Death Takes a Honeymoon (30 page)

Chapter Thirty-Four

MAX DAMN NEAR DISLOCATED MY SHOULDER, LEAPING FORWARD and trying to dash after Al, Todd, and the Tyke as they trotted down the road to retrieve the precious equipment. He was desperate for an end to this ordeal, poor creature, and so were the rest of us.

As we shouted and laughed and waved, the plane circled away and came back for a second pass, much higher up. Two more parachutes blossomed in the air, rectangular this time, with human figures guiding them. We stood staring up at these new smoke jumpers, cheering, and then suddenly we had to clear aside to let them land in the safety zone.

The first jumper had barely tucked and rolled and removed his helmet before we swarmed all over him with questions.

“Are they sending helicopters?”

“Is White Pine going to burn?”

“How soon can we get out of here?”

Then Al came back with a chain saw in each hand, grinning his snaggle-toothed grin. “Took you long enough, you sons of bitches. Let’s get going, Hardcase.”

“Wait!” Tracy pushed her way to the front and asked the question I’d been afraid to voice. “Did you see any sign of Jack Packard from up there? He drove down the ridge in a red Jeep, but he should have been back by now.”

“We spotted the Jeep, all right, pulled over on the shoulder about halfway down the ridge.” Hardcase—real name Buford Hart—was a dark-haired fellow, very young, sporting a neatly trimmed beard and a soft Southern accent. “This heah fire hooked over the road, so he couldn’t have driven back up. But there’s a hot-shot crew cutting line a little farther down, so my guess is he’s with them.”

“Thank goodness,” said Tracy, swaying a little in her relief. “I knew he’d be all right, I just knew it.”

“There was a second man,” I ventured. “Did you see him?”

Hart shook his head. “No, ma’am, but like I said, they’re probably with that crew. Al, we’ve got three helicopters on the way, and we brought—”

I clutched his arm. “Can’t you radio the crew and find out?”

“Can’t get through, the signals are interrupted up here.” He said it patiently enough, but I suddenly saw myself in his eyes: a disheveled, nearly hysterical woman who was delaying his mission. “Now if you’ll let me go, the sooner we clear that meadow for a helispot, the sooner we can get y’all home. Al, we brought a med kit, have you got casualties?”

“We’re good,” said Al. “Let’s go cut down some trees.”

With Al directing the smoke jumpers and the stronger civilians pitching in—and with Chief Larabee and Max standing guard over the prisoners—the ponderosa pines were felled, limbed, and sawed into sections with remarkable speed. It was hard, hot work, but no one faltered and no one complained, not with the smell of burning in our nostrils and the roar of the beast all around.

We knew that if the smoke closed in again the copters couldn’t land, so we worked like fiends. In little more than an hour we were dragging away the last of the debris, glancing up often to reassure ourselves that the trio of helicopters was still circling overhead. Staggering with exhaustion, I barely noticed that my lungs were raw and my hands were scraped and bleeding. I was even too tired to be afraid.

But finally it was done, we had cleared the meadow, and moments later the first helicopter lowered itself to the ground in a blinding cloud of dust and pine needles. The din of the rotors drowned out even the fire, so the evacuation took place in a weirdly deafened pantomime of shouts and hand signals.

“Come on, Chief!” Al bellowed, windmilling his arm and sprinting to the door of the helicopter in a crouching run. “Come on!”

Larabee hustled Cissy and Danny Kane inside, followed by as many of the civilians as could safely be jammed in with them—including Beau Paliere, who somehow managed to be first in line.

As the rotors whined and the copter lifted off, Al and his crew began to form up the remaining civilians, counting them off into groups to make the loading go as fast as possible.

Hart came over to where I sat drooping on the ground next to Julie Nothstine. Unable to help much with the physical work, Julie had been tending Max for me. He was calmer now, and had laid his huge head in her lap.

“You’re next, ladies,” Hart shouted, reaching to help Julie to her feet.

Sam and Tracy were nearby, and Tracy hurried over to support Julie as the three of them joined the group for the next helicopter. I wanted to tell Hart that I’d go later, but my voice was failing, so I shook my head and waved my hands to signal “No.”

“Come on, ma’am! Nothing to be scared of!”

He grabbed my hand and I tore it away, furious and frustrated. The effort of explaining to him that this was my wedding, that I couldn’t leave before my guests and my staff, was simply beyond me. Plus I hate being called “ma’am.”

“No!” I hollered, and Max seconded the motion with a snarl and a show of teeth. “Take the others!”

The smoke jumper swore at Max and reached for me again, but the Tyke, who’d been watching, interceded.

“Back off, Hardcase. She knows what she’s doing.”

Muttering in anger, Hart threw up his hands and stomped away. The Tyke slapped me approvingly on the back—I nearly fell over—and went to round up load number three.

