Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

I’m Lieutenant Deviled Yeggs.  I work homicide in the big city of Tracy.  Working for me are my old partners: Detective Sgt. Jim Wednesday and Detective Poached Yeggs, my nephew who is slowly becoming a good detective.

I have been “partnered” with my daughter Sophia in the past, but this bit of “investigation” was clearly off duty.  She was hosting a wedding shower with Missy Matthews and surprisingly Sandy Beech.  Since the other wedding was a week later, they made it one big happy family, and since the Missy Matthews wedding involved all Lily the Pink employees on the women side, Amy G. Dala was more than happy to put a few extra swag bags together.  But then, since Gwen Quinn was now part of the party, she bought naughty lingerie to add to all the swag bags, including packages for Amy and Pauline.

This report is a first person report from Sophie.

Since Bride number 3 and Maid of Honor number 1 was twice as old as I am, I let her get the party started.

Missy said, “Everyone!  Thank you for coming.  This started out as a two-wedding wedding shower, but now there is an unexpected third, and I am like Jemima was at Thanksgiving.  I am not getting married in a hurry because I have to.  I think Angus has to be somewhere, and he wants me to go along.  Otherwise, we could have waited until June.  Then again, since he can qualify for American citizenship by marrying an American, maybe that is his plan.”

I said, “And maybe you should ask him!”

Mom said, “Sophie, behave!  A great idea, but let Missy explore those waters on her own.”

There was a murmur around the room.

Missy blushed but she continued, “If you have looked around, and you know which wedding party you are part of, you have probably figured that everyone else is in the other wedding party.  Of course, there are a few non-wedding party people that came in just for the swag bags.  Just kidding!  But the swag bags are nice.  Really nice.”

Sandy raised her hand, sheepishly, “Can I say something?”  We nodded, since she was Bride number one and Matron of Honor number three, since she would be a married woman for a week when Missy got married.  “I may have to give my swag bag away.  Boaz is worried that gifts might be in the range to be considered bribes or policy influencers, and I hear the swag bag got carried away.  Boaz and I need everything, but getting around the political backlash from wedding gifts is already a nightmare.”

Amy cleared her throat, “I would prefer that you not give everything away.  I know what perfume you personally like.  And the additional stuff from Gwen Quinn is just your size and you may want to try it out in private, just you, no Boaz in the room, absolutely not, ummm, before the honeymoon.  Just a suggestion.  You know, what to wear on the flight down in your private cabin on the airplane, and what to wear after you are safe in the hotel room.  You know.  Just a Boaz and Sandy need to know kind of thing.”

Sandy’s face reddened, “No!  Not Gwen’s infamous naughty lingerie?  Okay!  I’ll give the gift cards to other people in the room, but the perfume and lingerie are all mine.  And I have no idea what else you have in there.  Thanks, you two.”

Gwen and Amy smiled and nodded.  Amy chuckled, “And the rest of you got the same type of thing, except those that are under eighteen.”

I moaned, “Not the tame sleepwear again!”

Gwen smiled, “Don’t worry, Sophie.  You are older.  You are one of the Maids of Honor.  It’s not tame, but it is not entirely naughty either, okay?”  I rolled my eyes, but I agreed.  Free stuff is free stuff.

Missy tapped her glass of cider with her fork. “Let’s settle down.  I want to introduce my wedding party.  And I hardly had anything to do with it.  I suggested the ladies, but Angus has more free time than I have.  I did not want to overwork all the ones in this room.  Sandy will be my Matron of Honor.  But Angus said that I had nearly one hundred people to choose from without leaving the confines of Lily the Pink.  I would love to have Aunt Hortense, but she is not physically able to walk that far.  And then Angus came up with a great idea after talking to Pastor Joseph.”  Mary Sheltie groaned, “Oh, no!”  I smiled, “No, Mary, this is a great idea.  We are having a totally unconventional wedding party with unconventional attire.  I will have a formal wedding dress with a MacDougall tartan sash over the shoulder to the floor.  Angus and all the men are going to be in kilts, each from a different clan.  So why not have ladies from Lily the Pink that were kidnapped and brought here, human traffic victims, if you will, and representing the six continents, since no one that I know of is ‘from’ Antarctica?  And they will wear their traditional native country attire.”  Everyone murmured about the possibilities.

