Chapter 14

My promise to complete the church decorations on time was sorely challenged by the falling roses. In the end, the boys took down all the swags so I could check that the roses were secured. But I stood back to survey the completely decorated sanctuary—the veritable garden I’d promised Carolyn—just as the organist and bell ringer arrived.

First Baptist of Ramble, on special occasions, still rang its steeple bell the old-fashioned way, using the same historic cast-iron bell that some said hearkened back to colonial days. Others claimed it was added in the early 1800s. But a few tourists still came through every now and then begging to see the old bell, despite the cobwebs that invariably filled the narrow staircase that led to it.

As the interns carried the empty boxes and supplies out to the truck and put the ladder back in the church’s maintenance closet, I darted into the ladies’ room to slip into my dress and try to look more like a wedding guest and less like a sweaty contractor.

I dabbed on a little extra antiperspirant, slipped into a soft scoop-necked floral dress, accented it with a sage green chunky necklace, and stepped into heels. I wish I could say the tired face disappeared under the application of makeup. I did my best, anyhow.

When I exited the ladies’ room, the sound of feminine voices echoed from a nearby Sunday school classroom. I recognized Carolyn and Rita among them, even if I couldn’t make out the words. These were not happy voices. I hoped all the peach roses hadn’t fallen from the swags while I changed. I suspected I’d better check in and make sure everything was okay from the floral perspective. Maybe I’d get lucky and find out that an usher had rented the wrong size tux or that no one could find the groom.

One of the bridesmaids, dressed in a polka-dotted tea-length peach dress, opened the top of the Dutch door at my knock.

“There, there, peaches,” Mayor Watkins crooned. Looking dapper in a tux and already sporting his peach boutonniere, he placed a comforting hand on his daughter’s shoulder. His nickname explained Carolyn’s flower choice. While she’d insisted on peach roses, she hadn’t given a reason why. Touching, that she would choose a flower based on her father’s pet name for her. Then again, he was paying for the wedding.

“It’s just a little snag,” he said. “Everything is going to work out all right. No one will even notice.”

Even as he reassured her, Carolyn’s lower lip jutted out and quavered. She looked like a pouting child in her pure white re-creation of a 1950s tea-length dress in satin with a lace overlay. Not that I knew much about wedding fashions, but that was how her mother described it when they placed the orders for her flowers. The fifties theme was a new one for me, but they explained they wanted modern flowers—that the arrangements they’d seen in the old wedding books and magazines they’d picked up from the library used book sale were dreary. I suspected the yellowing pages and the old-style photography made them appear that way, but I gave in to their wishes anyway.

The photographer snapped a picture of her, but Rita waved him off. I recognized him as the photographer for the On. I’d encountered him doubling as a wedding photographer on more than one occasion.

“Don’t cry.” Rita took Carolyn by the shoulders. “You’ll ruin your makeup for the pictures. If you do anything, scream. But smile while you’re doing it, lamb chop.” If that was her mother’s nickname for her, I wondered what we’d be eating at the reception.

“Dress, shoes, and gloves,” Carolyn almost spat out, her face twisted into a maniacal grin. “Was that too much to ask?”

I let out a sigh of relief. This was not a flower issue. The bridesmaids, however, scurried to the far corners of the room, like cockroaches when you turn the light on in a fleabag motel—not that I’d been in too many fleabag motels.

“Oh, Audrey, there you are.” Rita rushed over and took my hands. “I’m so sorry I doubted you. The church looks lovely, and so do the bouquets.”

“At least something’s gone right,” Carolyn muttered. “First we’re missing a whole bridesmaid, and now this.”

“Don’t worry about it.” Rita turned back to Carolyn. “There’s nothing you can do at this point except have all the bridesmaids take them off. You can’t have some with and some without.”

I hazarded a quick glance at the cowering bridesmaids. Most of the girls were Carolyn’s friends from the health club set, so I imagined the missing bridesmaid was Jenny. I wondered what it was that each would have to “take off” and was relieved to see they were all sporting their dresses and dyed-to-match shoes. So at least the group wouldn’t be standing up in their slips or bare feet, a thought which made me smile.

“And there’s still no answer at the bridal shop?” Carolyn said. “I’m sure Jenny never got around to picking hers up. They have to be there. The shop should have an emergency number.”

