by Laura Durham
Godfather of the Bride: A Novella
An Annabelle Archer Wedding Planner Mystery #14
Laura Durham
Broadmoor Books
For Gillian,
whose wicked sense of humor and spirit of adventure have kept me sane (and laughing) for years and years
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
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Acknowledgments
About the Author
Chapter 1
“I have to say, Annabelle,” my assistant, Kate, said as she sat with her feet up on my glass coffee table and took a sip of champagne. “I could get used to wedding days like this.”
“Well, don’t,” I told her, swigging my cold, bottled Mocha Frappuccino. “This is not a normal wedding day.”
Evidenced by the fact that my assistant wore shorts that would make Daisy Duke blush, I thought, trying not to be distracted by her long, tan legs. On any normal wedding day, we’d both be in appropriate black dresses. At least mine would be appropriate. Kate’s would show a little too much leg, but it would be black. This, however, was no normal wedding day.
Kate cast a glance toward my high living room windows where the bride sat on a tall stool getting her hair and makeup done. Late morning light streamed through the glass and glinted off the collection of hairspray cans and makeup palettes laid out on my dining room table. The scent of high-end hair product hung in the air along with the faintest hint of Bengay.
She dropped her voice. “You mean because it’s a Friday wedding, and the bride is over eighty, and we’re actually in the wedding party instead of running the day?”
“That’s part of it.” I took another swig of my cold coffee and reminded myself that I really didn’t need any more caffeine.
“Does the other part have to do with you not having a wedding day schedule?” Kate asked, the corner of her mouth turning up.
I looked longingly at her champagne. “I’m doing just fine without a schedule.”
Kate leaned forward. “Is your left eye twitching?”
I touched a finger to it and shot her a look. “Very funny.”
As the owner of Wedding Belles, one of Washington, DC’s top wedding planning firms, I was used to running weddings with the precision of a Swiss timepiece. That meant that each wedding had a carefully crafted timeline that outlined the wedding day minute to minute from the moment the bride started getting ready to the time the last vendor loaded out at the end of the event. This wedding, however, was different.
I glanced over at Leatrice, my octogenarian downstairs neighbor, who sat perched on the stool in a Wonder Woman bathrobe, with a tiny brown-and-black Yorkie on her lap. My eyes then went to Fern, my go-to hairstylist, as he teased the back of the bride’s jet-black hair.
“I thought we agreed not to make her hair too big,” I said, coughing as Fern unleashed a torrent of hairspray.
Fern waved a hand in front of his face. “I have to have volume, sweetie. We’re channeling a vintage look.”
One look at Fern’s own outfit was proof of that. Fern loved nothing more than dressing for the occasion, and especially if the occasion was a wedding. He’d done wedding hair wearing everything from a sari, to a kimono, to leather chaps and a cowboy hat. Today he’d chosen pleated beige pants and a brown, buttoned-up cardigan. He’d even tucked the end of his dark ponytail into the back of the cardigan.
“Are you going for a Mr. Rogers vibe?” I asked.
Fern inhaled audibly. “I’ll have you know, this was a very stylish look in the fifties. Of course, I’ll be changing for the wedding. I wouldn’t dream of performing the ceremony in anything less than my full liturgical attire.”
Leatrice rubbed her hands together. “I’ve always wanted a wedding blessed by a priest.”
“He’s not a priest,” I mumbled. “He was ordained online.”
Fern ignored me and leaned down to Leatrice. “Don’t you worry. Your wedding is getting the full Fern treatment.” He winked at her. “Just wait until you see my cassock and cross.”
The Yorkie, named Hermés, yipped in Leatrice’s lap. I opened my mouth to say something, then shut it.
“So he’s impersonating a priest,” Kate said, crossing one bare leg over the other. She tapped a finger to the pale-blue pillbox hat topping her blond bob. “It’s not the first time. You and I are playing the part of TWA stewardesses, I mean, bridesmaids.”
“Not willingly,” I whispered.
She took another drink of champagne. “Our baby-blue suits are better than those orange lace jumpsuits she originally wanted.”
Kate had a point. We’d talked Leatrice out of having a disco-themed wedding. We’d also talked her out of an Age of Aquarius motif and had convinced Fern that a murder mystery themed wedding was too on the nose.
“But do you have to wear the hat now?” I asked.
Kate adjusted the boxy hat so it tilted on her head. “Come on. It’s fun. I’m getting into the spirit of the wedding. I’m also reveling in the fact that we aren’t in charge.”
Even though we were wedding planners, Fern had volunteered to plan Leatrice’s wedding for her. After a bumpy start, everything had gone smoothly. Relatively speaking. This was due to the fact that Leatrice and her fiancé, Sidney Allen, wanted a small wedding, and because I’d been secretly going behind Fern’s back and fixing things.
