Save The Date Part 2

The shop phone rang and Cara glanced over at the caller-ID screen. "Speaking of which, there's the smother of the bride now." Her hand hovered over the receiver. "I swear, if Lillian calls me with one more demand, I am going to go stark, raving bonkers."

"Think of the invoice we're going to present when this whole circus is over," Bert advised.

"No. I'm thinking of the look on the Colonel's face when he opens the envelope with his check," Cara corrected.

"Exactly," he said, nodding. "Just hold your nose and smile pretty."

The phone kept ringing.

"Brides!" Cara muttered. "If I ever even entertain the idea of getting married again, Bert, you are authorized to smack me upside the head and have me committed."

"Never say never," Bert warned.

"I'm serious," Cara said. She looked across the workroom. "Here Poppy," she called.

The curly-haired goldendoodle puppy raced over to her side and propped her front paws on Cara's knees. Cara bent down to let the puppy lick her chin. "Puppy love. That's all I need. No more men, and definitely no more weddings."

Bert pointed at the phone, which was still ringing. "Really. Don't you think you'd better get that?"

"I'm not answering," Cara said defiantly. She got up from her stool and stretched. "And I am not stuffing any more flowers in this centerpiece. The wedding is in less than five hours. We've got to get these arrangements loaded in the van and get them out to Isle of Hope before three. Whatever Lillian wants, it'll just have to..."

Before she could finish the sentence, they heard the tinkling of bells coming from the front of the shop. Poppy p.r.i.c.ked up her ears and started toward the sound.

"Close the door!" Cara hollered. "Don't let the dog get..."

But it was too late. Sensing an opening, the seven-month-old goldendoodle, Poppy, streaked toward daylight.

"Grab her," Cara called to the startled stranger who's just entered Bloom. He paused for only a split second, pivoted, and lunged toward Poppy, managing to grab on to her collar. But Poppy, an obedience-school dropout who was as determined as she was undisciplined, easily wriggled out of the collar and was out the door in a flash, joyously running full-tilt down West Jones Street.

"s.h.i.+t!" Cara cried.

"Not again," Bert echoed. "Not today."

"Sorry," the stranger said, turning from Cara to Bert, still holding the collar in his right hand. "I wanted to get some flowers sent to my sister in the hospital..."

"Can you help him?" Cara gave Bert a pleading look. "I'll go after Poppy. If I'm not back in fifteen minutes, start loading the van without me."

Cara sprinted out of Bloom without looking back.

"Poppy!" she called, cupping her hands over her mouth as a makes.h.i.+ft megaphone. "Poppy, come back!"

She pa.s.sed the restored nineteenth-century town houses and elegant storefronts in her block, and dashed across Barnard Street, dodging cars as she ran.

Three tourists with cameras strung around their necks and unfolded street maps stood on the corner, arguing loudly about where to have lunch.

"No more barbecue," snapped a twenty-something girl in a tie-dyed s.h.i.+rt and white shorts.

"Did you see a dog run past just now?" Cara interrupted. "Curly white hair, maybe thirty pounds?"

"That way." The girl's middle-aged father pointed east. "She sure can run."

Cara continued east down Jones. She paused by the line of people still queued up for lunch outside Mrs. Wilkes' boardinghouse. "Did you see a dog run past here?" she asked breathlessly.

"Thataway," volunteered a bespectacled senior citizen with a plastic tour-company lanyard around her neck.

Cara ran on, crossing Whitaker, Bull, Drayton, and Abercorn. Her thin-soled sandals flapped against the steaming concrete sidewalks. Her face was sheened with sweat, her T-s.h.i.+rt glued to her chest.

"See a dog?" she asked, pausing beside a college kid locking his bike to a utility pole in front of a cla.s.sroom building on the art-college campus.

"Huh?"

Twenty minutes had pa.s.sed. But n.o.body else had spotted the puppy. Reluctantly, she started jogging back toward Bloom, breathing heavily and sweating profusely.

Bert had the van pulled around to the front of the shop by the time she got back. "Anything?"

"No," Cara said, near tears. "Look, just wait here. I'm going to take the van and see if I can spot her."

"Cara? Lillian has called back twice, and now Torie's started calling. And her wedding director wants to know why we aren't already out at the church. You know it'll take us thirty minutes to get out to Isle of Hope."