Mayor Watkins shook his head. “Even if I did get through to them, there just isn’t time to get them here. The girls will just have to go without.”

Carolyn rolled her eyes. “They’d look so much better with the gloves. I can still wear mine, though. Right?” It was more of a demand than a question.

“Of course, peaches,” her father said. “You’re the bride. You can do anything you want.”

Step one in the manual entitled How to Create a Bridezilla: Make her the center of the universe and demand that everyone succumb to her wishes. At least it looked like she’d managed to get her manicure just in time to stuff her hands into gloves. Thankfully, our part in this affair was completed and deemed acceptable.

“Congratulations again,” I said. “And Carolyn, you look gorgeous.”

“Thanks.” Carolyn picked up her bouquet for a picture.

“Oh, and, Audrey, I hope everything is okay at the reception, too,” Rita added as I was almost out the door.

“Yes, just lovely,” I said with a wave. Guessing. More of an educated guess since I knew Liv wouldn’t leave there until it met with her stamp of approval. Then again, I hadn’t seen her yet.

A teenage usher with a face full of acne and the barest hint of fuzzy stubble—which he seemed to wear more proudly than he did his rented tuxedo—escorted me to a seat at the end of a pew. In the front corner of the church, the same chamber group who’d performed at the funeral, including that vile violinist, played similar classical and religious pieces. If he held a grudge, it didn’t show. He winked at me as he caught my gaze.

The church was approaching capacity when Liv arrived on Eric’s arm. She gave me the thumbs-up sign as an usher directed them to a nearly full row.

“Excuse me, miss?” The teenage usher was back. “Could you please slide over? We’re full up, and I think we can fit one more person in this row.”

I did the required sliding, squeezing next to a matronly woman I didn’t recognize (out of town family maybe?) wearing way too much perfume. The space between me and the end of the pew would be perfect for one person, provided that person was three years old, an elf, or an anorexic supermodel. Preferably a three-year-old anorexic elf.

The usher returned a moment later and directed Nick Maxwell into the space next to me.

“Hi.” He eased into the allotted space, clearly not enough. His legs contacted mine, as did his hips and torso. It left no room at all, however, for his arms and shoulders, so he hoisted one arm over the end of the pew, then awkwardly draped the other on the pew back behind me. “Sorry. Tight squeeze.”

I nodded, wondering if I should be feeling one of those “electric shocks” the romance novelists are always writing about, or some stirring deep within or whatever the current jargon is. Instead, I felt a little like a sardine traveling in steerage. In the boiler room. This scenario could only have been more awkward had Nick brought a plus-one. She’d be sitting in his lap.

The matronly woman slid over, giving us all another two inches. Now I could sit comfortably without touching—as long as I didn’t try any excessive movements, like breathing.

“Funny,” Nick said, “we were just talking about you.”

“We?” I asked. My ability to hold a coherent conversation evaporated.

“Your cousin, I guess. Liv. I ran into her over at the Ashbury when I dropped off the cupcakes. It’s amazing. I would have never picked you two for cousins.”

“I’ll admit, there’s not much of a physical resemblance.” I turned to glance at Liv. She mouthed, “Nice,” and gave me another thumbs-up.

“What was that?” Nick asked.

“What?”

“What Liv said to you?”

“Oh, that . . .” I felt my face color. “She just . . . said the reception flowers are nice.”

“They sure are, and I must say, the church is fantastic.” He craned his neck to get a good view of the overhead swags, and his extended arm slid forward to rest along my back.

Do I lean forward to break contact? And spend the entire ceremony in an unnaturally erect posture? Or do I remain in place and pretend that the feeling of his hand on my back isn’t having an effect? It didn’t measure up to the hype of an electrical shock—and maybe that was a good thing. I’d suffered a bad shock from a frayed toaster cord before and it wasn’t a pleasant experience. I decided to go for nonchalance.

He chatted on, asking occasional polite questions about the flowers. He did seem to possess a superior knowledge of wedding planning, perhaps as a result of his research through the bridal magazines. Before long, my brain kicked in again, and our conversation from the time the wedding was supposed to begin until twenty minutes later—when it did begin—flowed cheerfully and naturally.

The procession must have lasted ten minutes. Eight bridesmaids, all dressed in the same polka-dotted peach dresses with matching shoes and fascinators—although sans the gloves—carried their bouquets of peach and white roses, daisies, and ivy. Very 1950s, although I agreed with Carolyn: I was missing the gloves.

