Murmurs in the Walls: The Wedding
Episode IX
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Murmurs in the Walls is a serial paranormal mystery novella featuring Judith Temple, psychic detective. This is Season 3 of Case Files of a Psychic Detective.
While Murmurs in the Walls can be read as a standalone story, you may appreciate the characters and their interactions more if you are familiar with Judith’s previous adventures, Down in the Holler and Beasts of the Field.
Season 1, Down in the Holler, is now available in paperback and e-book. You can get your own copy here! Season 2, Beasts of the Field, is currently free to read! Click here to read Beasts of the Field.
← In Episode VIII: The Intervention, Judith provided Brian with a few helpful strategies to reduce his unintentional psychokinesis, and then she received some unsolicited sisterly advice.
“I brought a few different dresses so you can try them on and pretend to think about them, but this is the one you’re actually going to end up wearing.” Constance swept into Judith’s house bearing an armful of colorful fabrics far brighter than anything Judith ever wore. She rushed through the living room, down the hall, and into Judith’s bedroom with the force of a hurricane while Orwell, his pink tongue out and his tail smacking the wall with enthusiasm, bounded after her.
“Which one?” Judith locked the chain on the front door, then turned the deadbolt, locked the door handle, and set the alarm system to Home before trailing after Constance.
“You’ll see!” came Constance’s perky voice.
A dozen cocktail dresses lay spread across Judith’s bed in a rainbow of fishscale shimmer, lace, and floral prints.
Judith stopped inside the doorway. “I don’t like itchy fabrics. And I’ll need something I can wear with a sweater. The wedding is indoors and will likely be too aggressively air conditioned, but the reception is outdoors and will likely be sticky and hot until the sun goes down and the air gets chilly.”
“I bet there’s somebody who would offer a jacket if you get cold,” Constance said in a faux-mumble.
“I’m bringing a sweater.”
For well over an hour, Judith tried on Constance’s dresses, shedding each like an ill-fitting skin the moment she decided it was an impossible choice for Melissa Sloan’s wedding.
Uncomfortable fabric.
A poorly functioning zipper.
A gaudy shade of yellow that looked whimsical on Constance but made Judith look jaundiced.
Too much…glitter.
“You should wear dresses more often,” Constance said, setting aside yet another discarded garment. “As much as you whine about it, these actually look really lovely on you.”
“I don’t like to feel the skin of my legs touching.”
Judith needed no psychic abilities to know that Constance was rolling her eyes at the pile of vetoed dresses.
“Did you work this morning, before I got here?” Constance said.
Judith latched onto the unexpected reprieve from clothing conversation. “I started working at 6am, actually. I got a few hours in on a project for quality assurance testing on an insurance company’s website. And then I researched hospitals to find a specific type of molding –”
“For work?”
“Well, for my other work.”
“Why?”
“At the home of a client, I saw a place memory which depicted a murder being committed several decades ago, and I got an impression of the perpetrator in a hospital room with a distinctive crown molding.”
“Is this a case you’re working with Tim?”
“No.”
“A different sheriff? A police force?”
“No, it’s for a poltergeist case.”
Constance cocked her head. “What does an old murder have to do with a poltergeist case?”
“Well – nothing, directly. But I’ve identified the murder victim, and his case has never been solved. I’ve been reading everything I can online and talking to neighbors who’ve lived in the area for years, and I suspect that the victim was killed over a business deal gone wrong. From what I could tell in the place memory and the few details I’ve been able to find about the murderer, he sold illegal drugs and unlicensed weapons –”
“Is this an actual job you’re being paid for, or is this your fun project?”
“It’s not fun; it’s a murder, Constance,” Judith said, then frowned at the tulle-swathed concoction she’d just donned. “This is far too…much. And I can’t do strapless.”
“I think you mean won’t.” Constance tossed another dress at her, and Judith, resigned, didn’t even bother casting a critical glare over it before exchanging the tulle monstrosity for whatever this new abomination would be. “So you did stuff on the computer for hours and then did more stuff on the computer. Did you do anything that didn’t involve a screen?”
A quick flurry of anxiety shot through Judith’s stomach, and her eyes flitted to her overlarge purse, in which sat a small binder filled with freshly-printed sheets of paper. “Just some – some other research.”
“Hm. And you’re going to talk to Tim tonight, right?” Constance said from outside Judith’s closet. “It’s the perfect time. You’ll both be all dressed up, and there’ll be an open bar – Wait, there will be an open bar, right?”
When she was greeted with silence, Constance poked her head through the closet door. “Judith?”
