Overdue Forecast
At 9:12 on Thursday morning, three hundred place cards dissolved in front of Catalina Ortiz with the theatrical spite of a bad ex.
They had been cream rectangles, hand-lettered in copper ink, each bearing a guest’s name and a carefully assigned seat. Now they lay across the conservatory’s mosaic floor as beet-pink pulp.
“The sprinkler test was supposed to water the wall,” Catalina said. “Not assassinate the stationery.”
Cresswork occupied a restored glass conservatory on Cleveland’s east side: iron ribs, climbing herbs, tiled paths, and enough polished brass to make a person distrust sunlight. Its opening reception was forty-eight hours away. Catalina’s phone now displayed 47:48:03, because fear, in her experience, improved nothing but arithmetic.
Marlon Velez hurried over from the herb display, apron's strings swinging behind him. “Tell me that’s radicchio.”
“Radicchio has dignity.”
“Could we call it rustic?”
“Only if you want the bride’s grandmother finding table twelve by taste-testing the floor.”
Marlon shut his eyes. His restaurant’s final completion payment depended on Saturday’s private reception going flawlessly, which was an ambitious demand to make of a building still discovering its own plumbing. Catalina, in a severe navy shirt that made her collarbones seem prepared to negotiate a treaty, lifted the ruined cards between two fingers.
“I need a rush print order approved,” she said. “Three hundred replacements. Today.”
At the folding finance table near the citrus trees, a man in a sensible white shirt studied a stack of invoices as if each had personally insulted his ancestors. His silver watch encircled one wrist like a protective cuff. He did not look up.
“If you’re here about the renovation overage,” he said, “the answer is no.”
Catalina paused. “Your greeting needs work.”
He lifted his eyes. They were gray, precise, and thoroughly inconvenienced by her existence. “You aren’t Willy Telford.”
“Excellent deduction. Shall I fetch you a certificate?”
“I was expecting the contractor who billed Cresswork twice for decorative gravel.”
“And instead you got the woman preventing three hundred guests from attending a damp pink funeral.”
His attention shifted to the pulp in her hand. “Catalina Ortiz.”
“Yes.”
“Wedding planner.”
“Very good. Two certificates.”
Stuart Hargrove, Cresswork’s forensic accountant, had spent the morning following a vanished deposit through invoices, bank transfers, and one remarkably creative receipt for “atmospheric masonry consultation.” He had not slept enough, trusted receipts more than instincts, and had already decided that emergencies were expensive costumes worn by bad decisions.
“I can’t approve another rush charge,” he said. “There’s an audit hold.”
“The cards did not steal Marlon’s deposit.”
“Paper has an excellent alibi. The expense does not.”
Her name sat on one of the disputed transfer forms, not because she had taken the money, but because she had arranged the vendor schedule. Details mattered. They had a nasty habit of becoming accusations when someone was frightened.
“Guests require names,” Catalina said.
“Guests also require a solvent venue.”
“Do you practice that line in a mirror?”
“No. Mirrors are not deductible.”
A small glass bottle of violet edible-flower syrup waited beside the tasting notes. Catalina’s elbow made a decision before her better judgment caught up.
The bottle tipped.
Purple syrup streamed down Stuart’s white shirt in a glossy stripe from collarbone to waistband.
He stood very still.
“Was that an accident?” he asked.
“It was an artistic interpretation of your budget.”
“It’s sticky.”
“At least someone at this table is.”
Before he could produce a reply sharp enough to balance the universe, metal shrieked behind them.
The display arch beside the camera crew had loosened at its base. It leaned toward a lighting stand loaded with equipment.
Catalina lunged for the left upright. Stuart caught the other side, syrup glinting across his shirtfront. The arch slid another inch.
“Don’t push,” she said.
“I am preventing it from falling.”
“By debating it?”
“You began the debate.”
“On three,” he said.
“Do not count at me.”
“That is how three works.”
“One—”
They hauled together. The arch rose upright with a protesting scrape. Camera operators scattered; Marlon made a sound normally reserved for tax notices.
Catalina’s wrist pressed beside Stuart’s against the same treacherous beam. He smelled faintly of violet syrup and irritation. She looked ready to charge him for both.
“Your emergency order is still denied,” he said.
“Then I regret saving your shirt.”
“My shirt was never in danger.”
“It has become a botanical tragedy.”
They held the arch steady, wrist to wrist and furious, while the countdown on Catalina’s phone continued toward disaster.