A ring bearer, who must have been about two, sprinted down the aisle and tossed his pillow onto the platform before running to his mother. Then a flower girl walked down the aisle with her basket of peach and white rose petals. I knew Carolyn wanted the child to scatter them on the aisle runner, but instead she clung possessively to the basket and gave defiant looks to the audience as she toddled her way to the front—daring them to take her precious petals away from her.

We all rose as Carolyn walked down the aisle, looking radiant on the arm of her father. Her groom stood innocuously at the front of the church, looking pale and wavering from foot to foot. I sure hoped he wouldn’t go down. Not only for Carolyn’s sake, but it would only mean more time packed into the increasingly warm church as they attempted to revive him.

He seemed to rally as Carolyn approached, and even managed a smile.

“Dearly beloved . . . ,” Pastor Seymour began, and thus commenced the traditional vows I’d heard countless times in the little church. If they’d asked for anything different, they didn’t get it. But with an octogenarian pastor, it’s better not to ask. He could officiate a traditional wedding in his sleep—I think I even saw him do it once. But throw him a curve, as Ellen Whitney had tried to do, and you just never knew what you’d get.

Of course, thinking of Ellen made me think of Jenny. They all traveled in the same group—the “health club set” was what I’d nicknamed them. All that exercise and juicing. The closest I got to juicing was an occasional chocolate-covered strawberry Blizzard at the Dairy Queen.

While the woman next to me started fanning herself, sending more of her cloying perfume in my direction, I found myself staring at the bridesmaids. A quick count showed eight bridesmaids and nine groomsmen, but I doubt anyone would have noticed a missing bridesmaid if they hadn’t been looking. Shirley, Pastor Seymour’s girl Friday, stood about midway down the row. I hadn’t placed her as one of Carolyn’s clique, but I did recall her saying something about finding massage clients at the club. She was whispering something to a blonde who looked familiar.

And then I recognized the blonde. Sarah Anderson, of course, Jenny’s roommate. With her hair down and her face made up—and her body not covered in spandex and sweat—I hadn’t placed her. She cleaned up nicely.

Two bridesmaids had red hair, Shirley and another girl, but she was a pudgy little thing, bless her heart, with eyebrows that almost touched in the middle of her forehead. I couldn’t imagine her or Pastor Seymour’s assistant as Derek’s secret inamorata.

When the new couple kissed and were introduced to us as husband and wife, we all rose and clapped, while the groomsmen erupted into old-fashioned hoots. After they all filed down the aisle, Nick turned to me. “I suppose I should head over to the reception to make sure the cupcake tower is still standing. Need a ride?”

“No, we need to take some of the flowers over in the truck. Some of them do double duty.”

“See you over there, then.”

I waved impotently as he darted out the back door. Liv squeezed her way through the crowd and made her way over to me.

“I see we’ve made some progress on the confectionary front.” She took my arm as we inched toward the foyer.

“Nonsense, Liv. Don’t read anything into it. He didn’t choose this seat, after all.”

“Maybe not, but you weren’t at the reception hall this morning.”

I crossed my arms. “Where you steered the conversation in my direction.”

“No steering necessary. He coasted right into it. Hard to talk to him about anything but you.”

“To quote Grandma Mae, ‘pshaw.’” I held the door open and we exited to the porch. Even though the temperature soared outside, it felt much more comfortable than the overpacked, stuffy church.

An usher handed each of us a little tulle bag of grass seed encased in peach-tinted fluff.

“I’m telling you,” she insisted in a whisper, “he’s interested.”

“Interested in collaborating. In having a business relationship.” I found a spot in the shade of a cherry tree where we could launch our grass seed without getting doused with it ourselves. Eric squeezed through to join us.

“No, he didn’t have the business look in his eyes,” Liv insisted. “Eric, you were there. You saw it, too. Tell her.”

Eric exhaled. “Liv, don’t go doing this.”

“What?”

“This infernal matchmaking.” He eased the tie about his neck. “It never works, and someone is bound to get hurt every time. Why don’t you let it go? If it’s meant to be, it will take a natural course. Like you and me.”

