Kristin Hardy - Fortune's Woman / A Fortune Wedding

“I can see it’s Lloyd, honey. What happened to him?”

The screaming woman wobbled closer on her high heels. “She killed him. Look at her! She’s got blood all over her. Oh, Lloyd, baby.”

She began to wail as if her heart were being ripped out of her cosmetically enhanced chest. Julie would have liked to be a little sympathetic, but she didn’t fail to notice the other woman only began the heartrending sobs when a crowd started to gather.

Ross turned to her. “Julie, do you have a phone? Can you call 911?”

“Of course,” she answered. While she pulled her phone out of her pocket and started hitting buttons, she heard Ross take charge of the scene, ordering everybody to step back a couple dozen feet. In mere moments, it seemed the place was crawling with people.

The 911 operator had just answered when Julie saw a pair of police officers arrive. They must have been drawn to the commotion from other areas of the Spring Fling.

“This is Julie Osterman,” she said to the 911 dispatcher. “I was going to report a…an incident at the Spring Fling but you all are already here.”

“What sort of incident?” the dispatcher asked.

Julie was hesitant to use the word murder, but how could it be anything else? “I guess a suspicious death. But as I said, your officers are already here.”

“Tell me what you know anyway.”

The woman took what little information Julie could provide to relay to the officers, who were pushing the crowd even farther back.

When she hung up the phone with the dispatcher, she stood for a moment, not sure what to do, where to go. She disliked this sort of crowd scene, the almost avaricious hunger for information that seemed to seize people when something dramatic and shocking occurred nearby.

She wanted to slip away but it didn’t feel quite right, especially when she had been one of the first ones on the scene. She supposed technically she was a witness, though she hadn’t seen anything and knew nothing about what had happened.

Julie scanned the crowd, though she didn’t know what she was seeking. A familiar face, perhaps, someone who could help her make sense of this shocking development.

In the distance, she saw someone in a black Stetson just on the other side of the edge of light emanating from the art fair. He made no move to come closer to investigate the commotion, which she found curious. But when she looked again, he was gone.

“Oh, Lloyd! My poor Lloyd.”

The woman who had alerted them with her screams was nearly hysterical by now, standing just a few feet away from her and gathering more stares from the crowd. Julie watched her for a moment, then sighed and moved toward her.

Though she wanted to slap the woman silly for her hysterics—whether they were feigned or not—she supposed that wasn’t a very compassionate attitude. She could at least try to calm her down a little. It was the decent thing to do.

She reached out and took the other woman’s hand in hers. “Can I get you something? A drink of water, maybe?”

“Nooooo,” she sobbed. “I just want my Lloyd.”

Lloyd wasn’t going to belong to anyone again—not his pale, stunned-looking wife and not this voluptuous woman who grieved so vociferously for him.

“I’m Julie,” she said after a moment. “What’s your name?”

“Crystal. Crystal Rivers. Well, that’s not my real name.”

“Oh. It’s not?” she asked, with a perfectly straight face.

“It’s my stage name. I’m a dancer. My real name is Christina. Christina Crosby.”

“How about if I call you Chris?”

“Christy. That’s what people call me.”

Julie offered a smile, grateful that their conversation seemed to soothe the woman a bit—or at least distract her from the hysterics. “Okay, Christy. What happened? Can you tell me? All I know is that we heard you scream and came running and found him dead.”

“I’ll tell you what happened. She killed him. Frannie Fredericks killed my Lloyd.”

Julie frowned as the woman’s bitter words seemed to ring through the night air.

She still couldn’t quite believe it. She had always liked Frannie. The woman seemed to genuinely care about her volunteer work at the Foundation and she had always been friendly to Julie.

She supposed no one could really see inside the heart of someone else or know how they would respond when provoked, but Frannie had always seemed far too quiet and unassuming for Julie to accept that she had murdered her husband.

“How can you be so certain? Did you see her do it?”

“No. He was already dead when I came looking for him.” She sniffled loudly and pulled a bedraggled tissue from her ample cleavage. “We were supposed to meet here and take off to my place after his obligations at the stupid Spring Fling. He didn’t even want to come, but Lloyd had business tonight he had to take care of.”

Business at the Spring Fling? Who on earth tried to conduct business at a community celebration?

“What kind?” she asked.

“I don’t know. Something important. Someone he had to talk to, he said. Maybe Frannie. Maybe he told her he was going to divorce her for me. I don’t know. I just know she killed him. Now watch—her brother Ross and the rest of the Fortunes are going to cover it all up. They think they own this whole damn town.”

Julie shifted, uncomfortable with the other woman’s antagonism. She liked and respected all the Fortunes. Susan Fortune Eldridge was one of her closest friends and she adored Lily Fortune, who was the driving force behind the Fortune Foundation that had been founded in memory of her late husband.

“Ma’am? Are you the one who found the body?”

Julie turned and found Billy Addison, a Red Rock police officer with whom she had a slight acquaintance through the Foundation.

“I did,” Crystal waved her scarlet red nails like she was rodeo royalty riding around the arena. “My poor Lloyd. Have you arrested Frannie Fredericks yet?”

“Um, not yet. Let’s not jump the gun here, miss. We’re going to be taking statements for some time now. I’m going to need to ask you a few questions.”

“Anything. I’ll tell you whatever you need to know. But I don’t know why you need to ask anybody anything. It’s plain as my nose job that Frannie did it. Look at her—she’s got blood all over her.”

She let out a dramatic sob, more for effect than out of any real emotion, Julie thought, with unaccustomed cynicism.

“Lloyd was going to leave her skinny butt,” Crystal said. “She knew it and that must be why she killed him. That’s what I was just saying.”

“Do you know that for a fact, ma’am?” the officer asked her.

“I know they fought earlier today. On the phone. I was with Lloyd and I heard the terrible things she said to him. She called him a two-faced liar and a cheat and said as how she wasn’t going to put up with it anymore.”

“How did you hear her side of the conversation?” the officer asked. “Was she on speaker phone?”

Crystal gaped at him. “Um, maybe. I don’t remember. Or maybe she was just talking real loud.”

Or maybe the conversation never took place, Julie thought. She didn’t know what to believe—but she did know she shouldn’t be hearing any of this. Any affair between Lloyd Fredericks and Crystal Rivers was not something she wanted to know any more about.

She stepped away to leave the police officer to the interview. Still, Crystal wasn’t exactly being unobtrusive. Her words carried to Julie as she walked through the crowd.

“I just know Frannie made my poor Lloyd’s life a living hell. And now her brother’s going to cover it up. Watch and see if the Fortunes don’t all circle the wagons around her. You just watch and see.”