Marlon, who had watched the rescue with both fists caught in the tails of his apron, checked his phone and made a sound like a man being notified that soup had acquired legal representation.
“What now?” Catalina asked.
“The performers canceled.”
Stuart kept the arch upright. “Which performers?”
“The Lantern District Quartet. Also the aerial herb dancers.”
Catalina looked at him. “You booked aerial herb dancers?”
“They were going to interpret basil.”
This was not, strictly speaking, the largest problem in the conservatory. It did explain the lengths of green silk dangling near the chef’s counter.
“Why?” Catalina asked.
“Their van broke down in Toledo. One dancer has developed a firm position on harness safety.”
“Reasonable,” Stuart said.
Marlon lifted his phone. “The sponsor liaison called. The completion payment requires the live opening segment.”
“Yes,” Catalina said. “We know. We have cameras, sponsors, a restaurant, and whatever basil was meant to feel.”
“They’ve changed the segment. With the performers gone, they want a believable engaged couple testing the reception service. Welcome cocktails, appetizer pass, seating flow, the whole wedding package. No couple, no approved segment. No approved segment, no payment.”
Catalina shifted her grip on the arch. Her phone, abandoned on the finance table, continued its grim arithmetic.
“Hire actors,” she said.
“By Saturday?” Marlon asked. “The crew wants people who can follow cues, look pleased near each other, and survive a room full of donors.”
From behind a lighting stand, Serafina Dufour raised one manicured hand. “I have seen actors. Most cannot locate a chair without a personal assistant.”
Stuart turned his gray eyes on Marlon. “Why are you looking at us?”
Marlon’s ears went red. “When the producer asked who you were, I said you were engaged.”
Catalina stared. “You said what?”
“I panicked.”
“That is not what engagement means.”
“At Cresswork, it currently means two adults who stopped a decorative arch from killing a camera operator.”
Serafina placed a tray of champagne flutes on the bar. “You two do have the proper mood. Like a divorce attorney’s favorite fantasy.”
“We are not engaged,” Catalina said.
“Correct,” Stuart said at the same moment.
Marlon’s expression made a direct appeal to every merciful force known to Cleveland. “Please. Just for the weekend.”
Catalina had built a career from making panicked people feel as if somebody had planned the moon. Yet posing as Stuart Hargrove’s fiancée felt less like planning and more like inviting a paper cut to move in.
She looked at him. Violet syrup had dried in a crooked line down his white shirt, transforming him from accountant into tragic dessert.
“I’ll do it,” she said, “if you finish the audit and establish that I did not lose Marlon’s deposit.”
Stuart’s jaw shifted once. “I will establish what the records establish.”
“Fine. Then establish the truth quickly.”
“And you keep this broadcast from becoming a civic embarrassment.”
“A wedding broadcast,” Catalina said, “is simply a wedding with worse lighting and people who charge extra for cables.”
Stuart considered the bargain as one might consider a tax penalty: offensive, unavoidable, perhaps cheaper than the alternative. Catalina’s vendor logs were meticulous. Her emergency instincts were alarming, but useful. And somewhere inside those logs might be the thread that led to the missing money.
“Agreed,” he said.
Marlon sagged against a citrus planter. “Thank you.”
“Do not thank us yet,” Catalina said. “We have not lied to anyone on camera.”
Serafina slid two champagne flutes toward them. “Give it ten minutes.”
A production assistant appeared with a tablet. “Wonderful. Our couple. At one-ten, you enter under the citrus arbor. One-twelve, shared cocktail. One-fourteen, personal engagement anecdote. One-seventeen, canapé interaction—”
“Those are not times,” Catalina said. “Those are threats.”
Stuart glanced at the tablet. “The sequence is workable.”
“You have a spreadsheet in your pocket, don’t you?”
“I have several things in my pocket.”
“None of them are charisma.”
His mouth made a brief, traitorous curve. “I bet you cannot follow one timed instruction all day.”
Catalina lifted her chin. “I bet you cannot survive one day without consulting a spreadsheet.”
“The winner chooses our next non-work date.”
She paused. “Why would there be a next non-work date?”
“Because you objected to the phrase before I finished saying it.”
“Fine. Winner chooses. And if I win, there will be no spreadsheets during dinner.”
“If I win, you arrive exactly when instructed.”
“Monster.”
“Planner.”
The assistant clapped once. “Hand in hand, please. We’re doing a test shot.”