Chapter Text
6:00 AM
Camille Bordey lies on her back and looks across the room at the simple wedding dress hanging on the bedroom door. It's supposed to be bad luck for the groom to see the wedding dress before the ceremony, and Richard Poole would certainly be the type of groom that would want to uphold that. Except, last night hadn't really been normal.
Right now he's facing away from her, towards the crib where Aimee is sleeping so she can't actually see his face, and she's not ready to wake him.
Yesterday morning had started out good. The guests for their wedding include Saint Marie locals, members of his family from England, members of her family from France and even their old friends from Detroit, and surprisingly everyone had been getting along really well. In fact, so well that she had actually forgotten that her ex-boyfriend is here on Saint Marie hellbent on destroying everything.
Camille had naively thought that the biggest concern would be that although sixteen is the legal drinking age on Saint Marie, it turned out that Bobby Fitch, the sixteen year-old son of Louis Fitch, couldn't actually handle alcohol yet and had to be taken back to the villa and cared for by his father for the rest of the day.
Except that had all changed when Richard had disappeared from his own Bachelor's Party only to return roughly forty-five minutes later with a bloody face and torn clothes. So Camille had spent her last evening as an unmarried woman tending to the wounds of her bookish future husband and vowing that if she got the chance she would kill her ex for, according to Richard, just randomly attacking him.
"We are most definitely pressing charges after the ceremony," Camille mutters to herself.
"Urgh." Richard rolls over in bed, apparently waking up.
It is at this moment that Camille realizes his left eye, although not swollen, is an ugly shade of purple. Despite having seen how bad he was the night before, Camille lets out a low gasp. "You are going to have to wear some of Maman's foundation."
Richard is still half asleep at this point and mutters, "I don't want to wear makeup."
"You have a black eye."
At this, Richard sits up and immediately looks at his reflection in the mirror across from the bed before stating, "I know he absolutely despises me, but this is bloody ridiculous." Camille is about to put a comforting hand on his shoulder when he adds his own badly thought out comment. "I don't understand why I need your mother's foundation though. I mean you have your own makeup kit already in here, don't you?"
Despite herself, Camille bursts into a howling peal of laughter which immediately wakes Aimee who begins crying.
Camille walks over to the crib and looks at the one-year-old for the briefest of moments before reaching in to lift her out. Aimee looks almost exactly like Camille had at that age, except she also has Richard's green eyes. The fact that she had been conceived from the very first encounter Camille and Richard had and the fact that Camille had been stabbed before being able to get the morning after pill still comes as a shock, but Camille still considers her to be the most perfect and precious thing that came out of that whole ordeal.
When she turns back to look at the bed, Richard still looks dumbfounded. "I don't get what would be funny about me using your foundation to cover my black eye."
Camille takes a deep breath as she tries not to laugh again. "You are too English to even hold a tan. I am French Afro-Caribbean."
Richard still seems too sleepy to get it. "Yes, and that is an irrelevant point."
"Ree-chard, I am going to hand you Aimee and then I am going to show you something."
Richard is at least awake enough to properly hold onto his daughter, and Aimee seems suddenly delighted anyway so Camille goes over to her makeup case and pulls out a bottle of a brown semi-liquid substance. "I wear foundation that matches my skin tone. See?"
It is only at this moment that Richard finally gets it. "Dear God, maybe that idiot did something to mess with my brain, I fear I have caught a case of being stupid."
Camille puts down the bottle of foundation before turning to look at her fiance and child again. Really, she couldn't possibly feel more love for these two people. Richard is not only the man she had secretly grown to love long before they got together, but she will never forget how loyal he was while she was in therapy for her injured arm. Aimee on the other hand is everything she had ever dreamed of having in a child and she doubts that will change as the girl ages. "No Richard, you are magnifique and I am going to marry you today."
As Camille makes her way back over to the bed to join her family, Richard sighs quietly before responding, "You're right. I suppose the only thing he could do to ruin today is kill someone."
"Do not joke about that."
-
8:00 AM
"This is going to be a disaster." Catherine paces the length of her kitchen before stopping at the counter and turning to look at Jesse Longford, who is sitting at the table.
