Fatally Flaky Page 3

  “Sir—,” Tom began again, still patient.

  The curtain swished open, and everyone except Tom jumped. It was not the first time I’d thought he had better hearing than I did, not to mention a sixth sense as to who was approaching.

  “Dear me,” said Father Pete, our short, corpulent priest. He cleared his throat and took in the anxious faces of our little tableau. All anxious, that is, except for Tom, whose eyes had never left Norman O’Neal.

  “Who’re you?” demanded Norman O’Neal, reeling unsteadily toward Father Pete.

  Father Pete was as kind and pastoral as the midsummer days were long, but he didn’t suffer fools gladly. “Where is your mother?” Father Pete asked Ceci, who had picked up the now-crying Lissa. Father Pete looked around the small makeshift room. “Cecelia? Where is Doc Finn? I thought he and your mother were walking you down the aisle.”

  “I don’t know where any of them are,” Cecelia wailed suddenly. She began to cry, too, which brought a fresh onslaught of tears from Lissa. As mother and daughter clung to each other, I thought, There go the hair and makeup. Two bridesmaids, both clothed in their floaty pink dresses, appeared at the curtain, widened their eyes at the scene, and whisked themselves away. “This is my ex-dad,” Cecelia said, sobbing, to Father Pete. “He’s insisting he’s going to be part of the ceremony! Plus, he’s wasted! He’s going to ruin everything!”

  There was a sudden hush in the large dining room on the other side of the curtains. All ears were apparently now attuned to the dressing room drama. Luckily, the DJ must have sensed something was amiss, as he started playing some Led Zeppelin a bit too loudly.

  “He’s not going to ruin anything,” Father Pete was saying soothingly. “That’s because he is going to get out of here right now. Off you go, ex-dad.” At that point, Father Pete, who was wearing his robes and surplice, took hold of Norman O’Neal’s elbow and began pulling him back toward the curtain.

  Norman O’Neal hollered, “I’m not going to allow a cop in an apron and a priest in a dress to tell me what I am or am not going to do!” At that point, he took a wild swing at Father Pete. Tom moved swiftly to plant himself between the two men, but Father Pete was too fast even for Tom. Our priest caught Norman O’Neal’s arm with one hand and delivered an uppercut to his chin with the other. Norman O’Neal flailed awkwardly, grasped bunches of the curtain to the area with the dining tables, and crashed backward, landing in Julian’s perfect wedding cake.

  “Oh, Christ,” said Father Pete. “I didn’t think I hit him that hard.”

  Norman O’Neal, his backside covered with frosting, didn’t move. Tom bent down to feel his pulse.

  “I’m going to call an ambulance,” Tom announced quietly.

  “You’re not going to charge me with assault, are you?” Father Pete asked, his eyes filled with worry.

  “Absolutely not,” said Tom as he punched numbers into his cell phone. “That was textbook self-defense, Father.” Tom asked me to send someone to find Julian, which I did. Father Pete, meanwhile, had moved to soothe Ceci and Lissa.

  Two seconds later, Tom was giving quick directions to emergency services. He then hung up his cell and hoisted a still-unconscious, frosting-and-cake-covered Norman O’Neal.

  “Any way I can get to the kitchen from here without going through the main dining room?” Tom asked me.

  “Yes, I’ll show you,” I said quickly. I was trying to suppress a wave of nausea.

  “Say, Father Pete,” Tom said as he heaved Norman O’Neal toward the kitchen. “Where’d you learn to box like that?”

  Father Pete stopped comforting Ceci and smiled shyly. “In my former life, I mean, before I was called to the ministry, I won the Golden Gloves.” He beamed. “Twice.”

  Once Tom, a lolling, closed-eyed Norman O’Neal, and I were in the kitchen, there was a knock at the back door. Two uniformed security guards had heard they were needed.

  “You are,” Tom announced as he handed off a still-unconscious Norman O’Neal. “Lay this guy out on the gravel, and when the ambulance arrives, get him in there. I told the ambo guys no sirens or lights.”

  “But it’s raining,” one of the guards protested. “You put this guy on the ground, he’s going to get wet.”

  “The rain will help clean him up,” Tom said before turning back to the kitchen.

