The Dream Wedding

by MJ Rodgers

  “A trip? To where?”

  “There’s only one caterer in Las Vegas who would have been called in to handle a wedding like the one at the Ayton estate. And that’s Pettit’s Catering. Gene and Ginny Pettit are friends of mine. If they catered an elaborate wedding for Christmas Eve, they are no doubt relaxing at home today. I’ll give them a call to let them know we’ll be dropping by.”

  “Why do you want to see the caterers to the wedding?”

  “Gene and Ginny are the confidants of high society here in southern Nevada and pretty good judges of character. I’d like to know what they think of the Aytons and the Newcastles. They’re only ten minutes away by air.”

  “This getting places by helicopter has its advantages.”

  “When time is important—as it invariably is—flying is an absolute necessity out here in the wide expanse of the desert.”

  GENE AND GINNY PETTIT’S home was a lovely Spanish-style hacienda on several acres, with lots of cool tile and mature trees to offer shade during the hotter months. Briana was anxious as to how the caterers would greet her. She soon saw that she had no reason to be. The moment Ginny Pettit opened the door, she gave both Michael and her a big, welcoming smile.

  “Come in, Michael, Natalie,” she said, stepping out of the way. “Gene and I can’t wait to find out what’s up.”

  Ginny Pettit was around fifty, tiny, with graying brown hair and warm brown eyes. She was quite similar in appearance to her husband, who immediately stepped forward with two glasses of eggnog.

  “This is the nonalcoholic version,” Gene assured. “I know you’re flying. Let’s sit in the living room. The fireplace is going.”

  Briana could immediately feel the warmth coming from the enormous floor-to-ceiling flagstone structure as she stepped into the living room. The sectional couch was a series of mushroom shapes stretching across three walls. The stone floor was covered in hand-woven Navajo rugs of geometric designs. A live piñon pine in a twenty-gallon tub sat in the corner, adorned simply with a single strand of silver garland and a few spare silver bulbs. At the top was a silver star.

  The room had a nice feel—simple, spacious, unpretentious.

  Briana took a seat on the sofa and sipped the eggnog.

  “Michael, if you’ve stolen Natalie here away from her husband, I’m not blaming you,” Gene said as he plopped down next to his wife on the couch. “I’ve been telling Ginny for months now that she was too good for the guy.”

  “Months?” Briana repeated, not encouraged to hear yet another report that people had known her as Natalie earlier than three weeks before

  “Ms. Newcastle is suffering from a memory loss,” Michael said quickly, by way of explanation. “Gene, Ginny, we need your help and your discretion.”

  “You have both, of course,” Gene said quickly, his face sobering. “But am I getting this right? Are you saying Natalie doesn’t know who she is?”

  “She has no memory of having ever been Natalie Newcastle,” Michael said carefully.

  “How awful that must be for you!” Ginny said, with real feeling, as she looked toward Briana.

  “Michael, how can we help?” Gene asked.

  “We need to know everything you do about the Aytons and the Newcastles. And I don’t just mean facts. I want to know your feelings about the people you’ve been dealing with on this catering job. Please, hold nothing back.”

  Briana felt both Gene and Ginny’s eyes immediately darting to her.

  “Your honest impressions, please,” Briana said quickly. “I promise you won’t be hurting my feelings. I don’t even remember being Natalie. So whatever you say, I can’t possibly take it personally.”

  She smiled at them in reassurance.

  “You were never a moment’s trouble, Natalie,” Ginny said. “I’ll never forget the day you pointed out to your mother-in-law that since she’d hired the best, it was probably only smart to let Gene and me alone so we could get on with doing what needed to be done. I could have hugged you.”

  “And your mother-in-law could have strangled you,” Gene said, laughing in remembrance. “‘Not in front of the help, Natalie!’ she said, as though Ginny and I were her lackeys. What a royal pitted prune than one is!”

  “Can you start from the beginning on this, Gene?” Michael asked.

  “Five months ago, Mrs. Gytha Ayton called to say that she was considering Pettit’s to cater her son’s wedding. She said she expected us at the Hamish Mountain estate at precisely ten the next morning, with our entire selection of hors d’oeuvres and dinners for her to sample. And they’d better be hot.”

