Page 8 of A Dead End Wedding

Tess sighed. “I’ll try to reach out to Frazzle. Sometimes if I leave honey out for her, she’ll come to visit me. Well, more to visit my cat than me, but still.”

“Okay. I’m out.” Ruby kissed Tess on the cheek, patted my arm, and waved to Eleanor, and then she was gone.

“I should have given her the collar to try on Pickles the pug,” Tess said, grinning.

“What collar?”

Eleanor explained, and then she asked me to turn into a tiger, so she could see if the collar worked on cats. I declined, but I thought the idea was pretty funny.

“I’m not sure I want to know what you’re thinking when you’re in your tiger form,” Tess said, tapping her chin with one finger. “It’s probablyEat squirrel, chase laser pointer.”

I laughed. “Not a big fan of squirrel. And I’m thinking the same thing as a tiger as I am when I’m in this shape: Protect Tess. Find food. Take a nap.”

“Cats. You’re all the same,” Tess said, but she walked over and hugged me. Even in her Dead End Pawn T-shirt, faded jeans, and sneakers, she was the most beautiful woman I’d everknown. I knew this kind of thing was subjective, but to me, she was perfect.

Funny, smart, and so caring. The entire town loved her. I didn’t mind the long legs, gorgeous red hair, or the big blue eyes, either. And—miraculously—she loved me.

“I can’t believe it’s still ten days till the wedding,” I said, pulling her close. “Are you sure we can’t elope? I’m ready for you to be my wife.”

Eleanor groaned and rolled her eyes. “You two are even worse than Bill and I were.”

“Oh, I don’t think so,” Tess said. “Or do I need to bring up the champagne incident?”

Eleanor’s face turned bright red, which was an interesting clash with her orange dress. “Never you mind, Tess Callahan.”

“What champagne incident?”

Tess laughed. “Sorry. I was sworn to secrecy. I can only say?—”

Her phone rang, loudly, withGirls Just Want to Have Funas the ringtone.

“Oh, no. It’s Lorraine. I hope it’s not a problem with the catering.”

Beau’s Diner, a fixture in Dead End and the only sit-down restaurant in town for a long time, was providing the food for the wedding. I’d asked Tess if she didn’t prefer a fancier menu, but she’d only laughed and said we were lucky the Southern United Methodist Women’s group wasn’t doing a potluck.

Apparently, there’d been multiple offers.

“What?” Tess’s voice got a little squeaky, and she shot me a look of dismay. “I didn’t even know therewasa troll in the Dead End swamp!”

“Put it on speaker.”

She nodded at me and tapped her phone.

“… is, and he’s here. And he wants lunch. And he smells so terrible. I can’t let him eat inside, or he’ll run everybody else out of the place. The health department would declare Beau’s a hazmat location, if the health department had any jurisdiction in Dead End.”

For former mayor Lorraine Packard to be mentioning bureaucratic nonsense, she must be pretty stressed out.

“Then let him eat outside,” I said.

“Jack? Sure, but I can’t just tell him to eat outside, like a stray dog. No matter how bad he smells, he’s a citizen of Dead End.”

“No, Lorraine, I meant to set up a few tables for an outdoor dining section.”

“He’ll see right through it when nobody else eats out there,” she hissed into the phone.

“Is he in hearing range?” Tess asked.

“I don’t know. Jack and his superior tiger hearing made me rethink who can hear what from where. So, what now?”

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