Chapter 28
Captain Kendra’s Log: I’m going straight to Hell.
Rowan and I headed to the Flamingo Cove church, where the celebration of life ceremony would take place. It felt weird to be so happy when we were headed to what was, in essence, a funeral.
“What’s with the smile?” Rowan asked from the passenger seat.
“I can’t wait to see the look on your face when we recreate the shower scene at the Flamingo Cove Marina,” I said.
He sucked in a breath, and I laughed.
“Kidding!”
“You know they got that on video, right?”
I slammed on the brakes right in the middle of U.S. 19. Cars raced around us, blaring their horns, cursing our mothers and any future children we would have.
“Damn it, Kendra. Seriously. Pull over. I’ll drive.”
“What are you talking about? On video?” I glared at him and held up my middle finger to the elderly driver behind me, who laid on her horn.
“Cheese and crackers. Don’t they know we’re having a conversation here?
” I flipped off a second driver who sped around us, screaming obscenities out the window.
“Kendra, please, Goldilocks, pull over or keep moving. I don’t want to get blood on this suit because of a road rage driver. It’s my last good suit,” Rowan pleaded.
He was a smoke show in the dark navy suit today. This time, he wore a tie, which made all my lady bits tingle with anticipation for when we were alone later, and I could take it all off.
I was already devising other positions to try having sex with him.
“Kendra?”
“Yeah, yeah,” I said as I hit the gas, and we lurched forward. “I’m going. But you better start talking, mister. What do you mean video?”
“The Flamingo Cove Marina has cameras everywhere. They put them in after a murder along the beach a few years ago.”
“That murder didn’t happen at the beach,” I corrected him. “It was elsewhere. And it wasn’t random. The murderer knew the victim.”
“Doesn’t matter who did the crime, the marina wanted to add security, so they tripled the cameras,” Rowan explained. “And one of them was pointed at the shower.”
“They had a camera in the shower?” I nearly braked again in astonishment but didn’t feel like getting the lecture on bad driving. I wasn’t a bad driver. I was an easily-excited driver. This is why I mostly stuck to golf carts and boats. Fewer people on the “road.”
“Not in the shower. The outside. And they got a great view of you knocking it down.”
“I wouldn’t say I knocked it down,” I said, biting my lip.
“What would you say, then?”
“I might have, possibly, on a slim chance, maybe, helped that rundown shower reach its tipping point.”
“Well, your tipping point was caught on 4K video.”
“Shit!”
“Yeah, shit!” Rowan let out a strangled-sounding laugh. “Imagine my surprise when the Harbormaster paid me a visit the next day.”
I bit back a smile as I imagined it. “Nooooo.”
“Yes! She couldn’t look me in the eye.”
“Did you tell her my name?” I glanced at him.
“No. I did not. It’s not her business.”
“It is if they decided to arrest us for public indecency!” I cried. “Damn. Now I have to get Warren to help me. And this case will probably cause his head to explode.”
“Who’s Warren?”
I was thrilled at the note of jealousy I heard in Rowan’s voice. “Warren Atwell and I went to school together. He also lives on the island. He’s a lawyer. Kind of a jack of all trades, master of none.”
“Interesting.”
“He might also be a robot,” I added. “I’ve seen Spock in Star Trek show more emotion.”
“I like him already,” Rowan chuckled.
I pulled into the quiet church parking lot. There weren’t many cars for a Wednesday morning. A few scattered vehicles were parked in the staff spots, and one shiny red Sportscar was parked next to the front door. I took the spot next to it and turned off the engine.
“You didn’t have to come with me so early.” I turned to face Rowan. “Jesse asked me for an assist.”
“Wouldn’t dream of letting you both go through this alone. Who knows? Maybe I’ll be helpful too.” Rowan’s eyebrows danced once. Then he put on his game face. “Do we need a codeword? In case you want to leave but don’t want to be rude?”
I nodded. “Sure. Aluminum siding.”
“Aluminum siding?”
“Yes. It’s not something that comes up in regular conversations, so if either of us says it, you know it’s the code word and not someone talking about redoing the exterior of their house,” I said.
“You came up with that pretty quickly.”
“I get flashes of genius.” I shrugged.
We walked through the front doors, arm in arm, and it didn’t take me long to find Jesse, who paced the floor near the back of the sanctuary.
“Hey, Jesse,” I said. “You okay?”
He sighed. “I hope so. True had me run a weird errand for her yesterday. I’m creeped out by it.” He shuddered.
Curiosity piqued, I asked what the errand was.
“I had to pick up her grandmother’s burial dress from the house,” Jesse replied.
Alarm bells went off my head. “You delivered her wedding dress to the funeral home?”
“Yeah.” Jesse paused his pacing and looked at me. “How’d you know that?”
More alarm bells. “Is it an open casket?”
He nodded, pointing to the front of the church where the casket containing True’s grandmother sat, ready for mourners and celebrants to pay their respects.
I shoved my purse into Rowan’s arms and ran down the aisle.
As I got closer to the casket, my stomach dropped.
“No. No. No. No. No. Jesse! What did you do?”
There, in the casket, was True’s grandmother peacefully in repose, wearing her granddaughter’s $50,000 wedding dress.
“Jesse!” I yelled again as he joined me at the front.
“What?” He held up his hands and shook his head. “Why are you yelling at me?”
“Yeah, Goldilocks. He does plenty of other stuff for you to yell at him about,” Rowan added. “Can’t you pick on the wanker for one of those?”
“Hey!” Jesse shouted at Rowan. “What the fuck, my guy?”
“Stop!” I grabbed each man's arm. “Jesse, where did you get this dress?”
