Murder With Peacocks

MURDER, WITH PEACOCKS

by Donna Andrews

Copyright 1999

by Donna Andrews.

A MYSTERY

Winner of the 1998 St. Martin's Press/malice Domestic Best First Traditional Mystery Contest, Donna Andrews introduces a cast of quirky characters who pull her heroine in different directions as she plans three successive summer weddings.

When Meg Langslow is roped into being a bridesmaid for the nuptials of her mother, her brother's fiancee, and her own best friend, she is apprehensive. Getting the brides to choose their outfits and those of their bridesmaids (and not change their minds three days later), trying to capture the principals long enough to work out details, and even finding peacocks to strut around the garden during the ceremony--these are things Meg can handle. She can brush off the unfortunate oaf who is smitten with her, and take philosophically her disappointment when she learns that the only eligible man in her small Virginia town (and a delightful hunk he is) is of questionable sexual preference. But even Meg is taken aback when the unpleasant former sister-in-law of Meg's soon-to-be stepfather disappears and is later found dead.

Well, that's one way to zip up a wedding, and Andrews does a fine job of making the three celebrations more fun and more unusual than anything you've ever read in Ann Landers.

DONNA ANDREWS lives in Arlington, Virginia.

MURDER, WITH PEACOCKS

Tuesday, May 24

I had become so used to hysterical dawn phone calls that I only muttered one half hearted oath before answering.

"Peacocks," a voice said.

"I beg your pardon, you must have the wrong number," I mumbled. I opened one eye to peer at the clock: it was 6:00 A.m.

"Oh, don't be silly, Meg," the voice continued. Ah, I recognized it now. Samantha, my brother, Rob's, fiancee.

"I just called to tell you that we need some peacocks."

"What for?"

"For the wedding, of course." Of course. As far as Samantha was concerned, the entire universe revolved around her upcoming wedding, and as maid of honor, I was expected to share her obsession.

"I see," I said, although actually I didn't. I suppressed a shudder at the thought of peacocks, roasted with the feathers still on, gracing the buffet table. Surely that wasn't what she had in mind, was it? "What are we going to do with them at the wedding?"

"We're not going to do anything with them" Samantha said, impatiently. "They'll just be there, adding grace and elegance to the occasion. Don't you remember the weekend before last when we all had dinner with your father? And he was saying what a pity it was that nothing much would be blooming in the yard in August, so there wouldn't be much color? Well, I just saw a photo in a magazine that had peacocks in it, and they were just about the most darling things you ever saw ..."

I let her rattle on while I fumbled over the contents of my bedside table, found my notebook-that-tells-me-when-to-breathe, flipped to the appropriate page, and wrote "Peacocks" in the clear, firm printing I use when I am not in a very good mood.

"Were you thinking of buying or renting them?" I asked, interrupting Samantha's oration on the charms of peacocks.

"Well--rent if we can. I'm sure Father would be perfectly happy to buy them if necessary, but I'm not sure what we would do with them in the long run." I noted "Rent/buy if necessary" after

"Peacocks."

"Right. Peacocks. I'll see what I can turn up."

"Wonderful. Oh, Meg, you're just so wonderful at all this!"

I let her gush for a few more minutes. I wondered, not for the first time, if I should feel sorry for Rob or if he was actually looking forward to listening to her for the rest of his life. And did Rob, who shared my penchant for late hours, realize how much of a morning person Samantha was? Eventually, I managed to cut short her monologue and sign off. I was awake; I might as well get to work.

Muttering "Peacocks!" under my breath, I stumbled through a quick shower, grabbed some coffee, and went into my studio. I flung open all the windows and gazed fondly at my unlit forge and my ironworking tools. My spirits rose.

For about ten seconds. Then the phone rang again.

"What do you think of blue, dear?" my mother asked.

"Good morning, Mother. What do you mean, blue?"

"The color blue, dear."

"The color blue," I repeated, unenlightened. I am not at my best before noon.

"Yes, dear," Mother said, with a touch of impatience.

"What do I think of it?" I asked, baffled. "I think it's a lovely color. The majority of Americans name blue when asked their favorite color. In Asian cultures--"

"For the living room, dear."

"Oh. You're getting something blue for the living room?"

"I'm redoing it, dear. For the wedding, remember? In blue. Or green. But I was really leaning to blue. I was wondering what you thought."

What I thought? Truthfully? I thought my mother's idea of redoing the living room for the wedding had been a temporary aberration arising from too much sherry after dinner at an uncle's house. And incidentally, the wedding in question was not Rob's and Samantha's but her own. After the world's most amiable divorce and five years of so-called single life during which my father happily continued to do all her yard work and run errands for her, my mother had decided to marry a recently widowed neighbor. And I had also agreed to be Mother's maid of honor. Which, knowing my mother, meant I had more or less agreed to do every lick of work associated with the occasion. Under her exacting supervision, of course.

"What sort of blue?" I asked, buying time. The living room was done entirely in earth tones. Redoing it in blue would involve new drapes, new upholstery, new carpet, new everything. Oh, well, Dad could afford it, I suppose. Only Dad wouldn't be paying, I reminded myself. What's-his-name would. Mother's fiance. Jake. I had no idea how well or badly off Jake was. Well, presumably Mother did.

"I hadn't decided, dear. I thought you might have some ideas."

"Oh. I tell you what," I said, improvising. "I'll ask Eileen. She's the one with the real eye for color. I'll ask her, and we'll get some color swatches and we'll talk about it when I come down."

"That will be splendid, Meg dear. Well, I'll let you get back to your work now. See you in a few days."

I added "Blue" to my list of things to do. I actually managed to put down my coffee and pick up my hammer before the phone rang a third time.

"Oh, Meg, he's impossible. This is just not going to work."

The voice belonged to my best friend and business partner, Eileen. She with the eye for colors. The he in question was Steven, since New Year's Eve her fiance, at least during the intervals between premarital spats. At the risk of repeating myself, I should add that I was, of course, also Eileen's maid of honor.

"What's wrong?" I asked.

"He doesn't want to include the Native American herbal purification ceremony in the wedding."

"Well," I said, after a pause, "perhaps he feels a little self-conscious about it. Since neither of you is actually Native American."

"That's silly. It's a lovely tradition and makes such an important statement about our commitment to the environment."

I sighed.

"I'll talk to him," I said. "Just one thing... Eileen, what kind of herbs are we talking about here? I mean, we're not talking anything illegal, are we?"

"Oh, Meg." Eileen laughed. "Really! I have to go, my clay's ready." She hung up, still laughing merrily. I added "Call Steven re herbs" to my list.

I looked around the studio. My tools were there, ready and waiting for me to dive into the ironwork that is both my passion and my livelihood. I knew I really ought to get some work done today. In a few days, I would be back in my hometown for what I was sure would be a summer from hell. But I was already having a hard time concentrating on work. Maybe it was time to throw in the towel and head down to Yorktown.

The phone rang again. I glared at it, willing it to shut up. It ignored me and kept on ringing. I sighed, and picked it up.

Eileen again.

"Oh, Meg, before you go down to Yorktown, could you--"

"I won't have time to do anything else before I go down to Yorktown; I'm going down there tomorrow."

"Wonderful! Why don't you stop by on your way? We have some things to tell you."

On my way. Yorktown, where my parents and Eileen's father lived and where all the weddings were taking place, was three hours south of Washington, on the coast. Steven's farm, where Eileen was now living, was three hours west, in the mountains. I was opening my mouth to ask if she had any idea how inconvenient stopping by was when I suddenly realized: if I went to Steven and Eileen's, I could force them to make decisions, extract lists and signatures. I would have them in my clutches. This could be useful.

"I'll be there for supper tomorrow."

I spent the day putting my life on hold and turning over my studio to the struggling sculptor who'd sublet it for the summer. I went to bed feeling virtuous. I intended to spend the next several days really getting things done for the weddings.

Wednesday, May 25

I was hoping to get out of town by noon, but by the time I packed everything, fielded another half-dozen phone calls from each of the brides, and ran all the resulting last-minute errands, it was well into the evening rush hour. Needless to say I was late arriving at Steven and Eileen's. Eileen, bless her heart, didn't seem to mind. In fact she didn't even seem to notice.

"Guess who's here," Eileen said as she met me at the door wearing a dress of purple tie-dyed velvet, splattered here and there with flour. "Barry!"

"Really," I said, with considerably less enthusiasm. Ever since December, when I'd broken up with my boyfriend, Jeffrey, various friends and relatives had been trying to set me up with their idea of eligible men. Steven and Eileen's candidate was Steven's younger brother, Barry. Barry had taken to the idea immediately. I had not.

"The minute we told him you were coming, he came right up," Eileen burbled. "Isn't that sweet?"

"I really wish you hadn't done that."

"Why, Meg?" Eileen said, wide-eyed.

"Eileen, we've been over this half a dozen times already. You and Steven may think Barry and I are made for each other. I don't."

"He's crazy about you."

"So what? I don't happen to like him."

"I don't see why not," Eileen said. "He's so sensitive. And such a deep thinker, too."

"I'll have to take your word for it. I've never heard him put two consecutive sentences together."

"And so attractive," Eileen went on, while attempting, in vain, to tidy her flyaway mane and succeeding only in covering it with flour marks.

"Attractive? He's an overgrown ox," I said. I could see Eileen bristle. Oops. Not surprisingly, Barry bore a strong fraternal resemblance to Steven. "All right, he's not as attractive as Steven, but he's okay if you like his type." The hulking Neanderthal type. "But he just doesn't appeal to me."

"But he's so sensitive ... and such a wonderful craftsman," Eileen protested. "Why, whenever he and Steven have any really delicate carving work to do on a piece of furniture, Barry's always the one who does it. Steven says he has such wonderfully clever hands."

"I don't care how clever those oversized paws are with wood," I said. "I don't want them anywhere near me."

"Oh, Meg, you'll change your mind when you get to know him better."

"What gives you the right to assume I want to get to know him better?" I said, hotly. To empty air. Eileen was skipping down the hall to the kitchen.

"Meg's here!" she trilled. I followed her, fuming inwardly. Calm down, I told myself. She means well, she's your best friend, you love her dearly, and as soon as this damned wedding is over you'll probably even like her again.

Steven and Barry were sitting around the kitchen table talking. At least Steven was. Barry was sitting with his chin in his hand, nodding at whatever Steven was saying. Situation normal. Steven came over and hugged me. Barry, fortunately, didn't try, but his face lit up in a way that made me feel both guilty and depressed.

"Sit down, dinner's almost ready," Steven said. "Meg's come to stay for a few days," he added, as if Barry didn't already know.

"Only tonight, I'm afraid," I said. "Mother's having some sort of party this weekend and I promised I'd come down in time to help her get ready."

A chorus of protests from Steven and Eileen met this announcement, and Barry looked heartbroken.

"Oh, you can't possibly!" Eileen said. "But we have such a wonderful time planned for you," Steven protested. "You've got to stay."

Even Barry nodded with what in him passed for enthusiasm.

I drained my glass and took another close look at him. No, not even Eileen and Steven's foul-tasting and incredibly potent cider could begin to make Barry look appealing. I didn't share Eileen's besotted view of Steven's charms. Steven was tall, handsome in a rather beefy way, and had a mellow, laid-back personality that perfectly complemented Eileen's ditzy one. But while Steven was definitely not my type, I had to admit that in making him, his parents had done the best they could with the material at hand. And then, flushed with overconfidence, they'd gone and produced Barry. Why couldn't they have left poor Steven an only child? Barry came close to having the same rough-hewn features that made Steven ruggedly handsome (according to Eileen), but everything was just a little coarser and rather haphazardly assembled. And besides, the human head is supposed to be connected to the human body with at least a rudimentary neck.

The rest of the evening, like every other stage of Eileen and Steven's campaign to set me up with Barry, resembled a French farce. I was outnumbered, since the three of them conspired to find ways of throwing me and Barry alone together. But I'd learned that I could neutralize Barry as long as I kept talking. By nine-thirty, I was more than a little hoarse, and found myself explaining to an unnaturally appreciative Barry the reason for the price difference between real engraved invitations and invitations with thermal raised printing.

So much for my quiet interlude in the country. I did find a few minutes alone with Steven to talk about Eileen's latest addition to the wedding agenda.

"About this Native American herbal purification ceremony," I began.

"I hate to say this, because normally Eileen has such wonderfully creative ideas," Steven said, "but I just think it's a little too much."

"So do I," I said. "Completely ridiculous. You'd be laughing stocks. Guests would be rolling in the aisles. You'd probably make "News of the Weird"."

"Exactly. So you'll talk her out of it?"

"No, I think you should tell her you agree."

"Agree?"

"Just tell her it's cool with you. I'll tell her I'm researching it. She'll change her mind long before the wedding."

"Do you really think so?"

"Trust me," I said. "I've known Eileen all her life. I guarantee you, by mid-June the Native American herbal purification ceremony will be history." At least I had every intention of ensuring it was.

Steven seemed satisfied. Eileen was overjoyed to hear he'd come around. And I would keep my fingers crossed that whatever new idea she came up with by mid-June was a little less off the wall. Please, I thought, let her become militantly traditional, just for a few months.

To everyone's disappointment, I went to bed at ten o'clock so I could get an early start on the next day's drive. No, I couldn't stay longer; I didn't want Mother to make herself ill getting ready for Sunday's family picnic. No, Mother's health was fine, but she wasn't getting any younger, and she had a lot on her hands this summer. I overdid it a bit; Barry was so touched by my daughterly devotion that he tried to volunteer to come down and help us with the party preparations and was only discouraged with the greatest of difficulty.

It could have been my imagination--or the influence of one too many glasses of cider--but as I was wishing everyone good-night, I thought I saw something like a snarl cross Barry's usually placid face. Perhaps he was beginning to realize that pursuing me was futile, I thought. And resenting it. Ah, well; even a surly, resentful Barry would be more interesting than his customary bovine self.

Thursday, May 26

What a relief it was the next morning to get up with the chickens (the few who had survived Steven and Eileen's care) and hit the road at 7:00 a.m. By the time I was actually wide awake, I'd put a good hundred miles of winding mountain roads between me and Barry.

