The Wedding Gift
written by: Jenna Moquin
@JennaMoquin
Amalia Hardwick stepped through her front door, and resting on the stoop was a shiny white box with a wide blue ribbon. It had her name and address written in looping cursive with purple ink, and no zip code. No return address, no postage—someone had walked up her stone path and left it on the doorstep.
She’d been in the kitchen all morning, where the large window between the sink and stove overlooked the stone path. Amalia hadn’t seen anyone walk up to her door and deliver the package, but there it was on her doorstep. A belated birthday gift out of thin air.
“Perhaps it’s from Jonathan,” she mumbled aloud. Her husband liked to surprise her. He’d already given her a gorgeous gold bracelet for her birthday two weeks ago, but sometimes he surprised her with extra gifts. Once he’d given her a box of chocolates days after Valentine’s Day when he’d already sent her a dozen roses. “It’s your second Valentine’s Day gift,” he’d said with a smile.
She wondered if this was a second gift for her birthday. But the handwriting wasn’t Jonathan’s. Perhaps it was gift-wrapped from the store where he’d purchased it, and a clerk had filled out the address label.
Amalia looked from left to right. It was a calm spring day, with a mild breeze and soft mid-morning sunlight. The cul-de-sac was quiet. Too early for the wives with part-time jobs to come home for tea. Too early for the mail carrier to arrive, another reason she knew the package had been hand-delivered. She smiled as she picked up the box with the blue ribbon, wondering what could be inside.
Amalia pulled off the ribbon and when she opened the box, she was so surprised she simply stared at it for a moment.
It was a large antique knife with an ivory handle, long like a tusk, the blade sleek and sharp-looking. Amalia picked it up by the handle. It looked similar to the antique knife she’d admired with Jonathan at a little shop in the Cape last summer. It was a sweet gesture, but odd, she thought. Why buy her an antique knife? It wasn’t as if she collected them. She certainly couldn’t use this for chopping and dicing.
She placed it back into the box with a shrug. She’d come outdoors to water her rose bushes, and didn’t want the gift to get wet. Just as she opened her front door to put the package in the house, a woman walked up the stone path. She wore a bandana around her hair, a pair of large, dark sunglasses, and a trench coat.
“Mrs. Hardwick?” she said.
Amalia, still clutching the package, turned back onto the doorstep. “Yes?”
The woman splayed out her hands. Amalia noticed she wore tan gloves, which was odd for a warm, spring day. There was a dark splotch on the right glove.
“I’m sorry to barge in on you like this,” the woman said. “I’m a friend of Mrs. O’Connell from across the street.”
The woman removed her large sunglasses to reveal piercing blue eyes.
“It’s nice to meet you, Miss…?” Amalia trailed off, waiting for the woman to introduce herself.
“I’ve known her for years, you see. We go way back!” She tapped her gloved hand against her chin and tilted her head.
“Is that so?” Amalia’s eyebrows furrowed as she took in the woman’s youthful features, and wondered for how long she could’ve known the elderly Mrs. O’Connell from across the street.
“Yes, we’re old friends! She said you had the most gorgeous rose bushes in town, and suggested I stop by to admire them.”
Amalia beamed. “What a lovely thing to say. I do take pride in them.”
The woman glanced at the pink roses. She then moved closer to Amalia and peered inside the box in her hands.
“Oh, an antique knife!” she exclaimed. “It looks exactly like the knife my husband gave me for a wedding gift, years ago.”
Amalia furrowed her eyebrows further. “Your husband… gave you a knife for a wedding gift?”
“Yes! I collect them, you see. The ones with ivory handles are quite rare, for obvious reasons.”
“Oh!” Amalia’s face lit up. “What an interesting hobby. Would you like to see it?”
She held the box out toward the woman, and wondered if this package had been meant for her, only addressed to the wrong person.
The woman reached inside the box, took out the knife and held it lovingly. She grasped the ivory handle and stroked the blunt part of the blade.
“Ah! It is the exact same knife from my wedding. The very one.”
“What? How do you know?”
“Because I put it on your doorstep.”
Amalia stared at the woman while she held up the knife. She opened her mouth to ask the strange woman why she left a gift-wrapped knife on her doorstep, and before she knew it, the woman sliced Amalia’s throat in a lightning-fast flick of her arm.
