“Is it true?” Kristie asked me when we found her in the salon. She wore a pale blue sheath dress, and I was a bit surprised to see her in anything but yoga pants. A selection of small silver bells lay on a white marble coffee table, and she held one in each hand, alternating as she jingled them. I supposed with all the chaos on the ship, clearing the negative energy with bells was a constant process. I wondered if I should start carrying bells in my emergency kit to ring around my brides every time they got stressed.
“Is what true?” I asked. With so much going on, I honestly didn’t know what she meant. The room still held the slight scents of scorched fabric and fresh paint. Not an appealing combination. I stifled a cough and hoped the flowers and food would mask the odors the next day.
“Is it going to rain on my wedding day?” She dropped the bells and they clanged on the marble table.
I almost felt relieved when I heard her concern. Then I realized I actually hadn’t checked the weather report in days. Usually I kept a watchful eye on the forecast to know how many white golf umbrellas to put in my trunk, but this week I’d been so preoccupied I hadn’t seen it once. I pulled out my phone and clicked the weather app while Kate and Richard did the same.
“Uh oh,” Kate said next to me.
Richard put a hand over his eyes. “This is intolerable.”
I tried not to panic. The image for the next day was a dark thundercloud with lightning and, if the Weather Channel was accurate, it would last for the entire day and night. This was probably what the captain had been picking up on radar, as well.
“The good news is you have a beautiful ship to get married on,” I said. I could have kicked myself for not keeping track of the weather better. I knew I couldn’t control it, but it helped not to be completely ambushed by massive thunderstorms. Especially when the wedding was being held on a boat.
“So that’s a yes?” Tears sprang to Kristie’s eyes. “What about the ceremony on the rooftop? I’m supposed to get married in the open air.”
One of the cameramen from the TV crew stepped into the room, cast his eyes over the tense scene, and began filming.
“Not now, buddy.” Kate pushed him backward until he was on the other side of the glass doors trying not to stumble down the stairs.
I thought fast. “We can do the ceremony in here. It’s the largest room and one hundred fifty guests can definitely fit.”
The bride’s eyes went to the low ceiling. “But what about the floral canopy?”
“It can still go in here,” I said. “It may have to be a bit shorter, but it will still be beautiful.”
Kate put an arm around Kristie. “The important thing is getting married, right?”
The girl nodded, then her face darkened as Mrs. Barbery swept into the room from the outside. She wore a pink and purple chiffon creation that could have been a nightgown or an evening gown. When I spotted the pink fur slippers peeking out from under the layers of flowing fabric, I pegged the ensemble as sleepwear. Not any sleepwear I’d ever wear, mind you.
Mrs. Barbery let out a sigh when she saw her stepdaughter. “I hope you’re not crying again, Kristie.”
“We were discussing the rain plan for tomorrow.” I tried to keep my voice upbeat but it came out sounding strained.
Kristie glared at her stepmother. “For your information, it’s going to pour all day long.”
“Then we’ll cover the ship.” Mrs. Barbery snapped her fingers at me. “I’m sure you have people who can do that.”
“Cover an entire ship? Like with a giant tent?” Richard asked.
“Exactly.” Mrs. Barbery put a hand to her red curls. “I’m sure my husband will agree to it.”
“But we can’t erect a tent over a ship that’s in the water,” I said, my voice no longer upbeat. “First of all, no tent company has forty-foot side poles. And since the boat is in water, there isn’t anything to anchor the poles to.”
Mrs. Barbery stamped a foot. “I do not want someone telling me all the ways it can’t work, Miss Archer. I need you to tell me how it can work.”
“We could tent parts of the ship,” I said, not sure exactly which parts I meant. “That would give us more covered space.”
“Make it happen.” Mrs. Barbery shifted her poisonous glare from me, and gave Kristie a sticky smile. “My husband wants this wedding to be perfect for his darling daughter.”
Mrs. Barbery flounced out of the room, leaving me feeling like I’d been left standing after a tornado.
“I’m sorry about her. She’s been even more awful since we started planning my wedding,” Kristie said. “But can you really cover some of the outdoor spaces?”
I leaned down and squeezed her shoulder. “I promise you we will do everything we can, okay?”
My mind raced with all I needed to do if we were going to be holding this wedding in the pouring rain. We already had a tent being erected on the dock next to Mystic Maven to be used as the kitchen, but we couldn’t put guests under it. Even though the yacht was one hundred and sixty feet long and dwarfed every other boat in the marina, the open spaces it did have were limited, especially covered ones.
“Why don’t we go find your fiancé?” Kate began to steer Kristie out of the room. I knew Kate could keep her busy telling her all the things we normally told brides who were blessed with rain on their wedding day. The old standby was rain on your wedding day is good luck, a lie a wedding planner clearly made up to calm down a hysterical bride. Less common and cheesier was only rain brought rainbows. I could never manage to say that one with a straight face.
I mouthed a thank you to Kate and turned to Richard, who also looked a bit panicked. “How did we not see this?” I asked.