Well before noon I found myself driving down the long, tree-shaded driveway to my parents' house. Well, Mother's house, anyway; Dad had moved out. Although I could see him up in a ladder pruning an ornamental cherry tree. I made a mental note to compliment him on the gardens, which were looking superb, and to hint that the house needed painting before all the relatives came for the weddings. On second thought, maybe I should just arrange to hire someone; painting three stories of rambling Victorian house with gingerbread trim was not something a sixty-six-year-old should be doing, though Dad would try if I mentioned it.

Mother was on the porch, her slender frame draped elegantly over the chaise lounge. She was dressed, as usual, as if expecting distinguished visitors, with not a single expensively natural-looking blond hair out of place. I suppressed the usual envious sigh. I'm the same height, and not at all bad-looking in my own fashion, but I'm not slender, I'm not a blonde, and nobody's ever mistaken me for elegant.

Mother wasn't even surprised to see me arrive several days early.

"Hello, dear," she said, giving me a quick peck on the cheek. "There's lemonade in the refrigerator. Why don't you help your sister with lunch? We'll all be able to eat that much sooner."

From the relief on Pam's face when I showed up in the kitchen to help, I suspected she was regretting her decision to pack off her husband Mal and the four oldest kids for a summer with Mal's parents in Australia. I could have warned her that the two youngest, Eric and Natalie, weren't much defense against Mother's tendency to enlist anyone within range as unpaid labor. But she'd known Mother eight years longer than I had; if she hadn't learned by now, there wasn't much I could do.

Dad was the only one who seemed surprised by my early arrival. He came in just as we were sitting down to lunch and took his usual place. Jake, the fiance, was not here. No one else seemed to find this odd, so I said nothing.

"Meg!" he cried, jumping up to give me a bear hug as soon as he noticed it was me taking the chair beside him. "I thought you weren't coming down till Saturday! You're supposed to be resting at Steven and Eileen's farm! What happened?"

"It wasn't relaxing. Barry was there."

"Barry who?" my sister, Pam, asked.

"Steven's brother. The one they keep pushing at me."

"The dim one?" Dad asked.

"Precisely."

"Is he nice?" Mother asked.

"Not particularly." I'd explained to her several times before, in excruciating detail, exactly how much I disliked Barry, but since she obviously paid no attention I'd given up trying.

"I can't see how any brother of Steven's wouldn't be nice," Mother said.

"Well, he'll be down for the wedding, so you can see for yourself. For that matter, he'll probably be down for Eileen's family's barbecue on Memorial Day."

"You could call and tell him to come down for our picnic," Mother suggested.

"Mother, I don't want him here for our picnic. I don't like him."

"I suppose it would be awkward, with Jeffrey here," Mother said.

"Jeffrey's not--oh, I give up," I muttered. I'd also failed to convince Mother, who liked my ex-boyfriend for his vapid good looks, that Jeffrey was out of the picture. Dad patted my shoulder.

"I know your mother really appreciates your coming down," he said. "There's such a lot to do."

"Yes, Meg," Mother said, her face lighting with the sudden realization that at least for the moment she had me solely in her clutches, free from the competing influences of Samantha and Eileen.

We spent the rest of lunch discussing wedding details, followed by an afternoon of debating redecorating plans and a supper split between these two equally fascinating topics. I ate both meals with my left hand while scribbling several pages of notes in the notebook-that-tells-me-when-to-breathe. Dad made intermittent attempts to talk them into giving me tomorrow off, and was ignored. After lengthy discussion, Mother, Pam, and I all agreed that a visit to the local dressmaker was the first order of business. I was about halfway through the job of nagging three brides, three flower girls, and fourteen bridesmaids into visiting the dressmaker and had even talked to her on the phone several times, but hadn't actually made it to the shop myself.

"Well, that's settled," Mother said, as Pam and I began clearing the dishes. "Tomorrow morning you'll go down to Mrs. Waterston's shop and make sure everything is going well."

"Yes, that sounds like a wonderful idea!" Dad said, with great enthusiasm. "You'll like that!"

I stared at him, amazed at this sudden about-face. Such enthusiasm from Dad meant that he was up to something, but I couldn't imagine what. He was wearing what he probably thought of as a Machiavellian expression, but since Dad is short, bald, and pudgy, he looked more like a mischievous elf. Ah, well. Perhaps he had decided getting me a day off was a lost cause and was putting a cheerful face on the inevitable. Or perhaps Dad approved of Mrs. Waterston. Perhaps she shared one of his obsessions--bird-watching, or gardening, or reading too many mysteries. Since she'd only come to town the previous September, Mrs. Waterston was one of the few people in the county I hadn't known all my life. That alone made me look forward to meeting her. Yes, a visit to the dress shop was definitely in order.

Friday, May 27

So, bright and early the next morning, I drove into Yorktown proper to visit the dressmaker.

Mother told me the dress shop was two doors down from the house where her uncle Stanley Hollingworth lived. I've never yet known her to give anyone a set of directions without at least one reference to a landmark that hasn't existed for years. It wasn't until the third time I'd examined every building in the block that I realized she must have meant not the house where he currently lived but the one he'd grown up in, three quarters of a century ago.

Sure enough, two doors down from the old Hollingworth house was a small cottage painted in Easter egg pastels, including a tasteful pink and baby blue colonial-style sign in front reading Be-Stitched-- Dressmakers. I walked down a cobblestone path between a low border of immaculately pruned shrubs, opened a glossy sky blue door, and walked in to the tinkling of a small, old-fashioned bell. The whole thing was almost too cute for words. And since I positively loathe cute, I walked in prepared to dislike the proprietor intensely.

And found myself face-to-face with one of the most gorgeous men I'd ever seen in my life. He looked up from the book he was reading, brushed an unruly lock of dark hair out of his deep blue eyes, and smiled.

"Yes?" he said. I stood there looking at him for a couple of embarrassing seconds before pulling myself together. More or less.

"I'm here about a wedding. Where's Mrs. Waterston?" I asked, and then realized how rude that sounded.

"In traction," he said. "Down in Florida. I'm her son, Michael; I'm filling in while her broken bones mend."

"Oh, I'm sorry. I hope she's better soon."

"Not nearly as much as I hope it," he said gloomily. He had a wonderful, resonant voice. Perhaps he was a musician. I'm a sucker for musicians.

"How can I help you?" he asked.

"I'm Meg Langslow. I'm supposed to come here to be measured for a bridesmaid's dress."

"A bridesmaid's dress," he said, suddenly looking very cheerful. "Wonderful! For whose wedding?" He stood up and turned round to pull out the top drawer of a file cabinet on the back wall, giving me a chance to discreetly eye his wonderfully long, lean form. I decided I was looking forward to bringing Eileen in here so I could point out to her that this, not the beefy Barry, was my idea of what a hunk should look like. And I peeked at the book he was reading--Shakespeare. Not only gorgeous, but literate, too.

"Samantha Brewster, Eileen Donleavy, or Margaret Hollingworth Langslow. Take your pick."

His hand froze over the files and he looked up warily.

"You're not sure which? Are you, perhaps, comparison shopping to see who has the least objectionable gowns before committing yourself?"

"No, I'm stuck with all three of them. Langslow is my mother, Brewster is marrying my brother, and Donleavy is my best friend. I know it sounds odd, but this is a very small town."

"Actually, after two weeks here, very little strikes me as odd," he said. "And you're right; this is a very small town. I'm surprised I haven't run into you before."

"I don't live here anymore. I've come home for the summer, though, to help with all the weddings. I assume one set of measurements will do for all three; the first and last ones are only two weeks apart."

"Should do," he said. "What a summer you're in for. Here we are. Brewster ... Langslow ... and I'll start a file for Donleavy."

"Start a file? She's the first one up; you mean she hasn't even been here yet?"

"Not since I took over, and if your friend had been in before Mom left for Florida I'm sure she would have started a file."

I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and began counting silently. I had gotten to three when he asked, "Are you all right?"

"I'm fine," I said. "Eileen always advises me to count to ten when I lose my temper. I generally still feel like throttling her when I'm finished, though."

I opened my eyes.

"She was supposed to have come in with one of her other bridesmaids months ago to pick out dresses so your mother could order them in our sizes. I mean, that's what she told me she'd done. The measurements were just supposed to be for the fine-tuning, or whatever you call it. Which I thought would be happening this week. She lied to me!"

Calm down, Meg, I told myself. Do not lose your temper at Eileen, especially in front of this very nice and extremely gorgeous man. Who was not, I had already noticed, wearing a wedding ring. I made a mental note to interrogate Mother about him; no doubt she and the aunts on the Hollingworth side of the family already knew not only his entire life history but also several generations of his family tree.

"I'm sorry," I said. "It's just that I'm the one who's trying to pull this all together, and she's the one who's unintentionally sabotaging everything."

"We'll manage something," he said, with a smile. "I don't recognize the name--what does she look like?"

"She's about five-ten, frizzy blondish hair down to her waist, a little on the plump side. Kind of looks like she just got in from California, or maybe Woodstock. The original."

He chuckled and walked over to a curtained doorway in the back of the shop and called out something in a rapid, musical tongue. A little wizened Asian grandmother, well under five feet tall, popped out and they chattered at each other for a few moments.

"She was in and looked at all the books several months ago, but didn't decide on anything," he reported finally. "Took down several stock numbers but hasn't called back."

"I'll have her in here Monday. Oh--Monday's Memorial Day. Tuesday, then. She'll be in town by then. You are open Tuesday?"

He nodded. "That would be great. Why don't we have Mrs. Tranh measure you now for the other weddings."

"Fine," I said, my mind still focused on Eileen's iniquities. "And just what did Mother and Samantha decide on? At least I hope they've both decided on something. They told me they had, but perhaps I shouldn't have trusted them, either."

"Oh, yes, they did. Several months ago. Your mother said she wanted to surprise you and your sister, and we weren't on any account to show you what it was until she had the chance," he said, a little nervously.

"That's Mother for you. I won't ask you to betray a confidence; I won't even ask you if she picked something ghastly. As long as it's underway."

"Oh, definitely," he said. "And it's not ghastly at all, if you ask me."

"And Samantha?" I asked. "She's underway, too?"

"Yes. She hasn't told you anything about what she picked?"

"No, she and the blond bim--the other bridesmaids all got together and decided two months ago. I knew I should have come down for it. How bad is it? Should I be sitting down?"

He pulled a picture out of the file and held it up.

"You've got to be kidding," I said. He shook his head.

"No, and neither is she, apparently."

"Oh... my ... God!"

The pictures looked like publicity stills from Gone with the Wind. Enormous hooped skirts. Plunging, off-the-shoulder necklines. Multiple layers of petticoats. Elaborate hairstyles involving many fussy-looking ringlets. And tiny, tiny waists.

"I'll let Mrs. Tranh take you back to the dressing room for measuring," he said. Damn him, he was fighting back a grin. "The corsets, particularly, require a lot of rather intimate details."

"Corsets? In July? Eileen's off the hook. I'm killing Samantha first," I said. Much to his amusement.

Mrs. Tranh, it turned out, was the tiny, gray-haired Asian woman. Vietnamese, I think. Neither she nor any of the other seamstresses would admit to speaking any English. However, she had no difficulty communicating with sign language and firm taps and tugs exactly how I should stand or turn so she and the flock could measure me. There were only five of them, I think, but the dressing room--formerly the kitchen of the tiny cottage--was so small, and they darted so rapidly about the room and up and down the stairs--to the sewing rooms, I supposed--that they seemed like dozens. They were all so short that I felt like a great, clumsy giantess. And knowing that they had previously measured Samantha and my sylphlike fellow bridesmaids, I had to sternly suppress my paranoia. I was sure their soft chattering conversation consisted mainly of unfavorable comments about my more normally female form.

I amused myself by letting my imagination run rampant about their boss, who was hovering attentively outside the curtain, occasionally exchanging rapid and unintelligible remarks with them. I would definitely have to interrogate Mother about him. But discreetly. If she and the rest of the family deduced that I was interested in him, half of them would probably disapprove and make clumsy and embarrassing attempts to interfere. The other half would rejoice and indulge in even clumsier and more embarrassing attempts to throw us together. Matchmaking was a competitive sport in Yorktown, and my family's enthusiasm for it was one of the reasons I had chosen to relocate several hours away.

I would have been tempted to hang about and talk to Michael the Gorgeous, but I knew I should be getting back to keep up with my schedule for addressing the envelopes for Eileen's invitations. Besides, another neighbor had arrived with the twin six-year-old nieces who were going to be flowergirls in her daughter's wedding, and she obviously expected Michael's full attention. I consoled myself with the thought that I would have plenty of future opportunities to see him.

As maid of honor, my presence at all future fittings of any member of the three wedding parties could be taken for granted. It would be very considerate to find out when their least busy times were, so I could schedule fittings that wouldn't be interrupted by other customers. Why, choosing Eileen's gown alone would probably occupy several mornings or afternoons next week. I magnanimously forgave Eileen for having lied to me.

I was in very good spirits when I arrived back at the house. I found Mother lounging elegantly on the living room sofa with a box of chocolates and the latest issue of Bride magazine.

I hate it when they read the bridal magazines. Every issue is good for at least a dozen new items on my to-do list.

"Well, I went down to the dress shop today, had my measurements taken, and found out that Eileen has not decided on her dresses yet," I announced, throwing myself into a nearby armchair.

"You really ought not to have let her wait this long, dear," Mother said. "She could have a very hard time getting anything on such short notice."

"I didn't let her wait this long, Mother. I nagged her to go in and order something; I sent her down here to do it under the threat that I'd pick something myself if she didn't, and two days later she came back and told me she'd ordered something. She lied to me!"

"She's under a great deal of strain, dear. Be tactful with her. Mrs. Waterston will manage somehow." Bingo! My opening to pry without seeming to.

"By the way, Mother, you told me to ask for Mrs. Waterston, but apparently she's in Florida, recuperating from a broken leg."

"Oh, yes, dear, didn't I mention that?" Mother said. "Her son has come down to run the shop while she's gone."

"Yes, I met him."

"Such a nice boy. I understand he teaches theater at a college somewhere up your way," Mother said, as she poked through the chocolates to see if perhaps there were any left that she liked. "Such a pity, really."

"What's a pity?"

"That he's ... well, you know. Like that."

