A Flower Girl Murder (2 page)

At the sight of the beautiful couple sinking into an embrace that neither of them was holding off on, Sage slightly cringed against her will. In her mind she knew she shouldn’t allow herself to become cynical and bitter, but there was only so much she could tell herself after what had happened.

The truth was she was still badly wounded and though the two weeks she’d spent at her sister’s had done a lot to soften the first sharp blow, she was still quietly agonizing after the fiasco that had cost her both her career and the man she’d been about to marry.

The memory still made her wince with mortification and it came uninvited in the least expected moments despite her attempts to close herself off to it and keep herself distracted. It was triggered by the simplest of things - one of her nephews mentioning school, a TV program set on a stage with a judging panel evaluating the contestants, a word or a phrase that Derek used to say uttered by somebody else. Once the initial wave of shame ebbed, a flaring anger settled inside her that slowly ate at her, making her blind to ordinary life and rendering her unable to enjoy Prim’s delicious meals, a refreshing breeze blown in from the sea or anything that used to make her smile.

In these still too frequent episodes, she saw the entire scene play out in front of her like it had happened mere moments ago. She was walking on the hardwood stage towards the lectern, her high heels clicking against the polished surface, her legs pale and defined under the well-tailored suit. As the entire Department of Biology’s faculty fixed her with their inquiring, serious eyes, she prayed she wouldn’t slip or spill the glass of water that awaited her at the stand.

As for her presentation, she was confident. Unless she made a fool of herself
physically
on the stage, not much could go wrong at this point. After all, she’d spent years compiling her study and now it was time for the culmination of her labor. It was the moment she had pictured for years while taking yet another dive deep in the Indian Ocean, collecting samples, or spending yet another sleepless night in the lab, hunched over her experiments.

Her findings about the medicinal properties of certain algae were astounding and she couldn’t wait another minute to share them with just about the only audience that would appreciate them. In a couple of short hours, she would be a celebrity in the biology circles at the university and she’d finally have time to focus entirely on the man of her dreams who’d stood patiently beside her through it all.

That’s when things had gone horribly wrong.

“Sage, honey?” Prim said, shaking her out of the oppressive memory, “Ben says they’ve already started setting up for tomorrow’s wedding. I’m guessing we’d better get up really early if we want to be ready by the time people start coming. I want to take their breath away! You are still up for it, right?”

Prim was already tasting her triumph as she was trying to disentangle her shirt, which had caught on Ben’s sheriff’s badge.

“Sure I am,” Sage said. No, she wouldn’t allow someone else’s wedding to remind her of her own failed one. She’d take this as therapy. She’d help her sister the way Prim had helped her and that was that.

“Okay, I’ll whip something up for dinner then, so we can have the whole evening to talk details. And you… you could take a nap?”

The last thing Sage needed after a day of lying around was a nap, but this was a tactful suggestion and she knew her sister liked to cook in silence and really concentrate. She savored each stage of the process and wasn’t much of a good company when she became engrossed in her cookbooks and recipe boxes.

“Well, I’ll leave you ladies to it,” Ben said, “I still have a small item to check off. Tonight’s the bachelor and the bachelorette parties and I’ll need to keep an eye on the fun, though I doubt there’d much to patrol.”

“Right,” Prim giggled, though Sage wasn’t in on the joke, “not with
those
two.”

Sage wasn’t about to ask. The last thing she needed was a story of two lovebirds who were so into each other and so impatient to marry, they’d have to practically
endure
a night away from each other. She grabbed a stack of old housekeeping magazines (a foreign topic to her altogether) and headed for the living room.

It wasn’t long before the quiet and the gentle clicking of silverware against porcelain that carried through from the kitchen put her into a lull and the memory of the disaster started unraveling once more.

Back on the university stage, things had gone smoothly up until the first slide of her presentation, when a soft murmur had swept through the lecture hall, causing Sage to lose a bit of her nerve. Her hands, holding a neat stack of index cards, had begun to sweat anxiously and she’d found herself straining her ears to discern what the noise was all about.

She’d gone on anyway, clicking towards the second slide and trying to make out her cues through the increasing vibrations of her trembling fingers. The murmur had then evolved into an open discussion with more and more members of the audience turning towards each other, frowns creasing their foreheads, than facing her and listening to what she had to say. It had taken almost unbearable strain of willpower to progress to the third slide and that’s when the entire hall had erupted.

A loud knock on the front door shook her back to reality.

Sage realized that the loud noise of the meat grinder that was now coming from the kitchen made it impossible for Prim to hear anything.

“Prim!” she called out, but when no response came, she pulled herself up reluctantly and went to answer the door.

When she opened, she slightly recoiled at the sight of the tall, handsome man standing in front of her, holding a large box.
Great
, she thought sarcastically,
just what I needed
.

“Looking good, Prim,” the man said and walked in, straight past her.

“Excuse me?” Sage said, outraged. “Who are you? You can’t just walk in.”

“Not in a good mood tonight, are we?” the man said, only now stopping to consider her. “Oh,” he said slowly, “Oh, my mistake. Who are
you
?”

“You seriously thought I was Prim?” Sage grumbled. She realized she was being rude to a stranger, but his behavior didn’t invite anything better. “Never mind, let me get her.”

“Wait,” the man said, clearly entertained by the mix-up, “You are her little sister, aren’t you? I heard you were staying with her. Must have slipped my mind.”

“I didn’t know it was public knowledge,” Sage said.

“You’d be surprised what’s public knowledge around here.”

“Is it also okay to just walk into people’s homes
around here
?”

“You mean instead of sending my calling card first?” the man said with a lazy smile. “Is that how you people do it in the big city?”

