The Wedding Plan

  The Wedding Plan

  A Tess and Tilly Mystery

  by

  Kathi Daley

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2020 by Katherine Daley

  Version 1.0

  All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Next from Kathi Daley Books

  Chapter 1

  Monday, June 1

  The sun hung low in the sky as the search and rescue team carefully explored the heavily wooded terrain to the west of Glacier National Park. Ten-year-old Timmy Wilson had been missing for twenty-eight hours, and while the daytime temperatures had been mild, the overnight temperatures the previous night had dipped close to freezing. Tonight was supposed to be even colder.

  I walked slowly, focusing on the damp ground. My job, as given to me by the team leader, was to look for footprints, broken branches, flattened earth, anything that would indicate that Timmy might have passed this way. The dense underbrush seemed impenetrable and undisturbed, yet my lack of success in finding evidence that we might be on the right track hadn’t swayed me from my mission. I looked down at my feet, each step carefully placed, barely aware of my surroundings beyond the mud beneath my boots, until the hum from a nearby beehive warned me to pause and pay attention.

  I glanced at the bees and then looked around at the thick groves of trees that grew in this part of the forest. It had rained earlier in the week, and the ground was still damp in a lot of places. I’d hiked these trails many times in the past, so I was familiar with the overall terrain, which is why I was asked to join the team for today’s operation in the first place. I knew the thick trees and heavy underbrush of the lower elevation would eventually give way to a grassy meadow and a swift-moving river. I also knew the river, while gorgeous, tumbled and twisted through the area until it eventually met up with falls emptying into a high country lake. I had to admit that the falls were impressive. More than a hundred feet in height, they arched gracefully before rushing toward the rocky landscape below.

  Once again focusing on the terrain beneath my feet, I took a step and then another. Ferns grew in dense patches tangled with devil’s club, snowberry, wild rose, and other shrubs that thrived beneath the dappled shade of aspen, fir, pine, and cedar. I watched a rabbit dart out of sight as a deer that had been grazing in the distance scurried away when he’d noticed my approach. As it did every June, the forest teamed with life as winter gave way to summer, the snow melted, and the days grew longer. Normally, I’d enjoy a hike through the waking forest, but today, all I could think about was the frightened little boy who might not survive if we weren’t able to find him.

  Breathing deeply, I angled my head slightly to the left as others from the group I’d been assigned to moved just beyond my sightline. While we each worked independently, we’d all been assigned a similar task and shared a single goal: find a clue, any clue that would help us find the child whose life might very well depend on it.

  My good friend and new boss, Brady Baker, was away at a search and rescue training program in Missoula this week, and I’d been left in charge of the animal shelter during his absence. I received a call from the Kalispell Search and Rescue team, and when I found out about the search for Timmy, I’d offered to help. I don’t have my own search and rescue dog yet, but since I’m familiar with the terrain and a strong hiker, I’d been assigned to tag along with a team of canine handlers to provide an extra set of eyes.

  The search was extensive and had been conducted over some of the roughest terrains in the area. I hadn’t had the chance to rest or eat, or really do much of anything other than trail along behind the dogs and handlers I’d been assigned to for the past fourteen hours, and quite frankly, I was exhausted, but I understood the intensity of the search. A ten-year-old boy, alone in these woods without food or supplies, would be lucky to make it out alive if forced to endure a second night of near-freezing temperatures.

  “Tess. Tess Thomas,” someone called out to me from a location to my left.

  I turned my head but didn’t see the woman behind the voice, so I called back. “Here. I’m over here; near the little creek that feeds into the river.”

  I waited while whoever had called out to me made their way through the dense underbrush. When a petite dark-haired woman in khakis emerged, I waved to identify myself and then waited while she made her way in my direction.

  “My name is Lizzy. Lizzy Arlington. The team leader sent me to find you. He wants to send a team into the park to explore the southern border, so you and I are going to join Rafe’s team. We only have a couple hours of daylight left, so we need to get going. I hope you’re in good shape since we plan to move at a brisk pace.”

  I nodded and started after the tiny woman. Luckily, until this past Friday, I’d been employed as a mail carrier for the White Eagle, Montana Branch of the US Postal Service. I’d been doing a walking route for a decade before I’d decided to quit and join Brady in his effort to rescue and train as many dogs as he could with the resources he had available to him.

  “Is there any news at all?” I asked Lizzy as I tried to keep up with her.

  She paused and waited while her dog, Poppy, stopped to sniff the area surrounding a nurse log. “No. I’m afraid that none of the dogs have been able to pick up the scent since the beginning.”

  Poppy walked in a circle, sniffing the air, and then started once again. We followed.

  “Does it happen that way often?” I asked. “Do the dogs start off with the scent and then lose it?”

  Her eyes narrowed. She paused to listen before she answered. “Sometimes,” she finally said. “It really depends on the terrain and the weather. When we were first called in yesterday, it was already getting late. It was cold and windy, and the ground was wet from the recent rain. The puddles of water left by the rain, the decaying leaves, and steady wind all made it harder to pick up the scent.

