Wedding Bell Blunders: A Freshly Baked Cozy Mystery - Kathleen Suzette (parable of the sower read online TXT) 📗

She nodded and looked at Ed. “I told you so.”

He nodded. “You told me so.”

We headed back into the ballroom, and we all took our seats. “I hope nobody minds leftovers,” I said.

“Are you kidding? Leftovers are better than when you ate it the first time around,” Ed said as he helped himself to the fried fish.

“That’s what I was thinking,” I agreed.

Lucy passed a serving bowl to Jennifer, and everyone helped themselves. “I’m pretty sure I’m going to eat more than I should.”

Jennifer nodded. “Me too.”

“Alec, what’s going on with that young man that got sick yesterday?” Mama asked.

Alec reached for a pitcher of sweet tea and hesitated. “Well, unfortunately, he passed away this afternoon.”

“Oh my,” Mama said, shaking her head. “What a shame. Do they know what happened?”

He poured some sweet tea into his glass and nodded. “Looks like it’s a murder.”

“Why am I not surprised?” Thad asked, looking at me. “It’s like my mother draws murder to herself.”

I narrowed my eyes at him. “All right, boy,” I said. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. I had nothing to do with that murder or any other murder for that matter.”

He shrugged and helped himself to some potato salad. “All right, if that’s your story.”

I shook my head at him and turned to Alec. “So, any ideas?”

He shook his head. “Not at this point. I told Sam I would look into things.”

“Wait a minute. You'll look into things? Like, in the next day or two?”

He looked at me hesitantly. “Well, I thought that since we were going to put the honeymoon off for a day or two, it wouldn’t hurt to put it off for a few more days. Besides that, we didn’t have a lot of time to plan the honeymoon, so now we’ve got a few extra days to do that.”

He had a point. But that didn’t mean I liked it. I sighed. “All right, this will give me a few extra days to look up some of those small towns along the coast and plot out a better route.”

He nodded and helped himself to some fried clams and put them on his plate. “That sounds like a plan.”

“So Alec, do you have any idea what might have happened to Richard?” Jennifer asked, leaning past Dylan so she could see Alec at the head of the table.

Alec shook his head. “Not just yet.”

“You know what’s funny?” Lucy asked him. “I could have sworn that Richard had been fired from the catering company.”

“Oh?” Alec asked. “Why do you think that?”

She took a sip of her sweet tea and thought about it. “Well, if I remember right, Annie McMillan told me that he got into some trouble. She heard he was dealing drugs from the catering business.”

“Are you kidding me?” my brother Jake asked.

She shrugged. “That’s the rumor, anyway.”

“That’s the trouble with this town,” Alec said. “Too many rumors flying.”

Lucy nodded. “It seems that Richard got into some trouble in high school and served time in a juvenile detention facility. When he was released, he did all right for a while, but then he was back at it.”

“I went to school with Richard,” Thad said. “And he did get into trouble with drugs.”

“If he was using along with selling, then I can see where he might not have been able to get away from it. Drugs are hard to shake,” Shelby said and cut into a piece of fish on her plate.

“That’s a shame,” I said. “But I wonder where he got his hands on the medication he took?”

“Is it used recreationally?” Jake asked Alec.

Alec shook his head. “I’ve never heard of it, but sometimes people try different things. There are all kinds of crazy things that people have been known to abuse that I never would have considered somebody thinking they could get high on it.”

“So, suppose he had heard that you could get high off this medication. Maybe he tried it, and he took too much, and his blood sugar dropped too low for the doctors to be able to get it back up?” I asked. “Maybe it isn’t murder at all.”

Alec nodded. “At this point, anything’s possible. I’ll look into that angle, but I’ve never heard of anybody abusing this drug recreationally.”

I helped myself to the deep-fried clams. “If that isn’t what happened, then somebody had to have slipped it to him somehow. Is that what Sam Bailey is going on?”

He nodded. “That’s what Sam Bailey is going on.”

I felt bad that somebody as young as Richard Thomas had died, possibly because he did something foolish. But even worse was if somebody gave it to him on purpose. He was in his early twenties, and that was too young to die.

I looked at Lucy. “So Annie McMillan is who told you that he got fired from the catering company?”

She nodded. “She told me that almost a year ago if I remember right. It’s probably just gossip, of course. She said that he had gotten caught by the owner selling drugs in the back of the shop.”

“Well,” I said. “That would be scary. If he was selling drugs, then he was attracting all kinds of people that aren’t safe to have around.”

She nodded. “I asked her why Della Barnes didn’t call the police on him, but she said she wanted to handle it herself.”

“That’s taking a risk,” Alec said as he helped himself to some fried fish. “There’s no telling what might have happened. He could’ve gotten angry at her while under the influence, and he could have hurt her. Or worse.”

Della Barnes owned the catering company, and I agreed with Alec. It was foolish not to call the police. “That would be scary. I would have just called