“Let me get Prim,” Sage said, exasperated. She was in no mood for verbal games with strangers.

“I think you might do just fine, no need to bother her,” he said, “You look pretty buff to me.”

Here he was, mocking her again. Sage’s arms were like two sticks. She narrowed her eyes at him.

“Here,” he said, depositing the box into her hands, “It’s the cupcake samples for the wedding. Blue hydrangeas frosting and all.”

“You make cupcakes?” Sage asked incredulously.

“I do a lot of things,” he said smugly, “What can I say? I’m just talented.”

Sage rolled her eyes. She was not going to indulge his sleazy flirting, if that’s even what it was.

After he was finally gone, Sage carried the box into the kitchen.

“Oh, great,” Prim said, “Did Dan just stop by?”

“If Dan’s the most irritating person around here, then yes, I guess he did.”

“Don’t be like that! He is a sweet man.”

“Not to me, he isn’t.”

CHAPTER TWO

Blue Hydrangeas and an Incident

Whenever something big happened in Rosecliff, there was never a fuss about the venue. The choice was clear. If more than twenty guests were expected to attend, it was understood that it was an all-town event and everyone felt invited to the village green. In the case of Rosecliff, it was a sprawling, lush lawn that ran at a slight incline down from the town square.

Ultimately, it reached a lovely stone-paved terrace that overlooked the spectacular ocean spray and was as perfect a spot for a wedding as any bride could wish for. The slightly eroded from the salt stone railing that ran in a semi-circle around the terrace gave the place a somewhat historical and romantic feel and marked the edge of a sharp, nearly 30-meter-high drop towards the crashing waves underneath.

So early in the morning, the sea was so flat and still, it looked enchanted. The only sounds came from the faint lapping of water against the rocks at the foot of the headland and the occasional shrieks of the seagulls diving to their breakfast. The tangy, salty air filled Sage’s lungs and she felt peaceful and eager to start the day. As a rule, mornings, when the air pulsated with anticipation and possibilities, were much better than evenings for her tired, overly analytical mind and the incessant stream of her gloomy thoughts. Yes, she could be happy on a morning like this, in a town like Rosecliff.

Sage jumped from the passenger seat of Prim’s wagon truck. She reached back inside for her travel mug and took a long swig of lukewarm coffee, the sleep still not completely rubbed off her eyes. The last time she’d woken so early, she’d still been working on her magical algae formula. Primrose, on the other hand, was anything but sleepy. She brimmed with contagious energy despite the first daylight still being only a sliver of pink marking the horizon.

“You go take a look at the arch and benches,” Prim instructed, “and see if all is set up nicely and I’ll start unloading.”

With that, she rolled up the sleeves of her cardigan (How had she managed to look so… well, prim, so early in the morning?) and unlatched the truck’s back divider. Then she started swiftly depositing the buckets of freshly cut hydrangeas on the fold-up cart she’d thoughtfully prepared.

Meanwhile, Sage followed her sister’s orders almost robotically. No vehicles were allowed past the lane that marked the upper boundary of the village green, so she started her slow descent across the dewy grass towards the stone terrace. She didn’t even need to watch her step as there wasn’t much she could bump her dragging feet into, so she was practically sleepwalking when an unexpected noise snapped her out of the daze.

Voices.

For a moment, Sage was relieved that she wasn’t the only one to suffer an early morning today, but when she realized that the still invisible couple was not only braving the early hours, but had managed to get into a fight, she became intrigued. A recently wronged woman, she couldn’t help but indulge the guilty pleasure of seeing that not every couple in the world was invariably infatuated with one another.

It looked like the raised voices were coming from the area of the wedding set-up. Changing course, Sage darted towards the cedar grove flanking the village green on the left.
I’m not really in the mood to be nice to strangers right now
, she mentally excused her childishness. She settled behind a gnarly trunk fairly close to the scene of the little domestic scandal and listened in.

“…our last chance to clean up this mess. This wedding… It can’t happen,” a male voice came through.

“What? No!” a woman almost shrieked, alarmed. “You think
that’s
the solution? I know we need to get what we deserve one day, but it won’t be today.”

“What are you talking about? Get what we deserve? I knew I should never have listened to you in the first place. I’d never be in this… Use your brain. There has to be something we can do.”

“In what? Five hours? Forget it,” the woman said, sounding defeated. “The wedding
is
happening. It’s too late. Let’s go. We’ll miss the breakfast at the Cheshire Cat.”

Sage craned her neck from behind the tree, trying to make out the two silhouettes behind the wedding arch. Not only was she not familiar with any of the town residents, but the sunrise behind them made it that much more difficult to distinguish any of the features of the couple’s faces in the few seconds she actually saw them. They were both hooded and facing out to the sea, completely oblivious to her presence.

So, it wasn’t a domestic scandal after all. It was something a lot spicier from what she could tell. She mentally urged them to keep fighting, when a loud “Sage!” broke the momentary stillness in the air. She turned around instinctively.

Primrose was coming down the lawn, pushing the cart almost three times her own size, her face obscured behind twigs of greenery and little explosions of blue flowers sprouting from each bucket. Sage glanced back towards the stone terrace, but the couple had evaporated. She sighed and raised herself to come out of her hiding place. The little morning show was over. The two strangers must have taken the stairs that led down to the small beach tucked amid the rocks.

The only thing left behind was a can of guava soda on the stone railing. A rush of wind knocked it to the ground with a dull, metallic sound. Sage wrinkled her nose as she went to retrieve it. First of all, she hated littering, and second, she couldn’t believe anyone would drink the nasty chemical guava concoction.