The Wedding Thief

by Mary Simses

  “I have a Dr. Loosen Blue Slate that’s very nice.”

  “Perfect. Thanks.”

  A moment later he placed my wine and a dinner menu on the bar. I put the glass to my lips and took a sip. The wine was crisp, cold, and slightly sweet, with the citrusy flavor I loved. I studied the dinner menu, starting with the appetizers, and quickly landed on a mixed baby greens salad with caramelized pears, aged goat cheese, candied pecans, and champagne vinaigrette. My mouth watered.

  It was hard to select an entrée because there were so many good choices. The sesame-encrusted ahi tuna steak (seared rare, sliced, and served with stir-fried vegetables) looked amazing, but so did the prosciutto-wrapped breast of chicken (stuffed with ricotta and spinach, served with marsala sauce, red bliss mash, and asparagus).

  I finally decided on the tuna, which left the dessert menu. The blueberry crumble seemed like the perfect choice. I was set. Jerome took my order, and I opened my business planner.

  “What are you reading?” he asked as he set a place mat and flatware on the bar in front of me.

  I looked up. “This? Oh, it’s not a book. It’s a planner. For work.”

  He tapped some keys on a computer, inputting my order. “I’m reading that book Rx for Romance.” He sighed. “It’s sad romance is so confusing we have to read books to figure it out.”

  I was familiar with the book. It had been on every bestseller list for months. I’d purposely avoided it, hoping my love life would improve on its own. “Maybe I should read it. I haven’t had the best luck with men.”

  Jerome leaned toward me and whispered, “Hon, that makes two of us.”

  True confessions, here we go. I laughed to myself, went back to the planner, and reviewed the list of things I had to do for the August board meeting, writing notes under some of the items. When Jerome placed my salad on the bar, I was happy to put the work away.

  The caramelized pear was delicious, sweet and nutty. How did they make pears taste like that? I’d eaten here ages ago and vaguely remembered the old menu, which had been more of a meat-loaf-and-potatoes kind of thing. “I like the changes they’ve made to the menu,” I said as Jerome walked by.

  “When was the last time you were here?” he asked.

  “Oh, it’s been at least fifteen years. I think it was a Sunday brunch with the family.”

  “The menu’s probably been changed a few times since then.” He put a saltshaker and a pepper mill on the bar by me. “Do you live in town?”

  “I used to.” I slid another piece of pear onto my fork and popped it in my mouth.

  “Still have family here?”

  “My mother. I came to see her.”

  “Oh, nice.” He poured a glass of water for me.

  “Yeah, well…it’s complicated.”

  “Mmm,” he said, half under his breath, “isn’t every family?”

  Probably so, but I wondered if they were as complicated as mine. I tilted the glass of Riesling to my lips and took another long drink. The wine was having its effect, slowing me down, making me relax. I told him the story—about how I’d ended up back in town, about Carter and Mariel’s upcoming wedding.

  “So, back up,” Jerome said. “What happened after the New Year’s Eve party? Didn’t your sister realize the terrible thing she’d done?”

  “We didn’t talk after that.”

  “You mean she never tried to get in touch with you to say she was sorry? Or anything?”

  I stabbed a few pieces of lettuce with my fork. The dressing was beginning to taste a little bitter. “Oh, she called me, she texted me, she wrote me a letter. I basically ignored everything. I mean, there was nothing she could say. I met him first. We were in love. And then she, well…”

  “But why would she do that to her own sister?”

  Why did Mariel do anything she did? I’d been her sister for thirty-five years and I still didn’t know. Why did she always copy me? Why did she take up everything I was interested in, try to impress my friends, go to college in LA, want my boyfriend? Because she felt she had to compete with me? Or was it just something in her DNA? I didn’t know.

  “We’ve never been that close. We’ve had our ups and downs. She was always jealous of my relationship with Dad. But she’s the one who’s close to Mom.”

  One of the servers asked Jerome for a dark and stormy and a jackrabbit. He mixed the drinks and set them at the end of the bar.

