Authors: Linda Grimes
He called within five minutes, pretending to be an important client who needed my attention immediately. In those five minutes I (quite efficiently, I thought) filled Mom and Laura in on the when and whereabouts of the shower, got an assurance from Laura that she’d e-mail me her friends’ contact info ASAP, and warned Molly to let Brian down easy when the time came for her to dump him. She solemnly vowed she would, but with a shine in her eyes that told me she wasn’t taking anything too seriously.
After assuring Mom that I’d be there for my final dress fitting (ugh), I rushed out, barely containing my sigh of relief until I got the door closed behind me. Wedding planning made my eyeballs itch.
Once I was safely down the block, I called Billy back. “You got me out just in time—thanks. Any longer and my head would have exploded. Molly’s a junior bridesmaid, by the way. You sure you haven’t been roped into anything yet? Groomsman? Usher?”
“Nope. It helps to know when not to answer your phone.”
“You always were the brilliant one. So, have you been watching the news? Looks like Jack’s sister-in-law might be the culprit.”
“I saw. Apparently she disagrees with that assessment.”
“Yeah, and she seems sincere, too. Then again, she would, wouldn’t she? What’s she going to say? ‘Oops, caught me—my bad’? It’s all so sordid. I can’t help hoping they find out it was one of those awful home invasion things you read about, and has nothing to do with my client
or
his family.”
“It’ll probably turn out to be exactly that. Try not to worry about it,” Billy said.
“Believe me, I’m trying. I have enough to stress about with the wedding. Ugh. Hey, I’m heading over to your place to hide out until I can catch a train home. Please tell me you’re there.”
“Nope, I’m still in the land of sin. There’s a job of my own I have to finish. I have a feeling Mark will be calling me in to sub for him very soon, and I want to be available.”
“He didn’t ask you to fill in for him at the wedding, did he? Because I was going to do that,” I said. Kidding, of course. Billy would be expected to be at the wedding himself. Not that familial expectations had ever ruled his behavior.
Billy laughed, but didn’t elaborate.
“Wait a minute …
are
you filling in for him?” That would explain why Mark didn’t seem overly concerned about the wedding disrupting his work—it wouldn’t.
“Shouldn’t take me long to wrap things up here. I can maybe meet you at your condo tomorrow.”
“Don’t change the subject,” I said.
“Plausible deniability, cuz. If Mommo”—Billy’s name for Auntie Mo, a mashup of “Mom” and “Mo” he’d come up with as a toddler—“asks where I am, you can tell her truthfully that you don’t know. Because you won’t.”
Maybe not technically, but I had a pretty good idea. “She’ll sniff you out and you know it.”
More laughter, a sound that made happiness bubble up inside me in spite of irritation at his impending ditchery. “A risk I’ll have to take, if it comes to it. And it’s still only an ‘if’ at this point, so buck up. There’s every possibility I’ll be there to ravish you in your wedding finery. I might even have a surprise for you.”
“A surprise? Tell!”
“It wouldn’t be a surprise, then, would it? You just focus on me ravishing you for now.”
“Yeah, well, you might want to hold that thought until after you see my dress. It’s
yellow.
” I didn’t try to disguise the disgust in my voice.
“Okay, I’ll take it off you first. We can burn it if you like. Toast marshmallows over it.”
I laughed and hung up.
* * *
I stumbled into my condo after midnight, still groggy from my snooze on the train. I hate sleeping on public transportation—I’m always afraid my mouth will fall open and I’ll drool all over myself—but it couldn’t be helped. My eyes had refused to stay open. Since my shirt was dry when we pulled into Union Station, I was going to assume I hadn’t embarrassed myself in front of my fellow passengers.
Home sweet home. The condo was as clean as I’d left it—in other words, not very. But it was my clutter, and nothing about it set off alarms in my head. I dropped my small suitcase at the foot of the stairs and made a beeline for the kitchen. I’d ordered a large pizza the night before I’d left for Hollywood—what was that? Three days ago now?—and I was hoping the leftovers weren’t too stale.
Luck was with me—there were no science experiments unfolding amid the slices, and the crust wasn’t quite hard enough to hammer nails with, so I maybe wouldn’t break my teeth. There was even an imported beer left from the last time Thomas had stopped by for dinner—he always brought the good stuff.