"Stall 'em," Cara said. "I can't let Poppy just wander around downtown. She'll get hit by one of those tour buses, or run over by one of the horse-drawn carriages. And even if somebody does find her, they won't know who she is, because she's not wearing her collar. Please, Bert?"

Bert shrugged and went back inside the shop to try to mollify their clients.

Cara drove east and north this time, trolling the side streets, leaning out the window of the pink-and-white-striped van, calling her puppy's name, straining for a familiar glimpse of curly white fur, but to no avail. While she cruised, her cell phone rang and pinged and buzzed, with incoming calls, texts, and emails, all of which she ignored.

She was backtracking toward the shop, turning up Habersham at East Charlton, when she saw a tall, bare-chested man dressed in nylon running shorts and expensive-looking running shoes, tugging a medium-sized, furry white dog by a piece of rope. He was walking down the lane behind Charlton.

"Poppy!" Cara cried. She veered left and into the lane.

"Hey!" she called to the man. She leaned out the open window of the van. "Excuse me, that's my dog."

He was in his mid thirties-the man, not the dog. His dark hair was pushed back from his forehead and his chest gleamed with perspiration. Even in her extreme distress, Cara noted that he was seriously ripped. The man glanced down at the puppy, then back up at Cara.

He frowned. "The h.e.l.l it is. This is my dog."

"No." Cara put the van in park. "Honestly. That's Poppy. My goldendoodle."

"No," he said impatiently, starting to walk away. "This is Shaz. Unfortunately, this is my goldendoodle."

Cara climbed down out of the van and hurried after him. "That's impossible. There aren't that many dogs like this in Savannah. I had to go all the way to Atlanta to find mine. And that one is mine." She searched in the pocket of her shorts and held out one of the doggie treats she always carried. "Here Poppy."

The puppy looked up at Cara and wagged enthusiastically.

"Shaz!" the man said loudly. The puppy looked at him and wagged her tail even harder.

"See?"

"She does that with everybody," Cara said, desperation creeping into her voice. "She's never met a stranger."

"If she's yours, where's her dog tag?" the man demanded.

"Back at my flower shop, on West Jones. A customer came in, and he tried to grab Poppy as she made a break for the door, but Poppy managed to wriggle out of her collar." She waved the treat under the dog's nose. "Here Poppy," she coaxed. "Come to Mama."

The puppy's ears p.r.i.c.ked up, and she lunged toward Cara, but the man pulled her back.

"See?" Cara said triumphantly. "That's Poppy."

"No," he said, wedging the now wriggling puppy firmly between his calves. "That's a cheap trick. And this is Shaz. She'd kill her grandma for a dog treat."

"If that's your dog, where's its collar?

"In my truck, back at my house. I was just taking her to the groomer, whom she hates, and the truck window was open, and she jumped out the window and took off. Come on, Shaz." He started walking away, and the puppy trotted obediently at his heels.

"Poppy," Cara called, near tears. "Come here, girl. Time to go home."

"Nice try," the man said, glancing back over his shoulder. "But I don't have time for this. Good luck finding your dog."

The puppy gave one backward look, but the man was jogging again, and the dog followed right on his heels.

Cara jumped back behind the wheel of the van. "Hey," she hollered out the open window. She beeped the horn. "Come back here."

The man jogged on down the lane, and she crept along right behind him, honking her horn every few minutes, and hollering out the window. "Stop! Come here, Poppy." She knew she looked like a lunatic, and she just didn't care.

Poppy, the little traitor, seemed quite content to follow along behind her new friend, never straying or yanking at the makes.h.i.+ft leash as she sometimes did when Cara took her for her morning walk.

Finally, they reached a block on Macon Street. The houses here were simpler than the grand brick and stucco townhomes farther west in the historic district. Mostly single-story wood-frame homes, they were known as freedman's cottages because they'd originally been built after the Civil War by newly emanc.i.p.ated slaves.

The runner paused in front of one of the least distinguished cottages on the block. Paint was peeling from the dingy white clapboards, a shutter at the window was missing several slats, and the faded aqua door seemed to be held together with duct tape. There was a wooden window box beneath the double window, but the plants were dried up and shriveled beyond recognition. The man propped his foot on the top step of the stoop and retrieved a key from a pocket in the tongue of his running shoe.

That's when he looked over and spotted Cara, parked at the curb, the van's motor idling.

"Beat it," he called.

She held her cell phone up for him to see. "Give me back my dog or I'll call the cops."

