Wedding Bell Blues Read online

  “Don’t,” I said when I saw Ossie help Reba up, put his arm around her and start leading her toward the patrol car. “Don’t you dare.”

  He stopped, and still with his arm holding Reba, stared me down. His dark little eyes told me not to come a step closer. “This is police business, I thank you, missy.”

  “But she hasn’t done anything. The body doesn’t have a mark on it. She doesn’t know what she’s saying.”

  “Back off,” he said and held the car door for Reba. “Go bake your muffins. Isn’t that what you do, little girl?” Little girl? I wanted to slap him. The nerve, making fun of me trying to make a living making homemade pastries for my B and B guests, trying to help my friend. Oh, the nerve.

  I always felt like Ossie looked down on Southerners, as though the minute we opened our mouths it sounded like we didn’t have enough sense to get in out of the rain. Me in particular. At least he was being nice to Reba. For that I was grateful. If only it could continue.

  Ossie escorted Reba to the backseat of the patrol car, helped her in and closed the door. The metal click of the door lock was a shock to my heart.

  Ossie started the car and pulled away.

  Reba lifted up her head long enough to wave bye to me and smile. I wanted to run after that car, beat on the door with my fists and say, “You let her out. She’s innocent as a child.” Reba was like a child who just loved to ride, anywhere with anybody. For years she had hung around the Interstate and hitched rides with anybody who stopped. She had a fondness for truck drivers. It’s a wonder she hadn’t been killed. Maybe she’d just been lucky so far.

  But where was Ossie taking her? Not to jail, surely not. If I knew Reba, she was like a captured wild bird who would beat its wings against a cage until it fell down dead.

  As soon as Ossie pulled away, Bruce followed in the big white truck. That’s when I saw the tall black lettering on the side. G.O.D. GENERAL OVERNIGHT DELIVERY.

  God.

  That’s why Reba thought she was marrying God. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. She hadn’t been making all this up. God was in the big white truck.

  As I started toward Lady Bug, I saw something flat in the gravel under the picnic table. Reba’s cell phone. I must have dropped it after I dialed 911. Beside it lay a key. I picked both up. The key was an old-fashioned metal room key stamped “Motel 3.” How long had it been here? Where had it come from? One of Reba’s pockets?

  Ossie was long gone. The MedAlert team, too. The back of God’s big white truck wasn’t even in sight anymore. All that was left was me, the cell phone and that key.

  I got in my car and headed up the road. In my rearview mirror I saw the empty roadside pull-over, a bare picnic table, the woods behind it and an emptiness. Even the air seemed still, like none of this had really happened.

  I pressed hard on the gas pedal and roared up the road like the Devil himself was on my tail. If God was dead, then that must have left the Devil in charge.

  Chapter Two

  Of course I drove straight to Motel 3 and put that key in the door of one of the finished rooms. If there was any way I could get Reba out of this mess, maybe I’d find something here. Door number 1. It was like I could hear some offstage announcer saying, “If you choose door number one, there could be a new car or a trip to Cancun or ten thousand dollars. Or death. Which will it be?”

  What I saw were two queen-sized beds—one slightly rumpled (Reba’s site of sin?), the other pristine under a fluffy-looking white coverlet with blue stitching. It offered the remains of what looked like last night’s supper.

  I picked up a half-finished bottle of champagne. Dom Pérignon. God had good taste. Somehow I couldn’t see Reba buying it, though she had always said grape juice was her “medicine” and drank Welch’s straight from the bottle, not even chilled. Two champagne glasses stood on the bedside table along with an open bottle of Scotch and a half-finished bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken on the bed.

  I looked in some of the cardboard tubs of sides. A couple of potato wedges, half a serving of coleslaw, one lonely ear of corn on the cob, some garlic bread and half a Tupperware bowl of green beans. Since when did KFC put carryout in Tupperware? KFC and champagne? Only Reba.

  I put lids on the takeout, which stirred up a roach underneath the garlic bread. He twitched his antennae as if to say, I got first dibs here. Go get your own. I left him to it. One of the least lovable of God’s creatures.

