"This wedding better go smoothly," Dallas said, almost as if he could read Joe's mind. "We don't need to call in the bomb squad." And that wasn't a joke, the tomcat knew too well. Just a year ago a bomb explosion had created a near disaster at the wedding of the police chief, the church nearly demolished and several people injured minutes before the guests would have filed in.
A lucky, anonymous tip had averted calamity, had probably prevented a mass murder-a tip that Dallas and the chief still wondered about, the tomcat thought, smiling.
"But no one," Dallas said, "has a grudge against Ryan or Clyde, not the way a few scum would like to seriously damage anyone in law enforcement." Ryan and Clyde weren't cops, but still…Ryan was like Dallas 's daughter, and Clyde was a close friend to many in the department.
Praying that Dallas was right, that nothing ugly would happen, Joe looked up at the detective, purring companionably.
"No," Dallas said, pummeling Joe as if he were a dog, until Joe hissed a warning and Dallas withdrew his hand. "Sorry," he said. Then, "No, nothing bad is going to happen. This will be a quiet, happy wedding-low key, just as Ryan and Clyde want. The department would take apart anyone who tried to make it otherwise, anyone who tried to harm those two."
2
INDEED, ON THE day of the wedding there was no bomb threat, no threat of any kind, the casual but smoothly planned ceremony proceeded in a sunny manner quite in keeping with the hopes of the edgy bride and nervous groom-though a dead body had been reported.
The information was relayed to Charlie Harper, wife of police chief Max Harper, the day before the wedding.
A hidden grave had been accidentally uncovered not three miles from the Harpers' home, where Clyde and Ryan were to be married.
Charlie got the word from a friend, but she didn't tell Max about it. She had no intention of telling him, not before the wedding and not afterward. On the happy day, long after the wedding cake was demolished, the sentimental tears were all wiped away, and the euphoric couple had been sent off for a two-week honeymoon in California 's wine country, still Charlie didn't tell Max that an unidentified body had been found in his jurisdiction.
Not only was it against the law to withhold such information from the police, it was against Charlie's principles to lie, even by omission, to the one man she loved in all the world.
But this one time, she had no choice. She couldn't tell him about the corpse. There was no logical way she could know about the hidden grave. None of their friends would have been up to the ruins that weekend, to discover it and tell her. Certainly she couldn't tell Max she'd learned about the grave through an anonymous phone call, because any anonymous call would point directly to one of Max's three unidentified informants.
She wouldn't put those three in further jeopardy, they already had enough trouble keeping their secret. Anyway, why would one of the department's regular informants be up there in that isolated location? And why would they call Charlie instead of calling the department directly, as they usually did?
Nor could she tell Max she'd stumbled on the grave herself. She had no reason to be wandering up there among those fallen walls where she had, not long ago, shot and killed a man in self-defense. Max knew she avoided the ruins. And it would be way too bizarre to think she'd slipped away to the old estate just before the wedding, in the middle of cleaning house and fixing special dishes for the buffet, or to think that, on the morning of the wedding, she'd saddled her mare and ridden up there when she should have been filling the coffee urn, icing the champagne, and laying out her good linen tablecloths on the extended kitchen and patio tables.
All during the weekend of the wedding and afterward, while keeping her secret, Charlie tried to work out a scenario that would seem plausible to Max and yet would inform the department of the unknown grave. The wedding was held on the fourteenth day of February, a Sunday, at precisely eleven A.M. The couple had chosen Valentine's Day only after the weather forecaster solemnly promised that it would be clear and fine.
The day turned out exactly so-a bright morning but cool, the sea breeze cool and fresh, the sky spreading a deep blue backdrop to the masses of white clouds that had piled to heavenly heights above the blue Pacific. The bride wore red, not so much in honor of St. Valentine as because she liked red. Her tailored suit, a muted tomato shade as soft as the spring roses she carried, complemented perfectly her high brunette coloring, her short dark hair, and her intense green eyes.
The groom was dressed in the first suit he'd owned in more years than he cared to count; he'd chosen a pale tan gabardine that would dress down easily to their casual lifestyle. Nor was the happy couple married in the Catholic Church as one might expect of Ryan Flannery's Irish-Latino heritage. The ceremony took place not on their own patio, as they had at first imagined, but on the wide hilltop terrace of the Max Harper ranch. Besides twenty-some close civilian friends in attendance were as many of Molena Point's finest as could be absent from the department at one time without encouraging an untoward outbreak of crime in the small village. The couple had chosen a weekend without any local festivals, golf tournaments, or antique-car exhibits, any of which would have put an extra burden on the department.
Chief of Police Max Harper was Clyde 's best man. The bride, again breaking tradition, was given away not by one male relative, but by three: her uncle, Police Detective Dallas Garza; her father, retired Chief U. S. Probation Officer Mike Flannery; and her red-bearded uncle Scott Flannery, who was the foreman of her construction firm.
Dallas was in full police uniform, his short, dark hair freshly trimmed. Ryan's dad, tall, sandy-haired Mike Flannery, wore a dark suit, white shirt, and soft paisley tie. Mike's brother, Scotty, had chosen the only thing in his closet that wasn't a work shirt and jeans; he wore beige slacks, a white shirt open at the collar, and a dark green corduroy sport coat that contrasted sharply with his red hair and beard. The three men walked Ryan down the aisle side by side-while Ryan's big, silver, canine companion looked on from the sidelines, so tense with excitement that the three cats, sitting beside him, thought any minute the big Weimaraner would bolt straight into the middle of the procession: That was his family marching down the makeshift aisle between the rows of metal chairs, and the big retriever shivered with nervous intensity at this obviously important event involving those he loved.
But Rock, sitting close between Charlie Harper's left knee and Clyde 's gray tomcat, with both Charlie and Joe Grey giving him stern looks, managed to remain on his best behavior.
No guest in attendance thought it strange that Ryan's Weimaraner and the groom's tomcat, and their friends' two cats, were in attendance; animals were an important part of their lives. Charlie stood with her fingers touching Rock's silky head, near his collar, to make doubly sure he didn't bolt to his mistress and new master; she could feel him quivering under her gentle strokes.
As for the three cats, Charlie wasn't worried about their behavior. Joe Grey, his tabby lady, and the tortoiseshell kit knew better than many people how to act during such a solemn and important ceremony.
Though, looking down at the cats, Charlie did wonder at Joe Grey's admirable restraint on this particular day-because this marriage would change dramatically all the rest of the gray tomcat's life. The fact that Ryan would now be living with Joe Grey and Clyde presented a whole new set of rules and priorities for the tomcat; Charlie had worried considerably about how he'd settle into the new routine.