When they first met two years ago, on the night she came to Detroit to see Camille in the hospital, neither of them had expected to fall in love. Except they had, and six months ago, after selling the Italian villa he had bought with his late wife, he had moved to Saint Marie to be with her even though this had left his own adult daughters with mixed feelings.
"I just got off the phone with Selwynn and he's already told the venues to watch out for Charles Lambert," the man responds before picking up his coffee cup, "But maybe it's just the retired Detroit homicide detective in me, but I don't think it was an impulsive attack."
"You don't think he was trying to kill Richard?" At this, Catherine can't help but feel somewhat shocked. "I mean that man is a proper French bastard and dating him was not the finest choice Camille made, but that was almost two decades ago. Surely that man would not return after that amount of time and attempt to kill the man she is going to marry. Would that not be excessive?"
The previous night they had held the so-called Bachelor and Bachelorette parties, which had really been more of clean social gatherings in separate bars than anything that would traditionally be associated with the phrase. Richard had spent the previous few days grumbling about how he didn't really get the need for such gatherings.
Because of this, Catherine hadn't initially taken things seriously when Richard's father had shown up insisting that his son needed to see her daughter on the balcony until she had seen him, covered in blood with torn clothing.
Jesse must recognize her current discomfort, because as he stands up from the table he responds, "No matter what he was trying last night, with the police presence that is going to be at that wedding there's no chance he's going to be able to get to Richard today."
Catherine somehow knows instantly that she trusts this answer. Detroit, Michigan is a far more dangerous than Saint Marie, and Jesse worked homicide there for over thirty years, so he'd learned how to spot both the worst and the best in people. Not to mention, he's her partner, and probably the best one she's had although neither of them are considering marriage unless there comes a point where it's needed as a legal contract. And above all in this situation, he cares about Camille and Richard, and even treats little Aimee like she's his own granddaughter.
"You know what? You are right. If he continues to try to get to Richard, Camille alone will be enough to make him regret it." After a pause she decides to add, "In fact, I am going to choose not to worry about this until we have to be at the hall later."
10:00 AM
"Do I really have to drink this?" Louis watches as his sixteen-year old son makes a disgusted face at the oddly colored drink in front of him.
"Catherine says it's one of the best hangover cures on Saint Marie, and I trust her," Ariana responds. There's a teasing tone to her voice, but when Louis turns to look at her he can tell from her posture that her back must be bothering her again and he immediately feels guilty. They had been intimate this morning before the kids had woke up, and although they'd obviously both enjoyed it at the time, he'd hate it if this hurt her.
"You okay? I mean if your back is bothering you again I can probably…"
Ariana silences him with a tilt of her head. They've grown to understand each other's signs so much that even though he doesn't always understand people, he gets her. "I think we need to worry more about our party boy."
Again, Louis turns his gaze back to Bobby. On Saint Marie, sixteen is the legal age to drink alcohol so he'd figured it was safe to let Bobby try an alcoholic drink as long as he was being watched.
"Just try holding your nose before you drink it," Louis tries not to sound amused.
"Ugh. I think I'm going temperance after this."
This time Louis has a harder time suppressing a laugh before he responds, "I think your mother will definitely appreciate that."
Despite Bobby now living pretty much exclusively with Louis and Ariana, due to disagreements with his step-father, Linda seemed to have a lot of angry opinions about what had happened last night. In fact, after learning that her son was nursing drunkenness, despite it being legal and despite Louis spending the evening caring for him, she had called him back to yell at him at midnight Saint Marie time. That had been 1 AM New York City time. Of course it probably wasn't a good look to be angrily pacing the beach in front of the condo at that time of night.
Before he can be too annoyed however, he hears the sound of badly imitated bird noises and is forced to turn his attention to the figure on the dining room floor. Gianna Fitch-Sanchez, affectionately called Gi or Gigi, is sitting on the floor playing with a stuffed parrot.
"Up Daddy, Up!" Gi reaches out to Louis and he feels obliged to pick her up even though she immediately lobs the plush parrot right at her half-brother's head.
"Hey, don't throw the parrot at your brother," Louis scolds although he realizes he isn't actually angry at the two-year old.