"Like what, Mother?" I asked, but had a sinking feeling I already knew the answer. Mother, mistress of pregnant pauses and vague euphemisms, had come just about as close as she ever would to telling me that drop-dead-gorgeous Michael was gay.

"I feel so sorry for his mother sometimes," Mother went on, inspecting a chocolate critically. "She's told several people that she's in no hurry for Michael to settle down because she was a child bride and doesn't want to be a young grandmother. She puts on a brave front. But of course since he came down everyone knows exactly how unlikely it is that she'll ever be a grandmother, especially since he's an only child." She nibbled a corner of the chocolate and made a delicate face. "Here, darling, you finish this one; I don't like coconut."

"Neither do I, Mother."

"Oh? Then we'll save it for Eric," she said, putting the candy carefully back in one corner of the box.

"Feed the grandkids the spitbacks?" I snapped. "That's efficient, Mother."

She looked at me in surprise.

"Are you all right, dear? Perhaps you should go upstairs and lie down for a bit; you've been so busy and perhaps the heat is making you just a little out of sorts. So hard to believe it's still May."

Feeling guilty for taking my disappointment out on her, I pleaded a small headache and fled up to my room. Actually I was depressed and wanted to mope by myself. Like Cinderella's golden carriage turning back into a pumpkin, all those impending trips to Be-Stitched to be fitted now turned from golden opportunities back into drab chores. I was already on the verge of tears when the sight of the huge stack of Eileen's envelopes on my dresser sent me over the edge. How symbolic of my summer. Me doing an endless series of chores while other people found happiness.

Obviously I was overreacting to the situation, but damn! My antennae were usually better than this. How could I be so mistaken? Perhaps it was wishful thinking. In the five months since breaking up with Jeffrey, I hadn't really met anyone else interesting. Not that I had much time for meeting people, between wedding arrangements and the extra time I'd been spending at the forge to build up enough inventory so I could take the summer off. The few dates I'd had were with men pushed at me by matchmaking friends, and most of them had been awful. I had pretty much resigned myself to putting my own social life on hold until this summer's weddings were out of the way. Obviously my hormones were objecting to this idea by reacting violently to the first attractive male in sight, without stopping to consider whether he was a suitable target. Or was it possible that Mother could, for once, be wrong?

That hope was dashed rather thoroughly when the Brewsters joined our family for a welcome-home-Meg dinner.

"Imagine," I heard Mother say to Mrs. Brewster, "when Meg went in today to be measured, she found Eileen had not ordered her dresses after all. And she told Meg she had done it months ago."

"I should have demanded an affidavit." I shrugged. "Well, we're behind the eight ball, but I'm going to drag her down to Be-Stitched the minute she gets here and force her to make a decision."

"So, you've been down to Be-Stitched already," Samantha said. "What did you think of Michael What-a-Waste?"

"Samantha, really," her mother said, but by her tone I could tell she was rather proud of her daughter's wit.

"What-a-Waste?" Mr. Brewster said, as if he had no idea what she was implying.

"Or the last of the Waterstons, if you like," Samantha said. "I mean, you did notice that he's not exactly much of an addition to the town's list of eligible bachelors."

"He seems very nice," I said, noncommittally. I didn't want to get into an argument with Samantha, but didn't see how I could avoid it if she kept on this way. I glanced at Mother. Surely this violated her ironclad rule against discussing sex, politics, or religion at the table? Surely these days one should add genteel bigotry to the list of forbidden topics?

"I do so like what you've done with your hair," Mother remarked to Mrs. Brewster.

"Oh, he's positively charming," Samantha said, relentlessly, "at least if you happen to be a fag hag."

"That's a perfectly hateful thing to say," I began, and then jumped as Mother kicked me under the table.

"Now, Meg," Mother said. As if I were the one at fault.

"He's a very charming conversationalist," Mrs. Brewster said. "Very chivalrous."

"Well, that's a dead giveaway, isn't it," Samantha said. "I mean, how many straight men do you know who have decent manners and can talk about anything other than football and beer?"

Your fiance and your future father-in-law, for starters, I felt like saying, but Mother was glaring daggers at me, so I counted to three and then said, as calmly as I could, "You all seem to know rather a lot about the private life of someone who's only been here, what, a couple of weeks?"

"Well, it's a proven fact. I mean, several of the bridesmaids who were in being measured have tried to get him interested. I mean, honestly, if they're running around half-naked and practically flinging themselves in his lap and the guy doesn't show a spark of interest, what do you think that means?"

"He has excessively good taste?" I suggested. "Or--" Mother tapped me again with her foot. Samantha gave me a withering look.

"Oh, sure," she said. "He flat-out told them not to bother 'cause he wasn't interested. Besides, he hangs out with those two old aunties who run the antique store and the decorating shop."

"Now, now, Samantha. That's enough. Little pitchers have big ears," Mother chided, indicating eight-year-old Eric. Eric was too busy stuffing his pockets with tidbits to feed his pet duck to pay any attention to our boring grown-up conversation. "I think it's very sweet of them to make Michael feel more at home."

"And so convenient that they've convinced Michael and his mother to do curtains and slipcovers and such," Mrs. Brewster said. "They've had an awful time finding local help who meet their standards."

"Yes," Mother said. "I'm not sure I'd have dared to go ahead with redecorating the living room without Michael's help. Not the deviled eggs, Eric."

"But Duck likes deviled eggs!" Eric protested.

"You may take a deviled egg to Duck, then," Mother conceded. "But don't put it in your pocket."

Eric took this as permission to leave the table and trotted out to the backyard with the deviled egg.

"Then you're going ahead with redecorating, too?" Mrs. Brewster said.

"Yes, the living room, and possibly the dining room," Mother said. "Michael will be out tomorrow to take measurements."

"The dining room, too?" Jake said, plaintively. No one seemed to hear him.

"We're having the living room and the library done," Mrs. Brewster said. Mr. Brewster sighed gently. "I haven't decided about the dining room yet, although I suppose I should very soon. Perhaps I should have Michael take measurements tomorrow, too."

"If he has time," Mother said. "He will be doing quite a lot of measuring here."

"I'll call to make sure he has time," Mrs. Brewster said. "And no snide remarks when he comes young lady," she said, turning to Samantha.

"Of course; not a word," Samantha said. "What kind of an idiot do you think I am? I mean, you know how vindictive and temperamental they can be; I'm not about to do anything to make him mess up my gown."

Mother kicked me before I could open my mouth. My shins would be black and blue by morning.

What a narrow-minded, prejudiced--no, don't say the word, I told myself. The whole conversation left a bad taste in my mouth. I felt guilty about not having stepped in to defend Michael. On the other hand, if Mother hadn't shushed me, I'd probably have lost my temper and said something that I'd need to apologize for. I had a bad feeling that Samantha and I would end up having a knock-down-drag-out argument about narrow-mindedness before the end of the summer; I'd just try to avoid doing it in front of Mother. Or Rob. I had no idea what he saw in Samantha, but he was madly in love with her, so I'd have to learn to live with her.

In the meantime I vowed to be extremely friendly and hospitable to Michael. To make up for the various indignities and embarrassments he had probably already suffered at the hands of my small-minded relatives and neighbors.

Saturday, May 28

Of course, being friendly and hospitable to Michael was going to get a lot easier once I mastered the tendency to drool every time I saw him. I stumbled downstairs at ten Saturday morning to find him sitting in our kitchen. Mother was serving him coffee and pastries and explaining her redecorating plans.

I found myself wishing I'd combed my hair better before shoving it back into a clip. Or put on something other than my oldest jeans. Don't be silly, I told myself crossly, and responded to Michael's heart-stopping smile with as friendly a nod as I could manage before noon. I joined them and listened to Mother chatter about chintz for a while as I sipped my coffee and waited for it to take effect.

"Meg!" Mother said sharply. I started, spilling some of my coffee. Apparently I'd nodded off while sitting upright.

"Sorry, not quite awake yet," I mumbled, mopping at myself with a napkin. Good thing I wasn't trying to impress anyone.

"I know how you feel," Michael said. "During the year I won't let them schedule any of my classes before eleven. I'm still not used to the way people down here get up at the crack of dawn."

"Ten o'clock is hardly the crack of dawn," Mother said, favoring me with a stern look. "Wait till you've been down here for a few weeks, with all the fresh air and proper food, young lady. You'll be getting up with the larks."

"Don't try to reform me, Mother," I warned. "Of course not, dear," Mother lied, and led Michael into the living room to measure things. He looked as if he would rather stay in the kitchen to ingest more coffee. I could sympathize.

I had another cup of coffee and contemplated the mess Mother had made in the kitchen while serving Michael, the mess she always made in any kitchen. I had learned to cook and clean early, in self-defense. I finished my coffee and swabbed down the kitchen before taking up the phone and my list of things to do. Fourteen phone calls later I had lost my temper twice and succeeded in crossing exactly one thing off my list. I could hear Mother gently but firmly ordering Michael around in the living room. Well, better him than me. My turn would come. I went outdoors for some fresh air and found Dad busily trimming the hedge.

He looked relaxed and happy. Of course he nearly always did. After the divorce, Dad had moved in with my sister, Pam, and her husband, Mal. Or more accurately, into the apartment over their garage. It was all of a mile from the family house, and apart from going home to sleep in a different bed, he made remarkably few changes to his life after the divorce. He still divided his time between gardening at Pam's and at Mother's; doing things with the grandchildren; reading great stacks of books; making anachronistic house calls on the friends, neighbors, and relatives who hadn't yet been persuaded that he'd retired from his medical practice; and, most important, pursuing with wild enthusiasm and single-minded devotion whatever odd hobbies happened to seize his attention.

As soon as Mother decided on a garden wedding, Dad started grooming our yard for the festivities. Once Samantha decided to have an outdoor reception, he began relandscaping the Brewster's grounds. The Brewsters seemed thrilled to have him doing it, though that could change very quickly if all the extra work made their gardener carry out his threat to resign. And Dad was even pitching in occasionally to help Eileen's father prepare for her event.

All of which seemed very odd. Dad was working overtime to make the weddings a success, and yet, he had never liked Samantha. He was constantly complaining that Eileen took advantage of me. And as for Mother's remarriage to Jake--was he really that cheerful about it?

Speak of the devil, I thought, there goes Jake. Predictably, creeping along at five miles below the posted speed limit in his nondescript blue sedan. I waved at him.

He screeched to a halt, rolled down the window, and stuck his head out, looking very distraught.

"Yes, what is it?" he asked, his voice trembling.

"Nothing, Mr. Wendell. I was just waving. Sorry if I startled you."

"Off to fetch your sister-in-law?" Dad asked. "She has a fine morning for flying, doesn't she? From Fort Lauderdale, right?"

"You-yes," Jake said. "How did you know?"

"Mother mentioned it," I said.

"Besides, it's hard to keep secrets in a small town like this," Dad boomed jovially. Mr. Wendell looked alarmed, and more like a startled gray-brown mouse than usual. He rolled his window up, tried to drive away with the emergency brake still on, stopped to release it, and finally rolled slowly off.

Well, that was not a success, I thought. In fact, it was about as much of a bust as most of my attempts to get to know Jake better. Ah, well; I'd have all summer to get acquainted with my future stepfather.

"So, what are you up to this morning?" Dad said, rubbing his back while surveying the parts of the hedge he'd finished clipping.

"Phone calls and errands. Want me to help with that?"

"No, I have a good idea how I want it done."

"Just as well; I have a feeling any minute now I'll get called into a conference about redecorating the living room. Mother has Michael from the dress shop measuring the house."

"Now there's an intelligent young man."

"Yes, he seems nice," I said, wincing. That was all I needed, for Dad to turn his boundless energy and determination to setting me up with the least eligible man in town. It was going to be the longest summer in recorded history.

"He's a professor of drama, you know," Dad went on.

"Yes, well, duty calls," I said, and fled back to the kitchen before he could continue.

I decided that chocolate chip cookies would cheer me up and placate Mother as well, so I took the time off from my list to whip up a batch. Lured by the smell, Rob ambled in, followed eventually by Michael and Mother, who graciously issued an invitation for us to make some lemonade and join her on the porch.

"We always like to have lemonade and cookies on the porch on summer afternoons," Mother said, when Rob and I brought out the glasses.

"Very civilized," Michael said, wolfing down his sixth cookie.

Just then we heard the kitchen screen door slam, followed by frantic quacking.

"Here comes Eric," I said.

My eight-year-old nephew ran in and launched himself at Mother, wailing and holding up a bleeding finger. By the time Mother had calmed him down enough to look at it, the bleeding had mostly stopped, and he had subsided into muted sniffles. Echoed by muted quacking from his pet duck at the back door.

"Would you like Grandma to kiss it and make it better?" Mother asked, smiling down at Eric.

"Grandpa says that the human mouth has more bacteria than even dogs' mouths," Eric said, snatching away his hand and backing off in terror.

"I'm sure your grandpa knows best then, dear," Mother said, with a touch of asperity. "Why don't you go ask Grandpa to suture it?"

"Okay," Eric said, charmed by the idea. Suture, indeed; the child obviously needed more of Dad's vocabulary lessons. Mother sipped her lemonade as Eric ran happily out, armed with a fist of cookies. Michael was looking oddly at us.

"Dad's very good with childhood scrapes and sniffles," Rob said. "That was always one of his major charms as a parent. How seriously he treated even the most minor ailments."

"It's a wonder you didn't all become raging hypochondriacs," Mother said, shaking her head.

"Other children might run to Mommy and get a Band-Aid," I added. "We'd go to Dad to have sterile dressings for our lacerations and abrasions--after proper irrigation to prevent sepsis, of course. At least Pam and I did."

"I never could stand the sight of blood," Rob said with a shudder.

"Won't that be rather a handicap in your profession?" Michael asked.

"Oh, very funny," Rob said, and buried his face in his bar exam review book.

"Rob's a little sensitive about lawyer jokes," I explained, patting my brother's arm.

"Lawyer jokes?" Michael said. "I'm very sorry; I wasn't trying to make a joke. I could have sworn your father told me Rob was going to go on to medical school. To become a forensic pathologist."

"Oh, God! Dad's at it again!" Rob groaned.