  “My sister doesn’t appreciate Carter,” I said as I took the last pecan from my plate. “I mean, he’s smart. He really cares about people. And he’s a wonderful attorney. He’s honest with his clients and he does what he says he’ll do. He’s also great at dealing with all kinds of personalities. You know, some of the folks in LA can be pretty crazy.”

  “Yeah, I’ve been there. I know,” Jerome said.

  I remembered Carter handling more than one actor who wouldn’t be in a film with a rival star unless he had more lines, as well as several singers who didn’t want their drivers to start a conversation with them or even look at them in the rearview mirror. Maybe Carter reminded me a little of my dad, who had worked with some challenging people but never got ruffled, always kept things under control.

  Carter was good at managing difficult situations. He could solve almost any problem, legal or not. If you had a child who needed to attend a special kind of school, Carter would know the right place and the person who ran it. He’d make the introductory call. If you were looking for a contractor to renovate your home, he’d give you the names of two or three people whose work he’d stake his life on. If you were traveling to Rome for the first time, he’d connect you with a friend who lived there and could tell you everything you needed to know about the city.

  I twirled the stem of my wineglass. “Like I said, she doesn’t appreciate Carter. How kind he is and how willing he is to listen to people, to understand them. She’s just interested in being around his celebrity clients.” I could imagine her talking about them, making it sound as though Carter’s clients were her personal friends. Oh, yes, Katy’s starting to work on a new album and Leo’s going to London to shoot that movie.

  Jerome wiped the bar in front of me with a towel. “Sounds like you’re still in love with him.”

  I looked at my empty salad plate. Of course I was still in love with him. I wished he were sitting next to me at that moment. I could feel my eyes begin to burn. I was grateful when Jerome told me he was going to check on my entrée.

  I sliced into my ahi tuna steak and took a bite. Crisp on the outside and rare on the inside, just the way I liked it. The sesame seeds were crunchy; the ginger and lime sauce was tangy.

  “How is it?” Jerome asked as he walked by.

  I told him it was perfect, and he gave me a thumbs-up and headed to the other end of the bar. When he came back, he asked if I wanted another Riesling. I said yes, and a minute later he brought me a new glass. “So what kind of work do you do that you have to take your notebooks to dinner?”

  I laughed. “I don’t have to take my notebooks to dinner. I just thought I’d catch up a little. I’m an event planner.”

  “Oh, you do weddings and parties and things?”

  “I used to, but now I plan corporate events for a financial services company. Mostly meetings, client outings, company picnics, that kind of thing. But when I lived in LA, I was with a group that did weddings and parties.”

  “Weddings and parties in LA. Umm. Sounds like fun. Was it?”

  People often assumed my job was fun, and I’d have to explain that, like most other jobs, it basically involved a lot of hard work. Few people knew what went on behind the scenes at a big event. Clients and guests expected everything to go smoothly and according to plan, but it almost never did. “A lot of it was fun. But it’s like any other job. It has its good and bad points. So many things can go wrong with an event, and you have to make it right.”

  “Yeah, I’ll bet. Things people don’t even know about. Not the guests, anyway. You’ve probab
ly seen everything.”

  “Well, maybe not everything, but I have survived plenty of near disasters.”

  “Oh? Like what?”

  Everybody wanted to hear the disaster stories. I rattled off a few, including one involving a sprinkler system and another involving a photobombing guest. “And once, when the bride made her own centerpieces, half the people at the wedding broke out in hives. We had to get bottles of Claritin and hand them out. We put pink ribbons around the bottles to make them look like party favors.”

  “Nice touch.”

  “I thought so.”

  “I was at a wedding once where the groom couldn’t get the ring on the bride’s finger,” Jerome said. “They had a huge argument right there at the altar. She said he got the size wrong. He said she’d gained weight.” He paused to refill my water glass. “You can imagine how the bride took that. I mean, what was the man thinking? She physically attacked the guy. The minister had to pull her off. I thought they were going to call off the wedding.”