  The guards obligingly took hold of Norman O’Neal and dragged him across the gravel outside the kitchen’s back door. Once he was laid on the ground, Norman woke up enough to begin puking. Julian, meanwhile, had reappeared in the kitchen.

  “What the hell happened to my cake?” he demanded.

  “Norman O’Neal happened to it,” I said. “Sorry. Can you do anything to make it look like … I don’t know, a ski slope?”

  Julian rolled his eyes and said he would try.

  Tom, meanwhile, was concentrating on preheating the ovens. Out in the main dining room, the strains of the wedding march began.

  “Okay, folks, here we go,” I said.

  We crowded together to watch the ceremony through the one-way mirrored panels I’d had put at eye level in the kitchen doors. The bridesmaids swarmed around Ceci, powdering her nose and cheeks with new makeup and patting her hair back into place. Then we only got to see Ceci coming down the aisle with Dodie, and Lissa in a lacy white flower girl outfit, before the back door to the kitchen was flung open, not by the security guards, or even Norman O’Neal, but by someone I dreaded even more: Billie Attenborough.

  She swept in wearing a voluminous, silky-sounding black trench coat. Her blond-brown hair was soaked. Tall and bulky, she put her hands on her hips and tapped her foot. “Why can’t any of you people answer your phones?”

  “I’m doing another wedding today, Billie,” I said evenly. “I’ll be home tonight, when you are welcome to call me. Now, would you please leave?”

  Billie lifted her small, dimpled chin. “I can’t leave until I tell you the changes we’re making to the wedding arrangements.”

  Tom groaned and lined another tray with rows of martini glasses filled with shrimp cocktail. Julian disappeared through the swinging doors.

  “What’s that?” Billie demanded as she peered over Tom’s shoulder.

  “Shrimp cocktail—what does it look like?” Tom replied.

  Tom could move fast, but not as fast as Billie, who scooped one of the martini glasses off the chilled tray and began eating the shrimp with her fingers.

  “Hey!” Tom yelled. He grabbed Billie by the wrist. She promptly dropped the martini glass on the floor, where it shattered. Noisily. I prayed the music in the dining room was somehow, somehow louder than Billie Attenborough.

  “What is going on back here?” asked Jack Carmichael as he preceded Julian into the kitchen. Looking as dapper as ever in a custom-made dark gray suit, Jack’s presence made me smile. “Sounds like either a food fight or a party.” Jack glanced all around the kitchen. Julian started sweeping up the glass, while Tom quickly left the kitchen with his tray of shrimp cocktail. “Ah,” Jack said in recognition. “If it isn’t Bilious Billie. No wonder there was crashing and banging out here.” Jack watched Billie push the shrimp she’d been eating into her mouth and shook his head.

  “Don’t say a word, you drunken old coot,” Billie replied, once she’d swallowed. She wiped her hands on a kitchen towel.

  “Nice talk,” commented Julian as he dumped the broken glass into the trash.

  I ignored all of them and put the first tray of hot appetizers into the oven.

  “Gertie Girl,” Jack said affectionately, “I’m here on an errand from Dodie. She says she hasn’t seen Doc Finn. She wanted to know if I had, because they’re going to want to start with the toasts once everybody’s seated. I told her I’d already called you and asked if you’d seen him, but she wanted me to ask you again anyway.”

  Before I could answer that I still hadn’t, Billie cried, “Doc Finn! That miserable old man. We could have a miserable-old-men convention right here.”

>   “I have not seen him,” I said quickly. I checked my watch: 12:15. “How far along are they?”

  “About halfway,” Jack replied. “I came in through the side dining room, so as not to disturb things any more than, say, Billie here breaking a glass.”

  “Shut up,” said Billie.

  There was a knock at the back door into the kitchen. Mentally, I cursed.

  “Who is it?” I called through the heavy wood. If it was Norman O’Neal, he could just stay out in the rain.

  “Craig Miller, Goldy. Is Billie in there?”

  I shook my head and opened the door to Billie Attenborough’s fiancé, Craig Miller. Wait, I forgot to think of him as Dr. Craig Miller. Important title, that. Before Billie and Craig were engaged, my best friend, Marla, had told me that Billie had told her that her next fiancé was going to be a doc. Marla had told Billie she might want to find someone with whom she shared mutual love. But Billie had dreamily countered that she’d always wanted to be introduced at Aspen Meadow Country Club as “Dr. and Mrs.” So much for love, Marla had remarked, but Billie had ignored her. I’d said that I sincerely hoped the doc would be a psychiatrist.

