Beach Wedding(64)

“You did this,” Tom said, turning toward me. “This was what you were doing? Running around all this time? You were trying to get them to open up Dad’s case?”

I hadn’t told the others what was going on yet. I was going to wait till after the wedding. But this publicity changed everything.

“No,” I said, shrugging. “I had nothing to do with it.”

They all stared at me in shock as I knocked back my drink in one shot.

“Only kidding,” I said, throwing my hands in the air.

“It was all me, Tom. And, yes, that’s why I’ve been running around. Remember you said keep my badge handy? Well, I followed your advice and it worked. Hailey thought she was free and clear. Fat chance. We just nailed that bitch to the floorboards.”

“But how?” Mickey said.

So I told them. About how I found the Sutton Slay files, my interviews with the staff, how the chauffeur was coming forward as a witness. Of course, as with Courtney, I lied about the whole stealing-the-evidence thing. What they didn’t know there couldn’t hurt them.

I also left out the part about our father possibly being murdered. We still had a wedding to attend. The wake could wait until after.

“Oh, you sneaky little son of a bitch,” Tom said, hugging me. “What a wedding gift. Just what I wanted. Hailey Sutton in an orange jumpsuit!”

Then we all turned toward Finn, who was over at the sound system when suddenly the strains of Chumbawamba’s one-hit wonder—and the Rourke family theme song—filled the room.

“‘I get knocked down, but I get up again’!” we sang as we knocked over barstools and shoved at each other, jumping up and down, making more noise than the kids.

“‘Ain’t ever gonna keep me down’!”

The song wasn’t over yet and the kids had joined in and we were all still mosh pitting in the center of the room when the song suddenly stopped.

We all turned to see our wives standing there.

“This is babysitting?” my sister, Erin, said to her husband, Nick.

You could have heard a pin drop as we struggled to think of something to say in response.

“It was all Finn’s idea,” Tom said, elaborately checking his watch. “Oh, look at the time. I have to call the caterer.”



88

“Screw this. What’s taking so long? Let’s go down to the bar and play some cards,” Tom said as we all sat around in Sandhill Point’s auditorium-sized living room, wearing our tuxedos.

The big day had finally arrived.

“I’m down,” said Mickey, who was the best man, as he started humming Chumbawamba.

“No, no, no,” Finn said. “Mickey, sit your ass down. You have one job, keeping that dummy sober until the reception, okay? No downstairs. No cards. Get serious. No whiskey drink or even lager drink. You also better have the rings or I’m going to kick your ass.”

I laughed as I shook my head at my crazy brothers.

We turned as the house manager, Robin, came in wearing a gray caterer’s uniform and a Bluetooth hands-free mike in her ear.

“Gentlemen, I believe you are to take your stations,” she said.

My brothers and I all looked at each other nervously as we stood and smoothed our lapels.

Because, at long last, it was finally here.

The Thomas Rourke & Emmaline Fullerton beach wedding day had arrived.

We filed out the side entrance onto the sun terrace. On the grass was perhaps the hugest white tent I’d ever seen in my life, with dozens of white tables arranged inside. Beside the tent was an avenue of white rose petals sprinkled onto the grass that we followed toward the now flower-garlanded stairs to the beach.

We finally saw all the people as we reached the top of the staircase. My brothers and I stopped and stood there, smiling like idiots, as a crowd of about 150 people, mostly family dressed to the nines down the bluff on the sand, let out an enormous roar. I could only imagine what the reception would be like once the throng of additional guests arrived.

I shook my head in awe at the storybook setting the wedding planners had created as I followed Tom down the teak steps. I mean, I knew it was going to be over-the-top nuts, but it looked like an emperor was being coronated.

At the base of the stairs, a full twenty-one-member string section from an orchestra was playing some ethereal Handel or Vivaldi melody. They were seated in tuxedos before an enchanted forest that had somehow suddenly grown out of the sand.

We passed by the musicians and entered a fairy forest of a dozen of what appeared to be real cherry blossom trees that formed an aisle between the seated assembly. Their lush overflowing branches reached up and formed a fairy-tale pink umbrella above us as we walked toward the raised wedding bower.

The four-post bower itself looked like it was made of peonies, a pastel wonder arch of softball-sized blossoms in coral and pale plum. Behind it, the endless Atlantic Ocean had pitched in by coloring itself lavender in the setting gold sunlight.

In that incredible champagne-colored light, I looked over at Tom and laughed. My impossibly confident and cocky brother had never looked so nervous in his life.

“Deep breaths, Zeus. Deep breaths,” I said.



89

We all shook hands with the priest, some kindly Brit and family friend of the bride, and took up our positions as the music suddenly changed to the wedding march.