For Whom the Bluebell Tolls (17 page)

“We were supposed to film the surfers who braved the shark-infested waters off certain Hawaiian beaches. How cool is that?”

“Sounds like a fantastic experience.”

“And it might have been. Except I listened to my mother. ‘It’s time to grow up and act like a professional,’” she mocked in a snooty voice. “Worst mistake of my life.”

“It doesn’t sound like such bad advice.”

She snorted. “She took me to her favorite store and bought me a whole wardrobe of professional business casual clothing. When I met the crew, they looked me up and down. Do you know what I did that summer in Hawaii? I fetched coffee and made photocopies, and then they had me alphabetizing their take-out menus. I was shut up in some office building nearly all day. And the only marketable skill I left with was how to make a decent pot of joe.”

“So you changed your image.”

“My image, and my whole approach.” She tugged up her tank top. “It’s the only way any of these men will teach me anything. Think about it. Why should they spend time with an intern? What’s in it for them? They don’t earn any more money for showing me how to do stuff. And if I end up being good at what they teach me, I’m just more competition in an already competitive job market. And I’ll never break into the business without good contacts. I need solid recommendations and people in the business who remember me and want to work with me again.”

“But will they respect you?”

“I think so. It may not look it, but I do have certain lines I don’t cross. And I make sure to take an interest in the job and stroke the guys’ egos by telling them what great teachers they are. And I am learning.”

“How did that work with Gary and Gigi?”

“I didn’t need it to,” she said. “I mean, I’m not into chicks, and I didn’t think Gary was, either. Besides, they’re the on-camera people. I’m more interested in the camera and sound work and the behind-the-scenes stuff to start. Maybe be a producer someday.”

“It’s a pity,” I said. “The camera would love you.”

“Thanks for saying that, but I don’t want to get into a job where you peak in your twenties and then it goes downhill. Besides, Tristan is a producer, and he’s quite the attractive man.”

*   *   *

“So Eric is going to do those renovations for us,” Jenny said, sliding into the chair across from me. “Said he can start next week.”

The cast and crew had deserted the Ashbury. Maybe they had to get some work done. Or maybe it was time for afternoon naps. Or maybe they got tired of watching Bixby and me watch them.

“I’m glad. He does nice work. I hope to hire him myself someday, if I ever save enough to buy back Grandma Mae’s cottage . . .”

“Are you still pining after that place? Audrey, I drove past it the other day, and it looks like it’s going to fall down any minute.”

“Pining hardly seems the right word. But, yeah. I’d like to fix it up. Live there.”

“Your childhood escape?”

“I’m not sure I’d call it an escape.”

“Are you going to talk to me or argue about my choice of words? It was precisely an escape. Every summer you and Liv would go and poke around in that garden, like the whole rest of the world didn’t exist. I know things weren’t great between you and your dad—”

“Things seemed fine between me and my dad, thank you very much. Right up until the time he just wasn’t there anymore.” I had raised my voice. I looked around the still-empty room, and then lowered it. “As far as I’m concerned, he ceased to exist the day he walked out on us.”

“Walked out on your mother,” she said.

“No, walked out on
us
. Don’t you go picking at my choice of words, either. Did he call me? Send birthday or Christmas gifts? Take me out for caramel corn the day I got my braces off? No, not a word since that day. The only way we even knew he wasn’t in an accident or kidnapped or something was because his suitcase and half his clothes were gone. I don’t know when he packed those up.”

“And coming to Ramble helped you forget, but . . .”

“Coming to Ramble was my salvation. Grandma Mae . . .” My eyes started to tear. But I forced my words through the crack in my voice. “That little cottage was a haven. No shouting or swearing. Quiet. Peace. I never felt unloved when Grandma Mae was alive.”

Jenny clasped her hands so tightly that her knuckles turned white. “I didn’t mean to bring up . . . It’s just that it’s such a rickety old place, and the things you treasured aren’t there . . .”

“But I could fix it up. Make it the same pleasant place I remember.”

“It won’t be the same, all alone in that house. You would be living there all alone, right?”

She sat up straight, as if she’d just remembered the year the Magna Carta was signed for a history test. And no, I have no idea when it was signed, or even why it was such a big deal. History was never my subject. But if I could have remembered I’d have had the same excited glint in my eyes.

“You’re
not
planning on living there alone, are you?” she said slyly.

“Let’s not go there.”

