Marriage and Mayhem (A Lexie Starr Mystery, Book 7)

by Jeanne Glidewell

  “No sense in trying to delete the video,” I hollered out to her. “I’ve already sent copies of it to Detective Johnston and the chief of police.”

  I hadn’t actually sent the video to anyone other than Sheila. We had taken this measure in the event something happened to the original copy. But it didn’t hurt to let Chena think the jig was up and the authorities were prepared to arrest her on attempted murder charges at any second, a charge that might later be upgraded to premeditated murder.

  “What we don’t understand,” I began, “is why you’d want to harm Bubba. What could possibly persuade you to poison a man you’d never even met before? Or did you and Andy’s best man somehow share a history we’re unaware of? You might as well spill the beans, Ms. Steward. It’s just a matter of time before you leave here in handcuffs.”

  Although Chena didn’t know it, we’d neither notified the police, nor any other living soul for that matter, and no one would be showing up at the bakery shop to cuff the cake decorator. But Sheila did have the voice recorder app activated on her phone, which we planned to take straight to the police station after we’d secured Chena’s recorded confession.

  The ploy worked. With her head bowed down, Chena returned to where Sheila and I stood and sheepishly laid my phone on the counter. With tears glistening in her eyes, Chena looked up and began to speak.

  “It’s not what you think,” she began. “I know the video shows me sprinkling sulfur powder in the boutonniere, but I truly had no intention of harming Mr. Slippknott. As you correctly stated, I’d never even met the man, nor did I know he had an allergy to the substance.”

  “So, what was the point?” Sheila asked.

  “What you don’t see in this video is that, after I put the box of flowers back down on the table and walked away, that young floral assistant named Raven walked up and detached all of the name tags. She tossed the tags in a trash receptacle, picked up the box, and then walked over to the wedding party gathering together for their group photos. Without name tags, Raven selected the bouquets and boutonnieres at random and pinned them on to the groomsmen and bridesmaids. Admittedly, the bouquets were identical, as were the boutonnieres, except, of course, for the one that had been dusted with sulfur. It hadn’t occurred to me Raven would do that, or I’d have never attempted the prank I was trying to pull.”

  “I don’t get it,” Sheila said.

  “Neither do I,” I said. “What prank are you referring to? Causing Bubba to have a severe allergic reaction was what you’d considered a prank?”

  “No. Don’t you see?” Chena asked. “I didn’t know Bubba was going to get the boutonniere I’d sprinkled with sulfur. I thought that―”

  Chena stopped to pull a tissue out of the Kleenex box on her desk. I finished her sentence for her, as the truth had just dawned on me. “You intended for Gunnar Wilde to get the boutonniere you tampered with. Let me guess. Gunnar also has a sulfur allergy, doesn’t he? Dr. Schnuck at Wheatfield Memorial told us it was not an uncommon allergy. Many people are allergic to sulfa, sulfur, and/or sulfites.”

  “Yes, I suppose so,” Chena replied. She sniffled and blew her nose loudly before continuing. “But Gunnar’s allergic reaction to sulfur is not nearly as severe as Bubba’s apparently is. Gunnar uses sulfur in the mix he feeds his cattle. It’s an essential nutrient required for the normal growth and reproduction of bacteria in the rumen of cattle.”

  “Rumen?” I was curious. I recalled the doctor saying that sulfur had a wide variety of applications. This was not one of the ones he’d mentioned, but Andy had informed us at the pow-wow that morning it was sometimes found in cattle feed. I listened as Chena explained further about the importance of sulfur to the digestion tracts of bovines.

  “The rumen is the first paunch, or stomach, of a cow. The rumen receives the food, or cud, from the esophagus, and the bacteria helps digest it and pass it on to the second paunch called the reticulum.”

  “Is it true cattle have four stomachs?” Sheila asked.

  “No. They have only one, but their stomach has four compartments, each serving a different function in the digestion process.”

  “Wow! You know a lot about cattle,” Sheila said. She sounded quite impressed, despite the terrible “prank” Chena had tried to pull off.

