Bride and Doom Page 3

  Digger was still making blustering noises as I stalked away—and bumped into Gordo, whose normally cheerful round face was puckered with concern.

  “You were gone when I got up here,” he said. “Is Rosie all right?”

  “She’ll have quite a headache in the morning, but yes, she’s all right. She took a taxi home.”

  “Thanks a million, Carnegie.” He pronounced it mee-leon. “It’s really nice of you to take care of her. I’ll go see her later on. Come have a drink with me and Rob?”

  I hesitated—especially when I saw Rob beam his smile at me from the bar—but I really was starving.

  “I’d better eat first. Catch you later.”

  The buffet table was pretty well picked over—something my friend and favorite caterer Joe Solveto would never have allowed. But I managed, making a sandwich from scraps of prime rib and a couple of mangled half-rolls, adding the radish roses no one wanted and the grape garnish from the long-gone Brie.

  Behind me Rob concluded some anecdote, and his audience howled with laughter. I turned to look. Even with today’s Home Run King on hand, the party was coalescing around yesterday’s star pitcher. Rob had that kind of charisma.

  I noticed the basset hound fellow, the one who had brought Digger his drink, standing at the fringe of the crowd with his folded arms resting on his belly. He was gazing with a strange intensity at the man of the hour, and I wondered if he’d ever dreamed of fame for himself. Then I spotted someone else gazing at me and forgot about Rob and the basset fellow both.

  In the far corner of the suite, beneath a huge blow-up of a Babe Ruth baseball card, Boris Nevsky was sharing a table with a bottle of Stolichnaya. He waved hopefully at me, but I just gave a vague smile and kept going, determined to keep my distance and dine undisturbed.

  The owners’ suite had a connecting door to the stadium’s “press box,” so I went over there. It’s an old-fashioned name for an up-to-date area, with tiers of swivel chairs and desktops instead of spectators’ seats. Each place had an outlet and phone jack for the sportswriters’ electronics, and the ones in front with the best view of the action bore name cards for specific newspapers or magazines.

  Down in the front row, reading the name cards, were two dear and familiar figures, one Petite and the other Extra-Large.

  “Buck!” I said, surprised. “Betty!”

  “Oh, you are here!” little Betty Buckmeister twittered, her patent-leather-black curls dancing and her apple cheeks as rosy as ever. “I was so hoping you would be, dear.”

  “Course she’s here, Mother,” rumbled her burly husband Buck. He wore a tomato-red bandanna tied pirate fashion around his bald head—Buck had dozens if not hundreds of bandannas—and beneath it his face was one big grin. “Monsoor Paliere told us you were givin’ him a hand with this shindig. How you been keepin’ yourself, little lady?”

  Unlike some people, Buck Buckmeister, the retired hot tub king of El Paso, was welcome to call me “little lady” all he wanted. Eddie might refer to them as the Killer B’s, but Buck, Betty, and their daughter Bonnie were the nicest Yuletide fanatics you’d ever want to meet. I’d done a lavish wedding for Bonnie this past Christmas, but I hadn’t seen the family since. And I certainly didn’t associate them with baseball.

  “How wonderful to see you!”

  I gave each of them a hug. My arms went almost twice around little Betty but could only take in half of bulky Buck. Their absent daughter Bonnie was sized in between them, so when the trio came together, they looked like those Russian dolls that fit one inside the other inside the next.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked. “Do you know Gordo or Rose or what?”

  Buck gave a basso profundo chortle. “Only met the fella tonight, and we still haven’t met the girl. I heard she went home already?”

  Oh good, I thought gratefully. Not everyone was watching. “Yes, she wasn’t feeling well. But then why—?”

  “Why’re we here?” completed Buck. “Why, because as of last week I’m the bone-a-fide minority owner of the Navigators!”

  “You’re not the only one, Father,” Betty added, determined to be accurate. Her eyes twinkled. “But he surely is the biggest!”

  After we shared a chuckle about that—the Killer B’s were big on group hugs and group chuckles—I invited them to join me.

  “You go ahead and finish your supper,” Buck told me. “We’re gonna go get ourselves an autograph from Mr. Harmon there. Ain’t it something, having him right here in person? I’m gonna enjoy this owner business.”

