Elementary, My Dear Watkins (42 page)

“I’ve been thinking about this, and, knowing you, I believe I’ve come up with the right solution. What would you say if I suggested that your shares could go into the charitable trust
anyway
, with you named as trustee so that you can call the shots on how the money is distributed?”

“Would that protect me from harm now?”

“No, but it would give you the last word with your parents and your grandmother, basically snipping away the puppet masters’ strings. You could shock them all and become a philanthropist, Jo.”

Jo studied him, a new gleam in her eye.

“I love it,” she said. “But we are talking about a lot of wealth, Danny. To me, the money has always felt like a burden, but you might not think of it that way. I don’t know if that’s really fair to you, for me to give it all away. You could be a wealthy man, you know.”

He took both of her hands in his and kissed them.

“Yeah, the money would be nice,” he said, embarrassed that now tears were forming in his own eyes as well, “but having you as my wife would already make me the wealthiest man who ever lived.”

T
he next hour passed in a whirlwind. Sidney, the lawyer, came and handled the legal details, even snickering when Jo and Danny told him their intentions for her inheritance.

“You realize your parents are going to flip, don’t you?”

“Absolutely,” Jo replied, grinning, knowing the victory was even sweeter because she was marrying the one man her mother had told her
not
to marry.

Once the papers had been drawn up and signed, they got ready to have a wedding. Jo knew that they needed to call the police and report the incident with the toaster, but it seemed safer to get married first and act on that afterwards. The more she thought about it, she decided that in a way it was good that the whole toaster thing had happened, as it allowed the list of suspects to be narrowed down significantly. The people who had been in the studio today, alone, could be counted on one hand: Winnie, Consuela, Jo’s parents, and Ian. Considering that several of those suspects were on the property even now, she told her grandmother to leave everyone else out of the ceremony except the lawyer, the judge, and the two who were getting married.

“What about witnesses?” Eleanor asked.

“How many do we need? We’ve got you and Sidney and the bodyguard.”

Jo suggested that Sidney also serve as the best man, even though he had never met Danny before tonight.

“And Alexa can be my maid of honor,” Jo added, “though she doesn’t need to know what’s really going on here.”

“I’m sure that would please her,” Eleanor said.

Upstairs, Jo flipped through the clothes in her closet, trying to find something to be married in. She hadn’t exactly made plans for this when she was packing up at home. She had, however, made plans to go to her grandmother’s church, which was kind of formal, so she had brought along three dresses, any of which would suffice now. She picked the lightest-colored one, a soft beige tea-length summer dress with tiny pink roses along the neckline.

Before changing clothes, she went across the hall and tapped on Alexa’s door, eliciting excited barks from Chewie. As Jo stood there in the doorway, petting her dog, she told Alexa that she wasn’t going to believe this, but that her fiancé had just returned from Europe and they had decided to get married—downstairs, right now.

“Would you consider being my maid of honor?” Jo asked.

Alexa nodded, eyes wide.

“I didn’t even know you had a fiancé. You don’t have an engagement ring.”

“We just never had time to get one,” Jo replied truthfully.

Alexa said that it would only take her a few minutes to put on something nicer than a T-shirt and flannel pajama pants, so Jo told her to come down to the study as soon as she was ready. In the meantime, she left Chewie there and returned to her own room to get dressed.

Jo wished she had time for a shower and full makeup and hair and everything. But then she thought of her almost wedding last fall, to Bradford, and she decided that what she looked like as she walked down the aisle wasn’t important at all.

What
was
important was the man who would be waiting for her when she got there.

“Oh, my, you do look handsome.”

Danny returned to the study to see Jo’s grandmother beaming at him from her chair. He had freshened up and was now dressed in his slightly-wrinkled sports jacket and slacks, once again wishing he had his tuxedo instead.

“There’s a stereo in the cabinet,” she said. “Perhaps you’d like to look through the music. I doubt that we have the bridal march, but check the Mendelsson, just in case. If not, there should be something else suitable.”

He did as she suggested, finally selecting a CD with “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring” followed by Pachelbel’s Canon. He loaded it into the stereo and adjusted the volume as it played.

“Oh, and you don’t need to call me ‘Mrs. Bosworth’ anymore,” she added. “Please, make it Eleanor.”

“Okay, Eleanor. How are you doing? Are you feeling okay?”

She didn’t look very good.

“I’m much better now, knowing that my granddaughter will be safe.”

