Bride and Doom

by Deborah Donnelly

  “I’ve never done it!” Rose muttered hoarsely. “I’m a goddamn virgin, all right?”

  I almost did the unforgivable and laughed aloud. But I swallowed the laugh and kept my voice steady. “Well, that’s…perfectly reasonable.”

  She snorted. “Yeah, try telling my friends that. They do it all the time, and they figure I do too. So of course I can’t say anything to them.”

  Remembering the overconfident Nick and his advances at the club, I had to agree. And I didn’t bother to suggest that Rose talk to her father. I put a tentative arm around her shoulder, and she leaned into me, this lonely and rebellious girl whose musical talent had suddenly thrust her into the spotlight. It wasn’t easy being Honeysuckle Hell.

  “Is Gordo pressuring you about this?” I asked gently.

  “No way! He wants to wait till we’re married.” She tilted her head to look up at me. “It’s just that I don’t want to mess up, you know?”

  “You’re not going to mess up, Rose. You’re going to be fine. Honestly, it’ll just be the two of you together, loving each other the way you do now, and things will take their course naturally. Sex is—well, it’s fun. It’s not a test, it’s just a private way to love each other. Take it easy on yourself, and you’ll be fine.”

  That was my very best shot at wisdom, and I heard Gordo shouting for us with a distinct sense of relief.

  “We’d better get going,” said Rose. “Thanks, Carnegie.”

  “You’re welcome,” I said, thinking, You’re not going to thank me if I have to put a stop to your wedding. You’re going to hate me.

  We caught up to the fellows at a meadow down below, where they were indeed talking about the World Series. Maybe Gordo didn’t see the notebook. Or if he did, maybe he didn’t recognize it. I desperately wanted Rose’s new husband to be an innocent man.

  “Game five tonight,” Gordo announced with relish as the four of us set off again. “Pitchers’ duel, and Rob’s going to do the play-by-play for us. You want to come along, Carnegie? The Box brewed a new beer just for the Series, and their food is muy bueno.”

  “Are you sure I’d be welcome? I’m sort of an outsider.”

  “No, you’re not,” said Rob. He stepped off the trail to let Gordo precede him, then fell in beside me to urge softly, “Y’all should come. Please?”

  “All right, I will,” I said, pleased. “I’ll just go home and clean up first. We’ve got plenty of time if we beat rush hour.”

  Trying to beat rush hour traffic is the official outdoor sport of Seattle these days, but it’s getting tougher and tougher to win. Even coming off the trail by midafternoon, we found plenty of other cars on the freeway back into the city. We dropped Rob at his friends’ place, then spent a tedious time idling on the I-90 floating bridge with the spires of downtown ahead of us and the westering sun in our eyes.

  Oddly enough, that was when I began to feel guilty, because I’d had more fun today than I’d been having with Aaron lately.

  Once we get the wedding plans settled, I thought, we can go back to being ourselves. And I resolved to be extra-agreeable when he arrived tomorrow. But I still planned to have a good time tonight. I was practically Rob Harmon’s date!

  “I’ll be there by the first pitch,” I promised as Gordo dropped me off. “Don’t drink all the beer.”

  One of the many satisfactions of hiking is scrubbing away the dust of the trail, and I did that first before checking my messages. Just as well, because the series of recorded rants from Beau would have spoiled it for me. First he requested that I call him to confirm the limos for Saturday, then he demanded that I report on Boris’s flowers, and then he commanded me to fax him the contract for the musicians.

  Which was all very annoying, because these were tasks I’d already handled. By his fourth and equally unnecessary call, Monsieur Paliere was sounding like a French monarch with the guillotine at the ready for unruly serfs like me.

  “Oh, to hell with you,” I said to the phone. “If you’re going to treat me like that, you can wait till tomorrow.”

  But the final message got my instant attention. Leroy Theroux had finally returned my calls—but not willingly.

  “What the blue blazes are you pestering me for?” said his wheezy, irascible voice. “If you want to fuss around about the blasted wedding, talk to the Yesler facilities people. I’m sorry we ever got into this.”

