The Big Fix

by Linda Grimes

I complied with her request, craning my neck to see the screen when Judy blocked my view. Jack was outside his luxury Las Vegas home, looking somber against the xeriscaped backdrop. “Hey, Mom, could you turn that up for me?”

  “Sure, sweetie. Just a sec…” She checked off two items on her list and reached for the remote. “Oh, my God, that’s Jackson Gunn—your father and I love his movies!”

  “Shh. Mom, I need to see this—ouch!” Jabbed by an errant pin. I’d blame Judy, but I was the one who’d moved abruptly.

  Mom gave me a look, and automatically said, “God punishes right away.”

  Apparently, God did not approve of shushing one’s mother. I would have rolled my eyes, but I didn’t want the chandelier to fall on my head.

  Fortunately, Mom was distracted enough by the news story that she didn’t launch into a complete lecture. “Oh, that poor, poor man. To lose his wife that way! How awful. Ciel, turn around—Judy needs to pin the back.”

  I twisted my body, but left my head pointing the way it was. Gunn’s voice caught on the words “my wife,” and he paused before continuing. For dramatic effect? Or was I being too harsh in my judgment? Even actors didn’t act all the time, did they?

  “… and Mark is best man, naturally, so you’ll have to touch base with him about a couples’ shower,” Mom continued. Even a Hollywood murder couldn’t distract her from her mission for long. “They’re so much more fun, aren’t they? And, really, why should it be all about the bride—”

  I pulled my focus away from the TV. “Shower? I’m supposed to throw a shower?”

  “Of course. You’re the maid of honor, aren’t you?”

  “Mom, there’s no time!”

  “Nonsense. If I—with Mo’s help, naturally—can organize a whole wedding on short notice, surely you can pull off a piddling little shower. Make it Sunday at the latest, sooner would be better—”

  “This Sunday?” I practically screeched.

  “Well, of course this Sunday. Next Sunday is after the wedding. You can’t very well have it then, can you?”

  “What about Halloween? You know you like to do it up big. Do we really have time for all these parties?” I said, grasping the first straw I thought of.

  “We’re skipping the Haunted Halloween hoopla this year. The wedding has to take priority. Don’t worry—the neighborhood kids will survive. We’ll give out full-size candy bars. They’ll be fine.”

  Well, that was good, at least. One less production to worry about attending. “But a shower? I mean, where…? Food … drinks … decorations … for God’s sake, invitations!”

  “E-mail, sweetheart. E-mail and caterers. Make sure Mark does his part. He’s your brother’s best man—I’m sure he’ll be happy to help.”

  “Yeah, right. Shall I also set him up for a root canal? Bet he’d love that, too,” I said.

  Mom narrowed one eye in warning. “Turn.”

  I jerked myself around, and promptly fell off the small platform I was standing on to give Judy easier access to the hideous maid of honor dress I was wearing. (What? Yellow is not my color.)

  “Sarcasm, sweetie. God punishes—”

  “—right away. I know, I know.”

  I hauled myself up, preparing to launch into a million and one reasons why a couples’ shower would not be a good idea, but a sudden commotion on the TV froze my tongue. The scene had switched from the grieving widower to a woman—young, hipster-ish, and highly upset—being escorted from an apartment building by two police officers. She strained toward the reporters, who were extending microphones toward her. “Listen to me, you fucking vultures”—well, the “fucking” was bleeped out, but I could read her lips—“I didn’t kill my sister!”

  Her emotion struck me as totally genuine. But was the emotion because she didn’t do it, or was it because she got caught?

  The cops hauled her to their squad car and got her into the backseat with relative ease, their stony expressions saying it was all part of the job. The hipster girl kept screaming as her long brown hair fell over her face and her big glasses slid farther down her nose.

  The camera panned over to the curvy blonde covering the story. “And there you have it—Jackson Gunn’s sister-in-law, Lily-Ann Conrad, suspect in the murder of her sister, Conrad Fine Foods heiress Angelica Conrad Gunn, being arrested. Lily-Ann, you may remember from a story we did last summer, was disinherited by her father after picketing against the company’s inhumane treatment of chickens. You saw it first here on STUN TV. Stay tuned for breaking details.”

