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.”