  “Do you know what happened?” I asked. “How it is that Timmy was out here in need of rescue in the first place?”

  Lizzy called in our location on one of the handheld radios everyone had been given and then started walking again. “According to the briefing we received, Timmy had gone fishing with his older brother, Robert, and his brother’s friend, Tyson. I guess the two older boys decided to get drunk rather than fish, so Timmy headed upstream to find a quiet place to while away the afternoon. Timmy’s mom had been adamant that they be home no later than six o’clock, so when five o’clock rolled around, Timmy went to look for Robert and Tyson, but when he returned to the location where he’d left them, they were nowhere to be found. Timmy then called his mother and told her what happened. She told him to come home on his own. He said he would and hung up. That was the last time anyone heard from him.”

  “And Robert and Tyson? Did they make it home safely?” I asked as I stepped over a fallen tree that was covered in moss.

  “According to what we were told, they showed up at the house around six-thirty without Timmy. Robert told his mother that he’d waited for Timmy until six o’clock, but when he never showed, he figured his little b
rother had gotten bored and gone home on his own, so he came home as well.”

  “So either someone is wrong or lying,” I said. “Probably Robert.”

  “Perhaps,” Lizzy agreed. We stopped to listen and then began to walk again as Poppy moved toward the east. “The team talked about it when we first arrived yesterday. We figured that either Robert was lying about waiting for Timmy to save his own hide since he’d been drinking, which is why he lost Timmy in the first place, or Timmy somehow got turned around, and when he hiked back to find his brother, he ended up in the wrong place.”

  “It sounds like the boys know their way around the area,” I pointed out.

  “Agreed,” Lizzy said. “Which makes it less likely that Timmy simply got lost.”

  Poppy paused again, and after sniffing around in the underbrush, she modified her direction slightly.

  “I’m surprised Timmy’s phone worked all the way out here,” I said. The forest was thick, and we were miles away from a town, although Glacier National Park was just over the ridge.

  “Apparently, Timmy climbed a tree and called his mother from above the thick canopy that covers the forest. At least that’s what his mom told us. According to Timmy’s mom, her son is intelligent and industrious. She shared with us that she had no reason to believe he wouldn’t be able to find his way home even though he’d become separated from his brother.”

  “Maybe the brother assumed as much as well and hadn’t actually waited for him.”

  “Maybe,” Lizzy agreed. “Timmy’s mother has insisted from the beginning that something bad must have happened to him. Otherwise, she is certain that he would have found his way home by now.”

  “Do you think something bad has happened to him?” I hoped that wasn’t true, but I had to admit that an injury or tragedy of some sort was the only thing that really made sense given the fact that the boy spent a lot of time in the area and seemed to know his way around.

  Lizzy pulled a t-shirt with Timmy’s scent on it from a plastic bag and gave Poppy another sniff. “Find Timmy,” she instructed Poppy, who took off again. “Do I think something bad happened to Timmy?” Lizzy picked up the conversational thread. “Probably. By all accounts, he should have made it home just fine. He’s familiar with the area, he had a phone, he’s obviously able to climb a tree should the need to gain elevation arise, and in terms of distance, the fishing hole where he’d left Robert and Tyson had only been a couple miles from his home. If you take these facts into account, the most logical reason Timmy never made it home is because something bad happened to him. Either that or his mom is lying about the phone call for some reason, or Robert is lying about when he last saw him. I guess time will tell.”

  It was hard to know exactly where we were at the moment given the density of the forest, but we’d been walking northeast for a while now, and it seemed to me that we were traveling in the opposite direction from where Timmy was last seen. I was about to ask Lizzy about this when Poppy laid down on the trail ahead of us.

  “She’s got something,” Lizzy said. She pulled out the handheld radio and called the group leader. She was instructed to check out the situation and radio back. I followed Lizzy as she made her way toward the spot where Poppy was lying in wait.

  “That looks like…”

  “Blood,” Lizzy finished.

  Swallowing hard, I followed Lizzy as she instructed Poppy to heel and then continued into the thick brush. After maybe twenty yards, she stopped. “You might want to wait here,” she said to me.

  “Is it Timmy?” My heart sank.

  “No. Not Timmy. But someone’s been ripped to shreds.”

  Ripped to shreds. I couldn’t quite get the imagery generated by that particular phrase out of my mind.

  “Animal attack?” I asked after I’d managed to regain control of my imagination.

  “Probably. It’s hard to tell. The body is in pretty bad shape.”

  I knew I should just wait for the others, but my curiosity had gotten the better of me, so I slowly made my way forward. As I approached the place amongst the thorny shrubs where the body had been found, the stench became stronger. When Lizzy had said the body had been ripped to shreds, she hadn’t been wrong. Not only was the body strewn around the area, but many of the pieces that should have been present were missing, including the head.

  “Will someone from the team call the rangers?” I asked, unable to look away from the body parts despite my desire to do so. “I’m assuming we’re on park land at this point.”

  She nodded. “Rafe will take care of it. He’s on his way.”

