Orange Blossoms & Mayhem (Fantascapes) (31 page)

But I couldn’t. I already had a full-time obligation right here. Interpol was not part of my future. But that wasn’t going to keep me from looking good in front of Rhys. Or from being ready for anything at any moment. I was the youngest Halliday. I was female, and damn proud of it. And on Saturday, come what may, I was gonna
shine
.

When helping my friend Marybeth shop for a wedding gown, we’d gone to Sarasota, Tampa, and Orlando. We’d even taken a jaunt to the foreign country of Miami. And ended up buying a gown on the South Trail in Golden Beach. So that’s where I’d made prior arrangements for Marina and possible bridesmaid. Frankly, I tend to be pretty laid back about wedding gowns. I can admire the dresses, the overall look, but I don’t get all starry-eyed, picturing myself dolled up in one of those elaborate creations of silk, pearls, and glass beads. I don’t see myself clutching a bunch of flowers, floating down the aisle, my vision obscured by a veil. Who thought that one up anyway? Are veils some holdover from medieval days when the groom didn’t see his arranged bride until the veil was lifted at the altar? And the bride couldn’t get a good look at him until ditto? Now wasn’t
that
a happy thought?

Oddly enough, as we embarked on our wedding gown expedition on Thursday morning, the language barrier wasn’t much of a problem. Probably because weddings and shopping were a universal language needing no translation. Yes, no,
da
,
nyet
. Smiles, nods, shrugs, waving hands. Marina, Dasha, and I spoke the international language of women.

I sneaked a peek at Dasha when she came out of the dressing room in a third possible choice of bridesmaid gown—spring green with white embroidery—and for a fraction of a second, I almost felt sorry for her. She looked as bored as I felt. Actually, come to think of it, I was just the teensiest bit glad to see her suffer. I definitely didn’t care for Dasha. And then, when she looked in the shop’s three-way mirror, I saw her eyes light up. The gown’s asymmetrical hem was lettuce-edged, as were the short sleeves, with tiny white rosebuds scattered among the embroidered leaves. This was a gown far more chic and attractive than the two previous ones she’d tried on. Enough so that the tough-girl façade wavered, cracking just long enough for a real person to shine through. A few intriguing moments before her face shuttered and Dasha was once again the bored sophisticate, tolerating her fitting because it was her job.

Interesting. I was almost sorry I’d noticed. If we ended up in a worst-case scenario on Saturday, with me going hand to hand with Dasha, the most ruthless was going to win. I didn’t want to see her as human.

But that wasn’t going to happen. Viktor might be playing me, but I was certain he wasn’t interested in seeing me dead. Therefore, I didn’t need to worry about Dasha.

Probably.

Maybe . . .

A chorus of
oos
and
ahs
filled the shop—from other customers as well the sales clerks—as Marina appeared in yet another wedding gown. There was no question. This was
it
. We settled into the nitty gritty of fittings, underpinnings, shoes, stockings, garters, and on and on . . . but actually, it wasn’t so bad. Dressing Marina was rather like playing with a life-size doll. She smiled and chattered to Dasha in Russian. She turned, she preened, she chortled and clapped her hands. In short, she was so thrilled, it was impossible to be ogre-ish. Even Dasha gritted her teeth and kept smiling.

And—okay, I admit it—at one point I was almost suckered in. It was a long day, punctuated by nothing but a fifteen-minute sandwich and soda break from the 7/11 across the street, and my brain was beginning to wander. I pictured myself in a gorgeous gown like Marina’s, moving in stately procession up the aisle, my train spread out behind me. The organ playing, people smiling.

My veil concealing who was waiting at the altar.

To borrow from Rhys’s basic Brit,
bloody, effing hell!
How did people with weird jobs ever manage to get married?

The owner of the Golden Beach Bridal Shop had just said something to me, and I missed it. I came out of my fantasy fast. She was beaming, enthusiastic about the bride, proud of what her business had managed. She gave me a quick estimate of the bill she would be presenting tomorrow when we picked up our selections.

