Wisconsin Wedding
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Carla Neggers
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Chapter One
WITHIN THE SEDATE, mahogany-paneled president’s office of Pierce & Rothchilde, Publishers, Byron Forrester pitched a sharp-pointed dart at the arrogant face of his latest traitorous author. The dart nailed Henry V. Murrow smack in the middle of his neatly clipped beard. Byron grinned. He was getting pretty good at this! Now if Henry had been in the office in person instead of in the form of an eight-by-ten glossy publicity photo, Byron would have been a happy man. Only that morning Henry had called to notify him that he’d just signed a mega-deal with a big New York publisher.
“For what?” Byron had demanded.
“A technothriller.”
“What, do you have a dastardly villain threatening to blow up the world with a toaster? You don’t know anything about advanced technology. Henry, for God’s sake, you haven’t even figured out the telegraph yet.”
“Research, my boy. Research.”
Pierce & Rothchilde didn’t publish technothrillers. Its specialties were expensive-to-produce coffee-table books, mostly about art, geography and history, and so-called literary fiction. Some of the latter was deadly stuff. Byron found Henry’s books depressing as hell.
Technothrillers. From a man who’d been utterly defeated by the locks on Byron’s sports car. “How does one exit from this contraption?” he’d asked.
Now he was calling himself Hank Murrow and planning to make a bloody fortune. Probably had shaved his beard, burned his tweeds, packed his pipe away in mothballs and taken his golden retriever to the pound.
“I wonder how much the fink’s really getting.”
Byron aimed another dart. Henry—Hank—had said seven figures, but Byron didn’t believe him. He’d yet to meet a writer who didn’t lie about money.
A quiet tap on his solid mahogany door forced him to fold his fingers around the stem of the dart and not throw it. He really wanted to. Henry had offered to send him a copy of his completed manuscript. Byron had declined. “It’ll be more fun,” Henry had said, “than anything that’ll cross your desk this year.” A comment all the more irritating for its probable truth. Byron had wished the turncoat well and gotten out his darts.
Without so much as a by-your-leave from him, Fanny Redbacker strode into his office. Trying to catch him throwing darts, no doubt. She regularly made it clear that she didn’t think her new boss was any match for her old boss, the venerable Thorton Pierce. Byron considered that good news. His grandfather, whose father had cofounded Pierce & Rothchilde in 1894, had been a brilliant, scrawny old snob of a workaholic. He’d vowed never to retire and hadn’t. He’d died in that very office, behind that very desk, five years ago. Byron, although just thirty-eight, had no intention of suffering a similar fate.
“Yes, Mrs. Redbacker?” he said, trying to sound like the head of one of the country’s most prestigious publishing houses.
Mrs. Redbacker, of course, knew better. Stepping forward, she placed an envelope on his desk. Byron saw her eyes cut over to Henry Murrow’s dart-riddled face. Her mouth drew into a straight line of disapproval.
“It’s tacked to a cork dartboard,” Byron said. “I didn’t get a mark on the wood paneling.”
“What if you’d missed?”
“I never miss.”
She inhaled. “The letter’s a personal one addressed to you and Mrs. Forrester.” Meaning his mother. Byron wasn’t married. Mrs. Redbacker added pointedly, “The postmark is Tyler, Wisconsin.”
Byron almost stabbed his hand with the dart, so completely did her words catch him off guard. Regaining his composure, he set the thing on his desk. Fanny Redbacker sighed, but didn’t say anything. She didn’t have to. It had been three months, and Byron still wasn’t Thorton Pierce. He didn’t even look like him. Where his cultured, imperious grandfather had been sandy-haired and blue-eyed and somewhat washed out in appearance, Byron took after the Forresters. He was tall, if not as tall as the Pierces, and thick-boned and dark, his hair and eyes as dark as his father’s had been. For a while everyone had thought that despite his rough-and-ready looks Byron would step neatly into his grandfather’s hand-tooled oxfords.