Liv and I burst into hysterics that drew the attention of those around us. And Eric only knew the tip of the iceberg. Liv had been matching up couples, with uncanny success, since her first junior high dance. Of course, I’d since forgiven her for pushing Brad in my direction.

“What?” he said.

“If you only knew.” I wagged my head. “Natural course. Sure.”

Shouts erupted closer to the church, and Carolyn and her groom darted out. After the new couple traveled about three feet, Carolyn got a faceful of grass seed, grimaced, and then scurried back inside.

“Daddy!” was all that we heard, and then hushed whispers, as the bride and her parents huddled just inside the open doors of the church.

The groom stood red faced, planted momentarily as he looked at the sea of faces, and then he backtracked into the church. He never seemed to manage to gain access to the huddle. Instead, he loped awkwardly to the side.

“Hi, Audrey.” Little Joe had sneaked up on me. His polyester black suit, the same that he wore for all his work at the funeral home—or maybe he owned more than one of them—shone in the sunlight.

“Hey, Little Joe. Nice wedding.”

“Yes, you did a fantastic job on the flowers. Real pretty.”

“Thanks.”

“Going to the reception?”

“I’ll be there.”

“Good.” He smiled and pulled out his invitation—printed like an old 45 record with the names of the bride and groom as the song title. “I’ll be there, too. Save me a dance, huh? I’ve been studying up some new moves online.”

I’d live to regret what came out of my mouth next, but he was so hopeful and sweet, and I was so sleep deprived. “Sure, Little Joe. I’d be happy to dance with you.” What would be a few minutes wandering around the dance floor while he tried to remember something he read on the Internet, compared to breaking the man’s heart? I was a little leery of his new moves, but if Little Joe could learn it online, I was certain I could fake it for a few minutes.

Finally the huddle inside the church dispersed, and Mayor Watkins stepped outside.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, “we thank you all for coming today. And we appreciate you sticking around to send the couple off. However, the grass seed you’ve been given is much harder than the samples we were provided, and we’d ask that you not throw it at the bride and groom, to avoid injury. Please feel free to take it with you and fill in any bare patches in your lawn, as I was assured it is very fine grass seed.

“Thank you very much for your cooperation, and we’ll see you over at the reception in”—he glanced at his watch—“a little over two hours.”

The couple then sprinted to their car, a huge boat of a red convertible with loads of chrome and fins on the back end—a fully restored 1957 Pontiac Star Chief, Eric reported with awe—to a round of weak applause.

Eric shook his head as he stuck his grass seed back into his pocket. “I don’t know, Audrey. You got your work cut out for you.”

“Most of the work is done. All we have to do is run a few flowers over . . .”

“No, I meant keeping your perfect record. That boy needs to get some gumption, or this marriage might not last much past the reception.”

• • •

I was holding out for a cupcake.

Otherwise I would have been home in my bed, sound asleep, and would have missed the forty-five minutes of speeches and congratulatory toasts, plus the thirty seconds of the choreographed dance extravaganza that the bridal party had worked on for “simply months”—the mashed potato, the emcee called it—and that might have been better if they’d performed it before all those toasts. Aptly named because the bridal party was, at that stage, toasted.

The venue was spectacular—or a spectacle, depending on personal preference. I saw Kathleen Randolph, the owner and manager, peeking her head in a few times with a strained expression on her face. Whether she was not fond of weddings or if she thought the historic inn should only be decorated in the period-appropriate fashion, I couldn’t tell.

But for this reception, the inn looked more like it might be haunted by Arthur Fonzarelli than George Washington. The guests were seated at traditional round banquet tables, each replete with a tall peach arrangement. Diner-style tables were set up for the wedding party. Yes, 1950s chrome and Formica diner tables, and the bride and groom ate at a sweetheart table that looked like a soda counter with high chrome stools.

Instead of a DJ or band, they’d somehow appropriated an old Wurlitzer jukebox, chock-full of fifties favorites. Guests picked the songs, which were then pumped out over the sound system. “Jailhouse Rock” seemed to be a particular favorite among the groom’s friends for some reason.

Of course, the fifth time it played, another chorus drowned it out, one that became familiar as the evening wore on. “Daddy, make them stop.”

Carolyn whined her line when the waitstaff tried to bring out the food during the dance time (which explained the cold chicken), repeated it when the groom’s brother started to tell an old story of his childhood, and perfected it when guests clinked their glasses, requesting the couple to kiss.