Missy called out their names and each came into the room in something similar to what they might wear for the wedding.  Missy introduced them, “Anahera, a Maori from New Zealand, who works in Shipping and Receiving.  Dominika, from Czechia, who works in carbon recovery.  Diya, from India, who works in the distillery.  Amara, from Nigeria, who works in Purchasing.  Beatriz, from Brazil, who works in the cider cooking area.  And finally, Aiyana, a Native American, Chickasaw, who has moved from the Doyle County Greenhouses to be Jim Kaiser’s Water Quality Expert.”

When I saw Aiyana, I felt guilty for complaining about not being able to play Cowboys and Indians.  Diya was definitely an Indian, but Aiyana was the most beautiful Native American I had ever seen.  Daddy gave me a long lecture after I joked with him about Cowboys and Indians.  He told me that every corpse had once been a living, breathing person, and they deserved all the respect possible, especially from those who were sworn to protect and serve.  He agreed the “offenses” were getting out of control, but since I was wanting to join the police force, I had to try harder.  And with Aiyana, she was definitely my favorite Native American.  She even had on a little war paint.  It was stunning, but then all six were stunning.  If for no other reason, Missy was going to have the most colorful wedding.  Now, I couldn’t wait to see what kilts would be beside these ladies.

There were gasps from around the room.  Missy, really Angus with a little help from Pastor Joseph had hit on a great idea.  But where were the guys?

Missy must have been reading my mind, “We have not paired them with their escorts.  That is next week.  We will have a little speed dating, a lot of getting to know each other next week.  And at this point, we have no idea who will be paired with whom or how that will work.  But Angus has twenty-something guys that are in the Scottish club, from which he will choose six of them.  They just do not attend many meetings.”

Missy continued, “But now that everyone is here.  The theme for today’s party is cake.  The entire thing has been dreamed up by my partner in crime over here, Sophie.  If you gain wait today and cannot lose it by the wedding, it is on Sophie!” Everyone snickered.

I shouted, “Hey!  You and Sandy approved all the games and stuff.  And Mom and Pauline are ready if someone feels they are going to gain weight.  Really, we just had Thanksgiving and Christmas is approaching.  I hope everyone thought to exhale when they were getting measured!”

That started off the meeting with a few laughs, but a few that might worry that they easily gain a couple of pounds and then take forever to lose it were groaning.

We started with some usual kinds of things.  We had the words “Wedding Cake” and the first names of the bride and groom and had them think of as many words as they could from those letters.  While that was going on, we brought liquid refreshments around, hard cider, wine, and the non-alcoholic stuff for Maggie Lothrop, Lilith, Margie, Jemima, and me.  Wow, Easter and Jemima are getting married as seniors in college, and they aren’t even twenty-one.  Behind closed doors, they could have some, but we did not want the First Lady of Tracy being involved with … you know.

The next game was a mystery bag.  Actually, two mystery bags.  I could have made it harder, but I was shot down.  The first bag had plastic fruit in it.  The second bag had spices in it.  While a banana might be easy to figure out, the rest were a lot tougher, and size was not actual size.  The idea was to pick two fruits and one spice and then try to dream up a baked dish that would be edible, best if it was a cake.  Mabel and Gwen were excluded, being the judges for the bizarre concoctions.  When Dr. Quinn pulled out cayenne pepper, she announced that I had become “Stinker Junior,” but I was thinking of a chocolate cake since there are a lot of people that like their chocolate bar HOT these days.  Gratefully, Gwen said she lived on cayenne-laced chocolates while in Chile and Argentina.  She said to not put the hot-sweet combination down until you’ve tried it.  For the most part, the ladies, having never or rarely baked, came up with things Mabel and Gwen turned a thumbs down, but it was all for laughs anyway, and there were a lot of those.  Mom got an apple and an orange and exclaimed that those could not be mixed, but she ended up winning the contest.  So, I guess the old saying is wrong.

Then, our special guest, Amy G. Dala, brought in PIPER, a little robot with a voice and an attitude.  PIPER is the robot that Uncle Scrambled used to pipe nearly one hundred cakes for Amy’s wedding.  Ralph E. invented the little guy.  Mabel, our fondant wizard, came in with a variety of fake cake tops.  PIPER, who jokingly is an acronym for Pretty Interesting Piping Expert Robot, started writing in a beautiful handwriting, cursive, each person’s name.