  “She has such colossal nerve,” Ginny said.

  “It often goes with a colossal bank account,” Gene added.

  Michael shook his head. “Obviously, Mrs. Ayton was not familiar with the fact that your chefs are the best in this part of the world, and just how sought-after your catering service is.”

  Ginny chuckled. “She soon found out. Tell them what you told Mrs. Ayton, Gene.”

  “I told her that for five hundred dollars a plate I would accept two reservations from her for a sampling of our selection at our formal dining room in Vegas at two o’clock three weeks from that next Friday. She gasped before hanging up on me.”

  “Does it really cost five hundred dollars a plate just to sample your food?” Briana asked.

  “Generally we don’t charge potential customers. And we can accommodate them at a sampling dinner within a week. I just figured Mrs. Ayton should pay for her consummate rudeness. Several hours later, her secretary called back to confirm the two reservations. I suppose it took her that long to learn that any weddings of class in Nevada better be catered by Pettit’s.”

  “Who was at this wedding, Gene?” Michael asked.

  “Mostly out-of-towners. Only local faces I saw were the governor’s and Senator Frank Mason and his wife, Kathy.”

  “And that short, balding pudgy man,” Ginny said, poking Gene’s arm. “What is his name?”

  “Oh, yes,” Gene said. “I know who you mean. I can’t remember his name, either.”

  “It’s all right,” Michael said. “I’m sure we can get a wedding guest list if we need to. I take it nothing improved your impression of Mrs. Ayton as you worked on the wedding?”

  “It got worse daily,” Ginny said. “If it hadn’t been for Mrs. Taureau, we probably would have pulled out of the whole mess a month ago.”

  “What happened?”

  “Mrs. Ayton decided to change her mind yet again about the menu. Gene and I were working on two other very large affairs. We’d had our fill of her nonsense. I called and left word with a servant at the estate that we would no longer be doing the catering. Two hours later, Carlie Taureau showed up at our door, begging us to simply ignore everything Mrs. Ayton said and serve what we had planned.”

  “And you agreed?” Michael asked.

  “She had a persuasive manner, and a check for the full amount of our catering bill in advance,” Gene said. “It was a hard combination to refuse.”

  “What did you think of Carlie Taureau?”

  “She was okay,” Ginny said. “Just too eager to please Mrs. Ayton. I still don’t understand how she could let that woman have all the say at her own daughter’s wedding.”

  “That isn’t something we see every day,” Gene said.

  “Every time Natalie suggested something,” Ginny said to Michael, “her mother was trying to talk her out of it and insisting the decision be left up to the old pitted prune.”

  “Yeah,” Gene said. “Struck me that Carlie Taureau sure seemed eager for Natalie to be marrying Sheldon Ayton, far more eager than Natalie seemed to be.”

  “Are you saying that Natalie didn’t want to marry Sheldon?” Michael asked.

  “She seemed fond enough of him,” Gene answered carefully. “She just didn’t display the kind of excitement that we generally see in a bride-to-be. Mrs. Taureau, on the other hand, was constantly excited—her eagerness for the wed
ding so obvious and so thick that you couldn’t have cut through it with the proverbial knife.”

  “Why do you suppose that was?” Michael asked.

  “Mrs. Ayton is worth close to half a billion,” Ginny said. “Obviously, Mrs. Taureau wanted her daughter latching on to the heir apparent”

  “What kind of money does Sheldon Ayton have?”

  “No more than fifty million in his own right.”

  Briana could have laughed, the way Ginny had said that, as though fifty million dollars were nothing. Of course, next to half a billion, she supposed it was. This was certainly a rarefied society in which the Pettits moved.

  “What do you think of Sheldon Ayton?” Michael asked.

  “A pompous ass,” Gene said without hesitation.

  Ginny nodded. “Natalie introduced us to him when he came looking for her one day. Acted like it was beneath him to speak to us mere ‘help.’ Still, you could tell he was absolutely head over heels in love with Natalie. It was something to see. This big, handsome, autocratic man, with all his money and power, just getting all starry-eyed and unglued around his bride-to-be.”

