Weddings are Murder (Bee's Bakehouse Mysteries Book 7) Page 2

  Jessie shook her head. When Bee had started planning this wedding, her attitude had been far more relaxed. She said she didn’t care about the details, she just wanted to marry the chief in front of friends and family who loved them dearly. Gradually she had become more and more obsessed with the day, scouring bridal magazines and clipping pictures that she found inspiring. It was all she’d talked about for months.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Jessie said gently. “All that really matters is that you both have a great day.”

  Aunt Bee threw her head back and groaned. “The chairs! Why couldn’t I just go with the ones in Lindemann’s? I should have left well enough alone. Now we’ll have to get in there and move all the chairs out before we can even get ours in. And what about the food? If there’s a delay, our food might not even be ready in time! It’s a disaster!”

  This time, Jessie couldn’t help but laugh at the absurdity of her efficient, organized aunt turning into a stressed-out mess. “Your wedding day is going to be the best, Aunt Bee. Stop worrying.”

  “Thank you, Jessie,” Bee whispered, exhausted. “Thank you. And I’m sorry for being a bridezilla.”

  “Who said that?” Jessie said, feigning shock.

  Bee smiled and shook her head. “Melanie’s been calling me that behind my back for weeks.”

  5

  Freddie Lindemann shook his head. “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s ten thirty,” Jessie whispered, struggling not to lose her temper. “You told me we could go in at nine to start preparing. Why are they still here? I’ve got a bunch of people waiting to help out.”

  Freddie scowled. “I can’t answer for them.”

  “Don’t you know how important this event is to my aunt? You’re going to ruin it.”

  “I’m not ruining it.”

  “I’ve never seen Aunt Bee so stressed. I promised her I’d get the room ready tonight. How much longer will they be in there?” She glanced back toward the parking lot. Mike was in his truck speaking to somebody at city hall. The hire company’s truck sat idling nearby. They were paying the driver by the hour and five college students were due to arrive at any moment to help.

  “It won’t be long now, Jessie. We’ll reimburse you for any additional expense, I promise you. And I’ll get my staff to help. The restaurant is closed for the night so they should be finished up soon. It’s going to be okay.”

  “How long? Half an hour? An hour? Two?”

  “It shouldn’t be long. Look, the conservatory is all set up for the ceremony. All we need to do is get the function room ready for the meal and dancing.”

  Jessie nodded. “There’s a lot to do. We’ve got to get as much done tonight as possible. You know this, Freddie: you guys host a lot of weddings.”

  He turned away and Jessie’s stomach flipped. She had never seen him this cagy. What’s going on?

  Just as she was about to ask him that, the door to the restaurant opened and Eric, one of the wait staff, marched out behind a shorter, mean-looking man. Freddie became even more agitated when he saw them.

  “Oh for goodness sake, what are you doing here? You know my thoughts about your business.”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Lindemann,” Eric said. “I caught him sneaking around the back where guests aren’t allowed.”

  “It’s not your fault Eric,” Freddie said, shaking his head. “I know exactly what he’s like. Get out of here, Joe.”

  “I don’t get it, Lindemann,” the man snarled. “I made you an offer you couldn’t refuse.”

  “Don’t insult me.”

  “It wasn’t an insult. If anything, I thought it was a lifeline.”

  Freddie flushed. “Then you must be more deluded than I thought.”

  Instead of taking offense at this, the man smirked. “I know things about you. Things I don’t think you’d like the public to know.”

  At this, Freddie hurtled forward, going straight for the man. It was only Eric’s quick intervention that prevented him from assaulting the man. Jessie stood rooted to the spot, wondering what could have provoked such a reaction in her friend. She had never known him to raise his voice.

  “It’s alright,” the man said. “I’m going. But I have a feeling you’ll reconsider my offer.”

  “The exit’s that way,” Freddie called as the man started to walk back in the direction of the restaurant.