Of course, the evening did have its moments. Cocktail hour featured diner food of sliders, fries, and mini chocolate milk shakes. The nonalcoholic drinks were provided for the kids, I was sure, but popular with many adults. I had one. Okay, more than one.

It was the cupcake tower that kept me from sneaking out. About four feet of sugar overload, it sat near the dance floor on a round table draped with peach satin. The table itself was also covered with cupcakes, and Nick stood by it almost the whole evening, chasing away dancers who got too close and those who wanted to partake too early, mainly the pouty flower girl, who still held on to her basket of petals.

I wasn’t sure which was more scrumptious looking, Nick in a suit and tie or those cupcakes with mounds of swirly frosting—in white, chocolate, and peach hues. They just sang from the tower, topped by a small sweetheart cake for that ceremonial cut. Liv had also lent a few peach roses to augment the design.

Throughout the evening flashes went off as people took pictures of the cupcakes, the flowers, the jukebox, and, if they dared, the bride and groom.

“Daddy, make them stop,” Carolyn demanded as she shielded her eyes from the flash of a cell phone camera.

“How about you go ahead and cut the cake, now, peaches?” the mayor asked.

Yes, why don’t you?

“I want more pictures first. By the jukebox.”

I turned to Liv. “I wonder if there are any more of those little chocolate milk shakes.”

“I’ll come with you.” She patted a sleepy Eric on the shoulder.

As Liv and I approached the soda bar, I spotted Little Joe, the mad mortician, heading for me, so I pulled Liv into the shrubbery. Well, not really shrubbery, more of a forest of plastic ficuses. These seemed to be disguising an unused closet. A tad too tacky for the Ashbury. Maybe I should talk with Kathleen Randolph about fresh floral alternatives.

“What’s going on?” Liv spat a plastic leaf out of her mouth. “What are we doing in the bushes?”

“Little Joe. He’s been after me to dance with him.”

“Then dance with him.”

“My feet are killing me already. I don’t need his added weight on top of them.”

“He’s a bad dancer?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never danced with him before. But how good can he be if he learned to dance from an online course? Is he still out there?”

Liv peeked through the dense leaves. “Yes, he’s still there, talking to another man with a handkerchief over his face. I think it’s Chief Bixby.”

“Oh, great. Little Joe’s probably put out an APB on me, and Bixby is going to arrest us for some obscure excess pollen violation.”

“There’s no such thing.”

“Then he’ll make up something.”

“Audrey, what if they find us here? How are we going to explain hiding in these ficuses?”

“We’re not hiding. We’re conversing.”

“And of course we like to do that in the privacy of silk camouflage. Um . . . Audrey . . . I hate to say it, but these plants are quite dusty. I think I need to sneeze.”

“Try to hold it in. Are they still out there?”

Liv braved the jungle once more. “I don’t see Little Joe, but Bixby’s headed this way.”

“Shhh.”

And so we stood, stock-still, trying to blend into the plastic jungle.

“There you are.” This was a female voice: Mrs. June’s. I could just make out the top of her poufy hair through the leaves in front of me. She stopped less than two feet away.

“June,” Bixby said. “Nice wedding.”

“So what are you doing standing out here like some party pooper?”

“It’s those blasted flowers. Must be a ton of them in there. I’d have stayed home if it was anyone else but the mayor’s daughter.”

“I thought the flowers were splendid. Mae’s girls did a nice job on them, didn’t they? Considering . . .”

“Considering?”

“Considering some rat absconded with half of their tools.”

“That’s funny, they didn’t report any theft.”

Mrs. June’s silence drove the point home.

Bixby sighed. “Just part of the investigation. I have to do my job.”

“No, I think you took pleasure in it.”

Bixby grunted. “Maybe a little. But between all those flowers at the crime scene and our other growing problem.”

“You still think someone is farming that marijuana around here?”

“Yeah, I do. We’ve never had such a problem before. And you have to admit, the flower girls are new in town, and they’d know how to grow the stuff.”

“Preposterous. They’ve been here five years—and a lot longer than that if you count summers. You just want it to be them so you can blame it on someone you don’t consider local. You’ve got no evidence. Oh . . . is that why you took a bunch of their plants? Using the murder investigation to get a look around their back room? Don’t you know what marijuana looks like by now?”