Blood spurted out of Amalia’s throat as she slumped back and fell to her knees. The glossy white box fell to the ground, covered with drops of blood. Amalia crumbled into a heap on her doorstep next to the box.
The woman looked at Amalia with a blank expression, and then she sprinted away holding the knife with the ivory handle.
Amalia’s body wasn’t discovered until hours later, when the mail carrier arrived at the Hardwick home. By that time the drops of blood on the glossy white box had dried, and the light had long gone out in Amalia Hardwick’s eyes.
***
Detective Robichaud couldn’t help but admire the pink rose bushes as his partner Dane Aidan took pictures of Mrs. Hardwick, who would never water them again.
“What do you think?” Aidan asked.
Robichaud shrugged. “You always ask me that before I’ve had a chance to examine any evidence.”
Aidan shrugged back.
“All I know right now is that we’ve got two women murdered within two blocks of each other, one with her throat slashed, and the other stabbed in the chest,” Robichaud said.
They’d found Mrs. O’Connell in her kitchen, her arms splayed out and her refrigerator door open. Someone had forced their way into her home—they’d found a broken window pane near the patio.
“Mrs. Hardwick here,” he said and gestured toward Amalia’s body. “Came out of her home willingly. No sign of a break-in or a struggle. Something brought her outdoors.”
“What about the package?”
Robichaud glanced at the white box splattered in dark red dots. The memory hit him so fiercely he had to blink several times.
The wedding gift, he thought. The package on the doorstep, wrapped exactly like the gift he’d given to Betty on the eve of their wedding. White box with a big blue satin bow. Betty had said the bow could be her “something blue” for the wedding, since she’d forgotten to pack the blue handkerchief she planned to carry down the aisle, tucked into the bodice of her dress.
“I’ll cut off a piece of this ribbon instead,” she’d said, before she opened the gift, which was a framed photo of the two of them at their engagement party cutting the cake.
Robichaud shook his head. Another memory was threatening to surface and he squashed it with a sputtering cough. He didn’t want to think about Betty, because thinking about Betty would bring up too many memories. Things he didn’t wish to relive.
“All right, Detective?” the street cop on the scene asked him.
“Um… yes, all right,” Robichaud said. “Did we dust the box for prints yet?”
***
The detectives met with the sergeant at the precinct to discuss the O’Connell-Hardwick double homicide. The husband, Jonathan Hardwick, was their first suspect. He’d acted somewhat strangely when they revealed to him that his wife was dead. He seemed shocked, and upset with the tears welling in his eyes, but he didn’t seem as concerned about it as most people would be.
But he had an alibi. At the time of death, he’d been in a board meeting at his office, and a dozen people vouched for his presence at the meeting. So, they moved on to investigating Mr. O’Connell, but he had an airtight alibi, considering he’d been dead for over five years.
They had no other suspects. No other leads. No prints were found on either scene. The package on Mrs. Hardwick’s doorstep only had her own fingerprints on it. They had absolutely nothing to go on, not even a possible motive since neither of the victims seemed to have had any enemies.
The unknown motive bothered Robichaud. When a jealous lover committed murder, it was a crime of passion. When someone got held up at gunpoint, the perpetrator was in a desperate situation. Not acceptable in any way, but understandable in a way—there were reasons behind the crime. But random crimes like this, especially as violent as these murders were, with no obvious reason, got under his skin.
And sometimes he could never solve the reason behind the murder even if the killer confessed. He tended to question confessions, especially when people turned themselves in. He didn’t believe people suddenly grew consciences, and one thing he’d learned in his forty-two years was that the world was full of liars.
His partner was suspicious of the package, and believed it was somehow connected to the murder of Mrs. Hardwick.
“Look,” Aidan said to Robichaud when the sergeant took a phone call. “There was no postage on the package, none at all! So, whoever sent it, must’ve hand-delivered it.”
“Or paid someone else to hand-deliver it,” Robichaud said with a sigh.
“True. But I still think, whatever weapon was used, was inside that package. And the package is what drew Mrs. Hardwick outside. They must’ve rung the bell, or knocked on the door.”
