“Uh-huh,” he said, getting to his feet. “But maybe I’ll have an answer by then.”
She laughed under her breath and waved him away, then settled back in her chair to watch Kay Dobbs order the wedding photographer around with all the subtlety of a drill sergeant.
Without conscious thought, Ramsey pressed her fingertips to the side of her head and winced.
8
“I hope a bottle is okay,”said Sullivan, setting the Yuengling in front of Ramsey.
“It’s fine. I prefer it.”
Instead of sitting down, Sullivan walked the circumference of the table examining the place cards of the guests who had not yet found their way to their seats. “It won’t be too bad. I know Will and Yvonne Packard. Will and I were in the same class in high school. His younger brother is one of the groomsmen. That’s the redhead with as many freckles as there are stars. His wife’s a home health nurse.” The sudden lump in his throat caught him off guard as his thoughts rolled back to his mother. His voice caught as he said, “Yvonne was a frequent visitor to the house.” He swallowed, shook it off. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to get…”
“I never saw the sense in apologizing for a real emotion.”
“Mm.” He raised his beer and drank. She was studying him, her expression not so much sympathetic as it was solemn. It made it easy for him to move on. “His parents are with us too. I saw Mr. Packard hustling martinis at the bar. Mrs. Packard was fussing over Andy.”
“The freckled groomsman.”
“Yes.” He waved his beer bottle over the last two place cards. “Ian and Sarah Bode. Don’t know them so I can’t say if they’re here already.” Sullivan slipped into the seat beside her and regarded her in profile. “You okay?”
Ramsey nodded. “Yes, why?”
He shrugged. “I thought I saw something when I came back with the beers. You looked…I don’t know…lost in thought. You had your fingers at your temple. Is it a headache?”
“No. No, nothing like that.” She turned her head, gave him a lopsided self-conscious smile. “You’re first impression was the right one. Lost in thought.”
“Want to share?”
She touched her bottle to his. “I don’t know you that well.”
“Ah.” He drank, she drank. “C’mon. Are you up for a little walk? We can pretend we’re circulating and never speak to a soul.”
“I’d like that.” She started to rise, sat back down again.
“What is it?”
“If we do speak to a soul, I’d rather we didn’t talk about what I do. I mean, it’s all right to say I work at Southridge, but I’d like to say I’m a cashier or that I work in the office. Anything at all except what I do.”
“I get it. Sure, that’s fine. If I did undercover work, I wouldn’t want people to know either.”
She laughed a little at that. “Undercover. I suppose it is.”
Sullivan stood when she did and pointed in the direction of the grills and smokers. “You want to see what’s cooking? Linda and Tug wanted a spit for roast pig. Looks like Kay had her way in at least one thing. I don’t see a spit.”
Ramsey sniffed the air. “They’re grilling shrimp and salmon.”
“Forget that. I smell barbeque and beans.”
Laughing, Ramsey fell into step beside him as they made straight for the banquet table, in this case a long line of rectangular picnic tables covered in white linens. The amount of food was very nearly obscene, and Ramsey said so, but Sullivan looked around at the guests milling about and pronounced them up to the task of clearing the platters. Each table had a watermelon basket of mixed summer fruit and two large salad bowls, neither of which contained a single leaf of iceberg lettuce. There was a traditional tiered wedding cake with delicate lace roses made from spun sugar. The cake topper was a pair of side-by-side miniature forest green Adirondack chairs. A woman in a bikini lounged in one; a man wearing a pair of swim trunks stretched out in the other.
Sullivan didn’t notice the topper until Ramsey pointed it out. He had been staring at the rows of cupcakes circling the cake trying to decide if they were bigger or smaller than his fist. It was a narrow thing. His eyes went to the cake just as Ramsey began to call his attention to it a second time.
“I see it,” he said, indeed, wondering how he hadn’t from the first. Right, the cupcakes. “Linda’s always been a little quirky.”
“It’s fun.” Ramsey looked around. “Everything she and Tug have planned is meant to be fun. The only stuffed things here are the mushroom caps.”
“And Aunt Kay.”