  “Yeah, well. I’m parked back here. I’ll talk to you soon, Freddie. I have a feeling you’ll be getting in touch.”

  The color drained from Freddie’s face, but he said nothing. He watched in silence as the man walked around the building and disappeared from view.

  “Not if I can help it, Joe,” he muttered at last when the man was long out of sight. “Not if I can help it.”

  “Who was that?” Jessie asked.

  Freddie looked surprised for a moment before he rearranged his features. “Nobody.”

  “It sounded like you know him pretty well.”

  Freddie shook his head.

  Jessie’s phone buzzed and she pulled it out of her pocket. She shot a meaningful look at Freddie when she saw who was calling.

  “Hi, Aunt Bee.” She glanced at Freddie again before turning away. “Yes, yes, we’re making great progress. You just relax and watch a movie. Let Mel fix your nails how you wanted. Yes, it’s beautiful. Okay, see you soon.”

  She ended the call and turned back to Freddie with a sigh.

  “She’s getting anxious?”

  Jessie nodded. “You could say that.”

  “It’s often the case with brides. I must say, I was surprised to see her so stressed. I’ve known your aunt for many years and this was the first time she’s ever lost her temper in front of me.”

  Jessie frowned. “Wait a minute. When did you see her lose her temper?” Sure, sometimes Bee ranted and raved at Jessie and Mel, but that was different. They were family.

  Freddie shrugged. “Let’s just say she wasn’t happy when I told her I had a booking for tonight.”

  “Can you blame her? You shouldn’t have told her she could have the room tonight if you didn’t intend to follow through on that.”

  Freddie hung his head. “I truly am sorry.”

  Jessie bristled. She’d caught a glimpse of the time on her phone. It was now past ten thirty and the music was still blaring. “You said they’d be done by nine.”

  He nodded.

  “Okay, this is ridiculous. I’m going to speak to them and see what’s causing the delay.”

  Freddie’s face fell. “You can’t. No.”

  “I shouldn’t, but this is unreasonable. I’m sure they’ll understand. I’m surprised you haven’t spoken to them already.”

  “No, Jessie, don’t!”

  She paused, confused by the urgency of his tone. Anyone would have thought he was stopping her from throwing herself off a cliff the way he was talking. She swung around and stared at him.

  “Freddie, I appreciate that you want these guests to have a good experience, but enough is enough. Don’t you want Bee to have a good time too? They’re not going to blame you if you tell them to leave. They’ve overstayed their booking. If that was me, I’d be…”

  He looked haunted. “You can’t go in there.”

  Jessie might have laughed if it wasn’t for the look on his face. But she couldn’t just sit back and wait. At this rate, they’d have to work all night to get the room ready.

  “I’m sorry, Freddie,” she said, turning to leave. “I’ve got to. This is crazy.” She stopped and sniffed. Something wasn’t right. “Hey, do you smell that?”

  “Smell what?”

  “That. Can’t you smell it? There’s a strong smell of burning.”

  He shrugged. “I can’t smell anything. It’s probably just the guys in the kitchen. It doesn’t matter how often I tell them: some of my kitchen hands always take the easy route and burn fat off the hot plates instead of scrubbing them down.”

  Jessie sniffed the air again. She had encountered h
er fair share of flaming fat as she tried to get to grips with running the café. “Freddie, I know what burning fat smells like. That’s not it. This is more like—”

  Jessie never got to finish her sentence. There was a strange popping sound and then flames were shooting out of the roof of the older section of the building.

  The part where her aunt was due to get married in less than twenty-four hours.

  “Freddie,” she hissed. She turned and looked at him, expecting him to jump into action. Instead, he was staring at the fire as if it was the most fascinating sight in the world.

  Jessie’s stomach lurched as she realized he was in shock. She reached into her purse and pulled out her cell phone, tapping 9-1-1 as quickly as her trembling hands would allow.

