Wedding Day of Murder (4 page)

Lacy was exhausted, but sleep
wouldn’t come. Her wisdom teeth extraction loomed early in the morning, and
that made her anxious. The town council meeting had been a disaster; it kept
replaying through her head, adding to her frustration and anxiety.

After a pleasant supper with her
friends, the quartet had walked to the meeting down the block. The protesters
were already there and screaming out unintelligible gibberish. The man who had
followed Lacy was there, hovering at the edge of the group. He stared hard at
Lacy again, but didn’t approach. Andy wanted to talk to him, but Lacy waved
away his concern. She felt sure that the man’s apparent fixation was due to a
misunderstanding. For whatever reason, the protesters thought she was a wealthy
CEO of the Stakely Corporation. She was wealthy, but she was no one’s CEO. She
was a landlord and, more importantly, the facilitator of community
revitalization. It was that revitalization that made the people inside the
building angry with her. They were unhappy with the changes taking place in
town lately.

When she walked inside and saw the
mayor and Detective Arroyo sitting together, she knew she was in trouble. The
speed with which the meeting had come together, combined with the vitriolic
attitude of the crowd, was now easily explained. Her list of enemies was small
but powerful. The town’s power players hated her for varied and nefarious
reasons. While they hadn’t attacked her directly, they were obviously in charge
of tonight’s meeting. Throughout the whole meeting, neither of them said a
word, but they didn’t have to. The other people at the meeting were properly
fired up. They spent a long while listing their complaints. While they spoke,
Kimber and Michael went to work rounding up Lacy’s supporters. The meeting had
been so hasty that only those with grievances had been able to organize. As the
meeting wore on, people who were happy with the Stakely building and the town’s
progress began to stream in so that by the time it was Lacy’s turn to speak and
defend herself, the crowd had an equal number of supporters and detractors.

In the end, nothing was
accomplished. Those who were unhappy with the changes aired their complaints.
Those who were happy listed the town’s accomplishments—growth, jobs,
landscaping, and a small real estate boom. In Lacy’s very biased opinion, her
group’s statistics were more concrete than the disgruntled group’s complaint of
“bad apples invading the town.”

After almost two hours of hearing
from both sides, Lacy stood to speak again. “You make it seem as if I want the
protesters here, as if I’m happy they’ve come, but I’m not. I wish they would
go away and never come back. But so far they haven’t violated any laws. Unless
or until they do, they have the right to stand outside my building and say
whatever they want. If we make a big deal over them, then they’ll dig in their
heels and stay. If we ignore them, they’ll go away.”

“I said the same about you when you
started this mess,” Mr. Argus said. He lived two blocks from the Stakely
building and complained almost daily about the noise, traffic, and parking.

Kimber sprang to her feet. “That’s uncalled
for. Your property values have probably skyrocketed since Lacy came back.”

“I suppose that depends on your
definition of value,” Mr. Argus said. “I like my neighborhoods free of crime
and traffic, and I don’t like having so many of you people around.”

“You people?” Kimber said. “What’s
that supposed to mean? People whose skin isn’t lily white like yours?”

“You take that to mean whatever you
want, little missy,” Mr. Argus said.

“That’s enough.” A voice spoke from
the back of the room and Travis stepped forward. He was in uniform and likely
on his way to work. He was a deputy at the jail and not a patrol unit. Most
people probably didn’t understand the distinction. A uniform was enough to
cause a ripple through the room. All eyes were on him as he parted the crowd
and came to stand beside Lacy and Kimber. “It seems to me that this meeting has
gone on long enough and everyone has said what they need to say. Does anyone
have anything else to add before we adjourn?”

Everyone remained silent. The mayor
reluctantly got to his feet. “I guess that’s it until next time, folks. Good
evening and drive safe.” He turned to whisper and gesture to Detective Arroyo
who gave a helpless shake of his head. Lacy hoped Travis wouldn’t get in
trouble at work for leaping to her defense. Though, in reality, he had probably
been leaping to Kimber’s defense. The two had been friends ever since their
accidental make-out session a few months ago. Kimber was embarrassed about the
whole thing, but Lacy had sensed a new maturity in Travis. It was as if the
evening with Kimber, combined with his heartbreak over Riley, gave him the
confidence he needed to step out of his shell a little. Tonight had been a
prime example of the new confidence; he was only twenty, and yet he had stepped
forward and broken up what could have been a very ugly encounter.

