A Rip Roaring Good Time (25 page)

I continued to search the crowd for Alice Runcan but couldn't locate her. As the owner of Zen's Diner, I considered the fact she may not have been able to leave the busy restaurant during the lunch hour on a Saturday.

At the conclusion of the ceremony, the groom gave his new bride a brief, dispassionate peck on the lips. It was the kind of kiss he'd have been apt to bestow on his grandmother when he ran into her at his high school football game. I often gave Rip a more amorous kiss just for carrying the trash out for me. Clearly, an over-abundance of PDAs would not be an issue for this newly-married couple.

We melded into the throng of people exiting the sanctuary to gravitate down the staircase into the basement where the reception was to be held. While the invited guests mingled and greeted friends and relatives with hugs and handshakes, Rip and I meandered around the buffet line. It crossed my mind briefly that the newlyweds might be wondering about the old couple lingering around the food table. Like the elderly lady at our own wedding nearly a half-century ago, we probably appeared to be waiting for an opportunity to make off with the champagne bottles situated next to a number of crystal glass goblets. I knew Dom Perignon was not an inexpensive brand of the high-alcohol-content libation.

At one point, Joy White caught me staring at her when I'd spotted her across the room. Looking none the worse for wear from her several days of broken-hearted grieving, she nodded and I nodded back. Joy looked surprised to see me but made no effort to walk over and greet me. I hoped I'd get an opportunity to speak with her before the reception concluded.

Rip and I were standing together at the rear of the room when I felt a tap on my shoulder. I turned around and found myself staring right into the eyes of the recently declared Mrs. Candy Crushnut. She gave me a polite hug and said, "I wanted to thank you for coming to our wedding. It's such a pleasure to meet some of Bobby's relatives for the first time."

"And it's a real pleasure for us to meet his new beautiful bride as well. I'm Rapella and this is my husband, Clyde. Rip, as everyone calls him, is Bobby's father's uncle's third cousin twice removed. Although we seldom see this side of his family, we were going to be in town anyway, so we decided to take the opportunity to attend your beautiful wedding." I spoke in a casual but friendly manner.

"Thank you. Where are you folks from?" Candy asked.

"Pasadena," I replied. There was no need to lie but it was the first place that came to mind, even before Rockport, Texas, our actual hometown.

"Cool," she replied. "I'm so glad you could make it, and I know Bobby will be delighted too."

The tone of her voice made it apparent she was getting ready to move on to greet other guests so I quickly changed the subject. "We were surprised to see Rayleen Waters here. Her late great-aunt and my mother have been friends forever. Coincidentally, we just saw Rayleen a few days ago at a surprise party for a mutual friend of ours. Tragically, one of the guests was killed before the party could even get started."

I glanced at Rip just long enough to see him roll his eyes. I was relieved when Candy took the bait and ran with it.

"Yes, it's been all over the news. That's just unbelievable, isn't it? At least they have the killer behind bars, I heard. But I've been so busy tying up loose ends for this wedding that I haven't had much time to pay attention to the news."

"I understand completely, sweetheart. Were you a close friend of Mr. Hayes?"

"No, not really, but I remember Rayleen went to homecoming with him our senior year. Caused a real dustup between her and Alice Runcan as I recall. But they got over it, and Rayleen had forgiven Trotter for causing the quarrel. In fact, she just told me recently that the two of them had discussed forming a committee to plan a fifteen-year class reunion to be held in a few years. She's been real torn up about his death the last several days."

As Candy was speaking, a petite, dark-haired woman, about twenty feet from us, caught my eye. As the woman turned slightly to her right, I recognized her as the caterer. I almost cut Candy off when I asked her, "Oh, do you know Georgia Piney?"

"Not too well, personally, but she's friends with my parents. Georgia and her husband were clients of my father, who's a partner in the Hocraffer, Zumbrunn, Kobialka and Wright law firm. He represented them when they sued Trotter Hayes and his family after their daughter, Tori, committed suicide, and then again in their lawsuit against the fertilizer plant after Mr. Piney was diagnosed with brain cancer. Well, I need to make the rounds and welcome all the guests, but it was nice meeting you both."

Before Candy could turn around, her new husband came up behind her and put his arms around his bride's waist from behind. She reached back with her right hand and patted his cheek, and said, "I've got to go talk to some other guests, Bobby, but you'll want to visit with your relatives from California."

"I'm sorry," he replied, looking at Rip and me as if trying to place us. "I didn't even know I had relatives in California."

"Oh, yes. Rip is your uncle's third—"

"Which uncle?" Bobby asked.

Oops! I didn't see that one coming. I knew he'd recognize all of his uncle's names, and with a zillion and four names to choose from I was fairly certain of guessing the wrong one. I considering trying "Bob" because a large majority of Americans have an Uncle Bob in their family and there was a decent chance that Bobby was his namesake. But if Bobby turned out to be in the minority and said he only had two uncles named Theodore and Winston, how would I respond?

So instead of replying, I did the only other thing that came to mind. I grabbed my chest and leaned over, groaning dramatically, with a couple of sudden lists to the side for effect. Fortunately, Rip knew me well enough to realize what I was doing and didn't pull the phone out of his suit pocket to dial 9-1-1. Bobby looked alarmed though, and probably wasn't keen on having some little old lady from Pasadena keeling over dead at his and Candy's wedding reception. He reached out to grab hold of my arm to help me regain my balance. Panicking, he asked, "Are you okay? Should I call for an ambulance?"

