Engaged in Death (A Wedding Planner Mystery) by Stephanie Blackmoore Read Free Book Online Page A

steps were stone, but they had bowed gently with the passage of many feet, approximating a crooked kind of smile. Forest-green paint peeled away from the wooden porch floor in narrow curly sheets. The wood felt pliant and rotten beneath me, and petunias grew out of a hole in the porch’s corner. I removed the colossal key ring from my purse, the different metals jingling like a discordant wind chime. I selected the simple key that would open the house, according to Garrett. The door swung open with no resistance, and we stepped in, holding our breaths. Turned out that was a good thing, as the place reeked of ammonia.
    We were greeted with hushed darkness in the entrance hall, and I trailed my fingers over the walls with my fingertips until I connected with a light switch. The hallway chandelier sprang to life, the old wiring emitting a perceptible whine.
    “Whoa!” This time, I was the one exclaiming and, for once, Rachel was silent. The inside was as ornate and in as bad a state as the outside. We were surrounded by dark paneled wood, the varnish blackened and crusted over. The scuffed floors were covered with threadbare rugs and led to a grand staircase, probably once flanked by two thistle finials as big as my head. Only one of the two thistles remained. The house seemed to let out a sigh. I shivered.
    “Kind of creepy.” I rubbed the goose bumps sprouting on my forearms.
    We combed each room, pulling back heavy drapes, stirring up dust and letting in sunlight through streaky windows.
    “Was that a bird?” A small, black winged creature fluttered out from the dusty brocade, narrowly missing my sister.
    “I think it’s a bat!” I ducked as it escaped out an open transom window. “Great, we need rabies shots just to live here.”
    Pictures in sepia stared at us from the walls. They featured women under parasols, shielding their delicate skin, attended by men with comical mustaches and little bow ties. Few smiled. The faded, busy botanical wallpaper was interrupted by ghostly, vibrant rectangles where paintings had once hung. Heavy brass sconces hung from the walls, crooked and candle-less. Silverfish scuttled across the floor in the lone bathroom, and the air was heavy and humid. Every nook, cranny, and shelf was filled with decorative glass, now dusty and dull.
    We pushed and jimmied swollen pocket doors that resisted our meddling and felt as if they hadn’t been cajoled out of their tracks for years. From the second-floor landing, I could see a carriage house, a greenhouse with nearly every pane of glass shattered, a weedy tennis court, and a large shed, listing to the right. Two statues of angels in flight, one of them missing a wing, the other her arm, presided over an overrun garden, choked with hydrangeas, irises, and day lilies. The garden took over a large swath of the backyard, which stretched far back to a copse of trees and a gazebo. The seven bedrooms on the second floor were as old-fashioned and lavish as the downstairs and also as neglected. We couldn’t even open the door sealing off the third floor. None of the keys on the key ring worked.
    “Good. That’ll give you an excuse to see Garrett Davies again,” Rachel said coyly. “Maybe he has the key.”
    “I don’t think we need to see him again.” I kicked up little piles of dust as we descended from the third-floor landing. “Although it might be worth it to pick his brain.”
    Rachel and I marveled at the contents of the house. It was a control freak’s nightmare.
    “Are you okay?”
    “Mm-hm.” I sank into one of the parlor’s lumpy couches, suppressing thoughts of the dust that would coat the backside of my black suit. “Just overwhelmed. I’m screwed, Rach. No one will want to buy this place.”
    My sister hitched up her shoulders in response.
    That bad, huh. I picked at some thread unraveling from the couch and shut my eyes against my new reality. I thought of the apartment I’d so recently shared with Keith, where things were