"Dad wishes Rob would go to med school and become a forensic pathologist," I said. "He came up with the idea about a week after Rob broke the news that he was going to law school."

"I didn't realize he was going around telling people that again!" Rob said, shaking his head.

"Still, dear, not again," Mother said. "He never really stopped, you know."

"God, think of all the people he's probably told," Rob moaned.

"I think most of the family understand the situation, dear," Mother reassured him.

"Our family might, but what about Samantha's family?" Rob wailed.

"They'll learn," I said. "The important thing to keep in mind when dealing with any of our extended family," I said to Michael, "is never, ever to believe anything any of us says without corroboration."

"Preferably from an outsider," Rob added.

"Preferably from your own two eyes," I said.

"Are you telling me your entire family are liars?" Michael asked.

"I have no idea what you're talking about, Meg." Mother sniffed.

"Not liars," I said. "Well, maybe a few, and mostly they can't help it. It's just that most of our family are prone to ... exaggeration."

"Tall-tale-telling," Rob added.

"Creative interpretation of reality resulting from wishful thinking," I suggested. "Like Dad's notion about Rob having a career in forensic pathology. All Rob's life Dad has been dreaming about Rob following in his footsteps. He was depressed about Rob not going to med school until he came up with the forensic pathology idea one day, and after that it took on a life of its own."

"That's the other thing you have to watch out for," Rob said. "With most of the family, once they get an idea into their heads, it's very hard to get them to change their minds."

"We hate letting silly things like reality interfere with our pet notions," I said.

"I think I know exactly what you mean," Michael said. "I've already experienced something of the sort myself."

"Good," I said. "So you'll know to take everything anyone here says with a grain of salt."

"A pound of salt," Rob corrected.

"Honestly, I have no idea why you children insist on filling this poor boy's head with such stories about your own family," Mother said. "You'd think we were a family of lunatics and pathological liars." When the three of us burst out laughing, she shook her head, gathered up her embroidery and her lemonade, and went inside.

"Oh, dear," Rob said. "You don't suppose Mother is upset, do you?"

"I doubt it, Rob."

"I'd better go and see." He sighed, heading for the door.

"Mother is imperturbable, Rob, you should know that by now," I called to his retreating back. Michael chuckled.

"Oh, it's very funny if you don't have to live with her," I said. "Which, thank God, I don't most of the time."

"I wasn't laughing at your mother," he said, hastily. "I was laughing from sheer delight; how often does one meet someone who can use words like "imperturbable" in casual conversation like that?"

"Yes, I know we can be rather pretentious sometimes. Expanding one's vocabulary is one of Dad's pet projects. He used to pay us by the syllable for new words. He does it with the grandkids now. That sort of thing has a permanent effect."

"A very charming one, if you ask me," Michael said. I sipped my lemonade and looked at him over the rim of my glass. The more I saw of him, the more I realized why instead of treating him as a pariah when they discovered his sexual orientation the local ladies seemed to have adopted him as a sort of pet. He was not only drop-dead gorgeous, he was absolutely charming. Except for the rather generic Middle Atlantic accent, he could easily have been custom-made to fit their notions of a Southern gentlemen. He was immaculately groomed and casually but elegantly dressed, with impeccable manners. Even Samantha and her mother admitted he was a charming conversationalist--although around here, that could simply mean that he had the ability to listen to others rattle on for hours without any overt sign of boredom. And he had a knack for the formal gallantry and witty flirtatiousness that so many aging Southern belles consider their due. More to my taste, he seemed to have a brain, and a slightly sardonic sense of humor. If only ... but no. He wasn't very obvious about it, but if both Mother's branch of the grapevine and Samantha's said he was gay, I could see no use wasting time on might-have-beens.

"I'm not sure you should be quite so hard on your family, though," he said. "It seems to me that most of the town shares your tendency to see things the way they want to see them."

"Most of the town are related to us, one way or another. At least the ones who have been here a generation or two. And the rest have just been around us too long."

"That must be it," he said. "You see, shortly after I got here, something happened that seemed to give everyone the bizarre idea that I--" He froze, looking over my shoulder, and I turned around to see Samantha and one of the bridesmaids.

"Hello, Meg," Samantha said. "You look comfortable." I felt as guilty as a night watchman caught sleeping on the job.

"No reason not to be comfortable while I work," I said. "We've been discussing the gowns. Michael has some ideas for making the hoops more manageable."

I felt guilty picking on Michael that way, but he rose to the occasion. After enduring a seemingly endless conversation on how the hoops could be better constructed to allow us to fit through normal doorways, sit in the limos, and go to the bathroom without too much outside assistance, I excused myself and fled outside on the pretext of seeing if Dad needed help. Michael jumped up and followed me out.

"Nice of you to come all the way out here from town," I said.

"It's just down the street, really," Michael said. "I'm staying at Mom's house."

"Which one is that?"

"Your mother calls it the Kaplan bungalow."

"Oh, yes," I said. "Not that any Kaplans have lived there for fifteen years."

As we went out the back door, we ran into Eric, sporting an extremely large and already dirty bandage and followed, naturally, by Duck.

"Hi, Aunt Meg," Eric said. "Who's he?" I suppose he had been too concerned with his finger earlier to notice Michael on the porch.

"This is Michael Waterston," I said, in my best formal manner. "His mother runs the dress shop. Michael, this is Eric McReady, my nephew." Michael leaned down to shake the rather sticky hand Eric was offering. "And this is Duck." Michael won Eric's heart instantly by solemnly turning to Duck and offering his hand, which Duck pecked.

"I've seen you two around," Michael said. "Yes," I said, "Duck follows Eric around just like a dog."

"Duck's better than any old dog," Eric said, loyally. "Come see what he did." Eric led us to a spot in the bushes where a single duck egg was resting.

"Duck laid an egg," Eric said.

"That's very smart of her," I said. "Him," Eric corrected. I decided it wasn't my job to explain that one to him.

"What should we do with it?" Eric asked. I looked at Duck, who showed no apparent interest in sitting on the damned thing.

"Well," Michael said, "I suppose you could always eat it."

"No!" Eric wailed. "I'm not going to let you eat Duck's babies! No, NO, NO!" He flung himself down to protect the egg with such violence that I was sure he would crack it. Duck began quacking hysterically.

"Hush, Eric," I said, glaring at Michael. "Nobody's going to eat Duck's babies."

"I didn't mean eat it," Michael said, desperately, "I meant heat it! Heat it! So it will hatch."

Eric looked around, still suspicious, but with noticeably less distress.

"That's what you have to do to hatch eggs," Michael went on. "You heat them. Most ducks sit on the eggs to heat them, but Duck seems to prefer following you around, so we have to figure out some other way to keep her ... his egg warm."

"Like what?" Eric asked, sitting up and cradling the egg in his hand.

"Well, when I was a kid I had a little machine that you plugged in and it kept the eggs the right temperature for them to hatch. An incubator, it's called. I hatched some chicks from hen's eggs that way."

"Where do you get a ink-ink-was--"

"In-cu-ba-tor," Michael said. Eric mouthed it after him. I could see the dollar signs in his little eyes; he was going to dash right off and collect twenty cents from his grandfather for learning a new, four-syllable word. "Where do you get one?" he asked. Michael and I looked at each other.

"I suppose a pet store would have one," Michael suggested.

"Aunt Meg, you could find a pet store with an incubator," Eric said, in the sort of tone that implied that only his incomparable Aunt Meg could perform such a miracle.

"I suppose I could try," I said.

"Try real hard!" Eric pleaded.

"I will, I promise."

"And soon!" he wailed. "What if Duck's egg gets cold while you're looking?"

"I'll try real soon. Meanwhile, why don't you keep Duck's egg in your shirt pocket? Of course you'll have to be really careful not to shake it, but that should keep it warm enough."

"Okay," Eric said. He carefully placed the egg in his pocket, and he and Duck trotted off--slowly--to find Dad.

"And what happens if he falls and breaks it?" Michael asked, shaking his head.

"Well, at least he can't blame either of us," I said. "And since there isn't any Mr. Duck around to fertilize the egg, it's not going to hatch no matter how long we incubate it. Eric accidentally breaking it might be the best solution; the kids could have a funeral. Pet funerals are very popular around here, especially since Dad came back from a trip to Scotland with a set of bagpipes for each of the grandkids."

"They really play the bagpipes?" Michael asked.

"No, but they can march around making such an ungodly amount of noise that they completely forget to be upset about the dear departed."

"Let's hope the egg survives. You've got quite enough to do as it is; I'll see if I can find an incubator. Since it was all my fault in the first place."

"You're on."

"By the way, Meg, I was wondering if you would like to go--" Michael began, only to be interrupted by Mother calling and beckoning to us from the porch.

"Michael, you will come to dinner tomorrow, won't you?" Mother asked as we arrived at the porch. "Jake's sister-in-law arrived this morning to spend the summer and help with the wedding, and we want to have a few people over to welcome her. Nothing formal," she insisted, "just a little light refreshment by the pool. Meg, dear, I have something to show you," she said, taking Michael's acceptance for granted and moving to the next item on her agenda. "It's about the dining room ..."

I waved at Michael and went off with Mother to spend the rest of the afternoon fruitlessly trying to talk her out of totally redecorating the dining room in addition to the living room. I hoped Mrs. Brewster wouldn't up the ante in the decorating competition by decorating three rooms so that Mother would feel obliged to do the family room as well. I hoped Jake was more than reasonably well heeled. I hoped Michael would have the sense to realize that Mother's idea of "nothing formal" meant that guests weren't actually required to wear black tie and tails. I hoped the summer would be over soon.

Sunday, May 29

I'd gone to bed Saturday night expecting a relaxing Sunday. At least the morning, when Mother and all her cronies would gather at Grace Episcopal, dressed to kill and waiting with decorative impatience for the service to be over so they could get down to the serious business of catching up with the week's gossip. I planned to sleep late, read the paper, and rest. But I woke early and got up when I couldn't stop worrying about my to-do list.

I padded downstairs, fixed coffee, and sat at the kitchen table waiting for it to take effect. I was enjoying the peace and quiet of the empty house. I suppose I was halfway asleep again when a noise at the kitchen door startled me. I jumped and whirled, only to see Jake, halfway through the door. He started and looked as surprised to see me as I was to see him. He was clutching a brown paper bag in both hands with a convulsive grip.

"I thought everybody was in church," we said, almost in unison. I laughed when I realized we'd both said the same thing. Jake didn't. No sense of humor, either, I thought. What on earth does Mother see in him?

"I just came by to drop off some things for the party," he said, opening the kitchen door a fraction more and then slipping in sideways and over to the refrigerator. He opened the refrigerator door and surveyed the inside, already crowded with containers of food.

"I suppose I should bring this back later," he said, shifting from foot to foot and rolling the top of the bag a little tighter.

"Oh, no; I'm sure we can find a space," I said. I opened the refrigerator door wider and began shifting around Tupperware containers and foil-covered casseroles. "What is it you've brought? Can we slip it here on top of the ham or--" I heard a slight noise and turned to find the kitchen empty. "Mr. Wendell?" I peered out the back door. I could see Jake scuttling around the corner.

Irritating little man. I seemed to make him nervous. Probably senses that you don't like him, I told myself. Perhaps trying to get to know him was a lost cause. Perhaps I should just ignore him.

On the other hand, if Mother had asked him to bring over something for the party, she would expect to see it. I gulped the rest of my coffee and went after him.

Jake was making better time than I was. By the time I arrived at his house, a block and a half away, he was nowhere in sight. I trudged up the porch steps and was lifting my hand to knock on the screen door when I heard a female voice say, "So there you are!"

I whirled, and saw no one.

"I just went down the street to Margaret's," came Jake's voice from inside the house. I realized the woman was inside, too, and not talking to me.

"To hide something, I suppose?" the voice continued. "Something of Emma's? The missing jewelry, maybe?"

"Just some food for the party," Jake said, meekly. "I told you, Jane; all of Emma's jewelry is in the safety deposit box. Emma was very careful about that. I'm sure the key will turn up."

Ah, I thought. This must be the sister-in-law. Emma, presumably, was Jake's late wife. And here I'd arrived in the midst of a family quarrel. Over missing jewelry, no less. I was tempted to stay and eavesdrop, but my conscience won out. I turned and began sneaking quietly off the porch.

"I'll bet you've given it all to that blond hussy you're marrying," Jane went on. I paused. I'd heard Mother called many interesting things--had called her a few myself--but "blond hussy" was a new one, even for Mother.

"No, no, no! Margaret doesn't know they're here--or in the safety deposit box, rather. I told her all Emma's good things had gone to pay the medical bills that the insurance didn't cover."

"Well, they've gone somewhere, haven't they? The Sheridan console that used to be here, and the Wyeth--"

"I told you, Jane; it's all in storage."

"We'll see about that. We'll see if your fiancee happens to have a Sheridan console like Emma's."

"Please don't do that. You'll upset her."

"I've a mind to go over there right now," Jane said. Hearing her footsteps coming my way, I whirled and ran pell-mell for home.

I need to exercise more, I told myself, as I sprawled, panting, on my chair in the kitchen, awaiting the onslaught of Jake and his sister-in-law. I'll just have to tell them I was doing my exercises, I thought. Oh, sure; Jake will certainly believe that, having seen me semicomatose in the kitchen a few minutes before. I stood up and did a few jumping jacks to add a note of realism for their arrival. After a few minutes I switched to sit-ups. When five or ten minutes passed with no sign of irate sisters-in-law, I abandoned my charade and went back to the kitchen for more coffee.

Damn Jake, anyway. At least he'd talked his sister-in-law out of storming over here immediately, but I had a premonition that trouble was still coming. Did Jake really think he had to put his late wife's possessions in storage to keep them out of Mother's clutches? And why didn't he just show them to his sister-in-law? Probably no time; she'd only just arrived a few hours ago. I hoped he did it soon. The way she sounded, I suspected that when she didn't find her sister's jewelry and furniture here, she'd accuse Mother of selling them. Which was nonsense. I could see Mother appropriating a piece of jewelry or furniture she thought was about to become hers anyway, and having to be gently but firmly told to give it back. I couldn't possibly see her selling them.

