Page 83 of Save the Date
Brooke rolled her eyes, then looked away.
“Hey, honey?” It was Harris’s turn to referee now. He had a smear of chocolate icing on his upper lip, and a glob of coconut on his shirt collar. He grabbed her hand and towed her toward the opposite end of the table. “Come down here and check out the desserts. Cupcakes! I freakin’ love ’em.”
“Cupcakes?” Patricia’s surgically stretched face registered her horror. She stalked down to the dessert offerings. “Are we having a 4-H picnic, Layne? Really?”
“No!” Layne hurried over. “These are just all the different cake types and frostings and fillings we do. I thought Brooke and Harris could taste everything and decide, and then, of course, we’ll do a proper cake.…”
“Forget it,” Brooke said, her eyes blazing. “Just let Patricia decide. After all, she’s the one running this show.”
Brooke reached over and snatched the lemon-iced cupcake he’d just bitten into from Harris’s hand. She set it down on the table.
“Aww, man…” he groaned.
“We’ve got to get back to work,” Brooke announced. She turned and walked rapidly toward the door.
“Harris! I’m leaving.”
Harris looked at Layne, then at Cara, then at Marie. He shrugged. “Sorry. Gotta go.”
He was halfway to the door when he turned, returned to the table, picked up his cupcake, and hurried back to the side of his one true love.
Somehow, after Brooke had gone, the women managed to work out a menu that suited Patricia as well as Marie. When everybody was gone, Layne went to the door of Fete Accompli and locked the deadbolt. Wordlessly, she went to the big walk-in cooler in her catering kitchen. She took out a half-open bottle of chardonnay, tipped it to her lips, and swigged for at least a minute. Then she handed it to Cara. “Be my guest.”
33
Bert met her at the door of the shop, and the look on his face telegraphed the bad news. “I’ve looked everywhere,” Bert said, rubbing a hand wearily over his face. “Honest to God, Cara. Every single stop I made Friday, I retraced. I showed everybody the picture of the epergne. I even crawled around in the grass and the bushes at the Shutters. Since it was low tide, I even looked around that dock, thinking maybe somebody got drunk and chunked it in the water for a joke. But nothing. It ain’t there.”
“Oh God.” Cara thumped her forehead on her desk. First Lillian Fanning, then Patricia Trapnell. Now this. What was wrong with her karma?
“What now? Will you call her and tell her?”
Cara popped three aspirin in her mouth and dry-swallowed them.
“I can’t deal with Lillian right now. I think I might have heat stroke.” She pulled her sticky shirt away from her chest.
“Did you call Sylvia Bradley again?” Bert asked.
“Yes, I called her. She doesn’t pick up the phone, because she doesn’t want to deal with me. I’ve sent her a registered letter, too.” Cara reached into her desk drawer and got her pocketbook.
“Let’s go,” she told Bert.
“Where to?”
“To wherever they sell air conditioners. I can’t spend one more hour living like this.”
***
The salesman at Lowe’s carefully explained the merits and options of all the room-size air conditioners the store carried.
“Which one is the next to cheapest?”
The salesman looked startled. “Next to cheapest?”
“My father taught me never to buy the cheapest model of anything. Or the most expensive,” Cara explained. “I sure can’t afford the next to most expensive, so I guess I’m buying the next to cheapest.”
“Most affordable,” the salesman said gently.
“Whatever. As long as you have it in stock and we can walk out of here with it in the next ten minutes.”