  “Yes. Gunnar and I went together for over two years before becoming engaged. Then Mattie Hill came waltzing in and stole him away from me.” In the time it took her to verbalize two sentences, Chena’s demeanor changed from one of great sorrow and regret to one of overwhelming anger and bitterness. I felt obliged to defend my daughter’s best friend, who was like a daughter to me.

  “If Gunnar was happy, he wouldn’t have even looked at another woman, let alone Mattie Hill. It’s certainly not Mattie’s fault Gunnar ended your engagement. I’m sure he’d have never even noticed Mattie if not for the fact he believed a future with you was not in the cards. You should consider it a blessing. Better to find out now that the two of you weren’t meant to end up together than after you and Gunnar were married. Divorce is an awful thing to go through. An unhappy marriage would be even worse.”

  “I realize that, but he broke my heart, nonetheless. It still hurts to see him so happy with another woman, particularly a beautiful one like Mattie. I can’t help but feel jealous of her.” For a tall, athletic woman, Chena suddenly looked fragile. I almost felt sorry for her. I listened as she continued to explain. “I just wanted to get back at Gunnar without really causing him any permanent damage. I knew from experience that when he inhaled too much of the sulfur when he fed the cattle, he immediately broke out in hives. He was usually very careful around the sulfur, but he still suffered from overexposure to it on occasion. I guess I just wanted to embarrass him, even though it wasn’t even close to the level of humiliation he’d caused me. You see, the hives would make his face turn red, and cause itchy raised bumps to form. The reaction he has to sulfur makes him look miserable, but also hysterically funny.”

  “People tend to look miserable when they are miserable, and that doesn’t sound hysterically funny to me at all,” I said. “But I do understand how the mix-up in boutonnieres occurred, and that you didn’t intentionally mean to bring any harm to Bubba.”

  “I would never have even considered such a thing had I known how it would turn out.”

  I made a scoffing sound. “I’d have thought that would have gone without saying.”

  “Yeah, no shit,” Sheila added.

  “Okay, okay. I know what I did was horrific. I’m so sorry it turned out the way it did. I am scared beyond belief that Bubba will die, and I’ll spend the rest of my life behind bars.”

  “Mostly the latter, by the way it sounds.” I was in no mood to cut Chena any slack. Whether Bubba was the intended target, or not, his life remained in limbo due to a mean-spirited, thoughtless act this woman had perpetrated.

  “No!” Chena exclaimed in earnest. “Truly, Lexie, my main concern is that Bubba regains consciousness soon and suffers no long-lasting effects from my impulsive, jealous prank. I couldn’t live with myself if he dies. I would gladly sacrifice my life if it would save his.” Chena began to cry, and I felt as if her concern and grief were sincere emotions.

  I could physically feel my heart softening just a bit. Goodness knows I too had an impulsive trait. That impetuousness I’d been born with had gotten me into life-threatening situations on numerous occasions. The difference was it was always my life I put on the line, not that of an innocent bystander. “If you step up to the plate and confess to your actions, you may do time, but not for the rest of your life.”

  “Okay.” Chena shrugged as she spoke. “I’ll probably turn myself in sometime this week.”

  “It’d be in your best interests to do it today, young lady,” I said. As I responded to Chena’s noncommittal remark, I felt my melting heart instantly turn back into stone. “Telling us you’ll ‘probably’ turn yourself in sometime this week ain’t gonna fly. We have recorded your confessio
n and Sheila and I will be turning you in ourselves if you don’t do so immediately. We’re not giving you a bye just because you accidentally assaulted the wrong person. We’re only offering you an opportunity to make the outcome better for yourself. But that offer has a time limit on it and the clock is ticking as we speak.”

  Chena turned toward Sheila, as if for support, who nodded before speaking. “Listen to her, Chena. You should take advantage of the opportunity Lexie has afforded you. If I were you, I’d waste no time going to the police station if you want to get a reduced sentence. I can assure you, the longer you wait, the worse the outcome will be.”

  “Oh, all right.” Chena then turned back toward me and said, “You know, I nearly tried to price you out from the beginning because I wanted nothing to do with this particular wedding. I should have paid heed to my gut instinct.”

  “Yes, you should have,” Sheila and I said in harmony. Then I added, “You nearly did price me out, if you recall.”

