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“Kidnapped?” Theodosia said.

“Who’s kidnapped?” Drayton asked, but Theodosia held up a finger to silence him. Had she heard Bettina correctly? The girl was injured and Jamie was kidnapped? Was this yet another bizarre chapter in her terrible wedding saga?

Bettina uttered a series of high-pitched yelps, then quavered, “It’s unbelievably crazy! Jamie and I had just finished eating dinner at Gaulart and Maliclet on Broad Street. Then, when the valet brought Jamie’s SUV around, I asked him to help Jamie get into the passenger seat—which he did. But when I came around to the driver’s side, this ninja-type person jumped out of nowhere and attacked me!”

“Attacked you how? Did you fight back?” Theodosia asked.

Crying even more heavily, slurring her words, Bettina blubbered, “I couldn’t do anything ! The guy hit me with a Taser! It felt like lightning exploding inside my entire body—my arms and legs started shaking and my heart felt like it was going to burst out of my ribs. And then…then my legs turned to jelly and I collapsed on the pavement and hit my head!” Her voice rose again, shrill and raw. “The last thing I remember was the car driving away! With Jamie in it!”

“Did anyone help you? The valet? A passerby?”

“Yes, yes, the valet guys called 911 right away, and the police are on their way, but Jamie’s gone!” Now her emotions were completely out of control. “Jamie’s gone!” she howled. “He’s been kidnapped!”

“Stay where you are,” Theodosia cried. “I’ll be there in five minutes.”

* * *

When Theodosia and Drayton arrived at Gaulart & Maliclet, the street out front was an open-air calamity. Uniformed officers were running around interviewing witnesses, red-jacketed valets were trying to maneuver departing customers’ cars around police cars, and tourists with puzzled faces stood gaping, suddenly worried about crime in what was supposedly a genteel neighborhood.

An ambulance from CCEMS, Charleston Country Emergency Medical Services, was on the scene, its blue lights spinning lazily. Bettina was sitting on the back of the ambulance, legs dangling, as an EMT put a series of Steri-Strip bandages on her temple.

Theodosia jammed her Jeep into a No Parking spot, and she and Drayton hurried over to Bettina.

“Are you hurt?” Theodosia asked in a rush.

“Dear girl, what happened?” Drayton asked.

“I think I’m gonna be okay,” Bettina said between hiccups.

The EMT nodded and said, “She’s doing fairly well. Her blood pressure’s coming back down to normal, and her respiration is good. She has a nasty abrasion on her right temple that needs a couple of stitches. So we’ll run her over to the ER and get that taken care of.”

Bettina clamped desperate eyes on Theodosia and said, “But Jamie’s gone. ” She hiccupped again. “Kidnapped, I think.”

“You think?” Theodosia asked.

“No, I know he was. I saw it with my own eyes,” Bettina said.

“Did you see who did it?” Theodosia asked.

Bettina shook her head. “Nuh-uh. It happened too fast. Somebody came up behind me, kind of smacked me on the head, then tasered me. The pain was so bad that I totally blanked out.”

“But you saw Jamie’s SUV drive away? With Jamie in it?” Drayton asked.

“I saw that much, yes,” Bettina said. She touched a hand to her chest and looked at the EMT. “I think I’m having a heart attack.”

“Probably not, but let’s slip that blood pressure cuff on you again,” the EMT said.

Theodosia patted Bettina’s knee and said, “I’ll be right back. I want to talk to the police.”

Theodosia turned away from the ambulance and studied the scene. There were two police cruisers blocking Broad Street with four harried-looking uniformed officers pushing back lookie-loos even as they tried to question witnesses and take statements. Worried murmurs rippled through a crowd of bystanders…

“What happened?”

“Somebody got killed?”

“We better get out of here.”

“Maybe we should…,” Drayton began, just as a shiny black Suburban with smoked windows threaded its way through the crowd. The Suburban had a large push bar on front, and set just above the bar were red and blue pulsing lights.

“Uh-oh,” Theodosia said.

Drayton glanced at her. “What?”

“Looks like this got kicked upstairs.”

They both watched as one of the back doors flew open and Pete Riley stepped out. Then the back door on the other side opened and Detective Burt Tidwell, head of Charleston PD’s Robbery and Homicide Division, eased out.

Tidwell was a bear of a man, bulky, imposing, and quick with his temper. Most of the people in city government feared him, while the detectives and officers that worked under him admired him unconditionally. Theodosia had had several run-ins with Tidwell before—mostly when she was looking into local crimes that had stirred her imagination and caused her to don her Sherlock Holmes cap and launch her own brand of investigation. Suffice it to say, Detective Tidwell mostly frowned on this course of action.

“Miss Browning,” Tidwell said, his hangdog face clouded with anger as he came striding up to her with his trademark beady-eyed stare, “I should have known you’d be mixed up in this.” His eyes skidded across to Drayton as well.

“I’m not mixed up in this,” Theodosia said. She tried to keep her voice even and not let Tidwell fluster her. Forced herself to focus on the soup stain on his horrible green tie, which was a total mismatch for his liver-colored jacket. “Drayton and I are only here because Bettina called and asked for our help.”

“Bettina of the unfortunate, unrealized wedding,” Tidwell said. “With the collapsed greenhouse and dead bridesmaid.”

“Well, yes.”

“And you’ve been investigating that death ever since,” Tidwell said. He raised his shoulders and dropped them, his belly puffing out in a sigh.

“Actually, I—”

“No,” Tidwell said, waving an index finger at her. “That was not a question.”

Theodosia switched her gaze to Riley. “You told him.”