No problem, I told her. Viktor had given me a wad of cash that had prompted me to go wedding-gown shopping while carrying concealed. Not that I wouldn’t have done so anyway with Dasha around. Thirty nice crisp hundred dollar bills. Which also included the cost of a modest American wardrobe for his bride, a task we were expected to fit into one day. Friday. This wedding was costing Viktor a bundle.

Not that he wasn’t getting his money’s worth in Marina Galikova.

To give me a clue about what street clothes Marina would need, I’d asked Viktor where they were going for the honeymoon. He favored me with one of his lascivious winks and said, “
Nichevo
. Make American girl, yes? Not Ukraine bride.”
Nichevo
is a word that covers a lot of ground. In this case, I suspected Viktor was saying the kind of clothes I bought for Marina really didn’t matter. He just wanted her to look like an American.

O-kay, I could do that. But this additional touch of generosity, combined with the sordid facts of Viktor’s life as Aleksei Tatarkin, just added one more mystery to the bubbling stew of what was, or was not, going down in Calusa County, Florida, on Saturday.

Friday went by in a blur. No surprise. We cruised from Golden Beach’s stylish Main Street boutiques to discount stores on the South Trail, running the gamut from dresses, slacks, jeans, shorts and shirts to bras, panties, shoes, socks, a lightweight jacket, and a large rolling suitcase. The Lexus was piled high with plastic bags even before we stopped at the bridal shop on the way back from Target and Beall’s. I handed over a large amount of cash, fitted the enormous plastic bags with Marina’s and Dasha’s gowns on top of everything else, and dropped both girls and bundles at The Beach Inn. But not before I’d written down the time I would pick them up on Saturday to take them to Three Rivers, where they would don their gowns in one of the club’s private reception rooms.

I dashed back to the office, where Mom and Candy assured me that flowers, caterer, and eggs were all on schedule. However, Mom added, there would be a ringer among the students that night when the eggs were set up in the club’s main hall. Also a special addition to the men putting up the wedding canopy. Hopefully, these ringers, both FBI, would be able to find a way to set up audio and video bugs under the watchful eyes of Viktor’s security. Bugs that not only provided information but were an invisible life line connecting me to our own security teams outside.

That night, I told Rhys I was going to Three Rivers alone, but he held his ground. He might have avoided a face-to-face with Viktor these past few days, but Viktor couldn’t help but know the man from Interpol was in town, that he’d visited the club. Ostensibly, Rhys would be tagging along in the capacity of “friend,” he told me, waggling his eyebrows suggestively. Adding his male support to the finish of my long, hard day. What, after all, could be worse than shopping?

I had to laugh. He was
so
right. Some time, along about mid-afternoon, I’d sworn off shopping for life.

Rhys nuzzled my neck. “I’m sticking to you like glue, woman. We’ll give the Russkies an eyeful. Maybe they’ll be so busy watching us they won’t see the FBI sleight-of-hand.”

Good point. And the fringe benefits were, well, just what my shopped-out psyche needed. So I let him tag along.

Funny how it’s the little things that get you. I swear my nerves were steadier when Rhys’s Peugeot was filling with water on the bed of the Rhone than they were when I watched the students offload those four eggs, one at a time, onto a dolly and roll them up the handicap ramp into the building. A phalanx of students, hands at the ready, surrounded the dolly in case an egg should decide to topple. And then, naturally, Murphy’s law set in. With the added height of the dolly, the two largest eggs wouldn’t pass through the double doors that opened onto the rear parking lot.

Rhys and I had snuggled our way through the setting up of the wedding canopy, with an occasional smooch and a blatant display of wandering hands—enough, we hoped, to keep Viktor’s three sturdy security goons sneaking peeks at us instead of the FBI guy. But now we dropped the act and rushed forward to add our helping hands to remove the green egg from the dolly. We tilted it, angling it oh-so-carefully through the door, settled it gently onto the vinyl tile floor, then nudged it, inch by inch, into place. Which was, naturally, on the far side of the room.