He shook his head. “It’s been so crazy with all the accidents and then the murder and then the fire. The weather was the last thing on my mind.”
“Mine too. But now we’d better figure out what to do. We have over a hundred and fifty guests coming tomorrow and nowhere else to put them except on this ship.”
Richard glanced around the main salon, which was filled with furniture. “How are we going to make more space?”
“We’ll have to move this furniture out if we’re going to jam all the guests in here for the ceremony.”
Richard threw his arms in the air. “And where are we going to put all of it? It’s not like there’s an attic or basement.”
I pressed one of the numbers I had preprogrammed into my phone. “I’m calling Davis. If we can get him to add a tent marquee to the wide area at the back of the ship—
“You mean the transom,” Richard corrected.
“Yes, the transom. Then we can get at least twenty extra feet. Maybe he can pop up another on the top deck, too.”
“Good thinking.” Richard began dialing his phone. “Not that you’d catch me on the top deck of a ship during a thunderstorm. I’m adding staff for tomorrow. If we have to go back and forth between the kitchen tent on the dock and the ship in the pouring rain, I’m going to need more people. Preferably ones with gills.”
I left a message for Davis, my go-to tent guy, while Richard talked to his staffing assistant. I made a mental note to put every umbrella I owned in my car and bring a pair of rain boots.
“Annabelle!”
I spun around and saw Leatrice’s head at the top of the spiral staircase leading down to the guest rooms. “What are you doing down there?” In all the panic about the rain, I’d forgotten about her. “You were supposed to leave the ship.”
“I was exploring,” she said. “This place just goes on and on.”
“Get up here. You aren’t supposed to even be here, much less be wandering all over the place.”
Leatrice walked up the stairs and looked around the room. “Isn’t this something.”
I had to agree with her. It was something all right. The bright orange, turquoise, and yellow that Jeremy had used throughout the room had turned the once-chic beige and cream salon into an assault on the eyes. “It’s South Beach meets South of France.”
Leatrice nodded, her expression confused. “Was this Richard’s idea?”
“Bite your tongue!” Richard said. He slipped his phone into his front suit pocket and walked over to where we stood. “I would never go for something this loud. Everyone knows I’m the soul of understatement.”
I decided not to touch that one or bother mentioning that Richard’s jacket was lined in hot pink.
“You didn’t happen to see Mandy while you were snooping around below, did you?” I asked Leatrice.
She tilted her head to one side. “Mandy?”
“She’s the chief stew,” I explained. “She’s in charge of all the interior staff and could probably help us get this furniture moved out of here.”
“Well, if you find her, let me know.” Daniel Reese came through the door from the casual dining room. “She’s been missing since earlier today.”
“Missing?” I asked. First one of the girls who worked under Mandy disappeared and got hit by a car, and now Mandy was missing?
He nodded. “She left the ship at some point in the early morning before anyone was awake and hasn’t been seen since.”
“Maybe she needed a little break,” I said, realizing how ridiculous that sounded in light of all the things going on. “It must be confining to be on board all the time.”
“I might agree with you if she’d told anyone she was leaving or got the time off approved,” Daniel said. “And her cell phone is turned off so we can’t track her.”
“So Mandy went AWOL?” Richard asked. “Well, isn’t that the cherry on top? It’s going to rain buckets, we’re stuck on a boat decked out in rustic neon, and now we’re down another crew member.”
“Did you say Mandy?” Leatrice snapped her fingers. “That’s the name of the nice girl who came by looking for you, Annabelle.”
My heart sank. I tried not to think of all the reasons why Mandy would have left the ship the day before the wedding and come looking for me. Maybe she got scared because of all the things happening on the ship, including the murder; maybe she’d had enough of Mrs. Barbery; or maybe she ran off because she was somehow involved with all the bad things going on. I didn’t really believe the last one though. Mandy had been our one ally on the crew during the entire ordeal, and I couldn’t help but worry that something bad had happened to her the way it had to Caren.
“Why do you think she left?” I asked Daniel.
He shrugged. “I don’t know, but I don’t think it’s good.”
Richard’s voice became shrill. “Of course it’s not good. Nothing about this wedding has been good. It’s been a disaster from the beginning. I’m telling you, Annabelle, this ship is cursed. Cursed, I say!” He flung himself down on a couch.
I couldn’t argue with him. Things were going from bad to worse to catastrophic.
“What else could possibly—” Richard started to say.
I leaned over and clamped a hand over his mouth. “Don’t you dare. The second you wonder what else could go wrong, it will.”
He made muffled noises into my hand, and I lowered it from his mouth.
“You have got to start using hand cream, Annabelle. Your skin feels like paper-mâché.” He dabbed at his mouth. “I have no intention of inviting more trouble. We certainly have all we can handle.”
“And then some,” I agreed.
Leatrice clapped her hands together. “Are all your weddings this exciting?”
Richard looked at me without smiling. “Kill me now.”