Judith frowned at her reflection. This dress wasn’t exactly terrible. She never intentionally wore lace, but at least it was black. The interior fabric of the dress was soft, and, though the bodice…clung in more places than she was used to, the skirt was loose and long enough not to constrict her movement –
Suddenly aware that Constance was watching her, Judith turned toward her sister with a jolt.
A devilish glint crept into Constance’s smile. “That’s the one I was talking about.”
“The one you were talking about?”
“The dress you’re actually going to wear. I just brought the other ones to break you down so you wouldn’t find some silly reason to veto this one.” Constance took Judith’s hand and pulled her into the bathroom. “Now I’m going to curl your hair. And I’ve already preheated the curling iron, so I don’t want to hear any complaining.”
In the McFerrin Community Center gymnasium, thick black basketball court lines intersected the makeshift aisle that led between clumps of folding chairs up to an arch festooned with fake white roses. Judith didn’t have strong sensibilities when it came to aesthetics, but she couldn’t help thinking that it would take less work to make an old-fashioned chapel look tasteful than a squeaky, vinyl-floored basketball court.
After a sudden scramble to remember on which side of the aisle she was supposed to sit, Judith selected a place in the very back row on the left hand side and then pulled out her phone to check her fifty-fifty guess against the internet.
Someone slid past her legs, and Judith scooted her chair back without looking up.
“This seat’s not taken, right?” came a voice.
A rush of discomfort surged through Judith like static. There were still plenty of seats available. The whole back row was empty. Why would this person elect to infringe on her personal space by sitting right next to her?
Fumbling for a reply that would strike a balance between basic politeness and a firm Go away, Judith looked up to see Tim in a suit and tie.
Why didn’t men wear suits on a daily basis anymore? She had no complaints about Tim’s usual Andy Griffith-esque sheriff’s uniform, but she’d never before seen him in a suit.
“No,” she said, her voice coming out too loud. “It’s not taken.”
An easy smile on his face, Tim sat down. The sleeve of his suit jacket brushed her arm, and the space beside her that had been empty was full and warm.
Judith was not sentimental; it was a defining aspect of her personality.
But it had been a year since she’d last seen Melissa Sloan. A year ago, Melissa had been pregnant, her eyes red from fear and tears. She’d had twigs in her hair and dirt smeared across her face, and the sudden primal fear of realizing that the man she loved intended to drop her body down an abandoned mine shaft had left terror etched into her skin.
Inside the wedding program was a photo of Melissa, arms intertwined with a man whose soft-looking face was camouflaged by a thick beard - Judith presumed this was Danny Boyle, the groom - and a blonde, curly-haired baby girl. In addition to the usual list of the wedding party and the order of events, the program contained an abbreviated story.
Two flawed people meeting in rehab, an unlikely friendship between a woman whose ability to trust had been ripped to shreds and a trucker grateful to have clawed his way out of alcohol addiction. A rushed midnight trip to the hospital when the baby came early and the woman had no one else to call.
And here, today, the inevitable next step of the story.
Throughout her life, when Judith’s parents had brought up the topic of marriage and relationships, prudence had been a theme. Time, thoroughness, minimizing the risk of negative outcomes through planning and thoughtful choices. The whirlwind of peril, rehab, childbirth, and romance that swung through Melissa and Danny’s story in no way fit into the mold of prudence which had been lectured into Judith from an early age.
But now, on the rickety makeshift altar with the tacky fake flower arch, Melissa’s face no longer looked weary and older than her years. A year ago, Judith had never seen her smile, but today Melissa hadn’t stopped smiling for a moment. Danny, the groom, wore a suit that was too tight and strained at the seams, but he had eyes for no one but Melissa and the blue-eyed baby girl he held, whose small fist clung to the shoulder of his camo-patterned suit jacket as though the crook of his elbow was her own personal possession.
Judith was not sentimental. But her eyelids were strangely hot and itchy, and beside her Tim’s eyes were definitely wet.
There was no assigned seating at the reception.
The sun sank red through the tips of the trees, which cast long shadows over the party. In a clearing surrounded by trees and mountains, the reception was lit by strands of lights that twinkled through the gathering dark. It was beautiful, a mild spring evening that was cool but not chill, dewy but not wet.
But Judith, to avoid the anxious, aimless wandering that tended to happen when she didn’t have a designated place to go, planted herself at a table and eventually found herself sitting between Tim and the groom’s second cousin named Herb, who talked incessantly while his tongue, darkened and dry as a parrot’s, wiggled in his mouth.
“Danny’s a sucker for that baby,” Herb said, leaning around Judith to talk to Tim. “He’s just the kind would go an’ get hisself hitched to somebody with a kid. When I was his age, young an’ healthy, you never woulda caught me makin’ eyes at someone who was towin’ a kid along.”
