Chapter 17 A Mystery Is Un-Mystered
ON THE WHOLE, THE SABOTEUR looks like a small rabbit.
Which is not a descriptor I’ve used for any of Grandma Rose’s friends, or for Grandma herself, so there go those theories.
“You!” the white and fuzzy creature says.
I push through the curtains, boggling as pieces fall into place. “Me? No, you! You’re the one who’s been stalking me! I recognize you from the forest! And—were you at Hamilton Hall!?”
The saboteur twitches its pink nose once, then darts for the depths of the kitchen, squealing like a pig. Ergo: it is not Grandma Rose, a rabbit, or a pig, but some strange fourth thing.
This would also explain why it’s carrying lighter fluid.
“Stop right there!” I pounce for the speedy not-rabbit and miss.
Freed of me, the creature tests the lighter while bouncing down a crowded galley. Waitstaff, servers, and catering chefs curse and bark in confusion as the pest springboards through gaps between their legs, followed by me shoving furiously past.
“I said stop!” I shout after my enemy. “This isn’t Ratatouille!”
The creature is fast. Insanely, supernaturally fast. By the time I’ve advanced past the first row of prep tables, the rabbit-thing has made it to the kitchen’s far end.
Near the cake. Oh god. The cake. Finding the fracas hysterical, the creature flings spatulas, ladles, and pastry cutters in my direction, making a noise like a teakettle that’s run out of water. “Tee hee ter ho terr herr.”
A caterer claws onto my shoulder. “Raw meat is one thing, but bringing in live animals is another!”
“Is it a monkey?” someone yells in confusion.
Oh god. I can’t let them figure out what this creature really is.
Whatever it is.
Ripping the caterer’s fingers off me, I shout: “Everyone get out, and we’ll tip you each a hundred extra bucks!”
Dodging flying paper towel rolls and measuring spoons, the staff hightails it.
Having been a poorly paid caterer myself, I understand completely.
But my knowledge of hotel kitchens fails to prepare me for the creature yelling, “Food delivery!” and sending a steel pan whizzing past my head.
Sizzling caramel splashes off the side—it’s the most threatening squiggle of melted sugar I’ve ever seen—I shout “Holy shit!” and duck behind a steel table.
“SUGAR!” cries Mandy, because of course she’s in here. “HOW SAD!”
“Mandy!”
I stand up, locating her on top of a worktable. Waving a ten-inch-long butcher knife.
“Sabby!” she cries. “I think I know who’s ruining your weddings!”
“Why are you holding a—never mind, protect the cake, Mandy!”
Mandy hops from her perch to block the pestilence before it can launch itself at Sidney and Brett’s glorious ten-story masterpiece.
Either that or escape through the back exit.
Whatever the diabolical, white-furred thing was planning to do, it skids to a stop, registering Mandy’s manic, sharp-toothed smile and knife with appropriate concern.
“Foiled!” it squeaks. “Oh. That’s what I’ll do. Foil!”
Expertly quick, the lighter’s snapped open and the battery taken out into its little paw.
I don’t like the look of this, the rapid planning and capacity for destruction.
Without question, this is the creature who has been ruining my weddings.
I don’t understand its reasoning for assaulting me with such evil intent, but whatever: the sabotage stops here. Today.
“You are not going to set this hotel on fire!” I shout.
“Oh, but I can! And I will!” the fuzzy cretin proclaims. “Behold, the stoves!”
Shit! The saucepans that weren’t hurled at me are rapidly converting salted caramel into fire hazards.
“Do I stab it?” asks Mandy as I lunge for the central range.
“NO!”
“No indeed! We are nonviolent!” agree a dozen voices near my feet. Furiously cutting off the gas to the burners, I notice glints of light and moving shadows among the scattered pots and pans at my feet.
The gnomes. They’re here! YES!
“It’s about time!” I shout.
“What would you like us to do, miss?!” pipes up a particularly heavy pot.
“Get the fire extinguisher! And build a perimeter—blockade that thing in!”
“On it!” cry the gnomes. “Catch the pooka, gnome-men!”
“That won’t help, ter her!” My saboteur—apparently called a “pooka”?
—giggles characteristically as a jangling clatter announces the gnomes’ call to battle.
A parade of upturned steel cookware encircles the room, carried there by visibly dirty, leather-booted feet.
From a tall shelf, a line of measuring spoons flies off, flung by unseen hands.
One by one, they bop the pooka on the head.
“Grr herrr!” squeaks the creature, pulling down its ears. “That’s annoying!”
I’ve just turned off the last of the burners when the fire extinguisher activates, flooding the range and room with white, hissing gas—and abruptly rocketing into the air.
“Ahhhh!” cries a troll-like silhouette, clutching to the device as it bounces off the ceiling repeatedly. “I’m too wee to control it!”
“I can’t see anything,” cries Mandy, slashing at white fog with her knife. “Where’d it go?”
“Oh no! To the perimeter, lads,” squeaks a gnomic voice. “Take defensive measures!”
The pooka laughs triumphantly. “How the tee-ter-tables have ter-turned!”
That’s my line, damn it!
Gritting my teeth, I heave a hot frying pan over my shoulder, prepared to go in for the kill.
Because while that pooka may be rendered temporarily invisible to everyone else, I know everything there is to know about blending in, and I don’t miss a thing.
A thin line of fluorescent light illumines the diabolically fluffy edges of the pooka’s silhouette as it waits stock-still in the galley.
With its body mostly—but not completely—covering the foil ball and a tiny, flickering flame.
It’s eyeballing the gas lines connecting the wall to the range with a dangerous, beady eye.
“Go ahead,” I say. “Do it. You can burn it all down. But you won’t be happy if you do!”
The pooka grunts. “Whyever not?”
“Because the guests will think it was a spectacle paid for by the bride’s family. They’ll love it. They’ll all clap.”
“Oh,” says the creature sadly. As the CO2 from the fire extinguisher clears away, the pooka’s form grows more obvious.
It crinkles up its ball of foil, tossing it over a furry shoulder.
Then its ears perk up. Oh no: it has an idea.
It bounces in three massive springs, straight at me.
Too fast for the gnomes to tackle it, or for me to do anything but brace for impact.
Except the pooka diverts at the last moment for a toppled catering cart.
At that moment, Levi the photographer rolls out from behind the food-service equipment.
“What the…” I say. “Why is he here?!”
“Eep!” says the pooka.
“Umm,” says Mandy.
“Hoo hoo hoo! That man will do!”
The gnomes pick Levi up and hurl him straight at the startled pooka—and right into Sidney’s thirty-thousand-dollar wedding cake.