There was a knock on the front door, and Eleanor suggested that he answer it.

“That would be the judge,” she pronounced. “It’s showtime.”

Alexa couldn’t believe this!

It was so exciting and so romantic, and she was going to be a part of it. She chose her frilliest, girliest dress, some pink designer thing that the old lady had picked but that Alexa had never worn. There had never been an occasion dressy enough for it until now.

Standing at the mirror, admiring herself once she was ready, she caught sight of the canopy over her fancy bed and got an idea. It was trimmed with a garland of silk flowers, so she kicked off her nice shoes, climbed up on the bed, and reached as high as she could to pull the flowers down. They were a little dusty but very pretty, so she blew on them with the blow-dryer until they were clean and then used scissors to cut the garland into four pieces.

One piece she wrapped into a circle, to wear on her head like a crown of flowers. She made a second one for Jo, in case she wanted it, then the third she fashioned around Chewie’s neck, like a collar. Finally, with the small clump that was left, she formed a bridal bouquet for Jo to carry. Alexa didn’t know much about weddings, but she knew that the maid of honor should be helpful in as many ways as she could.

Alexa led Chewie out of the room and knocked on Jo’s door, and when Jo answered, it was obvious right away that the flowers had been the perfect touch. Jo looked really, really pleased, especially when she saw the flowers on Chewie too. That made Alexa’s heart soar. She liked Jo so much, and she really wanted to make her happy.

Instead of wearing the whole ring of flowers on her head, Jo decided to pull out just one and pin it in her hair. Then she put the rest in her bouquet.

“So what do you think?” Jo asked, stepping back from the mirror and twirling around.

“I think you look like a bride,” Alexa said, grinning widely.

They didn’t waste much time down in the study. With the door safely closed and only Jo and Danny, Alexa, Eleanor, Sidney, and the bodyguard in attendance, the judge started right in with the ceremony.

Though Jo was thrilled to be standing at Danny’s side, about to become his wife, she also couldn’t help but feel sad. For a day she had dreamed of her entire life, this wasn’t exactly how she had envisioned it. She hated that none of their friends were there, or Danny’s family, or that their minister was not even the person conducting the ceremony. Instead, it was some judge Jo didn’t even know, reading the words for the ceremony out of a black book that wasn’t even the Bible. It was just some handbook for civil servants.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he began, “we are gathered here to join this man and this woman in matrimony…”

Not
holy
matrimony? Just matrimony? Jo hated that, hated that they were racing through the biggest moment of their lives, totally pressured, just so some aspiring murderer might be thwarted in his or her schemes. Jo thought of the people who had had access to that toaster, and it struck her that even her own parents might somehow be involved in the attempts on her life.

Jo pictured her mother as she had been today, in the garden, and her words of warning against marrying Danny. When Jo tried to reconcile that with Danny’s own story about how her mother had attempted to woo him back to America with a big job offer and then suddenly changed course and took steps to get him fired instead, it didn’t make any sense.

He’s not good enough for you
, she had said. Good enough? Jo thought now. He was far more than she deserved or ever dreamed of.

“Danny Watkins,” the judge was saying, instructing them to face each other and join their right hands, “do you take this woman to be your lawfully wedded wife, to have and to hold, from this day forward…”

Jo’s mind was spinning.

Just don’t marry Danny Watkins, whatever you do
, her mother had said.

But why had she said it? A few weeks ago, when Jo finally told her mother about the change in her relationship with Danny—that they had gone from friends to much-more-than-friends—the woman had been thrilled. So why the change of heart today, in the garden? Why the strange tactics with Danny in Europe?

“I do,” Danny said now, his voice strong and sure.

Jo looked at him and she felt terrible, terrible that such a dear and loving man was being manipulated, just as she had been manipulated.

Just don’t marry Danny Watkins, whatever you do
.

“Josephine Tulip, do you take this man…”

As the judge asked her one of the most important questions of her life, Jo gasped, realizing with sudden clarity that her mother had been using reverse psychology on her! Helen Tulip knew that Jo was just stubborn enough and just angry enough that the one way to get Jo to do what Helen wanted was to tell her specifically not to do it. She told Jo “don’t marry Danny” so that Jo
would
marry Danny.

“…till death do you part?”

Till death did they part. Slowly, Jo shook her head, her heart pounding.

“I’m sorry,” she said suddenly, looking from Danny to the judge to her grandmother. “But I don’t. Not right now. Not like this.”