  “You mean they still got married?” How could a marriage survive that kind of beginning?

  He nodded. “Divorced a year later, though.”

  That didn’t surprise me. People don’t like to be told they’ve gained weight. “I had a bride who couldn’t fit into her gown on the morning of the wedding. We were lucky because the whole thing was held at a hotel, and the hotel seamstress saved the day. She took some fabric from the train and stitched it into the gown. She literally sewed the bride into it.”

  “A good seamstress is worth a lot,” Jerome said, then turned away to fill an order. I watched him pour champagne into a couple of flutes and bourbon into a glass.

  “Weddings and parties,” he said when he returned. “That’s sort of a timely topic because I’m moving into that field myself.”

  “Oh, you mean as a bartender?” I was surprised he wasn’t already doing some of that work on the side.

  “No, as a photographer. I’ve had cameras ever since I was a kid, from little plastic things to Nikons. A couple of years ago I started looking for jobs I could do when I wasn’t tending bar. A friend asked me to take some headshots for a book jacket, and he loved them. A couple of other friends asked me to take pictures for their Christmas cards. And word kind of spread. I’ve been buying more equipment, and I started doing weddings this summer. So far, it’s going pretty well. I haven’t had time to think about a website, but that’s next on the list. Maybe in a few years I’ll be able to stop bartending and become a full-time photographer.”

  “That would be nice. There’s nothing like doing what you really love.”

  “Can I give you my card?”

  “Uh, sure. But like I said, I’ve got a corporate job now. I don’t do private events anymore except an occasional thing for a friend. Plus, I’m in Chicago. That might be a little far for you to travel.”

  “Oh, right. I forgot. Yeah, that would be a little far.”

  He removed some wineglasses from a dishwasher and put a cocktail shaker in the sink. “It’s kind of funny—I mean funny-peculiar—that you’re an event planner and your sister’s getting married, but you’re not planning her wedding. And you’re not even going.”

  I finished my Riesling and set the glass on the bar. “It’s just as well. If I were in charge of her wedding, I’d probably think of a million ways to ruin it.”

  “Sounds like a good title for a book—A Million Ways to Ruin a Wedding.”

  “Yeah, well, I could definitely write that one.”

  A man at the end of the bar raised a hand, and Jerome went to take his order. I looked at my empty glass and began thinking about all the ways I could ruin a wedding if I really wanted to. Anybody’s wedding. Even my sister’s. If I really wanted to. But I wouldn’t. That would be a little crazy. Besides, I didn’t even know what she’d planned for the big day. Although whatever it was, I was sure I could unravel it. It wouldn’t be hard. But I’d never do that. The whole idea was too far out there. Even for me. The one whose boyfriend Mariel had stolen. The one who couldn’t go back to LA because she was there with Carter. The one whose life she’d ruined.

  I ordered another glass of wine and looked around, studying the people in the restaurant as the place began to fill up. But I couldn’t get the sabotage idea out of my mind. Maybe it was worth a little more consideration, just as a what-if. Just for the sake of argument.

  Okay, then, if I was really going to unravel my sister’s wedding plans, what would I do? Tinker with the music for the ceremony? Sure. Change the transportation plan so people would arrive late? Of course. Hide the wedding rings? Absolutely. Or substitute some costume jewelry. I could revise the playlist for the reception, revamp the seating arrangements, and hide the box after people put all the cards and checks in it. And that was just off the top of my head. I could even work on getting Carter back, so rather than wasting my energy feeling sorry for myself, I’d be proactive. I’d be doing something. The thought of it made me sit up a little straighter.

  But hold on. This was crazy. Even if I wanted to ruin Mariel’s wedding, how would I figure out who the vendors were, the contacts, what the timetable was, the details? I’d have to try to break into her computer. Or Mom’s. Although Mom’s was easy. She still used that same old password with our birthdays in it. I could go over to the house when they were out, get into her computer; maybe there was even a paper file around with copies of the contracts and…

  “Here you go,” Jerome said. He placed another glass of wine in front of me.