  I flinched as I heard him slam down his phone. Not much of an opening there to question Theroux about his star slugger. I’d taken the wrong tack with him altogether. Maybe he’ll be at the party, I thought. I could make amends and then lead the conversation around to Digger’s story somehow. But how?

  Then Aaron called, and I set the issue on the back burner of my brain. He was already in the press box at the Minnesota stadium, which I pictured as being like the one at Yesler Field. And of course I was picturing Aaron, who in his own way was just as handsome as Rob Harmon. If not more so, really.

  “Hey, Stretch, how was your day?” His New England voice seemed a little harsh after listening to Rob’s drawl and Gordo’s soft inflections all day. “Sorry about the hike, but I’m getting some great material here.”

  “Actually, I made it to Snow Lake anyway.” I told him about the plan with Rose that turned into a foursome, without mentioning my suspicions of Gordo. Not outright lying, exactly, but I still felt uneasy about it. “It was such a beautiful day, I can’t wait to show you the photos that—”

  “Whoa!” cried Aaron. “You spent the day with Charmin’ Harmon? Was your girlish heart throbbing? Did you get his autograph and draw little stars around it? Did you—”

  “Enough, enough! He’s a perfectly nice guy, but I’m not a teenager, all right?”

  Aaron chuckled. He could always get a rise out of me. “Seriously, though, was he decent company?”

  “Better than decent. But the main thing is that I got into the mountains before the weather turns.” I changed the subject, not too subtly. “So, who’s got the advantage tonight, the Twins or the Cubs?”

  “I’ve got to admit it’s the Twins, but it’s going to be a wicked good game no matter what.”

  “I’ll be watching on a big screen, so wave at the cameras for me.”

  Aaron’s voice sank to an insinuating murmur. “I’m going to do a lot more than wave at you when I get home.”

  We continued in that vein for a few minutes, then said good night. As I got ready for the Batter’s Box, I told myself that the hike really had been the main thing. That and questioning Rose about Gordo’s use of steroids, which unfortunately hadn’t panned out. But it might still be possible to jolt Leroy Theroux into shedding some light on the subject.

  I had an idea about how to jolt him, and the more I thought it over, the cleverer it seemed. Though I had to admit, as I slipped into some slim-fitting slacks and pulled on my most flattering sweater, it wasn’t the Navigators’ general manager that I was dressing for.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  The private party at the Batter’s Box was Testosterone Central. I did see Rose, all in black but minus the spiked collar, sitting atop the bar with her feet dangling and Gordo by her side. She lit up when she saw me and waved me over. There were some other women too, the wives or girlfriends of players, along with a battery of bustling waitresses uniformed like major league umpires—if umpires wore short skirts and high heels.

  But other than that the place was wall-to-wall guys, almost all of them Navigator players, executives, and staff. I didn’t see Leroy Theroux, but Walter McKinney sat at a far table, nursing a beer and gazing across at his daughter with a quiet smile. And Nelly Tibbett, the sad-faced batting coach, was slumped against a pillar with an empty glass hugged to his Navigators jacket. To judge by the slump, it wasn’t his first drink, or even his third.

  Neither man was watching the huge video screen above the bar, but neither was anyone else. There were smaller televisions scattered around this wide, low-ceilinged, pine-paneled space, all of them
tuned to the same sports channel, but the volume was off and no one was watching.

  This professional baseball crowd didn’t care about the pregame analysis, much less the commercials. So as the talking heads on screen mouthed their silent pontifications, the partygoers drank and laughed and argued and ate the Box’s famous onion rings.

  The aroma of onions set my mouth watering, and the picnic seemed a long time ago. I was working my way through the crowd toward Rose—and that platter of rings on the bar—when I heard a soft drawl at my elbow.

  “Here you are. I’m glad you came.” Rob looked at me almost shyly. “No hard feelings?”

  “None.”

  The famous smile appeared. “In that case, light beer or dark?”

  “Light, thanks.”

  He was handsome from the back too. But as I watched him snag a waiter for me, I had one of those moments of self-scrutiny that so often spoil a girl’s fun. How could I be trading words of love with Aaron and so soon afterward feel gratified to catch Rob Harmon’s eye? What’s wrong with this picture? Maybe I’m not mature enough to get married, I thought glumly. But thirty-three isn’t any too young.