Mother arrived back from church just before noon, followed almost immediately by about fifteen or twenty relatives and neighbors, bearing flowers, extra plates and glasses, and more food in amazing quantities. The expected chaos reigned right up until the party began. I was a nervous wreck, expecting Jake's sister-in-law to arrive any moment shrieking accusations. The fact that she hadn't shown up yet was no relief; I was sure she was postponing the confrontation till the party, where she'd have a bigger audience. At least that's what Mother or any of my aunts would have done.

In retrospect, it seems appropriate that the summer's first known threats of homicide were uttered during the party preparations--although unlike at least one other local resident, I wasn't serious. My nerves were shot, and I was only trying to keep Dad and several of the uncles from decimating the buffet before the other guests arrived.

Mother is fond of remarking that she looks forward to the hour when a party begins because then she can stop working and start having fun. That may be true for her--although Pam and I have noticed that any work she does is purely supervisory. For me, the start of a party only means a change from the tangible, boring, but satisfactory work of cooking, cleaning, and decorating to the unpredictable and far more difficult task of keeping several hundred neighbors and family members from injuring each other or driving me crazy before the end of the evening.

I almost jumped out of my skin when Mother glided over to me with another woman in tow and said, "Meg, this is our guest of honor--Jane Grover, Jake's sister-in-law."

At first glance, Mrs. Grover seemed harmless. She was a short woman with badly hennaed hair and a loud print dress. She and Mother didn't look as if they'd had a quarrel. But after a second I realized that her smile looked artificial and her eyes cold.

"How nice to finally meet you, my dear," Mrs. Grover said, with a look that somehow seemed to insinuate that she had witnessed my shameless eavesdropping on the porch. "We must talk later."

I stammered a greeting and escaped as soon as possible. In the direction of the bar. I watched her and Mother making the rounds of the party. Well, at least they were both on their best behavior.

The party was in full swing, and I'd already confiscated firecrackers from two small cousins and a golf club from an inebriated uncle when Michael arrived.

"Didn't your mother say she was just having a few people over?" he said, incredulously, as he stood at the edge of the sea of guests in our backyard.

"For Mother, this is a few people," I said.

"She doesn't count family," Pam said. "At least half of the horde's family."

"The weirder half," I added.

"Oh, by the way," Michael said, holding out a bunch of flowers.

"Mother will be charmed," I said. "I'll lead you to her so you can present them in person. Don't get in the way of the croquet players," I warned, giving the flying mallets a wide berth. Michael paused to watch the game.

"Croquet!" he exclaimed, taking in the spectacle of a dozen middle-aged and elderly aunts in flowery summer dresses and sun hats posing among the wickets. "It's wonderful! Like something out of a Merchant Ivory film."

"Yes, the croquet clique do tend to dress the part, I'll give them that," I said. "But if you're under the impression that croquet is a genteel, civilized, Waspy way to spend a summer afternoon, don't look too close--they'll spoil all your illusions. It's a blood sport for them."

"Really?" Michael said, incredulously. Just then, one aunt hit another's ball out with a swing that would have been more at home on a golf course than the croquet grounds.

"Ball!" shrieked all the croquet players, and most of the assembled guests-- family, anyway--either dropped to the ground or flung their arms over their heads. The ball landed harmlessly in the swimming pool. Its owner, after a few minutes of waving her mallet around and verbally abusing her rival, stormed over to cajole Eric into diving for her ball.

Yes, the party was definitely hitting its stride. One of the uncles had taken his favorite perch on the diving board and was enthusiastically conducting a program of chamber music. My niece was lurking near the CD player in the hopes of slipping the 1812 Overture into the program and seeing him fall off the board again. About the usual number of relatives had pretended to think the picnic was a masquerade and had come in costume, including Cousin Horace in his well-used gorilla suit. Eric and Duck were paddling around in the pool, quacking at each other and bobbing for bits of food that the guests threw at them. Mother sat fanning herself with an antique Victorian fan and beaming goodwill near and far.

"Oh, thank you, Michael!" she said, as he handed her the bouquet. "Isn't it nice to have everyone together like this? Though I do wish Jeffrey could have come down for the holiday weekend," she added, turning to me. "You should have tried harder to convince him, Meg."

"Mother, pay attention," I said. "Jeffrey is history."

"Now, Meg."

"Jeffrey has been history for months, and I wouldn't get back together with him if he were the last human male on earth--which would be impossible anyway, because Jeffrey is not human, he is a vaguely humanoid reptile. Please delete Jeffrey from your memory banks. This is a recording."

"I still think Jeffrey is a very nice boy," Mother said.

"Good riddance to bad rubbish I say," Dad put in.

Dad has remarkably sound ideas on what my personal Mr. Right should be like. I should have known something was wrong with Jeffrey when Dad didn't take to him.

"Ball!" came the cry again, and we all hit the deck except for Mother, who watched with mild interest as the croquet ball missed her ear by two inches and landed in a bowl of potato salad on the buffet table. This ball apparently belonged to Mother's best friend, Mrs. Fenniman, who firmly believed that you weren't allowed to touch the ball with anything other than the mallet. Pam and several of the saner cousins hurried to move the rest of the dishes off the table so Mrs. Fenniman could climb up, dig the ball out with the mallet, and thwack it over the heads of the crowd to the croquet field.

"It's almost as good as the croquet game with flamingos and hedgehogs in Alice in Wonderland," Michael said, watching Mrs. Fenniman with morbid fascination.

"Don't give them ideas," I said, noticing absently that since Mrs. Fenniman was dressed in her usual somber colors with a black straw hat precariously attached to the side of her head, her perch made her look even more like a raven than usual. Ravens, flamingos ... something tugged at my memory. "Oh, Dad, do you know of anyone who sells or rents peacocks?"

"Peacocks? Why peacocks?"

"Samantha wants to have some for her wedding."

"Whatever for?" Michael asked.

"I don't know; loitering about decoratively, I suppose," I said, shrugging. "I mean, that's what peacocks do, isn't it?"

"That sounds very nice," Mother said, thoughtfully. "Very nice indeed."

"Well, if you want them, you can have them after Samantha's finished with them," I said. "Provided I find some to begin with."

"Let's go ask your mother's cousin, the one with the farm," Dad suggested. "He used to have some guinea fowl. Maybe he has an idea where to find peacocks."

"Yes, I think that sounds like a lovely idea," Mother said. "Which reminds me, Michael, about the dining room ..."

"You're having to spend an awful lot of time on silly details like those peacocks," Dad said, as we left Michael in Mother's clutches and strolled through the crowd looking for Mother's agricultural cousin.

"Well, if I didn't, who knows. Maybe Samantha would get ticked off and cancel the wedding," I said.

"Would that be such a tragedy?" Dad said, vehemently. "If you ask me, it'll be a sad day for Rob when he ties the knot with that one. I know you're working awfully hard to bring this wedding off, Meg, but I hope you won't be too upset if I succeed in talking him out of it, because I certainly intend to keep trying."

I was speechless. I don't know what startled me more, hearing Dad's outburst or realizing that Samantha had come up behind him in time to catch every word of it. If looks really could kill, Dad would be in serious trouble.

"Whatever you think best," I said, steering him gently out of Samantha's range.

We found the cousin, and, after extracting a promise that he would canvass the neighboring farms for peacocks, I left him and Dad deep in a conversation on the relative merits of various kinds of manure. I went to help Pam with her repairs to the buffet table.

"Well, at least they're having a good time," Pam sniffed, watching the winning team perform a decorous victory dance on the croquet field.

"I think everyone is," said Michael. "Anything I can do to help, Meg?"

"Hold these," Pam ordered, shoving several platters into his hands. "Mrs. Fenniman has left muddy footprints all over the tablecloth."

"Having a wonderful time in their own inimitable fashions," I said, watching another aunt who was standing at the very end of the backyard on the bluff overlooking the river, flinging the biodegradable garbage to a flock of seagulls while conversing with them in their native tongue. "With the possible exception of Jake," I added. Jake was standing by himself, a drink clutched in his hand and a nervous expression on his face as he watched the bird-loving aunt.

"I do feel rather sorry for Jake," Pam remarked.

"Jake? Why?" Michael asked.

"Well," Pam said, "about a year and a half ago he has to retire from his job up north somewhere and move down here because his wife is sick and needs a quiet place with a better climate. No sooner do they get here than his wife up and dies. And being pretty much at loose ends, before he's a widower for a year, he falls for Mother."

"Who is apt to be every bit as much trouble for the poor man as an invalid," I said.

"I don't see that there's any reason to feel sorry for him," Michael protested. Pam and I laughed. "I mean, your mother seems to be a very charming woman, and it's not as if she's forcing him to marry her."

"Oh, Mother would never think of such a thing," I said.

"Well, of course she would if she wanted to," Pam said. "But God knows, what reason would she have?"

"But look at him," I said. "I mean, does he look happy?" We all three turned to look at Jake.

"No," Michael said, after a moment. "He looks like a nervous wreck. But prenuptial jitters hit some men that way. I was best man for an old college friend a couple of years ago, and I had to stay up all night with him after the rehearsal dinner to keep him from getting into his van and driving to Montana."

"Why Montana?" Pam asked. "Was he from there?"

"No, he'd never been there or ever wanted to that I could remember. But that night, every time I would think I'd talked some sense into him, he'd jump up and say, "Break the news to her, Michael; tell her I've gone to Montana to herd sheep.""

"But he didn't go?" Pam asked.

"No, I got him to the church, and the wedding went off as planned. He's never mentioned Montana again. Or sheep. Just a monumental case of prenuptial jitters."

We contemplated Jake a while longer. When one of the neighbors came up and tapped him on the shoulder, he started so violently I was afraid he'd fall into the pool. Pam shook her head.

"If he's got prenuptial jitters already, think how bad he'll be by August," she said. "The man could have a coronary."

"Good point," Michael said.

"Perhaps he's more nervous than usual with his sister-in-law here," I remarked. She certainly made me nervous.

"Does she still count as sister-in-law now that her sister is dead, or is she his ex-sister-in-law?" Pam asked.

"Late sister-in-law, perhaps?" Michael offered.

"No," I said. "She's not dead, her sister is. Maybe he's worried about how she will take it."

"Afraid she won't like your mother?" Michael asked.

"Yes, or won't approve of their marrying so soon after her sister's death."

"Hmph," Pam said. "I'm not sure I approve of their marrying so soon." She tossed off the rest of her drink, gave our repair work an approving nod, and stalked toward the bar.

"Do I sense that you and your siblings are not entirely happy about your mother's remarriage?" Michael asked.

"You could say that," I said. "I mean, we could never understand why Mother and Dad divorced. They never argued or anything."

"Then what happened?"

"Who knows?" I said. "All of a sudden one day it was Sorry, children, your father and I are getting a divorce. All very amiable; we all joked that Mother got the house and Dad got the garden, except for joint custody of the tomato patch."

"And you still have no idea why?"

"Pam and I have always felt that it was all Mother's idea, and that she was doing it because of something he did, or didn't do. Or that she thought he'd done or not done. We thought eventually either he'd figure out what it was and set it straight, or she'd forgive him, or both of them would just get tired of the divorce and get back together. But now ... it's all looking rather permanent."

"And you're not happy about it."

"Well, Jake isn't anyone I would ever have thought of as a possible addition to the family."

"No, I can see that," Michael said. "Compared to your family he seems a little ... well, bland." He cast an involuntary glance at Uncle Horace.

"He certainly does," I agreed. "Of course, I can't say I've had much time to get to know him. Maybe he has hidden qualities I haven't seen yet." I glanced again at Jake's rather mousy figure. "Then again, maybe bland is what Mother's looking for. I mean he's not likely to startle the guests at a dinner party with graphic descriptions of the symptoms of ptomaine poisoning. Or put a whole truckload of fresh manure on the flower beds just before a garden party for one of her ladies' clubs. Or drag dead and possibly rabid animals into the house to show to the kids. All of which Dad has done, and more."

"Quite a character, your dad." Michael remarked. "Sometimes a little too much so."

"He does seem to be rather obsessed with poison, doesn't he?" Michael said.

"Ah, I see he's taken you on the garden tour."

"Not exactly, but I overheard enough of what he was telling another guest earlier to get the idea," Michael said. "Pointing out every toxic item in the landscaping, which seemed to be just about every other plant."

"You can never be too careful," I said. "If the buffet had been disappointing you might have been tempted to nibble on the shrubbery."

"But now I know better. I see. Is it a hobby of his, trying to grow every poisonous plant known to man?"

"Well, when my brother Rob was little, he almost died from eating most of a poinsettia, and Dad got interested in the fact that so many common house and yard plants were poisonous. He's made a special study of it. After all, it combines two of his major obsessions: medicine and gardening. Three obsessions if you include mystery books; he's a rabid mystery reader. See, there he is at it again."

"Enlightening one of the neighbors, I see."

"Actually, that's Mrs. Grover, the sister-in-law," I said. Dad was pointing at one of the shrubs and gesticulating enthusiastically. "Hydrangea." I said absentmindedly. "Contains cyanide, mostly in the leaves and branches, although I wouldn't advise sampling the flowers, either."

"Charming," Michael said.

"That's mountain laurel next to it. I forget what it has in it, but if Socrates had been a Native American, that's what they would have fed him instead of hemlock. And then the oleander, which contains a drug similar to digitalis."

"Is this a family obsession as well?" he asked.

"Not at all," I said. "But it's hard not to pick up a few tidbits over the years."

"I won't need your dad's tour, then. You can do the honors."

"Ah, but Dad would tell you the scientific names of each poison and describe the effects in vivid, clinical detail."

"Sounds as if it takes a strong stomach," Michael said, with one eyebrow raised.

"Yes. Mrs. Grover seems to be enjoying it more than most people do," I said. She was asking rather a lot of questions and peering with those cold eyes at each plant as if committing it to memory. Perhaps some of her sister's shrubbery was missing as well.

"Could it be her way of flirting with your dad?" Michael asked.

"More likely she's planning on poisoning someone herself," I replied. "Seems in character."

"Poisoning someone? Who?" Michael and I both turned in surprise to see a startled Jake behind us.

"No one's poisoning anyone, Mr. Wendell," I said, gently. "It was only a joke; we were both commenting on how patient your sister-in-law is being about listening to Dad's lecture on poisonous plants."