My feast set, I turned on the TV and flipped to a cable infotainment “news” show. The Jackson Gunn story was still going strong. Lily-Ann Conrad, now L.A.’s most notorious murder suspect, had retained a lawyer. Not only
a
lawyer, but
the
lawyer of the celebrity set: Nigel Overholt. I recognized him right away because he’d worked for Thomas for a while after he graduated from law school. Thomas was always bragging about how smart his former prot
é
g
é
was.
In his early thirties, blessed with stunningly good looks from his Italian mother’s side of the family, Overholt might have graced the silver screen himself had he not been confined to a wheelchair. He’d tried to hang glide off the Hollywood sign when he was twenty-two, and had landed badly. But he hadn’t let the failure of his attention-grabbing stunt stop him from becoming one of the biggest names in Tinseltown, if not precisely in the way he had originally intended. That was probably why he was so good at his job—he never accepted defeat.
And now he was working for Lily-Ann Conrad. Hmm. Interesting. I wondered what Jack thought about that. Heck, maybe he’d hired Overholt for her—he certainly had enough Hollywood clout to attract the guy. I still had to call him to find out if we had to reschedule the snake shoot—maybe I could feel him out about it then.
Not that it was technically any of my concern. (Not that
that
has ever stopped me from being nosy, especially where my clients are concerned. Sue me. I’m a curious person.)
My cell phone rang. I picked it up without pulling my eyes away from the TV screen, where Nigel was raising one of those nifty specialized wheelchairs to a standing position. Tall guy.
“Ciel? Sorry to call so late, but I thought you should know—”
“Dave? What’s up? Is something wrong? Oh, my God, is Eeyore all right?” I said, visions blowing up in my head of my beloved pony cut and bleeding from hoof strikes. Trigger and Licorice didn’t always exhibit a great deal of patience with their smaller stablemate. Granted, Eeyore was as big an asshole to them as he was to people, so he probably deserved whatever equine punishment they doled out. Still, he was a little guy, and I didn’t want to see him hurt.
“Eeyore is fine—as nasty as ever, and I have a new bruise on my rear end to prove it.” Dave sounded resigned. I felt a little guilty about that, but not enough to rehome Eeyore. Not that any clear-thinking person would take him. “But,” he continued, “I did find something interesting in his stall.”
“What, a poison apple?” I said wryly. “Billy’s been looking at him funny lately.”
“Nope. A gun.”
Well, crap. “I don’t suppose it’s Cody’s?” I said without much hope.
“Nope again. First thing I checked. I asked Rosa about it, too. She about took my head off for daring to suggest she might own a gun, or that if she
did
own a gun, she would be so careless as to leave it in the barn.”
“Any other visitors hanging around since you last cleaned Eeyore’s stall?”
“You and Billy. And, of course, Mr. Gunn. But I know for a fact it can’t be his—I unpacked his luggage for him myself when he got here. And his clothes were too tight for him to be carrying concealed.” Dave coughed. “Not that I’d normally notice a thing like that, but Rosa’s eyes got so big when she looked at him that it kind of brought it to my attention.”
I bit my tongue. I’d hate to disillusion Rosa, but I knew for a fact that, metaphorically speaking at least, Gunn was packing a derringer. And maybe a few socks.
“Okay. I’ll call Billy and see if by chance he dropped it while trying to assassinate Eeyore. What kind of gun is it?”
“It’s a Walther PPK—you know, a James Bond gun.”
The movie tie-in made my ears perk up. If anyone had a James Bond gun, it would be Jackson. I said as much to Dave.
“Yeah, that was my first thought, but like I said, I unpacked for him. Besides, it’s a very popular pistol, especially with the concealed-carry set.”
“But who else has been out to the ranch?”
“Well, there’s the delivery people, I suppose. Groceries, hay, oats…” he said.
“Maybe you could call them tomorrow and ask if anyone might’ve dropped it.”
“Will do. In the meantime, I wrapped it in plastic and put it in a drawer in the kitchen. Rosa’s not too happy about that, but I told her we couldn’t very well leave it in the barn.”
“Why not the safe?”
“No room. Rosa’s keeping all her secret family recipes in there. Damn, that woman has a
lot
of secret recipes. No wonder I’m suffering from Dunlop’s.”
I tried to think of what to tell him to do. I mean, a stray gun in Eeyore’s stall couldn’t be a good thing, but I sure didn’t want to get the local cops involved. If they found out Jackson had been a guest at my ranch while he was supposedly in Hollywood filming, that would lead to all kinds of awkward questions. “Look, leave it where it is for now. I’ll call you tomorrow and we’ll figure out what to do about it.”
