Excerpt from The Stone Girl by Dirk Wittenborn, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

As they headed back to Valhalla with the dead man in the wedding dress, Win Langley's floatplane landed at the other end of the lake. Buddy told his daughter, "We don't say anything about overhearing that conversation between Charlie and the lawyer. They hear we stopped to go fishing in the Mohawk Club's stretch of the river, they'll arrest us for poaching. You understand me?"

They tied up at the dock behind the boathouse. A conga line of party planners and florists were carrying centerpieces for the tables into the striped tent. Electric feedback echoed as the band did its sound check. The roof and railings of the Great Camp were garlanded with ropes made of gardenias. Langley was just getting out of his seaplane. With him were Ian, the Rhodes Scholar with the big dick, and a spidery, hunched, silver- haired man in his early sixties. Evie noticed him because he only had three fingers on his left hand. All three were wearing Mohawk Club blue blazers and cream- colored flannel slacks. Clinger the boatman tied up the floatplane and told Langley through a mouthful of Red Man chewing tobacco, "Miss Mannheim's lookin' for you, and the priest and that rabbi say they need to talk about the particulars of the service." Lulu had asked Langley to play father of the bride and give her away. The lawyer apologized for being late, explaining that a headwind had delayed them on the way up from Long Island Sound.

Buddy caught up with Langley just as he was starting up the steps to Valhalla. The lawyer looked puzzled as Buddy whispered in his ear, then Langley suddenly jerked his head back as if Buddy had just bit him. Evie was watching the fantasy unravel before her eyes when the door to the boathouse flew open behind her.

It was Lulu. Her hair tied back in a chignon roped with pearls, pink silk cocktail dress, she was all dressed up for the party except for her feet. It had rained briefly the night before and she had rubber boots on so as not to ruin her shoes in the mud. "Have you seen Charlie?" .

All Evie could think to do was shake her head no.

Lulu scrunched up her face in cute annoyance. "He got in super late last night from New York and slept in the boathouse so as not to wake the house." Charlie's four- wheel- drive BMW M5 was parked a few feet away. "He swore he'd bring my wedding dress, but I can't find it anywhere— you don't think he could have forgotten it, do you?"

Evie started to cry. "What's wrong?" Lulu could see Win and Buddy hurrying toward her.

"What happened!" Lulu was frightened and shouting. "Tell me what's wrong!"

Evie tried to stop her from looking in the boat, but Lulu pushed her away. The wind blew back the tarp covering Charlie's body as Lulu scrambled down into the boat. When she saw her fiancé was wearing her wedding dress, she began to scream and clawed his face in a rage that would have been called murderous if he were not already dead.

By the time Sheriff Dunn got there, Harvey had dragged Lulu away from the body and taken her up to a bedroom in Valhalla. She was still wailing, but softer now that the sedatives he had given her had started to kick in.

Evie listened numbly as they stood on the dock and Langley summarized for the sheriff's benefit what Buddy had told him regarding how, when, and where the body had been discovered. Lawyerly, cold, and matter- of- fact, Langley sounded heartless to Evie until his eyes suddenly watered up with tears. "I ... know this is irregular ... highly irregular, but given the tragic circumstances— Lulu's emotional state and the needless damage that would be done if certain details become public knowledge— I hope no one objects if we get him out of that damn wedding dress before the ambulance arrives."

The sheriff and two deputies kept the caterers, party planners, and the rest of the hired help away from the boat. Then Clinger drove the bishop, the rabbi, and Langley out to the airport to break the news to the chartered jet full of wedding guests. The boatman would later relay to Evie that Langley told the stunned guests that Charlie had died in "a tragic swimming accident." No mention was made of the wedding dress. A bridesmaid fainted and the bishop and the rabbi led them in a moment of silent prayer. Langley asked everyone to respect the bride's privacy and refrain from discussing the tragedy with anyone from the press. Of the ninety- four guests on the plane, only one chose not to reboard and fly back to NYC.

Excerpted from The Stone Girl: A Novel by Dirk Wittenborn. Copyright (c) 2020 by by Dirk Wittenborn. Used with permission of the publisher, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. All rights reserved.