  Disinherited? Huh. Well, that was a pretty good motive for murder, I supposed. A disgruntled sibling. Still tragic, of course, but (from my standpoint, at least) not as bad as if my client had done it. I’d have to call Jackson and find out when the snake shoot would be rescheduled so I could finish the job. With a little luck, the director would have decided Sparky’s performance was acceptable after all, and I could file the job away under Finito. If not, I’d just have to make sure it wouldn’t conflict with the wedding.

  Mom grabbed her purse off a nearby heart-shaped red velvet chair and kissed my cheek. “Gotta run, sweetie. Miles to go before I sleep. Mark will pick you up here in half an hour. You can make your shower plans over lunch. See you back at the house later. Toodles!”

  “Wait—what? Mark is coming here?” I said, trying to stifle the growls my stomach started emitting when I heard the word “lunch.” Peanuts and martinis do not make the best breakfast. I was starving.

  “Yes, right after he’s fitted for a new tuxedo. He said he already had one, but I think Thomas’s wedding deserves something fresh, don’t you? Bye!”

  I sighed. I love my mom, really I do. But sometimes I wish she’d take a nice vacation to the Thousand Islands and stay a week on each one.

  * * *

  What can I say about Mark Fielding?

  Tall, blond, and chiseled doesn’t begin to cover it. CIA operative who makes James Bond look like a wimp by comparison? Getting a little warmer. (Much like I do whenever he’s near.)

  The sad fact is, I’ve been crushing on my big brother’s best friend ever since adolescence shanghaied me when I was thirteen. You know those arrows Cupid likes to shoot at the hearts of unsuspecting idiots? Well, where Mark was concerned, that rotten little cherub had zapped me with a thunderbolt. Only his aim was a little low. (Yeah, about those hormones…)

  The thing was, now that my hormones—and, I strongly suspected, my heart—were engaged elsewhere, it still gave me a jolt when I saw him. It was disconcerting, but I was learning to deal with it. In fact, I barely even noticed it anymore.

  Until he smiled at me.

  “Hey, Howdy,” he said, and dropped a kiss on the top of my head. (Howdy from Howdy Doody, which Mark picked up from my grandfather. Have I mentioned my freckles?)

  Gah. I was going to have to get myself back to Billy, pronto. I hardly ever thought about Mark anymore when I was with Billy. That was progress, right?

  “I see work doesn’t prepare you for the really challenging stuff, like eluding my mother,” I said, hiding behind wryness.

  He chuckled, a gravelly, sexier-than-hell sound that vibrated right through me. “Sometimes you have to take one for the team. Besides, as much as your brother loves complaining about the fuss, I suspect he’s halfway looking forward to the wedding. And I know Laura is.”

  Laura was a CIA spook, like Mark, and had worked many assignments with him. Things had been a little tense between Mark and Thomas for a while after Laura gave up law school to join the Agency, but they’d since come to an understanding.

  “Is she? Really? Because I’d hate for her to feel railroaded into anything. Mom can be … well, Mom.”

  “Don’t worry. Laura is crazy about your mother, and willing to do anything to start off on the right foot with her future mother-in-law. But I suspect it’s more than that, even. A big wedding might not be her thing, exactly, but I think she’s thriving on the motherly attention.”

  “Huh. She c
an have my share, too, if she wants. Lord knows I have an overabundance of it.”

  Mark smiled. (Yeah, I melted. Sue me.) “You’d miss it,” he said.

  I quirked my mouth, but didn’t disagree.

  “Anyway,” he continued, “you don’t think Tom would really allow this to go on if he didn’t know Laura wanted it, do you?”

  I sighed. “I suppose not. And if he can put up with it, I guess we’ll have to, too.” Especially since the whole thing was my fault, but no need to go into that with Mark.

  * * *

  After a productive lunch at my favorite dive of a deli, Mark dropped me at my childhood home, an Upper West Side brownstone still occupied by my parents. The place was way bigger than they needed now that my three brothers and I no longer lived there, but they’d never leave. They were too attached to it. My dad liked to tease us about the bodies buried in the basement—the kids they’d had before us, the ones who hadn’t worked out. We were pretty sure he was kidding.

