CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Zoey had no father to dance with. I knew for certain that Gus, Captain George, and Jamie's dad had offered, but she had turned them down. Had she been hoping against hope that her father would come? No, that was ridiculous. Those offers had been made weeks before the wedding, before Kendall Clarkson had arrived in town. No one had walked her down the aisle; no one had given her away. "This is me," Zoey was saying. "Take me as I am." Jamie had done just that, and so had his family, whose happy faces and smiling chatter lifted the already buoyant mood.

Immediately after the first dance, Jamie danced with his mom. She had tears in her eyes as he led her around the dance floor. She knew how much he had wanted this. I was certain she'd wondered whether she would ever get this special moment with her youngest son.

The pocket doors from the foyer to the dining room had been opened to create more room for dancing. The DJ was set up in there, and in the corner was the wedding cake. It was white, and traditional, just as Zoey had dreamed. Live flowers spilled from the top and spiraled around the five tiers to the bottom. It sat on a round table on wheels. The plan was that the cake would be wheeled into the foyer to be cut during a break in the dancing.

Were on-duty police detectives allowed to dance? My question was answered when Tom came up behind me, took my hand, and whirled me onto the dance floor as the other guests came pouring on after Jamie's dance. Jamie went straight to Zoey, took her in his arms, and danced away with her. They were both beaming. Tension I hadn't known was there drained from my shoulders so markedly that Tom felt it and smiled at me. His own tension wouldn't end until the killer was caught.

The dance floor filled. Livvie danced with Jack, who lacked in technique, but whose enthusiasm couldn't be questioned. Sonny danced with Page. She looked so grown-up in her purple cocktail dress and high heels, her long, bright red hair pinned up. Sonny beamed, the picture of the proud papa. Tears came to my eyes when I saw them together.

Gus was nowhere in sight. I couldn't imagine the old curmudgeon dancing. Instead, Mrs. Gus, Fee, and Vee formed a merry threesome cutting a rug in a series of imaginative moves.

Mom danced with Captain George, who was surprisingly light-footed for such a big man. George rested an easy hand on her back. I hadn't ever thought they might become engaged and now that it had happened, I was still digesting it. Mom and my dad had been each other's first loves, an improbable romance between a summer girl who lived on a private island and the boy who delivered groceries in his skiff. They were so complementary to each other, so tightly bonded that even after Dad died, it was hard to think of one without the other. Dad had been my mother's best friend. When she'd had him, she needed no other. She'd mourned hard for a long time. But then she'd come back to us, back to her job at the Clambake, and her winter job at Linens and Pantries. Back to the family. Back to her small but treasured circle of friends.

Her relationship with George was different than the one she'd had with my dad. She stood on her own inside it, and so did he. But there was no mistaking that they loved and treasured each other.

George's motivation to marry was even harder to fathom. He'd never been married before, and it seemed late in life to be making that kind of commitment for the first time. Livvie, Page, and I had discussed this ad nauseam. Livvie's theory was that George had been in love with my mother right along, all through the years my parents had run the Clambake and George had piloted the tour boat. George had mourned my father, too, but then time had marched on, and so had he. I absolutely believed, without the slightest bit of evidence, that this was the true story.

George had become a grandfather to Jack, who had never met my dad. George taught Jack how to whistle, skip a stone, and clean a fish. "What do you mean you don't have a captain?" Jack had demanded of a first-grade pal. Until his parents set him straight, he'd believed every kid had one.

"You can declare this wedding a success," Tom said as he danced me to the side of the foyer. "Do you want a drink? I'll get it from the bar."

I wasn't drinking, except for a sip during the champagne toast, but I'd been belting down seltzer waters with lime all evening. Maybe it was time for a real drink. "A rum and tonic, please. While you get it, I'm going to the ladies' room."

* * *

I would have preferred to return to my apartment to freshen up, but I was nervous about being off the floor for the time it would take. Instead, I hurried into the public restroom. I walked with my head down, fast, and determined not to be stopped by a request from the staff or a friendly conversation. Without waiting a beat, I pushed open the door of the first stall.

"Excuse me!"

"I'm so sorry."

I had burst in on Constance Marshall, standing in the stall, in the process of giving herself an injection in her belly.

Mortified, I backed up into the sink counter, apologizing the whole way.

Less than a minute later, Constance emerged from the stall. "It's all right, Julia. I should have checked the latch."

"Are you okay?"