“Or, she stepped out of her own accord. I noticed there was a watering can, not far from her on the doorstep, she probably went outside to water her rose bushes. Perp saw their opportunity, and took it. Didn’t have to break in like they did at Mrs. O’Connell’s.”
“But why was the address written out? If no postage, and it was hand-delivered, why put the mailing address on it, at all? Why not just the recipient’s name?”
Aidan thrust a cellophane bag at Robichaud. It contained a snapshot of the address label from the package. The label had been addressed to Mrs. Amalia Hardwick, 102 Ivy Lane, Candelabra ME. Robichaud stared at the plastic evidence bag and rubbed the back of his neck.
Aidan shrugged. “There has to be a reason for the address being written out… something with the handwriting, you think?”
Robichaud shrugged, stood up and offered to pick up sandwiches from the deli across the street. They were in for a long night.
The address label bothered him the most about the package. Aside from the box itself reminding him of the wedding gift he’d given to Betty, the handwriting reminded him of Betty as well.
It was a similar looping curve in the cursive penmanship that she’d had. It was most noticeable in the L for Lane, and the H for Hardwick.
A memory threatened to swell over him as an image swept in—it was the plaque that had hung over the mantel in the home they’d shared for only ten months until it was all over. It had been hand-made by Betty—it was her wedding gift to him.
Love’s
Home
Is Here
The L and the H, were identical to the note left on Mrs. Hardwick’s doorstep on Ivy Lane. Two fancy loops on the top parts of the H, and a curvy double lasso on the L.
Robichaud sighed and ran his hands through his thinning hair. Tiny droplets of rain, and that metallic earthy scent in the air that appeared just before a rainstorm came through his senses. He relished in the washing away of his misery, letting in a memory that he wished away with all of his might but it kept coming up to the surface, and there was nothing he could do to stop it.
She’d left him on a rainy night in Paris. The rain pattered down and made everything look slick, and dark. The wet pavement beneath his feet turned black, Betty’s note moistened by the raindrops that fell upon her looping cursive.
I just can’t. Please don’t hate me.
~B
That was all it had said. With the tilde beside her initial, the way she always signed birthday cards and love notes.
When the horrific realization of it had hit him fierce, he’d fallen to his knees on the wet pavement, not caring at all that his trousers were getting soaked. Only caring that he wouldn’t be coming home to his wife’s warm body in bed that night, wouldn’t be coming home to her at all, ever again. The pain that swelled inside swept through him like a tidal wave, and he clutched his chest as if he were having a heart attack, since it felt like his heart was literally breaking at that moment.
His eyes misted over. He missed Betty so much it consumed his soul as much as his physical self and he spent most nights clutching the pillow in his bed, meant to be a substitute that was so unnatural and cold he almost loathed it more than the empty bed itself. But he couldn’t bring himself to throw the pillow away, since it still held the faintest scent of Betty’s perfume.
Robichaud shook his head out of the reverie. He passed by the magazine rack outside the drugstore next to the deli, and a blushing bride smiled at him from a glossy cover. She had blond hair just like Betty had, and he felt a choke in his throat.
It’d been over a year since he’d last seen her, and he’d taken down the wedding pictures that hung on his walls. Thinking about her, seeing her face, was too much for his heart to bear sometimes.
He sighed and then clenched his jaw. Sandwiches in hand, with the scent of the extra pickles he’d ordered drifting into the air, Robichaud walked back to the precinct.
Twilight was settling in. Streetlamps glowed and the number of people walking down the street dwindled. When he reached the office he shared with Aidan Kneubuhl on the fourth floor, he noticed something taped to the door.
He drew closer. It was a small white sheet of paper with something attached to it. Robichaud peered at it.
A piece of blue satin ribbon was pinned to the paper, with words etched in purple ink. His heart raced. His forehead broke out in beads of sweat as he picked up the note.
Did you like the gifts I left
for you this morning, my love?
It was written in Betty’s looping script. Just like the note on Mrs. Hardwick’s doorstep. Robichaud crumpled up the note and ribbon before Aidan or the sergeant could see it. He had to find a way to keep the murders of Mrs. Hardwick and Mrs. O’Connell unsolved.
Just like all the other ones Betty had done.
- The Wedding Gift - December 31, 2024
- Woodwork - October 13, 2018
- FLIPPED - October 25, 2017