"No, I'll be okay in a minute," I gasped between groans. "I have these sudden chest pain episodes quite often. But my husband will help me out to the truck to get my nitroglycerine spray and I'll be fine."

"Yes, that's right, dear. We need to scurry on out there before the pains intensify as they're prone to do," Rip said. He put his arm around me as if I couldn't stand without assistance. He then turned to Bobby and said, "Congratulations on your marriage, son. I need to get my wife off her feet right away, but it was nice to meet you, and we appreciate you inviting us to share your big day."

Bobby looked bewildered, but he shook Rip's hand and told me he hoped I felt better soon.

Rip's bad hip made his limping even more pronounced as he practically drug me to the door. Actually, he needed my assistance to walk, not the other way around. Bobby Crushnut watched our departure with great apprehension until the door closed behind us, no doubt relieved to be seeing the last of his oddball relatives from Pasadena. As soon as we exited the building, Rip looked at me and asked, "Really? You couldn't have just faked a senior moment and forgot the uncle's name?"

I ignored his jab, mainly because I was upset with myself for not thinking of Rip's suggestion. If I had, we'd still be in there, possibly chatting with Joy or Rayleen.

Rip went on to say, "If nothing else, I think we can now pursue other possible theories instead of your one with the Three Musketeers banding together to kill Trotter. It sounds to me like Rayleen had no burning desire to kill Trotter Hayes if they were communicating about a class reunion down the road. As far as not admitting they've seen each other recently, I'm sure Joy and Rayleen don't spread it around to strangers that they work together in a strip club. And most likely neither one of them has run into Alice lately. But Candy did mention a lawsuit between Trotter and the Piney family."

"Candy also mentioned one between the Pineys and the fertilizer factory Mr. Piney worked for. I do recall Georgia telling me that they felt toxic fumes at the factory attributed to her husband's brain cancer. It very likely has no bearing on this murder case, but we're fixing to find out!"

"I was afraid of that," Rip said with a sigh. "What are you planning to do now? Or do I even want to know?"

"I'm giving it some thought. I'm sure either Lexie or I will come up with something."

"No doubt."

"There's a connection there somewhere to Trotter's death. I'm just sure of it. My Three Musketeer theory was just a hunch, but I'm wondering if we might not have Georgia Piney dead to rights with this latest discovery."

"I hope you're right this time but I have my doubts," Rip replied with another sigh. "Get in the truck now, darling. I need to get you home before those chest pains escalate and you have a massive coronary on me."

Chapter 16

No one was home when we returned to the inn. Rip's bad hip was throbbing from being on his feet for so long at the reception and then having to drag his incapacitated spouse across the room. He went up to our suite for a nap. I unplugged my iPad from its charger and took it out on the back porch with a Miller Lite to quench my thirst.

I Googled every applicable word combination I could think of and was only able to come up with one short newspaper article about the lawsuit between the Pineys and Trotter's family. Although it didn't say so exactly, and few details were given, it gave me the impression that the Pineys held Trotter Hayes responsible for their daughter's suicide. Trotter's mother was mentioned but not Chief Smith. Since Trotter was the chief's stepson, I reasoned the incident may have occurred before the chief married his mom.

It also stood to reason the young girl would have had an autopsy performed on her body following the suicide. To verify my assumption, I called Wendy. She was at a male friend's house discussing his opinion of Falcon Jons. According to Wendy, the guy agreed that Falcon was more unpredictable than most. But Wendy's friend didn't think Falcon would viciously murder a person no matter how upset he was with him. It was just not in Falcon's DNA to be cruel, he had said.

I told Wendy what we'd learned at the wedding reception and asked her about the policies regarding autopsies and suicide victims. "Yes, we're required to perform an autopsy on anyone who takes their own life. Primarily the practice is done for insurance purposes, but on rare occasions the autopsy results conclude that the death was not self-inflicted as previously declared."

"Could that have happened in the Tori Piney case?" I asked.

"It's possible, but highly unlikely. I think I'll return to the coroner's lab for the last few hours of the workday with the excuse I don't want to fall too far behind with the paperwork stacking up on my desk. I'll tell Nate that my headache went away and my nausea cleared up soon after. And then, since no one pays any attention to what I'm doing on the computer anyway, I'll do some searching. With any luck at all I'll be able to bring up the autopsy report on Tori. You never know, something interesting might come of it."

"Couldn't you look up Trotter's autopsy report the same way?" I asked.

"No, not yet anyway. The findings haven't been officially recorded yet."

Wendy promised to call if she had any luck locating the report. While I waited impatiently to hear back from her, I fiddled with the iPad. I Googled "brain cancer" just for the heck of it and read through possible causes for it. Then I Googled the name Tori Piney and found a 2005 article about the lawsuit regarding Tori's suicide, and a few old articles dating back to 2003 and 2004 that listed honor roll students alphabetically. Both she and her twin sister had made the grade, I discovered. Having been an honor roll student, you'd think Lori could have proofread her mother's badly misspelled "no soliciting" sign before Georgia hung it up on the front door.

Then, to pass some time, I Googled myself and was horrified to find an old photo someone had posted on that Facebook thing that Mattie had told me about. It was a straight-on shot of me leaning back, trying to clear a limbo pole at a party back in the 1980s. My ratty underwear was clearly exposed beneath my skirt, my socks didn't match, and I'd had the most God-awful expression on my face you could ever imagine. The photo was obviously meant to amuse, and it had succeeded, judging by the disparaging comments beneath it and the ridiculous amount of "likes" listed. Someone had even made the comment, "This was the last time I let my alcoholic grandmother go out in public. LOL"