"Ghastly," Jake said, and edged away.

"Do I sense that he didn't enjoy his tour?" Michael said, chuckling. I frowned slightly at him; Dad was coming over with Mrs. Grover in tow. I braced myself.

"And this is my daughter Meg, who's down for the summer to help her mother with the wedding, and Michael Waterston, who's filling in this summer for his mother, who runs our local dress shop. How's your mother's leg?" he asked.

"Fine," Michael said. "Making good progress the doctor says. I'm hoping it won't quite be all summer before she comes back."

"Well, tell her not to rush it," Dad said. "You'd be amazed how many people do themselves a permanent injury trying to do too much too soon."

"Her sister is looking after her," Michael said. "Aunt Marigold won't let her get away with anything she shouldn't."

"Marigold? Tell me, is your mother Dahlia Waterston?" Mrs. Grover asked.

"Yes," Michael said, startled. "Do you know her?"

"Yes," Mrs. Grover said. "I come from Fort Lauderdale, you know. I know your aunt Marigold, and as it happens, I saw your mother not very long ago."

"Really," Michael said, oddly nervous.

"It must have been just before her accident," Mrs. Grover said. "Her leg, was it?"

"Yes," Michael said. "Quite a bad fracture."

"Really," Mrs. Grover said. "We must talk about her sometime."

I found myself rather disliking her sly, insinuating manner. She seemed to say one thing and mean another, and I wondered what there could be in that short conversation to make Michael so uneasy. Perhaps he was afraid that Mrs. Grover had found out he was gay and would reveal it to his mother when she went home. Perhaps she'd found it out from his mother and he was afraid she would reveal it here, not knowing that it was already common knowledge. Or perhaps ... oh, but don't be silly, I told myself. She's just a woman with a rather unpleasant manner. Stop letting your imagination run wild.

"Speaking of Florida, we have some very interesting tropical plants over here," Dad said, hauling the conversation by brute force back to his pet topic. He trotted over to another section of the yard with Mrs. Grover in tow. Michael and I both breathed sighs of relief.

"What an irritating woman," Pam said, appearing at my elbow. "If her sister was anything like her, perhaps even Mother would be an improvement."

"Why, what's she done?" I asked.

"What hasn't she done?" Pam countered. "One of the aunts leaves in tears after Mrs. Grover tells her how natural her wig looked--which it does, but you know how sensitive people are when they've lost their own hair, and Mrs. Grover goes and announces it in front of at least a dozen people who probably didn't realize it was a wig. She suggests that perhaps Mrs. Fenniman has had enough wine, which she has, but you know how contrary she is; she's off swilling it down now and will probably have to be carried home. And then--well, she said something very unkind about Natalie's looks, so I suppose you have to call me a biased witness. Oh, no, she's talking to Eric," Pam said, cutting short her tirade. "Excuse me while I rescue him; I don't fancy seeing her torture both kids on the same evening."

But before Pam had gone two steps, Mother swept over and led Mrs. Grover off. For the rest of the party, whenever I saw Mrs. Grover, she had Mother at her elbow and a vexed look on her face. Bravo, Mother.

That evening, as I was preparing for bed, I found myself getting depressed. I wasn't quite sure why. The anticipated explosion from Mrs. Grover hadn't happened. I'd actually enjoyed myself far more than I usually did at a family party. I'd spent much of the time with Michael. We had a great many interests in common, not to mention similar senses of humor. He seemed to enjoy the company of my eccentric relatives without actually appearing to be laughing at them. Unlike most of the theater people I'd ever met he didn't seem to have an overdeveloped ego and an underused brain--although maybe that was because he was a theater professor, not a working actor. And he was certainly easy on the eyes. Just my luck that I was the wrong gender to suit the only genuinely attractive, intelligent, witty, and interesting male to come along in years. I told myself that it was definitely destructive to my peace of mind to spend too much time with Michael What-a-Waste. I vowed that tomorrow, at Eileen's party, I would mingle. After all, while her father's guest list was unlikely to include anyone as gorgeous as Michael, it might offer someone who was not only unmarried but actually eligible.

Monday, May 30

However, I reckoned without Michael's apparent enthusiasm for my company. Obviously he'd decided I was a kindred spirit here in the wilderness. Or perhaps only the least unpalatable female camouflage available. Whatever. In the light of day, surrounded by dotty relatives, my resolution not to waste time on ineligible bachelors evaporated rapidly. And so from the start, the second party seemed almost as a continuation of Mother's.

"I have a sense of deja vu," Michael said, shortly after arriving. "Didn't I picnic with these same people yesterday?"

"Yes, and ate much the same menu you'll get today," I said. "Welcome to small town life."

"Speaking of food," Rob said, and he and Michael headed for the buffet table.

"Michael's right," I told Pam. "This picnic has almost the same cast of characters as Mother's."

"It's a pity the return performances include Mrs. Grover," Pam said. "After all the stories I've heard about her antics yesterday, I'd have thought she'd be persona non grata everywhere in town."

"She does have a gift for offending people, doesn't she," I replied. "I suppose we're underestimating the local dedication to Southern hospitality."

"Or Mother's ability to twist arms." "Also a pity Barry had to come," I said, glancing around to see if he was nearby.

"Oh, which one is he?" Pam asked.

"The one following Dad around like a puppy," I said, pointing. "He's been doing it all afternoon."

"Is Dad that entertaining today?" Pam asked.

"I don't know," I said. "I've been avoiding them. Actually, I think Barry's doing it to make a good impression on me. Steven and Eileen probably put him up to it."

"Hmph," Pam said. "I don't see them."

"They stopped over on Cape May on the way back from a fair."

"So we're partying without the guests of honor."

"Yes. Theoretically, they're supposed to be down here tomorrow so we can go pick her dress."

"I'm not holding my breath," Pam said. "Neither am I."

I felt it was very shortsighted of Eileen not to come. Both other brides were using the occasion to assign me new projects and extract progress reports on the old ones. Although if I reciprocated by trying to get either of them to make a decision or cough up information, they would gently rebuke me for being a workaholic and ruining such a nice social occasion. I hadn't expected to need the notebook-that-tells-me-when-to-breathe at a party, dammit, so I was taking notes on napkins. With two out of three brides present at the picnic, my pockets were getting rather full of napkins.

I joined the mob at the buffet table and discovered, to my irritation, that there was only a small bowl of Pam's famous homemade salsa, and that was nearly gone. Rob and Michael were industriously shoveling down what little remained.

"Is that all the salsa left?" I demanded. Michael and Rob froze, then edged away guiltily.

"Dad got into it," Pam explained.

"He always does," I said, scraping a few remnants off the side of the bowl. "You should have made two bowls and hidden one."

"I always do," she retorted. "It's not my fault he found them both this time. He's getting better at it."

"You mean your dad ate two whole bowls of salsa?" Samantha asked incredulously.

"Dad's very fond of my salsa," Pam said.

"It's very good," Barry pronounced.

"Wonderful digestion for someone in his sixties," Jake remarked. "I can't even look at the stuff without having heartburn for days."

"Dad can eat everything," Pam remarked.

"And frequently does," I said. "How well did you hide the desserts?"

"Here, Meg," Mother said, handing me a plate. "Have some potato salad."

"I don't like potato salad, Mother," I said.

"Nonsense, it's very good," Mother said. "Mrs. Grover made it." Not, to my mind, a recommendation. I examined it for telltale signs of ground glass or eye of newt.

"Oh, Meg, there's your friend Scotty!" Mother said, pointing out a new arrival. "Scotty and Meg grew up together," she explained to Michael, who was looking dubiously at Scotty's disheveled, potbellied form.

"I've been a little more successful at it," I said. "Scotty's in training to become the town drunk."

"Meg!" Mother said. "Is that necessary?"

"Well, somebody has to do it. Scotty's certainly the best qualified."

"He's had a little trouble finding himself," Mother said. "I'm sure he'll do just fine as soon as he finds something that suits his abilities."

"Mother," I said. "Scotty is thirty-five years old. If he hasn't figured out what he wants to do when he grows up by now, I would say the chances of his ever doing so are slim and getting slimmer by the minute."

"I'm sure he'll turn out all right," Mother said. "He just needs encouragement." She floated over to talk to some newly arriving cousins, graciously bestowing an encouraging word on Scotty in passing. He jumped guiltily away from the beer cooler at the sound of her voice and began combing his unwashed hair with his fingers. Then, when he realized she was gone, he furtively fished out another can.

"Actually, he doesn't usually need much encouragement at all," I said as Scotty had caught sight of me and hurried over. Scotty cherished the fond delusion that we were childhood buddies.

"Meg," he said, approaching with open arms.

"Hello, Scotty, have some potato salad," I said, shoving my plate into his hand to ward him off. He didn't seem to mind. Scotty was used to rejection.

"Isn't it great?" Scotty said. "We're going to be in a wedding together."

"Scotty's an usher in Samantha and Rob's wedding," I explained.

"His father is a partner in the firm," Samantha added, giving Scotty a withering look. He sidled off. I wondered, not for the first time, why Samantha had ever included Scotty as an usher. Granted he was rumored to be reasonably presentable when sober and washed, but other than that ... well, his father must be a great deal more important to Mr. Brewster's law firm than I'd previously thought. Samantha marched off haughtily in the opposite direction. Scotty looked as if he might return, but noticed that Dad was organizing an impromptu work detail to weed Professor Donleavy's flowerbeds. Scotty vanished around the side of the house. He was all too familiar with Dad's tendency to find work for idle hands. Barry, Eric, and one of Eric's classmates had already begun weeding.

"I see Dad's putting Barry to some good use," I said.

"They seem to be getting along pretty well," Michael remarked with a frown.

"Stuff and nonsense. I suspect Eileen has told Barry to get in good with Dad if he hopes to make a favorable impression on me, which is why he's been hovering over Dad even more than me since he got here."

"And getting in good with your Dad isn't important to making a favorable impression on you?" Michael asked. Dad saw us, waved, and began walking our way.

"It is, but I doubt if Barry has any chance of doing it," I replied.

"What a remarkably obtuse young man," Dad said, shaking his head as he joined us. Michael chuckled.

"I quite agree," I said. "Mother thinks he's very sweet."

"Really," Dad said.

"Of course, she has incredibly bad taste in men--present company excepted, of course."

"Of course," Dad said.

"She always liked Jeffrey, she's very taken with Barry, and she's even rather fond of Scotty the Sot," I said.

"Your mother strikes me as the sort of person who would be a sucker for stray animals, too," Michael remarked.

"Oh, she is." Dad beamed.

"But since we kids started going off to college and weren't around full time to feed them for her, she's gotten very good at getting other people to adopt them," I added.

I left Dad and Michael to entertain each other and strolled through the lawn, greeting friends and neighbors and adding to my napkin collection. One of Eileen's aunts gave me the new address for sending her invitation. A neighbor knew a calligrapher. Mrs. Fenniman knew a cheaper one. An aunt's new (third) husband was starting a catering business. By midafternoon I had to make a trip into the house to empty out my napkin collection.

When I came back out, I paused and looked over the lawn, bracing myself to dive back into the crowd. I noticed Samantha and Mrs. Grover standing a little apart at one end of the pool. From the looks of it, they weren't exchanging pleasantries.

I admit it, I'm nosy. I went over to join them.

"I'm sure you wouldn't want that to get out," Mrs. Grover was saying as I strolled into earshot.

"I have no idea what you could possibly be referring to," Samantha said in an icy tone.

"Well, we'll talk about it some other time, dear," Mrs. Grover said, so softly I could barely hear her. For a few seconds, she and Samantha appeared to be having a staring contest, and although neither appeared to take any notice of me, I knew perfectly well that both were acutely conscious of me and that my arrival had interrupted--what? As far as I knew, Samantha and Mrs. Grover had only just met. What could possibly be causing this undeniable antagonism between Samantha and her fiance's future stepfather's first wife's sister? What did Mrs. Grover know that Samantha wouldn't want to get out?

"Aunt Meg!" My melodramatic speculations were interrupted by Eric, who had appeared at my side and was tugging at my arm. "Come see what Duck did!"

"I can't imagine," I muttered, following him to a spot in the shrubbery. Mrs. Grover tagged along.

"What is it?" she asked.

"Duck laid another egg," Eric said. "Aunt Meg, what am I going to do with it? I don't have another shirt pocket, and I could put it in my pants pocket, but--"

"In warm weather like this, I think it will be fine until we get the incubator," I said. "Don't worry about it."

"Okay," Eric said. Spotting some newly arrived cousins, he ran off to play, presumably entrusting the care of Duck's egg to me.

"He's remarkably dependent on that bird," Mrs. Grover said, in a disparaging tone.

"Children are devoted to their pets," I said.

"Not exactly a normal sort of pet, though, is it?" she said, in a slimy, insinuating tone that seemed to imply that most arsonists and ax murderers started on the road to ruin through unnatural attachments to waterfowl.

"They have a number of dogs, too," I said, defensively. "But only one Duck."

"Yes, and I rather think we can keep it that way, don't you?" Mrs. Grover said, and before I realized what she was doing, deliberately squashed Duck's egg with the heel of her shoe.

"Don't! Eric's pet laid that!"

"Ugh," she said, as the contents of the egg splattered her foot. "The nasty thing is all over me."

"Well, what did you expect? Did you think ducks laid hard-boiled eggs? Don't touch that!" I said, swatting her hand away as she reached to strip a clump of leaves off one of Professor Donleavy's more fragile tropical bushes. "Don't touch any of the bushes; hasn't Dad warned you about all the galloping skin rashes you can get from the foliage around here?"

"Then get me some napkins," she ordered, shaking her foot and spattering me with droplets of egg, while scrubbing her hand on her dress.

"Get your own napkins," I snapped. "And don't let Eric see you. We're going to have a hard enough time explaining why the egg's gone; you have no idea how upset he'll be if he sees you with egg all over your foot."

I snagged a few napkins from the buffet table, cleaned the splatters of egg off my dress as best I could, and retreated to the opposite side of the yard to fume.

"What's wrong, Meg?" Michael asked, appearing at my elbow. I jumped.

"Don't sneak up on me like that!" I said.

"Especially when I'm already feeling guilty about contemplating homicide."