  Mark and I had hammered out a crude party plan. Like the wedding, the shower would be held in D.C., since that was where both Thomas and Laura worked, and most of the friends they had in common lived there. Mom had tried to convince them to get married in Central Park with the old “It’s so beautiful in the fall!” argument, but Thomas had balked, and Mom had wisely given in. Like any good tactician, she knew how to choose her battles.

  Between bites of a huge Reuben (with a side of greasy fries and a giant kosher dill) I’d called the lovely Thai restaurant that occupied the bottom floor of Thomas’s office building in downtown D.C. The owner had assured me that he’d be happy to provide the party space, and that the food would be his gift to the happy couple. (Thomas was apparently a really great landlord.) Score! Cross that off my list.

  Mark would see to it that Thomas’s lawyer friends were invited—and that they would attend. My job was to get a list of Laura’s non-Agency friends and send them e-vites, offering them whatever bribes I deemed necessary to convince them to show up on such short notice. As for her friends at the Agency … well, most of them were unreachable, being on assignments all over the globe, but Mark would see what he could do.

  “Ciel!” Laura met me in the entry hall, enveloping me in a huge hug. My brother’s fiancée and I had met not that long before, when she had been helping Mark rescue one of my clients (and, okay, me) from a neo-Viking terrorist group in Sweden. As much as I abhorred weddings in general, I was flattered she thought enough of me to want me in hers.

  “I’m so sorry to do this to you, sugar,” she whispered, her low-pitched Southern accent honey to the ears. “But thank you. It means the world to me.”

  “Are you kidding? I’d walk over hot coals to have a sister like you. A wedding can’t be much worse than that,” I teased, adding, “though an Aurora Halligan production might come close,” as Mom joined us.

  “You mind your manners, missy,” Mom said, giving me a swat on the rear. Sometimes God wasn’t fast enough on the draw for her.

  “You sure you know what you’re getting yourself into with this family, Laura? Your life will never be the same,” I said, putting as much dire warning into my voice as I dared while within reach of my mother.

  Laura’s forest green eyes sparkled, looking at home in a beautiful face surrounded by auburn curls. Her hair had been short and black last time I’d seen her, altered for some job or another. She wasn’t an adaptor, and so had to disguise herself the old-fashioned way.

  “I’m counting on it,” she said, smiling at my mother, who ate it up.

  “Come on, you two, we have tons to decide—” Mom started.

  “Ciel!” Molly’s shriek arrived seconds before I found my arms full of wiggly ten-year-old girl.

  “Hey, Molls,” I said, nearly dropping her as I spun her around. “Geez, girl, have you been growing again?”

  “Uh-huh. I’m having a spurt. Bet I’ll be taller than you by Christmas!”

  I didn’t doubt it in the least. Doyles tended toward tall, and Molly was a Doyle through and through. She was Billy’s baby sister—another of my honorary cousins—and looked just like him, other than being much shorter, having longer hair, and not sporting the occasional sexy five o’clock shadow.

  “You’re setting the bar kind of low there, kid. I won’t be impressed until you’re taller than your brother.”

  “That might take a little longer,” she said with a giggle. Molly-giggles are infectious, so naturally the rest of us joined in. “Hey, guess what? I’m going to be a junior bridesmaid! Isn’t that cool?”

  I glanced at Laura, who confirmed with a smile.

  “The coolest, kiddo,” I said. “You can be my date at the wedding.”

  “I don’t think Billy would like that. Anyway, I already have a date—Brian.”

  Brian was the youngest of my brothers, only a year older than me.

  “You’re rejecting me for that no-good wastrel? I can’t believe it,” I said, rolling my eyes dramatically.

  “Don’t talk about your brother that way,” Mom said. “God punishes—”

  “Right way!” Molly finished for her, then turned to me with a shrug. “I have to go with Brian. He’s my new boyfriend.”

  “Does your mom know about this? I can’t picture Auntie Mo approving of you dating a musician,” I said.

  “She doesn’t care, as long as he doesn’t charge her for my music lessons. Anyway, I’m not allowed to date for real until I’m sixteen. He’s just my boyfriend.”

