“I’m pretty sure that’s on the invitation,” he said dryly. “Keep your expectations low and we’ll be fine.”
“I can do that. What time is the wedding?”
“Four. I’ll check again to be sure and let you know if I’m wrong.”
“And where?”
“Cumberland State Park. The ceremony and the reception. Do you know it?”
“Yes. I hike there.”
“Huh. So do I. Bike and swim too. Anyway, the whole thing is mortifying for Aunt Kay, although you won’t be able to tell. Botox. She wanted the ceremony at Heinz Chapel on the Pitt campus and the reception in the Carnegie Music Hall. Aunt Kay and Uncle Mark are making good money—very good money—from the fracking boom. Kay wants to show it off. Linda’s having none of it, but it’s impressive that she’s been able to get her way. Elopement was a factor, I believe. Could have been a threat.”
“What is appropriate dress for a wedding in the park?” She watched him frown, clearly bewildered. “You haven’t given it a thought, have you? You can’t wear your uniform, you know.” More’s the pity, she told herself, because he looked extraordinarily fine in it, and that was hard to pull off in a polyester/cotton blend and Kevlar.
“And you shouldn’t arrive carrying concealed.”
She laughed. “Never mind about the dress code. I’m sure I can find something that will suit. Unless it rains. Then it’s my yellow slicker, duck boots, and a golf umbrella with the Ridge Group Stores logo on the canopy.”
Sullivan cast his eyes upward to the cloudless cerulean sky. “Please, Lord, let it rain.”
Ramsey did not know what came over her, but she poked him in the chest with her forefinger. He might not have felt it under the Kevlar, but he definitely saw it. He grinned like a fifth grader who’d just taken a punch from the girl in pigtails who told everyone she didn’t like him. In the language of eleven-year-olds everywhere, the punch said otherwise.
She let her hand fall to her side, curled her fingers into a fist. There was no point in apologizing and calling more attention to it. Instead she said, “I’m beginning to feel a little sorry for your Aunt Kay.”
He sobered. “We’ll see how you feel after you meet her. I’ll pick you up an hour before the ceremony. That will leave us plenty of time to get there, park, and give relatives, friends, and complete strangers an opportunity to talk about us.”
“Please, no more. You’re getting my hopes up.” She reached behind her and pulled on the SUV’s door. “Wait? Do you know where I live?”
“I ran your license, remember? Twenty-four nineteen Keenan Avenue.”
She nodded, stepped closer to him as she opened the door wider, and then retreated to slip neatly inside. She removed a silver sunshade from the front window, tossed it on the passenger seat, and started the Escape. She couldn’t say what possessed her to raise her hand in farewell as she drove away, and it was only when she was out of the municipal parking lot that she realized she left without knowing the answer to the question she’d meant to ask him. She was philosophical about it. After all, there was a bad date in her future. She would find out about the speeding ticket and his nonappearance in court then.
6
Sullivan thoughthe would see Ramsey at least once or twice before the wedding, but other officers were closer when calls came in from Southridge. They weren’t all from Ramsey anyway. The store employed eight loss prevention specialists, generally working in pairs on one of three shifts. If dispatch knew Ramsey’s schedule, they could predict within one incident how many calls they would get from the store during her rotation. The Ridge Group Stores took asset protection seriously. The number of specialists per store was predicated on the local crime rate, particularly as the crime was related to drugs, the population of the town or cluster of towns, the distance from a major highway, and the store’s history of theft.
Ridge stores located south of a town’s epicenter were Southridge stores. Those to the north, Northridge, and so on. It was the Ridge Group’s way of making the store more personal to the town, or at least that was the business model. Although it was categorized as a big box store, that description chafed Ridge executives. The Group went to some lengths to develop stores in a style that fit the community, sometimes taking over abandoned properties and breathing new life into them through remodeling rather than razing buildings and erecting modern fortresses. It was not cost effective in the short term, but by taking the long view, Ridge stores usually won the community over. They did not offer the cheapest prices. They couldn’t afford to. But neither did they drive out the local small business owners. What they offered was the convenience of a large inventory in one location coupled with the design sense of last century department stores.
