The Stand-in Groom Read online

  He was ten yards from the table, then five, with Percy practically on his heels.

  Percy went to one end of the table while Harold stumbled against the other, bending over and leaning on the edge to catch his breath. Paranoid Percy was wearing the ski mask again, still afraid he would be identified, no doubt.

  She could see the evil leer of satisfaction through the mouth hole. They thought their victims were trapped, and it wouldn’t be hard to drag her into the woods before the pack of bearded giants got there. She didn’t know what they were planning for Nick, but it would probably hurt.

  A lot.

  The timing was everything. Just as Harold straightened to close in for the capture, she yanked on the Elvis bedspread with all her strength. The frosting face slid to the ground, and she screamed with all she had.

  “The cake! He ruined Elvis!”

  Looking for Percy and Harold had been a halfhearted lark for Billy John and the others, the women trailing along in wedding finery for the fun of it. Now the bride’s shriek of indignation was echoed by a blood-chilling roar. The giant groom streaked toward the table with the power of a speeding locomotive.

  Stacy couldn’t hold back. She broke off a sizable corner of the fallen cake and hurled it at Harold.

  “Good throw,” Nick said, getting into the spirit of it.

  He blinded Percy with a big chunk of black-frosting hair, then spun around to push Harold down into the remains.

  “Evidence. Frosting on his hands to prove he did it,” he said as the kidnapper demolished an eye and an ear trying to get up. “Time to go.”

  Nick grabbed her cake-covered hand and pulled her toward the boat’s hiding place. They left behind the sound of sweet vengeance. Stacy glanced over her shoulder to see a beer can bounce off Percy’s head. Harold was trying to crawl under the picnic table, but the bride had retrieved the metal cake tray and was swinging it at his posterior. She heard a lot of boisterous laughter and a few pathetic whines.

  Maybe later she’d feel guilty for wrecking the cake, but at least the happy bride had had a taste of Elvis’ lips. It was a bang-up way to launch a marriage.

  4

  “We have to find a phone,” Stacy said as she trudged wearily along the edge of a blacktop road leading away from the lake.

  “And food.” Nick pointed at a rusty sign barely legible in the dark. “Cairo Casbah Cabins straight ahead.”

  “I wonder what time it is.”

  “It’s a little after eleven. Oddly enough, I still have my watch. And my money and credit cards. You’d think ol’ Perce would have taken them. Once you’ve kidnapped someone, petty theft hardly matters.”

  “Seems like ages since I put this dress on. I won’t be getting married in it. Purple and red frosting is sure to leave a stain.”

  “When’s the wedding?”

  “Second Saturday in August. That’s...” she counted on her fingers “...eight weeks.”

  “So soon?”

  Was it just her or did he sound disappointed? She didn’t have time to think about it further because he took her hand in his. She welcomed the contact. Although the moon was bright, the deserted road still seemed spooky.

  “Marriage is a big step,” he said, giving her hand a little squeeze. “Have you given it a lot of thought?”

  “We’ve been engaged for more than a year, so it’s not as if we’re rushing into it.”

  “Guess not.”

  “Haven’t you ever thought about getting married yourself?”

  “No, not me.”

  “You make it sound like some terrible fate.”

  “I’m sure it’s great for the right people, but what makes you so sure Mercer is the right guy?” He put his arm around her shoulders. “I don’t want you to get cold.”

  “I’ve never heard of Cairo, Michigan,” she said to change the subject. “Wonder exactly where it is?” She had the strangest feeling, as though this was happening to someone else. The closest she’d ever had to an adventure before this was getting tipped out of a canoe at Girl Scout camp. Everything in her life was orderly and unexciting compared to walking along a dark tree-lined road with a sexy man like Nick.

  “My guess is we’re about a hundred and fifty miles northwest of Detroit. Of course, I might have lost track of time in the van.”

  “I hope your head will be all right.”

  “It’s fine now. No more finger tests.” He squeezed her shoulder but not hard. “I gotta say, that was quite a wedding reception.”

