Read Engaged in Death (A Wedding Planner Mystery) for Free Online Page B

was right, he is hot. A teeny bit old but undeniably yummy.” Rachel pulled down her dress, which was riding up dangerously toward her hips.
    I snorted. “He’s five years older than me, tops.” I glanced in the car’s side mirror, donning my sunglasses so I wouldn’t see the damage the last few days had wrought on my face. And so my sister wouldn’t see my growing exasperation with her.
    “Right, like I said, he’s kind of old. But still adorable. I’d date him.”
    I let my sister’s comment pass. “Whatever. He’s certainly not very charming.” Though he was lovely to look at. Not that being attractive made him any less of a boor.
    Rachel dismissed my last remark with a wave of her hand. “Let’s go find your house.” She started the rental, as excited as a child on Christmas morning.
    “Sylvia’s house.” I couldn’t envision it ever really being “my” house, especially if I wasn’t going to keep it. “And Garrett Davies is right, not like I want to admit it. I’ll have to sell it.” No way could I hold on to a piece of property fettering me to my ex-fiancé and Port Quincy.
    “It’s still yours for now.”
    I directed my sister down a steep hill, away from Port Quincy’s downtown, through a little valley and up another sharp incline. The charming turn-of-the-century office buildings thinned and transitioned to small houses, then larger ones. The houses closer to town had been chopped up into apartments, but soon we reached streets where stately Victorians lined the road, set back from wide emerald lawns devoid of dandelions. A landscaper tended a rosebush in front of one house while another watered the lawn. We were clearly in the gentrified part of town.
    “So, fracking. What is that?” Rachel drove the rental like Danica Patrick, ignoring the TWENTY-FIVE MILES PER HOUR signs liberally posted all over town. I clutched the door with white knuckles and said a silent prayer.
    “It’s a way of getting natural gas out of the ground. Hydraulic fracturing. You drill by pumping water and chemicals into the earth under lots of pressure, and it breaks the shale rock so the gas trapped inside bubbles up. It’s made a lot of people around here very rich, and it’s generated a bunch of work for the law firm where I work.”
    “Chemicals?” Rachel wrinkled her nose. “That doesn’t exactly sound safe.”
    “Maybe that’s why Sylvia wouldn’t allow it on her property. I wouldn’t. But it’s a much-needed source of income, especially in places like Port Quincy.” We were about to miss our turn. “Take this left. Sycamore Street.”
    “You know where it is already?” Rachel accelerated the teeny Mini Cooper through a hard left turn.
    My stomach swooped.
    “Would it kill you to slow down? The house has been there for over a hundred years. It’ll still be there when we arrive.” I closed my eyes against her glare and counted to ten. “Back when Keith and I first got engaged, Sylvia offered us the house as a place to hold the wedding. We drove past it. You could barely see it from the street, the yard was so overgrown. Even from there, we could tell it was too far gone. We stayed in the car, and I didn’t have the heart to tell Sylvia. We thought it would upset her too much. That was over a year ago.” I shuddered, wondering how much further the house had deteriorated.
    “I’m sure we can spruce it up. A little paint, polish the floors . . .”
    “What do you mean by ‘we,’ Rachel? How long are you planning on staying?” I narrowed my eyes at my baby sister and thought of the copious luggage she’d brought with her. My heart plummeted.
    “Before you called off the wedding, I thought I could apartment-sit for you and Keith while you were on your honeymoon. Then I’d try to get a job in Pittsburgh.”
    I chuckled. “Keith would never have gone for that.” My laughter died in my throat. Why didn’t she need to go back to her job at the bakery and her classes at Pensacola