Bride and Doom

by Deborah Donnelly

  I added my call-back number, then shut off the phone. I didn’t want Gordo calling me while Aaron was around. But I’ll watch him carefully tomorrow, and if he gives the least little sign that he’s guilty, I’m going to raise hell and stop this wedding. I owe it to Rose.

  Aaron returned just a few minutes later, and murder was the last thing on his mind.

  “Now, where was I?” he leered, guiding me back to the couch. “I think it was right around here…”

  We picked up where we’d left off, so enthusiastically that an hour or so later we were both deep asleep among the cushions. My couch isn’t all that roomy, but we didn’t stir at all until the muffled but relentless sound of a cell phone disturbed us sometime near morning.

  At first I tried to keep dozing, while Aaron fished around in the pile of clothes on the floor. Then I came full awake in a panic. If that was Gordo—

  “Gold,” Aaron croaked into the phone. I held my breath, then let it out in relief as he said, “Izzy? Izzy, it’s barely sunrise here! Yes, I know it’s breakfast time where you are.”

  Smiling, I kissed Aaron on the temple and headed for the bedroom with my own phone firmly in hand. I set it on the bedside table along with the ruby ring and its chain, then crawled under the covers to stretch my cramped legs and sink back to sleep.

  But not for long—I can’t sleep properly without brushing my teeth. I tiptoed down the hall toward the bathroom, so quietly that Aaron must not have realized that I was up again.

  “Like my life, Grandpa,” I heard him say softly from the living room, taking care not to wake me. “I love her like my life.”

  I halted, eavesdropping shamelessly, while Izzy replied. Then Aaron spoke again.

  “Well, you tell Frankie she can get over it. Carnegie’s the best thing that ever happened to me, and I won’t put up with…No, I’m sure she didn’t mean to be rude…Uh-huh. Just tell her this is my wife she’s talking about, OK?”

  I hurried back into bed, and when Aaron slipped in next to me, I held him tight to my heart.

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Directing a large formal wedding is hard work. Assisting a bossy Frenchman to direct one is even harder. But if you add attempting to determine whether or not the bridegroom is a murderer, what you’ve got is an exercise in insanity.

  I started the day off-balance, because Aaron and I overslept. We reviewed the coming day hastily, gulping breakfast as we talked.

  “So can I hang out with you at this wingding,” Aaron asked, “or are you on duty every minute?”

  “Most minutes,” I told him. “The ceremony’s at noon on the pitcher’s mound, so I’ll be back and forth between the diamond and the rotunda until around eleven. After that I’ll be up in the owners’ suite helping Rose and Sheila get dressed.”

  I didn’t add that at some point I’d be having a private conversation with the groom—which might lead to shocking news for the bride.

  “Where will you be during the ceremony? I’ll look for you from the press box.”

  “Oh, somewhere on the fringe of things.” If things went as I expected, there wasn’t going to be a ceremony. “Want the rest of this bagel?”

  “Thanks.” Aaron was looking adorably tousled and unshaven, and I suddenly wished we’d awakened extra early. “Who helps the groom get dressed, anyway?”

  “Beau will, but it’s just a little tie-straightening. If anything actually goes wrong, like a button needs sewing, he’ll call me.”

  Aaron grinned. “And for this he gets the big bucks?”

  “Well, he did design the whole event.” I put our empty cups in the sink and dried my hands before lifting the ruby ring from my throat to gaze at it. Thank you, Izzy. Thank you, Bella. Then I noticed the clock on the stove and snapped out of my reverie. “I’ve got to run. See you at the stadium.”

  Ten minutes later I was up in the Made in Heaven office, explaining the situation—or rather, an edited version of it—to Eddie while reviewing my bridal emergency kit. Talk about insanity.

  “You’re giving up?” he asked in disbelief, chomping so hard I thought he’d bite his cigar in half.

  “I told you, with the notebook gone I’m stuck.” I stared at the items littering my desk. These were a mix of standard supplies and a few special items I’d added after one wedding mishap or another. “Let’s see, emery board, bobby pins, lint brush…”

  “I thought you were worried about the McKinney girl marrying a killer.”

