Apple Orchard Cozy Mystery series Box Set 1 Read online

  When Miss May got excited, she let it rip, and I felt like I had just hit a buzzer beater to win the championship game of some sport. I couldn’t help myself from fishing for just a little more validation.

  “You really think it’s good?”

  “Oh, come on,” Miss May gave me a light shove. “You know it’s good.”

  I smiled and looked away, embarrassed by Miss May’s praise, and even more embarrassed by how happy it made me.

  A half an hour later, the rehearsal dinner was in full swing, but for one crucial component… The groom was missing.

  At first, I tried not to worry about where Vinny might be. But I couldn’t forget the argument from earlier. And I couldn’t help but wonder…what if Vinny doesn’t show up at all?

  Of course, my own groom-who-shall-not-be-named situation had a real influence on my thought process, but here, something felt off. So after fifteen or twenty minutes, I pulled Miss May aside and told her about Vinny and Maggie’s argument.

  I wanted Miss May to laugh it off and tell me to stop being such a Worrying Wanda…and that’s what she did.

  “You saw them at the church,” she said. “Happy as a couple of little birds. Besides, I talked to Maggie a few minutes ago. She said Vinny’s just changing his tie. He’ll be here soon.”

  “Did she mention the argument?”

  Miss May shrugged. “Not a word. But you know that would be a weird thing to go around talking about the night of your rehearsal dinner.”

  “I know,” I said. “I just… I worry.”

  “Vinny’s not a runner,” Miss May said. “I’m sure the argument was just pre-wedding jitters.”

  “Better than mid-wedding jitters.” I laughed to cover up a tremor of emotion.

  “Stupid Mike.” Miss May shivered, like just the mention of Mike’s name gave her the chills. “Let’s not mention him again tonight, OK?” Miss May grabbed a pitcher of spiked apple cider from the bar. “Here. Go see if any of the guests need a refill.”

  I took the pitcher and saluted. Then Miss May hurried off to greet an arriving guest, and I made my way over to the first table of guests.

  It would be nice to say my conversation with Miss May had lifted my concerns about Vinny’s whereabouts, but our talk made me even more nervous. And as I refilled one glass of cider after another, my mind kept recycling the same questions…

  Who needs half an hour to change his tie? What if Vinny ran away? What if he left Maggie, just like Mike had left me?

  I was about to let my thoughts run away with me when a loud shriek brought me back to the present.

  I recognized that shriek. It belonged to Rita Sorrento. An Italian-American twenty-something with tan skin, olive-green eyes, and a look on her face that seemed to seduce and repel simultaneously. Rita and I had gone to high school together, but we hadn’t really run in the same circles. She had been into cars and boys, and I’d been more into reading and…reading.

  Rita jumped out of her chair as the cider cascaded off the table and onto her lap. She had somehow inherited her parents’ Bronx accent despite growing up in the burbs, and she had the attitude to match. “Seriously!? Watch where you’re pouring!”

  I grabbed a handful of napkins and dabbed at the table. “I’m so sorry! Let me get this cleaned up for you.” I turned to Rita. “Can I get you anything else? Some white wine, or perhaps a cocktail?”

  “I’m not drinking tonight.” Rita shook her head in disbelief. “I tried to tell you that before you poured the stupid cider, remember?”

  I stammered. I guess I had been so distracted that I hadn’t noticed Rita talking. Still, Rita avoiding alcohol was like most people avoiding air. This is a girl who used to bring wine coolers in her lunchbox in seventh grade. “Oh uh, right. Sorry.”

  “Will you stop apologizing? It’s clean already. Move on.”

  Rita stepped back toward her seat as Miss May approached with a tight smile. “Everything OK here?”

  Rita sat back down. “It’s a stupid spill. It’s fine.”

  “Great, great. I’m just going to borrow Chelsea for a second. Let us know if you need anything else.”

  Miss May took me by the elbow and led me over to the corner of the event barn. “OK. New plan. I think someone should go get Vinny.”

  “But—”

  “I know. Maggie said it was fine. I said it was fine. But we might as well check in, right?” Miss May looked over at Maggie. “She’s looking nervous. Don’t you think?