But that was before he’d ventured to Tyler, Wisconsin, three years ago. After that trip, all bets were off.
“Thank you, Mrs. Redbacker.”
She retreated without comment.
Byron had forgotten his annoyance with Henry Murrow. Now all he could think about was the letter on his desk. It was addressed to Mr. Byron Forrester and Mrs. Ann Forrester, c/o Pierce & Rothchilde, Publishers. At a guess, the handwriting looked feminine. It certainly wasn’t Cliff’s.
“Oh, God,” Byron breathed.
Something had happened to Cliff, and now here was the letter informing his younger brother and mother of the bad news.
Nora... Nora Gates had found out who Byron was and had decided to write.
Not a chance. The letter wasn’t big enough to hold a bomb. And the scrawl was too undisciplined for precise, would-be spinster Eleanora Gates, owner of Gates Department Store in downtown Tyler, Wisconsin. She was the last person Byron wanted to think about now.
He tore open the envelope.
Inside was a simple printed card inviting him and his mother to the wedding of Clifton Pierce Forrester and Mary Elizabeth Baron the Saturday after this in Tyler.
A letter bomb would have surprised Byron less.
There was a note attached.
Cliff’s doing great and I know he wants to see you both. Please come. I think it would be best if you just showed up, don’t you?
Liza
A hoax? This Liza character had neglected to provide a return address or a phone number, and the invitation didn’t request a reply. The wedding was to take place at the Fellowship Lutheran Church. To find out more, presumably, Byron would have to head to Wisconsin.
Was that what Liza Baron wanted?
Who the hell was she?
Was Cliff getting married?
At a guess, Byron thought, his brother didn’t know that Miss Liza Baron had fired off an invitation to the sedate Providence offices of Pierce & Rothchilde, Publishers.
Byron leaned back in his leather chair and closed his eyes.
Tyler, Wisconsin.
A thousand miles away and three years later and he could still feel the warm sun of a Midwest August on his face. He could see the corn standing tall in the rolling fields outside Tyler and the crowd gathered in the town square for a summer band concert. He could hear old Ellie Gates calling out the winner of the quilt raffle, to raise money for repairing the town clock. First prize was a hand-stitched quilt of intersecting circles. Byron later learned that its design was called Wisconsin Wedding, a variation on the traditional wedding ring design created by Tyler’s own quilting ladies.
And he could hear her laugh. Nora’s laugh. It wasn’t her fake spinsterish laugh he heard, but the laugh that was soft and free, unrestrained by the peculiar myths that dominated her life.
He’d gone to Tyler once and had almost destroyed Nora Gates. He’d almost destroyed himself. And his brother. How could he go back?
Please come...
Byron had waited for years to be invited back into his older brother’s life. There’d been Vietnam, Cambodia, a hospital in the Philippines, sporadic attempts at normality. And then nothing. For five years, nothing.
Now this strange invitation—out of the blue—to his brother’s wedding.
A woman named Alyssa Baron had helped the burned-out recluse make a home at an abandoned lodge on a lake outside town. Was Liza Baron her daughter?
So many questions, Byron thought.
And so many dangers. Too many, perhaps.
He picked up his last dart. If he or his mother—or both—just showed up in Tyler after all these years, what would Cliff do? What if their presence sent him back over the edge? Liza Baron might have good intentions, but did she know what she was doing in making this gesture to her fiancé’s estranged family?
But upsetting Cliff wasn’t Byron’s biggest fear. They were brothers. Cliff had gone away because of his love for and his loyalty to his family. That much Byron understood.
No, his biggest fear was of a slim, tawny-haired Tylerite who’d fancied herself a grand Victorian old maid at thirty, in an era when nobody believed in old maids. What would proper, pretty Nora Gates do if he showed up in her hometown again?
Byron sat up straight. “She’d come after you, my man.” He fired his dart. “With a blowtorch.”
