“Why’re you spying on my wedding?” she demanded in a slurred, airless voice. Her hand clutched at the front of Jake’s uniform, gathering in a handful of it. “Who are you? Who’re you watching-Sonny? Are you? Tell me, damn you!” Her breath caught and her hand tightened, twisting in the cotton fabric. “Who-arc-you? It’s important-I need…to know!”
She was close to losing it. Jake held up his hand-one finger-in front of her taut, battered face, with that simple gesture capturing her attention and pulling her eyes to his. Once he had them, he held them with the sheer force of his will and-tricks he’d learned in interrogation training-focused all his energy into bringing her into his plane…his sphere… his calm.
Only when her breathing had slowed and quieted, unconsciously timing itself to his rhythms, did he answer her.
“FBI, ma‘am. Special Agent Jake Redfield-”
He hadn’t expected her to burst into tears.
Although it was hard to be sure that’s what she was doing, at first. She kept sobbing, “Thank God, thank God.”
And then she got the hiccups.
Mirabella was pacing furiously on the white runner down the center aisle of the church sanctuary, where the entire Waskowitz family had gathered in stunned indecision.
“I can’t believe she did this,” she kept muttering, while fear jumped and fluttered beneath her rib cage. “I can not believe it. This is too much-even for Eve. Just too much. This time she’s gone too far.”
“I can’t believe it, either,” Summer retorted from the front pew, where she was attempting to console the disappointed flower girl, her five-year-old daughter Helen. “That’s the whole point. She wouldn’t do this. She wouldn’t.”
“Oh, yeah, right,” Mirabella snorted, hoping to convince herself as much as anyone. “Have you forgotten about high school graduation?”
“That was different! We all knew she thought the whole thing was pointless and stupid! But this was her wedding. She was happy about it. Excited. Why would she-” She choked off something that sounded dangerously like a sob, which prompted her nine-year-old son, David, standing in the pew behind her, to throw his arms around her neck in mute and helpless sympathy.
“Why? Why does Eve do anything?” Mirabella raged, waving her arms. She was gently corralled by her husband, Jimmy Joe, probably the only person there who understood that the angrier she sounded, the more frightened it meant she was.
“Something’s happened to her,” Pop Waskowitz rumbled. “Had to.” Beside him, his wife, Ginger, silently squeezed his hand.
Across the aisle, Charly cleared her throat and said in her dry Alabama drawl, “Anybody thinkin’ about callin’ the police?”
Her husband, Troy, leaning against the end of the pew at her elbow, shook his head. “That’s probably a little premature. What’re you gonna tell ‘em? I doubt she’s the first bride who ever got cold feet and decided not to show up for her own wedding.”
“Sonny and his friends are out looking for her,” Ginger Waskowitz offered in a hopeful tone. “Maybe we should wait and see…” Her voice trailed off.
“When’s the last time anybody saw her?” Troy’s eyes went from person to person, asking each one the question.
Summer met Mirabella’s eyes and opened her mouth, then snapped it shut again at her sharp sound of warning.
Which, of course, Jimmy Joe didn’t miss. “Marybell?” he prompted gently, as all eyes turned her way.
Mirabella fought it for a second or two, drew a reluctant breath and muttered, “Okay, this is really embarrassing. The last I saw her, she had a bottle of champagne and a couple of glasses and was going to the rectory to find Sonny.”
“But,” Summer quickly put in, “according to him, she never got there. He hasn’t seen her, either.”
That revelation was met with stunned silence, except for the rhythmic sound of footsteps. All heads turned to follow the elegant figure coming toward them down the long center aisle.
“One of Sonny’s men found this on the walk beside the rectory,” Summer’s husband, Riley, said quietly, showing them what he held, nested in the folds of a pristine white handkerchief. Shards of broken crystal. “Could be champagne glasses.”
Someone-Ginger-uttered a small, stricken cry. Her husband, who had once been a chief of police, rose slowly to his feet as Riley carefully rewrapped the glass shards, then put a hand on Summer’s shoulder and gave it a gentle squeeze.
“I’ve put in a call to Jake Redfield,” Riley said in a low voice, meant for his wife’s ears. “He wasn’t there-out on assignment, they said. I left my beeper number.” Summer swallowed, nodded gratefully and put her hand over his.
“Jake Redfield?” Mirabella said sharply. “Where have I heard that? I know I‘ve-who’s Jake Redfield?”
Summer and her husband exchanged a look. “Someone we know,” she said in a shaken voice, “with the FBI.”
“Oh, God,” her mother whispered.
Jake was on the phone to his Bureau office, which happened to be located only a few blocks away from the church in downtown Savannah. He, however, was going in the opposite direction, heading southwest on Abercorn as fast as he could go without risking official attention, a course of action he knew was not apt to make either his partner or his superiors happy. He was, in fact, at that very moment holding the phone some distance from his ear in an attempt to lessen the impact of the irate voice on the other end. But Jake had a considerable amount of experience in getting yelled at and had a pretty good ear for when he was nearing the limits of someone’s patience. Right now he was confident he was nowhere near the red zone.
“Get her in here,” the distant voice of his supervisor, Don Coffee, was bellowing in tinny impotence. “Right now! You hear me, Agent Redfield? Now.”
Jake waited for a break, then calmly drawled, “That’s… not a good idea, Don. At the moment she’s in no shape to talk to anybody. I’m gonna need to get her cleaned up and-” he flicked a glance in his rearview mirror and wryly offered “-calmed down,” as a euphemism for “sobered up.” “I’ll bring her in as soon as she’s up to it. Hey-do me a favor, would you? When you hear from Birdie, tell him I’m sorry I had to leave him stranded. Tell him something came up. Tell him-” Then he had to hold the instrument away from his ear again.
“Redfield! Where are you taking her? Dammit, Red-”
“Someplace safe,” Jake growled, and broke the connection. In the ensuing quiet he heard a distinct hiccup from the interior of the van, and then a musical little ripple of sound he realized must be laughter.
“Someplace… safe,” his passenger murmured with mocking solemnity as her head with its tousled cap of sun-shot hair pushed past his shoulder and into his line of vision. She gave that delightful giggle again, followed by another hiccup.
“Hey!” Jake barked as he threw out his arm just in time to bar her way to the front passenger seat, “where do you think you’re going? Get back inside and keep down out of sight.”
At that order she sort of reared back in surprise, and he watched in the mirror as she stuck out her lopsided lower lip, then winced and gave it an exploratory poke with her finger, while a frown darkened her eyes. But only briefly-so briefly, it was like the shadow of a bird flying between him and the sun. The pout became a quirky, fat-lip smile, and she muttered,…, “Okeydokey,” and sank to the floor of the van right where she was, all but disappearing into the billowy cloud of her skirts.