“They seem very happy,” Judith said, moving her untouched solo cup of champagne a centimeter to the left so that she had something to do with her hands.
Herb spared a brief, disdainful glance at Judith before turning his gaze back to Tim. “Danny’s always been the kind would save baby animals and hold up traffic to move a turtle off the road. Nice guy, but no sense in his head. He never woulda made it far in my day - too soft. But then his mama never did toughen him up proper -”
Tuning out Herb’s prattling voice, Judith turned her attention out to the other wedding guests mingling at surrounding tables. There was hollow-eyed Stewart, Melissa’s high school friend, surrounded by a gaggle of noisy children and a harried woman whose hair was starting to fall out of its bun. And there was Anna May Schneider, sitting with her husband and son Jason, still lanky and surly, with his hair flopping over his eyes. Rock and Cindy Mitchell filled out the other chairs around Anna May’s table, and from her angle Judith could see them holding hands under the burlap tablecloth. Anna May’s eyes snagged on Judith’s, and they exchanged a small, awkward wave.
At a warm prickling in her skin, Judith glanced to the side and caught a smiling look from Tim, who appeared to be paying as much attention to Herb as she was.
Judith clutched the handles of her purse, her chest tightening.
A sudden high-pitched whistling sounded through the chatter, startling everyone’s attention to the head table. The best man took his two fingers out of his mouth and winked at the groom.
A solo cup clutched in his hand, Danny Boyle stood up from his seat and straightened his camo suit jacket. He was big and bulky and cleared his throat with a deep rumble as he stood before the wedding guests, but still somehow he seemed to fit better in the open air, surrounded by solo cups and burlap-covered picnic tables, than he had in the squeaky-floored gymnasium.
“Don’t worry,” he said, gesturing to his solo cup. “It’s ginger ale.”
A faint chuckle filtered through the guests, along with a few sprinkles of applause and a piercing whoop from a man in the back.
Danny smiled, his face reddening as he shifted on his feet. “I just wanted to thank y’all for comin’ to celebrate this day an’ my beautiful wife -”
Judith dropped her eyes to her hands twined in her lap. They always made her uncomfortable, these effusive, blubbery, off-the-cuff speeches without a clear structure or ending. Without looking up, she squirmed and half-listened to Danny’s list of all the things he loved and was grateful for about Melissa and the little baby Aspen, until suddenly she heard her own name spouting from the groom’s mouth.
“- to Judith Temple and Sheriff Tim Morrissey. Without y’all I never woulda met the woman o’ my dreams. The two o’ you saved Melissa and Aspen’s lives last year, and -” Danny’s voice shook, and he paused.
Judith’s fingers were cold and her torso hot, her body going into fight-or-flight mode without her approval as the eyes of the wedding guests swiveled to their table. Beside her, Tim sat still with gracious discomfort, his embarrassment evident only in the faint tightness in his face and the curl of his shoulders.
“I am just so, so -” Danny paused again, his pitch rising with emotion, and Melissa reached up to take his hand. “So thankful for all y’all, and I wish every blessing for ya.”
Whether or not Danny was actually finished with his speech, the wedding guests cheered and clapped, and one of the groomsmen darted to his nearby truck. A few moments later, an old bluegrass song blared through the truck speakers, and guests started pushing tables to the side of the dance floor.
Clutching her purse and breathing hard, her face red, Judith scampered out of the circle of lights and music and messy emotions and fled to the shadowy fringes where the small clearing merged with the woods.
A small bench sat at the edge of the clearing, facing the woods as though to welcome tired-footed visitors wanting to admire the pressing vitality of nature as it crept up on the human-made open space. But in the dimness of late twilight, only a faint gray light peeked through the dense tree limbs, and the forest floor was already swathed in thick darkness. Judith sat, holding her purse on her lap and willing away the heat in her face. All those confused, inquisitive eyes that had turned to stare at her during Danny’s speech and that would pin her down again the moment she returned to the bright glow of the reception’s hanging lights -
“That was a little awkward.” Tim’s voice startled Judith from her thoughts as he leaned his elbows against the back of the small wooden bench.
A jittering rose in Judith’s stomach, and she hugged her purse against her abdomen as though to quiet the sensation. “Wedding speeches tend to make me uncomfortable. So do eulogies.”
Tim stepped around the side of the bench and eased down to sit beside her. “Makes sense. People’s emotions are running high, and they’re supposed to say something meaningful. It’s hard to strike a good balance. He was right, though.” Tim nudged her gently with his elbow. “You did save Melissa.”
“You’re the one who went into the mine. Without your Kevlar, I might add.”