"Really," he said, handing me a fresh glass of wine. "Who's the intended victim?"

"Mrs. Grover."

"You may have to stand in line," he replied. "What's she done to you?"

"She deliberately smashed Duck's latest egg. I know it's trivial, but she very nearly did it in front of Eric, and you saw how upset he was at the very idea of something happening to the first egg. It was just so ..."

"Cold," Michael said. "Very cold. I know exactly how you feel. She sets my teeth on edge."

"Who's that?" asked Dad appearing so suddenly that I jumped again. "Goodness, you're nervous today, Meg."

"That's understandable," Michael said. "She's contemplating homicide."

"Mrs. Grover, of course," Dad said, nodding. "I do hope she won't come to visit often when they're married. I hate to think of Margaret having to put up with her all the time."

"Mother's probably the only one of us who's a match for her," I said.

"Meg!" Dad exclaimed. "Your mother is nothing like Mrs. Grover!"

"I didn't say she was like her," I protested. "I said she was a match for her. As in, I defy Mrs. Grover to get Mother's goat the way she's getting to everyone else around here."

"Your mother feels things more than she shows sometimes," Dad said, reprovingly. "I plan to do whatever I can to see that she doesn't have Mrs. Grover on her hands any more than necessary this summer. She doesn't need that with everything else she has to do to get ready for the wedding."

"All the things she's doing!" I began, but before I could get much further, Dad had trotted off.

"He looks like a man with a purpose," Michael remarked.

"Yes, but what purpose, I have no idea," I said. "Not to rescue Mother, certainly. Mrs. Grover seems to have latched on to Barry at the moment, and I'm all for letting him go unrescued for as long as possible."

"Amen," said Michael.

In fact, I was definitely hoping no one would interrupt Mrs. Grover's tete-a-tete with Barry, since she seemed to be accomplishing the hitherto unknown feat of getting him hot under the collar. He was frowning and getting very red in the face; you could almost see the steam pouring out of his ears. He seemed to be looking for rescue. He kept glancing in my direction and then frowning all the harder. He would have to wait a long time before I rescued him. Unless--a sudden thought hit me. He wasn't just glowering at me, he was glowering at us. Michael and me. I would be willing to bet almost anything that Mrs. Grover was trying to make him jealous of Michael. Only Barry would be dim enough to fall for that one, I supposed. But the ridiculousness of it wouldn't necessarily prevent Barry from taking some violent action if he got much madder. He should avoid getting angry, I thought. It didn't suit him at all. His eyes got small and piggy and he reminded me more with each passing moment of the bull in a cartoon bullfight, snorting and pawing the earth and preparing to charge. Michael, who would be playing the part of matador if Barry did charge, didn't seem the least bit alarmed.

I finally decided that it would be better to rescue Barry, for Michael's sake if nothing else, and had actually gotten within earshot when Dad bustled up.

"I have a wonderful idea!" he said. "You don't mind, do you, Barry?" he said, taking Mrs. Grover by the elbow and leading her off. No, Barry didn't mind a bit, though Mrs. Grover looked rather like a cat when you take away a wounded bird that the cat's not quite finished playing with.

"Fetch some punch, Barry," I said, rather brusquely, thrusting my cup into his hand and giving him a shove in the direction of the food and drink. I watched to make sure he was really leaving, then dashed off after Dad and Mrs. Grover, partly to avoid being around when Barry returned with the punch and partly to hear what Dad's wonderful idea was. I was appalled to see that he appeared to be making a date with her. To go bird-watching.

Since Dad's bird-watching trips start an hour before dawn and include trekking through some of the local streams and marshes to view the waterfowl, Mrs. Grover was proving less than enthusiastic, even after Dad offered to lend her his spare pair of hip boots. But from the way Dad persisted, I realized he must have some ulterior motive. Very few people can hold out when Dad persists. Mrs. Grover finally agreed, with a visible reluctance that seemed to escape Dad, to meet him in Mother's backyard an hour before dawn for a few hours of nature appreciation.

"Now, tell me why you're so eager to go hiking through the woods with Mrs. Grover," I said, when she finally escaped Dad's clutches.

"I think a little taste of healthy, outdoor exercise would be beneficial," Dad said. "Perhaps a fishing trip in the rowboat would be a good idea, too."

"You could borrow an outboard motor from someone."

"No, that wouldn't do at all," Dad said. "The rowboat's the thing. I could teach her how to row."

"Dad, I doubt if Mrs. Grover has any interest in learning how to row. If you're trying to chase her out of town, why don't you take her over to Mother's cousin's farm and show her the hogs."

"That's a splendid idea," Dad said. "Perhaps he could arrange to slaughter a few while we're there. Any other little ideas you have to keep her out of your mother's hair and make her homesick for Fort Lauderdale, you just speak up anytime." And he trotted off happily in search of the hog-owning cousin. I sighed.

"What now?" Michael asked, once more appearing at my elbow. He was getting very good at that.

"Dad has found a new purpose in life," I said, pointing to where Dad was enthusiastically talking to Mrs. Grover.

"Mrs. Grover?" he said, incredulously.

"In a way. He's decided Mother needs protecting from Mrs. Grover."

"Your mother?" he said, even more incredulously.

"Precisely. He's planning to kill her with kindness. Strenuous dawn nature hikes, visits to cousins who live under rigorously rustic conditions--all sorts of supposedly fun things that aren't. Keeping her out of Mother's hair and if possible, encouraging her to flee."

"She could always refuse to go along."

"You don't know him yet," I said, shaking my head. "Dad's the only human being on the face of the earth who can talk Mother into doing something she doesn't want to do. Mrs. Grover's a pushover compared to Mother."

"Well, I must say, I won't be sorry if he succeeds in running her out of town," Michael said. "She keeps coming up to me and insisting she knows me from somewhere. I'm sure if she does she remembers me from my acting days. Before I went back to school for my doctorate, I was one of those rare actors who actually earned a living at it. Mostly in soap operas. I assume that's how Mrs. Grover knows me."

"Have you told her that?"

"Yes, but she keeps saying "No, that's not it. But it will come to me sooner or later." As if she expects me to break down and confess, "Yes, yes, you've seen through me! It was I on the grassy knoll, and what's more, I can tell you where Jimmy Hoffa is buried!""

"Really? I always heard it was somewhere on the New Jersey Turnpike," said a cousin who was the family's leading conspiracy enthusiast. His uncanny ability to turn up at moments when his pet subjects are mentioned is one of the most persuasive arguments for mental telepathy I've ever known. I confess, I abandoned Michael to him and hunted down Dad.

"Dad, about your trip to the farm with Mrs. Grover," I said. "Do they still have that old outhouse around for local color?"

"Yes," Dad said, a blissful smile spreading over his face as he dashed off to talk to the cousin.

Maybe it wasn't going to be such a bad summer after all.

I kept one eye on Mrs. Grover's progress through the crowd--it was easy to track her by the comparatively bare spot in the crowd that tended to form around her whenever she paused anywhere for more than a minute. I was surprised she hadn't yet burst forth to accuse Mother of robbing her dead sister, but perhaps she was saving that for the grand finale. I wandered over to where Mother and Samantha were talking to the current and former rectors of Grace Episcopal Church. The retired rector, the aptly named Reverend Pugh, was an old family friend. Mother had recently granted tentative approval to his successor after a mere eighteen-year probationary period. She now referred to him as "that nice young man" rather than simply "that young man." At this rate, he had a very real chance of achieving "dear rector" status by the time he retired.

"And here's Meg," the rector said, as I strolled up. "Your mother and Samantha have been telling me about all the things you're doing to get ready for their weddings." Telling him in mind-numbing detail, I suspected, from the desperate note in his voice. I'd long ago stopped wondering why all three brides showed such a distressing inability to understand how anyone they came in contact with could fail to be fascinated with the minutiae of their weddings.

"I'm sorry I'll have to miss them all," he continued, somewhat disingenuously, I suspect. "The day after tomorrow I'm taking the wife and kids on that trip to the Holy Land. Finally going after all these years!"

"Do you mean you're not going to be here in July?" Samantha demanded. "Then who's going to do my wedding? I've booked the church." The rector and I exchanged worried glances.

"Yes, well, if you'd talked to me I'd have told you I was going to be gone this summer," he stammered. "When you didn't, I assumed you were making your own arrangements with my substitute."

"And who is that?" Samantha asked.

"Why, me, of course," Reverend Pugh answered, beaming. Fortunately his eyesight was very bad--not unusual at ninety-seven--and he failed to notice the expression of outrage that crossed Samantha's face. I could see she was horrified at the mere thought of his decrepit and highly unaesthetic self officiating at her wedding.

"Don't worry, Samantha dear," he said, reaching to pat her hand and getting Jake's by mistake. "I've got it down in my calendar already. I wouldn't miss it for the world!"

I'd often heard of people having conniption fits, but I'd never actually seen a genuine, unmistakable example before. I was briefly tempted simply to let things run their course, but reason prevailed, and I knew I had to defuse the situation. Nothing brilliant came to mind, so in desperation I made a conspiratorial gesture to Samantha and whispered the first thing that came to mind: "Just humor him! I'll fill you in later."

And spent most of the rest of the party avoiding Samantha while racking my brain for some explanation that would satisfy her. By the time she finally cornered me, much later in the evening, we'd both had rather a lot of champagne, and I managed to spin a convincing yarn about Reverend Pugh's mysterious illness, and how Dad had said a positive mental attitude was important and of course it would keep his spirits up to look forward to the wedding, but that we'd round up a substitute and have Dad order bed rest at the last minute. It sounded highly convincing to me, though it could have been the champagne. Either she bought it or she allowed me to believe she had, after issuing the stern warning that I had better find the substitute ASAP.

I had changed my mind; it was going to be an interminable summer.

Tuesday, May 31

Although I hadn't exactly made a wild night of it, I had stayed up rather late at the picnic, plotting pranks against Mrs. Grover, averting disasters, and drinking a few glasses of wine and champagne. All right, more than a few. I was not at all happy when one of the bridesmaids showed up at the house shortly after dawn. The caterer was acting up and Samantha wanted my help.

"I'm sure Meg will be able to take care of it," Mother said soothingly as she adjusted her hat in the hall mirror. "Jake and I are following your orders today, dear. We're going down to get him a new suit for the wedding, and then we're going to run a whole lot of little errands."

"What sort of little errands?" I asked. Perhaps it was paranoid of me, but I couldn't help suspecting that, as usual, some of Mother's errands would later turn out to involve major amounts of work on my part.

"Oh, this and that," Mother said, vaguely. "Some things for the house. I don't have a list yet. We're going to make a list over a nice breakfast, and then see how much we can get done by lunch."

"Wonderful," I said, insincerely. Mother turned loose on the unsuspecting county. I much preferred her indolent.

"There's Jake now, dear," she said, and floated out toward the front door just as Dad came in the back.

"Meg," he said. "Have you seen Mrs. Grover this morning? She was supposed to meet me here at six A.m. to go bird-watching. She's half an hour late."

"She probably decided to be sensible and sleep in. That certainly was what I had in mind this morning," I said, looking pointedly at the bridesmaid.

"Probably so. Well, if she shows up, or if anyone needs me, I'll be in the side yard." I nodded; my mouth was filled with one of Pam's blueberry muffins.

"Okay," I told the bridesmaid, as I finished filling my traveling coffee mug. "Let's go get Samantha and bring the caterer to heel."

The neighbors two houses down had recently put up an eight-foot fence to keep in their Labradors. When we started down the street, I saw Michael trying to pull a small furry dog away from that very fence. The little dog was barking almost hysterically and leaping repeatedly at the fence. We heard an occasional bored bark from one of the Labs. Michael finally succeeded in dragging his dog away, and they headed in our direction. When the dog caught sight of us he quickened his pace.

"Oh, what a cute little dog," the bridesmaid cooed as we came near them.

"If you say so," Michael said. "I consider him--don't!" he shouted, as she bent down to pet the dog. "He'll take your nose off," he explained, as the dog went into a frenzy of snarling and snapping. "Bad dog, Spike," he said rather mechanically, as if he had to say it rather often.

"Oh, his name's Spike," she said inanely.

"No, actually Mother calls him Sweetie-cakes, or Cutesy-poo, or something like that," Michael said, with disgust. "I don't think even a nasty little dog like him deserves that, so I've decided to call him Spike. After a bully I knew in grade school." As if he understood what Michael was saying, Spike glanced up at him balefully and curled his lip.

"Charming," I said. Spike was a small dustmop of black and white fur with a petulant, pushed-in face. I prefer cats and collies, myself.

"Mom rescued him from an animal shelter where she was doing some volunteer work."

"Oh, that's so nice," the bridesmaid said.

"She is fond of remarking that he must have been mistreated," Michael said, "and will mellow when he learns to expect food and kindness instead of ill treatment."

"Oh, then she hasn't had him long," I said.

"Only seven years. At this rate, I think he'll go senile before he mellows."

Spike trotted over to the neighbors' mailbox and lifted his leg. However, he lifted the wrong leg, and instead of watering the post came perilously close to spraying the bridesmaid and me.

"We'd better go," she said, wrinkling her nose. "Samantha will be getting impatient."

"The caterer is showing signs of rebellion," I said. "We're gathering a posse to deal with him."

"Good luck. Are you bringing your friend Eileen in later today?"

"If she shows up," I said. "Mother took a garbled message from her yesterday. Something about her and Steven running away to the beach."

"Perhaps they're eloping."

"Don't get my hopes up."

We dealt with the caterer by phone, and then spent what seemed like hours in earnest discussion over whether or not there should be finger bowls, and if so, whether they should have flowers or paper-thin lemon slices floating in them. Left to my own devices, I could have settled this in thirty seconds.

When this weighty issue had been decided and I had my marching orders, Samantha and her bridesmaid went off to meet yet another bridesmaid for lunch. Probably going to split a lettuce leaf between the three of them, I thought, guiltily remembering the muffin with which I'd already undermined my day's calorie count.

I went home, fixed myself an early and depressingly meager lunch, and spent the next few hours on the back porch swing with the phone, racking up long distance charges. One of Eileen's bridesmaids, from Tennessee, had provided two completely contradictory shoe sizes, and I had to elicit the truth.

