by Laura Durham
Mack reached over and squeezed her hand.
“Did your husband recognize the number?” I asked.
“I don’t know. He didn’t say.” She pressed a hand to her pale cheek. “I do know he didn’t recognize the voice on the other end, because it was disguised by one of those voice changers. I could hear it a little, and it sounded warped.”
I’d heard voice changing software on TV shows, so I knew what she meant.
“The voice said they had Veronica, and if we wanted to see her again alive, he would pay the ransom.” Mrs. Hamilton began weeping quietly as Buster put an arm around her shoulder.
“Did they mention Kate?” I asked.
The bride’s mother looked up at me with a blank look on her face. “Who?”
“My assistant, Kate. She was with Veronica earlier, and we found her phone on the floor near the front door. She’s also missing, and I think she may have been taken because she was with your daughter.”
“No, they didn’t,” Mrs. Hamilton said. “I’m sorry.”
I was sorry too. If Kate had been taken because she was in the way, I couldn’t help but worry that she’d be easily discarded. What if they thought there was no reason to keep her, or if it was a hassle to have two hostages?
“I’m sure she’s fine,” Mack said, his pinched face not conveying the same confidence as his words. “Kate’s a tough one.”
Fern gave a strangled sob.
“Have you contacted the police?” I asked.
Mrs. Hamilton jerked her head back and forth. “The kidnappers said no law enforcement. If they see any police, they’ll kill her.” She glanced out the windows. “They said they were watching us.”
I couldn’t imagine how since the estate wasn’t within visual distance of the nearest neighbor, but I also wouldn’t have thought anyone would have been able to kidnap two women out from under our noses.
“What about your husband’s security team?”
Her face darkened. “You mean the team he hired to protect himself? They’re so focused on watching for any threats against him, they weren’t paying any attention to the rest of us.”
I imagined this was an issue she’d be discussing at length with her husband. “So they didn’t see anything?”
“Not that I know of.” She pulled her silky robe closed tighter around her throat. “My husband is having them lock down the house and question everyone here, but it’s too little too late if you ask me. At the moment, all I care about is paying the ransom and getting my daughter back safe.”
I wanted to add “and Kate,” but I didn’t think the bride’s mother remembered or cared that my assistant had been swept up into the situation. “We still have the wedding cake being delivered. Should I cancel it in light of the circumstances?”
Mrs. Hamilton put her hands to her cheeks. “The wedding cake. I forgot about that. I’ll have my husband tell the security guards to let the baker in.”
“So we should still go ahead with the wedding setup?” I asked. “I have a few more vendors who should be arriving later. Maybe I should tell them not to come.”
Mrs. Hamilton stood, her curlers bobbing around her head and her jaw set. “No. The best thing we can do right now is assume that Veronica will be back in time to walk down the aisle. Give a list of your vendors to the security team, and I’ll tell my husband to make sure they’re let in.”
“Not postpone?” Buster asked.
The bride’s mother squared her shoulders. “We are getting Veronica back today, and she is getting married. I can’t consider any other option.”
I watched the woman swish out of the room and wished I felt as confident as she did. Even if they got Veronica back, would Kate be part of the deal?
“What about Kate?” Mack asked, voicing my thoughts. “I’m sure she’s with the bride.”
I bit the edge of my lower lip. My stomach churned at the thought of my assistant, who’d become one of my closest friends over the years we’d worked together, being held hostage somewhere. I stood up. “I need to make a call.”
I ducked out of the kitchen and into the hallway that led to the garage. The door at the end opened, and I saw Sidney Allen’s head bobbing behind a pair of minstrels in purple-and-green-satin costumes, holding lutes.
“Your songs don’t sound Venetian enough,” he said, his Southern accent drawing the word Venetian out an extra few syllables. “This is Carnival, people. Not cocktail hour at the Goldman bar mitzvah.” He clapped his hands. “I need more energy.”
The two minstrels rolled their eyes.
