by B A Trimmer
“Forget the cake for a moment,” Kristy said, a touch of desperation in her voice. “Francisco, why is nothing ready?”
“What do you mean?” he asked, clearly puzzled.
“The appetizers should be out already. You need to be serving salad at seven forty-five. You’re nowhere close to that in there.”
“Seven forty-five?” he asked as he shook his head. “No, I have eight forty-five.”
He saw the look she was giving him. “It’s easy enough to clear this up,” he said. “Let me get the work order.”
We followed him into the kitchen and over to a desk in a corner. He picked up a metal clipboard with several papers on it and flipped through to the third or fourth page back.
“No, here it is. I’m not sure where the disconnect is, but the work order lists the first course at eight forty-five. Take a look,” he said as he handed her the clipboard. “See for yourself.”
Kristy looked at the paperwork and sighed. “I’m not sure how the time was changed, but I had it in at seven forty-five. I reconfirmed everything with Maggie two weeks ago.”
“I don’t know what I can tell you,” Francisco said, also frustrated. “I can only go by what’s on the order. I can speed things up by maybe ten minutes. Fifteen if you don’t mind if the beef is a little rare.”
The look on Kristy’s face was horrible. It was like she was watching her house burn down. “Francisco,” she quietly said. “I know it’s not your fault. Do what you can. I’ll go out and open up the bar. Maybe we’ll get lucky and the bride will be late.”
Unfortunately, as we walked back into the reception space, there was a round of clapping and several yells of delight as the bride and groom entered. Kristy walked up to her, with me trailing behind.
“Everything looks so beautiful,” the bride said as she took in her reception space. She was beaming with happiness at how perfect her special night was turning out. “You outdid yourself.”
“Thank you,” Kristy said. “All I did was to help make your vision a reality.”
“I think everyone’s about here,” the bride said as she looked around. “When should we start directing them to the tables?”
“Everything tonight is going well, exactly as we planned. But I did want to let you know, the caterer is running a little behind.”
The look on the bride’s face went from blissful to bridezilla in an instant.
“What?” she demanded to know. “Dinner’s going to be late? Are you F-ing serious? How late?”
“Forty-five minutes, um, maybe an hour.”
“An hour?” the bride fumed. “Are we supposed to have everyone standing around for an hour, doing nothing while they wait for dinner?”
“Let me make a proposal,” Kristy said, using a tone I could only classify as her official wedding-planner voice. “Let’s switch the bar from cash to open. An hour is about the time it takes for everyone to have two to three drinks.”
The bride’s eyes flared. Clearly, this was an expense she had not anticipated.
“No, no,” Kristy said as she held up her hand. “The cost of the open bar is on me. We’ll keep it open until the first course is served. That way, the guests won’t even know we were running behind.”
The bride shook her head, clearly upset. “Kristy, you promised that tonight was going to be perfect. This isn’t perfect.”
Without saying another word to us, the bride grabbed a couple of bridesmaids and loudly complained that the dinner would be late. They all patted her shoulder and told her it would be okay. Then everyone drifted to the bar and started ordering drinks.
Kristy also went to the bar and had a quick discussion with the staff about opening the service for the next hour. As she was walking back, she was met by the mother of the bride. After a brief discussion about the delay, we could see the bride’s mother wasn’t any happier than the bride.
When Kristy came back, she looked tired and discouraged.
“You wanted to know what sorts of things have been happening?” she asked. “Well, this is it. I know, without a doubt, the dining schedule was correctly set up. I called the business office here two weeks ago to double-check and everything was perfect. Somebody purposefully went in and changed things around.”
“How much will you lose because of this?” I asked.
“At eight dollars a drink, this will run me around twenty-five hundred, maybe three thousand dollars.”
“Ouch.”
“At this point, it’s not the money. It’s my reputation. The bride is the daughter of one of the leading money managers here in town. Once they find out I’ve had another problem, word will spread.”
“You said you worked with a woman named Maggie on the catering?” I asked.
“That’s right, Maggie Simms. She’s the scheduler here at the Barrington.”
“Could she have something to do with the switch?”
“I don’t think so. I’ve worked with her for years and we get along great. She’s organized and efficient.”
“Well, first thing tomorrow, I’ll talk with her. Hopefully, this will open up an avenue for the investigation.”
Kristy took off to make sure nothing else was going wrong. A few minutes later, Sophie came over to stand next to me. She’d been at the bar, having a conversation with a good-looking guy.
“What happened with the dinner?” she asked. “Both the bride and her mother are at the bar saying some nasty things about our client.”
“The dinner was supposed to start at seven forty-five, but now it won’t begin for another hour.”
“Jeez, no wonder they’re so pissed. What happened?”
“It looks like someone switched the times. I only hope nothing else goes wrong.”
~~~~
The following day, I got up early, dressed in an outfit that would work for golf, and headed into the office. Knowing things would still be awkward with Lenny, I stopped along the way and got a box of doughnuts.