“No question,” Riley said. “I had to now that Celeste’s death has mushroomed out of control and spilled over into Charleston proper.”

“Where we have complete jurisdiction,” Tidwell said.

“Great,” Theodosia said. “So what are you going to do about it?”

“We’ve already put out a BOLO on Jamie’s stolen SUV,” Tidwell said.

“A Be on the Lookout ,” Riley explained.

“I know what it means,” Theodosia said. “And that’s a good first step. But what else are you guys going to actually do?”

“We are going to investigate and apprehend,” Tidwell said, enunciating each word carefully. “While you two are going to leave well alone.” With that, he spun away from them, a light-footed maneuver for such a large man.

Riley shrugged. “You heard the man.”

Theodosia let out an exasperated sigh as she backed away from Riley, unhappy that he wasn’t going to give her any help. Just the same, she kept a watchful eye on Tidwell and Riley as one of the uniformed officers hurried up to them.

“We’ve got an eyewitness here,” the uniformed officer said, gesturing at a young man who was standing on the sidewalk, fidgeting with his car keys. “Saw the whole thing.”

“I’ll talk to him,” Tidwell said. “Meanwhile, let’s string some tape and get this entire street blocked off.”

“Yes, sir.”

Tidwell turned to Riley. “You go talk to the girl.”

“Now what do we do?” Drayton asked as Tidwell and Riley both got busy.

“Go back to the drawing board?” Theodosia said. “Try to figure out who on earth would want to kidnap Jamie—and hurt Bettina as well?”

“That sounds like a tall order.”

“Probably because it is.”

“Theodosia!” A shrill voice rose above the din of the crowd and the honking of horns from frustrated drivers who’d just found their street blocked off.

“Hold on to your hat,” Drayton muttered under his breath. “Delaine just arrived.”

Delaine came spinning toward them like an F3 tornado. Her face was twisted into a mask of fear, her hair was a flyaway mess, and her red fingernails seemed to claw at the air, propelling her forward. Only her clothes were impeccable—a tight black long-sleeved silk T-shirt tucked into a short black leather skirt and her trademark four-inch stilettos.

Delaine threw her arms around Theodosia and started to sob. Then she pulled away and threw her arms around Drayton. “My poor, dear Bettina!” she wailed. “How could anyone possibly want to hurt her?”

“Or kidnap Jamie,” Drayton said.

Delaine straightened up and brushed at her tears. “Yes, Jamie,” she said, as if it was an afterthought. Then, head up, chin out, Delaine was striding down the street, headed for the ambulance, where Bettina was still being tended to.

“Now Delaine’s really going to put the screws to you,” Drayton said to Theodosia. “She doesn’t trust the police, but she loves to put her faith in you.” He turned and gazed at the restaurant, a white building, very French-looking with its touches of brass and its black wrought iron balcony above the front door. “Great coq au vin,” he said.

But Theodosia’s mind was still in a whirl. She felt terrible that she hadn’t been able to figure out Celeste’s murder. And now this. Jamie kidnapped, Bettina tasered and beaten up. What was going on? She just couldn’t see a clear answer. Was she letting people down, people who were dear to her? It sure felt that way.

“I’ve been trying to figure this whole thing out,” Theodosia said to Drayton, “but haven’t come up with much. And now this…” She waved a hand at the chaos around them. “I never anticipated anything like this happening. What a complete and total mess.”

“It could get messier,” Drayton said. “You know, if Jamie…”

“What?” Theodosia spun toward him. “What are you saying, Drayton? If Jamie is murdered?” She shook her head. “If someone wanted Jamie dead, then why bother to kidnap him? Why not just engineer a nice clean drive-by shooting?”

“I don’t know,” Drayton said. “Maybe there’ll be a ransom demand. Are Jamie’s parents well-off?”

“I think so,” Theodosia said. “On the other hand…”

“What?”

An idea—an ugly idea—had slithered into Theodosia’s brain. She glanced around to make sure no one was listening. “You don’t, um, suppose that Jamie arranged to kidnap himself, do you?”

“Sweet Fanny Adams, why would Jamie do a thing like that?” Drayton cried.

“What if he wanted to get out of marrying Bettina?”

Drayton was dumbfounded. “ What? Explain please.”

“The thing is, you hear about runaway brides all the time. But I have a sneaking suspicion there are plenty of runaway grooms, too.”

“I thought that was an urban myth, stories that were spread on the Internet.”

“Not exactly,” Theodosia said. “Remember what we talked about before?”

“Dead brides and grooms?”

“Yes. And I know this sounds really weird, but I did some more research on it. Newly minted brides—and newly minted grooms, too—have a strange tendency to die on their honeymoon.”

“They do?”

“Think of all those poor young people you hear about on the news who fall overboard on cruise ships…”

“You do hear about that,” Drayton said. “And it’s more than a once-in-a-blue-moon thing.”

“And might I remind you, when new brides or grooms are killed, it’s more often than not done at the hands of their spouse.”

“That’s terrifying,” Drayton said.

They stood there and gazed at each other, unsure what to do now.

“An alternate explanation,” Drayton said, “and I pray this is true, is that maybe Jamie’s kidnapping was a Halloween prank, something Jamie’s friends cooked up.”

“A boys-will-be-boys thing,” Theodosia said slowly. “It’s possible. Except for the fact that Bettina was tasered so hard she collapsed and split open her head. That goes beyond the boundaries of a Halloween prank.”

Drayton looked around at the chaos and shrugged. “I guess all we can do is keep our fingers crossed and hope that Jamie turns up tomorrow.”