A Rip Roaring Good Time (33 page)

I was surprised but greatly relieved to see the detective. Lexie told me later she'd begun to worry at the restaurant about the plan we'd set into motion. When Wendy had excused herself to use the restroom, she'd taken the opportunity to tell the rest of the party briefly what had happened and the real reason Rip and I had not joined them for supper.

Lexie related to us that when Wendy had returned to the table, Wyatt had made a show of putting his phone in his pocket, said, "Sorry folks, but duty calls" and left the restaurant just as the waitress was handing out their drink orders. Wyatt made arrangements for Veronica to ride back to the inn with Lexie and told her he'd stop by to pick her up later.

Wendy hadn't seemed to question Wyatt's excuse to leave the restaurant, which was basically the truth anyway. With a sense of urgency Wyatt had driven to the inn as fast as he safely could. The detective felt he should be there if the confrontation took a bad turn. And the seasoned cop's instincts were correct. The confrontation had taken a very bad turn, indeed.

Chapter 20
 

Lexie explained to me later what had transpired to bring Detective Johnston to the scene at that precise moment. As soon as Wyatt had left the restaurant, Wendy had turned to her mother, and said, "Okay, spill the beans, Mom. I want to know what's going on. I know you well enough to know you're so uptight right now, you won't be able to eat one bite of your food. If there's something going on that's pertinent to the murder case, I think I deserve to know about it."

Lexie had then reached down into her purse and activated the voice recorder on her phone purely on a whim. She played the recording for Rip and me the following morning. We'd listened as Lexie told Wendy about our suspicions that her best friend, Mattie, could have been responsible for Trotter's death. Lexie had felt her daughter really did deserve to know the truth, considering the impact it would have on her. Of course, at the time, Lexie was still under the impression Rip and I were at the inn questioning Mattie about any involvement she might have had in the crime. Lexie knew nothing about what had taken place with Alice Runcan in the interim.

Listening to the recording, we'd heard Wendy say, "Although I don't want to believe it's even possible, it could account for why Mattie's been acting so strangely this week. She told me that she had warned Trotter at the party he'd better leave before I arrived or she'd tell Andy what he did to me, and Andy would make mince-meat of him. Then, when he didn't leave, she sent him a text a few minutes later to remind him of her threat. Naturally, Mattie joked about it, saying she would have never had the guts to do it, knowing I didn't really want Andy to know about the assault. But maybe she'd actually given Trotter a more menacing threat, and couldn't resist his daring her to do it."

We then heard Lexie's voice ask, "Why didn't you tell us about that exchange of texts between Mattie and Trotter?"

To which Wendy replied, "I guess, in retrospect, I should have mentioned it to you all earlier, but I couldn't imagine that my friend, who I thought I knew as well as I knew myself, could ever do something so vicious."

Lexie had then suggested they leave before they placed their meal order, and get back to the inn quickly. She'd told them we still had the barbecue stuff we'd picked up earlier, which we could all eat later as a late supper.

With an apology to the waitress and a ten-dollar tip for her trouble, the remaining five in the party had rushed out to their vehicles and arrived at the inn just a minute or two behind Wyatt. Earlier, they had carpooled to the restaurant in Lexie and Stone's vehicles and Wyatt had met them there in his patrol car. That decision had turned out to be a good one.

With Veronica in the passenger seat, Lexie told me she hadn't even bothered to check her speed as she rushed back to the inn. Her little VW Bug sped through downtown Rockdale, just a yellow streak racing down Main Street, with Stone's truck nearly glued to her bumper.

When I had turned in surprise at Wyatt's voice shouting, "Freeze," it seemed like mere seconds before the rest of the dinner party had flooded into the room. The look on Lexie's face will forever be imprinted in my memory. The scene when they entered the room was that of Rip lying across the piano bench with blood streaming down the right leg of his pants, Mattie on the floor, still hiding under the grand piano, Lori dabbing at a speck of blood on her ankle where a shard of glass from the shattered bowl had cut her, and Alice wailing as she clutched her left knee. To top it off, I was standing in the center of the room like one of Charlie's Angels with the Glock pointed at the helpless restaurant owner on the floor. I'm not sure what had been going through my mind at that moment. But for the record, I was ready to defend my husband, Mattie Hill, Lori Piney, and myself if the sobbing, wounded lady suddenly jumped to her feet and brandished a second revolver she'd had hidden in her no doubt lacy and revealing brassiere.

Wyatt had immediately taken control of the situation. He called the police station for assistance, requesting EMTs and a couple of ambulances. Then he began to apply pressure to the gaping hole in Rip's hip from the close-range shot, to stop the profuse bleeding. He looked over at me and said, "He's going to be all right, Rapella."

Seconds later, Lexie approached me with a questioning expression. I nodded and said, "It's over, Lexie. And Rip's got all the proof we'll need recorded on his phone."

With a smile that spoke of mixed emotions, Lexie said, "I'm glad you've had your wits about you better than I have this week. Let's keep our earlier suspicions about Mattie just between the six of us. I wouldn't want Mattie to find out we ever doubted her honesty and integrity."

"Absolutely!" I agreed. I put my arm around Lexie as the ramifications of the situation had caused Lexie's eyes to pool. Through her tears she thanked me for all Rip and I had done on her behalf.

"I'd do it all again, and I know Rip would too. At least the old bull-headed turd will have to have his hip fixed now, whether he likes it or not."

She smiled at my remark and I heard my husband mumble something that's not fit to repeat. I gave Lexie a tender pat on her back and said, "I hope you aren't terribly upset, but for a short spell you had your great-grandma's bowl back, only to have it shattered to pieces in the ensuing chaos."