She looked back over her shoulder toward the stall. "Oh, that? Yes, fine. I'm used to it. Been doing it for years. I have to be careful when I travel, different time zone, different food, routine all topsy-turvy. But I assure you, I'm fine, just diabetic."

The injection pen had disappeared. Perhaps it was in a case in her slim clutch.

I was glad to escape into the stall as my mind spiraled. We had all assumed the murder was planned because the killer would have had to bring the poison and the means to deliver it to the island. But what if the killing was spontaneous and the murderer had the weapon at hand? Like a syringe and insulin. How much would it take to kill a man? How long would it take to act?

Kendall Clarkson—or Kenneth Clark, as he had called himself then—had hurt Constance deeply and altered the course of her life, in her own telling. Seeing him for the first time in forty years must have been a terrible shock. Her life had recently changed radically with her retirement. Would that destabilize her enough to commit murder? Was I trapped in the bathroom with a killer?

She was still there when I came out of the stall, smiling pleasantly, which comforted me somewhat. "What was going on with Derek at your table?" I asked, making what I hoped was benign conversation. I washed my hands, keeping well back from the sink, careful of my dress and well away from Constance.

"Nothing important," she said. "You don't want to know."

She was right. I didn't. Since I'd put on the light blue gown, the afternoon had enveloped me in a warm cocoon of wedding bliss. I didn't want to deal with the likes of Derek.

"I'm glad to hear—"

That was as far as I got because there was a tremendous crash out on the dance floor, followed by raised voices and another crash.

Constance and I ran out of the room and into the foyer.

* * *

Bill Lascelle was on the dance floor, sitting on Derek Quinn, pummeling him mercilessly. Tom attempted to pull Bill off. Jamie knelt beside Derek, shielding the man's body from Bill's blows and taking some of them himself.

Everyone had cleared the dance floor and stood around open-mouthed. Constance was still next to me. "You said this was nothing to worry about," I hissed.

"I didn't think it was. I thought we had it under control."

Zoey found her way to my other side and was making squeaking noises every time Jamie took a punch. I reached for her hand and held on tight. Amelia turned up next to Constance. I thought, over the yelling and the grunting, I heard her making a sound like a growl. I couldn't tell whose side she was on.

Dan Dawes ran across the dance floor. Like many of the men, he'd removed his jacket for the dancing, and he looked like a streak of white as he leapt on the pile. I assumed he had gone to defend his Uncle Jamie, but instead, Dan began drumming Bill with his fists. What on earth did Dan have against Bill Lascelle?

People screamed at the combatants to stop. Women cried. Sonny hoisted a way-too-fascinated Jack on his shoulder firefighter-style and whisked him out the front door. Dan's impact had knocked the pile of thrashing bodies through the archway into the dining room. The DJ reacted by throwing himself over his expensive equipment. Then he took a second look as the fight edged ever closer and ran out of the room.

Several police officers joined in, including the wedding-dressed detectives and Busman's Harbor police who were guests. Uniformed troopers rushed in from outdoors. They grabbed at shirts and limbs, trying to pull people off the pile, but the fight went on.

Zoey's nails dug into my hand so hard it hurt.

They rolled on the floor, punching and grunting. There were so many people involved by that point that I couldn't really see what was happening, but I could see that the ball of human limbs and waving fists was edging ever closer to the table holding the magnificent cake.

Zoey saw it, too. Everyone who wasn't in the fight saw it. There was collective intake of breath.

"Don't!" I shouted along with several others.

The people in the fight didn't hear us and likely couldn't have stopped their momentum anyway. Someone hit the round, wheeled table with a bang.

The cake swayed like a skyscraper in a hurricane, back and forth, and back and forth. The crowd oohed like they were watching a circus trapeze act. The fight stopped. Layers of people jumped off and backed up until only Derek and Bill were left on the floor, looking up, startled. They were on their backs, mouths open, each one with a fistful of the other's shirt.

Jamie and Tom grabbed for the wheeled table, attempting to stabilize it. The cake briefly righted itself. Then, just as the crowd let out its collective breath, the table rumbled and wobbled. The beautiful cake fell in a perfect arc, tier by tier, the top layers swishing across the dance floor until finally breaking up near the front door. The two big bottom layers fell directly on Derek and Bill, coating them in icing and white cake.

The hall went deathly silent. Carol Trevett ran out of the kitchen, looked at the remains of the beautiful cake, put her hands to her cheeks, and screamed.