  “And how did Mrs. Ayton feel about Natalie?”

  “It was clear she didn’t think Natalie was good enough for her son. But it was also clear that Natalie was Sheldon’s pick. And Natalie was the one subject on which he wouldn’t give way.”

  “Mrs. Ayton didn’t like it,” Gene said. “She’s a woman who is used to having everything her way.”

  “Everyone in that household kowtowed to her, with the exception of Natalie here,” Ginny said. She smiled over at Briana. “You were easygoing with the lot of them, but you never played the suck-up or supplicant to Mrs. Ayton, like her son and the rest.”

  “Neither did her brother, Rory,” Gene added.

  “Oh, yeah, Rory Taureau,” Ginny said. “I nearly forgot him. We didn’t see him that much.”

  “Tell me what you did see,” Michael said.

  “Good-looking, bulky,” Ginny said. “Few years younger than Natalie. He was a professional boxer once. He limps from some injury. He didn’t seem to like the Aytons much.”

  “How do you know?” Michael asked.

  “He’d leave a room every time Mrs. Ayton entered it. Only time I ever saw him with Sheldon, he was taking verbal potshots at his brother-in-law-to-be.”

  “How did Sheldon take that?”

  “Oh, you could tell Sheldon was ticked about it, but was trying to endure it for Natalie’s sake. Rory was also guzzling down the bourbon pretty steadily all the time, when his mother wasn’t actively preventing it.”

  “How was he with Natalie?”

  “They were always joking,” Gene said. “Good-natured stuff. They seemed to get along well, although she definitely didn’t approve of his drinking so much.”

  “What was the wedding day like?”

  “A madhouse, like most of them. Both Ginny and I attended, just as we always do, to ensure everything that we are responsible for is done right. Dinner turned out superb, and even the old prune was smiling at the compliments on our cuisine. I was just giving our people instructions on the final beverages and after-dinner liqueurs to be served to the guests when the news that Mrs. Ayton had fallen spread through the ballroom.”

  “I saw her, Michael,” Ginny said, her voice dropping. “I had just come out of the kitchen, and there she was, lying at the bottom of the stairs, with Sheldon leaning over her, the manservant, Kuen, holding her little whimpering dog in his hands. I knew it was serious. Sheldon was calling out but she wasn’t responding.”

  “How did they get her to the hospital?”

  “The servants made a stretcher out of a table and carried her to Sheldon’s helicopter,” Gene answered. “He flew her himself to the emergency room in Vegas.”

  “Mrs. Ayton’s accident put an immediate pall on the festivities, as you might imagine,” Ginny said. “Most people left directly afterward.”

  “How about you?”

  “Gene and I gave our staff instructions to stay as long as any guests did, and then we left, too. I didn’t like dealing with the old prune, but I would never have wished anything like this on her. Gene and I called the hospital a little while ago. They say she’s still in a coma.”

  “Did your people make a video recording of the wedding reception?” Michael asked.

  “Naturally,” Gene said. “Do you want to see it? It’s still here. We haven’t gone back to the office since the reception.”

  “I’d appreciate it,” Michael said.

  Gene got up to get the tape. Ginny turned to Briana.

  “Our cameraman dwells primarily on the food and its presentation, so that we have a visual recording of everything served,” Ginny cautioned. “He doesn’t do much panning of the wedding party and guests.”

  Gene came back into the room with a videotape in his hand. He flipped what looked like a light switch. The wall beside him opened to reveal a fully equipped entertainment center. Gene slipped the tape into a VCR recorder and took the remote control over to the couch to sit next to his wife.

  The first scenes were of table after table of a very large and delicious-looking spread of hors d’oeuvres displayed in fine silver and china and crystal.

  Briana noticed that although the cameraman primarily concentrated on the food, he also got a few shots of guests tasting the marvelous assortment and smiling appreciatively as they went back for more. Briana recognized Carlie mingling among them. Ginny pointed out a muscular young man with black hair standing next to Carlie, a drink in his hand.

  “That’s Rory Taureau.”