As soon as I hung up I dialed Billy. Got routed directly to voice mail, left a message to call me right away, and crawled upstairs to bed. Thomas’s imported beer was hitting my overtaxed brain cells and all I wanted to do was sleep.
I woke to the sound of pans clanging in the kitchen. I would have been scared of a break-in, but no competent burglar made that much noise. It had to be somebody I knew.
I stumbled down the stairs, eyes half shut, still in my clothes from the night before. Changing into a nightgown had seemed like too much trouble. I ran my tongue over my teeth—my mouth tasted of stale beer and old pizza. Bleah. Apparently my usual dental hygiene routine had been beyond me, too.
I was flanked as soon as I walked into the kitchen. “Group hug!” poured into one of my ears at the same time as “It’s been too long!” flowed into the other.
Sinead and Siobhan, Billy’s middle sisters, who had two of the most mellifluous voices on the planet. Sometimes it was hard to listen to what they were saying because it just
sounded
so pretty.
Sinead was three years younger than Billy, and Siobhan a year younger than her. Both were still in college, and everyone who didn’t know them thought they were twins. They each had the amazing Doyle eyes, which, like Billy and Molly, they’d inherited from their father. (Uncle Liam must have some powerful eye genes, is all I can say.) Their hair, long and wavy, was a light chestnut color. I suspected they got their hair coloring from their mother, though I couldn’t be sure since Auntie Mo liked to appear to the world with the vibrant red hair and emerald eyes that made her resemble a young Maureen O’Hara even more than she already did.
I automatically wrapped my arms around their waists and squeezed back, trying to keep my nose clear of their chests so I could breathe. Like I said, Doyles are tall. They each had six inches on me even when they were barefoot. When they wore heels, I was a hut between towers.
“Why the hell are you here?” I blurted after they disengaged. (Perhaps not the most gracious thing a hostess can say to her guests, but it was the best I could manage in my un-caffeinated state.)
Siobhan lilted a laugh and went straight for the fancy espresso maker Thomas had left here when he’d moved on to greener pastures. She knew me well.
Sinead, always perky in the morning, said, “Not exactly our idea, shrimperooni”—Sinead was a teaser, like her brother—“but you know how it is. Auntie Ro hinted to Mom that you could use some help with this shower thing for Tom and … Laura, is it? Might be nice to actually meet her before the wedding. Anyway, Mom passed it along to us, and we volunteered.”
“More like we were ‘voluntold,’ but let’s not quibble,” Siobhan said, and I understood completely. Our mothers’ hints were not easily ignored.
“But don’t you have class or something?” I asked. Granted, I was a little groggy, but I was fairly sure it wasn’t any kind of holiday.
“Yeah. So? Professors don’t care if you don’t show up to class as long as you pass the tests,” Sinead said.
“That’s right. And the tests are easy if you’re careful to only pick professors who care about their image on Rate Your Professor dot com,” Siobhan added.
I quirked my mouth. “Don’t tell me, let me guess. A little tip you picked up from Billy?”
They nodded in unison, their adoration of their brother evident by the glow in their eyes.
Then it hit me. “Shit,” I said, and dug my cell phone out of my jeans pocket, where I’d left it the night before when I’d fallen into bed. Had I slept through his return call?
I scrolled quickly through a ton of wedding-related reminders from Mom until I got to Billy. Punched a few buttons and listened to him say, “Tag. You’re it. I’m exhausted, lying facedown in bed. Wish you were under me.” I called him and got his voice mail again. Swore.
“Oooh, that’s my all-time favorite,” Siobhan said as she waved a mug under my nose. “I’m a fan of strong, single-syllable Anglo-Saxon words. So expressive.”
I grabbed the mug, blew across it to cool it faster, and gulped. Repeated Siobhan’s favorite word after burning my tongue.
“Careful, it’s hot,” Sinead said. “Don’t tell, let me guess. Billy.”
I sighed. “Phone tag. And I can’t even blame him for not answering, because I did the same thing to him last night. Slept right through his return call.”
Siobhan leaned against the counter next to me and shrugged. “Don’t worry. He’ll call back soon. It’s not as if he’s avoiding
your
calls. It’s Mom he’s hiding from—and by extension, the two of us, because he knows we’re forced to be her loyal minions until we don’t need her to write tuition checks anymore. He doesn’t want to be roped into any wedding duty.”