Whitney froze, but Melanie jumped up so fast, none of them had a chance to react. The slap of her hand on Felicia’s cheek sounded like a gunshot. “Where is he,” she yelled. “My husband. Where is he?”
“I, I’m not sure.” A stunned Felicia gingerly touched the reddened side of her face. She started to rise, then Melanie leaned over her again.
“Stop it,” Grace was on her feet, but it was Marjorie who charged in and restored order.
“Ms. Regan,” she hissed, glaring at Grace over the top of her glasses. “Please lower the noise level in here. We have clients in the other offices who can hear these ladies.”
To Grace’s amazement, the Overton wives straightened up, and Melanie even managed a weak apology. The threat of bad publicity appeared to trump outrage, at least until the door closed behind Marjorie.
“Spit it out, Felicia,” Whitney demanded. She stood next to her sister, on guard. “What’re you saying?”
“You know we’re married,” Felicia said in a shaky voice. “Heath told you.”
Whitney looked at Melanie, who shook her head.
“We eloped two weeks ago in Las Vegas.” She sounded stronger in the face of the sisters’ shock.
Whitney sat down abruptly.
‘Two weeks?” Melanie asked.
Felicia scrambled out of her chair and moved around behind Grace’s desk. With a more substantial barrier between herself and the other women, she said, “Well, you divorced him, Mel. Heath told me you got the finalized papers.”
“You’re already divorced?” Grace said, struggling to keep up.
“A technicality. It doesn’t mean anything,” Melanie said, not taking her eyes off Felicia. “I don’t believe Heath did this to me.”
“To us,” Whitney corrected. “Felicia, you knew the wedding ceremony was supposed to be a moral union for all of us, not just a legal one for you and Heath. You weren’t scheduled to be married until we filmed the Christmas episode. Now you’ve ruined everything.”
Grace decided the producers had missed a great storyline. She’d watch this drama even if she wasn’t getting paid. Hopefully getting paid.
“Don’t be silly,” Felicia said from the safety of the far side of the room. “Heath said Fred Renne was fine with it as long as we kept it quiet.”
“The owner of Lightning Strike knows?” Grace asked.
“Well, now I’m not sure,” Felicia said. “I thought he told them, too.” She waved a hand at the sisters. “Good thing I didn’t mention it to Fred when I saw him. I stopped by the Baltimore office on my way here. He seemed a bit nervous, but I assured him everything would be fine and we’d be ready to shoot on schedule.”
“You had no right to do that,” Whitney said.
Melanie appeared to gather herself and got to her feet. “What else did you say to him, you stupid little girl? Because Fred told Sawyer — our producer, remember him? Fred told Sawyer if Heath isn’t here on time ready to film with no changes to the script, the contract is void. How do you like that? Keep on bragging about being married and guess what? All that nice money I’m sure you’ve already spent will evaporate. Get the picture?”
“I’ve always had the picture,” Felicia fired back.
Grace interrupted before the free-for-all could start again. “Wait a minute, please. Felicia, when did Heath say he’d told Melanie and Whitney about your marriage?”
“Right after he did it. He called me after he saw them.” She paused. “That was Sunday, the sixth. He said everything was fine, but he was going back to Las Vegas for a few days. He said he wanted to rest before the filming started. That’s where I thought he was, Las Vegas. But then Whitney and Melanie started calling me, looking for him. I couldn’t reach him, and I got worried. Last night I decided something had to be wrong, and I took the first flight I could book this morning. ”
Whitney snorted and said, “Your new husband wanted to be alone to rest? That doesn’t say much for you, does it?”
Felicia’s smug look slipped a little, but she said, “I understand him. Heath needed a breather after seeing you two.”
Grace broke in before the latest insult could sink in. “What I’m hearing is that none of you have talked to him in the past ten days, and you don’t know where he is. I think it’s time to call either the police or hire a private detective.”
