“Give it up!” Rocky cried.
“You heard him!” Sue Ellen Bass shouted, rushing forward to Rocky’s aid. Together, the two disarmed Hector and cuffed him.
I turned at a new sound: my partner’s voice. Matt was sitting up now, clutching his new bride in his arms, wailing like a man who’d lost his one true love.
“No...” I whispered.
I saw the dark stain on Breanne’s delicate white wedding gown, right over her heart. The liquid bled slowly across the handmade silk. Then Breanne’s royal blue eyes fluttered, and I saw the empty espresso cup in her lap. The dark fluid wasn’t blood! It was coffee!
But if the bullet missed Breanne, who did it hit?
I whirled. Madame was still on the white marble, Otto Visser bent over her, his face twisted with emotional pain.
My God, no! Not my mother! I rushed to her side, fell to my knees. “Madame? Are you...”
Her gently creased face turned toward mine. She pointed to the sterling silver tray on the floor. The metal was badly dented: the tray had deflected the bullet!
“You saved Breanne’s life!”
“Your cry saved her, Clare. And Matteo, too...” Madame grabbed my arms, pulled me in. “Thank you...”
Relieved beyond words, I hugged her tightly. When we parted, Otto and I helped Madame to her feet. We took a moment to check her out, make sure nothing was broken.
“I’m afraid my gift is broken,” Madame said, shaking her silver head at the dented tray.
“On the contrary.” Otto laughed. “I think the couple will cherish it for years to come.”
Nodding in complete agreement, I looked around, wondering where the bullet had ended up. Noticing the slight damage to a nearby stone pedestal, I pointed. “Thank heaven no one was hurt. Not even a sculpture.”
Otto smiled and squeezed my shoulder. Then Madame’s gaze shifted—and she gasped. “Look, Clare,” she whispered. “Look at them now!”
I turned to see Matt still sitting on the stained marble floor, holding Breanne close, kissing her, petting her, telling her he was there for her.
“Madame? I don’t understand. What is it?”
Her blue eyes had dampened. “It’s love, my dear.”
Otto laughed. Then he put his arm around his girl and kissed her, too.
“I’m so happy, Otto!” Madame declared as they headed for the bar. “My son does love his bride...”
Still uneasy, I remained behind, surveying the crowded room. When I saw Hector being led out in handcuffs, I finally sagged against my perfect coffee and dessert table.
Matt was still holding his new bride in his arms, kissing her with a passion I hadn’t seen him display since our own Hawaiian honeymoon.
It was then I finally noticed our daughter in the crowd, watching her father, her pretty young face full of mixed emotions. I knew how Joy felt. It was surreal, given all that had happened, all that we’d been through.
Oh, sure, on the scale of human history, you could hardly deem the wedding of my ex-husband a significant event. Not like, say, Christopher Columbus discovering the New World. In my own little life, however, it was a moment that changed everything. This really was good-bye to the handsome groom of my youth; the swaggering father of my child; the globe-trotting spouse who liked to pretend that, no matter how many women he slept with, I was his only love.
For a fraction of time, I felt a sadness grip me, the quaking that comes from unforeseen loss. But the seismic shift was a small event, and when it was over, I heard another man call my name.
“Clare! Over here! I’m over here, sweetheart!”
I saw Mike then, breaking through the crowd. With a sure and steady voice, I answered him, because now I was ready, more than ready, to explore his new world.
Epilogue
Despite starting off with a bang (literally), Matt and Breanne’s wedding reception came off quite well. The champagne started flowing, and the well-heeled crowd was soon buzzing with the realization that they now had a fabulous new saga of urban survival—a wedding favor that would keep on giving with retellings at cocktail hours and dinner parties for months to come.
Nunzio’s fountain turned out to be the biggest draw of the night, making our coffee and dessert bar a huge hit. (Janelle received no less than thirty requests for her business card.) And Matt’s passion fueled Breanne’s emotional recovery. Giddily soaking up her groom’s repeated, ardent kisses, the usually restrained, ultra-cool sophisticate was feeling no pain, laughing and animated and uncaring that her exquisite Italian silk creation had been stained like a macchiato. I had to give the woman credit, she wore the espresso like a badge of honor—even insisted more photos be taken with the damaged tray and the spattered gown.
“Hector’s shot missed Breanne,” I told Madame as the evening wound down, “but it killed bridezilla for sure.”
As for the sad-eyed Colombian murderer, I had to wait two more days to hear what the police finally got out of him...
“SUICIDE by cop?” Mike told me.
“Suicide by what?”
“You’ve never heard of it?”
I shook my head.
Mike paused to sip the latte I’d made him. “It’s when a perp commits a crime, expecting the police will gun him down.”
“And that’s what Hector told the Fish Squad? That’s what he thought was going to happen at the wedding reception after he shot Breanne?”
Mike nodded.
It was late Monday evening. I’d taken so much time off work before the wedding that I was giving my baristas a break and closing myself for a few nights in a row. Mike and I were the last ones in the Blend. While I finished wiping down the café tables, Mike watched me from the coffee bar, where he’d been filling me in on the details of Hector’s interrogation.
Distraught and unbalanced, Hector had broken down fairly quickly, spilling everything when Lori Soles and Sue Ellen Bass played the “sympathetic ear” gambit.
Just as I’d guessed, Hector confessed to wanting to kill Matt’s bride in order to cause him pain—as much pain as he’d felt when his own daughter had been (in his words) “driven to suicide by the wedding announcement she’d received.”
Apparently, Andelina Pena had left a long, rambling note professing her love for Matteo. Hector saw the note, saw Matt’s name, and focused on the idea of vengeance. To him, the wedding announcement was salt in a wound—a cruel trick. The fact that it was clutched in his daughter’s hand when she took her own life hadn’t helped, either.
“Hector Pena believed he had nothing to lose,” Mike said. “He’d already been diagnosed with cancer. Knowing he didn’t have long to live, he became obsessed with the idea of avenging his daughter’s death.”
“Then Hazel Boggs really was a case of mistaken identity, just like Matt thought?”
Mike nodded. “Soles and Bass linked the crime through ballistics on Hector’s small-caliber weapon. He hadn’t meant to kill the innocent young Hazel. After that, he was even more distraught. He was also reluctant to use the gun again. The poisoning would have worked if Breanne had gone into the office that morning. Instead, Monica Purcell was the one who died.”
“What about Machu Piccchu?”
“Hector attended the luncheon at Javier’s urging,” Mike said. “He hadn’t planned on an attack there, so he didn’t have his weapon on him. But when he heard that Breanne had been behind sending that wedding announcement to his daughter, he became enraged. After Matt ran off and he was asked to help find him, Hector broke away from the other men, doubled back, bought a coat and ski mask from a clothing store near the restaurant, and slipped inside to wait in the ladies’ room—”