Savilla handed me her key card. “There should be a dolly right inside the cellar door. Take the staff elevator so you don’t have to carry it up the stairs.”
I closed one eye, which Savilla rightfully took to mean that I didn’t remember how to get to the elevator.
“Go back down the same hall but this time take a right and then a sharp left.” Savilla tapped at the steering wheel. These directions were rote memory to her, and I think both of us were aware of the strangeness of me not knowing how to navigate my own home. “You sure you don’t want me to come with you?”
“I got it,” I tried to reassure her. “I’ll call you if I get confused.”
I climbed out of the car and clenched my hands together, blowing warmth into them in the frigid night air.
I started toward the short staircase that ascended to the grand entrance—but then I spotted something in my periphery. It was in the bushes, and the shape of the thing made me pause.
I peered over the stone balustrade, letting my eyes adjust to the darkness below. I blinked several times as I stared at the lump in the holly bushes that the landscapers had planted for the holiday season, and as my eyes adjusted, a figure came into focus.
This was a man in a priest collar, the very person who was supposed to marry Anton and Lacy tomorrow: Reverend Todd Anderson, as he’d introduced himself, with a thick Boston accent. At thirty-something, he was much younger than the woman he was dating, which just happened to be Anton’s mother, Patty Swanson.
All of these details rushed at me at once as I tried to fit the factof this man’s body in the bushes into the puzzle of this weekend, which was supposed to be such a joyous occasion.
My first thought, one that I would later find ridiculous, was how odd it was that he would take a nap in the snow. His eyes were closed, and I could almost make out a film of ice already coating his eyelashes. His head of dark black hair was sprinkled with the newly fallen snow.
I blinked, trying to recall whether or not I’d seen the man at all during the rehearsal dinner. I was sure I had—at least at the beginning of the night. Yeah, that was right. He’d started the evening by reading a blessing that Anton’s mother had insisted on, and then he’d sat beside her, rubbing the back of her hand with his thumb, the gesture seeming obscene for many reasons: their age difference; the fact that Anton’s parents’ divorce wasn’t yet final; and his, well, supposed priestliness.
Then, after dinner had been served and the toasts had begun, Todd Anderson was… Huh, I couldn’t remember. But we’d been sitting at opposite ends of the table, and as soon as Aunt DeeDee had finished her toast, the one that Momma would’ve given, I ended up sobbing into a wad of toilet paper in a bathroom stall. All of that meant that the last time I’d really noticed him must’ve been two hours ago, at the start of dinner.
I stared down at the body, realizing that regardless of whether or not I remembered seeing him leave, he was definitely here now, and he wasn’t sleeping peacefully. Nope, he was dead. Dead as a doornail, as Dickens had once written in his holiday morality tale.
I shook away my scattered thoughts. I needed to focus.
I crouched down to study the figure and take his pulse for confirmation. The new perspective allowed me to notice for the first time that he was contorted at an awkward angle, suggesting he’d fallen from a height: one leg was bent in an unnatural direction and the head was twisted to the side as if he’d turned to respond to someone calling his name. An arm was outstretched as if the man were about to wave it up and down to make a snow angel, but his face was blank, the thin lips set in an unremarkableline. Thankfully, his eyes were closed, though one appeared to be creeping open, the fixed pupil visible. His white clerical collar peeked from beneath a navy winter jacket—a tailored one, from the look of it.
I stepped even closer, into the snow cushioning the mulch around the red holly bushes, and I almost lost my footing as the toe of my boot caught on a stem. The Rose Palace had been named for the swamp rose bushes that grew wild around the property, and over the years the Finches, the owners, had tamed the plant, showcasing the pink petals on most of the branding for their home and the annual pageant they hosted. But every December without fail, landscapers lined the front of the house with festive greenery, the Finches spending a small fortune to switch out the plants for holiday visitors. With the wedding festivities this winter season, and with the impending reopening of The Rose as a hotel, Savilla had splurged on the old tradition.
In the freezing cold, I bent closer to move the clerical collar and feel the man’s carotid artery. I counted for thirty seconds. I waited a full minute. I placed a hand in front of his nose, his mouth, waiting for any kind of breath. Nothing.
I glanced around the body. I didn’t immediately see any blood, and at first there seemed to be no visible marks on the skin. But when I bent even closer to his face, I saw a two-inch bruise along the right side of his jaw. I would’ve assumed it was from the fall, but mottled yellow and purpling had begun around the injury, reminding me of how I’d watched my boyfriend and our local sheriff, Charlie Strong, pummel him to the icy ground about twenty-four hours ago during the bachelor party.
Oh Lord, this does not look good.
As I crouched, Savilla left the running car and started toward me. She’d been unable to see what I was doing from her vantage point in the car and, anyway, was likely scrolling Instagram videos of babies. Something must’ve caught her attention because now as she stomped forward, blowing warmth into her hands, she frowned at me from the driveway. “What in the world isgoing on?”
I poked my head above the plant line and pointed down at the body that had landed face up on the holly bushes, noticing again the layer of snow was coating the man’s clothing. In a few hours, he would be part of the unblemished white landscape.
Savilla hurried forward and gasped as she reached my side. “Oh my God!” Her eyes darted, her words coming out haltingly when she finally spoke. “Is that… is that the priest?”
“Reverend Todd,” I confirmed. “That’s what he said to call him.”
“But I don’t understand,” Savilla said, struggling for words. “How did he get…here?”
I heard a noise and glanced up to see Charlie poking his head over the railing of the balcony.
At first, the image didn’t compute.
Without thinking, I shouted up, “What are you doing here?”
“The security company called me,” he yelled back, before shaking his head in exasperation. He didn’t have time to explain. “Hold on. I’ll be right down.”
In what seemed to be seconds later, he raced out of the front door of the house, breathing hard.
“I came to check the house and while I was making my rounds”—Charlie was looking all around as he rushed toward us—“I heard someone screaming inside his room. His door was locked, so I busted it down. Is he okay?”