  “Billie, dear,” Craig Miller pleaded now, running his short fingers through his brown hair as if he might tear it out, “please come back to your mother’s house. Please don’t bother Goldy now.”

  “I can’t leave,” Billie snapped. “She won’t let me talk to her about what I came here to talk to her about.”

  “She hasn’t been herself lately,” Craig said to the group, his pale blue eyes wide with apology. “She’s been trying to lose this weight—”

  “Would everyone who is not a caterer please leave this kitchen?” I asked.

  “Goldy,” Billie said, “if you would just listen to me, I could tell you we’ve added fifty people to my guest list.”

  She finally had my full and undivided attention. “You’ve done what?”

  Billie blithely closed her eyes. “My mother was supposed to tell you, and in all the rush of things, she forgot.”

  “I can’t handle fifty more people here. Fire department regulations.”

  “Why do you think I’ve been trying to reach you and your assistant all day?” Billie asked. “We’re having to move the wedding and reception to the Gold Gulch Spa.”

  “You’re doing what?”

  “Billie,” Craig Miller tried again. “This can wait.”

  “It cannot wait,” Billie announced. “Mother’s calling everyone now, to make sure she hasn’t forgotten anyone else.”

  Norman O’Neal may have lost his lunch already, but I was quite sure I would be next. Fifty extra people. A different venue. More food than I had ordered or had time to prepare.

  When Tom returned to the kitchen, there was yet another knock at the back door. This was turning into one of the worst catering days of my entire career. Julian moved quickly across the kitchen floor to answer it.

  “It’s probably the ambo for Norman O’Neal,” Tom said.

  “Ambulance?” Craig Miller said softly. “Oh, I wish I had known. I just thought the fellow outside had had too much to drink—”

  I shook my head while Julian conversed in quiet tones with whoever was at the back door.

  “They want you, Tom,” Julian said quietly.

  Oh, God, I thought. Arch. Something’s wrong. I glanced at my cell. My son had not tried to call. Nor had anyone else since the last time Billie had phoned.

  Tom left, then stuck his head back into the kitchen. He looked very grave. He signaled me and I went out into the rain with him.

  “I have to go, Miss G. They just found Doc Finn’s Cayenne at the bottom of a canyon.”

  “And Doc Finn?”

  “Inside the Cayenne. Dead.”

  4

  Somehow, I don’t know how, Julian managed to get rid of Billie Attenborough and Craig Miller. Meanwhile, I pulled Jack aside and told him the terrible news. He turned ashen.

  “Doc Finn?” His voice cracked, and he swallowed hard. “My friend? That’s not possible. They must be wrong.”

  I shook my head. “I’m sorry. Can I get someone here to be with you?”

  “How did it happen?” Jack asked.

  I told him what I knew.

  Jack rubbed his forehead. “I … we’d been talking a lot lately, Finn and I…” He broke off, and I signaled Julian for a chair. He rushed out, and returned with two.

  “Oh, Jack, I’m so sorry,” I said.

  “My friend,” Jack was mumbling. “Doc Finn. I can’t believe it. I just—I don’t believe it. How could this have happened?” His pale blue eyes beseeched me, all his energy drained.

  “I don’t know, Jack.”

  “And, oh my God, this endless rain.” Jack’s non sequitur took me by surprise. When I didn’t respond, he said, “It’s just that Finn was a great driver, and that SUV of his was excellent. A ravine? I don’t understand.”

  I did not know what to do. Finn had been Jack’s only friend in Aspen Meadow. But now I was worried about Jack. Maybe his son, Lucas, would be able to come be with him, and take him home.

  “Can we go outside?” Jack asked me.

  He was my godfather. He had brought me games and puzzles and endless days of joy when I was a child. I loved him unconditionally, totally, and forever. Now his best friend had died, and he was a mess. He had helped me when I desperately needed it. I simply could not abandon him.

  I looked around helplessly for Julian. He understood the situation in an instant and brought me an umbrella.