  I ate quickly, then returned to the party to see the Buckmeisters beaming at Rob, who was pulling baseballs from his jacket pockets and signing them left and right. Then I looked past the bar to the corner, where Boris had been joined by Digger Duvall. Boris was doing all the talking, while Digger just kept nodding sympathetically and pouring him more Stoli.

  “Can you drink on duty, Stretch?”

  I looked around and smiled. Aaron had a glass of wine in each hand.

  “You bet I can! Come sit down and be nice to me before Beau pounces again. It’s been a hell of a night.”

  “No kidding. Do many of your parties feature strip-teasing brides?”

  I dropped into a seat at a table for two and groaned. “I suppose everyone’s been sniggering about it.”

  “They started to,” he said, setting the glasses down, “until Harmon distracted them with a demonstration of his different pitches. And then, get this, he pulls all the press guys together and makes this little speech about how we all have our moments, and he knows we’ll be gentlemen and not print anything nasty about Gordo’s bride!”

  “And you all agreed?”

  “Yeah, we did. Everybody likes Gordo, and they sure as hell respect Rob Harmon. When a guy can throw a hundred-mile-an-hour fastball, you listen to him. Of course, you’d listen to him anyway, wouldn’t you?”

  I’d made the mistake of telling Aaron about my onetime infatuation with the famous pitcher, and he’d been teasing me about it ever since.

  “Never mind that,” I said sternly. “You really think no one will write about what happened?”

  “I think your girl’s reputation is safe, for now anyway.” He sipped his wine. “She looks like a real piece of work.”

  “You’re telling me.”

  We were both so intent on our conversation that we didn’t notice Boris until he lurched up against our table. We do all have our moments, and the Mad Russian was having one now.

  “Khar-rnegie!” he said, in a kind of lovelorn bellow. “You avoid me, why is this?”

  “I’m not avoiding you,” I began, but then Aaron spoke up.

  “Listen, Nevsky, you’ve had a little too much, you know? Why don’t you—”

  “I talk to my Kharnegie, not to you!” The bellow was belligerent now. Heads turned along the bar, and the room fell silent.

  Aaron kept his voice low and even. “All I’m saying is, you should go sit down for a while.”

  “Nyet! Who are you to tell me what to do?”

  Boris was the taller of the two by a head, but when Aaron rose to his feet with a stony glare, the Russian fell back.

  “I’m her goddamn fiancé, that’s who,” said Aaron, much louder. “Now back off!”

  Well. As I said, our engagement wasn’t public yet, but that was because I wanted to announce it at a charming little dinner party and then send out charming little invitations. Not because I wanted to pole-ax Boris Nevsky and create a scene straight out of a prime-time soap opera in front of all these people.

  Somebody muttered something, and somebody else shushed him. Cigars stopped puffing, false eyelashes fluttered in anticipation, and drinks were held suspended. The whole bloody room was on tenterhooks waiting for the next line in this farce, when who should speak up but Digger Duvall.

  “My, my,” he said roguishly, and loudly, from just behind Boris. “Here my Slavic friend is madly in love with the redhead, and she’s secretly engaged to an
other man! Isn’t she a sneaky little minx?”

  Boris Nevsky’s English was pretty good, but—as Digger was about to learn—it didn’t cover the finer points of colloquial usage. Such as the fact that minx is not an obscenity. With a thundering roar, Boris erupted.

  “How dare you call my Kharnegie such thing!”

  Then my dinner plate went flying, along with my table and several chairs, as the Mad Russian wound up like a Hall of Fame pitcher and lunged to punch the Sage of Summertime square in the face.

  Chapter Five

  On game nights in summer, the outdoor concourse of Yesler Field is a great place to grab some nachos (or clam chowder, this being Seattle) and watch the sun go down from four stories up. The view is a show in itself, and the open-air plaza is always populated by hungry fans, cavorting children, and picture-snapping tourists.

  But not tonight. Tonight the concourse was deserted, just the place for me to escape the ruckus in the owners’ suite.