  But that was just the low blood sugar talking. Half an hour later, with a beer and some onion rings inside me, I was heckling the batters on the screen with the rest of the gang. Several people recognized me from the engagement party, and the rest just accepted me as a friend of Gordo’s—or of Rob’s.

  But as the innings progressed, Rob paid more and more attention to the game and his buddies and less and less to me. Meanwhile Rose, though happy to see me, was taken up with Gordo. No more heart-to-hearts tonight, and not much conversation with my not-quite-date. I began to wonder why I’d been so eager to come to this party. Then the waitresses unveiled a buffet of fried chicken with all the fixings, to the loud approval of the crowd, and Rob soothed my ego by offering to fetch some for both of us.

  I saw a couple of the other women follow him across the room with their eyes. They turned to look me over appraisingly, then gave each other knowing glances. Eat your hearts out, I thought. If you only knew.

  Then Leroy Theroux came in, and my focus shifted with a snap. The general manager stopped by a screen near the doorway to watch the last pitch of the inning, a look of furious concentration on his dark wizened face. The Cubs were pitching, and the Twins batter hit a pop-up to center field.

  It looked like an easy out, but in the World Series every play can be the pivot that the game turns on. As the ball climbed high and then dropped slowly toward the outstretched glove of the Cubs fielder, to maintain the 0–0 score, everyone in Minneapolis, in Chicago, and here in the Batter’s Box was tracking it intently.

  Everyone but me. I was hastily buying a bottle of the imported ale that I’d seen Theroux order at the engagement party. Once the inning ended and the buzz of conversation arose, I carried it over to him. Time to try out my clever idea.

  “Hi, Leroy. Sorry about those phone calls. Will this do for a peace offering?”

  He looked at me suspiciously, then took the bottle and allowed himself a grudging nod. “Guess so. Did you get whatever it was straightened out with the facilities folks? I can’t be bothered with every little—”

  “Of course not,” I said soothingly. “Everything about the wedding is taken care of. You must have enough on your mind with Digger Duvall’s murder.”

  He took a pull on his ale. “That’s up to the police now. None of my business any longer.”

  “Sure. I just meant that this rumor going around must be worrisome for you.”

  “What’s that? What rumor?”

  I glanced to either side, making sure we weren’t overheard. I didn’t want to launch a scandal, just provoke a reaction.

  “Well, that Digger was working on a piece about steroids”—at the word, the general manager’s eyes bulged wide—“and the possibility that Gordo Gutierrez used them to break the home run record.”

  I was watching Theroux carefully, hoping to see some sign of guilt or wariness. But after that first look of shock his face went blank, and what happened next took me completely by surprise: he laughed in my face.

  “Gordy, a juicer?” Theroux took a long pull on his ale, vastly amused and entirely at ease. “He don’t even take aspirin! Who’ve you been talking to, anyway? They could cause a lot of trouble saying things like that.” He frowned a little, then laughed again. “Not that anybody’d believe it.”

  “I certainly didn’t,” I said quickly. “I don’t even remember where I heard it. Just one of those silly comments people make without thinking.”

  “You can say that again. Dumbest thing I ever heard. Evening, Rob.”

  The pitcher had appeared with two loaded plates and a couple of big cloth napkins draped over his shoulder. “Evening, Leroy. Want some?”

  “Don’t mind if I do.” Theroux reached for a drumstick, gnawed for a moment, then said, “I heard the first half of the inning on the way down here. What the hell was Laventhol thinking, throwing Pataki a slider like that?”

  “Well, it wasn’t so much a slider as a—”

  As the conversation sank into technicalities, I felt myself becoming invisible to Rob again—and found myself missing Aaron. He enjoyed talking baseball, but he talked it with me, explaining the finer points and turning insider anecdotes into funny stories. Why had Rob urged me to come tonight if he was going to ignore me?

  I sighed in resignation and addressed myself to my chicken. As I ate, I pondered Leroy’s reaction to the bait I’d dangled. The notebook—which was now safely zipped inside my well-worn but favorite shoulder bag—said “LT knows.” But he didn’t seem to know anything about Gordo and steroids. Or was he just a good actor who’d practiced his response in case anyone came too near the truth?