  “I am, but there’s only so much I can do.” I was nervous as hell about what I’d already done, but no way was I going to tell Eddie about that. So I tried to distract myself from the risk I was running by diving deep into wedding-day mode. “Where’s that nail polish?”

  Clear polish is the best fix for runs in stockings, but I’d spilled mine the last time I used it. Eddie, still grumbling, yanked open the file drawer where we keep such miscellany, extracted a fresh bottle, and tossed it to me. I fielded the toss almost without looking and continued with my inventory. Moist towelettes, spare panty hose, moleskin for tight shoes…

  The mini–first aid kit seemed to be complete, from antihistamines to aspirin to ammonia capsules for fainting spells. And I’d remembered to collect the spare buttons that came with Rose’s gown. I tucked them into my sewing kit along with some black buttons for the gentlemen’s tuxedos.

  “Can’t you bring the cops in?” Eddie demanded. “It’s a hell of a thing to let that little girl—”

  “No evidence, remember?” Not unless I come up with some today. “Now where’s the chalk?”

  Technically a tux should only be worn after dark, but at least Gordo and Rob wouldn’t be sporting Navigator uniforms, as Leroy Theroux had suggested. Next to the sewing kit I set a little can of black polish for their dress shoes and a stick of chalk to hide any scuffs on Rose’s white pumps.

  I also had a Baggie of spare earrings and earring backs and even a pair of “gold” rings. I’d bought those after one dreadful occasion when the moronic best man had tried to juggle the wedding bands, and they’d rolled merrily into a gutter.

  Eddie was still fulminating. “You know, it’s all fine and good that Nevsky’s off the hook now, but I should think you’d want to—”

  “Could you just drop it, Eddie!”

  I threw up my hands in vexation. One was filled with rolls of antacid and breath mints, the other with a pair of black socks. You’d be amazed at how many groomsmen show up in navy. I put the socks down and sighed.

  “Sorry. I’m just anxious about—about the arrangements for today.”

  I picked up the big yellow identification badge that Beau insisted all his minions wear, so that interlopers could be spotted and barred from his domain. As I slipped the badge’s lanyard over my head, I thought how odd it must look beside the ruby ring. But I could tuck the ring inside the neckline of my jade silk—which reminded me that I still had to polish my own leather flats.

  “I’ve got to go get dressed. Tell me what I’m forgetting here.”

  Eddie came over to my desk—he can even walk indignantly—and surveyed the litter of stuff on it.

  “Toupee tape,” he growled.

  “Right.”

  Double-sided carpet tape works in a pinch on slipping hems and bra straps, but toupee tape is a lot easier on the skin. I threw a roll of it into my bag, followed by the rest of the supplies—including a special spool of medium-blue thread. Sheila, Rose’s bass guitarist and maid of honor, had demanded a black dress instead of the “lame” pastels she was originally offered, but we’d compromised on the blue of the Navigators’ logo.

  “I guess that’s everything,” I said. “I’ll call you if—”

  My phone chirred then, and I jumped. But it was only Beau, hounding me already.

  “The chocolat, where is the chocolat? The machinery is here, the supplies are not! This was your responsibility, and you—”

  “I’ll be there in half an hour, Beau, right on schedule. And I’ll call Jus
tin before I leave.”

  Justin, a tall curly-haired youth, was our attendant for the chocolate fountain today. The fountain itself came by delivery truck, with the attendant bringing the edibles separately. Justin was easily flustered but not flustered enough to forget the chocolate. Or was he? I thumbed in his number with one hand while opening the office door with the other.

  “Hi, Justin?” I trotted down the outside stairs as I spoke. There was a chill in the air this morning—Indian summer couldn’t last forever—but the sun was gaining strength already. “You’ve got all our supplies, don’t you?”

  “Well, there’s a little problem.”

  I froze with my key in the front door lock. “I don’t want to hear this. What kind of problem?”

  “My car won’t start. I think it’s the battery, so I called a towing service, and—”

  “Cancel it! What’s your address?”