  I opened the closet door to see a white suit, some sort of western-type jacket with silver beading, sequins and fringe like a rock star or an Elvis impersonator might wear. On the closet floor, looking back at me, was a large pair of spectator shoes in blue and white. I picked one up. Size twelve.

  On the closet rod hung Reba’s wedding dress, the one we’d put together at The Calico Cottage. Somewhere in a piled-up storage room, Birdie Snowden, who had owned and run The Calico Cottage as long as I could remember, had unrolled a bolt of Chantilly lace so old it had yellowed on the edges. But when she held it up, Reba had clapped her hands and said, “June Bride, June Bride,” then stood still while Miss Birdie draped it over her. “I’m a June bride,” Reba said with a beatific smile. I’d always wondered what a beatific smile was and now I saw it. For a moment, Reba glowed. She looked serene and even a bit lovely.

  “I’ll fold it in half, cut and bind a hole big enough to go over her head,” Miss Birdie said, “then seam up the sides, let it fall to her ankles, hem it and presto, change-o, Reba, you got a wedding dress.”

  Reba turned around, stood on tiptoes, twirled, let us see the back. It was like helping a child play dress up.

  When we laughed, she laughed. It was all such fun. We weren’t laughing at Reba, but with her. This crazy, silly business of weddings, which made me tear up and remember I’d never had one. Mama Alice would have loved to see me in her back garden, under the rose trellis in my mother’s wedding dress and veil, serving her super-duper wedding cake that all her friends would ooh and ah over. But it never happened. Mama Alice probably planned my wedding a dozen times in her head, made up the reception menu, dreamed of the wedding cake she’d make. She never said a word, never made me feel guilty I didn’t go that route.

  When Ida Plum heard about all the wedding dress preparations the rest of us were doing, she donated a long white satin slip from her underwear drawer and it fit Reba like it had been waiting for her. Hmm, I thought, when was the last occasion Ida Plum had to wear a long slip under a formal dress? Did she have more of a social life than she wanted me to know? Ida Plum also bought some netting and made a veil and twined plastic ivy around the top. “We can weave in some fresh white roses on the big day,” Ida Plum said, then out the side of her mouth, “if such a day ever comes to pass.”

  So we had the something old (Chantilly lace) and something borrowed (Ida Plum’s slip). We still needed something new and something blue.

  Malinda, my best friend in high school and again now that we were both back in Littleboro, brought over a lace-trimmed blue garter. “Never worn,” she said, and handed it to Reba, who tried to put it on her head like a headband until she had us all in stitches. “No, no,” Ida Plum said. “Leg. You put it on your thigh.” Ida Plum pulled up her skirt to show Reba, who blushed but wouldn’t model it. Instead Reba tucked it in one of her many pockets, zipped it shut and patted that pocket like it held a secret.

  Malinda went to UNC on a Morehead Scholarship when women became eligible for the program. Everybody thought she was headed for med school and assumed she was in it for a while. Years passed and the next thing anybody knew Malinda was back in town with a crisp white coat, a pharmacy degree, a job at Gaddy’s Drug Store and a baby in tow. If anybody knew her story, they didn’t tell and nobody asked questions. In Littleboro we are polite, especially when it comes to people’s past and private lives. If a person wants us to know something, they’ll tell us in their own good time. Meanwhile we go about our daily lives, live and let live. It keeps the peace and harmony.
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  Not one of us ever expected this wedding to come off, but it was fun to play along with Reba, to see happiness surrounding her. That was last week. Reba had been so full of hope, not like this afternoon, shredded and hysterical. I thought how quickly life can grab you by the throat and dash you down.

  Now I picked up the white flip-flops somebody around town had given Reba or she had picked up from somewhere. Who knew? Who cared? We had decorated them with big white bows. I put them back on the closet floor.

  On the back of the closet door hung a thick burgundy robe embroidered with the logo and name of some resort in Scottsdale, Arizona. God did get around, I guess. Standing on the dresser was a row of orange prescription bottles and Reba’s bridal bouquet, its plastic white roses and resurrection lilies tied with dangling blue satin ribbon, stuck in a glass of water.