  Briana recognized him instantly as the man from one of her dream scenes—the smiling man talking to the person wearing the scary mask. And then a harsh elderly woman’s face suddenly filled the screen, and Briana recognized it as belonging to the second woman in her dream argument.

  Chills skidded down her spine.

  “That’s Mrs. Gytha Ayton,” Ginny said, confirming Briana’s suspicion.

  Briana looked closer, to see what Gytha Ayton was holding in the crook of her arm.

  “It’s a dachshund,” Bnana said.

  “Mrs. Ayton raises them as show dogs,” Ginny said. “They’re cute as buttons, but excitable. Any noise gets them barking. She’s always carrying this one about. He’s Napoleon, her prize champion.”

  The dream argument with the two women played in Briana’s mind, and the way their voices had sounded like dogs barking toward the end.

  “Are the dog kennels at the Ayton estate?” she asked.

  “Along with a full-time dog trainer and handler,” Ginny said. “Napoleon stays in Mrs. Ayton’s room, though. He even sleeps on her bed.”

  Bnana looked closer at the screen and realized that the clothing was not wedding attire. “When was this footage taken?” she asked.

  “At an informal get-together on the afternoon of the rehearsal dinner to welcome those members of the wedding party who had just come from the airport. We provided the refreshments for all events associated with the wedding. What you’re looking at is the best man, ushers, maid of honor, bridesmaids—all of them Mrs. Ayton’s selection.”

  “Didn’t Natalie have any friends in the wedding party?”

  Ginny reached over to hit the pause button on the remote control in her husband’s lap before answering Briana’s question.

  “You told your mother you wanted to have two women in the wedding party who were your friends. When Mrs. Ayton found out that they worked in your mother’s restaurant in New Orleans, she nearly had a coronary. The idea was immediately nixed.”

  “And Natalie gave in to this?”

  “Your mother told you that your friends would be far too uncomfortable in the Ayton crowd, and that you’d only be embarrassing them by asking them to be your maid of honor and bridesmaid, since they couldn’t possibly afford the clothing or anything else attendant to such positions in such a wedding like this.”

  “I could have paid for
whatever was necessary.”

  “When you mentioned that to your mother, she told you that you’d be hurting your friends’ pride terribly if you offered to do such a thing,” Ginny said.

  “So I gave in?”

  “I think you just wanted to do the right thing, Natalie. You knew your friends. You must have realized your mother was right, that they would be uncomfortable. And you knew it was what she wanted. You two seem very close.”

  Ginny restarted the videotape. Briana watched the food being served at the rehearsal dinner and the other functions, thinking about Ginny’s words about how Natalie had endured her mother-in-law’s machinations for her own mother’s sake. Would she have done that?

  If her grandmother had asked it of her, yes. In a second. But Hazel would never have asked that of her. Hazel would have wanted her wedding to be what Briana wanted.

  The videotape had come to the wedding reception. The spectacular wedding cake had been so large that the cameraman had to step back quite a few feet to get it all in the frame. When he did, he’d captured a lot of the wedding party and guests, as well.

  Briana instantly recognized the beautiful wedding dress she had been wearing—and the face of the woman wearing it. Her face. Now. Sheldon Ayton was standing beside her as they cut the cake together.

  It was so damn eerie—so damn scary—to think that she was that woman standing next to the groom. That Natalie Newcastle was inside her, a part of her.

  “Could you pause the tape right there?” Michael asked.

  Gene hit the pause button. Michael rose and moved closer to the screen. “Isn’t that Everett Thaw back in the crowd?” he asked, pointing toward a short, pudgy man who was holding up his tie for the scrutiny of a thin, hawk-nosed manservant in the background.

  “Everett Thaw!” Ginny said. “Yes, that’s the man whose name I was trying to remember earlier. He was asking the Ayton’s manservant, Kuen, there for something to take a food stain off his tie. Strange man, that Everett Thaw. Ever since his wife Molly died, one never knows what to expect from him.”

  “No, one doesn’t,” Michael agreed.

  They watched the tape for nearly an hour more. And all through it, odd feelings of recognition kept surfacing in Briana’s mind as Carlie and Rory and Sheldon and Gytha Ayton’s faces periodically flashed across the screen.