"Oh, well. I thought it was gone forever anyway, and had already come to terms with losing it. Not to mention, family heirloom or not, I'd trade it for my freedom and Mattie's innocence any day. So, my friend, considering the ramifications of all that's gone on this week, that old bowl is, as Rip would say, no big rip! But it breaks my heart to think of Alice Runcan's future. She must have been tormented for years by whatever mental illness has taken control of her mind."

"I had a feeling you'd see it that way, my friend. I hate to use a cliché ─ "

"Of course you do."

"But the poor girl's madder than a wet hen, and maybe that will turn out to be another stroke of good fortune for Alice, regarding her future."

Wyatt tended to the injured with Mattie, a registered nurse, instructing him on how to best assist my husband. In between directions to the detective, she did her best to care for the bloody laceration to Lori's leg. She applied an antibiotic cream and gauze to the wound, items Lexie had brought her from the medicine cabinet in her bathroom. After Lori's inquiry, Mattie assured the young lady that no stitches would be necessary to close the gash which was not as deep or severe as it appeared.

When the room became still as the gravity of the situation sank in, I broke the eerie silence by saying, "Well, Wendy, Rip, and I wanted to attend your birthday party to watch you be surprised by your family and friends. And if everything that happened this past week didn't surprise you, nothing will!"

"Speaking of which," Andy said. "I know this is not the most appropriate time to do this, but it might be the last time we're all in one room at the same time. And it's only a matter of minutes before the room fills up with cops and medical personnel. Wendy, my love, I want to take care of something I'd intended to do at your surprise party and never got the opportunity."

He approached his girlfriend and took her hand. Andy then dropped down on one knee before he spoke again.

"Wendy, you have made me the happiest man in the world. I love you with all my heart, and I'd like nothing better than to spend the rest of my life with you. With your mother's, and my Uncle Stone's blessing, Wendy Marie Starr, will you do me the great honor of becoming my wife, to have and to hold from this day forward?"

Through glistening eyes, Wendy also used words from the traditional wedding vows to reply, "I'd love nothing better than to be married to my best friend, in good times and in bad, in richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, until death do we part. Just promise me, sweetheart, that you won't be in any hurry to have to honor that last one."

The room erupted into laughter, mixed with applause and delighted congratulations. Even Alice clapped and cheered as she watched Wendy get engaged to the love of her life.

An odd sensation swept through the room at that moment. Two life-altering events had just occurred within minutes of each other and the two emotions the events invoked were polar opposites of each other.

We'd all just learned an emotionally and mentally disturbed young woman was going to be held responsible for a ghastly murder, and also that Wendy would soon marry the man of her dreams, Andy Van Patten. Nearly everyone in the room smiled through their tears. The tears in everyone's eyes were from overwhelming sorrow and overwhelming happiness, and in Rip's case, quite a bit of pain, as well, all mixed into one bittersweet moment.

* * *

Lexie and Stone had offered to let us stay at the inn until Rip had completed rehab and was fit to drive again. As much as we appreciated their offer, we'd opted to get a monthly site in a nearby RV Park. The campground was only two blocks from the physical therapy clinic Rip was going to be treated at, and the park owner agreed to let me help out in the office for free rent. And as I said at the beginning of my story, "free" was one of my favorite words.

Compared to the monstrous Alexandria Inn, our abode was tiny and without frills and thrills. There were no mints on our pillows at bedtime, no baskets of fresh fruit on our nightstand, no fancy four-course meals, and no hosts ready to tend to our every need and desire. But to Rip and me it was home. You should know by now how much I hate to use clichés, but home is definitely where the heart is. And to us, our hearts were in the comfortable old Chartreuse Caboose, complete now with a toilet that actually flushed, and no leaks, squeaks, or reeks to be found.

Even Dolly seemed to be content to be back in her favorite napping spot on the back of the couch. She was now spending most of her waking hours staring out the window at the finches and wrens flitting around a feeder the campground owners had hung on a branch of the Mimosa tree located next to our RV site.

* * *

I was sitting in a chair next to my husband's hospital bed. After a three-hour operation early that morning, Rip was bullet-free. Better yet, he'd come out of the surgery with a brand-spanking new artificial hip joint, like the one I'd been nagging him to get for months.

Lying on his hard and uncomfortable hospital bed, Rip turned slowly and tenderly in my direction. He looked at me for a few seconds before his face broke out in the most endearing smile I'd ever seen on a man. Then he said, "I've learned a thing or two about you over the years and I know that, because you were itching to know and couldn't stand the suspense, you asked either Lexie or Wendy what was in the wrapped package Alice brought to the inn last night. So, tell me, what was it?"

"Okay, you've got me there," I replied. "Alice Runcan's birthday gift to Wendy was a very ragged first-edition copy of Arthur Miller's
Death of a Salesman.
"

"Seriously?" Rip asked. I had to laugh at his usage of my new least favorite word.

When I nodded, he said, "How fitting! Now
I'm
itching to ask you something else, knowing without a doubt you will know the answer. What did Trotter Hayes do for a living?"

"According to Wendy, he owned a used car lot in St. Joseph with a rather shady reputation, just like its owner."

Rip chuckled and said, "Considering her gift, I think Ms. Runcan has got that insanity plea option in the bag!"

Even though it was no doubt highly insensitive and inappropriate, Rip started laughing so hard that he was groaning in pain at the same time. Naturally, his amusement cracked me up, and our rowdy laughter enticed one of the night shift nurses to stick her head in the door to make sure her patient was all right.