Free Once Bitten (A Melanie Travis Mystery) by Laurien Berenson Page A

who’s currently in favor doesn’t change with the wind—but it’s unlike her to be out of touch with everybody. A few minutes ago, I even tried Delilah and Grant. They haven’t seen her either.”
    I thought for a moment. “Maybe Sara has a batch of new friends that you don’t know anything about.”
    “I doubt it. If she did, we would have heard about them last week when we were at your house. As I’m sure you noticed, Sara likes to talk, mostly about herself.”
    “Maybe she’s just been really busy. After all, it’s only been four days.”
    “You don’t understand. For Sara, four days is a lifetime. She’s met a guy, fallen in love, gotten engaged, and broken the whole thing off in less time than that.”
    “Okay.” I was beginning to see her point. “So now what?”
    “Brace yourself,” said Bertie. “I need your help.”
    Let me set the record straight. I think Bertie’s great. I’ve always wanted a sister and I loved the fact that she was about to become part of my family. But whenever someone tells me they need my help, things never seem to work out the way I hope they will.
    “Doing what?”
    Bertie must have heard the suspicion in my voice. Lord knows, I made no effort to hide it. It didn’t even slow her down.
    That was not a good sign.
    “The way I look at it,” she said, “we’ve got two options. I hired Sara to plan my wedding, and now she’s gone. Vanished into the wild blue yonder. It seems to me we’ve either got to find her, bring her back and make her get the job done like she promised, or we’ve got to plan this shindig ourselves.”
    We? I thought. We who?
    “Go ahead,” Bertie invited. “Your choice.”
    “My choice? When did this become my problem?”
    “About a week ago.” Bertie paused for effect. “The day your ex-husband blew into town.”
    For the second time, she’d managed to surprise me. Sheesh, I thought, I needed to be quicker on the uptake. When I assumed we were talking about Bob, we weren’t. And when I assumed we weren’t, apparently we were.
    “What’s Bob got to do with this?”
    “He wants you back, babe.”
    “No, he—” I stopped.
    There was no point in denying it just because the news was unwelcome. After all, that certainly seemed to be what he’d been leading up to at Aunt Peg’s on Sunday. Probably the only reason he’d never finished his pitch was because I hadn’t given him the chance.
    Then again, aside from his speaking on the phone with Davey several times, we’d barely heard from him since—which had left me as confused as I was relieved.
    “It’s not going to happen,” I said firmly. “Besides, you could be wrong. As it happens, I haven’t heard from him all week.”
    “As it happens,” said Bertie, “you have me and Frank to thank for that. We’ve been running interference on your behalf. Frank even has Bob filling in over at the Bean Counter.”
    “Oh.” Well, that explained a few things. “Thank you.”
    “You’re welcome, but actually I was hoping for more than words. I’m thinking along the lines of compensation. How about this? I’ll continue to keep Bob out of your hair, and you find Sara for me.”
    Of all the sneaky, underhanded offers.
    I hated to admit it, but Bertie was going to fit into our family just fine.
    “That’s extortion.”
    “Just what I was aiming for,” she said cheerfully. “Do we have a deal?”
    I let her wait half a minute, ratcheting up the suspense. Yeah, right, who was I kidding?
    “You know we do.”
    I heard Bertie chuckle, savoring her success. But then she quickly sobered again. “I’m really worried, Mel. Sara can be capricious at times, but once she makes a commitment to a friend, she honors it.”
    I wondered if that meant she hadn’t counted all those ex-fiancés as friends.
    “Also, she was really psyched about working on the wedding. She told me so. I just can’t imagine she just suddenly disappeared of her own volition.”
    “I guess we’ll find out.