  Maggie took a sip of cider. She ripped up a piece of bread but didn’t eat it. She kept ripping and ripping and ripping…

  “She doesn’t look relaxed,” I said.

  “Right. So it’s time to go find Vinny, and tell him to get his butt in here, tie or no tie.”

  I nodded. “I completely agree.”

  Miss May just stood there, looking at me. “So go get him.”

  I groaned. “Why do I have to do it?

  Miss May smiled her sweetest smile. “Because I asked?”

  Ugh. I turned and trudged out of the barn. “Fetching grooms” is one aspect of this job to which I had never agreed.

  5

  Deader Than Dead

  As I made my way out of the barn, Liz — the reporter from the Gazette — pulled me into a conversation between herself and Pine Grove’s new mayor, Linda Delgado. Mayor Delgado had perfect posture, and a high, tight ponytail. On a normal day, in a normal conversation, she was unflappable. But as Liz waved me over, the mayor fidgeted and fussed with her collar.

  “Chelsea! Weigh in on this.”

  I stepped toward them. “Uh… weigh in on what?” I recalled Liz’s aspirations to bring hard-hitting journalism to the streets of Pine Grove and assumed I was now witnessing that plan in action.

  “I’m trying to understand Mayor Delgado’s streetlight initiative,” Liz said. “She wants four new lights installed, and that’s just in town.”

  Mayor Delgado shrugged. “Traffic lights are essential for modernization. It’s not that controversial.”

  “We don’t need to be modern!” Liz said. “What we need is more money for schools. Schools matter more than streetlights. Right, Chelsea?”

  I laughed. I had a bad habit of doing that when I was nervous. “Uh… I guess schools are important. Yeah.”

  “My sentiments exactly!” Liz scribbled a note in her pad. “And that begs the question, Mayor, why are you so passionate about these streetlights? Might it be because you’re servicing the needs of special interest groups who want more growth in town? Might a certain high-profile contractor be paying you to install the streetlights, so that he can sell more McMansions to new residents at obscenely high prices? Might that contractor be the groom at this very wedding!?”

  “That’s ridiculous! I would never take a bribe from a contractor or anyone else.” Mayor Delgado tried to walk away. Liz blocked her path.

  “Not even if that contractor promised to invite you to his wedding so you could meet his powerful friends, who were all equally eager to line your pockets?”

  Miss May hurried over with her hands up like she was directing traffic. “Whoa, whoa! Liz. What’s going on here?”

  “I’ll tell you what’s going on. Mayor Linda Delgado is up to something.”

  “Oh, please.” Miss May tsked. “Linda’s not up to anything. She just got elected. Leave her be.”

  “We’ll see about that.” Liz put her pad away and strode away as if she had the Mayor’s head on a stake.

  “I’m sorry,” Miss May said to Mayor Delgado. “You’re our guest, you should be relaxing. Not dealing with Woodward and/or Bernstein. Even though those streetlights are a bad idea.” Miss May turned to me. “And I think you were about to go check on something? Or did you forget?”

  “I didn’t forget.” I just didn’t want to go.

  Miss May looked at me with her hands on the hips.

  I smiled, tight. “Nice talking to you, Mrs. Mayor.”

  My bad feeling got worse w
hen I exited the barn and stumbled across someone yelling into his cell phone.

  “Hello? Are you there? Hello? Damn it!”

  I approached. “There’s no service up here. If you need to talk, you need to go back out to the road.”

  “Uch,” the guy said. “Really?” The man stepped into the light, and I recognized him as Sudeer Patel, Vinny’s business partner from the contracting company and my former classmate.

  Unlike Vinny, Sudeer had been quiet in high school. In fact, the two were total opposites. Vinny had played three sports and had also found time to shoplift and smoke in the bathroom. Sudeer had been the president of Key Club. He had taken all honors and AP classes. And I doubt he had ever touched a cigarette, let alone smoked one.

  Sudeer had six older brothers, and that stretched his family thin. He never had the money to go on school trips. He hadn’t played an instrument or any sports. And he had sometimes gotten picked on by other kids, including Vinny, for having clothes that were a few years out of date or a few sizes too big.