When the students got the largest egg, the pink one, off the truck, everyone stood there and looked at it for a moment. It truly was gorgeous, with its fluted bands of shining gold, the intricate white filigree, green leaves, hot pink roses, and scattering of glass gems, large and small. But it was
big
. The canopy team stepped forward to help. So did one of Viktor’s goons. And with grunts and heaves, and all of us take-charge types biting our tongues to keep from shouting orders in place of the student who was supposedly running the show, we somehow got the blasted egg onto its mark.

And then came the painstaking, but less iffy project of opening the shimmering pink egg wide and fitting the jade green egg inside. That done, the green egg was laid back on its hinges and the blue one set inside. And finally the iridescent white egg that would house the bride. It stood there, closed, glorious in its beauty, purity, and innocence—the perfect setting for Marina Galikova. Once again, Fantascapes had done good.
Yay, hoo-ray
.

One of the student girls stepped forward, opened the white egg, and slipped inside. Two other students gently closed the egg around her until it appeared a seamless whole. Then they pulled the front edges of the blue egg around the white, the green around the blue, and, finally, the pink around the green. The student leader looked at me, and grinned. I nodded.

Heads high, with a flourish that belied their jeans and T-shirts, two students stepped forward like footmen greeting Cinderella’s coach at the palace ball and laid the pink egg open, one on each side, revealing the elaborate decoration on the jade green egg. There was a soft murmur of approval from all who watched, even from Viktor’s wiseguys. The green egg gave way to blue. Pause. The ultimate moment, the opening of the bride’s egg.

And there she was. I didn’t see a student in pony tail, shorts and cut-off tee. I saw Marina, her innocence and beauty the crowning moment of this immense and stunningly effective creative effort. It took my breath away. I lost my cool. At that moment, I might have said yes to the first man who asked me to marry him.

When I managed to get my wits back, I realized the FBI guys could have run around naked during the egg demonstration and no one would have noticed. Not even the guards. All eyes had been focused on Viktor’s vision of his bride emerging from a nest of Fabergé eggs.

“
Is good,” Viktor said, stepping out of the shadows behind me. “Is good job, Laine.”

Damn and blast!
I hadn’t known he was there. I swallowed hard, managed to force out, “Thanks.”

“
Ah, and this is your man, no?” Viktor added expansively.

“
You were watching?”

“
Da, da
. I watch whole time,” Viktor told me, flashing one of his knowing leers. You too busy with friend and eggs to notice me.”

Dear God. What else had he seen? Or had he been as fascinated as the rest of us by the act Rhys and I were putting on and then by the process of setting up the eggs?

“
Excuse me,” I said, escaping Viktor to congratulate the students on a job well done. Although they were scheduled to remove the eggs after the wedding, I’d brought their check with me tonight. It seemed the right moment to deliver the pay-off for all their hard work. Beaming, they grabbed the check and the dolly, and trooped out, the FBI guys tagging along in their midst.

Rhys and I extended our best wishes to Viktor, once again complimenting him on his unique idea for the Fabergé eggs. He grinned, shook our hands with vigor, assured us he could hardly wait. Tonight, suddenly, he was the picture of the eager bridegroom. We said goodbye and headed home.

I actually let Rhys drive. He needed a bone of control now and then, and, besides, I had to talk to Doug. I’d had one last horrible thought about an avenue of escape we hadn’t covered. Tomorrow, Rhys would be stationed as close to the club as he could get—in the back room of a liquor store at the near end of the strip mall along the Trail. The Gerries would be with him. (The store owner was a retired detective from Cleveland and happy to co-operate.) Jeff would be on spotter duty with Flint in the chopper, so Doug was it for this particular emergency. I speed-dialed him, told him to leave his Brazilian to his employees and come home. I needed him. There was, of course, no question about his agreement. Doug was a Halliday.

Rhys, when he heard my end of the conversation, pounded a fist against his forehead and growled low in his throat. “There are times when you positively frighten me,” he said. “God truly smiled on you the day brains were passed out. I missed it, we all missed it.”