  “This is an emergency,” she screamed before the operator was able to utter a second syllable. “Lindemann’s in Springdale. There’s a fire. A—”

  Jessie gasped in horror. The operator’s voice turned into a whisper, as if Jessie was rushing away down a tunnel.

  It was completely silent now except for the crackle of the flames. Jessie realized with a lurching horror that the music system must have been destroyed. Flames were shooting from the roof.

  The other guests.

  “Hurry,” Jessie hissed. “Please come quickly. There are people inside.”

  Freddie was standing beside her, still just staring at the building. Jessie hurried toward the nearest entrance to help. She never made it. Everything around her turned black, even though the smoke was rising into the air away from them.

  6

  The rhythmic beeping sound was so persistent that it forced Jessie awake. After a few seconds of staring at the ceiling, she became aware of the date. She sat forward with an almighty gasp.

  “The wedding, oh my goodness! Oh, no! The fire!”

  Without even taking the time to look around, she was scrambling forward and tearing the covers away from her, scanning the ground for her shoes as she did so. It was only when her bare feet made contact with cool linoleum that she cared to look around and really take in her surroundings.

  “Jessie, wait! Stop!”

  Someone cleared their throat behind her. She didn’t have to look around to know it was Mike.

  “I’m glad you finally took a moment. I thought I was going to have to tackle you to the ground to keep you here.”

  Jessie spun around and immediately regretted it. She winced and her hand flew to her forehead, which throbbed painfully. Her arm hurt where she’d pulled on the catheter, which she hadn’t even noticed when she made her mad dash from the bed.

  “I don’t understand, Mike. I was hurrying to help and then everything went fuzzy. What am I doing here? And why is this thing in my arm?”

  He was on his feet in moments. He came around the side of the hospital bed and gently pulled her into his arms.

  “It’s okay, Jessie. Please sit down. Doctor’s orders. Do you remember anything? I was sitting in the truck and next thing I knew the building was in flames. I jumped out and ran to you, but you’d already fainted by the time I reached you. It’s lucky you fell on the grass, otherwise you might have been seriously injured.”

  “All those people,” Jessie whispered. “And I fainted before I could reach them.”

  Mike frowned. “You did the best thing you could do: you called emergency services right away. Also, there was one fatality. It’s unlikely that you could have done anything for him because he was found in a store room you might not have even thought of looking in.”

  “But what about the others?”

  “There are no others. Just you and some of the staff members. None of them were injured, at least not seriously.”

  “Are you sure? Are you sure all those people got out? Oh, we’ve got to send somebody back there.”

  Mike smiled tenderly. “The fire crew got the blaze under control several hours ago, honey. They’ve been through that building and done a preliminary examination. There was one fatality. There was nobody else at the scene besides you and the staff. They must have gone before the fire started.”

  “I don’t understand,” she muttered, shaking her head. Her brain still felt fuzzy and slow, as if she was submerged in water. Everything was muffled and strange.

  “Hey, now. You’ve got to rest.”

  “I just fainted.”

  He looked at her sternly. “You’re probably in shock. The docs hooked you up on an IV because you were dehydrated when you were admitted. You’ve got to calm down.”

  “Who was the victim?” Her heart clenched. She prayed it wasn’t Freddie or one of the staff members she was friendly with.

  Mike shook his head. “We don’t know yet. But Freddie and his staff are all accounted for.”

  Jessie winced as she remembered Freddie’s altercation with the strange man just minutes before the blast. “There was a guy hanging around there. Freddie was very cold to him; told him to leave. I bet it’s him. He went around the back to get his car but we never saw him leave.”

  “That could be it. They found a dark van beside the entrance to the function room. It must have been his. Who was he?”

  Jessie shivered as she remembered the icy tone of Freddie’s voice and the man’s menacing aura. “I don’t know but it sounded like he was threatening Freddie. One of the wait staff found him wandering around inside and dragged him out. He seemed to think Freddie would change his mind about something.”