  I used to think Sudeer’s family was hoping he’d strike it rich and help them out a little, which is why I hadn’t been surprised when Sudeer and Vinny went into business together. Yes, they were total opposites. And Vinny had bullied Sudeer in high school. But Vinny’s family had been involved in local real estate for generations, and Sudeer had gone to architecture school at Cornell, so the partnership made sense.

  Once Sudeer and Vinny combined forces, it didn’t take long for them to become the most sought-after team in the Pine Grove real estate market. The big, ostentatious houses they built sometimes sold for up to a million dollars. And they built a lot.

  “Is everything OK?” I asked. Sudeer looked like he was about thirty seconds away from smashing his phone on a rock in a fit of rage.

  “Yeah,” he said. “I’m sorry. I’m just freaking out over a business thing. Actually, I should go take care of that.”

  I looked back in the barn. Maggie had begun to white-knuckle her glass of champagne. I gulped. “I need to go take care of something too.”

  With that, Sudeer and I parted ways. He trudged down toward the street, so he could find service, and I walked out toward the cabins, where I hoped I would find Vinny.

  ----

  My favorite path out toward the cabins traced a small brook all the way around the property. Growing up, I had called it “KP’s Walk” because it led right up to our groundskeeper KP’s little cabin along the back edge of the farm. KP’s Walk wasn’t the shortest route, but it was the prettiest, and I took it that night to try to find a moment of relaxation in what was turning out to be an otherwise stressful evening.

  Over the past few months, I had taken up walking meditation to center myself in my more anxiety-ridden moments. To be honest, it hadn’t been very helpful. Still, I turned to that practice as I headed out to the cabins to find Vinny, narrating the walk aloud to stay present and relaxed.

  “I am walking down a path.” Breathe in, breathe out. “The leaves are changing.” Breathe in, breathe out. “The trees are beautiful. The brook is babbling. There’s a man in the creek.”

  Wait, what?! I did a double-take. Sure enough, there was a man face down in the creek. I blinked. I squinted. I rubbed my eyes. Yup. There he was.

  My heart rate quickened as I pulled out my phone and turned on the flashlight. The light cut a pinhole through the pitch-black night.

  A branch snapped. I stumbled back, scared. I caught my breath and refocused the light.

  I took a step closer. And then another. Still squinting.

  My heart thumped in my temples. My jaw tightened. My eyes watered from all the squinting.

  But I kept walking toward the man.

  He was motionless. Wearing a navy suit. Hair matted in the back. Holding a flask in his right hand.

  I held my breath. Is that guy… dead?

  I didn’t want to think that could be true, so, for some reason, I tried to start a conversation.

  “Hello?”

  The body did not answer.

  “Uh. Are you OK? Can you hear me?”

  Again. No answer from the body.

  Either this guy was playing a strange and elaborate prank or something much worse was happening. I took another step closer, and I realized with a gasp…

  I had found the missing groom.

  6

  Questions and Chaos

  It was an hour after the EMT had declared Vinny dead, and I could officially say my wedding was no longer the worst in Thomas family history. I wasn’t proud to admit it, but I was a little bit relieved. Devastated, sure. But also relieved.

  The party guests waited inside the event barn to be questioned by police, and they didn't seem happy to be there.

  A random bridesmaid drank champagne straight from the bottle, in shock. Other guests sat at their tables, not talking. Maggie cried loudly, not even bothering to wipe her tears. My Aunt Dee Dee sat next to her daughter, trying to console Maggie. But it was no use. My little cousin was a wreck. And I hated seeing her so upset.

  Even though Vinny was a jerk, Maggie loved him. I remembered that they wanted to go to Turks and Caicos for their honeymoon. I’m sure they had a lot of plans for their lives together. But as they say… the best laid plans often turn up dead in the creek.

  My chest tightened, and I batted back tears. I’d always had a tendency to find other people’s emotions contagious, a condition that Miss May referred to as a “weak emotional immune system.” If anyone in my vicinity cried, usually I cried too. But I didn’t want to bawl at that moment, so I ripped my gaze from Maggie and looked around the orchard.