  Strictly speaking, I should have stayed at the party. But it was soon obvious that Digger wasn’t hurt—Boris’s drunken punch had barely grazed him—and even more obvious that there were plenty of people on hand to grovel and placate and pacify the great Digger Duvall. I just couldn’t bring myself to be one of them.

  So, suddenly weary of male voices, male ego, male everything, I had seized my wine glass, shrugged at Aaron, and fled. Beau was the boss here—let him do the groveling for both of us. And if Digger wanted me fired, I was in no hurry to hear about it.

  The concourse was dark, with just a muted glow from the entrance to the main hallway behind me, and I thought at first that I was alone. But as I approached the perimeter rail, a dim form detached itself from the shadows and turned toward me.

  Startled, I tensed up, but the voice that emerged from the gloom was reassuringly mild, and I recognized the potbellied figure.

  “Oh, hello,” said the hound-faced fellow who’d been staring at Rob earlier. “I was just, um…”

  He trailed off awkwardly—he seemed to be under the influence—so I stepped into the breach.

  “I’m Carnegie Kincaid,” I said, extending my hand. “I’m helping with Gordo’s wedding.”

  “Tibbett.” He made to shake hands, but his right palm was filled with the torn-off half of a dinner roll. “I, um, been feeding the birds.”

  Sure enough, a pair of seagulls passed over our heads and then wheeled back on tilted wings, their cries sharp and piercing above the hum of traffic on First Avenue far below. With a mischievous smirk, Tibbett flung the bread over the railing. Instantly the gulls dropped into a shrieking, spiraling dive, pursuing their prize almost down to the sidewalk until one of them plucked the fragment from the air and made off with it.

  We watched them go in companionable silence, then turned our gazes to the larger panorama. To our right, the lights of downtown and Queen Anne Hill begin to wink and sparkle, while to our left, south, the giant ship-loading cranes of Harbor Island stood silhouetted against the sky like giant insects. In between, on the dim surface of Elliott Bay, a long freighter went creeping past the dark hump-backed islands.

  Tibbett was peaceful company. We stood quietly for a while, and I began to ask him about his role with the Navigators. But we heard footsteps approaching.

  “So this is where you’re hiding.” Aaron grinned at me and nodded at my companion. “Hey, Nelly.”

  Tibbett nodded back, then gave me a half-smile and went inside, weaving a little. I waited till he was out of earshot.

  “Nelly?” I asked.

  “As in Nervous Nelly, his baseball nickname. He was in the majors once, back when Rob Harmon was pitching for the Red Sox. I remember the way he kept fouling off pitch after pitch, like he was afraid to let the ball go by. The Navs made him an assistant batting coach as a favor to Harmon, and he’s been doing it ever since. Or he was, poor guy.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Aaron shrugged. “He drinks. He used to help steady down the rookies, but now he’s sloshed half the time and not too useful the other half. He’s not coming back for spring training, he just doesn’t know it yet.”

  “So how do you know it?”

  “Duvall told me.” Aaron grimaced. “I can’t stand the guy, but he always knows what’s going on before anybody else. You listen to him because you’re curious, then you end up feeling disgusted with yourself. Too bad Nevsky didn’t hit him harder.”

  I thought about Tibbett gazing at Rob Harmon there at the bar. The has-been and the superstar. Sad. Then I returned to my own problems.

  “Has Digger left yet?”

  “Is that why you’re skulking around out here?” Aaron slipped his arms around me. “Yeah, he’s gone. But Leroy Theroux’s on the warpath, big time, and Paliere keeps asking where you are.”

  “They can both wait.” There was a pause as I kissed him, and a longer pause as he kissed me back. Much longer. Then I pulled away. “Seriously, what’s been happening in there?”

  “Mostly people sucking up to Digger, till he finally left to catch his plane.”

  “Is Boris still around?”

  “Are you kidding? He took off the minute he realized what he’d done. And now that the show is over, people are getting ready to leave. Hey, your friends the Buckmasters are here!”

  “Buckmeisters. I know, I saw them.” I sighed and combed my long disorderly hair into place with my fingers. “I suppose I should go face the music. I know you’re busy tomorrow, but are we still on for dinner?”

  “Sure. The game starts at six.”

