My Spy 3: Murder Mayhem

Heirloom

Once as I am in the car, I debate making yet another phone call or hightailing it over to the craft store so I can price stuff out before the store closes. I glance to the clock on the dashboard and an image of the sad vacant winery flashes across my mind. I know I need to set my priorities straight so I decide to head off to the craft store.

As soon as I arrive, I am overwhelmed by options. There are so many different variations of golds, reds and browns that I end up asking an associate to pick out the ribbons, envelopes, invitations and calligraphy pens. I scroll through the table decor options and decide to just order fresh centerpieces from the florist in town. My mother said it would cost more than doing the arrangements ourselves, but after an hour of attempting to bundle a nice bouquet of fake flowers together, I call it quits. I grab vases to stuff the flowers into and realize I don't know how many to buy. How many tables will I have? That depends on the number of guests, and I won't know the number of guests until I find Poppy's old donor lists. I then realize I can't place a catering order, a drink order or buy the party favors until I have that number. Basically, everything is on hold until I get an idea of the headcount.

These lists are becoming more and more important and it seems impossible to find them. And then, the more I try to locate the lists, the odder accounting issues I discover. So even if I wanted to walk away from Poppy's case, I can't until I have her old records in my possession.

I walk what I have in my cart to the register and realize I don't have society funds to purchase what I have. I wonder if I could just buy what's necessary and have Arthur reimburse me. I decide to go with that route and I quickly ring up the few items.

When I arrive home, I take the two paper bags into the kitchen and dump them onto the table in front of Momma, who has her nose stuck in a book. She waits to finish her chapter before looking up at me.

"What's all that?" She asks and I look down at her.

"You told me to go to the craft store today, so I did. I got invitations and everything needed to mail them."

"How did you know how many to buy?" She asks with her glasses perched on her nose.

"They came in packs of fifty, so I bought four. I know for a fact there weren't over two hundred guests at the fundraiser so we should have plenty to send out to everyone." I tell her and she frowns. I shake my head as I snap, "What? Why are you looking at me like I did something wrong?"

She drops the book onto the table and sits back into the chair before she says, "Sawyer, we have a tight budget. I asked you to go price out invitations. What if we only invite one hundred people, then you just wasted money on extra invites when that money could go towards something else."

I roll my eyes.

"If we end up having extra, I will go return what we don't use. I figure we don't have much time to get these out so once I get the list together, we will be ready to go."

She eyes me and I know she wants to say more but she doesn't. She stands up from the table and goes through my purchases. With her hand still in the bag, she looks up at me again and asks, "Are you going to do the calligraphy on the invitations yourself?"

I nod.

"And I am going to recruit Annabeth too. Finally, one of the lessons you shoved down my throat will pay off. We'll save money instead of hiring someone else to do them."

"I bet Margot has beautiful penmanship as well. I want you to ask her to help," she orders and I drop into a chair. I look to her as I reply, "I'm sure Margot has better things to do than help me. Besides, she makes Austin do everything for her now and we all know Austin's handwriting looks like chicken scratch."