“No,” Whitney said. She stood, pulling Melanie up with her. “Come on, let’s go home. Grace, check everywhere and do everything you can think of to find him without filing an official missing person report. He’ll be so disappointed in us if we ruin the deal with Lightning Strike. Felicia, if you’re part of this family, then get with the program. This is what we do, we make a decision and stick with it. You can see what happens when we don’t. Grace will find Heath and, in the meantime, the three of us will see to the children and work out a way to spin this into an even better storyline.”
Grace couldn’t believe Whitney wanted Felicia to come home with them and was amazed when the other two women fell in line without protest. The relief she felt when they were gone was quickly replaced by worry over how to find the missing man. She also had to tell Mosley that not only hadn’t she withdrawn from the Overton case, it had gotten even more convoluted.
Lilac fields and the glittering streets of Paris had never seemed so far away.
Chapter Seventeen
Thursday night dinner parties at Delaney House had become a thing at some point over the past six months. It had started in the winter when Grace was still recovering from a series of events that had ended with her being injured and engaged — a combination that still struck her as ominous. When David returned to Washington, Avril and Niki set up a weekly party schedule to, as Avril put it, ‘make sure Grace stays fed and socialized.’
While Grace recovered physically, her naturally introverted nature kicked into overdrive and left to her own devices, she’d have buried herself in work. At first, she went along with the dinners to please Niki and Avril, but as the weeks passed, she slowly began to enjoy herself. The potluck affairs were often so crowded, guests spilled out of the big kitchen and set up folding tables and chairs in the empty dining room and the twin parlors. Aidan Banks said it was a BYOFFB — Bring Your Own Food, Furniture, and Beer. Sometimes she didn’t know half of the people who showed up on her doorstep, but everyone was a friend, or at least friendly, by the time the evening was over. Her total immersion into the social life in Mallard Bay was a crash course that she enjoyed much more than she’d thought possible.
David called it a circus and usually delayed his weekend arrival until Saturday morning. His unexpected appearance thirty-six hours early did not bode well, especially given the way they’d left things on Tuesday. Her surprise at seeing him started the evening off badly. She’d been looking forward to having fun, and instead, she’d be on edge trying to keep him happy and non-confrontational.
Her concerns were realized as soon as he walked into the kitchen. His ‘hey, babe’ segued directly into ‘how soon until we’re alone?’
“I wasn’t expecting you,” she said and moved around him to greet a new neighbor.
They went through the motions from that point on. Grace tried to throw herself into the dinner conversation, but it was clear the Overtons were all anyone was interested in. Besides worrying about David, she had to steer clear of talk about her clients. What low-budget publicity had been slow to achieve, a missing husband and three angry wives had accomplished. The news of Felicia and Heath’s elopement was out and traveling fast, and the guests at Delaney House devoured food and gossip with equal enthusiasm.
“What would you call them?” David asked. He refilled his wine glass and passed on food. He’d already talked at length about his seventy-hour work week and the long drive from DC. It was clearly a chore for him to be polite, not that he ever made much of an effort with Grace’s friends. His rudeness hadn’t hurried the dinner along, so he tried a different tack. “Your clients, honey,” he prompted when she di
dn’t answer. “What are they?”
“Besides adults minding their own business?” Avril asked.
David and Avril had an actively antagonistic relationship, and he refused to acknowledge her as he said, “I mean their ménage a’ quatre, Grace.”
“They have a familial relationship,” she said, giving him a warning look, which he ignored.
“And they aren’t polygamists because, why again?” He took a handful of potato chips from an open bag, bypassing a platter of shrimp stuffed rockfish filets and a basket of warm corn muffins. He was enjoying putting Grace on the spot and was helped along by the other dinner guests who were waiting for her answer.
“You’ll have to watch the show for the details,” she said.
A chorus of protests made him laugh until her napkin landed on his head.
“Come on, you have to admit they’re advertising themselves that way. The Plurals Next Door pretty much says it all, don’t you think?” David tossed the napkin back to her. “And a good headline would be ‘Scandal Rocks Mallard Bay — Again.’”