“I do, but that Lafferty kid doesn’t. I told him to bag up anything that looked suspicious. Still, we’ll see what the state lab says about the residue on the cutting tools.”

Liv reached over and squeezed my hand. I swallowed hard. It stank to be suspected for something like that, not to mention to be called flower girls and worse: nonlocals. But at least Bixby’s tests should exonerate us.

“So that’s why you took all their tools,” Mrs. June went on. “They were pretty worked up over that, you know. Look, if you’ve got allergies, you’ll have to find some way to cope. You can’t blame everything that goes wrong in Ramble on Audrey and Liv, like you’re on some crusade to rid the world of flowers. There are medications—”

“I’m sensitive to a lot of medications. You know—” His argument was interrupted by several quick inhalations, followed by one humongous sneeze.

A split second later Liv sneezed as well.

Mrs. June turned around and locked eyes with me through the bushes. I shrugged.

“Did you hear that echo?” Bixby said.

“Yes. Yes, I did.” Mrs. June took Bixby’s arm. “Odd acoustics in here. Say, I want to find that wife of yours and say hello.” Mrs. June was a dear and led him away back into the reception room. Now Bixby’s actions made a little more sense. If someone was growing and distributing marijuana in Ramble, I supposed we’d have means. It could be a pretty lucrative side “business,” too, considering the number of retired hippies who’d bought up the struggling farms outlying the town and now raised organic crops, meat, eggs, and cheese and sold them at the local farmers’ market under tie-dyed psychedelic tents.

“Is the coast clear?” I asked.

“Clear enough.” Liv grabbed my hand and pulled me out into the open.

“Oh, hello. Audrey, was it?” Sarah Anderson, Jenny’s roommate, stood gazing at us, tottering a bit on those high peach heels.

“Hello, Sarah.” I wiped a couple of dust bunnies from my shoulder.

“Is there anything good back there?” Sarah, still decked out in her polka-dotted peach bridesmaid dress, leaned into the ficus, losing her balance. “Just a door.” She giggled and wagged a finger at me. “Trying to get away? Trust me, it’s not going to work. Nobody leaves until little Miss Peaches gets all her stupid pictures. C’mon, I’ll buy you a drink.”

We followed her to the bar and helped her onto a stool. “Any milk shakes left?” I asked the server.

“Ooh. Good idea,” Sarah said. “It’s a little warm in here. How about a wee bit of schnapps in mine?”

The server smiled and scooped more ice cream into the blender carafe. “You?”

Liv and I declined the addition.

“I’m going to need an extra hour on the treadmill to work this off,” Sarah said as the server sprayed whipped cream on top of her schnapps-laden shake and presented it. Sarah tore one end from her straw and launched the remaining paper across the room. “I think I hate weddings now. Don’t you hate weddings?” She twirled around on the stool.

“They’re okay.” And then a thought hit me. “A good chance to run into old friends. I’ve been looking for one person in particular, but I can’t remember her name. You probably know her. She was a friend of Derek’s, too, I think. A redhead?”

“Nope. Never saw Derek with a redhead.” She scrunched up her nose. “Not that I didn’t see him with horses of every other color.”

“So Derek was unfaithful to Jenny?”

“Derek was . . . Derek.” Sarah toyed with the straw. “Jenny shouldn’t have done that, though.”

“Done what? Been in a relationship with him or kill him?”

“Jenny and Derek weren’t in the same league. It was doomed from the beginning.” She stared into her shake morosely.

I’m not sure why people celebrated a wedding by consuming copious amounts of a depressant. Raised by teetotalers, I’d imbibed only once in college. I spent the majority of the evening weeping on a friend’s shoulder over the way my jeans fit and the next morning camped out in the bathroom with my head on the toilet seat.

“I tried to tell her,” Sarah muttered. “Tried to tell him. They liked each other all right, but it wasn’t love. Anyone could see that.”

Shirley came to fetch her. “We’re being summoned for more pictures. This time Carolyn wants us all in the car.”

Sarah saluted and then tumbled off the bar seat. “How do I look?” She plastered on a sad smile then followed Shirley to the exit.

“She’s going to be hurting tomorrow.” Liv pushed Sarah’s deserted drink back toward the server.

The milk shakes, or malteds, as the server explained the difference, were luscious and rich, and I relaxed as I drained the dregs from the glass. Unfortunately, that was when my guard fell.