She pulled closer to me. “It’s Nick, right? You and he seemed like you were getting serious.”

“Nick and I had a long talk the other night.”

“And?”

“And he told me I was free to date other people.”

Jenny’s jaw dropped. She was speechless for a good fifteen seconds. “Someone needs to hit that man upside the head. Why would he say something like that?”

“Maybe he’s not all that interested.”

“He’s crazy about you,” she said. “There has to be another reason.”

“He mentioned something about not wanting to commit when he can’t make a go of the bakery, but I don’t know . . .”

“Well, that makes more sense. He is responsible to a fault.”

“But then there’s Brad.”

“Brad? Brad’s back in the picture?”

I nodded. “Possibly. Unless Bixby arrests him for murder.”

“So that’s why you’re hanging around here and not doing flower arrangements back at the shop.”

“Liv practically booted me out the door.”

“To help Brad?”

“That, and with the added motivation that if someone succeeds in their attempt to cancel the wedding, we don’t get paid.” And paying suppliers out of our own pocket would set my down-payment fund back months—if not years.

I caught movement out of the corner of my eye and spotted Nick standing in the doorway. He went to the catering table.

Jenny rose to get up, but he waved her back.

“Nobody here, anyway. Might as well get a break in.” He poured himself a lemonade and joined us. “I thought you’d be slaving away over flowers.”

“Audrey’s hot on the trail of the killer,” Jenny said.

I rolled my eyes. “I wouldn’t say
hot
.”

“Nick has been investigating, too,” Jenny said.

“Oh?” I said. I could have sworn Nick blushed.

“Seems you guys have a lot in common.” Jenny stood and poked me in the arm. “Well, I’ll let you two intrepid investigators conference for a minute. I want to make more lemonade before the crew comes back out of the heat.”

“What were you investigating?” I asked.

Nick took a sip of his lemonade and set the glass down on a cocktail napkin. “I was looking over all that message-board material on that Pinkleman character, and then it hit me that I could go talk to the man. So I drove over to the regional jail this morning and visited for a bit.”

“Learn anything?”

“I asked him why he didn’t leave town when he had the chance. He told me he’d considered it, but that someone had to stay to protect Gigi.”

“Protect her?”

“That’s what he said. He said he figured that if someone was after Gary, Gigi might be next. Said he’d lay down his life for her. A little melodramatic, but kind of gallant, in a way.”

“Dennis didn’t have access to the Ashbury, at least not officially,” I said. “But he heard about the threat against Gigi? Or did he know about it because he’s the one who sent it?”

“He didn’t mention the threat directly, so I’m not sure he even knows about it. I didn’t tell him about it because—if he gets out of jail—I think Bixby would rather Pinkleman clear out of town completely. Maybe have Mrs. June bake him a cake with a file in it just to get rid of the guy.”

I tapped my nails against the table.

“What’s brewing in that pretty little head of yours?” he asked.

“I think Bixby would rather Dennis Pinkleman stay close by. Pinkleman has some kind of obsessive attraction to Gigi. So he would have motive to get rid of Gary. And he’d also have a twisted reason for writing the threat to Gigi . . .”

“How’s that?”

“It allows him to stay and be her protector, her white knight.”

Nick leaned forward, resting his elbows on the table. “That actually makes sense. Although . . .”

I quirked an eyebrow at him.

“Pinkleman is obsessive, I grant you that,” he said. “And that preoccupation could lead him just about anywhere. But his posts are frank and straightforward, even if they’re a little off. I don’t see him as cunning or twisted enough to concoct that whole plot.”

“No, not unless he’s putting on an act. It also doesn’t explain the damage to the dresses.”

“Pinkleman did have access to the chickens.”

“But he could have simply been hungry,” I said. “He didn’t hurt the chicken. He just ate her eggs. There’d be no connection at all if people hadn’t assumed those dresses were spattered with blood.” I winced as I realized I’d left myself out of the group that had made that assumption. I’d been as quick to jump to conclusions. “Why would Pinkleman want to sabotage the wedding fashions?”

“To frighten Gigi more?” he suggested.

I bit my bottom lip, which was becoming chapped from the sun. And probably from biting it so much. “Possibly, but why the dresses? That’s not an area that Gigi handled. As an avid fan, Dennis would know that was Gary’s department.”

Nick nodded. “I wouldn’t cross him off the suspect list just yet.”