The pointed tip of the dart penetrated the polished mahogany paneling with a loud thwack, missing Henry Murrow’s nose by a good eight inches.
The Nora Gates effect.
He was probably the only man on earth who knew that she wasn’t anything like the refined, soft-spoken spinster lady she pretended she was. For that, she hated his guts. Her parting words to him three years ago had been, “Then leave, you despicable cad.”
Only Nora.
But even worse, he suspected he was the only man who’d ever lied to her and gotten away with it. At least so far. When he’d left Tyler three years ago, Nora hadn’t realized he’d lied. And since she hadn’t come after him with a bucket of hot tar, he assumed she still didn’t realize he had.
If he returned to Tyler, however, she’d know for sure.
And then what?
* * *
“MISS GATES?”
Nora recognized the voice on the telephone—it was that of Mrs. Mickelson in china and housewares, around the corner from Nora’s office on the third floor. For a few months after Aunt Ellie’s death three years ago, the staff at Gates Department Store hadn’t quite known how to address the young Eleanora Gates. Most had been calling her Nora for years, but now that she was their boss that just wouldn’t do. And “Ms. Gates” simply didn’t sound right. So they settled, without any discussion that Nora knew about, on Miss Gates—the same thing they’d called her aunt. It was as if nothing had changed. And in many ways, nothing had.
“I have Liza Baron here,” Mrs. Mickelson said.
Nora settled back in the rosewood chair Aunt Ellie had bought in Milwaukee in 1925. “Oh?”
“She’s here to fill out her bridal registry, but...well, you know Miss Baron. She’s grumbling about feudalistic rituals. I’m afraid I just don’t know what to say.”
“Send her into my office,” Nora said, stifling a laugh. Despite her years away from Tyler, Liza Baron obviously hadn’t changed. “I’ll be glad to handle this one for you.”
Claudia Mickelson made no secret of her relief as she hung up. It wasn’t that Nora was any better equipped for the task of keeping Liza Baron happy. It was, simply, that should Liza screech out of town in a blue funk and get Cliff Forrester to elope with her, thus denying its grandest wedding since Chicago socialite Margaret Lindstrom married Tyler’s own Judson Ingalls some fifty years before, it would be on Nora’s head.
Five minutes later, Mrs. Mickelson and the unlikely bride burst into Nora’s sedate office. Mrs. Mickelson surrendered catalogs and the bridal registry book, wished Liza well and retreated. Liza plopped down on the caned chair in front of the elegant but functional rosewood desk. Wearing a multicolored serape over a bright orange top and skinny black leggings, Liza Baron was as stunning and outrageous and completely herself as Nora remembered. That she’d fallen head over heels in love with the town’s recluse didn’t surprise Nora in the least. Liza Baron had always had a mind of her own. Anyway, love was like that. It was an emotion Nora didn’t necessarily trust.
“This was all my mother’s idea,” Liza announced.
“It usually is.” Nora, a veteran calmer of bridal jitters, smiled. “A bridal register makes life much easier for the mother of the bride. Otherwise, people continually call and ask her for suggestions of what to buy as a wedding gift. It gets tiresome, and if she gives the wrong advice, it’s all too easy for her to be blamed.”
Liza scowled. There was talk around town—not that Nora was one to give credence to talk—that Liza just might hop into her little white car and blow out of town as fast and suddenly as she’d blown in. Not because she didn’t love Cliff Forrester, but because she so obviously did. Only this morning Nora had overheard two members of her staff speculating on the potential effects on Liza’s unusual fiancé of a big wedding and marrying into one of Tyler’s first families. Would he be able to tolerate all the attention? Would he bolt? Would he go off the deep end?
“Well,” Liza said, “the whole thing strikes me as sexist and mercenary.”
Liza Baron had always been one to speak her mind, something Nora admired. She herself also valued directness, even if her own manner was somewhat more diplomatic. “You have a point, but I don’t think that’s the intent.”