  I took a long sip. “You know, that’s not a bad idea.”

  “What’s not a bad idea?”

  I leaned in and lowered my voice. “A million ways to ruin a wedding. I could do it to my sister.”

  “Oh my God,” he said, taking a step back. “You’re serious.”

  Chapter 6

  A Good Feeling

  Is Hard to Ignore

  The first thing I did the next morning was e-mail my boss to tell her I had to stay in Connecticut for a couple of weeks. I figured that wouldn’t be a problem, because she’d been expecting me to be out for a while, and with my phone and laptop and planners I could work from almost anywhere. Sitting at the banquette in my room at the inn, I called the front desk and extended my stay. The sabotage plan was on. I just needed to figure out the details. And to do that, I had to have information.

  The wedding ceremony was being held at St. John’s Church in Hampstead at four o’clock a week from Saturday, with the reception taking place afterward at the Hampstead Country Club. I knew that because it was on the invitation and response card I’d thrown out the day they arrived. Beyond that, however, I didn’t have a clue. I needed names and contact information for the vendors. I needed to know who was in the bridal party and what music was being played. I needed the guest list and the seating chart and the dinner menu. I needed to know who, what, when, and where for every minute of that day in order to determine the best way to attack it.

  And I needed some supplies, like a notebook for jotting everything down and a flash drive for copying anything wedding-related I might find when I broke into Mom’s and Mariel’s computers. I thought about the gift shop downstairs and decided to check it out.

  The shop was called This and That and it consisted of one bright, cheery room with large windows, whitewashed floors, and walls covered in pale green ivy-patterned paper. The office supplies were limited, but they did have a few spiral notebooks, and I got the last flash drive on the shelf.

  As I was heading to the checkout counter, an object on a table caught my eye—a snow globe with two horses and a red barn inside. The bay and buckskin looked just like Two’s Company and Crackerjack, the ponies Mariel and I had had as kids. Something about that scene tugged at my heart, and I found myself picking up the snow globe, shaking it, and watching the flakes fall. I’d just placed it on the checkout counter along with the notebook and flash drive when I heard a familiar voice.

  “Okay, tell him to send
it to me and I’ll take a look. I think that could work.”

  David. I thought he’d gone back to New York City.

  “Yeah, have him e-mail me the photos.” His phone pressed to his ear, he made his way toward the table where I’d just been standing. “We could try to get a variance, but I think it’s going to be an uphill battle.”

  Real estate talk. I wasn’t interested in that. I wanted to know what was going on with the hand.

  “No, I’ve gotten delayed,” he said. “But I’ll be back in the office in a day or two. In the meantime, maybe you could…”

  He walked across the room, out of earshot. But I kept an eye on him and when I saw him put away his phone, I approached him. He seemed surprised to see me, but he didn’t seem angry. That was good.

  “You’re still here, Miss Fix-It?” There was a glimmer in his eyes I liked, and I had to smile at the nickname.

  “Yeah, looks like I’m sticking around for a little while after all.”

  “I guess that makes two of us,” he said.

  A playful mood struck me. “By the way, there are plenty of things I can fix, you know.”

  “Oh, I’m sure there are,” he said, his tone matching mine. “Just not sculptures by famous artists.” That twinkle again.

  “True. But I have to draw the line somewhere. I mean, I can’t be an expert at everything. I’ve already got a lot of areas covered, and there are only so many hours in the day.”

  “Hmm.” He tilted his head back, assessing me. “But I was under the impression, given what you said yesterday about your experience with papier-mâché, that you were well schooled in art restoration.”

  Why did he have to remember that? “Ah. Well, sadly, I realized my skills in that particular area are more suited to pieces created on a kindergarten table during the month of December.”

  He peered at me in a suspicious way. “Are you saying your experience with papier-mâché was making Christmas ornaments as a five-year-old?”