“That’s the problem,” I said. “Can’t really cross anyone off the list. The answer has to lie in the motives to cancel the show.”

“Easton?”

“Would have had a motive to kill Gary to get the job, but he certainly doesn’t seem like he wants the show canceled. If anything, he’s frantically trying to keep his new job.”

“Gigi?” he said.

“Would have had a financial reason to kill Gary, and more could have been wrong in their marriage than that. And she admitted that she was angry that Gary wanted to walk away from the show. But why would she want to stop it now?”

“She wouldn’t,” he said. “But threatening herself would divert suspicion away from her. And it could also explain why the dresses—and not any of her materials for the reception—were sabotaged.”

“I didn’t think of that.”

“Who else would have motive?” he asked.

“Well, Brad sure does seem to come up a lot.”

“That’s another guy with a habit of getting himself into trouble.”

I shrugged.

“Sorry, I know it’s a touchy subject. Why would he want to stop the show? I thought that’s why he left.”

Nick didn’t say, “I thought that’s why he left
you
,” but I could hear it in his voice.

“He has an opportunity to film a pilot for a show of his own, but can’t do it while under contract.”

Nick nodded thoughtfully.

“But he didn’t do it,” I quickly added.

“Too bad,” Nick said.

“What!”

“Sorry.” He patted my arm. “I really didn’t mean it that way. I was thinking . . .”

“That you’d like Brad to be guilty?”

“Audrey, I happened to think that if Brad were behind the threats, that you were safe. I don’t think he’d hurt you. Whether or not the killer is the same person who’s sending the threats, someone wants the wedding stopped badly enough that they sabotaged the dresses. Who’s to say the flowers aren’t next? It’s not safe for anybody involved.”

“Do I need to genuflect or something?” Gigi asked, spinning in the aisle while taking in the stained glass of the historic First Baptist. “This really is a spectacular old church. I guess if Gary had to pick . . . what a place to go.” She wiped the corner of her eye.

“Not nearly enough natural light,” Marco said. “Those colors in the stained glass are going to mess up the skin tone of the bridal party—not to mention how they can dull a white dress.”

Aha, so the bride’s dress was white after all. I texted Liv.

“Good thing I travel with my own lighting guy,” Gigi said. “I’ll have him take a look at the church, too. So, Audrey, tell me what you have in mind for the church flowers.”

I put my phone back into my pocket. “Do I have to talk into the camera?”

“Not unless you have something earth-shattering to say. Marco is mainly here to check out the lighting.”

I walked her through our plans for the church flowers: altar flowers, nice arrangements on the window ledges, swags from the rafters, and the calla lily and silver bell markers on the ends of every pew.

“Perfect,” she said.

“Perfect?” Even most of our brides were pickier than that.

She shook her head. “I’m having a hard time getting into it. But it sounds like you did your homework, so I’m not going to mess with anything. I’m leaning on you to make me look good.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence.”

“How is your friend liking those old videotapes?” she asked. “Pretty boring stuff, I imagine.”

“Liv? She’s poring through them.”

“While working on flowers, I hope.”

“While working on flowers. We also called in some more part-time help.”

She nodded. “I need to get out of here. Audrey, where is Jans?”

“Jans? You mean the funeral home?”

She nodded.

“I didn’t realize they were doing the arrangements.”

“They’re not, really. Just the embalming and hair and makeup, I guess.” She wrapped her arms tightly across her chest. “We’ll have the funeral back home where his family can attend. But the coroner released the body today, and I had to figure out someplace to take him. I wonder if I should get our makeup woman to touch him up, if she’s not too freaked out about it. Unless Jans is any good.”

“The only ones in town. But yes, they’re pretty good.” I refrained from telling her that they had such a good reputation that a few of my brides had asked Little Joe to do their makeup for their weddings. Let’s keep that as one of Ramble’s dirty little secrets.

“Want some shots of him?” Marco asked. “I could take my still cam . . .”

Gigi glared at Marco until he shouldered the camera and headed to the front door.

I gave her directions to Jans and Son Funeral Home, which, like the directions to most businesses in Ramble, consisted of “Walk down Main Street until you come to it.”

When the door shut behind her, I sank down into our pew.

It wasn’t really our pew in that it was marked and we paid rent like they did in the old days. But it was the pew Grandma Mae used to usher Liv and me into—and then sit between us so we weren’t “carrying on,” as she put it, during the preaching.

