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Wedding Bell Blues
Charlotte Douglas
MAGGIE SKERRITT CAN'T GET AWAY FROM WEDDINGS…The fortysomething cop-turned-P.I. has enough on her hands, dodging her mother's plans to turn Maggie's upcoming wedding to partner Bill Malcolm into an 800-guest circus. Then a friend asks them to provide security at the wedding uniting Florida's answer to the Hatfields and McCoys. And to top the week off nicely, they're hired to find a runaway bride–Maggie can empathize!–whose path intersects with a very dead, very murdered body.Murder always gives Maggie hives. Add that to her own prewedding jitters and a sudden crisis of confidence about her new profession…. Well, suddenly she's thinking that staying single–and becoming a bartender–might be better choices after all….
I’d been avoiding Mother’s calls for days.
She was anxious to finalize her plans for my elaborate wedding, and I’d hoped by putting her off that she would finally cease and desist.
Guilt prompted me to pick up the phone and face the consequences.
“Good morning, Mother. How are you?”
“I’m perfectly fine, but I was beginning to worry that you’d fallen off the face of the earth, Margaret. It’s a relief to know you’re alive and well.” Mother cloaked her sarcasm in such a soft, sweet tone it took a few seconds to realize I’d been zinged.
“Business is booming.”
“Not too booming for you to have lunch with your mother today, I hope?”
When she referred to herself in the third person, I knew I was in trouble, so I bit the bullet. “Of course not. Just the two of us?”
“There’s someone at the door,” Mother replied without responding to my question. “I’ll see you at noon.”
With a feeling of foreboding, I hung up the phone. I feared the wedding-planning trap had been sprung.
Charlotte Douglas
USA TODAY bestselling author Charlotte Douglas, a versatile writer who has produced over twenty-five books, including romance, suspense, Gothic, and even a Star Trek novel, has now created a mystery series featuring Maggie Skerritt, a witty and irreverent homicide detective in a small fictional town on Florida’s central west coast.
Douglas’s life has been as varied as her writings. Born in North Carolina and raised in Florida, she earned her degree in English from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and attended graduate school at the University of South Florida in Tampa. She has worked as an actor, a journalist and a church musician and taught English and speech at the secondary and college level for almost two decades. For several summers while newly married and still in college, she even manned a U.S. Forest Service lookout in northwest Montana with her husband.
Married to her high school sweetheart for over four decades, Douglas now writes full-time. With her husband and their two cairn terriers, she divides her year between their home on Florida’s central west coast—a place not unlike Pelican Bay—and their mountaintop retreat in the Great Smokies of North Carolina.
She enjoys hearing from readers, who can contact her at charlottedouglas1@juno.com.
Wedding Bell Blues
Charlotte Douglas
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
From the Author
Dear Reader,
Welcome back to Pelican Bay! This month Maggie is inundated by all things bridal.
She and Bill Malcolm are hired to find a runaway bride and to provide security for a wedding reception. At the same time, Maggie struggles to convince her mother and sister that she doesn’t want them to plan for her “the biggest wedding Pelican Bay has ever seen.” But all is not beribboned bouquets and white lace as Maggie and Bill’s search for the missing bride-to-be turns into a full-blown murder investigation.
My mail has been filled with requests for Maggie and Bill to tie the knot. Will their marriage finally happen in Wedding Bell Blues? Or will commitment-shy Maggie balk again? Relax, smell the orange blossoms and enjoy Maggie’s latest adventure.
Happy reading!
CONTENTS
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
EPILOGUE
CHAPTER 1
“Good morning, Maggie—if you like this hot, sticky weather.” Darcy Wilkins, my secretary-receptionist and jill-of-all-trades, dropped the mail on my desk.
“Like it or not,” I said, “it’ll be this way for the next six months. Thank God for air-conditioning.”
Darcy handed me a jumbo French-vanilla latte from the bookstore coffee shop downstairs and settled on the sofa in my office. Cupping a mug of green tea in her capable dark hands, she propped her feet on the coffee table and waited for further instructions.
In the far corner of the sofa, Roger, the pug I’d inherited from a former client, slept undisturbed, his legs straight in the air in the dying cockroach position, head hanging backward over the cushion’s edge. His snuffling snore mixed with the rumble of traffic on Main Street one storey below where the morning rush could be heard, even through closed windows and above the hum of central cooling.
I sorted through the stack of envelopes and set aside the utility bills for Darcy to handle. My morning started going downhill at the sight of an oversize white linen envelope addressed to Miss Margaret Skerritt, Pelican Bay Investigations, Pelican Bay, Florida. In the same elegant script, the return address indicated the plump package was from Mrs. Philip Skerritt, my mother.
Knowing what I’d find, I slit the envelope and dumped its contents on my desktop with a sigh.
“June is busting out all over,” I said to Darcy, “and I’m running out of places to hide.”