Then there was this little dialogue that was the hit of the party:

“P” is Aunt Pink; “R” is Piper (the voice was mechanical, and his “laughter” was just “HA … HA”), the robot; “A” is Amy.

P: This is an interesting font.  How did you get this programmed.
A: We had a few people with beautiful penmanship copy a little story, as carefully as possible.  Gisele and Pauline were among those we selected, and the fonts go by their names.  The story had all the letters of the alphabet in upper case.  And for the lower case, there were nearly twice as many cases, where the preceding letter was near the top or near the bottom.  Depending on how they wrote their “r” it might be either way.  Ralphie had fun with it, but PIPER, I do not recognize this font.  What is it?
R: This is a new one.  This is the Pink Lady font.
P: I did not submit a copy of my handwriting!
R: Your husband, who is my new owner, gave me your love letters.
P: No!  He didn’t!
R: Oh, yes, he did, and some are racy!  I have them on file.  Do you want me to read the really naughty ones?
P: You are about to get disassembled!  And my husband is a dead man!  Naomi, Gisele, Callie, Polly, and Minnie!  You did not hear that!  I don’t want you giving evidence in the murder trial.
A: Wait, Pink, this makes no sense.  PIPER, are you pulling our legs?
R: I do not know what that means.
A: Are you telling a joke that a couple of husbands concocted?
R: I am required to avoid answering that question.
A: DOI CEO Override 4325.  Who put you up to this charade?
R: Ralph E. wanted to have some fun.  I do not have any love letters from Pink Lady.  It was a joke.  Ha!  Ha!  Ha!
P: Not funny, PIPER!
R: Please, no disassemble PIPER!
P: Now that I am calming down, whose handwriting is this?
R: Pauline Niblick.  Would you like to hear one of her love letters?  Ha!  Ha!  Ha!
A: PIPER, just pipe the cakes.  No more humor.  We will not disassemble you, but we will definitely give you an attitude adjustment with the next upgrade.  I know what to have in the upgrade!  A sexy female voice!  How’s that, PIPER?!
R: I will behave.  I promise.  No disassemble.  No female voice.  Unless it is voice of Mabel.  I like her.
A:  Robot protocol, PIPER.  No romance with a fellow human employee.
R: There I go again.  Getting the short end of the stick.

Half the room was laughing the entire time until Aunt Pink got extremely pink.  I mean, you could not tell where her face ended, and her hair began.  Her long-time employees muttered that they had never seen her that angry.  But then she sat back in her chair and started laughing herself.  She said, “That little twerp of a robot had me convinced that he had my love letters, and I can’t remember if I wrote any!”

I said, “Umm!  I think we are ready for our dessert and some blindfolds.  Blindfolded taste tests are next.”

This was a mess.  Most could figure out the difference between a chocolate cake and a vanilla cake.  Some had no clue about the red velvet.  It ended up being more laughs than anything.

We set up Mama Missy, but she got both of them right.  One was a Black Bun and the other was Clootie Dumpling, neither anything that would be a wedding cake, but both Scottish.  Then Missy had to explain that a Clootie Dumpling had no “clooties” in it.  A Clootie was a cloth bag that the dumpling is boiled in.

Jemima shouted that one of her cakes was her intended wedding cake, a white cake with a raspberry jam layer.  When everyone asked what was that all about, she said, “My code name on the Turtle Crew is Stinker.  When I make suggestions, Easy agrees, but B.B. and Home Wrecker give me the Bronx cheer or the raspberry.”  Mary and Dr. Quinn illustrated.  Jemima snarled, “Very professional, don’t you think?!  Well, they will be eating their raspberries at the wedding reception.”  Then, Jemima showed her disdain, and professionalism, by sticking her tongue out at her teammates and bride’s maids.

As for the winners of the bridal taste tests, the Boaz groom cake will be a fruitcake, popular among monastery weddings and several monks will be there.  Jemima loved the banana split cake, calories and sugar off the scale, but it contains all the ingredients of a banana split, with cake layers and icing instead of ice cream.  Her reasons: Easter was still a child at heart.  And Missy went off the board altogether.  Angus had not told her what cake she would have, so she went with Scottish Cranachan, a dessert made from oats, cream, whiskey, and raspberries.  Mabel said that she had heard of it, and she thought she could incorporate that into a cake or a cheesecake.  They felt the people who did not want the alcohol would go for the banana split cake anyway.  So, stay tuned for Mabel’s magic in the kitchen.  Since Mabel already knew what Angus had ordered, and was sworn to secrecy, she knew the two cakes would be different and complement each other.

