I hung up rather than listen to those horrible noises. I then told Tom about the remorseful, confused, and oh-so-sick Norman O’Neal.
“Sounds like your typical alcoholic after a blackout,” Tom said. “He wants like hell to make amends, at least he likes the idea of making amends. Only thing is, he wants somebody else to make them for him.”
“Maybe I should go see him in the hospital,” I replied. “He did sound pretty awful. Plus, he said Cecelia’s daughter almost died! Have you heard anything about that?”
“No, I haven’t. And you’re kidding about visiting Norman O’Neal in the hospital, right? As if you don’t have enough on your plate already.”
“Never tell a caterer she has too much on her plate.”
“Miss G., please. You want to go see Norman O’Neal, I’ll go with you. But at least wait until you’ve done Billie Attenborough’s wedding,” Tom advised. “By then the dust and/or mush may have settled in Norman O’Neal’s brain, and the three of us might be able to have a civilized conversation. Although I doubt it.”
“By then he’ll have gone home from the hospital.”
“I’m sure Dodie O’Neal will tell you where he lives.”
“Or maybe he’ll be in rehab,” I said. “Then I’d never be able to reach him, or at least, not for thirty days, or what ever it is. Now I’m all worried about Cecelia’s daughter. I’m going to call her.”
“It’s almost eleven.”
But I dialed Dodie O’Neal anyway.
“Hey, Goldy,” she said. “Saw your name on the caller ID. I gave you the right amount of money, didn’t I?”
“Of course, Dodie. But Norman just called me from the hospital.”
“Oh, is that what the calls have been about from Southwest? Please tell me he’s dying.”
I cleared my throat. “He said Cecelia’s daughter had a brush with death. I just wanted to make sure she was okay.”
“She’s in bed, fast asleep. Was Norman still drunk?”
“He was pretty sick. But he sounded as if he wants to make amends, or to have a relationship, or something.”
Dodie snorted. “He calls you again, tell him to contact my lawyer.”
“I felt sorry for him,” I said lamely.
“Goldy, don’t fall for his act. He’s a son of a bitch. He manipulates women into bed with him, he gets women to do his work for him, he gets women who are going through divorces to pay him more money than is sane. He would manipulate the boulders in my front yard, if he could.”
“I just wanted to let you know about his call.” I told her again what a lovely wedding Cecelia had had—even though I’d missed most of it, of course—and signed off.
Tom was emptying his pockets, carefully placing his keys, badge, notebook, and wallet on the counter. He stopped for a moment to give his words their full effect. “I don’t get you, Goldy. A drunk—a lawyer, no less—comes and almost screws up the wedding of one of your favorite clients. He makes said client—the bride, no less—cry. He makes his granddaughter cry. The lawyer takes a swing at our priest. Our priest pops him one, and the offending father-of-the-bride, who, let us not forget, was entirely in absentia as his daughter was growing up, passes out. The drunk lawyer gets hauled off to the hospital, where, when he wakes up, he probably begins preparing his papers to sue Father Pete. But he takes a break from preparing those papers, and calls you to blubber. And you feel sorry for this asshole?”
“Oh, Tom, he just wants to have a relationship with Cecelia and her daughter. And you make it sound so—”
“You want to do something for a few drunks? Make cookies for the AA meetings we have down at the jail. Trust me, drunks who are drying out love sweets. But do nothing for that SOB Norman O’Neal. You do anything? Visit him, send him flowers? He’ll say in court, ‘See, even the caterer felt remorse over what happened, she brought me roses.’”
I shook my head. “I married a cynic.”
“No, you married a realist.” He leaned over and gave me a kiss. “Not meaning to bring up the past. I mean, with the Jerk and all. But you’ve already felt sorry enough for one asshole to last an entire lifetime.”
“That’s hitting below the belt, Tom.”
“My dear sweet wife,” Tom said as he gathered me into his arms, “first of all, I would never hit you. Second, there are any number of fun things I would love to do with you that involve activities below the belt.”
And so we went to bed, although we didn’t actually go to sleep for a while. Tom had a number of those activities in mind, and I was more than willing to try them out.
As I was drifting off to dreamland, I realized that unlike many of the people I worked for, I hadn’t thought getting married was any big deal. It was being married—to Tom, that is—that, along with having Arch, had been the very biggest deal of my life.
SATURDAY MORNING DAWNED with weak sunshine and birdsong. I lay in bed thinking how much better the night before, with Tom, had been than the day I was about to have was probably going to be. The prospect of spending my Saturday with Charlotte Attenborough and the dreaded Victor Lane at Gold Gulch Spa did not fill me with joy. Even the leavening presence of my godfather wouldn’t help. I wished fervently for rain, lots of it, and a cancellation of all plans.
“Come on, Miss G.” Tom leaned over and kissed my cheek. I luxuriated in his scent of aftershave and soap. He placed an iced espresso with cream on the night table. “I have to go meet with the medical examiner.”
“The medical examiner? Do you really think he’ll get to Doc Finn so soon?”
“Yup. Our guy was an old friend of Finn’s.”
“And he wants to perform that procedure on his old friend?” I shivered as I stood up and eased into black pants and a white shirt. “That’s awful.”
“He called me early on my cell. Said he doesn’t want anybody else to do it, and that he was coming in early and wanted me there. Finn was going to the top of his list.”
We were interrupted by the sound of Jack’s horn, a custom contraption he’d had installed in the old sedan. Tweep-tweep-twoop-tweep declared his presence out front. I glanced at the clock: not quite 6:30? If the neighbors didn’t love me because of my godfather habitually rolling in noisily after a night of carousing with Doc Finn, they sure as heck didn’t love me now, with him beeping to indicate he was ready to go.
“Guy lives across the street,” Tom commented, “and he can’t phone or come over when he’s ready to go? He has to honk the horn on that dad-blasted car of his?”
“He’s from New Jersey. They honk there. And you know how he loves that horn.”
“It may be after eight o’clock on the East Coast, but it isn’t here. Six months ought to be long enough for someone to get used to changing over from Eastern Standard to Mountain Daylight Time, don’t you think?”
“Tom.”
“That secretive slob of a godfather of yours isn’t always as loving as you think he is, that’s all I’m saying. All right. Let me go and talk to him.”
“Please be nice.”
“I’m always nice.”
While Tom went out front, I slipped down to the kitchen and looked around frantically. What did I need for the trip out to Gold Gulch Spa? What ever it was, I needed to gather it up quickly, because Jack was not a patient man. I booted up my kitchen computer, brought up Billie Attenborough’s revised menu, numbers, and table settings, inserted a new flash drive, and backed up the files for Yolanda. Bless Yolanda’s heart, I knew she would be out there this early, as the overnight guests had to have breakfast.
I also quickly opened a morning e-mail from Charlotte. She said she was bringing extra place cards, linens, candles, centerpieces, china, and flatware to the spa. Maybe she should be leaving all this up to Billie, since Her Flakiness, Bridezilla, was the one screwing up this whole thing.