changed into jeans, t-shirt and moccasins. I always felt underdressed when I was with Rusty in his detective clothes. We went to a restaurant that served dinner and dessert. Rusty ordered dinner. I ordered cheesecake.
“You have to eat more than cheesecake,” he said.
“What’s wrong with cheesecake? Milk, cheese, eggs, flour. I don’t need meat every day.”
“Cass.”
“Okay,” I said looking up at the waitress, “with strawberries on top. I’ll add fruit, it’s healthier than caramel sauce. Is that better?” After the waitress left I turned back to Rusty. “I won’t need another cheesecake fix for a couple of weeks. Besides, some lady thought I was homeless and handed me a hamburger while I was walking home from the hospital.”
He shook his head grinning. “My poor homeless fiancée.”
“I have a homework assignment for you.” I said over dinner. “I need you to make a list of everyone you should invite to the wedding. Family, relatives, friends, co-workers, anybody who would want to be invited. And I will need addresses for all those people, too. I need to get a head count so I can find a place to have the wedding.”
“Can’t we keep it simple?”
“We could try, but I doubt if we’ll succeed. Just make the list and you’ll see how impossible that is. Think of how many people there are just at the station and it’s already a big wedding. Plus, my mom will be in her element with this. She didn’t get to go all out the first time around. She basically just showed up for the ceremony and Jack and I wore our dress uniforms. She’s going to have fun with this. But the first step is getting a head count. Then, with the count in mind, we look for a location. After we have a few places in mind we can try for a date.”
“I thought the date was up to us.”
“In a way it is, but we also have to work with the schedule of the person performing the ceremony and the site where the ceremony will take place. So what day would you like to shoot for? It takes at least three months to plan a wedding. At this point we are looking at July, but we need to avoid holidays. Everybody at the station is going to be busy over Independence Day Weekend so that’s out.”
“This is going to be complicated, I can tell already.”
“I’ll make you a deal. I’ll make your assignments short and easy if you’ll have patience when things get crazy. The list of addresses will probably be the toughest one.”
“What else?”
“You might be thinking about who you want for attendants. I hope it’s a short list because I don’t know anybody besides my sister who would be a bride’s maid. I suppose I could talk Rhonda into it if I had to. After that I draw a blank. I think Steve and Randy would feel pretty silly standing up there. So, if you can, think of two people that would work and I’ll talk to Rhonda.”
“What else?”
“That’s all for now. You’ll have to get fitted for a tux later.”
“That can’t be all.”
“I told you I’d keep your part easy.”
“What if I want to help?”
“If you want a really tough assignment then plan the honeymoon.”
I could tell this idea interested him. Where would a cop and a tracker go on their honeymoon?
“Where do you want to go?”
“I don’t know, surprise me.”
“Well, what do you want to do?”
“I want to spend time with you.”
“Do you want to rough it or go easy?”
“To be honest, I don’t want to spend my whole honeymoon in a tent. And I definitely don’t want to eat oatmeal for breakfast. And I’d prefer to avoid all kinds of backpacker food except trail mix.”
He smiled at me, glad to see my outdoors fix was over for a while. Maybe, if people would watch where they were going in the woods, we’d have a few days to ourselves.
After dinner Rusty excused himself, “What’s the patient’s name?”
“Angie Grey.”
Rusty went outside to make the phone call so I wouldn’t try and read him during the conversation. He knew me too well. He came back looking somber.
“We’ll try again in the morning,” he said when he got back to the table. “It was good news, just not the news you were hoping for.”
It was going to be a long night. Rusty’s cell phone rang and he got up to answer it, wandering off again. I always made a point to not listen to his work conversations.
“That was Strict,” he said on his return. Lou Strickland, Search Commander. “He just wanted to know how you were doing. He said we should go do something fun tomorrow. You’ve been running yourself ragged.”
“I am not, I’m just wishing this last one had turned out more positive.”
“Nope, Strict is right. You do need a break. Let’s start a different search.” I looked at him quizzically. “I have something I want to show you. Tomorrow.”
In the morning we called the hospital again to check on Angie. She was conscious now. Things were looking up. I was able to relax a little.
We drove up into the hills and wound around on some back roads. Rusty pulled up into the driveway of a ranch style home. The yards were landscaped and the house looked freshly painted. A welcome sign was nailed to the wall beside the front door and pots of flowers lined the porch. We walked to the front door and Rusty rang the bell.
The door was answered by an older woman, maybe seventy-five years old. She brightened when she saw Rusty. She was dressed in slacks and a polyester blouse with flowers embroidered all over it. Her clothes were immaculately pressed, not a wrinkle in sight, well, not on her clothes anyway. She walked with a delicate grace as she led us into her living room.
“Mrs. Morgan, this is Cassidy.”
She looked me up and down and gave Rusty a sly look. “I’m pleased to meet you Cassidy,” she said politely.
“It’s good to meet you too,” I replied, curious about why we were there.
“Cass, Mrs. Morgan is trying to sell her home. I’ve been looking around in my spare time while you were out with the team and so far this is the first house I found that I’ve wanted to show you. I don’t know exactly what you are looking for in a house. I just know the condo is not a good long-term solution for us, so I’ve been watching for a house that you might like.”
He’d been looking at houses? He never said anything about looking at houses! He looked at me uncertainly. Okay, so I’d look at the house.