Sullivan wondered how Ramsey had come by her job. Had she been at another Ridge store in another state? How had she come to West Virginia and Clifton in particular? He’d get around to asking her eventually when he thought she might trust him enough to give him a straight answer. It was unlikely to be anytime soon, especially if their first date went as badly as she predicted. Ramsey Masters struck him as someone who had a fair amount of practice deflecting personal questions. He understood, could even appreciate it, and as a consequence he would wait to have his curiosity satisfied by the woman who gave rise to it.
Sullivan was jerked out of his musings when his radio squawked. Dispatch reported a disturbance outside the Bottoms Up bar and strip club on Main Street. He glanced at the time. Sure enough, twenty minutes before last call. The natives were drunk, high, and horny. He responded to the call, turning his vehicle sharply onto the closest side street and heading toward Main.
The morning of the wedding Ramsey consulted her phone for the weather report. Eighty degrees at four o’clock. Clear skies. A dew point in the fifties. If the app could be trusted, and generally it could, there would be a breeze out of the southeast and zero percent chance of rain. No point, then, in wearing her slicker and duck boots. Sullivan might be disappointed but this weather favored the bride.
Ramsey did not want to admit that she was looking forward to the date. She hadn’t told anyone about it, not even Briony who continued to hint that she should dive deep into the dating pool again, starting with Sullivan Day. She purposely held off getting ready until the eleventh hour. It was her idea of mindfulness, to keep herself occupied with the preparation so she wasn’t distracted by what was coming next.
She showered, shampooed, and applied moisturizer before she turned the blow dryer on her hair. Because her hair had a tendency to defy her and because she was all thumbs, she left the underside a little damp so she could manage it. She twisted and tucked the length into something that resembled a chignon, secured it with a few hairpins hidden deeply in the twist and then stabbed it with a couple of gold studded tortoise shell combs. She shook her head, the chignon stayed in place except for a few tendrils that fell against her neck just as if she had planned it that way.
She rarely wore more than mascara and lip gloss to work. There had been a time when she had applied makeup with care, and wore it with confidence, but that was a long time past. Her fingers actually trembled when she lifted the eyeliner. She set it down, called herself all kinds of a fool, and when her hand was steady, she added a thin line to each eyelid without thinking too much about what she was doing. A little foundation, mascara, blush, and sheer rosy lip color, and she was done.
She had several ideas about what she would wear, all of them weather dependent. Now she whipped through her closet and selected a pair of pleated ivory linen Bermudas that fell just above her knees. She added a loose fitting linen-blend tank and an ivory jacket with three-quarter length sleeves. She dithered about the shoes for a few minutes, trying on several pairs until she found the ones that did not make her legs look stumpy in the Bermudas. The heel was a high, straw covered wedge that would keep her from sinking into the ground. She pitied the woman who wore stilettos to a wilderness wedding.
She was digging through her jewelry when the doorbell rang. Her stomach lurched. She quickly grabbed some copper and gold bracelets and slipped them on her wrist, then on impulse, she opened the pouch that held the exquisite Marco Bicego diamond multi-strand collar necklace and fastened the ball-and-joint closure at her nape. She laid her palm against the delicate gold strands and fingered one of the diamond-set stations. Too much? she wondered. No. She worked at the Ridge. She was accompanying a cop. Who would suspect this from gold plate and cubic zirconium? She gave herself a last look, tugged on the hem of her jacket, and she was off. It was only when she reached the door that she realized she had forgotten earrings. She turned off the security alarm, opened the door, and said, “Just another minute,” in a husky, breathless voice before she closed the door in Sullivan’s face and hurried to her bedroom for earrings.
Sullivan was leaning against one of the columns that supported the front porch roof when she stepped outside carrying a clutch in one hand, earrings in the other, and wearing a pair of tortoise shell sunglasses on her head. She did a cartoon stop when she saw him, the kind where the toon character halts so abruptly his body actually vibrates. At least that’s how it felt.
She took a breath, sipping the air through pursed lips, and released it slowly. She managed a lopsided smile. “I needed these,” she said, unfolding her fingers to show him the earrings. “And this.” She raised the clutch. “Oh, damn. I forgot my sunglasses. I’ll just—”
