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“I demand an arrest!” Brenda said, her voice growing sharper.
“If you don’t sit down,” Xavier said, his voice growing softer, “that arrest is gonna be you for disturbing the peace.”
Brenda drew a deep breath, which did amazing things for her cleavage, and sat down next to Lisa Livia. “Where’d you get that necklace?” she spat.
“It was a gift,” Lisa Livia snapped back.
Xavier sat down behind Brenda, next to Garth, who clearly wished he hadn’t.
Up at the front, Reverend Miller was now conferring with Jefferson Keyes. Jefferson finally shook his head and sat back down.
Reverend Miller drew himself up to his full rotund height. “I’m sorry,” he said, clearly not. “But I feel the irregularities present at this ceremony make it impossible for me to continue.”
Lisa Livia tensed, but Brenda smiled, showing her teeth.
The reverend flared his nostrils. “I don’t know what’s going on, but there are undercurrents here that make this wedding less than the holy occasion it should be.”
Agnes drew a deep calming breath, the way Dr. Garvin had taught her. I’m going to kick your pompous ass into the Blood River and let the flamingos and the gators fight over it, you dickless wonder.
Reverend Miller bowed his head. “Let’s all close with a prayer?—”
“Let’s not.”
Agnes looked at Lisa Livia, thinking for the moment that she’d broken her promise to Maria, but then she realized that Evie Keyes was standing up, pink daisy quivering with repressed emotion.
“If you don’t feel you can perform the wedding ceremony of my son, who will someday inherit a significant portion of the Keyes land and fortune,” Evie said, very distinctly, “then I understand. I’m just not sure he will.” She fixed the reverend with the iciest blue eyes since the Snow Queen, and the reverend froze. Understandably.
Go, Evie, Agnes thought.
“What the hell?” Brenda murmured under her breath, leaning forward.
The reverend turned and smiled weakly at Palmer, who did not smile back, which wasn’t surprising since Palmer hadn’t smiled since Thursday, but Agnes wasn’t about to tell Reverend Miller that.
The reverend turned back to Evie. “Can you assure me that nothing untoward is happening in occasion with this wedding?” he said, trying to work some sternness back into his voice.
“No,” Evie said, having no trouble at all lacing her voice with a lot of fuck you and earning Agnes’s undying respect in the process.
“Perhaps I was hasty,” the reverend was saying, going down in ignominious defeat.
No doubt about it, Agnes thought as Evie took her seat again.
Brenda made a little shrieking sound beside her, full of rage and frustration.
“Very well.” Reverend Miller nodded to the band, which struck up that goddamned flamenco music again, setting off Cerise and Hot Pink all over again.
“Stop that,” Agnes said, standing up, and the whole wedding now looked at her as she scowled at the band. “You, classical music from now on. If you can’t play that, you don’t get paid. You know the wedding march?”
“Of course we know the wedding march,” the bandleader said. “We had to learn the damn flamenco for this gig.”
Downer burst out laughing again.
“Grow up,” Agnes said, and he stopped. Then she nodded to the band, and it began the wedding march. “Jesus,” Lisa Livia said.
“If we’d had this at the country club—” Brenda began.
“Shut your thieving, murdering mouth,” Lisa Livia said, and Agnes thought, That’s fair, and turned to watch Maria come down the aisle.
Maria appeared at the top of the porch steps, unsmiling but lovely in flamingo pink, and Frankie paused beside her, too, beaming and majestic in tuxedo black, and they walked across the lawn together until they reached the edge of the chairs. Then somebody said, “Who the hell is that?” and Brenda turned, and gasped, “Frankie?” rising to her feet on the word as her face went paper white, and Frankie waved to Lisa Livia, and then made a gun out of his thumb and forefinger and shot Brenda.