She arched an eyebrow in question. Roger snored louder.
“Hide?” Darcy said with a hint of disbelief. “I wouldn’t think you, a tough ex-cop and Pelican Bay’s finest female private eye, would hide from anything.”
“I’m the city’s only woman P.I.,” I said, “and if you had my mother, you’d be looking for a bolt hole, too.”
I indicated the pile of brochures and magazine and newspaper clippings heaped on my desk. “Everywhere I look are articles on planning weddings and ads for brides’ dresses, florists, caterers, and honeymoon travel packages. The newspapers are filled with wedding announcements. And, to make certain that I don’t miss something, Mother gathers them all up and sends them to me.”
“But you’re not getting married until Valentine’s Day. That’s more than eight months away.”
“Right.”
“And I thought you and Bill had agreed on a small wedding?”
“We have.”
She pointed to the small mountain of materials on my desktop. “Then why the bridal blitz?”
Why, indeed? “Mother dear, who has ignored me my entire life, had a change of heart in April after she suffered what might have been a fatal stroke. Now she’s determined to compensate for her former neglect by throwing me the biggest wedding Pelican Bay has ever seen.” I shuddered. “And when she and Caroline put their heads together, you can bet they’re planning an extravaganza to rival the distant nuptials of Charles and Diana. The only thing missing will be global television coverage.”
Darcy shrugged. “Can’t you just say no?”
“Mother’s selectively deaf when she doesn’t want to hear something.”
“And your sister?”
“Caroline thinks I’m being coy. My sister can’t believe there’s a woman on earth who doesn’t want a huge, elaborate wedding. It involves shopping, after all, Caroline’s raison d’être.”
“And what does Bill say?”
I shook my head. “He’s no help. He says he’ll go along with whatever I decide.”
“And you’ve decided?”
I nodded. “No big wedding.”
“Then there’s no problem.”
“Except breaking that news to my mother and sister, who refuse to accept the fact. They’re pushing me now to sign up for bridal registries.”
“That’s not a bad idea.”
“But we don’t need anything. I have my furnished condo, and Bill’s family home in Plant City is full of his parents’ antique furniture and his mother’s china, silver, and crystal.”
“There must be something you want.”
I thought for a second. “I could use a new sidearm.”
“There you go,” she said with a grin that exposed perfect white teeth. “Register at Cole’s Gun Shop.”
“And give my mother another stroke? I don’t think so. I couldn’t live with the guilt.”
“Where’s your groom-to-be today?”
“Helping the Pelican Bay Historical Society by running free background checks on their volunteers.”
Darcy looked surprised. “They research their volunteers? Aren’t most of them little old ladies?”
“The museum docents present several programs a year for children. The director figures he can’t be too careful.”
Darcy nodded, her expression solemn, and I guessed she was thinking what I was. Our last major case had involved a pedophile who had murdered three young girls in Tampa. Checking out anyone who worked with kids was no longer optional. It was a necessity.
Darcy drained the last of her tea and pushed to her feet. I handed her the bills to pay, and she went into the reception area and closed the door behind her.
I picked up the wastebasket and swept my arm across the top of my desk to file Mother’s latest correspondence. I wished I could dispose of my reservations about my rapidly approaching marriage as easily.
Bill Malcolm, my fiancé and co-owner of Pelican Bay Investigations, had been my first partner when I’d joined the Tampa Police Department twenty-three years ago. He’d also been my best friend almost that long, even when I transferred to the Pelican Bay Department after seven years with Tampa. Last Christmas, he’d proposed. I loved him, without doubt, but whether I was marriage material remained to be seen. I’d led a schizophrenic life. Raised in privilege and wealth, I’d changed course at twenty-six to become a police officer when the love of my youth, an ER doctor, had been murdered by a crack addict. I’d dived headfirst from the height of society into the underworld of crime.
Earlier this year, after more than two decades as a police officer, I’d retired from the force. But as a private investigator, I still straddled both worlds, belonging in neither. Police work had been all-consuming, and I’d had no time for diversions, no hobbies and very few friendships, besides Bill. I’d grown solitary, withdrawn, and set in my ways. Somewhere along the way, I’d forgotten how to enjoy living. My first career had been as a librarian, yet over the years, I’d rarely taken the opportunity to read, which at one time had been one of my greatest pleasures.
Although I’d committed to marry Bill—we’d even closed last month on a house we had bought together—I feared I didn’t have what it took to live the rest of my life with another human being, even one as wonderful as Bill.
Especially one as wonderful as Bill.
My biggest concern was that I would either drive him nuts or out of my life entirely.
I looked at Roger, still sleeping peacefully, if not quietly. I had committed to owning a dog and surprised myself by enjoying it. Maybe there was hope for me yet.
A knock sounded, and Darcy slipped into my office and closed the door behind her.
“You’ve got visitors.”
“Clients?”
