Page 93 of Say Yes to the Death

Claire handed the cooler and envelope to Nicole, who moved it to the bar.

“Thank you, sir,” she called to the man as he disappeared down the hallway. “And you are?” She addressed a second man who wore a bright red shirt with Donatelli’s Pizzeria written on it.

“Bayani, Donatelli’s Pizzeria in Los Angeles.” He glanced uneasily at the butcher knife that still dangled from her right hand. He handed over another large, square cooler. “Cook it for four twenty-five for eighteen minutes on the dot. I wrote it down for you,” he said, gesturing to a sticky note.

“I’m guessing this is pizza?”

Bayani scoffed. “It’s not just pizza. We have the best pies in the entire country. Google us. And while you’re at it, go easy on Luke. He’s a good guy. He wanted me to give you this too.” He handed over an unmarked DVD.

“Not creepy at all,” she muttered, transferring the cooler to the already-crowded bar. When she turned back, both men were gone. She shut and locked the door behind her.

“Well,” she said, “should we get to folding?”

Nicole stared blankly at her. “Are you kidding me? Luke sends a pizza delivery boy two thousand miles one way and you’re not even going to look at it?”

Claire sighed and walked over to the oven. She stabbed the preheat button and set it to Bayani’s instructed temperature. But only because she was going to order a pizza anyway. She flipped the lid on the pizza box. “I apologize” was spelled out in half-moons of pepperoni.

“Well, at least he’s becoming more self-aware,” Nicole commented behind her.

Claire grunted and took another sip of wine.

“And the ice cream?” Nicole prompted.

Claire sighed and cut the tape on the cooler. Fog rolled out of the box. Inside, nestled in a confusing apparatus of carefully arranged toothpicks were two perfect vanilla soft serves in cones. Why would he send two? If he was outside her door ready to beg for forgiveness, she was heading for the fire escape.

“It’s…beautiful,” Nicole said, plucking one from the box.

“No sense in wasting it,” Claire admitted and pulled the other cone out. It was exactly as she had remembered. Creamy, cold, perfect. She was usually a chocolate girl, but there was something about Chucky’s vanilla custard. If she closed her eyes, she could practically smell the salt spray in the air and feel the rough wood of the boardwalk beneath her feet.

“You almost have to forgive him after this,” Nicole said in a reverent tone. She had a small ice cream mustache.

Claire straightened up. “Food can’t make up for the fifty thousand lies he told me. Can we talk about something else?”

“The awards are in two days,” Nicole said over a mouthful of cone. “Are you nervous?”

“Why would I be? You’ve seen her proposals. They’re super dull and generic. And she only had five this year—the restaurant one, a football game, amusement park, Santa’s lap, and that one where she staged the groom getting arrested. None of them compare to your proposal. Even with the sabotage.”

It hadn’t been officially proven, but there was a ninety-five percent chance that Wendy had been responsible for loosening a carriage wheel during Nicole’s proposal, causing the bride-to-be to spill out onto the roadway.

Nicole shuddered. “Why is she even still in this business?”

“To beat me. To try to take everything I have. That’s the only thing I can think of. She might have gotten Jason, but she won’t take anything else from me.”

Nicole fiddled with the blank DVD. She held it up to the light as though that would tell her what was on it. “Kyle said your first mediation meeting is next week.”

The oven beeped, and Claire tossed the pizza in harder than was necessary. “Yes. Trapped in a room with two lawyers, a mediator, and my ex-fiancé’s new girlfriend. It’s going to be another fun week.”

Nicole reached across the island and squeezed Claire’s hand. “It’ll be ok. She’s going to lose, and things will go back to normal. She flipped a table on live television and openly admitted to stalking you. Anyone with a pair of functioning eyes can see that she’s unhinged.”

Claire sighed and picked up their wine glasses. She walked them into the living room and set them on the coffee table. “I hope so. Maybe I’ll put the award in a glass case and bring it with me to the meeting. Really rile her up.”

Nicole followed her and sat cross-legged on the rug. “You should absolutely do that. What’s this? Another proposal?”

“Oh,” Claire said, quickly snatching a binder off the table. “Yeah, just some notes for the escape room proposal. It’s going to take a lot of planning.”

But it wasn’t the Escape Room binder. Early that morning, she had done a couple of hours of fruitless Googling. She tried searching for the symbol on her neck, antifeminist groups in the United States, anything that could be relevant. Nothing but some scary forums had come up, but there were countless empty sleeve protectors in the Murder Binder 2.0 waiting to be filled with information on Barney’s secret group.

“What are you doing?” Claire asked. Nicole had crawled over to her gaming console and put something in the disc tray.

---