“What a place to go, indeed,” I said. And then I got angry. This was a house of worship. It had been for at least two centuries. Folks were baptized here, married here. Little children who wailed in the nursery and sang songs in the Sunday school had grown, lived, and, yes, a few even died here. When Liv and I were kids, a ninety-year-old woman in a prim sky-blue suit in the row ahead of us nodded off during the services and never woke up. Grandma Mae had insisted that Miss Bernice would have wanted it that way, to go from Sunday meeting straight on to glory.

But now someone had turned the old place into a crime scene.

And speaking of crime scenes . . . I headed through the library and down the little hallway that held the bathrooms, and stood at the bottom of the narrow, winding staircase that led to the bell tower. No crime scene tape barred the entrance, so I started to climb.

I’d been up in the little room before, to see the bell. Well, at least that’s why Brad
said
we were headed up the stairs that day. But I’d rather not revisit that thought.

I was rounding the first corner of the steps when the bell started chiming. Someone was in the tower.

I crept up the steps, rounded the second corner, and could see shoes—scuffed-up tennis shoes, white athletic socks, and hairy legs.

“Brad?” I asked, between peals of the bell. Yes, I recognized the legs.

But he wasn’t alone. As I climbed the last few steps and entered the little square room, I saw Jordan, the sound mixer.

“Hey, Audrey,” Brad said.

Jordan waved, and then went back to looking at the bell. The normal rope had been replaced with what looked like the clothesline on which Grandma Mae once hung her laundry. A new coil of it sat on the floor next to a knife.

“What are you doing up here?” Brad asked.

“I was about to ask you the same thing.”

“Jordan wanted to hear the bells, maybe get some tape of them to add to the footage, but the police must have removed all of the rope.”

I shivered. It was gruesome to think of Brad cutting Gary’s lifeless body down. But it also made sense that the police would want to preserve any evidence found on the rest of the rope.

“And you were fixing the rope,” I said.

“Well, jerry-rigging it, really. They’re going to have to call in a professional, I think, to do the job right. Maybe this would be a good time to automate. Then all they’d have to do is press a button, or even program it to go off at certain times. But this should get us through the wedding well enough.”

I turned to Jordan. “Had either of you been up here to check it out since you came to town?”

Jordan shook his head. “I was going to the afternoon they found Gary. But Brad convinced me to wait until dark. Good thing, too. I could have been the one to find him.”

I turned to Brad. “Why would you tell him to wait until after dark?”

“I’d like to know that, too,” came a stern voice from behind me.

I whipped around to see Chief Bixby leaning on the doorpost.

“Why, Brad? Why tell him not to come with you? Didn’t you want Jordan to see what was happening to Gary?” Bixby moved closer. “Did you want to eliminate a witness?”

Brad’s color blanched. “No, that’s . . .”

Jordan also shook his head. “No, sir. He told me that it would be more pleasant here at night, cooler. And”—Jordan used a dangling shirttail to wipe his sweaty brow—“I’ll have to admit he’s right. I would have waited until after dark today, but we’re running out of time.”

“And you’re here to . . .” Bixby said.

“Check the sound levels on the bells,” Brad said. “Are you following me? How did you know I was here?”

Bixby only smirked. “Didn’t have to follow you.” He pointed up. “Clear as a bell.” He glared at Brad before he turned and headed down the steps.

“What did you do to irk that man?” Jordan asked, after the sound of footsteps faded.

“He and I may have had a few skirmishes when I was younger,” Brad said. “And maybe he suspected me for a few more minor infractions he never caught me at. But, boy, can he hold a grudge.”

“Did any of them involve garden gnomes?” I asked. One summer when I was staying with Grandma Mae, the
Ramble On
had reported a number of thefts of garden gnomes. The gnome-napping continued unsolved for over a month, until one day, they were discovered in the soccer fields, lined up for a kickoff against a team of pink plastic flamingoes.

“That depends,” Brad said. “Any idea what the statute of limitations is on the theft of lawn ornaments?”

I gave him a look.

“But I’m a reformed man.” He smiled his cherubic grin, which I’m sure kept him out of juvenile detention when he was younger. “
You
were very good for me.”

Jordan cleared his throat. “I think that’s my signal to go.”

“No, wait,” I said.

“Three’s a crowd.” He swung his equipment bag over his shoulder.