  She giggled in agreement. “I’d like to do something memorable for mine, but Jonathan is pretty conservative. He’d never go for an Elvis cake.”

  “How about a cake shaped like Cobo Hall? Frosting cars instead of flowers since they have the big auto show there.”

  “What a good idea!”

  “Or Tiger Stadium with plastic players?”

  “The important thing is not to be ordinary.” She laughed and skipped ahead with a surprising burst of energy.

  “Nothing about you is ordinary. The way you set up Harold to take the blame for the cake was brilliant.”

  “Thank you, kind sir. Do you think they’ve gotten away yet?” She looked back at the dark stretch of road.

  “Doubtful, but I’ll be glad to hole up somewhere. This area must be part of a state park. It’s unusual not to have a lot of cottages on such a nice lake.”

  “Unusual to be kidnapped by a pair of crooks who make the Three Stooges look sophisticated.”

  “I sure wish I knew who their boss is,” Nick said thoughtfully. “But I guess the police will find out. They shouldn’t be hard to track down.”

  “We never did get a good look at Percy.”

  “No, but I could pick Harold out at a convention of sumo wrestlers.”

  “Or a herd of walrus.” She was walking backward, her skirt bunched under one arm.

  “I see lights.”

  She spun around to look.

  “Hurray!” No more kidnappers, no more Billy John bear hugs. She could soak the frosting out from under her nails.

  She’d also be saying goodbye to Nick. He was Huck Finn to her Tom Sawyer, the only other person she knew who’d experienced being kidnapped. It sort of made them a support group of two.

  They reached a pink neon sign in a few minutes.

  The Cairo Casbah Cabins must have been built eons ago to accommodate motorists who came north to visit the country in their Model Ts. They looked like log doghouses.

  “Looks like all the cabins are dark. Either everyone’s gone to bed, or they don’t have any guests,” Nick said, taking her hand and guiding her up a rutted drive.

  “Maybe the place has been abandoned. We could go into Cairo.”

  “Do you feel like walking more? Those blinking red lights are probably on the water tower to warn away small planes. I bet the town is still miles from here,” he said.

  “I guess it couldn’t hurt to knock on the door of the biggest cabin.”

  They walked up to a larger building and saw an office sign over the door.

  Nick rapped on the wooden doorframe.

  “It’s pretty dark inside.” Stacy peered through a bare square window.

  Nick was persistent even though it had to hurt his knuckles to knock so hard. She was ready to give up when a yellow bug light went on over their heads.

  “Got no vacancies,” a crackly old-man’s voice said from behind a dark screen door.

  “What we really need, sir, is a phone,” Nick said.

  “I’m in the business to rent cabins, not loan phones,” the crotchety little man said. “I already told you, I don’t rent out cabins this time of night.”

  “Then you do have a vacancy,” Stacy said.

  “Don’t matter if I do or not.”

  “If you do, maybe you could make an exception just this once,” Stacy said, coming as close to purring as she could. “Our car broke down, and we just got married. See, I’m still wearing my wedding gown.”

  Nic
k snickered. She knew if he did that again, she was going to—to what? What would Miranda do to six feet of muscle and attitude? She’d be afraid to find out! The old man made a comment about dragging in riffraff off the road, and Nick snorted. Stacy poked her elbow into his ribs.

  “Are there phones in your cabins?” he asked. “If there are, we’d be much obliged if you’d rent us a room. I can pay cash.”

  “’Course there are phones. Electric lights, space heaters, indoor plumbing. My cabins got all the amenities you city folks can’t live without.”

  “You got me wrong, sir. I’m a country boy. Daddy raises sugar beets up in the thumb.”

  “Do tell?”

  The wispy-haired man stepped closer to the screen. He seemed to be wearing an old-fashioned red nightshirt partially tucked into a pair of jeans.

  “Of course, my little bride is from Detroit.” He said it the way Billy John had with the accent on the first syllable. Now she was pretty sure he watched Hee Haw reruns.

  “Well, come on in,” the cabin manager said grudgingly. “Guess I got one left.”

  “For cash,” Nick reiterated.