The last person I wanted to see was Sidney Allen and his not-so-merry band of performers. I opened the nearest door and slipped into the small windowless office of Mrs. Hamilton’s personal assistant. I’d been in this room a couple of times during the planning process to drop off documents to be signed. As I pressed the speed dial on my phone, I closed the door behind me to block out the sound of Sidney Allen. Hearing a lecture on how to sound authentically Venetian delivered with a Southern twang was something I could go a lifetime without hearing. I perched on the edge of the messy desk and counted the rings, saying a small prayer that he would pick up.
“Hey, babe. How’s the wedding going?” Detective Mike Reese asked when he answered.
Tears of relief sprang to my eyes when I heard his voice. “Not great.” I heard my voice crack and took a breath to steady it.
“What’s wrong?” His voice changed from playful to concerned.
“Kate’s been kidnapped, along with the bride.” As hard as I tried to even my voice, I could hear the waver in it.
There was a long pause. “I’m on my way.”
“You can’t,” I said. “The father of the bride got a ransom call and was told if he goes to the police, they’ll kill the hostages.”
“I won’t come in a squad car. It will be me alone. I’m off duty and at home anyway.” His voice softened. “Listen, babe. You’re in over your head. I want to help.”
I hesitated. “I don’t know. If the parents found out I brought a cop in when they were told no cops, it would not be good.”
“The parents are probably focused on getting their daughter back, right?” Reese didn’t wait for me to answer. “Who’s looking out for Kate in all this?”
“The mom didn’t seem concerned that Kate is also missing.” I choked back tears. “I’m scared something’s going to happen to her if the kidnappers decide she’s not valuable.”
“I’m not going to let that happen.” His voice became lighter. “If something happens to your assistant, who’s to say you won’t try to recruit me to work weddings with you? I have a vested interest in making sure we get Kate back as soon as possible.”
I laughed. “Fair enough. But you can’t tell anyone here you’re a cop. Is there any way you can come in disguise?”
“Dressed as what?”
Another call beeped in, and I looked at the screen. “Hold on two seconds.” I clicked over.
“I’m about to leave my studio,” Alexandra, my go-to cake baker, said on the other end. “Did the bride decide yay or nay on the silver cake pedestal?”
“Yes, I mean yay,” I said. “Can I ask you a huge favor?”
“You want me to bring extra sugar petals for you to snack on?” she asked with a giggle, knowing how much I relied on the gum paste rose petals she scattered around her cakes to give me a boost of energy late at night.
“Can you pick up a passenger on the way?”
“A passenger?”
“I know it sounds odd, but I’ll explain everything when you get here,” I said. When she agreed, I added, “And in case you get tempted to hit on him, he’s taken.”
“The plot thickens,” Alexandra said. “Now I can’t wait to see this guy.”
I hung up after I’d given her Reese’s address, and I switched back to the other line. “My cake baker is going to pick you up in a delivery van in five minutes.”
“I’m riding in a cake delivery van?”<
br />
“Admit it,” I said. “It’s a great cover. You’ll be able to drive up to the house without anyone questioning you.”
“I have to say, dating you is never boring.”
“Mike,” I said, closing my eyes and leaning back against the desk, “thank you for coming.”
“Don’t mention it, babe.”
I clicked off and put my phone back in my pocket, feeling a sense of calm. Even if Reese wasn’t officially on duty, he would know how to handle things.
I stood up to go back to the kitchen when the office door opened, and the mother of the bride’s personal assistant stepped inside. I’d met the middle-aged blonde—Sherry, if I remembered correctly—a few times before, and she’d always seemed nice, if a bit harried. She paused when she saw me.
“I’m sorry. I needed a place where I could make a private phone call.” I jerked a thumb in the direction of the kitchen. “It’s a little dramatic out there.”
The woman ran a hand through her short, wavy hair and grinned. “Tell me about it. I was coming in here to escape the chaos myself.”