Up and down the old pine farm table, heads swiveled to Grace, who was fuming. How dare he behave as if her clients didn’t deserve the same level of professional confidentiality he gave his own?
But David ignored all the warning signs. “I mean, come on. How can one lawyer in a small town end up with back-to-back Jerry Springer casts for clients? Last winter’s disaster was bad enough, but you may have outdone yourself with this bunch. You sure bring a lot of attention to this little backwater place, babe.”
The hilarity level dropped, and Grace blushed.
Mac broke the awkward moment, to Grace’s relief and David’s irritation. “Actually, this part of the mid-shore is quite a fashionable place to be. Has been for years.” He settled back in his chair as if moving into a fireside chat. “We attract all sorts of wealthy and famous people. Such as yourself, Counselor.” He paused to smile at David. “I seem to recall your first appearance here last year was to represent one of those Jerry Springer types.”
The looks the men exchanged had nothing to do with David’s disparagement of Grace’s clients and everything to do with Grace. Mac was sitting next to Ashley Greenburgh, his arm resting on the back of her chair. The veterinarian looked embarrassed, but neither man seemed to notice.
Aidan changed the subject in his usual abrupt way. “Why’d you come down early this weekend?” he asked David.
“If I need a reason other than this entertaining dinner, let’s say I missed my girl.”
“Huh,” Aidan said. “You mean the embezzlement case I’ve been reading about in the Washington Post doesn’t keep you tied to your office around the clock?”
“I’m never too busy for Grace.” David snagged another handful of chips and sent an insincere smile toward her side of the table.
“C’mon,” Aidan said. “Give us some details. What’s Senator Sloane like? And is his wife as hot as she looks on TV?”
“Hey!” Niki gave him an elbow in the side. “Are you checking out other women?”
“I’m not blind, so, yeah,” he said with such earnestness that everyone but Niki laughed. “So, Davey, fill us in on the good stuff.”
With exaggerated movements, David brushed chip crumbs off his hands. “You’re a police officer, aren’t you? You should know I can’t discuss my clients.”
“Corporal, actually,” Banks said. “But you know how we are over on this side of the bridge. News is slow to reach us out here in the backwater, and we’re not as uptight as all you DC folks. You were making fun of Grace’s clients, so I assumed it was okay to get the gossip on yours, too.” The smiles he got from around the table were nice, but the glare from David was even better.
The general conversation drifted off to the local theater group’s production of Ten Little Indians and the YMCA’s yard sale fundraiser.
“That’ll be a great opportunity for me to finish cleaning out Mom and Dad’s house,” Niki said. “And who knows what we might find for the inns, Grace.”
David gave her his best smirk and said, “Can’t wait to see this place decorated from a yard sale.” The conversation took off into urban legends of junk sales with unsigned Picassos, long lost Vermeers, and priceless Faberge eggs used as Easter decorations. Unhappy to have been dismissed so easily, he pulled out the brochure for the house on the Wye River and passed it around, accepting compliments on his good taste.
Grace noticed Mac looked at the photos longer than the others before passing it down the table without comment.
Ordinarily, Avril stayed until the dishes were done, and the kitchen was sorted. During dessert, David announced that he was doing all the cleaning up, but if he thought that would rush people through the caramel cake and peach cobbler, he was once again mistaken. The desserts were delicious, and the party kept going.
When the evening finally wore down, and she closed the door behind the last departing guest, he exploded. An hour later, he was half-way to DC, leaving Grace with a kitchen full of dirty dishes and an ultimatum. Come back to DC and marry him or else. He didn’t define ‘else,’ but she took it, anyway.
Chapter Eighteen
On the walk to Niki’s house, Aidan said that for a dinner where he had to sit between David and Avril, it was a pretty good night. Niki said she was glad he’d had fun and proceeded to ruin the rest of his evening. When he couldn’t convince her he wasn’t interested in Senator Sloane’s wife, he cut the ridiculous argument short and left her at her door.
