Page 58 of Jon's Helter Skelter Cold Case

Gonzalez let out a low whistle. “Learn something new everyday. I’ll keep this in mind but I think we’re definitely on the right track.”

Marc sounded a bit too pleased over there. “I’ve got two more interviews lined up in this state, then I fly to the third, but we’re making progress on narrowing the list down. Javier had to take a call, but once he’s done, I’ll have hubby call the companies and get a list of who all bought one of their systems in the past year.”

Which should be easy enough to do. It would be sold to an individual, not a company, so that narrowed the field of possibilities drastically. And hopefully? This would lead us to him.

Short of the perp messing up and just standing around in the open, I didn’t know how else we were going to locate this SOB.

20

Saturday finally dawned. It was wedding prep day now that we had our location and date set, which meant getting invitations out and planning for all the ceremony stuff. I was so excited to do this, I could barely get to sleep last night.

I’d dreamed of wedding ideas, and fantasy, and costumes. I’d woken up with ideas.

Which should scare everyone. Kekekekeke.

We ate breakfast, played some with the cats. They were complaining they were being neglected, which was their usual song. I could pet them all day and they would tell me they were neglected, so…

By that time, our mothers had arrived. With things. Many things. In boxes I helped carry in, and from the weight of the boxes, this was either gold bricks or paper. Likely paper considering we were doing invitations. Mom was the first one through the door, Donovan following behind.

Mom had a definite bounce in her step as she put things down on the bar.

“Donovan, the box in your hands has all the mailing labels.”

I gestured toward the box I’d just set down. “What’s in here?”

“The invitations.”

My eyes about bugged out of my head. “Mom! You’ve only had three days to get them printed!”

She just laughed. “I found a local place that does overnight turnaround. You already approved the design, after all.”

Well, I had, but…seriously? I didn’t know you could get things printed so fast!

Curiosity compelled me to open the box and take a look for myself. We hadn’t wanted the invitations to look serious, considering the theme of the party, so Donovan had suggested using our two cats as models. I’d instantly loved the idea. So those two were on the front of the invitation, which was made to look like a postcard, with our return address on the back right so people could check a box and RSVP without much trouble, and a link to RSVP online if they prefered.

On the back side, it read:

Our humans have decided to tie the knot!

We invite you to eat pizza, play games, and celebrate the wedding of

Jonathan Bane

And

Donovan Havili

On September 25, 2021.

The rest was time, location, and a request to RSVP by either website or returning the postcard.

I blinked. Blinked again.

“Uh…we have a website?”

“Skylar’s contribution,” Mom explained while plonking herself onto the barstool. “So we can have people upload any pictures they take and such.”

“Ohhh.” Trust my niece to think of that. “Cool. I’m all for it.”

---