English Trifle (41 page)

Gayle chuckled and Sadie couldn’t help but join her, knowing that she was being a little ridiculous. She put a hand on Gayle’s arm and leaned in toward her friend. “It’s a good thing you’re sitting next to me,” she said, giving Gayle’s arm a squeeze. “I’d be liable to embarrass myself otherwise.”

Gayle laughed again and cut a bite from her own piece. She paused for a moment after putting it in her mouth and then turned to Sadie. “This is incredible.”

Trixie turned toward them both and nodded, her jaw rhythmically moving as she also chewed her cake.

Sadie gave them both a smile, glad to be sharing the moment with people that could appreciate it. She took yet another bite, able to keep from moaning this time—but just barely.

“How many did you end up making?” Gayle asked, hurrying to take another bite as if the cake might disappear at any moment.

“Eighteen,” Sadie said. “Thank goodness Shawn came into town last night, so he could help me finish up.”

Gayle nodded again, but Sadie noted the distracted look in her friend’s eyes. Eyes that were green tonight. Gayle’s real eye color was mud—Gayle’s word, not Sadie’s—so she bought colored contacts. Green was Gayle’s favorite since it went so well with her curly red hair, but she also had blue and hazel ones. She even had a pair that were violet, which Sadie found a little bit creepy. Who ever heard of someone with purple eyes? Even a woman as beautiful as Gayle—and she was a beautiful woman—had a hard time pulling off purple lenses.

“Shawn didn’t want to come?” Gayle asked once she swallowed yet another bite.

Sadie shook her head. “It’s hard to believe, but he thought spending a Saturday night with his mom at a library fundraising dinner sounded boring. In fact, I think his exact words were ‘dead boring.’ ”

Gayle huffed in feigned offense.

Sadie chuckled and lifted yet another bite to her lips.

The rich chocolate threatened to make her weak in the knees again when her eyes caught movement on the stage. Thom had arrived and was fiddling with his wireless microphone, trying to clip it to the lapel of his suit jacket. Another man, shorter and balding, was trying to help.

“Oh, there’s Thom,” Gayle said, pointing at the stage with her fork. “I’m guessing the little man is his manager? Mr. Ogreski?”

“I would assume so,” Sadie said, watching the men with an air of distraction as she cut another bite.

“Thom looks good,” Gayle continued in an appraising tone. “He’s single, you know.”

Sadie rolled her eyes but couldn’t help but smile at the same time. After Gayle’s divorce five years ago, even the suggestion that she might want to date again was met with thinly veiled violent intents directed at whoever had dared to bring it up. And then, just over a year ago, Gayle accepted a neighbor’s invitation to attend a single’s dance at her church. Gayle was officially introduced to middle-age single life that night, and she hadn’t looked back. Sadie was glad—a woman like Gayle needed people, and people needed women like Gayle. Gayle opened her mouth to say something, but then straightened, dropped her chin coyly, and looked over Sadie’s head. “Speaking of single men,” she said, then smiled brilliantly and cocked her head to the side.

Sadie swiveled in her seat, then smiled and sat up straight as Detective Pete Cunningham entered the ballroom and headed toward their table. If only she’d been able to fit into her black velvet formal. Instead she was in her navy blue sparkle-dress—which was nice, but not nearly as elegant as the flowing dress Gayle was sporting—green, to match her choice of eye color for the evening.

Sadie stood as Pete approached their table. He undid the button of his tux so it wouldn’t wrinkle when he sat down. Dang, but the man looked downright dapper in his patent leather shoes and bow tie. His well-trimmed silver hair and beard were a perfect complement to his formal attire, and for a moment, Sadie thought he might kiss her hello; on the cheek if nothing else. Instead, he gave her a quick hug. “Sorry I’m late—paperwork.”

“Not a problem,” Sadie said as she sat down and he helped push her chair into the table for her. He was always such a gentleman—too much of one sometimes. In the three months they’d been dating, he had yet to kiss her even once. It was beginning to give Sadie a complex.

Pete had met Gayle twice before and said hello while Sadie introduced the other people at their table, including Trixie, whose real name turned out to be Michele. Apparently she was Frank’s niece and an English literature major at CSU. Who knew?