  “What?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. I tried to ask Freddie who he was but he didn’t say much. Then the fire happened and…” Jessie gulped and Mike pulled her to him, holding her tight.

  “Mike. Oh my gosh. If it hadn’t been for Freddie thinking that that other group was inside, we might have…”

  She shook her head. It was too much to contemplate. She stared at Mike, who had turned a greenish shade of pale.

  “You can’t think like that.”

  “But Mike,” she hissed, clinging on to him. “It’s true. Think about it. That’s the only reason we weren’t in there.” She remembered something from right before she blacked out, but she shook her head as if to dismiss it. It was too crazy; too wild a conspiracy theory to even entertain it. It was probably an accident, she told herself. There’s no sense in coming up with mad plots when the answer is simple.

  “Are you okay? You’ve gone quiet. That’s usually a bad sign.”

  Jessie shook her head. It took all the willpower she had to force her mind away from the fire. After all, they had other things to worry about.

  “The wedding. What’s going on with the wedding?”

  Mike sighed and turned away. She could tell from the slump of his shoulders how this was affecting him. “There’s not going to be a wedding. They were able to get the fire under control before it spread to the restaurant and kitchen areas. Freddie is extremely lucky he opted for a stone passageway and not wood. Even so, I don’t think we can call him lucky. The entire function area has been destroyed. All the windows were blown out of the conservatory. But still, if it wasn’t for that stone link between the two sides… Most of the workers were in the kitchens at the time and they were so lucky to escape unscathed. Lucky too that they’d closed up for the night. If it had been earlier in the day…”

  Jessie swallowed back the panic that rose inside her as she realized what would have happened if there hadn’t been a delay. She didn’t say anything, but Mike must have sensed what she was thinking because he hugged her even tighter.

  “I know, darling. I know. But you’re safe and so am I.”

  He held her for a long time as she sat on that hospital bed and thanked her lucky stars for last minute delays and Freddie’s insistence that she not enter the building.

  Jessie was allowed to leave when the doctor came around later that morning. She had escaped with only a few scrapes. She was glad to learn that Freddie and his staff members had managed to escape unscathed. They had all left the hospital. Well, all except for the man
who was killed.

  “Who was he?” Jessie asked the doctor as he was about to leave her bedside.

  He shook his head briskly. “I don’t know. That’s the coroner’s department, not mine.”

  “I guess it’s that guy who was hanging around before the blast. There were no other survivors aside from the staff and Freddie, right?”

  “That’s what I was advised.”

  She swallowed. She knew she was delaying him from his rounds, but she had one last question; one last thing that had been nagging her ever since she came to. “And there was only one person found inside the building, right? There wasn’t a bunch of people brought in with critical injuries.”

  He jerked his head from side to side. “No. You and some others were brought in and treated for shock. There were some sprains from trips as the staff rushed to exit the other part of the building. But nothing more serious. You were all very lucky.”

  Jessie shivered.

  “What caused it?” she whispered, still struggling to take it all in.

  “Not my area of expertise. You’ll have to ask the cops.”

  Jessie was gripped by a fresh rush of fear. “Chief Daly! Where was he, Mike? I haven’t seen him since before all this happened.”

  He rested a reassuring hand on her shoulder. “It’s okay. He was nowhere near Lindemann’s. I spoke to him before I came to pick you up. He was a little nervous so I sent him off to Chevy’s with Benny Sweet for a couple of calming whiskeys.”

  “You did what? Aunt Bee will…” she stopped and shook her head. “I suppose it doesn’t matter now. The wedding’s off.” She sighed. “I bet this isn’t how Chief Daly expected to spend his wedding day.”

  “You can say that again.”

  “Come on, let’s go. I should go see how Aunt Bee’s doing.”

  7

  Jessie filled with dread as she waited for her aunt to come to the door. She was relieved when her cousin Melanie opened the door.