Thankfully, the smoke held off for loads three and four. And though we couldn’t see the fire from here in the meadow, the roar of the beast seemed to be holding steady, or even retreating. We had our miracle.

The fifth batch, the last one, consisted of smoke jumpers, Boris Nevsky, Max, and me. Boris had worked like a fiend and a half, but he was still stoked on adrenaline.

“Is your dog?” he asked, as we waited for our helicopter to return. He extended grimy fingers, and I relaxed the leash to let Max sniff them.

“Only for now. Chief Larabee’s going to return him to his real owner. Boris, you were a wonder today.”

“
Da,
I was most wonderful. Is good to work hard. I think I will become smoke jumper, then my Kharnegie will admire me even more!”

I laughed for the first time in forever. “I don’t how I could admire you any more than—Max! Max, come back here!”

Whether it was the clamor of the helicopter or just another mad whim, Max had torn the leash from my scraped-up hand and gone bounding across the meadow. I started after him, but my feet were leaden.

“Let’s go,” the Tyke yelled from the helicopter. “Everybody in, now!”

“Wait!” I shrieked. “Wait till I get him. Please?”

But the fire beast was roaring louder now. The smoke jumpers were dashing for the helicopter, which was rocking on its skids, barely staying earthbound in the rush to fetch us away. I tried to keep running, but then Boris had me by the left shoulder and the Tyke was at my right.

“We go
now,
” she commanded. And then, in a different voice, she said, “Oh my God.”

“I got him!” called a voice from the far edge of the meadow. There, coming out of the trees with a hand clamped on Max’s collar, was Jack the Knack. He was hardly recognizable, his clothing scorched and his fair hair blackened with soot. I couldn’t read his expression.

“Packard!” the Tyke called out, tears springing to her red-rimmed eyes. “Get your ass over here and get on this chopper! Where’ve you been?”

There were cries and shouts from behind us, but they faded into the distance as I forced my feet forward, one and then the other.

“Jack?” I heard myself saying as he trudged toward us. My voice was a stranger’s, someone far away. “Where...”

Everything seemed to go silent and distant then, everything seemed to fall away from my vision except for Jack Packard’s somber, stricken face.

I ran to him. “Where is he? Where’s Aaron?”

Jack closed his arms around me.

“I’m sorry,” he said roughly. “Bad news.”

Dear Reader:

Welcome to the Wedding Planner Mysteries!

You know, some of my best wedding anecdotes (like Tracy
Kane’s ill-fitting dress or the snake who slithered down the aisle)
are inspired by absolutely true real-life stories. So if you have a
wedding story of your own, why not share it with me?

Whether it’s a disastrous bachelor party, an unusually charming bridal gown, or your suggestion for the perfect wedding venue,
I’d love to hear all about it. Just visit
www.deborahdonnelly.org
and click on “Drop Me A Line.”

I hope you enjoyed
Death Takes a Honeymoon,
and if
you’ve missed any of Carnegie’s other escapades, please read on
for a special peek at each one.

Cheers,

Veiled Threats

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When love is in the air, Carnegie Kincaid is not far
behind. A wedding planner who works out of her
Seattle houseboat, Carnegie makes magic—usually...

In
Veiled Threats,
Carnegie agrees to plan a wedding for one of Seattle’s most prominent families—
who happen to be going through a high-stakes,
headline-grabbing legal war. Before she can get her
bride-to-be into just the right dress, a murder and a
kidnapping plunge Carnegie into a mystery of extor
tion and violence...

I LOVE THIS MOMENT. YOUNG AND TREMBLING OR calm and not-so-young, seed pearls or tie-dye, intimate ceremony or extravaganza, this first public appearance of the bride always makes me misty. There’s all the romance that Western culture can bestow: the idea of the fairy princess, Cinderella, the one and only true love. Not to mention the sheer theater of making a solo entrance in a knockout costume. But it was the courage that caught at my never-married heart. To publicly say, He’s the one; I pledge my life to his life. All the divorce statistics in the world can’t tarnish that moment. That’s the real reason why I help people get married. I’m a sucker for romance.

So I lingered while Diane, bright as a sunrise, took her place beside her chosen man. The candlelight gleamed on her gown and in her eyes, and Jeffrey looked, as all bridegrooms should, like the luckiest fellow on earth. I sighed, dabbed at a tear, and slipped back through the fine old oak-floored dining room into the mansion’s kitchen. I had to track down a pair of antique crystal goblets sent over by the groom’s grandmother this morning, thus setting off the old lady’s tantrum. And I had to ask Joe Solveto, the caterer, where the hell that third waiter was.