  The front room ran the length of the roomy log cabin and had a maple living room set and a ten-inch TV. At the far end, a floor lamp with a low-watt bulb was on, probably so the man could walk to the door without stumbling.

  A small counter divided the living room from the official check-in area. The owner stepped behind it and flicked on an overhead light.

  “I can let you have unit three. That’ll be forty-five dollars for the night. What’s left of it.”

  Nick counted out three twenties. “A little something extra for yourself. I don’t want anyone disturbing our honeymoon.”

  He gave the man a lewd wink and took the key, an antique-looking iron one hanging on a piece of wood the size of a Ping-Pong paddle.

  “I hope the honeymoon ain’t as rough as the wedding,” the old man commented, looking at Stacey with knowing eyes.

  They managed not to giggle until they were behind the locked door of cabin three.

  Elvis could have stayed there. The bedspread didn’t exactly match the Trail’s End memento, but it was the same drab tan with ratty fringing.

  The motif was mythical Mexican with slumbering men in huge sombreros improbably leaning against saguaro cacti. The headboard, nightstand, and three-drawer dresser were vintage mission oak, and the door of a bathroom the size of a phone booth stood open.

  “It feels like a coffin,” she said. Her short-lived burst of energy on the road had ebbed away.

  “I have to admit I’ve never seen knotty-pine walls and ceiling,” Nick said. “It’s like being inside a box. But here’s the phone.”

  A corded landline. Nineteen seventies, here we come.

  “My parents must be worried sick,” she said.

  “You call them first. I’m sure your mom called the cops since she saw the kidnapping. She must be frantic.”

  He shook his head and gave her the receiver, his hand warm when it brushed against hers.

  She smiled her thanks. How could she have gotten through this without him? She owed him so much for trying to rescue her, for getting her off the island unharmed, for bolstering her courage by being so brave himself. Words failed her.

  “I’ll call my parents. They can tell Jonathan and everyone else I’m okay. I won’t talk long—not longer than I have to.”

  He nodded. “I’ll wash up a little.”

  He was giving her privacy, at least what was possible in the tiny cabin. Suddenly she felt all weepy, and it wouldn’t do to be emotional with her parents. They’d think she was hurt or hysterical or something.

  She dialed the familiar number, and her dad picked up on the first ring.

  “Dad, it’s me. I’m okay.”

  “Thank God! Where are you? Are you sure you’re all right?”

  “I’m sure about being all right—not so sure where we are. Have you ever heard of Cairo?”

  “Egypt?” Her mother had picked up the extension.

  “No, Mom. Cairo, Michigan. Oh, please don’t cry!”

  She started getting questions from both of them at once.

  “I don’t know why they kidnapped me... No, I’m not alone. Nick is with me... Yes, Nick Franklin... I’m not hurt. I’m perfectly fine, but the dress I was trying on is ruined. I feel terrible about it... Yes, I’ll talk to Jonathan.”

  “I’ll be right there to get you, darling,” her fiancé said, sounding even more panicky than her parents.

  She told him the name of the nearest town, but he’d have to rely on a map or GPS to find it.

  “I’m in a little cabin. I can stay here all night if I have to, so you don’t have to break any speed records getting here,” she told him.

  Jonathan wasn’t ready to let her hang up.

  “Yes, I can use a knight in shining armor about now,” she agreed with him, not pointing out that Nick had already filled that position. “Yes, the man who tried to stop the kidnappers is with me now.”

  Jonathan wanted to know everything about the kidnappers and their escape, but she didn’t want Nick’s family to worry a moment longer than they already had. Jonathan promised again to get there as quickly as possible.

  “Yes, me, too,” she said before she signed off, too self-conscious to say the three words to Jonathan now that Nick had returned from the bathroom.

  She hung up and looked into Nick’s dark-brown eyes, noticing for the first time how they seemed to radiate warmth.

  “Jonathan’s coming. Sorry I talked so long.”

  “You didn’t.”

  “He’s on the way. You can ride home with us, of course.”

  She handed him the phone and gave him the same courtesy he’d given her by going into the tiny bathroom and closing the door.

