The wedding photographer lived on Tine Lane, a street that ended in a fence bordering a field. The boxy brick houses lacked fences of their own, their front paths joining the sidewalk, and most of their yards neatly kept.
Except for one. The photographer’s house.
A rusty washing machine had been left out front, and what had once been a sofa sagged into the grass near the cracked front steps.
“Oh boy,” I muttered. “This ought to be fun.” I half-expected a reply from Gamma, even though I hadn’t put on my microphone and earpiece. She had bigger fish to fry today. Namely, whoever was stealing the Halloween decorations from the Gossip Inn.
I got out of her seagreen Mini-Cooper, and made for the photographer’s front path.
“Hey!” A woman, middle-aged, slim and wearing a neatly ironed blouse, waved at me from the front step of the house next-door. “Over here.”
I frowned but joined her.
“Hi,” she said, sweeping a gaze over me, “you’re Georgina’s assistant, right? The one from the Gossip Inn?”
“Yeah. Sorry, I don’t think we’ve met?” My grandmother’s roots had penetrated deeply in this town. Everybody knew her. Most people liked her, apart from Belle-Blue’s crew.
“I’m Henrietta Burnes,” she replied, shaking my hand. “I’m a… grape.” The last word came out in a whisper.
“Right. Nice to meet you.” Gamma’s “grapes” were her hidden network of gossips who gave her information about the goings on in town. Up until now, I hadn’t realized that they identified themselves as grapes too.
“Why are you here?” Henrietta asked, leaning in. “For Freddy Fisher?”
“The photographer, yeah.”
“Part-time photographer, full-time slob,” Henrietta said. “That boy wouldn’t know a real day of work if it hit him right in the gap between his two front teeth. You’re here to talk to him about photography?” She gasped. “The wedding! That’s it, isn’t it? The Childless-Knowles wedding.”
I didn’t answer. As much as Gamma likely trusted Henrietta, I didn’t know her. And it was never wise to give too much away, especially in Gossip.
“I heard about the murder,” Henrietta continued, “and I’ve got to say, I’m not that surprised.”
“Why’s that?”
“Julia didn’t invite a single person from Gossip to her wedding. None of her childhood friends, not even distant relatives. You know, of course, both her mother and father are deceased, so…”
“You think one of her old friends might’ve taken exception to the fact that she didn’t invite them?”
“Maybe. You never know in this town.” Henrietta gave a shrug, but the sparkle in her eyes told a different story. She was sure that Julia’s death was related to the lack of wedding invitations for the locals.
“I’d better get going,” I said. “Have a nice day. It was great meeting you.”
“You too, sugar,” she said, then nodded toward Mr. Fisher’s house. “Good luck with that one. You’re going to need it.”
I left the ominous warning behind and headed past the sagging sofa, the rusted washing machine, and up to the front door. I knocked three times, since the doorbell was hanging off the wall.
The latch clicked a moment later, and the door opened to reveal a man who suited the house perfectly. Freddy Fisher wore a t-shirt pocked with holes and a pair of jeans stained brown at the knees. His blond hair stuck up at odd angles.
Mid-twenties, probably, with dark circles under his eyes, and what looked like a smear of ketchup on his cheek. He also smelled… great.
“Mr. Fisher,” I said, holding back from blocking my nose. “You’re, uh, hi…”
“Yeah, hi. You’re the one who called, right? Charlotte?”
“That’s me,” I said. “I’ve been hired by the groom, Ethan Knowles, to find out who murdered his wife.” I didn’t have the constitution to linger here too long, so I blurted the words out. “I understand you were the photographer.”
“Yeah. Haven’t been paid yet, though.”
“You haven’t?”
“No. Turns out, the cops confiscating the photos kind of stepped on my toes business-wise.”
“Ah. So you don’t have photos from the wedding?”
Freddy considered me for a couple of beats. “What’s it to you?”
“You have them or not, Mr. Fisher?”
“I might have them. For the right price. I always keep a copy of my photographs, just in case.”
“So why not give them to the families of the bride and groom?”
“Like I said, they wouldn’t pay me for them,” he replied. “But you… what’s it worth to you to have them?”
The more I looked at this guy, the more ratty he appeared. “Let me check them out free of charge, and I’ll pay you for any photo I want.”
“Sure. Sounds like a good deal,” he replied, grinning, and I saw what Henrietta meant about the gap between his two front teeth—big enough to fit a third incisor. Not that it mattered. It was his attitude that irked me.
“You have them on a phone or a laptop or something?” I asked. “I, uh, I’d prefer to view them out here. Need to catch some rays.”
“Sure. Wait out here.”
You don’t have to tell me twice. If this guy smelled bad, I could only imagine what the rest of his house was like.
I sat down on the top step, dusting it off gingerly first. Freddy returned with his laptop minutes later. He handed it to me, and I nearly gagged. The screen was covered in specks of food and maybe coffee?
I removed a pack of Kleenex from my pocket and dutifully wiped off the grossness, handing each tissue to Freddy to throw away.
“You should look after your stuff better, dude,” I said.
He didn’t reply. Maybe the concept of being paid for the photos was too exciting to get on my bad side.
For what it was worth, the photos he’d taken of the bridal party were gorgeous. Tastefully done. High quality even. I couldn’t fault his technical abilities when it came to taking photos.
“Ah,” I whispered to myself.
I hadn’t noticed it when I’d attended the wedding service, but each of the groomsmen, and the best man, had a peach handkerchief folded in the top pocket of their suit jackets. A peach, cotton pocket square.
That has to be what I ripped free from the attacker that night!
It made the most sense. So, therefore, it had to be one of the groomsmen who had attacked me, right? Or the best man.
I cycled through the images, carefully. There were ones of the bride starting down the aisle, heading toward the altar where an exceedingly bored-looking Ethan waited. Julia was in tears, as I’d witnessed on that fateful day.
“These two,” I said, to Freddy who hovered nearby. I clicked between two photographs. One showed the bride proceeding down the aisle and was a shot of the people seated in the back rows in the town hall. The other was the last photo taken.
The bride and groom faced each other, the reverend was talking. It had to have been taken moments before the lights had cut.
And the best man, the same one who had tried to convince Ethan, the groom, not to ask me to investigate the case, had been caught reaching into his suit jacket’s pocket.
For a gun?
“That’ll be $100 each,” Freddy said.
“You can have $20 for each,” I replied. “And that’s my final offer.”
He glared at me. “That’s daylight robbery, lady. $25 each.”
“Deal.” I’d have gone as high as $50 per photograph. I handed him the money and waited for him to transfer the pictures to the flash drive I’d brought along.
Just like that, my main suspect had shifted from the overbearing groom’s mother to the best man.
The murkiness of the case had started clearing. Slowly.