"This looks like parrot doodoo," Bobby groans in response, referencing the only half drunken liquid in his cup.
"Doo! Doo! Doo! Doo!" Gi suddenly begins to repeat the word as a chant and Louis makes brief horrified eye contact with his wife across the room. This isn't the first time recently Gi has accidentally picked up a new phrase.
However, in hindsight it's definitely better than when he'd unwittingly taught her to call people she found annoying dumb fucks and she'd ended up debuting her new language at dinner with the in-laws when Ariana's sister-in-law had tried to take food off her plate without permission. Secretly, Louis was almost proud of that because Callie was one of those weird white women who loved to make creepy, snide comments about how the interracial babies her and her husband would produce would be so adorable because their combined genetics were flawless all while not so discreetly implying that Gi herself was in fact not a flawless example of interracial genetics. Nonetheless, it still wasn't proper to teach a two-year old that phrase even if she'd deployed it correctly and he's spent every moment since then very carefully monitoring his own language.
Apparently trying to diffuse the sudden tension, Ariana quips, "We should teach her to sing that to the tune of 'Here Comes the Bride.' "
Bobby turns to look at his stepmother and grimaces before finally downing the last of his drink and muttering, "Please no singing."
12:00 PM
Dwayne considers knocking on the dressing room before walking in but then decides against it. After all, he knows that both Catherine and Richard's uncle are in the room too so he's probably not naked although that would certainly be an amusing sight to see.
So instead of knocking, Dwayne barges in and Richard jumps. "Oh my god Dwayne! Please knock next time!"
Dwayne is about to make a teasing comment in return when he realizes Catherine is holding a bottle of foundation and his friend and boss has a black eye, presumably from last night's tussle.
"Geez, Chief, he really messed you up." Dwayne suddenly finds himself more concerned than he'd planned to be.
"Yes, I know that Dwayne," Richard sighs before turning back to Catherine. "Is this going to hurt?"
"Reechard, think for a moment. If it hurt to apply foundation, would so many women wear it?" Catherine rolls her eyes in exasperation.
"I don't know. Things like lip filler and botox seem painful but women still do those."
Before Dwayne can make a comment on this, Gregory Poole grabs his nephew's hand and squeezes it and Richard looks at his uncle before letting out a resigned sigh.
Although they'd only met a few days earlier, Gregory is an interesting character to Dwayne. He's Graham's older brother and he had once had a son who would be roughly the same age as Richard had he not died from a septic tooth infection as a child. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of him though is that he has terminal cancer and will likely be going into hospice soon after returning to England although he had insisted he couldn't miss his nephew's wedding.
"I can tell you one thing. That Charles Whatshisface won't be back to terrorize my nephew's wedding," Gregory states, squeezing his nephew's hand.
Richard rolls his eyes before commenting, "He's younger than me and he's got a good four inches at least on me in height. Honestly, I think it's a bloody miracle that I'm not in a hospital bed right now."
Gregory coughs raggedly before responding, "Well, he doesn't have coppers from three different countries ready to come to his defense, now does he?"
"Technically Saint Marie's a territory not a…" Richard starts to respond before Catherine shoots him a pointed glare. Instead he finishes up with, "Well, I keep feeling like he's still got more tricks up his sleeve."
2:00 PM
Richard sucks in a deep breath and tries to make himself focus on the present instead of worrying about if Charles Lambert still has one last trick up his sleeve. For the past several days the man has well and truly been a thorn in his side.
Apparently learning that Camille was about to be married had reminded him that she belonged to him despite their little relationship having taken place during her earliest days in Paris when she was, as described by herself, with so little self confidence that she thought bad love was better than no love.
Richard didn't feel romantically threatened by him in the traditional sense. Even he could tell that she looked about as thrilled to see Charles as one did to see mold on bread, but fighting off an aggressive rival suitor still made preparing for the wedding a lot harder, and it would be really hard to get married if he'd first gotten murdered.
Still, nothing particularly noteworthy has happened so far today and he is about to be married to Camille who is everything he has ever dreamed of.
"This won't go wrong," Richard mutters more to himself than anyone else, but the expression of the officiant makes it clear that he has also heard the comment.
