The Perfect Couple(2)
They have to assume foul play by law, although here on Nantucket, violent crime is rare. The Chief has been working on this island for nearly thirty years and in all that time, he has seen only three homicides. One per decade.
Roger Pelton called it in. The Chief has heard Roger’s name recently. Really recently, at some point in the past couple of days. And a compound in Monomoy—that rings a bell too. But why?
He hears a light tap on the window, and through the glass slider, he sees Andrea in her nightshirt, holding up a cup of coffee. Chloe is moving around the kitchen behind her, dressed in her catering uniform of white shirt and black pants.
Chloe is awake already? the Chief thinks. At six o’clock in the morning? Or did she get home so late last night that she fell asleep in her clothes?
Yes, he thinks. She worked a rehearsal dinner the night before. Then it clicks: Chloe told the Chief that the rehearsal dinner and the wedding were being held in Monomoy and that Roger was the wedding coordinator. It’s the same wedding. The Chief shakes his head, even though he knows better than anyone that this is a small island.
“Was the woman you found staying at the compound where the wedding is taking place today?” the Chief asks.
“Affirmative,” Dickson says. “She was the maid of honor, Chief. I don’t think there’s going to be any wedding.”
Andrea, possibly recognizing the expression on the Chief’s face, steps out to the deck, hands Ed his coffee, and disappears inside. Chloe has vanished. She has probably headed upstairs to shower for work, which will now be canceled. News like this travels fast; the Chief expects that Siobhan Crispin will be calling at any moment.
What else did Chloe say about that wedding? One of the families is British, the mother famous somehow—an actress? A theater actress? A playwright? Something.
The Chief takes the first sip of his coffee. “You’re still on-site, correct, Dickson? Have you talked to anyone other than the bride and Roger?”
“Yeah, I talked to the groom,” Dickson says. “He wanted to go with the bride to the hospital. But first he went inside one of the guest cottages to grab his wallet and his phone and he came right back out to tell me the best man is missing.”
“Missing?” the Chief says. “Is it possible we have two people dead?”
“I checked the water, down the beach, and out a few hundred yards in both directions with my field glasses,” Dickson says. “It was all clear. But at this point, I’d say anything is possible.”
“Tell the Greek to wait for me, please,” the Chief says. “I’m on my way.”
Friday, July 6, 2018, 9:15 a.m.
GREER
Greer Garrison Winbury thrives on tradition, protocol, and decorum but on the occasion of her younger son’s wedding, she is happy to toss all three out the window. It’s customary for the bride’s parents to host and pay for their daughter’s nuptials, but if that were the case with Benji and Celeste, the wedding would be taking place in a church at the mall with a reception following at TGI Fridays.
You’re a terrific snob, Greer, her husband, Tag, is fond of saying. Greer fears that this is true. But where Benji’s wedding was concerned, she had to intervene. Look what she’d endured when Thomas married Abigail Freeman: a Texas wedding, with all of Mr. Freeman’s oil money on grand, grotesque display. There had been three hundred people at the “welcome party” at the Salt Lick BBQ—Greer had hoped to live her whole life without ever patronizing a place called the Salt Lick BBQ—where the suggested dress code was “hill-country casual,” and when Greer asked Thomas what that could possibly mean, he’d said, Wear jeans, Mom.
Wear jeans to her elder son’s wedding celebration? Greer had opted for wide-legged ivory trousers and stacked Ferragamo heels. Ivory had turned out to be a poor choice, as the guests of this welcome party had all been expected to eat pork ribs with their fingers. Shrieks of joy had gone up when there had been a surprise appearance by a country singer named George Strait, whom everyone called “the King of Country.” Greer still can’t imagine how much it must have cost Mr. Freeman to hire the King of Country—and for an event that wasn’t even part of the usual nuptial schedule.
As Greer drives the Defender 90 (Tag had it rebuilt and shipped over from England) down to the Hy-Line ferry to pick up Celeste’s parents, Bruce and Karen Otis, she sings along to the radio. It’s B. J. Thomas’s “Hooked on a Feeling.”
This weekend, Greer is effectively the bride’s mother as well as the groom’s, for she is 100 percent in charge. She hasn’t encountered one iota of resistance from anyone, including Celeste herself; the girl responds to all of Greer’s suggestions with the exact same text: Sounds good. (Greer despises texting, but if one wants to communicate with Millennials, one must abandon old-fashioned notions like expecting to speak on the phone.) Greer has to admit, it has been far easier to get her way with the color scheme, the invitations, the flowers, and the caterer than she ever anticipated. It’s as if this were her own wedding, thirty-two years later… minus her overbearing mother and grandmother, who insisted on an afternoon reception in the sweltering garden of Swallowcroft, and minus a fiancé who insisted on a stag party the night before the wedding. Tag had gotten home at seven o’clock in the morning smelling of Bushmills and Chanel No. 9. When Greer had started weeping and demanding to know if he’d actually had the gall to sleep with another woman the night before his wedding, Greer’s mother took her aside and told her that the most important skill required in marriage was picking one’s battles.