Chapter 31 #2
“They brought their own table. You really need something specific for a champagne tower because you need to trust that table. And the actual construction of the tower happens as late as possible, usually during dinner service, because, sure, these things are stable when built right, but someone knocking into it can definitely bring it down. After they built it, two Stanley Catering people stood on each side, guarding it from drunks. Pretty standard. The champagne towers are like a magnet for drunk wedding guests.”
“Did you have a pretty good view of it during that time?”
“Oh, yeah. It was right on the other side of the DJ booth, and like I said, people were still eating dinner. Nothing much was happening at the bar.”
“How long between when they had it set up and when it collapsed?”
Lisa purses her lips. “Maybe twenty minutes?”
“Did anyone else come around the table?”
“Oh, yeah. A lot of people came over to look at it. You always get a few wedding guests making jokes, like pretending they’re tripping or falling. Not funny. And the wedding planner was there adding decor.”
“Whitney? Do you remember if it was Whitney Sternell?”
“Yeah, it was Whitney the wedding planner. She always makes these custom vignettes for the couple, tailored to their interests—a flower, a bell, a tiny bike, or whatever—and she puts them all over the place. All I remember about this one was that there was a Mickey Mouse head involved. Because the couple are Disney fanatics.” Lisa bites the side of her lip.
“The photographers came over to do detail shots, too, like B-roll shots.”
“Was it...?” I wake up my tablet and check my spreadsheet. “I have it down here that Bo Richardson and Roy LaRue were shooting that one. Do you remember which one of them did the close-ups?”
“I feel like they were both doing things around the table.”
I nod. “So a lotta traffic.”
“For sure. And there were the usual kids asking questions. DJ Sassy Sadie was over there for a while, too, and Kip went over to trash-talk them. Somebody also would’ve brought over the fake champagne.”
“It’s fake?”
“Stanley Catering puts cheap sparkling wine in Veuve Clicquot bottles for their fountains. It’s not like people drink that stuff. I mean, everyone’s fingers are all over those glasses during setup, so it’s not exactly hygienic. The tower is just for show.”
“I heard that nobody was near the table when it actually fell.”
“Correct. Aside from the Stanley people standing on either side to guard it. But they don’t stand that close.
They don’t want to bump it either. At the time of the fall, though, most everybody was watching the groomsmen doing some kind of pretend fistfight on the other side of the room.
Bo was photographing the shit out of that, and the tower was collapsing in the background behind them. ”
“So, you’ve got a good grasp of mechanical things. Let me ask you, if somebody were to sabotage that champagne tower and make it look like it just spontaneously collapsed, how do you think they would do it?”
Lisa widens her eyes. “You think that’s what happened?”
“I think this is one of a strangely large number of wedding accidents around here this year.”
“Like Boyd falling off the balcony.”
“Yeah.”
“Handy Jack was distraught. Everyone thought he’d screwed up.”
“You know Handy Jack?”
“Oh yeah. He’s kind of Robotics Club adjacent. The man knows a lot about really random tools and techniques. He had an insane clipboard checklist system.”
“You know about the checklist?”
“Oh, we all saw waaaaay too much of that checklist. The man thought everybody should use his system. And then some asshole stole it—twice! Most of the people who hang out at Hardware Sam’s think it was somebody out to get Handy Jack.”
“Wow.”
“But the champagne tower would have nothing to do with Handy Jack.”
“So if you had to rig the table to make the champagne tower collapse, like maybe by remote control, how would you do it?”
Lisa taps a finger to her lips. “If you could get a solenoid actuator under a leg, you could activate it with a wireless switch to create a sharp sideways movement. Sort of like a pinball machine part.”
“How about something that doesn’t involve kneeling down by the table? Because the Stanley people would see that, right? What about something that you could stick to the bottom of the table or put on top of the table, like maybe hidden in the flowers.”
Lisa nods slowly, warming to the idea. “Yeah, yeah. You could use a gyroscopic device hidden in a floral arrangement. Something that shakes just enough to destabilize the base layer. Or maybe a small vibration motor affixed to the bottom using superglue or a similar adhesive. Interesting.”
“Do you think somebody could have affixed something to the bottom of the table before they brought it out?”
“No way,” Lisa says. “The Stanley people make a lot of adjustments on the table before they start building. They would’ve seen it. You need that thing super level.”
“Can you recall anybody spending a weird amount of time around the table and being shady?”
“So you’re really thinking somebody crashed it on purpose.”
“I’m exploring all the angles.”
“Nothing sticks out,” Lisa says. “It all seemed very routine. Aside from the champagne tower spectacularly collapsing, glass going everywhere, people screaming because they stepped on glass, and insurance getting involved.”
I spend the rest of the afternoon at InovaSpire, putting out workflow fires and thinking about what Lisa said. She provided a pretty good list of people who drifted by the champagne tower table during the twenty-minute window where it was on display, including Whitney and Kip.
I’d love to get my hands on the pictures Bo took.
He probably wasn’t shooting for the whole twenty minutes, but between him and Roy LaRue with his B-rolls, there was probably a lot of coverage of that time span.
Maybe he inadvertently caught either Whitney or Kip doing something suspicious.
Or Harlan. Or some other person common to all the weddings.
I leave a message with Richardson Photography. Maybe if it’s not Kip asking, they’ll be more willing to show the photos.