“You don’t see anybody dragging Cliff down here to pick out china patterns, do you?”
“No, that wouldn’t be the custom.”
It was enough of a shock, Nora thought, to see Liza Baron with a catalog of Wedgwood designs in front of her. But if Liza was somewhat nontraditional, Cliff Forrester—Well, for years townspeople had wondered if they ought to fetch an expert in posttraumatic stress disorder from Milwaukee to have a look at him, make sure his gray matter was what it should be. He’d lived alone at Timberlake Lodge for at least five years, maybe longer. He’d kept to himself for the most part and, as far as anyone knew, had never hurt anyone. Nora had long ago decided that most of the talk about him was just that: talk. She figured he was a modern-day hermit pretty much as she was a modern-day spinster—by choice. It didn’t mean either of them had a screw loose. Cliff, of course, had met Liza Baron and chosen to end his isolation. Nora had no intention of ending hers.
“If I were in your place,” she went on, “I’d consider this a matter of practicality. Do you want to end up with three silver tea services?”
Liza shuddered. “I don’t want one silver tea service.”
Nora marked that down. “When people don’t know what the bride and groom want, they tend to buy what they would want. It’s human nature. It’s to be a big wedding, isn’t it?”
“Mother’s doing. She’s got half of Tyler coming. Cliff and I would have been happy getting married by a justice of the peace without any fanfare.”
That, Nora felt, wasn’t entirely true. Cliff no doubt dreaded facing a crowd, but would do it for Liza—and for her mother, too, who’d been his only real friend for years. But in Nora’s estimation, Liza Baron relished being the center of attention again in Tyler. It wasn’t that she was spoiled or snobby; she was still getting used to having finally come home to Tyler at all, never mind planning to marry and stay there. It was more that she wasn’t sure how she was supposed to act now that she was home again. She needed to find a way to weave herself into the fabric of the community on her own terms. The wedding was, in part, beautiful vivacious Liza’s way of welcoming the people of her small hometown back into her life. As far as Nora was concerned, it was perfectly natural that occasionally Liza would seem ambivalent, even hostile. In addition to the stress of a big church wedding, she was also coping with her once-tattered relationship with her mother, and all the gossip about the Ingalls and Baron families.
And that included the body that had turned up at the lake. But Nora wasn’t about to bring up that particular tidbit.
She discreetly glanced at the antique grandfather clock that occupied the corner behind Liza. Of the office furnishings, only the calendar, featuring birds of Wisconsin, had changed since Aunt Ellie’s day.
“Oh, all right,” Liza said with great drama, “I’m here. Let’s do this thing. The prospect of coping with stacks of plastic place mats with scenes of Wisconsin and a dozen gravy boats does give one pause.”
Gates carried both items Liza considered offensive. Nora herself owned a set of Wisconsin place mats. She used them for picnics and when the neighborhood children wandered into her kitchen for milk and cookies. Her favorite was the one featuring Tyler’s historic library. She didn’t tell Liza that she was bound to get at least one set of Wisconsin place mats. Inger Hansen, one of the quilting ladies, had bought Wisconsin place mats for every wedding she’d attended since they first came on the market in 1972. Nora had been in high school then, working at Gates part-time.
They got down to business. “Now,” Nora explained to her reluctant customer, “here’s how the bridal register works. You list your china, silverware and glassware patterns, any small appliances you want, sheets, towels, table linens. There are any number of variables, depending on what you and Cliff want.”
Liza wrinkled up her pretty face. She was, Nora saw, a terribly attractive woman. She herself was of average height and build, with a tendency to cuteness that she did her best to disguise with sophisticated—but not too chic—business clothes and makeup. She didn’t own a single article of clothing in pink, no flowered or heart-shaped anything, no polka dots, no T-shirts with pithy sayings, damned little lace. No serapes, no bright orange tops, no skinny black leggings. She preferred cool, subdued colors to offset her pale gray eyes and ash-blond hair, which she kept in a classic bob. Liza Baron, on the other hand, would look wild in anything. Cast them each in a commercial, and Judson Ingalls’s rebellious granddaughter would sell beer, Ellie Gates’s grandniece life insurance.