“I wouldn’t have been there at all if you hadn’t dragged me out of my house in the middle of the night.”
“I don’t believe it technically counted as the middle of the night. I first called you around ten o’clock, which is hardly the middle -”
Tim laughed, and with a rush of warmth Judith suddenly realized that Tim didn’t laugh at her the same way other people did. When he laughed, there was no streak of scorn, however subtle. When he laughed, even if she was doing something mildly absurd, his laugh came not from disdain but delight. “Okay, fine. Technically it wasn’t the middle of the night, not at first. But you were still the reason I was there at all.”
Unbidden, Brian’s freckled face, his smile fading so quickly at the harshness of Tucker’s voice, rose up in Judith’s thoughts, and her shoulders deflated. “At least I could actually do something for Melissa.”
Tim shifted beside her, making the bench creak, and in the molecules of air between them Judith could feel his warmth. “You having a hard time with a case?”
“A little boy. I’ve done what I can for him, in my limited capacity, but it won’t do much as long as his mother keeps getting into awful relationships.”
Tim let out a heavy sigh. “That’s a tough one. You can’t fix people.”
“There’s a good chance her current boyfriend has committed crimes in the past. If I could get a reading on it, then it’s possible I could give law enforcement an anonymous tip.”
Tim’s laughter jostled her again, harder this time. A smile cracked through the tension in Judith’s face, though in terms of prying into Tucker’s dubious past she hadn’t exactly been kidding.
“You would,” Tim said, his chuckles quieting. Whoops, stomps, and rowdy bluegrass music with a twanging fiddle blared from the dance floor, vibrating the small bench. In the late spring dusk, it was a classic coal country wedding.
Tim took a breath. “I’m not trying to rush you.”
The cool night air suddenly burned against Judith’s skin, and every cell in her body came alert with what she knew had to be one of three things: excitement, panic, or anaphylactic shock.
“But I wanted you to know,” he said, leaning his elbows on his knees and looking down at his clasped hands, “that a few weeks ago when I asked about dinner, I wasn’t just talking about dinner.”
Judith’s arms tightened around her purse, and her fingers itched to tear it open, though the rest of her body was frozen in place.
“I was talking about us,” Tim went on. “The two of us, I mean. You and me. I really think -”
“I’ve been doing research.” Jolting into sudden motion, Judith ripped open her purse and yanked out a three-ring binder, nearly dropping it from her jittery fingers.
“Research?” In the dim light, Tim’s face was blank with confusion.
“On factors that contribute to successful long-term relationships. Numerous studies have shown that having shared values is one of the most significant predictors of relationship success, so I’ve put together a questionnaire that will help clarify and quantify our beliefs on several values-based topics -”
“Wait, you did what?”
Unable to pause her thoughts to interpret the meaning behind the dopey grin on Tim’s face, Judith hurtled onward. “I’ve divided the questions by category, and even if the wording isn’t ideal or the questionnaire isn’t as well-designed as it ought to be, since I put it together within a very limited timeframe, the topics themselves will be helpful to discuss regardless.”
Laughter bubbled up again from Tim, and a prickle of anxiety shot through Judith.
“I didn’t intend for this to be funny,” she said.
“No, no, I think it’s great,” Tim said, wrangling his hilarity, though his mouth still tilted upward.
“If you’d rather not answer the questions -”
“No, I do. More people should talk about this stuff beforehand; it would save a lot of people a lot of heartache. It’s just very…thorough.”
Judith’s breath eased slightly, though her hands still clutched the binder. She would not get distracted by the infectious smile on Tim’s face. She needed to focus. “I pride myself on being thorough.”
“I’m aware.” Tim scooted closer, leaning over Judith’s shoulder to squint at the first page, the small print difficult to read in the dimness. “What’s the first question?”
“What is your ideal number of children? Specifically biological children, but also extending to adopted - Why are you laughing?”
Thank you so much for stopping by the read Murmurs in the Walls! If you enjoyed this episode, please let me know with a like, comment, or restack!
→ Keep reading! Episode X: The Voicemail
← Episode VIII: The Intervention
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Judith: reinvents pre-Cana but with figuratively all the quiet parts out loud
Tim: "you've been THINKING of me!"
One reason I adore Judith and Constance is that they remind me so much of my lifelong bff and me. I'm more of the Constance type, and she's Judith (although this was much more true when we were kids and teens - as adults, we've both evened out a bit). She's now a successful surgeon in an extremely difficult, esoteric, and male-dominated speciality - I could see Judith thriving in this area as well, in another life. Meanwhile, I'm a lawyer-turned-stay at home Mom who is updating her on my favorite classics and my niche pop culture obsessions.