  Yeah, the three of us can ride back together, Nick thought wryly. There was a plan. Already he didn’t like her fiancé, and he hadn’t even met him.

  His mother had been hovering by the phone. When she heard his voice, she did something Sue Bailey Franklin never did. She cried.

  His brother Cole came on the line.

  “You okay for real?” he asked.

  “I’m fine.”

  “Gramps used to worry one of us might get snatched when we were little and cute,” his older half-brother said. “Don’t know why they’d kidnap a pug-ugly guy like you now.”

  “I was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  Nick was so not in the mood to go over the whole thing now. He glanced at the bathroom door, wondering if Stacy was as calm as she seemed.

  “You were all over the six o’clock news,” his brother said. “The clerk at the bridal salon must have called the TV stations, then the police. At least, they arrived in that order.”

  “Just what I need.”

  Now that he thought about it, he did have a headache.

  “Where are you? Zack’s here. Marsh, too. They want to come get you.”

  Did he want to spend two or three hours in a car with his grandfather pumping him for details?

  “Cairo, somewhere in North Central Michigan. All I know is it’s near a lake with an island. Maybe in some kind of wildlife preserve or state park since there’s not much population. I have a ride home with Stacy. I’ll tell you all about it when I get there.”

  “Ah...” Cole hesitated. “Her fiancé has been in and out of the house. Volunteered to deliver the ransom money.”

  “Did you get a ransom demand?”

  “No, but he volunteered anyway. Hey, it’s no trouble to come pick you up.”

  “Thanks, but I’ll get there okay. Convince Mom I’m fine. We were never in any real danger. The kidnappers were idiots.”

  He said goodbye, pretty sure he’d made the right decision by not letting his family come for him. This would give them time to calm down—especially Marsh. After getting expelled from college, he hated sending his grandfather into a tailspin. He’d probably gone ballistic over th
e kidnapping.

  Nick was in no hurry to lay all the details about the kidnapping on him, not that he understood them himself. The two morons hadn’t even taken his money. So who planned the abduction and sent those fools to carry it out?

  Stacy came out of the bathroom, her face pink-cheeked and clean, her hair honey-blond where she’d slicked it down with water. She moved with a natural grace he was pretty sure couldn’t be taught. Even in the stained and torn dress, she made a beautiful bride. “Is your mom okay?” she asked.

  “She will be now that her youngest son is off the hostage list. I will take you up on the ride, though. Otherwise my grandfather will insist on coming.”

  “It’s the sensible thing to do. Where do you live?”

  “Livonia. My brothers own a duplex there. I’m their temporary tenant. Beats living with my grandfather.”

  “Yeah, there comes a time when it’s nice to be on your own. I have a little apartment in Royal Oak. My roommate got married at Christmas, so it’s all mine. It’s kind of nice not accounting to anyone.”

  “Until you tie the knot.”

  “Well, yes, of course.”

  “Are you hungry?” Silly question, he knew. She didn’t even get her fill of Elvis’ chin.

  “Yes, but I’m more tired. Do you mind?” She gestured at the conventional-size double bed. “I’ll just close my eyes for a few minutes.”

  “Go ahead. I’ll see if there’s such a thing as pizza delivery in the backwoods.”

  She pulled off the grimy spread and the tan all-weather insulated blanket and dropped down on the top sheet, her skirt fanning across the bed. He couldn’t be sure, but she may have been asleep before her head hit the pillow.

  The cabin had a single chair, probably leftover from an old kitchen set. The plank seat was solid wood painted pond-scum green. He sat and picked up the thin phone directory.

  Cairo had two restaurants. The first didn’t answer the phone. The manager of the second had a good laugh when Nick asked about delivery, but promised a great pastie, Northern Michigan’s version of a meat pie, if Nick came there.

  He was tempted until he asked how far it was from the Cairo Casbah Cabins. Three miles there and three back meant a six-mile trek. He decided to pass. He hung up and tried to get comfortable on the chair, even taking off his shoes and propping his feet on the end of the bed. It didn’t take long for his butt to go numb and his legs to feel stiff.