“Nora, Cliff doesn’t want anything. He’d be happy living in a damned cave.”
But, as Nora had anticipated, in the quiet and privacy of the third floor office, with its window overlooking the Tyler town square, Liza Baron warmed to her task. She briskly dismissed anything too cute or too simple and resisted the most expensive patterns Gates carried. She finally settled on an elegant and dramatic china pattern from England, American silver-plate flatware, a couple of small appliances, white linens all around, Brazilian knives and a special request to please discourage can openers. The stemware gave her the worst fits. Finally she admitted it was Waterford or nothing.
“Go for it,” Nora said, amused. She tried to picture Cliff Forrester drinking from a Waterford goblet and found—strangely—that she could. Had someone said he was from a prominent East Coast family? Like most people in Tyler, Nora knew next to nothing about the mysterious, quiet man who lived at run-down Timberlake Lodge.
Liza slumped back in the delicate caned chair. “Is it too late to elope?”
“People would still buy you gifts.”
Their work done, a silence fell between the two women. Despite her busy schedule, Nora was in no hurry to rush Liza out. The young woman had gone through a lot in the past weeks, and if the rumors circulating in the shops, restaurants and streets of Tyler were even remotely on target, she had more to endure. Falling in love with an outsider had certainly been enough to stimulate gossip, even undermine Liza’s beliefs about what she wanted out of her life. In Nora’s view, that right there was enough reason to steer clear of men: romance caused change.
It was as if Liza had read her mind. “You’ve never been married, have you, Nora?”
“No, I haven’t. I like my life just the way it is.”
Liza smiled. “Good for you. Have you ever been tempted?”
Nora’s hesitation, she was sure, was noticeable only to herself. “Nope.”
“Well, I certainly don’t believe a woman has to be married to be happy or complete.”
“But you’re happy with Cliff.”
“Yes.” Her smile broadened. “Yes, I am.”
Indeed, falling so completely in love with Cliff Forrester had already had an unmistakable effect on one of Tyler’s most rebellious citizens. Liza Baron, however, seemed much more willing to embrace change than Nora was. She seemed more at peace with herself than she had when she’d first blown back into town, if a little rattled at the prospect of a big Tyler wedding.
Nora shrugged. “Romance doesn’t have a positive effect on me, I’m afraid. It makes me crazy and silly... I lose control.”
Liza’s eyes widened in surprise, as if she’d never imagined Nora Gates having had anything approaching a romance, and she grinned. “Isn’t that the whole idea?”
“I suppose for some, but I—” Nora stopped herself in the nick of time. What was she saying? “Well, I’m speaking theoretically, of course. I’ve never... I’m not one for romantic notions.” A fast change of subject was in order. “How’re the renovations at the lodge coming?”
“Fabulously well. Better than I expected, really, given all that’s gone on. You should come out and take a look.”
“I’d love to,” Nora said, meaning it. As if marriage and her return to Tyler weren’t stressful enough, Liza had also come up with the idea of renovating Timberlake Lodge, a monumental project Nora personally found exciting. Unfortunately, the work had led to the discovery of a human skeleton on the premises. Not the sort of thing one wanted percolating on the back burner while planning one’s wedding.
“Anytime. And thank you, Nora.”
“Oh, you don’t need to thank me—”
Liza shook her head. “No, I’ve been acting like a big baby and you’ve been so nice about it. The store looks great, by the way. Your aunt would be proud, I’m sure. You’ve added your own touches, but retained the flavor and spirit everyone always remembers about Gates. When I think I’m living in the boondocks, I just walk past your windows and realize there is indeed taste and culture here in Tyler.” She hesitated a moment, something uncharacteristic of Judson Ingalls’s youngest grandchild. “Ellie Gates was quite a character. She’s still missed around here.”