“I wanted to ask you,” I said, before he could escape down the stairs, “did Gary say he was coming to the church the day he was killed? I mean, would he normally have asked you to come along?”

Jordan studied the hanging rope. “You know, he never did mention it. He might have been there when Brad suggested that I go at night. In fact, I think he was. Come to think of it, the whole crew was there.”

“So Gary wouldn’t have expected any of the cast and crew to be in the tower when he came, since Brad warned them off.”

“But someone was here with him,” Brad said.

“What a perfect place to have a meeting,” I said. “Private.”

Jordan waved as he started his march down the stairs.

“But how . . . ?” I began.

“How what?” Brad asked.

“You said you got a text from Gary, then drove up to the church and heard the bells starting to ring.”

“Yes.”

“And you ran right in and up to the bell tower?”

“Well,
run
might be stretching the truth a little. It was hot, remember. I figured Gary was messing with the bell rope.”

“So you got out of the car and walked into the church, through the library, and up the stairs to the bell tower. And saw Gary, swinging on the rope, the bell still ringing. Any idea how long it would take for Gary’s weight to stop the bell?”

“No idea. The momentum would have kept it going for a while.”

“Taking Gary with it. But the bells started ringing when you pulled up?”

“Yes, I . . .” Brad paled, then sat on the floor as if he were dizzy. “I never thought of that. No wonder Bixby seems sure I did it.
Audrey, where was the killer?
”

I looked around the little room. Only one door in. No windows. “He couldn’t have climbed the bell rope. Nothing to hide behind.” I opened the door to a small closet. It was packed with dusty old Sunday school books. “No room in here.”

“He must have run down the stairs,” Brad said. “But why didn’t I see him leaving the church?”

I ran down the staircase. Again, running was an exaggeration, because it was stifling in that bell tower. At the base of the stairs, I saw the only two options. One marked “Men,” the other “Women.”

“The men’s room?” Brad asked.

“Or the ladies’, possibly,” I said.

“You think the killer could have been a woman?”

I shrugged. “I don’t think the killer cared which door. You know, from here he could have seen the front door of the church open up.” I pointed down the hall, through the library, to the two large wood entry doors.

“But I didn’t see anybody when I came in.”

“Was it dark in the church?”

“Yes, but . . .”

“It would have taken a while for your eyes to adjust. The cameraman was just mentioning how little natural light there is in the church.”

I knocked on the men’s room door. “Anybody in there?”

“What are you doing?”

“Do you think Bixby would have bothered to check the bathrooms?”

“I’m sure they checked the whole building to see if anyone else was about.”

“Not for someone who was there—but someone who had been there.”

“I don’t understand,” he said.

“Okay, the killer sets Gary pealing the bells. Maybe he thought he could convince people that Gary committed suicide. I don’t know. But then the guy runs down the stairs. He thinks he has a few minutes to get out, since there’s nobody in the church. But as soon as he hits the bottom of the stairs, the door to the church opens.”

“That would be me.”

“He’s trapped. He can’t get past you, so he ducks into one of the bathrooms. Maybe he leaves the door open a crack and watches you.”

“Audrey, it’s scary that he could have been that close.”

“It gets scarier. He wouldn’t have known if you saw him or not. But when you walk past the restrooms and up the stairs, he figures that you haven’t.”

“So he runs out and makes a clean getaway before the police arrive.”

I turned the door handle to the men’s room and stepped inside. The bathroom was small—too small to be practical—shoehorned in before there was such a thing as building codes and handicapped access laws. And there was no room to expand them. And since there were much larger, nicer bathrooms in the fellowship hall addition, nobody bothered to maintain these much. The men’s room consisted of one small, cracked vanity, a tarnished mirror mounted above it, one urinal, and a single narrow stall with the door hanging askew. I scratched my chin as I looked around, especially around the walls. But the most suspicious thing I found was a rolled-up pill bug.

When I straightened myself, I caught a reflection in the mirror. There were dark smudges on my chin. “Why didn’t you tell me I had a smudge on my face? How long has it been there?”

Brad looked up and chuckled. “Must have just happened. Look, it’s on your hand.”

I wetted a paper towel then washed my hands. Then I took another clean towel to the door handle. Both the inside and outside still bore remnants of a black powder. I showed the towel to Brad.

“What does that mean?” he asked.

“Good news for you. Bixby’s not so sure you killed Gary. He checked the door handles for prints.”