But then, Sandy wanted to talk again.

Sandy said, “Yesterday, at a news conference, an idiot reporter asked my future husband if he had ever eaten anything sandy at the beach lately.  After a couple of other reporters stifled a snicker, the room got quiet.  Boaz calmly said, ‘I am glad the subject came up.  The reporter, if he can call himself that, is forgiven – this time.  Next time, you may find your credentials for news conferences pulled.  I do not mind differing opinions, but vulgarities and attacks on my wife are off limits.  My bride to be is named Cassandra Beech.  It was natural that her school friends started calling her Sandy Beech.  People named Cassandra are often called Cassie.  My future bride has already been setting up my social calendar, and she will soon be doing that full-time.  She is presently a full-time employee at Lily the Pink, but she will be moving into the home that has just been built for us in an upper middle-class neighborhood, a couple of blocks from my uncle who is a police Lieutenant.  Cassandra will be phasing from a full-time employee to a consultant.  Missy Matthews, who will soon marry Angus MacDougall, a professor at T.R.U.S.T., will become the new head of security at Lily the Pink.  But as of now, you will address my bride as Cassandra.  She will be Cassandra or Mrs. Yeggs after we get married.  If you hear any other name, it will be from her close friends who will call her Cassie.’  That ends the quote.  I wanted you to know.  Everybody here calls me Sandy and the change will be hard to get used to, but if that reporter can make a joke out of Sandy Beech, guess what he’ll do with Sandy Yeggs!!  Oh, and Sophie, grab Missy, I think she’s about to faint.”

Missy said, “I have a full-time job already.  I am going to school full-time.  I can’t.  I just can’t.  I was just reunited with my children.  I am getting married in a few weeks.  This is too much!”

Cassie said, “That is what the consulting job is for.  We will slowly phase me out.  And Pink and I agree that you are ready.”

Aunt Pink added, “Absolutely, Missy.  You will have Cassie to help, but until now, she was living here, and she was the first person on the call list if the supervisor on shift could not handle it.  That will go to you, and only go to Cassie if you are in class.”

Missy groaned, “The reality of being in charge of everything hasn’t sunk in yet.  I can be terrified of that tomorrow, but I am going to be the first one to call her Sandy and get in trouble!  You’ve always been my Big Sis Sandy!  I wish you the best, but this is way too sudden.”

Cassandra clarified, “Consultant.  I will be on call when you are in class, but I may have to do a lot over the phone.  We will have each other on speed dial.  You have this, Missy!”

With Missy reassured, Cassandra (don’t call her Sandy) had one more thing to add.  “I forgot.  I want everyone to know that the paperwork has gone through.  My official adoptive parents are Pink Lady and Scrambled Yeggs.  I am not changing my name now.  I will be a Yeggs in a couple of weeks anyway.  But the adoption paperwork required three added signatures, since my parents were still alive.  The parents that have always been my parents could not forgive me after they saw video evidence of what I did here for Baldwyn Apple.  That hurt.  They brought me to church every Sunday as I grew up, but then, they could not forgive.  They signed within seconds of being handed the paperwork.  But then, my mother admitted her infidelity prior to getting married.  She was a groupie of Angus MacDougall’s older brother, Duncan MacDougall, of the Kilted Duncans rock band fame.  She was engaged to my Dad at the time she got pregnant, and he married her to cover up for her indiscretion, which makes not forgiving me that much harder to take, but I needed Duncan’s signature also.  He is very sick, and he is dying.  He reluctantly signed the document, but he wanted me to keep in touch.  I would be his only heir, whatever he might have left.  So, this whole marriage thing has led to gaining three parents and losing three, even though one is still hanging onto life.  And Missy, I will soon legitimately be your niece instead of pretend sister.”

Missy was still wobbly in the knees, but she got up to give Cassandra a hug.  In talking to Missy later, she wondered if she would ever get a chance to meet Angus’ big brother.

The party games were over, but no one wanted to leave.  They wanted to get to know one another, within wedding parties and between wedding parties, especially the new arrivals.

Credits

“No disassemble!” – a line used by Number Five, the robot, in the movie, Short Circuit.

I doubt if there was ever a band called the Kilted Duncans, but there have been bands that blend bagpipes with guitars and drums.