  “Believe it or not, I gave you a fair price, even if the cake didn’t turn out quite as nice as I’d have liked.”

  “It was god-awful, Chena. The lopsided concoction looked as if it were thrown together by a demented monkey. I should have―”

  “Okay. Okay. I’ll admit it was a royal mess, and I’m sorry.” Chena dabbed at tears as she spoke. “As I was saying, there was a reason I didn’t want to be anywhere near the wedding. I knew Gunnar and Mattie standing up as groomsman and maid of honor for Wendy and Andy would be something I couldn’t bear to watch.”

  “So why didn’t you just drop off the cake and split?” Sheila asked.

  “I wanted to, but I couldn’t. It was kind of like the train wreck about to happen in front of you that you can’t take your eyes off no matter how awful you know it’s going to be. The sulfur prank was a spur-of-the-moment thing to begin with, not a premeditated act.”

  “How’s that, Chena?” I asked.

  “Well, knowing the cake table was being set up on the lawn, I brought that small container of sulfur powder to sprinkle in my socks in case there were chiggers in the lawn. I am highly susceptible to chigger bites. They make me miserable. I swell up and itch like crazy for days. I’m a little ashamed to say this, but chiggers have almost the same effect on me as sulfur has on Gunnar. Sulfur, believe it or not, is a great deterrent to chiggers.”

  “So, I’ve heard,” I said dryly. I’d hazard to guess Chena didn’t find her own suffering “hysterically funny”, but I kept the thought to myself. Instead, I told her about Sheila’s husband. “Randy uses sulfur powder for the very same purpose you do―to repel chiggers.”

  “It’s very effective. Try it some time,” Chena advised. “So, anyway, as I was setting up the cake before the wedding, Gunnar walked up to me and asked, ‘Did you actually charge Andy and Wendy for that pathetic-looking cake?’ And then, to add salt to my wounds, he added, ‘It looks horrendous!’”

  “Well, that was admittedly very rude of him.” It was true, but not exactly polite, I thought. Gunnar had obviously provoked his ex-girlfriend intentionally. It sounded as if he’d inadvertently induced the tragic event that had felled his fellow groomsman.

  Sheila and I had deduced that the person dressed in black in the video clip, who was the recipient of a spit bath from Chena, was Yvonne Custovio. We’d assumed she’d walked up to the cake table and made some remark about sleeping with Chena’s current boyfriend, or something of that nature. She seemed to take great pleasure in stealing other women’s lovers. The fact that the person Chena had spat on was shorter than Chena had made us mistakenly assume the individual was female. Only now we realized that individual was Gunnar Wilde. Like Gunnar, Yvonne had short, curly, dark brown hair, of which only a small portion was visible in the video clip, and she’d worn a black blazer to the wedding.

  I was amused by the fact Chena had failed to mention she’d spat on her ex-fiancé after his cutting remark about the cake. She didn’t know I had captured her confrontation with Gunnar at the cake table on another video clip we hadn’t shown to her. “I guess I might have felt a desire for a little payback, too, Chena, if I’d been in your shoes. But to cause anyone physical harm is unforgivable in my opinion.”

  “I know. You’re right, Lexie. It was a horrible thing to do, and I greatly regret my decision.”

  “I would hope so. So what happened next?”

  “Well, right after he walked away, I looked over and saw Raven put the box of flowers down on a table. I recalled the sulfur in my pocket, and the inspiration to exact a little retribution against him hit me. So, when I thought no one was looking, I sprinkled some of the sulfur powder in the boutonniere marked with Gunnar’s name, as you saw in the video. But after I saw Raven remove the name tags a few minutes later, it was too late to do anything about it without admitting what I’d done. However, I felt sure that if the wrong groomsmen did end up getting the boutonniere with the sulfur in it, he’d be unaffected by it. It never occurred to me it’d end up on the lapel of someone who not only also had an allergy to sulfur, but a severe one, no less. I know I should have come forward right away, but I was afraid to. I knew if Bubba was to pass, and it sounds as if he still may, I’d be in deep trouble.”