I knew he’d be offended if he found out, so Leatrice had promised not to breathe a word to anyone. But she’d secretly given me all the contracts before she signed them so I could point out potential pitfalls. I’d also fed vendor names to Leatrice so she could ask Fern about them and used my professional pull to get almost the entire wedding at cost. Of course, it helped that Leatrice had agreed to a Friday afternoon in July when no one in their right mind wanted to get married. Not even Kate knew exactly how involved I’d been in the planning, and I intended to keep it that way. No one needed to know that I’d written up my own schedule and memorized it so we wouldn’t get wildly off track.
“You’re right,” I said, flipping my auburn ponytail off my shoulder. “I guess I don’t have anything to worry about.”
“Of course you don’t,” Fern said. “I think this goes to show that you can pull off a wedding without a crazy schedule.”
I bristled at the word “crazy,” but forced myself to shrug it off as my phone vibrated in my jeans pocket. I walked from my living room to the kitchen as I answered without looking at the name on the screen. I didn’t care who was calling as long as it kept me from telling Fern what I really thought about his schedule-less wedding planning.
“Annabelle, thank heavens.” Richard’s voice sounded high and breathy. “I’m dying.”
My best friend and caterer, Richard Gerard, had a tendency to be dramatic, so I took his frequent claims of imminent death with a grain of salt. I dropped my empty Frappuccino bottle into the green recycling bin and hopped up onto the kitchen counter. “Did a waiter show up in a cream shirt instead of white, or did they send you the wrong flatware again?”
“Do I sense a tone of mocking?” Richard asked, his voice instantly sharper.
“Never,” I said, hoping he couldn’t sense that I was smiling over the phone. “What’s wrong?”
“Do you have any idea how hot it is?”
I’d violated one of the cardinal wedding planner rules and forgotten to check the weather report. That didn’t mean I hadn’t been aware we were in the middle of a heat wave, but at some point, hot was hot. As long as it wasn’t scheduled to pour rain on our outdoor ceremony, I was okay with a little heat. “Well, it is mid-July in Washington, DC.”
“Which is precisely why it’s considered the off-season for weddings. Certainly for outdoor weddings.”
“Which is why Leatrice got such a good deal on the venue and all her vendors,” I reminded him. “It’s also why you were willing to give her the food at cost.”
“A benevolent act I’m sincerely regretting.”
“I know you don’t mean that,” I said.
He mumbled something about coercion and self-sacrifice that I couldn’t quite make out, and not because we had a bad connection. I knew Richard was only a few blocks away from my Georgetown apartment at the Dumbarton House where Leatrice was getting married. As the caterer for the event, his team was the first into the venue for setup. Normally, I’d be right there with him, but as a bridesmaid I was supposed to be getting hair and makeup done with the bride. A part of me wished I were at Dumbarton House with Richard instead.
We’d chosen the historical home because it was nearby, and it was intimate enough that her small guest count wouldn’t be overwhelmed. It also had a lovely garden for the ceremony and a tented patio for the reception. Of course, when we’d toured the venue, it was springtime and in the mid-70s. Summer temperatures in the nation’s capital routinely topped ninety degrees with sky-high humidity.
“I take it it’s a bit muggy?”
“Muggy?” Richard’s voice went up an octave. “I have so many waiters swooning out on the lawn, it looks like they’re doing some sort of interpretive dance.”
“The temperature should drop by the time we get to the ceremony, and guests are sitting outside.”
“Let’s just hope I have staff left by that point. I don’t know what I’ll do if I can’t pull off French service.”
I leaned back against my wooden cabinets. “Leatrice is pretty laid back. Worse comes to worst, you can shift to a buffet.”
He sucked in his breath sharply. “A buffet?”
“Yes, a buffet,” I told him. “They can be done very tastefully.”
“If the old bird wanted a buffet, she could have gone to Golden Corral.” Richard sniffed. “The menu I planned out is specifically for French service, Annabelle. You know very well I can’t just switch it up willy-nilly. It throws off all my quantities.”
Richard planned his menus with the same precision I prepared my wedding schedules, so I did appreciate that they couldn’t be changed on the fly.
“I know that,” I said, “but technically I’m not the wedding planner on this one. You should probably be talking to Fern.”
More muttering. “I just hope all the guests aren’t as old as the bride. In this heat, we’ll have to roll them out on gurneys. Maybe I should serve B12 shooters instead of gazpacho soup sips.”
That was a sobering thought, but not an unrealistic one. “I’ll call Ace Beverage and have them send a second run of more water and ice. We’ll have to keep people hydrated.”
“Already done, darling. I’m glad Buster and Mack provided a claw-foot bathtub for our bathtub gin station. Once I fill it with ice, we may have to submerge guests in it to cool them off.”
That would make for pretty pictures. “I’ll pop over in a few minutes. I’m just waiting for Reese to arrive with the tuxes.”
“Has he gotten used to the idea of being Sidney Allen’s best man yet?” Richard asked, with amusement in his voice.
“I think so. Sidney Allen did spend a lot of time with Reese while we were in Ireland.”
“It’s good practice for Reese,” Richard said. “Grooms who’ve been in weddings are always more polished than the ones who are neophytes. We don’t want your groom, of all people, to be clueless at his own wedding.”
