Now the credenza was covered with a collection of fragrant condolence bouquets, all of them complete with unopened envelopes from various senders. At least one of the vases had been carelessly deposited on the polished wood, leaving behind a distinct and indelible water mark. Seeing the stain saddened Ali. She made a halfhearted effort to rub it out but it didn't go away. It would take someone wiser in the ways of cleaning to make the offending moisture ring disappear.
With no one paying any attention to her, Ali ventured a few steps into the living room. In anticipation of the wedding, most of the furniture had been removedreplaced by a dozen or so rows of cloth-covered banquet-style chairs arranged so they faced a wooden arch at one end of the room. On either side of the arch stood ranks of candles and immense baskets of flowersan avant-garde mix of traditional and fragrant lilies punctuated with an occasional bird-of-paradise.
Ali wasn't the least bit surprised by this somewhat odd combination. Bird-of-paradise wasn't exactly commonplace in bridal floral arrangements, but Paul had always preferred it to any other flower. He would insist on sending it on occasions when other peopleAli includedwould have preferred roses or gladiolas or even snapdragons. The oddly angular buds with their comical topknots and brilliant colors had never spoken to Ali the way they had to him.
The same could be said of Paul's choices in furnitureunabashedly modern and not especially comfortableand art. On this early Saturday morning, with most of the furniture removed in honor of a wedding that would never happen, only the artwork remained. The big splashy original oil canvases had bold colors and plenty of panache. Ali knew the paintings came with top gallery pedigrees and spectacular price tags. What they lacked was heart.
Just like the rest of the house, Ali thought. No wonder she had never felt at home here. If it hadn't been for Elvira Jimenez doing her cooking magic in the kitchen, the house on Robert Lane could just as well have been a museum of modern art.
The far wall of the living room was lined with French doors that led out onto a spacious terrace. Through the open doors, Ali saw the terrace was stocked with a dozen or so linen-covered cocktail tables and even more chairs. Empty buffet tables, chafing dishes at the ready, were situated at both ends of the terrace. Again, Ali wasn't surprised that Paul would have selected this spot as the site of his now canceled wedding reception. Paul had always loved entertaining on the lavish terrace with its unobstructed if sometimes smog-obscured view of the city. Ali had usually gravitated toward the smaller and more private tree-and-bougainvillea-lined patio out back by the pool house.
With the three attorneys settled in the library in a low-voiced huddle, Ali wandered out onto the terrace. The grassy lawn below the stone balustrade was a beehive of activity. Someone was using a handheld dispenser to lay out a complicated pattern of white chalk lines on Paul's carefully tended grass. Ali looked around for Jesus Sanchez, Paul's longtime gardener. He had always taken great pride in the fact that his grass could have been plunked down on the eighteenth green of any self-respecting golf course without anyone knowing the difference. Ali more than half-expected Jesus to appear out of nowhere, bellowing a loud objection to the chalk-spreader's desecration.
Moments later Jesus did in fact appear around the corner of the house above and behind Ali, but he wasn't making any kind of fuss about the chalk on his grass lawn. Instead, he was totally occupied by two young men who were pushing a pair of heavily laden wheelbarrows loaded with perfectly round rocks down the steep path that led from the back of the house to the lawn below.
As one of the men made the corner, the wheelbarrow wobbled in his hands. The next thing Ali knew, the load of rocks came spilling down the hill and onto the flagstone terrace. Some of them bounced almost head high while one of them smashed to pieces, sending shards of granite flying in every direction. One needlelike piece seemed headed directly for Ali's throat. It missed her by an inch. Seconds later, a man vaulted off the path and over the rail, landing on the terrace next to her.
"Are you all right?"
Ali was shaken but unhurt. "I'm fine," she said.
Nodding, the angry man turned back to the frightened workman who was still clinging to the handles of his empty wheelbarrow.
"You stupid jerk! Don't you know how to do anything? You could have killed this poor woman!"
Only then did Ali recognize him. The man doing the yelling had to be Tracy McLaughlin, the same tall blond guy pictured on the RV. The big difference was that now he wore regular khakis rather than a kilt.
"Are you sure you're all right?" he asked Ali again. "It's a good thing that eight broke into a million pieces. Otherwise it might have taken your head right off. I'm not surprised, though. The kind of piss-poor help we're having to put up with here today amp;" He shook his head in disgust. "Come get these, will you?" he shouted up at the men waiting on the path. "And then go back to the truck. Thank God I have a spare eight there. It's got a crack in it, but it'll have to do."
As the one man came to collect his scattered load, the other made his way down to the grass. "Don't put them there, you stupid asshole," Tracy shouted at him. "Don't you know anything? Those are the fours. They belong on this side."
As the man hefted the rocks out of another wheelbarrow and onto the ground, the truth about Sumo Sudoku finally came home to Ali. When Ted had said it was played with rocks, Ali had envisioned something the size of marbles. These smooth, round hunks of granite were more like boulders, with large numbers chiseled into the surface. From the size and obvious weight of the "fours," Ali could only guess how much damage the stray eight might have done had it hit her full on.
Ali was still shaken from her near miss when she saw a young woman, blond and very pregnant, emerge from the living room. She walked over to the debris field left by the broken rock and kicked at some of it. "What's this?" she wanted to know.
Helga had said April Gaddis was gorgeous, and that was true. Even without makeup and with her hair in disarray, she was a fine-featured beauty except for her eyes. They were red and puffy from a combination of weeping and lack of sleep. And she was pregnant enough that the silk robe she wore didn't quite cover her expanded middle. She was beautiful but utterly distraught and very, very young.
"One of my rocks," Tracy explained. "That cretin up there didn't know how to work a friggin' wheelbarrow. He lost his whole load and it came crashing down on the terrace here. It's a wonder he didn't kill this lady. A miracle really."
As the workman in question scurried to load the remaining rocks back into his wheelbarrow, April looked at Ali uncertainly.
"What are you doing here?" April asked. At least she didn't try to pretend that she didn't know who Ali was.
"The lawyers," Ali said, quickly forgetting her near miss with the exploding rock. "We're supposed to be meeting with the lawyers this morning in the library."
April shrugged. "I'm not in any condition to deal with this stuff right now. All I was trying to do was sneak down and get some breakfast from the buffet, but there are way too many workmen here already. I had no idea the crew would be this big."
Ali had sometimes imagined how she would react in what she had thought was the unlikely event she would ever come face-to-face with April Gaddis, her rival. Ali had scripted any number of biting remarks, but faced with the young woman and seeing her obvious desolation, Ali forgot all of them. Instead, Ali tried to focus on the homespun wisdom passed along to her in the e-mail from Phyllis in Knoxville.