  “Tom told me what’s going on.” Julian’s voice was low. “He didn’t know what to do about Dodie and Ceci. But he thought the wedding shouldn’t be more ruined than it already has been. They’ve got a couple of deputies stationed outside your French doors to tell Dodie when the ceremony’s over—”

  “Wait. As soon as the bride and groom say I do, pull Father Pete aside and clue him in. He’ll know how to handle things.”

  “Good idea. How’s Jack?”

  I shook my head. Julian turned on his heel and moved quickly through the kitchen, intent on making this already-messed-up wedding seem as normal as possible.

  When Jack and I stepped outside under the umbrella, the ambulance was just pulling away, presumably with Norman O’Neal inside. Jack wrinkled his face in puzzlement, and I murmured that a wedding guest had gotten sick.

  One of the sheriff’s department deputies had given Tom a windbreaker. Tom and two more investigators were deep in discussion. Tom’s discarded apron lay, sodden and forgotten, on the ground.

  Investigators? Julian had said two uniformed cops were outside the French doors, for when the time came to notify Dodie. So what was going on? It was as if I’d been in a mental fog, and now I grasped a situation that I hoped Jack did not. Beside me, he’d tilted his head forward and was rubbing his hand through his sparse gray hair.

  I stared at Tom with his underlings. The Furman County Sheriff’s Department did not handle car accidents. No Colorado county did, and that was because the state patrol was in charge of automobile accidents. The sheriff’s department was only called in if there were other issues.

  Criminal issues.

  “Where’s Lucas now?” I asked Jack. “Let me call him for you.”

  Jack gave me his son’s number, and I punched it into my cell. When I got voice mail, I identified myself and told Lucas his father needed him, as in, right now. I told Lucas where I was, and hoped his resentful attitude of that morning didn’t mean he’d ignore my message.

  Without thinking twice, I punched in Marla’s number. Like me, she’d been unhappily married to the Jerk. Unlike me, she had inherited wealth and had no physical fear whatsoever. Those two attributes had allowed her to clean his clock, financially and physically, when he’d come after her. We’d been fast friends ever since she divorced him. She had a wonderful heart, and although she might not particularly want to come take care of Jack, she’d do it anyway.

  “Just a sec, Ja
ck, take the umbrella, okay?” While he protested, I moved out into the rain. Marla’s home phone rang and rang. “Pick up,” I said to Marla’s voice mail. “I know you’re there and I need your help. This is an emergency, and I do mean a genuine bona fide emergency.”

  On the other end, the phone crashed and clicked.

  “For God’s sake, Goldy,” Marla said dramatically. “Now what?”

  “Marla—”

  “I mean honestly, Goldy, tell me one time your life hasn’t been a crisis. I have to get lots of sleep, just so I can deal with all the energy I have to expend—”

  “Doc Finn’s dead,” I said quietly. Oh, why hadn’t I brought two umbrellas outside? Jack had moved off to talk to Tom, which was not something I wanted. And I was getting soaked.

  “Dead?” Marla echoed. “Doc Finn? What happened?”

  “A car accident. Marla, please listen, I’m under a time crunch here. I’m at my event center, trying to do Cecelia O’Neal’s wedding. But—” Oh, really, how could I summarize the events of the last two hours? I couldn’t. “—I need you to come over and be with Jack, my godfather. Take him to your place, take him to his place, do whatever. Just be with him. He’s a wreck, and I can’t get hold of Lucas. Please?”

  “All right, all right, why didn’t you say so? I’ll be there in ten minutes. Wait—did you try to reach Charlotte Attenborough? She and Jack have been going out for the last two months.”

  Oh, Lord, in the confusion I’d forgotten about Charlotte. She and Jack were indeed an item, maybe more in her mind than his, I’d gathered. Charlotte could be imperious and was used to getting what she wanted, but compared to her daughter, she was Mother Teresa. Still, I simply couldn’t face any more Attenboroughs today, and I doubted Jack could either.

  “No, I didn’t call Charlotte, and I don’t want to. It’s a long story. Look, Marla, I’m outside and I’m totally sopping wet. Could you just please come over and get Jack? We’ll be in the kitchen. I’ll give him a drink or something.”