“Audrey!” Little Joe’s excited voice cut straight through to my backbone, if I possessed one. “I’ve been looking all over for you. Where have you been?”

“Hiding.”

“Such a kidder.” Little Joe grabbed my hand and pulled me from my stool. “Ready to take that spin on the dance floor?”

I should have realized he meant “spin” literally. He stopped at the jukebox long enough to make a selection before leading me to the crowded dance floor. “The next song is a jitterbug,” he said, perhaps in way of apology for the awkward waltz. “Well, not really a jitterbug. It’s a swing dance. Jitterbug technically refers to the people who dance it and can’t stop. Did you know there was supposed to be a song in The Wizard of Oz about a jitterbug? I found that online, too.”

I tuned him out as we swayed to Elvis’s “Are You Lonesome Tonight?” A question I didn’t want to ponder, either. So when I heard an older couple mention the name Rawling, I maneuvered in their direction.

“At least we’re spared another wedding. It would have been appalling,” the woman said in an accent I could only identify as old money. Funny how economics often transcends geography.

“I heard that Whitney woman say they were planning the wedding of the century.”

“Not if the Whitneys were paying for it. And from what I hear, the Rawlings weren’t going to pitch in much, either.”

“I thought they liked that girl.”

“At one time they did, but I heard they’re a little strapped for cash.”

Little Joe tried a move in a direction away from the couple, but I stood my ground and yanked him back toward me. Misinterpreting my move, he drew me into a tighter embrace. “Maybe I like waltzes after all,” he said, his breath heavy with the onion rings from the diner bar.

“What do you mean, blackmail?” the man said.

The woman shushed him, and I steered Little Joe a little closer so I could hear. Good thing the dance floor was crowded at the moment.

“. . . business dealings . . . implicate the whole family . . .” I caught only a few words. So I pulled Little Joe and edged as close to the couple as I dared. If we were any closer, we’d be dancing a foursome.

“. . . million dollars,” the woman said.

“No way Jonathan would part with that kind of money.”

I wanted to hear more, but at that moment Elvis finished his crooning and the dancers applauded. The older couple headed toward their table.

“Here it comes!” Little Joe said, a maniacal fire in his eyes. I had just enough time to recognize the song as “Shake, Rattle, and Roll” before everything started shaking, rattling, and rolling.

First the shaking. Little Joe’s long legs started pounding the dance floor. I tried to keep up with him, mirroring the steps, but they were just too fast for me. I think I caught every other one.

Then came the rattling. That was my teeth coming together as Little Joe grabbed my hand and led a series of wild swings that sent me bumping into more than one person. Soon the dance floor cleared around us, and, between spins, I could just make out an audience forming around the perimeter, gaping at us. Any more spinning, and I’d not be able to walk.

But that didn’t prove to be a problem, because then came the rolling. Perhaps cheered on by the spectators now clapping to the music and the occasional flashbulb, Little Joe latched on to my arms and soon I was airborne.

Moving dead bodies around all day must be a great strength-training routine. He swung my legs to each side of him, and I could feel my dress ride up to my hips as he swung me between his legs. One shoe flew off as he picked me up and twirled me around his shoulders, knocking the wind out of me as my diaphragm struck his clavicle and scapula. I struggled for the breath to protest, yet he kept on tossing me around as if I were a Raggedy Ann doll smeared with bacon grease and he were a pit bull terrier.

Finally he let me go. But it was not the relief I was looking for, because, as a finale to his routine, he sent me sliding along the dance floor, feet first. I can describe everything that happened after that, because my brain videotaped it in slow motion, storing it under the title “Most Embarrassing Moment Ever.”

As I hurtled along the dance floor to the closing chords of the music, I got my bearings enough to see Nick Maxwell leap out of the way. And then I saw nothing but the billowing peach satin of the cupcake table. My body slid under the table, my ankle wrenching as my one remaining heel snagged in the table cover, slowing my momentum.

The table above me tilted; the crowd gasped. I had visions of the whole thing coming down, but that didn’t happen. Rather the cloth shifted, as if pulled by an amateur magician, and one lone peach cupcake teetered on the edge of the table. Then it fell, somersaulting like an Olympic diver before landing, frosting side down, right in my . . . um . . . décolletage.