  “From what you’ve told us, I don’t think you’d be charged with anything more than aggravated assault or, perhaps, manslaughter, if Bubba doesn’t pull through. Although likely the chief cause, the sulfur is one of only a number of factors in what took Bubba down. His is a complicated case. I do know for certain, as I’ve already told you, it’d be in your best interests to turn yourself in as quickly as possible and explain to the police what you just told us.”

  “Will you go with me?” Chena asked. “I’m scared to death. I may need you two to hold me up as I confess to the police.”

  “Absolutely,” Sheila and I agreed in unison.

  I was aghast at what Chena had done, but I felt sorry for her in an odd way, too. Even knowing my words would fall on deaf ears, I’d plead to the police chief to go easy on her as harming Bubba had never been her intention. She really hadn’t intended to cause great injury to anyone, even Gunnar.

  I felt Chena’s pain as she’d explained the heartbreak she’d experienced. I knew how true the old adage about the best laid plans of mice and men going astray could be. I’ve had well-constructed plans go astray more times than I could count. But to even attempt such a prank was beyond contemptible.

  And to be perfectly honest, I wanted to see the expression on Chief Smith’s face when he discovered his nemesis―the co-owner of a bed-and-breakfast and volunteer librarian―had been instrumental in solving another local crime. I knew it’d be a bitter pill for the man to swallow. And, oh, how I’d enjoy watching him as he tried to choke it down.

  This mysterious case of marriage and mayhem had been unraveled and the perpetrator, such as she was, would be brought to justice. Whatever that justice might entail, I hoped it would be fair. Chena didn’t appear to be a malevolent person by nature. How many of us have made ill-advised choices based on affairs of the heart? Fortunately for most of us, the results were much less traumatic. Chena’s actions may have been intentional, but they were hardly premeditated. If anything, Chena was guilty of a crime of passion, which is exactly why there is a third-degree murder charge in our justice system.

  Forty-One

  September 1, 2018

  Bubba awakened from his coma on the fifth day following his collapse at the originally scheduled wedding ceremony. He spent another day in the hospital recuperating and regaining some strength. Appearing weak and gaunt, but otherwise healthy, he’d been allowed to leave Wheatfield Memorial Hospital earlier that morning, on October first, in order to participate in Wendy and Andy’s rescheduled nuptials.

  Bubba was more than gracious once informed about what took place during his five-day coma. In Chena’s defense, he’d jokingly said, “After all, it could have been the handful of peanuts I ate that put me over the edge. That was my own fault. I knew
very well I was prone to having allergic reactions to nuts.”

  At the news the sulfur-laced boutonniere had been intended for him, Gunnar had remarked, “I feel bad for Bubba, but it looks as if I dodged a bullet. My face swells up like a road-killed possum after I’ve inhaled too much sulfur.”

  Bubba heard about Gunnar’s reaction to the news while Andy and his three groomsmen were getting dressed in their rented white tuxedos for the repeat ceremony. Evidently, Lariat had felt superstitious about ordering black tuxes again. To Gunnar, Bubba had said, “Like me, it appears as if you dodged another bullet when you ended your former engagement. Sounds like both our exes are vindictive bit―”

  Before he could finish his response, Andy cut in. “Hey, fellows. Get your bowties tied and your jackets on. The ceremony starts in ten minutes, and I don’t want it delayed for even a minute. I’m not going to let our tickets to the all-inclusive resort in Cozumel go unused. They let us reschedule our honeymoon stay the first time, but they might not be as understanding a second time. Not to mention, my beautiful bride will have all our heads on a platter if this ceremony doesn’t go off without a glitch!”

  For the second ceremony, Andy and Wendy were both wearing the matching his-and-hers watches Stone, a former jeweler, had created as his wedding present to them. He had combined twenty-four carat gold bands with small peridots surrounding the face of the handsome timepieces. The couple had both celebrated their birthdays in the last four weeks, and peridot was the birthstone for August. If not for Bubba’s unfortunate health crisis, they would have celebrated an August anniversary, as well.

  Lariat, despite his drinking problem, had turned out to be a really upstanding guy. He’d made all of the arrangements for the second ceremony solely on his own with Wendy and Andy’s blessing, and at no additional cost. I believe my blessing―not to have to deal with any of the details or decisions―goes without saying.