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in your dress,” Stella said calmly.
    “But Ian’s coming tomorrow morning!”
    “That gives us twenty-four hours to get this straightened out, doesn’t it? And he can deal with a little stubble. I don’t think he’ll much mind.”
    “Oh, thank you, thank you,” Dotty sniffled. “It don’t even matter if you can’t get them all back here for the rehearsal dinner, we’ll manage without them. As long as they’re here for the wedding.”
    “I hate to say it,” Chrissy said, “but, Dotty, you don’t even seem to like most of them.”
    “Well, that’s true,” Dotty said, ticking names off her fingers. “Taffy’s just got worse over the years, Divinity’s so stuck-up I can’t believe no one’s put an arrow through her backside yet, and just being in a room with Marty for fifteen minutes makes me feel like I been dipped in cooking oil. But they’re family, you know, so even if I don’t like them, I got to love them.”
    “Mmm-hmm,” Stella and Chrissy agreed in unison.
    After all, they had families of their own.

CHAPTER FOUR
    STELLA LET CHRISSY DRIVE, A RISKY proposition, so she could make a few calls. Mercy Hospital was on the southern end of Kansas City, only forty-five minutes away, but the way Chrissy drove it was liable to take twice that unless she got distracted by conversation, in which case she tended to take her eyes off the road and let her foot press farther and farther down on the gas pedal until she was tearing down the fast lane guided by nothing but luck.
    Stella’s first call was to Novella Glazer, the most voluble of the Green Hat Ladies, a scrum of octogenarian ladies who’d planned to form an outpost of the better-known Red Hat Society until Gracie Lewis’s husband offered up half a dozen brand-new John Deere promotional ball caps from his feed store. If there was one thing the Green Hat Ladies knew, it was that free is a bargain any day of the week, and they proudly sported their chapeaus at the daily lunch meeting at the Prosper Popeye’s Chicken.
    But thriftiness was the least of the ladies’ virtues. They were also wise and generous and keen for gossip. Stella made a practice of calling on them for help in her thornier cases. If there was a rumor that needed to be backed up, a relationship that needed untangling, an event that needed to be put in historical context, you couldn’t find a better panel of experts.
    Crowdsourcing, Prosper style.
    Novella picked up after only a couple of rings. “How’s the weather down there, Stella?” she asked without bothering to say hello. “I’m trying to decide if I should bring the fox.”
    Novella was well known for her ancient fox stole, one end of which sported a moldering tail and the other, the fox’s head, which appeared to have been prepared fairly early in the taxidermist’s career. Stella herself had sat behind Novella in church staring into the thing’s beady glass eyes, unable to tear her gaze away from the clumsily stitched leer, which gave the fox an air of lechery.
    “I’d say you’re good without it, since there ain’t a speck of rain in the forecast and it’s heading up toward seventy today, but I got bigger fish for you to fry.”
    “You got a new case?” Novella demanded eagerly. “Who’s done what now?”
    That was the downside of enlisting the Green Hat Ladies—they expected to be rewarded with full disclosure. It was a tricky dance, though they had proved discreet when needed.
    “I can’t talk about it yet,” Stella hedged. The minute the ladies got to the resort, they’d not only ferret out the details of the camping tragedy, but communicate them all to those back home in Prosper. Delaying the news as long as possible was the least Stella could do for the Flycock family. “But listen, there’s a few alterations need done on Dotty’s gown. And a few of the bridesmaids’. Nothing too major,” Stella lied. “And you’re just so good with a needle.”
    “Stella, you know I’d love to, I