  Next to the bouquet was a man’s leather billfold, so worn its corners curled. I pried it open to find some credit cards and a driver’s license. Staring back at me was a photo of Butch Winston Rigsbee, age sixty-three, Akron, Ohio. This guy had dark hair and brown eyes and a killer of a gleaming smile that nearly blinded me. Looked like he had all his teeth or some darn expensive dental work. There was no resemblance to the guy on which I’d tried to perform CPR, the one Reba was calling God.

  I flipped to other photos in the billfold. In one, Butch was sitting with his arm around a big gray cat. Standing behind him was a tall blond woman who looked like she either Roller Derbied or was a SmackDown wrestler. The look on her face was one my grandmother would say was enough to curdle sweet milk. She didn’t look like the kind of woman anybody would ever want to meet in the dark … or the daylight. Not a woman anybody would want to get on the wrong side of. Behind that photo was the same woman with two girls, daughters maybe, who looked to be about twelve and fourteen. Both wore the same sort of pouts and they weren’t pretty. They were just about as tough-looking as their mama. The money compartment was empty, not even a dollar bill. Reba, I wanted to say, if Butch was your fiancé, he wasn’t taking you on much of a honeymoon, not even to South of the Border for the day.

  I read the label on one of the prescription bottles, something for blood pressure. Several labels sounded like painkillers. None of the labels had a drugstore name nor were addressed to this Butch Rigsbee, which was odd. Had they been pilfered from somebody’s medicine cabinet? I picked up one I recognized was for diabetes. I knew because Mama Alice, my grandmother, had taken it at one time. Another bottle was some highly advertised weight-loss formula, then there was a rolled packet, a generous supply of blue Viagra pills. Hmm. I had to chuckle. If Butch had really been the omnipotent God I knew, he wouldn’t need those!

  I opened a dresser drawer that was empty except for a supersized box of condoms. Optimist, I thought, and closed the drawer. Suddenly I felt guilty. Snooping into people’s lives. Why had I really come here? What was I really doing? Ida Plum always said I had too much curiosity for my own good, that I liked to meddle.

  But I wasn’t meddling here. I was truly trying to find something that would both connect Reba to all this and prove she had not killed the guy on the picnic table. But who was this Butch Rigsbee? How did she get herself into such a situation? And what were the rest of us doing playing along with her about a wedding? Had we gotten her into a lot of trouble when we should have tried to divert her? Somebody could have given her a gift card to Walmart and she probably would have forgotten the whole wedding thing. But no, we had been having too much fun, apparently at her expense. All of us ought to be ashamed.

  Then the cell phone in my pocket vibrated against my hip. I’d forgotten it was there. I’d automatically shoved it in my pocket when I picked it up from under the picnic table. I flipped it open and squeaked out a startled “Hello,” only to have an angry voice nearly rupture my eardrum. “I know where you are and what the hell you’re doing with my thieving, no good, two-timing lizard of a husband. I’m going to cut his tail off and it won’t grow back.”

  I gulped. “I’m not—”

  “Whoever you are, Miss Hussy, I’m going to find you and when I do, I’ll kill you. And don’t think you’re going to keep a cent of what you find. It’s mine. Mine.” She had a rusty chainsaw of a voice that made my ear hurt. She clicked off. I could almost feel the heat of her anger in my hand as I stood holding that little piece of electronic accusations and feeling like the walls around me weren’t there, that this woman on the phone, this wife person, could see me and I was in danger.

  My next thought was I’d better head straight for home, the Dixie Dew B and B, where Ida Plum manned the range and could wield a mean iron skillet or two, and Scott maybe had popped in from his latest remodeling job. I knew my doors had locks on them and it was a bright, well-lighted place just down the street from the police station, a place quite conveniently within hearing distance of bloodcurdling screams. If I ever got to the point of needing to scream something bloodcurdling I’d probably just open my mouth and saliva would drip out.

  There was a polite little tap on the door and without waiting for me to get to it, the door cracked partway open. Motel 3 was so cheap it didn’t even have chain locks on the doors.

  “No,” I screamed. I pushed my whole body against that door and whoever was on the other side pushed back. Pushed heavier and harder. “Help, somebody,” I yelled. “Help!”