  I didn’t make the half-hour I’d promised Beau, but within the hour I was at Yesler Field helping Justin unload his delicacies, including the apricots, from my van. Then some of the caterer’s men came out to help us, so once I’d confirmed that the bulk chocolate was Valrhona and not some cheap substitute—I can tell—I left them to it and entered the rotunda.

  “Oh, wow.” I turned in a slow circle to take it all in. “Oh, wow.”

  Beau Paliere was arrogant and volatile and a pain in the butt to work for, but I had to admit, the man was a genius with decor. Although he was famous for his after-dark affairs, the kind that use hundreds of lanterns or thousands of candles, he was no slouch in daytime either. Even partway decorated as it was now, with caterers and florists and electricians scurrying everywhere in a sort of orderly chaos, the rotunda was transformed.

  Along the walls, tiered banks of blue and white hydrangeas curved around the serving tables. One table held a special sort of pedestal affair for the cake, which hadn’t arrived yet, and another bore the tall stainless-steel chocolate fountain. All the tablecloths were Navigator blue and green, and each table was flanked by old-fashioned lampposts festooned with ivy and hung with baskets of gardenias and stephanotis.

  The centerpiece of the huge round space was an ivy-twined latticework gazebo beneath the chandelier of bats, surrounded by a raised ring-shaped dance floor guarded by a low railing. One of Boris Nevsky’s Sergeis, the tallest one, was attaching a garland of greenery and white roses to the railing, and the overall effect was as cheery and wholesome as baseball itself.

  “It makes an improvement, non?”

  As Beau approached across the rotunda, he was trailed by one of the videographers I’d hired to take documentary-style footage. And Beau was certainly photogenic this morning. Next to his hand-tailored Italian suit, my good old jade silk dress felt provincial.

  “It’s phenomenal, Beau.” I tried not to look at the camera or fidget with my hair. “You’ve done wonders.”

  “Of course I have.” He favored the future audience with a profile, then waved the videographer away and snapped, “You brought the chocolat?”

  “It’s unloading now. Is Gordo here yet? I need to talk to him—”

  “Later.” Beau made a haughty gesture toward the gazebo. “First you will coordinate with the electrical crew. The sound system, it has too many cables, and—Who is that person? He has no badge!”

  “It’s OK, Beau, I’ll take care of it.”

  The person in question was JD, Digger’s son and Rose’s lovelorn bandmate, who had apparently slipped in through the loading dock. He wore the same black leathers I’d seen him in at the engagement party and also at NocNoc the other night. But unlike his hangdog demeanor on those occasions, JD came marching across the rotunda toward me now with his eyes ablaze and his goateed chin held high, a man on a mission.

  “Where’s Rose?” he demanded. “I’ve got to see her. I’ve got to!”

  He leaned in close to me as he said it. That’s when I saw that his breath was coming short and fast, and his pupils were the size of salad plates. I’m no expert on controlled substances, but it was clear that young JD had snorted his breakfast this morning.

  “She’s not here yet,” I said brightly, slipping my arm through his and moving toward the exit. “Let’s go talk about this, OK? Then I can tell you all about today’s schedule, and we’ll work something out. Rose will be glad to see you…”

  Like hell she will, I was thinking, but I kept up a relentless flow of words as we walked. All I wanted was to get JD outside the main doors, where one of the stadium’s security guards could take over. I had enough to worry about today without heartbroken druggies cluttering up the scene.

  “You see, Rose will be busy getting dressed for the ceremony, and of course with everything going on, it’ll be quite some time before she’s available, but I’m sure we can arrange a few minutes for you and the rest of the band to say goodbye before she leaves—”

  My tactic almost worked. But at the sound of the word “goodbye” JD exploded.

  “I’m not saying goodbye!” As he tore his arm away, his voice rose to a scream. “I’m never going to say goodbye to Rose! She’s mine, she has to be mine, it’s our destiny!”

  “Maybe it is, JD, but you have to face facts and—”

  “Don’t you talk down to me!”

  We were almost at the door by then, and the guard stationed there heard the shouting and burst inside. A nasty little scuffle ensued, but the damage was limited to a pot of hydrangeas toppling over and my cracking a nail when JD’s flailing arms sent me stumbling into the door frame. Within three minutes he was pinned tight between the guard and a Sergei, who seemed to be enjoying the break from his floral duties.