“I told you. It was at True’s grandmother’s house. True told me to go to the house and get the wedding dress in the closet,” Jesse explained. “I went to the house. I found the closet. The wedding dress was inside a garment bag, and I brought the garment bag to the funeral home.”
“Did you, by chance, look at the dress before you handed it over?”
“Why would I do that?”
“To make sure you gave the funeral director the right dress!” I clenched my hands into fists, my fingernails biting into my palms.
Jesse sighed. “Ken, you’re not making any sense. This is the wedding dress in her grandmother’s closet. How could it be the wrong dress?”
Rowan covered his mouth with his hand to hide the laugh that was no doubt bubbling up. The me of a week ago would probably let this stand and wash my hands of it. Maybe. But there was no way I was putting another woman through something like this, even if it meant keeping the wedding on track.
“Jesse.” I shook my second-oldest friend. “That is True’s wedding dress! We need to get it off the grandmother ASAP!” I started for the casket, but Rowan grabbed me around the waist. “What are you doing? True will be here soon!”
“Love, stop. We won’t be able to salvage that dress.” Rowan nodded to the casket. “They cut the back of the clothing to fit it around the body.”
“Ewww.” Jesse scrunched his face up in disgust. “Yeah. I’m not touching it now.”
“The fuck you are!” I yelled.
“Is everything okay in here?” A woman in a black robe called from the back of the sanctuary. “It’s getting a little loud.”
“Fine. Ma’am,” Rowan said, holding up a hand and smiling at the reverend. “You know how grieving can be.”
The preacher squinted her eyes at us but kept walking, leaving us alone in the sanctuary with The Hot Mess of All Hot Messes.
“True is going to be so pissed at me,” Jesse moaned and scrubbed his hands down his face. “I thought I was helping!”
I sighed and looked at the giant cross on the wall. Was it too late to start praying for divine intervention?
I had a crazy idea, and I turned back to the men.
“Here’s what we’re going to do. Jesse, I need the name of the funeral home you took that dress to.
I will call the funeral director and ask them to meet us here.
Rowan, take my car and Jesse to the grandmother’s house, find the right gown, and bring it back here on the double,” I ordered.
Rowan saluted me, took the keys, and grabbed Jesse’s arm.
“What are you going to do?” Jesse asked as Rowan dragged him back up the aisle.
“Pray that your mom can perform a miracle.”
An hour later, I dabbed the sweat on my forehead and arms as people began filing into the sanctuary for the service. People murmured words of peace and love to True and her family, who stood in a receiving line next to the casket.
“That was close,” Rowan breathed heavily beside me. He, too, wore a nice sheen of sweat. I worried about what that would mean to his good suit but was too frazzled to think about it any deeper.
“Yes. Thank you for helping him,” I said, turning to my fake fiancé. “I truly appreciate you.”
“You could have let him twist,” Rowan suggested. “But you didn’t. Why?”
I huffed a laugh. “I asked myself that same question over the last hour about a million times, and the answer was always the same. I couldn’t do it to True.”
“But you could’ve done it to Jesse,” Rowan pointed out.
I picked at the hangnail on my thumb. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Yes, you do, Goldilocks,” Rowan insisted. “If you didn’t know True, hadn’t gotten to know each other, and she was a faceless bride-to-be, you could have let Jesse twist in the wind because you know she’d have been pissed at what he did to her dress.”
“Well, he didn’t do it. The funeral director did,” I corrected.
The funeral director did indeed cut up the back of that gorgeous gown and dressed the grandmother in it.
And because of all the embalming fluids and makeup on the body, the dress was ruined.
There was nothing Charlotte would be able to do to fix it.
She would have to remake True’s dress - in less than 48 hours.
Her team of seamstresses was working on it right now.
“You know what I mean.”
I sighed. “Yeah. I do. No. I couldn’t let Jesse twist either. He’s my second-oldest friend. This was a mistake. How could he know True hid her wedding dress at the grandmother’s house so he wouldn’t see it?”
Rowan kissed me on the cheek. “You’re a good person. You know that? I admire that loyalty to someone who has hurt you.”
“Did he hurt me, though? Or did I hurt myself?” I asked. “I’ve been thinking about this ever since you said what you said at the bar.”
“You need to let that go, love. I was talking out of my arse,” Rowan said.
“No. You were being honest with me because we were strangers in a bar, and if you can’t tell a stranger the truth, what can you tell them?”
Rowan was about to say something when the organ music started up.
I leaned closer so he could hear me without yelling.
“I’ve been holding onto this - crush - for years.
Looking at every scrap of interaction for hidden meaning.
Holding my breath for him to come back here and rescue me and my business.
Waiting for breadcrumbs. It’s ridiculous.
And everyone knows. I see that now. My brothers, Joy, even you saw it, and you didn’t even know me. ”
“Don’t beat yourself up,” Rowan said. “I don’t think that was all in your head. I believe he did give you false hope.”
I shook my head. “No. When I look at everything through your eyes, I see it. Clear as day. And I could kick myself for being such a fool.”
Rowan put his arm around my waist and guided me into the hallway.
“Kendra. Please hear me when I say this. You’re not a fool.
You’re a trusting, loyal friend who believes in people.
You see the best in everyone. If someone took advantage of that, they’re the fool, not you.
Don’t lose that trust in the good. That’s what makes you - you. ”
His words warmed my heart, and I hugged his waist, leaning in closer to his uniquely familiar scent. “Thank you. But - agree to disagree. How about we start this celebration of life, and I can calm my racing heart? That was a close call.”
Rowan pulled back slightly and kissed my forehead. I leaned into his lips and closed my eyes, cherishing the moment and thinking about the other close call and mistake I’d been making my entire adult life.
Pining after the wrong man.