I cleared my throat as my pulse quickened at the mention of my wedding. I twisted my engagement ring nervously on my finger. “Right.”
“Whenever that wedding might be,” Richard said, not hiding the sarcasm dripping from his voice. “But don’t let me rush you, darling. You just take all the time in the world to pick a date. Not that any of us have busy calendars we need to plan around.”
“I’m working on it,” I lied. “You know I have to work around wedding season.”
Richard let out a long breath. “At least there isn’t a set crime season your detective has to worry about. Another perk of being with someone who isn’t in the wedding business.”
That and there were virtually no single, straight men in the DC wedding industry.
“Considering how long Sidney Allen has been in events, I was surprised he didn’t have any other friends.” I lowered my voice so Leatrice couldn’t hear it through the opening between the two rooms. “Not that Reese wasn’t happy to step in.”
“I don’t see why you’d be shocked. The man’s a workaholic and very competitive. Before he met our girl, I don’t think he had a personal life.”
Richard had known the pint-sized entertainment director for far longer than I had, but I’d also never known Sidney Allen to mention family or friends. Leatrice’s quirky fiancé was known for running a company that rented out costumed performers and for micromanaging them on-site while barking orders into a wireless headset. Even though his performers were the most authentic, I rarely used him because I avoided theme weddings like the plague, and he usually amped up the drama factor of any event. Since I routinely worked with Richard and Fern, the drama at my weddings was already high enough. Although we didn’t work together often, he’d actually met Leatrice while coordinating a troupe of Venetian performers for one of my weddings.
No one knew his actual age, but I suspected Sidney Allen was younger than Leatrice’s eighty-plus years. And while my neighbor was all bones, Sidney Allen was all belly. Each year I’d known him, he’d gotten a little rounder, and each year his pants had shifted higher on his waist. Richard claimed Sidney Allen’s pants were actually eating him, and he had suggested an intervention or rescue attempt more than once.
“Your fiancé next to Sidney Allen is going to be quite a picture,” Richard said. “One’s tall, dark, and handsome and the other—“
“Be nice,” I said, my face warming at the thought of Reese being my fiancé and not just my boyfriend. “Not only is he the groom, he’s your client.”
“Fine,” Richard said with a huff. “I just hope he doesn’t wear his tuxedo pants hiked up around his armpits.”
“I’m sure he’ll look fine,” I said. “Reese went with him to get fitted.”
“Two straight men do not make a right, darling.”
I heard a knock on the door, and then Leatrice called out, “Love Muffin!”
I recognized the pastry-themed nicknames Leatrice and Sidney Allen used for each other. “Speak of the devil,” I said. “I’ve got to run.”
“Wait,” Richard said before I could disconnect. “How is Hermès? Did you tell Fern not to mess with his hair?”
I sighed. Hermés was Richard’s dog, although Leatrice babysat him so often, the small dog had been the natural choice for her ring bearer. “I told him.”
“The last time Leatrice gave him hair extensions, it took forever for me to get them out,” Richard said. “Besides, I just had him groomed.”
“The only thing we’re doing is putting him in that tiny tuxedo you bought him.”
“Good,” Richard said. “It should fit him perfectly unless Leatrice has been sneaking him treats since the final fitting.”
I tried to suppress the memory of attending a tuxedo fitting for a dog, reminding myself that I was a successful working professional who owned my own business, even if it did involve dogs wearing formal wear. “Talk to you later.” I clicked off despite Richard’s protests
and slid down from the counter.
“You know it’s bad luck to see the bride before the wedding,” I said as I returned to the living room.
Sidney Allen was indeed standing in my open doorway, but he wasn’t alone. A thin man with a full head of silver hair stood next to him, his dark suit a contrast to Sidney Allen’s red velvet bathrobe. I looked from Sidney Allen’s stricken face to Leatrice’s open mouth as she gaped at them.
“I finally found you,” the man said, his eyes locked on Leatrice.
Chapter 2
“I’m only halfway done,” Fern said as Leatrice slipped off the stool and put Hermès on the floor. True to his word, only one half of Leatrice’s hair was teased, making her look like she’d been electrocuted on her left side only.
“Is that really you?” Leatrice walked forward and tightened the belt on her Wonder Woman robe, her eyes unblinking as she gaped at the older man next to her fiancé.
The man nodded, working the brim of his hat in his hand. I almost never saw men wear hats anymore, but this old-fashioned gunmetal-gray fedora seemed to fit with his look and his age.
“I’ve been looking for you for a while,” he said, “but don’t worry. I haven’t told the others I found you.”
Hermès scampered up to the strange man, sniffed around his ankles, and proceeded to emit a low growl.
Leatrice let out a breath. “I didn’t think it would be you.”
“Don’t worry,” he said. “I’m here for a different reason.”
Sidney Allen looked as befuddled as I felt, and I noticed him wringing his hands. What was going on here? I couldn’t believe Leatrice had a long-lost love who’d just happened to turn up on her wedding day.