  I put a hand over my mouth and nose and glanced at Poppy, who Lizzy had called to her side. “Poppy was following Timmy’s scent. Do you think — is it possible…”

  “That Timmy was somehow with this man when he died?” Lizzy asked.

  I nodded, hoping all the while that it wasn’t true.

  “Maybe,” she said. “Poppy was following Timmy’s scent, so it stands to reason that Timmy might have passed this way at some point, but it didn’t seem like Poppy really had a good grasp on the direction Timmy traveled. When Poppy is able to hone in on a specific scent, she tracks directly toward it. Today, she seemed to be meandering around, looking for the scent that was just out of her range. It’s my opinion that she had the scent early on and then lost it. She hadn’t alerted for a long time before indicating that she’d found the body in the woods, so it may be possible the scent she’d been following had been left by the man who died.”

  “Does that happen often?” I asked. “Do the dogs pick up the wrong scent?”

  She shook her head. “No. Not often, but in the absence of the scent they’re looking for, they may latch onto another. A bloody and decaying body has a strong scent. I’m not surprised Poppy led me to it.” She glanced back toward the body. “I wonder who it is.”

  I glanced at the dismembered pieces. “It’s going to be hard to identify the victim without the head.”

  “The guy has a tattoo on his left arm,” Lizzy pointed out. “I suppose the cops might be able to use that to identify him if they aren’t able to identify him any other way.”

  “Tattoo?” I asked.

  She looked down at something near her feet. “It looks like a cross with a thorny rose bush draped from it.”

  I walked over to where Lizzy was standing. My gaze narrowed as I focused in on the dismembered arm. “I’ve seen that tattoo before.” I tried to remember where. The thorny vine entwined with the cross bore flowers that were pink at the base but turned red at the tip. I could picture the tattoo in my mind, but I couldn’t think whose arm I’d seen it on. It couldn’t have been anyone I knew well, or a name would have come immediately to mind. Perhaps it had been someone passing through town or someone I’d known a long time ago. “Maybe we should look around while we wait,” I suggested. “For the pieces that are missing. Such as the head.”

  “At this point, it’s best to wait,” Lizzy informed me. “If this man died here in this spot, we don’t want to disturb anything.”

  I supposed Lizzy had a point.

  Lizzy called Poppy to her side and then walked back to the clearing we’d passed through as we’d come in this direction. I followed, pausing in the area where the majority of the body parts that hadn’t been scattered were laid out. My initial reaction to the dismembered body had been nausea and dizziness, but somewhere along the way, my logical mind had kicked in, and I found myself focusing on the evidence rather than the gore. “It looks like the body was cut apart rather than torn apart,” I said to Lizzy, who was about twenty yards away by this point. “If I had to guess, this man was killed and dismembered and then dumped in this location. While it does appear that wild animals have made a meal out of what was left, I don’t think it was wild animals that led to this man’s demise.”

  Lizzy started to speak but then raised a finger as her radio crackled to life. “Go for Lizzy,” she replied.

  “Are you north or south of the little gu
lly that widens to the east?” A voice I recognized as Rafe’s asked.

  “North. Just north. Once you cross the gully, continue north maybe a quarter of a mile. You should see us. If you don’t see us, holler, and I’ll holler back.”

  “Ten-four.”

  Lizzy looked toward me, waving me in her direction. “Rafe will be here in a few minutes. He said to wait here and not to touch anything. Hopefully, the park ranger won’t be far behind.”

  “Felix Wallace,” I said, walking toward Lizzy and thinking about the tattoo I’d seen in the past.

  She lifted a brow.

  “The tattoo,” I explained. “I mentioned that I’d seen the tattoo before. I’ve been trying to remember where. My dad used to have a friend named Felix Wallace, and he had a tattoo just like that one.”

  “You said your dad used to have a friend named Felix Wallace. Aren’t they friends any longer?” Lizzy asked once I’d reached her side.

  I shook my head. “My dad died when I was a kid,” I said, deciding to stick to the easy answer despite the fact that my dad’s death had been vastly exaggerated. “Wallace died a few years before that.”

  “Sooo,” she drew out the word in the form of a question.

  “Obviously, the man in the woods can’t be Felix Wallace, but the tattoo is sort of distinctive. It seems odd that some random guy would just happen to have the exact same tattoo all these years later.”

  She pursed her lips. “So perhaps it’s a family tattoo — like a modern-day family crest.”

  “Perhaps,” I agreed. “Or maybe it’s a logo of some sort for a club or group.”

  She tilted her head to the side as she seemed to be considering this. “I suppose that could be. I’ll mention it to the ranger.” Poppy let out a sharp bark. Lizzy looked up. “It’s Rafe,” she said, waving her arms over her head.

  After Lizzy and I had talked to Rafe, filling him in on everything we knew, he volunteered to wait for law enforcement, so Lizzy, Poppy, and I could rejoin the search for Timmy. By this point, the sun had begun its final descent. As I watched the forest swallow the sun, I said a brief prayer that Timmy was still alive and that he would find a safe place to shelter for the night.