  Mom clapped her hands. “All right, come on everyone. Into the study. We have decisions to make. Music! Flowers! Seating arrangements! We are going to spend some of that money my eldest has been hoarding for the last decade. Laura, honey, whatever you say goes. Don’t worry, Thomas can afford it. Even if he couldn’t, Patrick and I would cover it. So, about venues. I’ve been researching what’s available in the D.C. area…”

  I hooked my arm through Laura’s, and we followed Mom. “It’s not too late. You can still save yourself,” I whispered.

  “I heard that, Ciel Halligan!” Mom called over her shoulder. “You better take notes, because you’re next.”

  Chapter 6

  I took that as my cue to leave and surreptitiously texted an SOS to Billy. If I didn’t escape soon, Mom might get it into her head to make it a double wedding.

  He called within five minutes, pretending to be an important client who needed my attention immediately. In those five minutes I (quite efficiently, I thought) filled Mom and Laura in on the when and whereabouts of the shower, got an assurance from Laura that she’d e-mail me her friends’ contact info ASAP, and warned Molly to let Brian down easy when the time came for her to dump him. She solemnly vowed she would, but with a shine in her eyes that told me she wasn’t taking anything too seriously.

  After assuring Mom that I’d be there for my final dress fitting (ugh), I rushed out, barely containing my sigh of relief until I got the door closed behind me. Wedding planning made my eyeballs itch.

  Once I was safely down the block, I called Billy back. “You got me out just in time—thanks. Any longer and my head would have exploded. Molly’s a junior bridesmaid, by the way. You sure you haven’t been roped into anything yet? Groomsman? Usher?”

  “Nope. It helps to know when not to answer your phone.”

  “You always were the brilliant one. So, have you been watching the news? Looks like Jack’s sister-in-law might be the culprit.”

  “I saw. Apparently she disagrees with that assessment.”

  “Yeah, and she seems sincere, too. Then again, she would, wouldn’t she? What’s she going to say? ‘Oops, caught me—my bad’? It’s all so sordid. I can’t help hoping they find out it was one of those awful home invasion things you read about, and has nothing to do with my client or his family.”

  “It’ll probably turn out to be exactly that. Try not to worry about it,” Billy said.

  “Believe me, I’m trying. I have enough to stress about with the wedding.
Ugh. Hey, I’m heading over to your place to hide out until I can catch a train home. Please tell me you’re there.”

  “Nope, I’m still in the land of sin. There’s a job of my own I have to finish. I have a feeling Mark will be calling me in to sub for him very soon, and I want to be available.”

  “He didn’t ask you to fill in for him at the wedding, did he? Because I was going to do that,” I said. Kidding, of course. Billy would be expected to be at the wedding himself. Not that familial expectations had ever ruled his behavior.

  Billy laughed, but didn’t elaborate.

  “Wait a minute … are you filling in for him?” That would explain why Mark didn’t seem overly concerned about the wedding disrupting his work—it wouldn’t.

  “Shouldn’t take me long to wrap things up here. I can maybe meet you at your condo tomorrow.”

  “Don’t change the subject,” I said.

  “Plausible deniability, cuz. If Mommo”—Billy’s name for Auntie Mo, a mashup of “Mom” and “Mo” he’d come up with as a toddler—“asks where I am, you can tell her truthfully that you don’t know. Because you won’t.”

  Maybe not technically, but I had a pretty good idea. “She’ll sniff you out and you know it.”

  More laughter, a sound that made happiness bubble up inside me in spite of irritation at his impending ditchery. “A risk I’ll have to take, if it comes to it. And it’s still only an ‘if’ at this point, so buck up. There’s every possibility I’ll be there to ravish you in your wedding finery. I might even have a surprise for you.”

  “A surprise? Tell!”

  “It wouldn’t be a surprise, then, would it? You just focus on me ravishing you for now.”

  “Yeah, well, you might want to hold that thought until after you see my dress. It’s yellow.” I didn’t try to disguise the disgust in my voice.

  “Okay, I’ll take it off you first. We can burn it if you like. Toast marshmallows over it.”

  I laughed and hung up.

  * * *

  I stumbled into my condo after midnight, still groggy from my snooze on the train. I hate sleeping on public transportation—I’m always afraid my mouth will fall open and I’ll drool all over myself—but it couldn’t be helped. My eyes had refused to stay open. Since my shirt was dry when we pulled into Union Station, I was going to assume I hadn’t embarrassed myself in front of my fellow passengers.