I’d made sure to get the cinnamon swirls Lenny liked and the chocolate creams with sprinkles for Sophie. Gina seldom ate doughnuts, but I’d gotten an assortment in case she was in the mood.
No one was in the back, so I took the box up to reception. As I suspected, Gina was sitting in one of the red leather chairs. Sophie was at her desk, sipping on a gas station coffee.
They were talking about the problems at the wedding. At the same time, Sophie absent-mindedly flipped through the Southern California Surfline reports on her tablet.
Sophie looked up and saw what I had in my hands. This brought a broad smile to her face.
“Oh my God,” she said as she snatched the box of doughnuts and tried to make up her mind which one to have first. “I so need these today.”
I looked over to see that the door to Lenny’s office was shut. “Have either of you talked to him yet?” I asked. “How bad is he?”
Sophie shook her head. “He showed up about ten minutes ago. He’s a mess. Fortunately, he’s still in his sad phase. I don’t even want to think about how bad it will be when Lenny starts to get pissy.”
“We’ve got to do something,” Gina said. “Have either of you come up with an idea?”
“Well, I was thinking,” Sophie said. “Remember last spring when we worked on that assignment for Mistress McNasty? Remember how Lenny drooled all over her boots when she came in? Maybe he could date her for a while?”
“Um, I’m not sure he could afford her,” I said. “Even for Lenny, that might be a stretch.”
Not to mention, he’d be dating Johnny Scarpazzi’s girlfriend.
“Still, that’s not a bad idea,” Gina said. “Even if Suzi’s out of his league, there must be some sort of budget dominatrix out there. I bet Lenny won’t be too particular about who he’s with for the next couple of weeks. We just need someone to take his mind off Elle.”
“I could ask Suzi if she has any friends who are looking for new clients,” I said. “You never know.”
“At this point,
it’s worth a shot,” Gina said. “To be completely honest, Lenny is starting to get on my nerves.”
~~~~
We chatted for the next twenty minutes about Lenny, Suzi Lu, and the wedding. Sophie ended up eating three doughnuts before she’d had enough.
Gina got up, saying she needed to take off and be productive. As soon as she went through the door to the back offices, Sophie stood up.
She walked over to the front window that looked onto the street. When she found what she was looking for, she motioned for me to come and join her.
“Take a look at this,” Sophie said in a hushed voice.
“What is it?” I asked.
“See that white cargo van parked in front of Gilbert Ortega’s gift shop?” she said as she pointed down the street.
“Yeah, what about it?”
“I’ve been seeing it on our block all week. They move it every couple of hours, but it’s always the same van.”
“How do you know it’s the same van? All white vans pretty much look alike.”
“This one has three little antennas sticking up on the roof near the front. Can you see them?”
“Sort of. It’s a long way away. Do you think it has something to do with one of Lenny’s cases?”
“Lenny? No, I’m thinking it’s more like the Men in Black.”
“Seriously? Are you starting to worry about using the secret software again?”
“Maybe. After all the crazy searches I’ve done for you over the past couple of months, I think I’ve ended up on their radar. I think they’re monitoring me to see what else I’ve been up to.”
“But you’ve been using the secret software for a year and a half. You’ve run all sorts of searches. Don’t you think if they didn’t like what you were doing, they’d just revoke your access?”
“I don’t know how they’d react. I only hope they don’t want to disappear me into one of their secret underground interrogation facilities.”
“Why would they do that?”
“Who knows why? As far as I know, it could be illegal for me to even know the secret database exists.”
“Wait a minute, the government installed the software on your computer so we could search out the bad guys. How could it be illegal for you to have it?”
“I just have a feeling,” she said.
~~~~
I glanced at the clock and figured the Barrington would be open by now. I looked up the number and called Maggie Simms, the woman Kristy said was the event scheduler.
Maggie answered right away, and I let her know who I was and why I wanted to meet with her. She said she’d be in all day, and I could stop by anytime.
~~~~
I had some time before I needed to meet with Tony, so I drove up Scottsdale Road to the Barrington. I parked next to the business offices and went in.
A woman who I took to be Maggie Simms was on the phone. She was an efficient-looking woman, about sixty years old, with short dark hair and reading glasses hanging against her chest with a cord.
She was seated behind a desk that was covered with colorful folders. She held up a finger to let me know she’d be with me in a minute.
As I waited, I looked around her office. It was an ample space that had scheduling boards on three sides. On the wall closest to her desk was a panel that apparently represented the current month. Each day had a long, slotted tray with several colored three-by-five cards in it.
As Maggie talked, she typed information into a computer, then wrote on one of the colored three-by-five cards. A printer next to her desk started printing out what turned out to be five or six pages.
Maggie hung up, grabbed the papers from the printer, stapled them together, and placed them in a colored folder on her desk.
“Sorry about that,” she said. “How can I help you?”
“I’m Laura Black,” I said. “I’m working with Kristine Darby. We had a reception here last night and there was a mix-up on the time the caterer was supposed to serve dinner. I’m here to help find out how it happened.”