After the meeting broke up, Lacy
had gone home. Her mother was at Tosh and Riley’s, allowing Lacy to go straight
to bed with no drama. But no matter how hard she tried to rest, sleep remained
elusive. “I might as well get up and work,” she whispered to no one in
particular. The crazy day had been a waste, and stacks of tax forms awaited her
signature.

For the third time in twenty-four
hours, she showered and spent awhile picking little globs of paint from her
hair. After Jason’s careful attention, there were only a few stragglers left.
Lacy was confident they would work themselves out in time for Riley’s
wedding.
 

She sneaked to the kitchen and left
a note for her grandparents and mother. Her grandmother was having outpatient
surgery that day, too. Lacy fleetingly thought it was strange that Frannie was
going shopping on the day her mother and daughter were both having surgery, but
her mother had never been good with illness. Anytime Lacy got sick as a child,
her grandmother had been called in as chief caregiver. As a kid, that had
seemed normal to Lacy. Now she wasn’t so sure. Her mother had been a
stay-at-home mom, and yet anytime one of her children got more than the
sniffles, they had been shipped to Grandma for the duration. Frannie Steele was
a study in contrasts. Sometimes she was nurturing and supportive—a
perfect reflection of her adopted mother, Lucinda. At other times, she was
critical and self-absorbed—a replica of her biological mother, Barbara
Blake. Was she self-aware enough to wonder over the dichotomy? Lacy wondered
and felt sympathy for her mother. The constant battle between nature and
nurture must be confusing.

“Hi.”

Lacy whirled and banged her knee on
a cupboard. “Mom, what are you doing up?”

“Couldn’t sleep. There’s so much to
do for this wedding, and it seems like I’m the only one who cares,” Frannie
said. She rubbed her hands over her arms, causing Lacy to notice that the house
was chilly.

“I’m sure the wedding will be fine,
Mom,” Lacy said. She refrained from reminding her mother that it was a moot
ceremony since Riley and Tosh were already married. Frannie’s ways were not her
ways. Lacy had learned long ago that it was better to keep her head down and go
along than to waste precious energy arguing over the unchangeable.

“What are you doing up?”

“I couldn’t sleep, either. I think
I’m going to go to work.”

“Why? Will you be able to sleep
there?” Fran asked.

“No, I have work to do,” Lacy said.

“I don’t understand that. You own a
building. What work could there possibly be?”

“A lot, actually,” Lacy said. Every
day it was something new—renter disputes, neighbor complaints,
regulations, taxes, an unending stream of bureaucracy. She didn’t elaborate,
both because her mother wouldn’t care about the minutia and because the topic
was awkward. Frannie had never delved too deeply into Lacy’s inheritance. Lacy
tried to keep it that way so her mother wouldn’t ask too many questions. She
still had no idea that she was adopted, and for as long as Lacy’s grandparents
wanted to keep the secret, she planned to play along.

“Someday when you and Jason get
married, he’s not going to like having a wife who works all day,” Frannie said.

“Jason and I just started dating,
Mom. We’re hardly ready for marriage. And if it ever reaches that point, then I
doubt he would require me to stay home. He’s supportive.”

Frannie smiled. “All men are
supportive at first.”

“Mom, what’s going on between you
and Dad? You’ve hardly called him since you arrived.”

“I’ve been busy,” Frannie said. She
moved past Lacy and put the teakettle on the stove. Lacy wanted to delve deeper
into the subject, but her mother was ready with a diversion. “You need to give
Riley a bachelorette party.”

“I need to throw a bachelorette
party for a married, pregnant woman?” Lacy said.

“She’s your only sister, and she’s
getting married. Of course you need to throw her a party, and don’t think this
counts as a baby shower because you need to give one of those, too.”

“Fine, Mom, we’ll go out for milk
and antacid before the wedding. It’ll be a blast.” Riley had been having severe
morning sickness and acid reflux. Added to her exhaustion, she was in misery
most of the time.

