Engaged in Death (A Wedding Planner Mystery) Read Free Page A

envelope to the floor. “What is that?” He began to pick it up, but I beat him to it.
    “I’m not sure. There’s no return address. Probably something wedding-related.”
    Keith handed me a silver letter opener as he answered his phone again.
    “Yes, Mother. Of course I’ll help you with the arrangements. We just need a few minutes to process.”
    Just like Helene . I sniffled back more tears. She probably can’t wait to put Sylvia into the ground.
    Shaking my head, I returned to the contents of the envelope. I wasn’t sure what I was looking at. There were pictures, a whole stack of glossy five-by-sevens. The shots were grainy and dark. It appeared to be a person—no, make that two—in a car. My heart caught then accelerated. The car looked an awful lot like Keith’s navy BMW. And one of the people looked an awful lot like Keith. I shuffled through the pictures, and the quality improved, as if the photographer had zoomed in and sharpened the focus. A blond, shining curtain of hair hid the woman’s face. Her dark roots stood out in a severe line against her luminous hair. My throat started to constrict, and I flipped faster through the pile of photos.
    “Babe, what’s wrong?” Keith abandoned his phone and made his way across the room in slow motion.
    The last photo was crystal clear. It showed Keith in the waning winter sunlight, the hood of his car encrusted in snow. In flagrante, with his mentee Becca Cunningham.

Chapter Two
    Two days later, I still felt as if I were breathing under water. I was devastated by Keith’s betrayal, but after sleeping for twelve hours, I slogged through the necessary tasks, starting with calling my mother, Carole, to tell her my engagement was over.
    “But you’ll end up a spinster.” Her annoyance overrode concern. “You’ll have no one left but divorced men.”
    I took in a sharp breath.
    “And you’ll run out of time to make me a grandma!” I pictured her leaping out of her chair in her cheery apple-green kitchen in Florida, wringing her dish towels and pacing a well-worn track in the linoleum. I put down the phone, hit my fist into my pillow, and then gingerly placed the phone back next to my ear. She was still going on, gathering steam.
    “Just so you know,” I interrupted, “I’m fine.” This silenced her.
    “Well, yes. How are you taking this, dear?” Her concern for me, once prompted, almost made me crack a smile.
    “About time you asked her how she’s coping,” my stepfather said in the background. “Cut her some slack, Carole.”
    Thank you, Doug.
    I enlisted my mom and my best friend, Olivia, to call all three hundred guests and tell them the wedding was off. Imagine my surprise when the Port Quincy Country Club informed me otherwise.
    “Mrs. Helene Pierce said the reception is still booked,” the manager said in a timid voice.
    “Fat chance. You’ll need the bride, and she won’t be there.”
    I shut my cell phone off after the tenth call from Keith, the twentieth from Helene and the fifth from a man claiming to be Sylvia’s lawyer. I refused to talk to any of them. No matter, since my mom and Olivia had the number at the grubby motel I was now hiding in. I’d told my secretary and the three partners I worked for I had a highly contagious disease and couldn’t come to work. They were polite, but I could tell they’d already heard I’d cancelled the wedding. After those humiliating conversations, I sunk into a catatonic state, unable to get out of bed. I hadn’t showered since I’d run off, and I’d been eating from the vending machine at the end of the hallway, watching reruns of Married With Children on TBS in the dark.
    But today was Sylvia’s funeral, according to the obituary in the Port Quincy Eagle Herald . If I could muster up the courage to get out of bed, I should show up and pay my final respects. Even if it meant facing Keith.
    I thought back to the moment two days ago when I had realized what the photographs in my hand