"Were you expecting something to go wrong?" the man asks, trying to sound casual but clearly concerned.
"No, because it won't. Because I always prepare for everything."
Next to him, he catches Fidel and Dwayne exchanging a look as if they're trying not to point out that he's being pompous.
Before Richard can comment on how it's rude to call someone pompous on their own wedding day, the music suddenly starts playing and he finds his attention drawn back to the aisle in front of him.
First comes Rosie Best pulling a wagon. Aimee is sitting in the wagon in her little white flower girl dress and Richard also catches a glimpse of Harry, the ring-lizard. He briefly wonders what sort of insanity led to him being the kind of man who would agree to have an only partially tame lizard as his ring-bearer, but somehow it makes sense that it would be Harry. Besides, he will be paid with his own plate of mango and crushed bugs after the ceremony is completed.
Camille had opted for the bridesmaids, who are Juliette and one of her old school friends, to already be standing at the front before she walked down the aisle. When Richard had attempted to opine that this was odd and untraditional she had responded by reminding him of the aforementioned lizard ring-bearer and somehow that had been enough to quiet the subject.
The minute the wagon reaches the end of the aisle, Rosie and Aimee both go to sit with Catherine who is in the front row, and Harry well…Harry apparently decides to crawl up the outside of Richard's pant leg which again, is rather untraditional behavior for a ring-bearer but there's hardly time to fret because soon Camille is coming down the aisle on Sellwynn Patterson's arm and really, that matters far more.
It is at this point that Richard decides nothing could make today go wrong.
4:00 PM
"I just don't think I should have had to bribe my son to get him to wear pants to a wedding," Damon can't help but sigh.
Getting to attend a wedding on a Caribbean island is a once in a lifetime event that he never would have imagined himself doing, even a few short years ago. Just a few years before that, on the first night he worked Detroit homicide, if he'd known that in a little under five years time the person he'd be willingly talking with at said Caribbean wedding would be his irritating new partner, that would have seemed even stranger than the wedding itself.
And yet, here they are. The ceremony itself was genuinely beautiful, and several of the guests along with the bride and groom are now walking along the beach before the reception, yet he can't help but feel something will go wrong and it just might be Martin deciding pants are optional for the rest of the evening.
"Maybe it's a sensory thing. I mean this isn't Detroit. If I was a little kid and you told me I had to wear a suit all day, I might also want a little bribery in regards to wearing pants," Louis responds and Damon is reminded that although he now respects and cares about his partner, he still finds him really strange.
Before he can say anything about this, their attention is turned to the water. Camille Bordey, now Camille Poole is in the ocean in her wedding dress holding her toddler daughter and her new husband does not seem pleased by this development.
"Woman! I command you come back to shore right now!" Richard Poole yells in frustration.
"And what will you do if I don't?" Camille laughs as she responds.
"I just…why must you be so incredibly difficult?! This is supposed to be a formal event and you are cavorting in the ocean in your wedding dress!" Richard growls. There almost seems to be a bit of panic in his voice too.
Damon exchanges a look with Louis. They both clearly think this behavior is weird and the older man clears his throat as if to comment on this.
However, before Louis can say anything the air is broken by an ear piercing scream. The yell seems to have come from Jennifer Poole, who is about a hundred feet down the beach. When Damon really strains to look he's pretty sure he can also see raccoons scattering from something, although before now he had no idea they even lived on Saint Marie.
Either way, whatever is bothering the old woman is intense enough that she immediately turns away and it looks as if Catherine and Ariana both move to comfort her. The bride and groom also immediately stop arguing and as Camille races out of the water, as fast as she can move in a waterlogged dress, she quickly hands her daughter off to her mother before focusing on whatever is near the treeline.
As if this isn't dire enough, Damon watches as his partner's wife turns to look at them and even from this distance he can tell she wants them both to come to her location quickly.
The smell hits him before he sees anything, and then the nausea hits too. The Caribbean sun has created a rather potent cocktail of the smell of human decay, and he recognizes it before he even sees the corpse sprawled on the sand with a knife sticking out of its chest.
Next to him he hears his partner state, "Well, that's one hell of a wedding present."