Frannie turned to give her a look.
“Be serious, Lacy. It needs to be classy, something befitting the wife of a
millionaire.”

Lacy bypassed the part where she
reminded her mother that Tosh lived humbly on what he made as a pastor and went
to the more important point. “Who would I invite? None of Riley’s friends live around
here. It would be me, Riley, and Kimber.”

“How about Tosh’s sisters?” Frannie
suggested. “I don’t think they’re sold on Riley. This party could go a long way
toward smoothing things over.”

“I guess that might be fun,” Lacy
said. She had met Tosh’s sisters a couple of times and liked them.

“Plus I’ll be there, and Grandma.”

“Basically you’re telling me that I
have less than a week to plan a fun, elegant party that can accommodate Tosh’s
wild and crazy sisters, my pregnant sister, my mom, and my super-conservative
grandmother.”

“Don’t forget Kimber and any of
Riley’s friends we can manage to find,” her mother said.

Lacy was getting a headache, which
served to remind her that she would be having dental surgery in less than four
hours. “I really need to go,” Lacy said.

“We should talk more about the
party,” Frannie said.

“Later,” Lacy said. “I’ll see you.”
She slipped out of the house before Frannie could call her back. So far she had
stayed out of her mother’s way, content that she had no part in the blitz of
wedding plans. Somehow she had been given an integral role in the pre-wedding
events. How did these things happen to her?

She couldn’t worry about it now.
After her surgery, she would throw something together. If Riley had some vested
interest in the event, then she might feel compelled to put in more time or
effort. But none of Riley’s friends were coming to the wedding—Lacy
thought this was secretly because Riley didn’t want anyone to see her barely
discernable pregnancy belly. Whatever the reason, if there was no one around
Riley cared about impressing, then a low-key party wouldn’t be a big deal. Her
mother would be disappointed in Lacy, but then she always was. The changes Lacy
had gone through the last year were giving her new energy to deal with her mom.
The more comfortable she became in her own skin, the less she needed her
mother’s approval—a good thing since Frannie’s approval was so rarely
given.

And then there was Jason. It was
hard to care about her mother’s criticisms when she had a beautiful, amazing
man constantly by her side telling her otherwise. For every disparaging comment
from her mother, Jason gave her two doses of tenderness and encouragement. And
it wasn’t as if he was purposely trying to counterbalance Frannie. He was
simply being the caring, supportive boyfriend she had come to expect. Not that
he didn’t occasionally become exasperated or angry with her, but the
frustration rested on the surface of a deep well of adoration. Lacy was
becoming confident in the fact that Jason truly loved her, and that confidence
made all the difference.
And yet you
couldn’t tell him you love him.

“What is wrong with me?” she asked
herself. The words felt harsh in the darkness. She looked around to make sure
no one had heard them. One of the things she loved about living with her
grandma was the ability to walk to work, but walking to work felt much better
when it wasn’t four in the morning. Not until she arrived at the Stakely
building did she remember the creepy protester who had stared at and followed
her. Walking to work by herself in the middle of the night was probably not a
good idea right now.

Or
ever,
she heard the rejoinder in Jason’s voice. It was exactly what he
would say after he got over the apoplectic seizure he would no doubt have if
she told him what she’d done.
You walked
to work in the middle of the night…alone…after people picketed you all day and
you were followed…and there was a contentious council meeting full of angry
townspeople…
He would also give her the look, the one where he tried and
failed to figure out how her mind worked. Then he would hold her close and say,
Woman, sometimes you make me crazy.
She
wondered if he was still at work. It would be like him to work all night and
then take her to the doctor without a word about how exhausted he was.

Lacy skulked as she came closer to
her building, awkwardly squatting and darting from car to car. If the
protesters were still there, they weren’t in plain view. She tripped, bashed
her head on the side of a car, and toppled onto her hands and knees in the
street. The car alarm started to blare.
So
much for being sneaky,
she thought. She froze, waiting to be discovered by
the protesters or the owner of the car. When no one came, she stood and dashed
to the Stakely building, fumbling for the lock with shaky fingers.