“She is,” Nora agreed simply.
“Well, I should be off.” Liza rose with a sudden burst of energy. “I guess I’ll go through with this big fancy wedding. If nothing else, Tyler could use a good party right now.”
Now Liza Baron was sounding like herself. Nora swept to her feet. “You’re probably right about that. I suppose you haven’t heard anything more from the police?”
Liza shook her head. “Not a word.”
Without saying so outright, they both knew they were talking about what Nora had begun to refer to as the Body at the Lake. The Tyler Citizen reported every new and not-so-new development in the case, but the rumors were far more speculative. Given her ownership of Tyler’s only department store, her membership on the town council and her circumspect nature, Nora was privy to considerable amounts of local gossip, which she never repeated. Certainly anyone could have been buried at the long-abandoned lodge. Someone from out of town or out of state could have driven up, plucked a body out of the trunk, dug a hole and dropped it in. But townspeople’s imaginations were fired by the idea that the body was that of Tyler’s most famous—actually, its only—missing person, Margaret Alyssa Lindstrom Ingalls. People said Liza was a lot like her flamboyant grandmother. Bad enough, Nora thought, that Liza had to cope with having a dead body dug up in her yard. Worse that it could be that of her long-lost grandmother.
“I’ll continue to hope for the best,” Nora said diplomatically.
Liza’s smile this time was feeble. “Thank you.”
But before she left, she spun around one more time, serape flying. “Oh, I almost forgot. Cliff specifically wanted me to ask if you were coming to the wedding. You are, aren’t you?”
“Well, yes, I’d love to, but I’ve never even met Cliff—”
“Oh, he’s seen you around town and admires your devotion to Tyler and...how did he put it? Your balance, I think he said. He says if he has to endure a huge wedding, he should at least have a few people around who won’t make him feel uncomfortable.” Liza’s eyes misted, her expression softening. She looked like a woman in love. “God knows he’s trying. He’s still uneasy around people—I guess you could call this wedding a trial by fire. Not only will half of Tyler be there, but there’s a chance his family’ll come, too.”
“I didn’t realize he had any family.”
“A mother and a brother.” Liza bit the corner of her mouth, suddenly unsure of herself. “They’re from Providence.”
“Providence, Rhode Island?” Nora asked, her knees weakening.
“Umm. Real East Coast mucky-mucks.”
Byron Sanders, the one man who’d penetrated Nora’s defenses, had been from Providence, Rhode Island. But that had to be a coincidence. That wretched cad couldn’t have anything to do with a man like Cliff Forrester.
“Are they coming?” Nora asked.
Liza cleared her throat hesitantly. “Haven’t heard. From what I gather, our wedding’s pretty quick for a Forrester, so who knows?”
“Cliff must be anxious—”
“Oh, no, I don’t think so. He hasn’t had much to do with his family since he moved out here. Nothing at all, in fact. He takes all the blame, but I don’t think that’s fair. He didn’t tell them where he was for a couple of years, but when he did finally let them know, he told them to leave him alone. But they could have bulldozed their way back into his life if they’d really wanted to.” She grinned. “Just like I did.”
“But Cliff did invite them?”
“Well, not exactly.”
Nora didn’t need a sledgehammer to get the point. “You mean you did? Without his knowledge?”
“Yep.”
Now that, Nora thought, could get interesting.
“I guess we’ll just have to see how it goes,” Liza added.
With a polite, dismissive comment, Nora promised Liza that she and her staff would steer people in the right direction when they came to Gates hunting for an appropriate wedding gift. Liza looked so relieved and happy when she left that Nora felt much better. Why on earth was she worrying about Byron Sanders, just because he and Cliff Forrester were from the same state? Rhode Island wasn’t that small. No, that weasel was just a black, secret chapter in her life.
She tucked the bridal register under her arm to return to Claudia Mickelson. She did love a wedding—as long as it wasn’t her own.
