's he gonna fix that in time for the wedding?"

  He shot me a quelling glance and I realized I wasn't helping the situation. "You asked me to get it ready back here, did you not?"

  I nodded.

  "Then you gotta trust me to do it. I have no idea how a fountain works, but he does. He builds them for a living, and he said something about the hydro-mechanics being inefficient and outdated. He promised it would be ready in time for the wedding."

  I couldn't help but be nervous, but it helped that the stone angel in the center was free of the moss and debris that had crusted it since way before I'd moved in.

  Turning to Ms. Maisey, I said, "Why don't you help Scout get the landscaping in shape. That's your forte. I promise that if anything at all doesn't turn out exactly right, we'll fix it."

  With one last worried glance toward the fountain, she nodded. "Okay, but only because I trust both of you."

  I sighed, relieved to have put that fire out, then gasped in pleasure when I turned my attention to the roses themselves. She'd originally designed the garden so the foliage made a perimeter around the large open space in the center. Taller varieties of roses were planted in an outside row along a fence, directly behind a medium-height row of hedges. Shorter varieties of roses hugged the front of the hedges.

  Two huge old oaks provided shade for the reading benches and fountain, and I'd strung a hammock between them once we'd gotten the undergrowth cleared. A neat little brick path from the house to the fountain, then circled it. Two more branched off from directly behind the house so that it formed a nice walking path all the way around the perimeter so that you could admire them up close.

  We'd already cleared the center and laid new sod, but the bushes themselves need work, as did the brick path and fountain. It was obvious that Scout had all that under control.

  I gave him a small smile.
"Thank you. It looks amazing already."

  He bent down and gave me a quick kiss before he picked up his garden shears. "I promise it'll be ready in time."

  "I have faith." I turned and walked back inside, heading straight to the kitchen to make my list. Everything was under control and I felt confident tuning out the activity in favor of holding up my end of things. The last thing we needed was a hoard of hungry people in hot dress clothes.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  WITHIN AN HOUR, I HAD a menu designed and a grocery list made. Dee already had the first two cakes in the oven and was busy piping out a kazillion different sized blue roses. I'd caught her up on the case and also told her about the harrowing ordeal at Buns while we'd been brainstorming the menu.

  "That was just mean," she said, barely smothering a smile when I told her how Nikki had abandoned me to the old vultures. "But it sounds like you held your own."

  I snorted. "Barely. Another three minutes, and I'm pretty sure they'd have jumped on me, talons out and ready to tear me to pieces if I didn't give up the goods."

  The icing bag in her hand made an empty squelching noise and she growled. "I'm out of confectioners sugar again." She shook her hand to loosen it, then pulled a near-empty bowl of icing from the fridge and stuffed the remainder into the bag.

  "This is all the icing I have left. I need a break anyway, or else I'll be the one with hooked talons. You said you were going to Walmart?"

  "Yeah," I said, nodding. "I was just on my way out. I figure if I get everything today, I can spend most of tomorrow cooking. I'll still have some little stuff to do Sunday morning, but the wedding's not until two. I'll have plenty of time."

  "I'll go with you, then," she said, arching her back in a stretch. "I need to step away from this for a minute, anyway. My whole body is starting to ache and my eyes are crossing."

  I laughed as the oven timer went off. "I think that's your cue to take an hour off and go with me. You looked like you were at a good stopping point, anyway."