“Sure,” she said. “Kristy called and said you’d stop by. I already pulled the file and it’s there on the desk.”
I picked up the thick file folder that must have contained thirty or forty pages.
“Wow, I didn’t know so much went into a reception. What’s in here?”
“These are the work orders for the layout of the Classic reception hall. We break up each function into its own work order. It makes it easier to keep everything straight.”
As she was talking, I flipped through the file. There was a work order for the table service. There was also one for the plate and silverware layout, one for the bar, and one for the cake table. As I glanced at the file, there were another ten or so bundles of paper in it.
“What about the caterers?” I asked.
“It’s all in there,” Maggie said. “Kristy used our house caterer. We don’t allow outside services.”
Maggie asked for the folder. When I gave it to her, she pulled out a bundle of ten pages, held together with a metal clip.
“Here’s the paperwork for the catering,” she said. “You were looking for the serving time?”
“That’s right.”
Maggie flipped a couple of pages back. “It’s listed here at eight forty-five. From what Kristy told me this morning, it should have been an hour earlier.”
“Do you remember anything about this?”
“Not this specific change, but it would have had to come directly from her. I keep an email folder for each wedding. I didn’t see it in there, so I’m thinking she probably called.”
“It seems for something major, like a change to the serving time, someone would remember.”
Maggie shook her head. “I either talk with Kristy directly or get an email from her three or four times a week. She probably has a dozen weddings scheduled here over the next eighteen months.”
“Would it seem unusual for her to make a change like that?”
Maggie started laughing. “I wish it was. But truthfully, most of what I do here are last-minute changes. The brides will reserve the venue two years in advance. Still, they wait until two weeks before the wedding to completely change their minds about everything. It’s unusual if I don’t have at least two or three changes for an event.”
“When you talked to Kristy this morning, did she recall making the change?”
Maggie smiled and shook her head. “No, she didn’t remember this specific change. It’s a shame. Kristy was always one of the better planners we dealt with. But lately, her events always seem to go wrong.”
“Do you have any idea why this is happening?”
“Maybe she’s trying to do too many weddings. It’s easy to mess things up when you’re juggling a dozen events at once. Trust me, I know.”
“As long as I’m here. Could I get a copy of the Henderson-Peckham wedding on New Year’s Eve? Grandma Peckham’s my next-door neighbor and she asked me to help her out with it.”
“Sure,” Maggie said. “I understand. I’ve been getting a lot of people asking about Kristy’s events.”
~~~~
I got in my car and drove the short distance to the Blue Palms. As I pulled into the resort’s entrance, I realized it was the first time I’d been here since everything had happened with Major Malakov. It was hard to believe it had already been three weeks ago.
I usually wouldn’t use valet, but in this case, I drove right to it. I was running a little behind and didn’t want to make Tony wait. Besides, I knew they’d have my clubs and be able to get me squared away.
I waited in a line of cars for about a minute, then a man in a Blue Palms uniform opened my door. As I climbed out, he handed me a claim ticket.
Another uniformed man took my name, then walked with me to a waiting golf cart. I saw it held a bag of new Lady Pings in the back. Without a word, we headed out.
As we drove to Mulligan’s Grille, I looked to see if I could spot any residual damage to the
Kokopelli course from the thousands of people who’d been walking on it, only three weeks before.
But it looked as pristine as ever. As always, I was impressed with the level of care and maintenance that went into these courses.
As we pulled up to the front of the restaurant, the man removed the clubs from the cart and set them in a stand near the entrance. He told me to have a good round, then got in his cart and took off.
I walked into Mulligan’s and looked around. There were about thirty-five people in the place, all drinking, eating, and talking loudly. Fortunately, Tony hadn’t arrived yet.
I took one of the stools at the counter in front of the open-air grill. I then watched as a man in a white apron and chef’s hat cooked burgers, chicken, and steaks. The meat was sizzling on a thick metal grate, inches above a smoking bed of red-hot coals. The grilling meat smelled scrumptious.
A waitress stopped by and I ordered a Diet Pepsi. Next to the bar in the back, a woman played an acoustic guitar on a small stage.
Sitting in the grille, listening to music, and waiting for Tony, brought back some memories. Almost a year ago, I’d waited here for a meeting with him. At the time, I was terrified. Since then, I’ve come to know him as a friend.
I’d been there about fifteen minutes when the chef’s eyes opened wide and he suddenly became very busy. I didn’t need to look. I knew Tony had come into the grille.
I walked over and gave him a hug. “Laura Black,” he said in his low, gruff voice. “It’s good to see you again.”
“I didn’t know you were back to golfing,” I said. “How long have you been going out?”
“I’ve been to the driving range several times, but this is the first time I’ve attempted to play a course. To be completely honest, the results have been mixed. Are you ready to head out?”
Chapter Five
We walked out to where the carts were waiting. One of the guys had already placed the set of Lady Pings in the back of Tony’s red six-person cart.
Today, it was driven by Carson, a man I’d worked with when I’d recently stayed at the resort. He looked my way and acknowledged me with a nod.