The kitchen was crammed with hors d’oeuvres but empty of Joe or anyone else. My stomach growled fiercely at the fans of prosciutto-wrapped asparagus, ranks of crisp snow pea pods piped with velvety salmon mousse, and clusters of green grapes rolled in Roquefort. The wedding cake, three tiers of chocolate hazelnut glory, was already in the dining room, but the old marble countertop along the kitchen wall held a parade of cut-glass dishes piled with petit fours and chocolate-dipped apricots. Surely I could pluck just one apricot from its dish, one tiny cream puff from its pyramid, one oyster from its bed of crushed ice, without disturbing Joe’s fearful symmetry...

But no, first things first. I stepped out to the back porch and squinted into the drizzly night, hoping to see the waiter’s headlights. Sercombe House sits high on a hill, with terraced flower beds stretching down the lawn. The parking lot behind the house had filled. Parked cars were now lined up nose-to-tail the whole length of the steep drive leading down to the highway, where a mossy old brick wall bordered the property. I could see my modest white van, nicknamed Vanna White, just uphill from Nickie Parry’s candy-apple-red ’66 Mustang.

The car had been a college graduation gift from Nickie’s father. Douglas Parry owned several department stores, a few Alaskan fish canneries, and a good chunk of downtown Seattle. He was so very fond of Nickie that he’d said the three magic words about her wedding: Money No Object. Fifteen percent of Money No Object was going to put me firmly in the black, for the first time since I’d started Made in Heaven. I wondered idly if my parking brake was set—I’d hate to dent that Mustang—but I wasn’t willing to brave the downpour to find out.

Someone else was out in the rain, though: a heavyset figure was striding downhill just beyond the Mustang. His long raincoat flapped as though he were shoving something into a pocket. Car keys, probably. But he was heading away from the house, not toward it, so he couldn’t be my waiter. Well, we’d have to manage with only two. I turned my back on the hissing of the rain and went inside to find Grandmother’s goblets.

I had better luck on this count. The crystal in question, facets winking in the light, had been unwrapped and set on a high shelf out of harm’s way. Also out of reach, even for me, so I pulled over a wooden chair and stood on tiptoe. Just another inch... A startling blast of damp air lifted my skirt. Already off balance, I turned abruptly to see a handsome, frowning man enter through the porch door and shake the rain from his wind-breaker. My third waiter. The chair wobbled, then tipped over with a clatter, sending me in a harmless but ungraceful leap to the checkerboard tile floor. I saved myself from sprawling flat at the cost of a cracked fingernail and my dignity.

He reached out a hand. “Are you all right?”

“Of course I am,” I snapped, brushing off my dress. The broken nail launched a run in my left stocking. Damn, damn, damn. “But you just barely made it. Where’s your tie?”

He looked down at his heathery sweater, and then down at me. I’m over six feet tall in dress shoes, but he was six four, with wavy chestnut hair and the most distinctive green eyes I’d ever seen on a waiter or anyone else, the glass green of a breaking wave.

“This was the best I could do,” he said coolly. “I just came from the airport.”

“The best you could do!” I kept my voice low, but green eyes or not I was angry. “Black slacks, white shirt, black bow tie. I was very specific! Look, I need those glasses up there.”

“Yes,
ma’am
.” He mounted the chair, reached up, and handed the goblets down to me. He had broad, tanned hands, still chilly from the rain where they brushed my fingers.

“Thanks,” I said. “Now let’s find the others.”

“Right here, Carnegie.” Joe Solveto’s cunningly mussed sandy hair and narrow, theatrical face appeared in the stairwell leading up from the basement-level pantry. He brandished an unopened champagne bottle. “We’re popping the corks downstairs, but this is the special stuff for the happy pair. I see you found the goblets. Excuse me, sir.”

Sir?
Joe relieved me of the glasses and pressed on into the dining room, quickly followed by all three waiters, in their white shirts and black bow ties. Number Three must have arrived during Susie’s sneezing attack. I felt a blush rising from the asymmetrical neckline of my jade silk dress. It was my one haute-couture rag, and my favorite outfit for weddings: gracefully appropriate for day or evening, generously cut to allow mad dashes to my van in case the best man forgot his tie or the maid of honor her lipstick, and equipped with pockets in which to thrust my hands when embarrassed. Which I was, and did.

“You’re a guest. I’m very sorry. I—”

“My fault.” He had a light tenor voice, surprising in such a large man, and slightly crooked front teeth that showed when he smiled and saved him from being male-model perfect. Not that one objects to perfect strangers. “Obviously I came in the wrong door,” he was saying. “Have I missed everything?”

“Yes. No.” Deep breath. “The ceremony is almost over, but you can slip in the back if you go through the dining room and to your right. I am sorry.”

“No problem,” he said, smiling as he walked by. “You can order me around anytime.”

I stood bemused for a moment, muttering “Who
was
that masked man?”

Then I got back to work.