“Can someone tell me what happened?” Mel asked. She was fighting to keep her voice even and not sound impatient. It was a struggle.
Al cleared his throat. “The limo company wasn’t answering their phone, but when Ange did get through, she found out that the driver they’d hired was—”
Al stopped. Just like that. As if his voice had vanished, too.
“Was what?” Mel cried. “Double booked? Sick? Missing? What?”
“Dead,” Paulie said. “Bludgeoned to death with a tire iron.”
Four
Mel’s legs gave out and she sank onto the nearest stool. Angie let out a wail that sounded as hysterical as an abandoned kitten on an iceberg in the Arctic.
“Dead?” Mel repeated as if it were a motion requiring a second.
“Yeah,” Tony said. “They found his body last night outside the company’s garage. It looked like a robbery, so the police have been investigating it as such, but now—”
Mel blinked at him, waiting for him to finish his sentence.
He glanced back down at the gadget in his hands.
“Now what?” Mel asked Angie.
Angie scrubbed her face with her fist and sucked in a steadying breath. “Now they think it might have been murder and that it has something to do with Tate and me getting married.”
“‘They’ being Uncle Stan?” Mel asked.
“Yeah, he seems to feel that it’s too coincidental and that there is someone out there with a grudge against Tate or me and they’re trying to stop our wedding.”
Mel shook her head. “Not to state the obvious, but wouldn’t it be easier to go after you or Tate directly?”
The brothers collectively gasped.
“I didn’t say I wanted that to happen, just that it would be more expedient than murdering everyone involved in their wedding,” Mel said.
“That’s what I said,” Angie agreed. “But Uncle Stan and Tate were pretty freaked out, so now I have them.” She hooked her thumb at her brothers. “They are going to watch me right up until the ceremony to make sure nothing happens to me.”
“What about Tate?” Mel asked. “Who’s watching him?”
“Stan has assigned plainclothes policemen to watch all of our vendors and Tate,” Angie said. Her voice wobbled and she looked at Mel and said, “I can’t believe this is happening.”
Mel rose half out of her seat and hugged her friend. “We don’t know that it’s directed at you two. It could still be coincidence.”
“Not to be negative,” Tony said, “but my calculations on the probability of this being a random happenstance are fifty to one.”
Mel would have asked him how he arrived at that conclusion, but math was not her gift and he’d likely offer up some complicated algorithm that would just make her feel dumb. Tony was the only person she knew who actually did math equations for relaxation. Weirdo.
“But everyone loves you and Tate,” Mel said. “Who could possibly want to stop your wedding?”
“Christie Stevens’s family,” Al said. “Her father has hated Tate since she was murdered and I wouldn’t put it past that guy to hire some muscle to ruin Tate’s life in revenge.”
Mel’s eyes went wide. Tate’s former fiancée had been murdered a couple of years ago. She hadn’t liked Christie but she’d never wished death on the woman. Besides, her murder had been proven to have nothing to do with Tate. Why would someone be out to get him now?
Mel paced the kitchen. She didn’t like this. She didn’t like it at all. As much as she disliked Tony’s stats, the coincidence was unsettling. Then she had a disturbing thought. She glanced at Angie and wondered if she should say anything. Maybe it hadn’t occurred to her yet, but then again, if plainclothes officers were being assigned to everyone attached to Tate and Angie’s wedding—
Mel didn’t get the chance to take the thought any further.
The doors to the kitchen slammed open with a bang. Tony and Paulie assumed fighter’s stances, while Al wrapped his arms around Angie and dragged her to the floor.
“What the hell?” Angie cried. “Al, get off of me!”
“I can’t work like this!” Oz cried.
He stomped into the kitchen and Mel noticed a petite little redhead with delicate features right on his heels. Oz whipped around and bent low so that they were eye to eye, or more accurately in Oz’s case, eye to hair, since he wore his bangs over his eyes all the way to his nose.
“This area is off-limits!” he barked at the woman.
For anyone else, this would have been a terrifying sight. Oz had a lip ring, tattoos all over his arms, and when standing straight he was easily six feet, four inches. The redhead did not look impressed in the least.
She crossed her arms over her chest and glared at him with flinty gray eyes. “Where you go I go.”
“Argh!” Oz roared. He spun around and looked at Mel. “Help me.”
“I wish I could,” Mel said. “But since I have no idea what the problem is it’s hard to know where to jump in.”
“The problem is her!” Oz roared.
The redhead took her badge out of her pocket and was holding it on display for everyone to see. “Officer Hayley Clark. I’ve been assigned to keep watch over Mr. Ruiz.”
“Oz, the name is Oz,” Oz corrected her.
“Whatever you say, Mr. Ruiz,” Officer Clark said. She glanced around the kitchen and Mel got the feeling she was looking for access points from outside and doing a risk assessment.
When she noticed Al, still holding Angie in a huddle, she bent low and asked, “And who do we have here? Do you need help, miss?”
Al let his sister go, and Angie struggled back into her seat. She huffed out a breath and looked at Officer Clark and then at Mel. “Why can’t I have her? She’d be so much less annoying than these three.”
Mel shrugged.
“Officer Clark, this is Angie