  Chapter Three

  I felt the pressure from the other side of the door ease off a little, but I didn’t trust whoever was out there. They could be gathering up steam for one giant push, so I grabbed the first things I could get my hands on: Reba’s wedding dress, which I yanked off the hanger and held in front of me, and a flip-flop. Nobody would shoot a bride, would they? Or if they did, I’d make a mighty sweet- and innocent-looking corpse.

  Someone tapped on the door again. Light little polite taps, not killer taps. Still, how could you know? Could be a sneaky killer trying to get me to open the door and slide in fast, grab me by the throat and that would be the end of me. Could have a weapon, a quiet weapon. Who knew I was here? Ida Plum knew I was going to find Reba at the picnic area by the Interstate, but that was all. Nobody would think to look for me at Motel 3. Nobody knew about the key I’d found.

  Were Reba and Butch involved with something illegal? Drugs? I hadn’t found any but then I didn’t know what illegal drugs looked like. All the pills in the pill bottles looked to me like ads I’d seen in newspapers and magazines. I hadn’t seen any white powder, if that’s what the bad stuff looked like. The only white powder I knew was laundry detergent and baking soda and powdered sugar.

  Money laundering? I couldn’t ever get my hands on enough money to even try to think how somebody would launder it. I didn’t know any big-city crime stuff. I didn’t even watch TV. I could be in something over my head in a million different ways. Oh, Lord. An innocent person did not go poking around in strange motel rooms in the middle of the day. Ida Plum would say (over my dead body) that I set myself up for it.

  I grabbed the other flip-flop and backed away from the door. Then someone called, “May I come in?” The voice sounded a little familiar.

  “No,” I said, just to be safe. “No, you may not.” Since when did killers use correct English?

  “Is this Reba’s room?”

  It was Pastor Pittman from the First Presbyterian Church. I recognized his voice.

  I opened the door. “It’s Beth,” I said. “There’s not going to be a wedding.”

  “I know,” he said. “There never was going to be one.”

  He came in, looked around, took a seat on the end of the slightly rumpled bed and eyed the remains of the picnic on the other bed. I’d always heard you should feed preachers chicken. My grandmother Margaret Alice did. But then she liked to feed everybody chicken in some shape or form. Should I offer him some chicken? The bucket was still almost full. But who was I to go offering somebody the remains of Reba’s supper? My thoughts were as jumbled as Reba’s.

  “Reba calle
d me to meet her here,” he said. “I was going to see if we couldn’t put an end to this whole charade. Though I have to say it’s kept the entire town entertained these last several weeks.”

  “I’m not snooping,” I said, still holding the wedding dress and the flip-flops.

  He grinned. “Nobody ever said you were.” He looked around as if he expected Reba to come from the closet or bathroom.

  “She’s not here,” I said. “Long story.”

  “I got an hour.” Pittman looked at his watch, sighed and leaned forward, head in his hands. “Is this a confession? You haven’t killed anybody lately have you?”

  “No, I certainly have not.” That made me mad. I bristled. “I never killed anybody in my life. No matter what you heard.” He knew since I came back to Littleboro I had been associated with two murders, one in the Dixie Dew, the other in the Catholic church, but he also knew I had nothing to do with either. Gossip, stories and tall tales in this town took on lives of their own.

  He laughed, put both his hands up. “Okay, what’s going on? Where’s Reba?”

  “She may be in jail.” I really did not want to start explaining Reba’s God and the truck and all to a preacher. It all seemed unbelievable, even to me who had been accused of having an overactive imagination by the sages in this town.

  He sat up. “I’ve married people in jail before. Not the best of circumstances, but one makes do. One is called on to serve in so many situations.” He wove his fingers together into a sort of church, like I had done as a child. You lace your fingers together, thumbs up, say “Here’s the church, here’s the steeple.” You fold them back and say, “Open the doors and see the people.” I wondered if he’d ever heard the rhyme, if he had done that as a child and it had become a habit as a preacher?

  “She kept saying she killed him.”

  “Killed who?” Pastor Pittman looked toward the window and sighed, as if what I was going to say was just another bit to add to the town folklore. Ida Plum had said First Presbyterian Church had been losing members. What was once a congregation of nearly two hundred was now down to seventy-eight or so. Pittman must have had time on his hands, plus been a bit bored in a town like Littleboro watching the same ecumenical calendar roll around year after year.