  Finally I excused myself for the ladies’ room, though the two men barely noticed. As the restroom door swung open on silent hinges, I caught a comment that wasn’t meant for my ears.

  “I think she’s working on Gordo’s wedding. But what Rob sees in a stick-figure type like that I—oh!”

  It was the glamorous-looking blonde I’d last seen on the arm of Digger Duvall, now looking quite disconcerted. She’d been talking to another woman, also generously endowed, who gave me a bright, blank smile and made her exit. As the blonde began to follow her out, Rose emerged from a stall.

  “Carnegie, Rob’s been looking for you everywhere!” She winked at me. “Poor bastard, you’re breaking his heart.”

  Then the blonde and her friend were gone, and Rose broke into wicked laughter.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” I demanded, though I couldn’t suppress a snicker myself.

  “Just cranking up a little gossip.” She grinned into the mirror as she washed her hands and reapplied her lipstick. It was the color of dried blood, and her eye shadow was black with purple sparkles. “I hate groupies. It’s pathetic the way they’re drooling after Rob. Hey, can I ask you something about the wedding, or are you off duty tonight?”

  “No, of course you can.”

  “It’s about the chocolate fountain. Could we have dried apricots to dip in it along with the other stuff? I was just thinking, I really like dried—”

  “Oh, no. Oh, hell!”

  “What?” Rose looked alarmed. “Are you OK?”

  “Fine.” I rummaged in the shoulder bag for my cell, noticing absently that the bag really was getting shabby. “I just remembered something I forgot. Um, sure, apricots are no problem. Excuse me, I need to call someone right away…”

  We parted outside the restroom, and I found myself a semiquiet corner of the party to use my phone. Beau picked up on the first ring, and he was not a happy Frenchman.

  “At last! I am generous, I allow you a day off, but then you do not return my calls. Your contract is most clear about—”

  “Beau, I’m calling now, OK? Listen, I just realized—” I paused while a couple of Navs came by, raucously arguing about Peterson and Laventhol.
r />   “I cannot hear you!” Beau complained. “Where are you, at a riot?”

  “At the Batter’s Box with the bride and groom,” I told him, just to make it most clear that I was on the job tonight. “But listen, about the chocolate fountain—”

  “Exactement! This is what I call you about! I am looking at the floor plan for the rotunda, and I see no power outlet where the fountain is to go!”

  “All right, calm down.” I closed my eyes, visualizing the reception site. “We could put it against the north wall, next to the staircase. In fact it might look better there.”

  “But is there an outlet at that place? It does not show on the plan.”

  “Y-yes, I’m pretty sure there is.”

  “Pretty sure is not sufficient! You must go and see.”

  “All right, tomorrow morning I’ll—”

  “Now! This Battered Box is merely across the street, c’est vrai? You will find out at once and then call me back. Go!”

  And with that he hung up, no doubt pleased to be ordering me around once more. I muttered a few choice curses and considered defying my temporary lord and master. But I needed that contract, so I went to tell Rob and the others that I’d be back shortly.

  “Whatever,” said Rose over her shoulder. Gordo just grunted, and Rob’s eyes barely left the television screen.

  I wasn’t all that sorry to leave them, or the game, which was scoreless. Pitchers’ duels are fine for baseball fanatics who can analyze every pitch and every swing. But casual fans like me want to see somebody hit the damn ball once in a while.

  Call me crude, I thought as I jaywalked First Avenue to the stadium, but give me a slugfest every time.

  It was cool and breezy out tonight, with a clear taste of autumn in the air. Traffic was minimal and the sidewalk almost vacant as I used my passkey to enter Yesler Field through a side door. The low-level safety lights were on inside, as I knew they would be, so I had no trouble making my way to the rotunda.

  There the vast vaulted space threw back my footsteps as I crisscrossed the main floor, verifying the lack of outlets at our chosen spot for the chocolate fountain, then examining the new location I’d suggested. Aha. I found a double outlet, properly grounded, in the center of the north wall.