  “I’ll get you for this!” JD howled, but not at the guards. As they hustled him away, his wild eyes were glaring only at me. “I’ll kill you, you bitch. I’ll kill you!”

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Up in the owners’ suite, the atmosphere was chaotic but cheerful—and I didn’t darken it by mentioning JD’s outburst. Rose would soon have enough to deal with without that.

  She was certainly in good spirits this morning, giggling with her friends over coffee and pastries and the traditional bottle of champagne. The suite’s curtains were drawn to give the ladies privacy, and both Rose and Sheila were already down to their underwear.

  Sheila, a tall and busty blonde, was making most of the noise as she flung her bouquet in the air and caught it again, over and over. Three other girls, whom I recognized from NocNoc, sat at the bar making faces at themselves in the lighted makeup mirror that I’d had delivered the night before.

  “Hey, Sheila, show us your new tattoo!” one of them called out.

  Sheila obliged by turning her back and bending over. She wore a black lace thong, so the artwork was clearly visible: a full-color “USDA Prime” shield low on one cheek. I’d also had a full-length three-way mirror set up, and she turned to admire the view herself. Silently, I applauded myself for banning the photographers from this particular dressing room.

  “I’m gonna get one on the other side next,” she announced. “A big sign saying ‘Exit Only.’”

  As the girls shrieked with laughter, I set down my tote bag.

  “Good morning, Rose. Sheila, it’s too late to replace those flowers, so if you wouldn’t mind—”

  “Whoops!” she said. “The chaperone’s here. Beat it, you guys.”

  The three friends trooped out, and Rose surprised me by rushing over to give me a hug—even though she was sober. Her lingerie was a bit more decorous than Sheila’s, and she’d gone with all-black for her hair, no spikes or neon streaks. Her eyes were clear and glowing, just like a bride’s.

  “Hey, Carnegie. Everything OK down there?”

  “Everything’s fine. How about you? No last-minute nerves?”

  “Nope.” She frowned a little. “Gordo’s sure edgy, though.”

  I kept my voice neutral. “Oh, really?”

  “Yeah, he was fine at first this morning, and then all of a sudd
en he got real quiet and tense.”

  “Any idea why?”

  Rose looked at me curiously. “Well, duh, he’s only getting married today. Why do you think?”

  “Of course,” I said, feeling pretty tense myself. I fingered the phone in the pocket of my dress, willing Gordo to call and get this over with. “Of course that’s why. Um, shall we do your makeup?”

  Some brides have beauticians and hairdressers standing by for the big moment, but Rose had requested only a little help from me. She took her place before the mirror, I adjusted its lights to mimic daylight, and together we accented her large, dark eyes and dusted blush on her cheekbones.

  It all felt like such a charade to me, when any minute now I might be accusing the groom of murder and the bride might be spoiling her mascara with furious tears. Rose reached for a lipstick, but I shook my head and offered her a different tube.

  “Try this,” I said. “Lipstick always photographs dark, and if you wear that one, it’ll show as practically black.”

  “Cool!” said Sheila, breathing over my shoulder. “We gotta do something to jazz this up, instead of looking like a couple of Barbie dolls. I’m telling you, these dresses are so lame—”

  “Enough about the dresses!” I snapped. “The dresses are lovely.”

  “Temper, temper,” Sheila taunted. She reached for the champagne while Rose applied the paler lipstick. “Have a drink and chill, why don’t you?”

  I gave her my sternest frown. “No, thank you.”

  She set the bottle down again. “Guess I’ve had enough myself. For now, anyway. I’ve got a bitch of a headache. Rosie, have you got something I can take?”

  “I do.” I pulled out the first aid kit and removed the little white package of aspirin. Sheila reached for it, but I put it quickly on the bar and stepped away.

  “What, you’re afraid to touch me?” she asked hotly. “Like I got cooties?”

  “It’s a liability issue,” I explained, almost glad of the distraction from waiting for my phone to go off. It was like having a bomb in my pocket. “We never give drugs to anyone, we just make them available. That way if someone has an allergic reaction, or—oh!”