“How’s Mrs. Hamilton handling everything?” I asked. I felt safe in assuming Sherry knew about the kidnapping since she was the mother’s right-hand woman.
“Not great. She and Mr. Hamilton are having it out upstairs.” Sherry sidestepped to the other side of her desk and pulled a bottle of Jameson’s Irish Whiskey and a stack of Dixie paper cups from a drawer, pushing a pile of papers out of the way as she set both on the top of her desk. “Another reason I came down here.”
“Why is she mad at her husband?”
Sherry twisted the cap off the bottle and poured a shot into each mini cup, holding one out to me. “I can be honest with you, right? We’re both in the position of keeping our boss’s secrets.”
“Absolutely,” I said, taking the cup from her so as not to be rude.
“The Hamiltons aren’t the happiest couple on the block. Never have been, and I’ve been with them from pretty much the beginning. Mrs. Hamilton likes the money, but not the strings that come with it. And now this.” Sherry’s voice was deep and throaty, and I wondered if she ever paired cigarettes with her whiskey. “She blames him for her daughter being taken.”
I held the whiskey without drinking it. “Just because he’s wealthy?”
Sherry slammed back her whiskey and motioned for me to do the same. “He was already wealthy before he got involved with DOD. Mrs. Hamilton thinks the new defense contracts are why someone targeted Veronica. It’s why he had to hire bodyguards.”
I took a sip of my whiskey and tried not to gasp as it seared my throat. “But why would his work with the Department of Defense increase the chances his daughter would be kidnapped? Because they can ask for a bigger ransom?”
Sherry eyed the whiskey bottle and poured herself another. “You don’t know?”
“Know what?” I took another tiny drink, noticing the way it warmed my stomach and loosened the knot between my shoulders.
“The kidnappers aren’t asking for money.” Sherry lowered her voice even though the door was closed. “They want Mr. Hamilton to bring them some of the nerve gas he’s been developing.”
I set the paper cup back on the desk before my shaking hands spilled it. “So these aren’t your run-of-the-mill kidnappers? They’re terrorists?”
Chapter 6
“What do you mean they don’t want money?” Fern asked me after I’d pulled him, Buster, and Mack outside to the pool deck to tell them what I’d learned. I didn’t need to keep my voice low since the band’s sound checks meant I could scream the news and still not be the loudest noise outside.
A steady stream of waiters flowed back and forth from the garage kitchen to the dinner tent carrying baskets of bread sticks and silver pitchers of water, but I did not see Richard. I wondered if he was inside the smaller fabric-draped cocktail tent, but since there was little setup to do in the space, I doubted it. I felt relieved. I didn’t look forward to breaking the news to him that no one would get to see his mask-shaped breadsticks.
“This ransom is about getting access to the nerve agent the dad’s company has been developing for the DOD.” I held up a hand to shield my eyes from the sun and stepped under a patio umbrella for shade. “They want poison gas instead of cash.”
Fern gasped and leaned against one of the patio tables, causing the tan-and-white-striped umbrella over us to wobble. “It’s like we’re in a James Bond movie.” He glanced at the two penguins lounging on chairs by the pool. “Or a Disney movie gone wrong.”
“This is awful,” Buster said. “I can’t imagine something worse happening at a wedding.”
I had to agree with him, and considering some of the disasters we’d had, that was saying something.
Mack lowered himself into one of the patio chairs with a thud. “So Kate and the bride were taken by a group of terrorists?”
“According to Mrs. Hamilton’s personal assistant,” I said. “And I tend to believe her since she’s been the one to give me the inside track since we started planning.”
Buster put a hand on Mack’s shoulder. “We should activate the prayer chain.”
As part of the Road Riders for Jesus motorcycle gang, they had a prayer chain they credited with finding me a boyfriend, saving Twinkies from being discontinued, and averting a hurricane.
I shook my head. “We have to keep this between us. If this gets out, it could put Kate and Veronica in danger.”
Mack reached up and patted Buster’s hand. “Two can pray just as hard.”