  Six cop cars and a fire truck had been parked outside the barn. For some reason, all the emergency vehicles in town had “Pine Grove” painted on their doors in big, goofy bubble-letters. As a kid, I’d thought the bubble letters were cute, but at that moment, in a real-life crime scene, the bubbles seemed inappropriate. Who in the world would choose a “fun font” for an emergency vehicle? That would be like using Comic Sans on a tombstone.

  * * *

  Mayor Delgado, with her impeccable posture and diplomatic demeanor, was making the rounds, talking to guests and policemen alike. And Liz stuck close behind the mayor, clearly hunting for a scoop on the whole ‘dead groom at the rehearsal’ thing. I couldn’t blame Liz for trying. What reporter wouldn’t shift into work mode with a story this dramatic?

  A few police officers handled paperwork over by their cars. Other officers searched the orchard with floodlights, looking for clues. It felt so much like a movie I had a brief impulse to shout something like, “Release the hounds!” But I kept that to myself, mostly because it seemed inappropriate, but also because there were no hounds.

  The Thomas Family Fruit & Fir Farm was a place where nothing bad was meant to happen. But at that moment, washed in all those harsh police lights, it felt almost eerie. Haunted, even. A chill shimmied down my spine and through my legs, all the way to my toes.

  I walked over to Miss May, who stood like a sentinel at the barn doors. My voice wavered as I spoke, “I feel so bad for Maggie.”

  Miss May nodded, “No way she's getting her money back for that Turks and Caicos trip.”

  Although Miss May was an expert at cracking tension like an egg, she wasn’t always the best at communicating her emotions. She liked to take action instead. Like that moment, for instance. Miss May was obviously in problem-solving mode.

  “I wonder what Vinny was doing all the way out on KP’s walk,” she said. “All by himself.”

  I shrugged. It was an odd place for Vinny to turn up. Then again, turning up dead anywhere the night before your wedding is odd.

  Miss May pressed on. “Do you think other people heard Maggie and Vinny arguing?”

  “I don’t think so,” I said.

  “Good. We don’t want these cops treating Maggie as a suspect on top of everything else.”

  I let out a big sigh. Maggie was a few years younger than me, but we
had always stuck together at family events. We were the ones who had stayed on the Slip n’ Slide when all the other kids had rushed away for hamburgers and hot dogs. Our two-person plays were famous among our aunts and uncles. And we had even invented cute nicknames for each other. My nickname for her was Magpie. Her nickname for me? I would never tell. And I’d sworn Maggie to secrecy.

  Maggie and I had grown apart as adults. But the rift in my relationship with Maggie was part of what I wanted to heal by moving back to Pine Grove, and the last thing I wanted was to see her accused of murder at her own wedding weekend.

  When I looked back over at Maggie, her mom — my Aunt Dee Dee — was smoothing Maggie’s hair like it was an ermine coat. Dee had cropped Maggie's dad out of the picture years prior, so he had not received an invitation to the wedding. But it seemed like Maggie still had plenty of support.

  Vinny’s brother, Lance, the best man, was by Maggie’s side too. Lance wrapped his arm around Maggie and squeezed her shoulders. She seemed comforted by the gesture, and that comforted me.

  Lance had dark eyes and the same slicked back hair as Vinny, but other than that, I would’ve never guessed he and Vinny were brothers. Lance was out of shape and short. He had none of the boisterous energy or bravado of his late brother, and I had the sense that Lance had spent a lot of time in Vinny’s shadow — especially where the UV rays were concerned.

  Lance had gone to high school with us too, and he had been in Maggie’s grade. Maggie and Lance had known each other for a long time, and I liked that Maggie had someone like that around at a time like this.

  “There’s no way Maggie could have hurt someone. Especially not someone she loved,” I said, turning back to Miss May. “Anyway, it could have been a legitimate accident. He died with a flask in his hand.”

  Miss May gave me a long side-eye, “You think it was an accident?”

  I shrugged. I didn’t know what to think. But I was beginning to feel like it was my duty to find out.