Pete shook hands with the other people at their table—some of whom he already knew—before finally taking his seat. Sadie was nearly bursting with pride to be the girl on his arm. “I’m sorry you missed dinner,” she offered. She should probably offer him some of her cake, but she wasn’t sure their relationship was at that level just yet. Certainly a little lip-locking was prerequisite to sharing devil’s food cake, right? Instead, she waved to get the attention of one of the servers and pointed at her plate and then at Pete. The server nodded and headed toward the doors to the kitchen. Sadie pulled her plate a bit closer to herself in hopes that Pete wouldn’t get any ideas before they returned with his food.

“They’re getting your dinner,” Sadie said.

“Oh, good, I’m starving,” Pete said. He looked toward the stage, drawing Sadie’s attention back to it as well. “I haven’t missed the main event, have I?”

Sadie shook her head. Thom was still fiddling with the microphone. They had someone from the hotel helping him, too. Weird that they were having problems now. The sound system had worked fine for Sadie’s introduction of the evening forty-five minutes earlier. The hotel had a wooden podium with a detachable wired microphone offstage as back up, but everyone had agreed the wireless system was better. She wondered how long they would keep trying to make the wireless microphone work before moving to plan B.

“He doesn’t look much different, does he?” Pete commented, nodding toward Thom.

“Did you know Thom when he used to live here?” Gayle asked, leaning toward them and speaking in a high, sweet voice. Sadie felt a flash of jealousy that surprised her. Was it her imagination or was Gayle being flirtatious? Or was she just insecure about the no-kissing-for-three-months thing?

Pete looked from the stage to Gayle. “I was one of the detectives on his son’s case,” he said.

“Oh,” Sadie and Gayle said at the same time. Sadie wondered why Pete hadn’t told her that before now. But she wasn’t about to ask in front of Gayle.

“Maybe you should remind them about the wired microphone?” Sadie heard herself say to Gayle.

“Me?” Gayle said in surprise, dropping her flirtatious smile for a moment. Pete was one of the few men over the age of fifty that Gayle hadn’t dated in this town, and Sadie wanted to keep it that way.

“I think they’ve forgotten about the back-up microphone,” Sadie said, giving her friend a pointed look. She’d like a few minutes with Pete to catch up on the day. Surely Gayle could understand that.

Gayle was silent, but put down her fork; correctly interpreting Sadie’s look. “Well, I guess I could,” she said. Sadie smiled in thanks. Gayle stood up and put her napkin on her chair before heading toward the front of the room. At the same moment, a server set down both a dinner and a dessert plate in front of Pete. By the time Sadie looked up again, Gayle had disappeared behind the curtain to the right of the stage. Sadie owed her one. Michele stood and excused herself to use the ladies’ room.

“It’s worth the hundred and fifty dollars,” Sadie said, nodding toward Pete’s dinner now that she had him to herself—for the moment anyway. “I promise.” She only wished she could say she’d made it herself. Feeding the people she cared about was one of her favorite things to do.

Pete smiled and winked at her before using his knife to cut off a piece of prime rib. Sadie looked up at the stage in time to see Gayle roll the podium out from the curtains on the right and Thom walk off stage left; he looked frustrated. The hotel worker helped Gayle plug a wire from the floor into a port on the side of the wooden podium. Sadie took another bite of cake in hopes of distracting herself from the guilt of asking Gayle to go up there. Gayle wasn’t even on the board this year; Sadie was the one who should be up there.

Suddenly the stage area cleared except for the manager and the podium. An expectant hush fell over the crowd as everyone realized in the same moment that the presentation was about to start. The manager looked out at the crowd as if just remembering they were there. After straightening his suit coat, he made his way to the podium, which was so tall the microphone pointed over his head. He reached up both hands to adjust the snakelike microphone holder so that he could speak into it. However, when his mouth moved, the microphone failed to pick up the sound. Was there a problem with the entire sound system? Sadie wondered. After all the committee’s work to pull off this dinner, she would be really, really mad if it fell apart now.

Mr. Ogreski continued to wrestle with the microphone, which seemed to be stuck. It was free from the holder now, but the wire, which fed through the hole in the podium, didn’t have much give, and he couldn’t seem to pull the microphone close enough to his mouth. After a few more seconds, Mr. Ogreski clenched his jaw together, adjusted his grip on the microphone, and yanked it toward him, presumably to free the cord that seemed to be tangled within the wooden podium. It didn’t budge. He took a breath and planted his feet, poised to pull again. Sadie let her eyes drift closed—giving herself up to the chocolate ecstasy in her mouth and unable to focus on what was happening onstage for the moment.

In the next instant, a shotgun blast echoed off the walls of the ballroom and all the people in the room screamed in horror while Sadie choked on her cake.