I felt tears prick the back of my eyes as I thought of Kate being held hostage and the real danger she was in. I pushed the images out of my head and cleared my throat. “Detective Reese is on his way with Alexandra, but no one but us can know he’s a cop.”
“Who is he supposed to be?” Fern asked, dabbing his eyes with a linen handkerchief monogrammed with a swirling F.
“For now he’s a cake delivery guy,” I said. “I know the kidnappers said no cops, but we need someone who knows what they’re doing and who can help us save Kate. I’m afraid the Hamiltons aren’t focused on anything but getting Veronica back.”
“Do not tell me the bride is still MIA.”
I hadn’t heard Richard come up behind us over all the noise from the band, and it was clear he’d only heard the tail end of our conversation. His hand rested on one jutted-out hip, and he tilted his head at me.
“You might need to sit down for this,” I told him, indicating the cushioned chair next to Mack.
His eyes searched our faces. “What’s going on? Is the wedding canceled? I hope the parents know that I’m going to bill them whether their daughter walks down the aisle or not.”
“The bride didn’t run off,” Fern said, blowing his nose loudly into his handkerchief.
“Thank heavens,” Richard said, releasing a breath before narrowing his eyes at me. “Then why the grim faces? Is it the groom? Did he finally realize what a brat the bride is? I could understand if he ran off. I always thought that boy was in way over his head.”
“No one ran off,” I said. “The bride was kidnapped.”
Richard blinked at me. “I beg your pardon?”
“And they took Kate too,” Mack added, putting his head in his thick hands.
Richard staggered into a patio chair. “Kidnapped? I don’t understand. When did this happen?”
“Sometime between when Kate went upstairs to talk to the bride and when Fern went back up to check on them,” I said. “The father of the bride got a call from the kidnappers a few minutes ago.”
“And Kate?” Richard asked, looking up at me.
I steadied my voice before answering. “With Veronica we think. Her phone was on the floor by the front door.”
“How could this happen?” Buster shifted his weight, and his leather pants creaked. “How do you drag off a bride and a wedding planner in the middle of wedding setup? There are people everywhere.”
“That’s
exactly how,” I said, feeling a bead of sweat trickle down my back even though I stood in the shade. “There are so many people, we’d never notice a few extra. Not to mention the trucks and vans that have been coming and going all day.”
Mack pointed to a pair of men clad in black emerging from around the side of the house, the gun bulges obvious underneath their blazers. One of the men spoke into his wrist, and the pair strode toward the tent. “It looks like the security guards are springing into action.”
“I’ll bet they’re in hot water for having someone kidnapped under their watch,” I said, watching the men begin to question the band. “Although I think they were specifically hired to watch the dad.” I pulled my schedule out of my pocket and ripped off one of the pages I’d already used. I leaned over a nearby table and began writing. “I need to give them a list of vendors who still need to get on the property.”
“Will there be a list of people who get to leave as well?” Buster asked.
I looked up from making my list. “You want to take off?”
Mack shot his partner a look. “We would never in a million years think of abandoning you at a time like this.”
“I don’t want to leave,” Buster said, “but we do have another wedding downtown.”
Mack dismissed Buster’s concerns with a shake of his head. “Our other setup crew can handle it. It’s a tiny affair. Not to mention they slashed the floral budget until it’s practically miniscule. You can’t expect to get the Mighty Morphin Flower Arrangers in person when you only order bud vases.” Another head shake. “We’re staying with you.”
I felt a bit bad for the people who’d had the temerity to order single flower arrangements from Lush, but not bad enough to surrender Buster and Mack. I felt like I needed all the emotional support I could get, not to mention as many eyes and ears as possible to find out what was really going on. I finished my list, making sure to include the band members who would arrive right before the performance, Alexandra and her phony delivery assistant Mike Reese, the female officiant, and the groomsmen who were getting ready at a nearby hotel and would arrive before the ceremony. If we had a ceremony.