"Get away from my house or I'll call the cops myself," he retorted. He picked Poppy up in his arms and climbed the rest of the steps to the doorway. He unlocked the door. Cara jumped from the truck and ran for the minuscule porch, but he was too quick. He stepped inside and slammed the door in her face. A moment later, she heard a deadbolt lock slide into place.

"Dognapper!" Cara pounded on the door with her fist. "Give me back my dog!"

"Crazy stalker woman, go away," came the m.u.f.fled reply.

She banged on the door, and looked around to ring the doorbell, but it was defunct, dangling by a single frayed wire from the dry-rotted doorframe.

Cara gave the door an ineffective kick, resulting only in a badly stubbed big toe.

"I'm calling the cops," she screamed, her lips plastered against the doorframe.

"I already called 'em," came back his voice.

She paced back and forth in front of the cottage, waiting for the police. Bert called, and she instructed him to load as many of the flowers as he could into his own car, and start ferrying them over to the church. Torie and Lillian Fanning called, too, but she let those calls go to voicemail.

While she paced, Cara studied the house, hoping the runner would somehow relent and release Poppy. The cottage was a puzzle. It sported a jaunty new-looking red tin roof, but there were cracks in the wavy gla.s.s of the front windows, and she could see that two or three of the clapboards were perilously close to falling off the house.

Cara called the police again. This time, a bored-sounding dispatcher informed her that the police had actual crimes to solve, and that an officer might not show up for another hour.

"But he's got my dog," Cara protested. "And he won't even open the door or listen to reason."

"Ma'am?" the dispatcher said. "Try to work it out like adults, why don't you?"

She disconnected and walked back over to the house. She climbed onto the front stoop and peered in through the dust-caked window. The room inside held a battered leather sofa and a flat-screen television squatting on a sheet of plywood stretched across sawhorses. The room was littered with stacks of lumber, tools, and paint buckets. There was no sign of Poppy. She would have cried, but she had a wedding to get to.

4.

"Did you find Poppy?" Bert asked, as she raced back into the shop.

"He's still got her locked up," Cara said. "And the police were no help at all." She was pulling her sweat-soaked T-s.h.i.+rt over her head as she raced for the back stairs to her second-floor apartment above the shop.

"Never mind," Bert called up after her. "I've already taken the altar arrangements, the pew bows and centerpieces out there. But we've still got the bouquets and boutonnieres and the buffet arrangements here, so hurry! I'll get the van loaded. After the wedding, I'll help you get Poppy back."

Ten minutes later, she was back downstairs, her still-damp b.u.t.terscotch-colored hair pulled into a careless French knot, dressed in a floaty vintage flower-sprigged pink silk garden-party dress, and pink cowboy boots.

The ride out Skidaway Road to the Isle of Hope was a nail-biter, but they pulled up to the quaint, white wood-framed Methodist church at exactly five o'clock, with only an hour to spare before the wedding.

Cara toted the cardboard carton with the bride's flowers into the back of the church, where she was met by Lillian Fanning, her carefully made-up face contorted with anger and anxiety.

"Finally!" Lillian snapped, s.n.a.t.c.hing the box of flowers from Cara's hands. "I've been having heart palpitations for the last hour. Where on earth have you been? Didn't you get any of my calls or texts?"

"So sorry," Cara responded. "The battery ran down on my cell phone. But we're here now. Bert's taking the rest of the arrangements over to the reception. Honestly, Lillian. We have it all under control."

"Mama? Is that Cara with my d.a.m.n flowers?" A willowy brunette in a stunning strapless cream satin Vera w.a.n.g gown poked her head out the door of the bride's room.

"It's me, Torie," Cara said. "I was just telling your mom, everything's good."

A small, nervous woman in a pale blue dress fluttered out of the room. "Whatever you do, don't upset her any more," Ellie Lewis, the wedding planner, whispered in Cara's ear. "She's already threatened to strangle one of the flower girls."

"I'm coming," Cara said, scuttling into the room with the box of flowers held before her like a peace offering.

Torie Fanning was a gorgeous mess. Her glossy black updo was coming unpinned, and the tight-fitting bodice of her gown gaped in the back where the last half-dozen tiny satin-covered b.u.t.tons refused to fasten. The dress fit snugly over her hips-a little too snugly, Cara thought-then flared out with multiple layers of spangly tulle that made the bride look like a mermaid. An overwrought, undermedicated mermaid.

"It's about d.a.m.ned time," Torie said.