"Double Wedding" published in Blood Moon

UPDATE: "Double Wedding" has been nominated for a Derringer Award! Stay tuned.

Bev and Dillon have promised to love, honor, cherish and never testify against each other forever, but there’s one thing missing to make their wedding perfect—and Bev’s obnoxious cousin Evelyn has it. Here's an excerpt from "Double Wedding," published in Best New England Crime Stories: Blood Moon and available from Level Best Books.
 

Double Wedding

            “The bride’s side or the groom’s?” The usher looked like he was staring at his own cocked elbow, but I knew he was checking out my cleavage. The low neckline of my sheer silk blouse was deliciously cool for a July wedding in Virginia, where the churches are too historic for air conditioning and the stained glass windows are too valuable to actually open.

            I clutched the usher’s arm almost as close as he would have liked me to, threw him a hip check and a wink, and whispered, “Definitely the groom’s side. I’m Frankie’s first…girlfriend.”

He leered like a party-hardy frat boy until he noticed Dillon scowling at him over my shoulder. My guy was doing that smoking volcano thing he does so well, like he’d erupt in the middle of the wedding if another guy looked at me, or my cleavage, too close.

* * *

            “You’re sure your folks won’t be there?” Dillon had asked when I first suggested crashing Evvy’s wedding. We were lounging by the pool at Atlantic City’s Resorts Casino Hotel, courtesy of a Boston banker who didn’t yet know we’d swiped his credit card numbers.

            “They always skip these family deals,” I said. “Ever since my first arraignment. They send regrets and a pricey gift, then go on a cruise or something.”

            “I don’t know, Bev.” Dillon stretched out in his lounge chair in a way that made me want to drag him into the nearest changing room. “Don’t tell me you wanted a big church wedding after all?”

            Just two weeks earlier, me and Dillon had been married by a Justice of the Peace in Connecticut. We’d come right from the mountain theme resort where we’d been working and laying low, which is why Dillon looked studly in lederhosen and I wore a sexy dirndlette and carried a spray of fake edelweiss.

            “I’m not a church wedding kind of gal,” I reassured Dillon, “but there is one thing I bet Evvy will have for her wedding that should be ours.”

            After a spot of marital cherishing back in the Resort Casino’s honeymoon suite, he agreed.

* * *

            So here we were. As I expected, Evvy’s wedding was a big budget production choreographed by a wedding planner with a whole cast of designers, florists, musicians, make-up artists, and probably plastic surgeons. I looked around the church, at the garlands of peach blossoms twined around every other pillar, the masses of flowers in silver vases by the altar, the fussy clusters of peach satin ribbon, white lace, and pearls marking the VIP pews. Was I jealous?

            I nudged Dillon and blew him a kiss from under the brim of my hat. He hooked his left foot around my right ankle and tugged me closer. Maybe there wasn’t a lot of  ambiance at our wedding, but nothing could have been more romantic than me and my guy pledging to love, honor, and cherish, and never testify against each other, forever till death do us part. Amen.