Excerpt of Double Mint by Gretchen Archer

Jeep USA rewarded the top fifty Jeep dealerships in North
America by sending the franchise owners and their
families to Lahaina, Maui, Hawaii, where they spent two
glorious weeks in private villas with names like Kamaole
Estates, Hula Paniau, and Wailea Beach. Sixteen-year-old
Kiki Logan, whose father owned the Jeep dealership in
Jackson, Mississippi, hooked up with seventeen-year old
Austin Griffith, whose father owned the Jeep dealership
in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. They lied to their parents
in general, but specifically about sneaking out to meet
the other. They hid on a strip of secluded beach beside a
shallow saltwater lagoon and drank spiked Hawaiian Punch
for most of the second week. Fast-forward eight months,
and it’s Hele Mai ‘Oe I Ko Maua Male ‘Ana! (We’re Getting
Hitched!) and Hapai Kaikamahine! (It’s a Girl!) at the
Bellissimo Resort and Casino in Biloxi, Mississippi.

Where I work.

My name is Davis Way Cole. I’m a redhead, a newlywed, and
lead investigator on an undercover team for the casino,
which is to say I, along with my partners Fantasy Erb and
Baylor (just Baylor, like Batman) perform workplace
duties no sane person would ever agree to. Tonight’s
impossible task? The Hawaiian Jeep wedding.

The families were bitter rivals and sworn enemies from
way back who couldn’t agree on anything, much less a
wedding venue, so the wedding was booked on our neutral
ground. Huge wedding. The $100,000 package. It was all so
Romeo and Juliet.

The mother of the bride and the mother of the groom
raised all kinds of hell in the weeks leading up to the
wedding, which was nothing compared to the fits they
pitched when they checked in and began tearing it up in
person. Our special events coordinator, Holder Darby—mid-
fifties, ’80s big hair, wears Birkenstock clogs every
single day of the year—who’d been with the Bellissimo
booking, organizing, and being paid very well for
coordinating every wedding, reunion, and conference since
1996, walked off the job. She didn’t show up for work
Wednesday or Thursday, and finally on Friday, the day of
the rehearsal dinner, Human Resources tracked her down.
Holder told them she would never set foot in the
Bellissimo again, ever, she’d had it with being bullied,
threatened, and strong-armed, send her last paycheck via
the United States Postal Service, and don’t call back.
All because of a Hello Kitty cake.

The wedding parties checked in on Tuesday. Groom’s Mother
arrived first. She burst into Holder Darby’s office to
have a word about the bride’s cake. It got ugly, and
Holder had to call security. Groom’s Mother, who
housekeeping reported “ate rocks for breakfast” and was
“mean as a snake,” incensed at having been kicked out of
Holder’s office, decided to give it another go. She laid
in wait, then followed the wedding coordinator out of the
employee parking garage all the way to her Sunkist
Country Club Road home. Groom’s Mother angled her Jeep
Laredo E against the back bumper of Special Events
Coordinator’s Audi S8 sedan, then climbed out of the car,
dragged poor Holder out of hers, and put her in a
headlock. She told Holder if she heard the words “Hello”
or “Kitty” one more time in regard to her only son’s
wedding, she would take that cake and shove it so far up
Holder, she’d have Hello Kitty coming out her ears for
six months. Holder didn’t even clean out her desk, she
just stopped coming to work.

Until she could be replaced, Holder’s job fell in my lap.
Starting with the Hawaiian wedding. Mission? To keep the
Jeep people from killing each other over a Hello Kitty
cake. Here’s how stupid this fight is: The groom’s cake
is a towering Minecraft number garnished with diamond,
emerald, and eyeball cupcakes.

The ballroom was split down the middle. The families
marked their territories with two completely different
decors, menus, and live entertainment. This marriage was
doomed.

We made it through dinner without incident, the Hello
Kitty cake was cut and served without bloodshed, and it
looked like we were home free when the very pregnant
bride propped her swollen feet in a chair and the older
Jeep guests began nodding off. It was the dance bands who
started the war. The Groom’s band began playing Van
Morrison’s “Crazy Love” before Bride’s band finished the
last few measures of Frank Sinatra’s “Fly Me to the
Moon.” A contractual infraction. The lead singers began
arguing from their respective stages over headset
microphones. Ugly things about each other’s questionable
paternity. F-bombs all over the place. In the blink of an
eye, twenty musicians were off those stages and in a pile
on the dance floor, fists and bass guitars flying. Every
wedding guest under the age of sixty hit the dance floor
and joined in.

Fantasy and I, on opposite sides of the brawl, spoke via
earpieces.

“Where’s Baylor?” I asked. “He needs to get in there and
break it up.” A man’s shoe flew in front of my face. Then
a bridesmaid’s bouquet.

“Need some help over here, Davis.”

I hopped on a chair and spotted Fantasy across the
ballroom. She was wrestling a fire extinguisher away from
a wedding guest who was trying to run out on the dance
floor with it.

Good idea. I pulled my phone from my pocket, hacked the
Bellissimo’s building management control system, and
turned on the sprinklers. Five alarm, full blast, make it
rain. The fighting stopped, but the rain didn’t. I
managed to turn the sprinklers on and in the process,
drowned my phone, so I couldn’t turn them off.

It took until midnight to get the soggy guests sorted and
disposed of. Thirteen were hauled off to jail, including
five from the Top 40 band, two from the Jazzy Lounge
band, and just the one Groom’s Mother. The other guests
were sent to their hotel rooms, with the bride and her
family traveling via ambulance to Biloxi Regional Medical
Center where she delivered a seven-pound five ounce baby
girl. The whole time, a cleaning crew pushed industrial
wet-dry vacs through the ballroom. The groom was finally
located in a guest room with a Hello Kitty bridesmaid,
dry as a bone.

I didn’t get home until one in the morning, and when I
did, I woke up my husband.

“Bradley.” I climbed into the warm bed. “You have to call
Holder Darby and make her come back to work.”

He pulled me into a hug and kissed my forehead. “You have
frosting in your hair.”