Since their first date in the sixth grade, Aidan and Niki had been mismatched soul mates, miserable apart and never really happy together. Lately, he’d been thinking about one of his mother’s sayings. Her stock response to his arguments with Niki was always, ‘It’s better to be alone than to wish you were.’
It was after ten when he pulled in the driveway of his childhood home, but there was a light on in the den. He decided to find out what his mother had been trying to say for the past twenty years.
McNamara dressed in the dark and might have slipped out of Ashley’s house without any uncomfortable explanations if her fifteen-year-old Siamese cat hadn’t been incontinent. When his foot hit the cold puddle of pee, his gasp startled the cat, whose screech woke Ashley, who turned on the lights and caught him, shoes in hand, at her bedroom door.
“Going so soon?” she asked, rubbing sleep from her eyes.
He had zero experience with such situations and froze, speechless, and without a single useful thought coming to mind.
“Maggie’s a watch cat,” Ashley said. “I should have warned you.”
“She’s also made a little mess, but I think most of it’s soaked into my socks now.” He could have kissed the cat for providing the diversion that allowed him to make almost normal sounding conversation until he got to the front door.
His hand was on the doorknob when she said, “It’s okay, you know. You’re more transparent than you think. I knew how you felt when I agreed to this.”
He wanted to believe her, to keep going. To go home where he could pretend he hadn’t hurt her. Instead, he turned around to apologize, only to see the door shut behind her.
Outside, the predawn air was cool against his hot face. What a fool he was.
After a fitful night spent fuming over Aidan’s behavior, Niki went to the only person who hadn’t, at some point, urged her to dump her boyfriend. Grace didn’t answer her text, but a ride past Delaney House told her David was gone. Forty-five minutes later, she surprised her still sleepy cousin with lattes and lemon poppyseed muffins from the Dunkin’ Donuts on Route 50. The coffee and the muffins were both considerably cooler than when she’d bought them, but the twenty-minute ride to Easton was better than risking a run-in with Aidan in the bakery section of Three Pigs.
“Last night was it, Grace. You see it, don’t you?” Niki asked as she set the food out on the table.
Grace stood in the kitchen doorway, longing to go back to bed. Instead, she crossed the roo
m to the rocking chair by the fireplace. “Coffee first,” she held out a hand for a latte. “I’m not up to this.”
Niki briefly considered leaving, but she had to talk to somebody. She handed Grace a muffin. “I hate to bring up problems so early, but I’ve wrestled this all night, and I need to talk it out. The way he behaved at dinner just reinforced everything I’ve been worried about. His behavior is awful.”
“I know,” Grace agreed. “Everyone noticed, and it was embarrassing. He’s ridiculous, and it’s exhausting trying to keep up with his moods.”
Niki knew she shouldn’t be surprised that Grace was so emphatic, but it was rare to have someone else as mad at Aidan as she was. An awful thought struck her. Did everyone else really feel the same way? Were they all wondering why Niki put up with a man who was so clearly inadequate? Fresh anger flared, and all of Aidan’s shortcomings rushed to the surface. “He’s thoughtless and selfish. And let’s not forget ignorant. Sometimes he’s so dumb, I can’t believe he’s made it as far as he has.”
“Dumb?” Grace stopped picking at the muffin she wasn’t eating. “Thoughtless and selfish, yes. I’ll even agree he’s ignorant sometimes, but you really think David’s dumb?”
“Who’s talking about David?”
It took a minute to untangle the conversation. At first, it was funny. Then it wasn’t. The cousins sat and let their coffees go cold in the kitchen that had seen generations of the Delaney family’s troubles.
Niki broke the silence. “He says I’m mean.” There was a quiver in her voice, and she waited to be contradicted. “I wasn’t mean enough,” Grace answered.
“I’ll dump mine if you dump yours,” Nicki offered. It was a last-ditch effort for a laugh, but Grace just looked sadder.
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