  We’d begun strolling back across the concourse, hand in hand, but now I halted. “The game? I thought we were going to sit down with a calendar and pick out our wedding date!”

  “We can do that with the game on, can’t we? Come on, Stretch, it’s the World Series.”

  “Ohh no, wait just a minute. You told me that if the Red Sox didn’t go to the Series, you’d be done with baseball for the year. You said that weeks ago.”

  I enjoyed baseball myself—in moderation. But Aaron was raised Red Sox Orthodox, and he’d obsessively followed his beloved Boston team all the way through the playoffs this fall. Day after day, on the car radio or his television or mine, the games had been a constant soundtrack to our time together.

  I’d tried to be a good sport, but we had already been separated all summer while Aaron recuperated from his fire injuries at his sister’s place in Boston. Now that I had him back—now that he’d proposed—I was weary of baseball and anxious to talk about the wedding.

  But with Aaron back in his old job at the Sentinel, and me working most weekends, finding the time had been difficult. And having a conversation without a ballgame on the radio had been almost impossible.

  “Besides,” I went on, “I’m seeing Joe Solveto for coffee on Sunday. We’re going to brainstorm menus, and I was hoping to give him our date so he can work it into his schedule. He books almost a year ahead, you know.”

  Aaron made no reply, just went on walking, but I tugged at his hand.

  “You promised, Aaron. You promised that this week we’d pick a date and make up a guest list and—”

  “And we will!” He looked back at me, his face in shadow. “As soon as the Series is over.”

  “But you said—”

  “I know what I said,” he snapped, and I flinched a little. Aaron took a deep breath and switched to a patient, tolerant tone, as if speaking to a child. “But I said it before the Cubs won the pennant. How was I to know they’d get this far? The Chicago Cubs, Stretch. The Cubbies haven’t been in a World Series since 1945, and they haven’t won it in almost a hundred years.”

  I hated that tone. “I don’t care if it’s been three hundred years! I’m sick to death of talking to you between innings. You’ve never even been to Chicago.”

  “That’s not the point. Now that the Red Sox have broken their curse with the Series, it’s the Cubbies’ turn. They’re the underdogs of all time! They’re—”


  “The point is that we have a wedding to plan, and you act like you’re not even involved! We’ve both been working so much lately that I never see you except during a game, or a pregame analysis, or a postgame wrap-up.” An alarming thought occurred to me. “You’re not going to pull this on Friday, are you? Mom and Owen are only in town for that one night.”

  Owen Winter was my mother’s fiancé. Mom and I had become engaged within a week of each other, and now she was living with Owen up in the San Juan Islands. At first I’d had doubts about their romance, but now I could see that after all her years as a widow, my mother was truly happy.

  They’d be passing through Seattle soon, and Owen had arranged weeks ago to treat the four of us to dinner. If Aaron tried to cancel—

  “Friday night is still on, Stretch. You think I’d screw up something that important to you?” He grinned. “Besides, it’s a travel day. No game.”

  “Very funny. But what about our planning?”

  “Hey, I’m just the groom here, remember? You make the decisions, I shave, shower, and show up. Right?”

  He was trying to cajole his way out of the argument by getting me to laugh. I hated that too.

  “Wrong. We agreed to plan this together, and we decided to start tomorrow night.”

  “Fine. But I’ll be watching the game.”

  Aaron jokes a lot, but he’s a stubborn man, and I knew better than to push him too far. I also knew better than to bicker with him when I was upset about something else. But it was too late for knowing better now.

  “Fine,” I said. “But you’re not watching it at my place.”

  He dropped my hand. “Suit yourself.”

  And with that my fiancé strode back inside, almost colliding with Beau Paliere on the way. I might have called out after him, but Beautiful Beau was boiling over.

  “Again, like a guest! Everyone leaves, you should be present to help with the coats, to—”

  “I’m coming,” I told him through gritted teeth. “Just give me a minute, would you?”

  “There is not a minute,” he said icily. His eyes traveled from my disheveled hair to my dusty shoes and back again. “The cleaning company has arrived early, and they have no key. You will wait at the service entrance and let them in, tout de suite. And do not use the main ’allway. You are not fit to be seen.”