One of Mother's more elusive cousins had to be tracked down--as it turned out, to a commune in California. After failing miserably to find out through any other means the phone number of the Cape May bed and breakfast where Eileen and Steven were reputed to be hiding, I called Barry at Professor Donleavy's and managed to extract the information without actually promising to go out with him. And finally, I reached Eileen and Steven and made Eileen promise to come home within a day or two to decide on her dress and ours.

Having reached the end of my patience, I retired to the hammock and addressed envelopes for a few hours. When Mother hadn't shown up by six o'clock, I began fixing some dinner. When she hadn't shown up by seven-thirty, I ate it. Jake finally dropped her off after nine, tired but happy and laden with parcels.

Not a wildly exciting or productive afternoon, but trivial as my activities were to the progress of the weddings, they loomed large in the light of subsequent events.

Wednesday, June 1

Subsequent events began happening the next morning at breakfast.

"Meg, have you seen Mrs. Grover?" Mother asked while waiting for me to finish fixing her a fresh fruit salad.

"Yes," I said. "I met her at the party, remember? At both parties."

"Yes, but have you seen her since? Jake called a little while ago to say she didn't come home last night. He wanted to report her missing to the sheriff, but for some silly reason you can't do much until she's been gone for twenty-four hours."

"Does he think something could have happened to her?" I asked. Trying hard not to sound too hopeful.

"Goodness, I hope not," Mother said. "I think perhaps he's worried that she may have gotten a little vexed at his leaving her alone all day yesterday. While he and I did all our little errands."

"Maybe he's right. She is supposed to be his houseguest."

"Yes, but good heavens, half the neighbors had invited her to visit them or offered to take her places. Your father even came out early to take her bird-watching and she never showed up."

"Well, let's call some of the neighbors and see if anyone has seen her."

We called all the neighbors. No one had seen Mrs. Grover. I went over and searched Jake's yard and the small woods in back of it, in case she'd fallen, broken her hip, and been unable to move, as had happened to an elderly neighbor the previous year. No Mrs. Grover. We braved the dust of the attic and the damp of the cellar to see if she might have been overcome by illness while indulging in a bit of household snooping. Still no Mrs. Grover. There were dishes in the sink and half a cup of cold coffee on the bedside table in her room that Jake didn't think had been there when he left yesterday morning, but he couldn't be sure. She had left three suitcases and quite a lot of clothes, but there was no way we could tell if anything was missing. I was quietly amused by the number of small but valuable household items that seemed to have found their way into her suitcases. Things she considered part of her rightful inheritance from the late Emma Wendell, I supposed.

Having met the woman, I could easily believe that she would storm off and leave Jake to have fits worrying about her. But that didn't mean she couldn't have gotten ill or had an accident. And I privately doubted that she would have gone off, even temporarily, and left all her loot behind where Jake could reclaim it.

While we were searching, the sheriff turned up at Jake's house. It was rather unsettling; the sheriff was a cousin, and dropped by quite a lot, but usually his conversations with Mother revolved around family gossip, not police procedures.

"We're going to list her as officially missing first thing in the morning," he announced.

"Anything could happen between now and then," Jake said.

"Frankly, I decided not to wait to start checking around," the sheriff assured him. "She's not in any of the local hospitals or morgues, and there are no Jane Does remotely fitting her description. She can't have taken a plane or train or bus; none of them have a credit card transaction in her name and these days the ticket agents tend to remember anyone who pays in cash. I got in touch with the police department down in Fort Lauderdale, and they'll let me know if she shows up at home. We could try to get some dogs in here to try to track her in case she's ... wandered off and lying ill someplace."

"I'd appreciate that," Jake said. "I only hope I'm not putting you to all this trouble for nothing. I mean, I'd feel terrible if she just showed up tomorrow and we find out that she forgot to tell me she was going to visit some friend who lives down here. It just has to be some kind of silly mix-up like that, doesn't it?"

He looked hopefully up at the sheriff. "That's very probable, Mr. Wendell, but I'd feel terrible if we didn't do everything we could to make sure she's all right," the sheriff replied in the earnest tones he usually reserves for the election season. "If you hear from her, you let us know straight away, you hear? And we'll call you the minute we find out something."

I spent most of the rest of the day trying to do a few wedding-related chores in between fielding phone calls about Mrs. Grover, helping coordinate the search for Mrs. Grover, and reassuring an increasingly anxious Jake that I was sure nothing serious had happened to Mrs. Grover.

"I certainly hope she really is all right," I told Dad as we sat on the porch after dinner. "She's totally wrecked my week's schedule and probably taken ten years off Jake's life, the way he's worrying, but I will feel guilty about resenting it all until I know she's all right."

"Yes," he said. "I feel mildly guilty for all the little pranks I was planning to play on her."

"Let's resolve to be especially nice to her when she shows up again," I said.

"Agreed," said Dad. "No more little pranks."

Thursday, June 2

I woke up early, couldn't get back to sleep for wondering if anyone had heard from Mrs. Grover, and finally gave up and came down for breakfast.

"Any news of Mrs. Grover?" I asked.

"No, but Eileen called," Mother said.

"Make my day; tell me she's coming home to pick out a dress."

"No, she and Steven are staying over at Cape May," Mother said. "Such a nice place for a honeymoon."

"Yes, but they're not honeymooning yet. Or ever will be, if she doesn't get down here to pick out a dress."

"There's still time, dear. Why don't you fix us a nice omelet?"

We heard a knock and saw Michael's face at the back door.

"Have you seen Spike?" he asked, slightly breathless. "You know, Mom's dog?"

"No," I said. "Damn, we don't need any more disappearances."

"If you see him running around loose, just give him a wide berth and call me," Michael said. "He's not really vicious, just terminally irritable."

"You might try going down to the beach," I said, following him out. "Dogs always seem to like that. Lots of smelly seaweed and dead fish to wallow in."

"Your nephew and your father suggested that," he said. "Searching the beach for Spike, that is, not wallowing there. They went down to look."

"Or wallow, knowing Dad and Eric." Just then we saw Eric running toward us.

"Maybe you're in luck," I said.

"Meg!" Eric called, running up to us. "We found something down on the beach! I think it's a dead animal. Grandpa's down looking at it!" He ran over to the edge of the bluff and teetered there, pointing down.

"Stay away from the edge!" I shouted, grabbing for him. "You know it's not safe. It could cave in."

"Come see, Meg!" Eric pleaded.

"We'd better go," I told Michael. "We may have to carry Dad up the ladder."

"Ladder?" Michael said.

"It's a shortcut down to the beach," I explained over my shoulder as Eric tugged me along by the hand to the next-door neighbors' yard. "Most people go down to the Donleavys' house. They have an easy path down to the beach. But Dad likes to go down this rather precarious series of ladders our neighbor built straight down the side of the bluff to his dock.

"Dad!" I called as we reached the top of the ladder. "Do you need us for anything?"

"You keep the kids back, Meg," Dad called up.

"There's only Eric."

"Just keep him back, you hear?" Dad repeated, sounding anxious.

"Go on back to the house and see if your grandmother has the cookies ready," I told Eric, who trotted off eagerly.

"Is she baking cookies?" Michael asked, with interest.

"Mother? It's extremely unlikely. But by the time she convinces Eric of that, he'll have forgotten all about whatever it is Dad doesn't want him to see. It's very odd; I wonder why he's so worried about keeping the grandkids away."

"Surely he wouldn't want them to see a dead animal."

"I don't see why not. He was always dragging Pam and Rob and me to see dead animals and using them for little impromptu biology lessons. He does it all the time with the grandkids. Unless it's one of their animals, of course; even Dad has more sense than to do that. Oh, I hope it's not Duck; he wasn't following Eric."

"Or Spike," Michael said. "Mom would have a fit."

"Meg," Dad shouted up. "Who else is that with you?"

"Michael," I shouted back. "We sent Eric back to the house."

"Good!" said Dad. "Michael, would you mind climbing down here for a minute?" Michael shrugged and started down the ladder. A little too quickly.

"Take it slow!" I said. "That's an old ladder; there are a few rungs missing, and a few more will be very soon if you aren't careful."

"Right," he said, and continued at an excessively cautious pace. I stood at the top of the ladder peering down, rather idiotically, since the bushes were too thick for me to see anything. I could hear Dad and Michael talking in hushed tones.

"Meg," Dad called up. "We've found Mrs. Grover. Go call the sheriff."

"The sheriff," I repeated. "Right. And an ambulance?"

"Yes, not that they need to rush or anything," Michael said.

"And tell him to come prepared," Dad added. "There are some rather suspicious circumstances."

"Oh, dear," Mother said, after eavesdropping shamelessly on my conversation with the sheriff. "Poor Mrs. Grover. And here we all were so irritated because we thought she'd disappeared on purpose to annoy us. I suppose it should be a lesson to us."

I felt rather guilty about the uncharitable thoughts I'd had about Mrs. Grover--now, presumably, the late Mrs. Grover. But while I felt very sorry indeed for her, I couldn't help thinking that if she was going to die under suspicious circumstances, she couldn't have picked a better place to do it.

Of course, having met her, I felt sure that she'd have made every effort to die elsewhere if she'd had any idea of the deep personal and professional satisfaction a mystery buff like Dad would feel at the prospect of helping investigate her death.

Dad examined the body, both on the scene and again at the morgue, once the coroner had arrived from the county seat. He kept trying to discuss the findings at the dinner table and was sternly and repeatedly repressed. I could understand it in Jake's case; he wasn't used to Dad, and it was, after all, his sister-in-law. But I found it hard to see how Mother and Rob could still be so squeamish after years of living with Dad.

Rob and Jake fled after dinner, and Pam and Eric joined us for dessert, and Dad was at last able to discuss what Mother was already referring to as "your father's case."

"And just what is that in English?" Pam queried, after Dad had given a detailed, polysyllabic description of Mrs. Grover's injuries.

"There was no water in her lungs, so she didn't drown," I translated. "She had a fracture on the left rear side of the top of her skull, apparently from a rounded object; she died within minutes of the fracture; and the way the blood settled in her limbs indicated she may have been moved after death. Right?" I asked.

"Very good, Meg," Dad said. "Of course, the moving may have been due to being washed about in the water; hard to tell yet whether it's significant. And they'll have to do more tests to determine the precise interval between the fracture and her death; that's just my estimate. Incidentally, I estimate the time of death as sometime during the day on Tuesday, but, again, the medical examiner's office will be able to tell more accurately. An examination of the contents of the stomach and the digestive tract as well as--"

"James," Mother warned.

"Well, anyway, they'll be able to tell," Dad went on, unabashed. "But there's one more important thing about the fracture."

"What's that?" I said.

"Consider the location and angle," Dad said. Pam and Mother frowned in puzzlement. I fingered my own skull with one hand, recalling Dad's description.

"You think it's homicide," I said.

Dad nodded with approval.

"Homicide? Why?" Pam demanded.

Dad looked expectantly at me.

"Try to visualize it," I said. "The fracture was on the top of her skull. It's a little hard to figure out how she could do that falling. Unless she fell while trying to stand on her head. Sounds more like what would result if someone hit her on the head with a golf club or something."

"She fell off the cliff," Pam said. "If she was falling head over heels, couldn't she have landed smack on her head?"

"From forty feet up? It would have been like dropping a melon on--"

"James!" Mother exclaimed.

"Well, it would have," Dad protested. "Consider the velocity of a straight fall. She would have sustained far more extensive injuries, particularly to the cranium if that's where she landed. And if her fall was broken one or more times by the underbrush or by intermediate landings, why were there no significant abrasions or contusions elsewhere on the body? No torn clothing, no leaves or twigs caught in her hair or clothes? I don't believe she fell from that cliff, before or after her death," he stated firmly. "I believe she was murdered and then left on the beach. The sheriff may not realize it yet, but I do. And I'm going to do my damnedest to prove it."

Well, at least someone was happy. I went to bed trying to fight off the uncharitable thought that thanks to Mrs. Grover's inconveniently turning up dead almost in our backyard, I was now yet another day behind in my schedule. And I had no doubt further interruptions would be coming thick and fast.

Friday, June 3

Either the sheriff had come around to Dad's way of thinking or he was taking no chances that Dad might be right. When I woke up the next day, the bluffs were swarming with deputies. Well, six of them, anyway, which was a swarm by local standards, being exactly half of the law enforcement officers available in the county. They were searching the beach and the top of the bluff, and had even gotten the cherry picker from the county department of public works, which they drove down to the beach and used to search the side of the bluff. About the only thing of interest they'd found was the missing Spike.

One of the deputies spent several hours and a whole truckload of Police Line--Do Not Cross tape cordoning off the bluff and the beach for half a mile on either side of where Mrs. Grover's body was found. Which seemed idiotic until the crowds began showing up.

Everyone in the neighborhood turned out to watch the excitement, and not a few people from the rest of the county. Mother organized about a dozen neighboring ladies to provide tea, lemonade, and cookies, and the whole thing turned into a combination wake, block party, and family reunion, with Mother holding court on the back porch.

The only good thing about the gathering was that I met Mrs. Thornhill, the inexpensive calligrapher Mrs. Fenniman had recommended, and turned over Samantha's invitations and guest list to her. What a nice, motherly woman I thought, as I watched her drive off, her backseat piled high with stationery boxes. Of course Samantha was paying her, but it still felt as if she were doing me a favor by lifting that enormous weight off my shoulders.

The forces of law and order knocked off at sunset, leaving a lone deputy standing guard. The festivities went on long after dark. About ten o'clock I snuck off to my sister, Pam's, to sleep.

Saturday, June 4

The show resumed at dawn, and since it wasn't a work day, the crowds were even larger. I pointed out to the sheriff that anyone he might possibly need to interrogate about Mrs. Grover's death was probably milling about in our yard or the neighbors', rapidly replacing whatever genuine information they might have with the grapevine's current theory--which seemed to be that Mrs. Grover, arriving early for her appointment with Dad, either fell over the bluff or was coshed on the head and heaved over the edge by a prowling tramp.

So the sheriff was using our dining room as an interrogation chamber and enthusiastically grilling a random assortment of witnesses, suspects, and fellow travelers. He was concentrating on our whereabouts on May 31, and what we had seen then. Mother and Jake were of no use, of course, since they'd spent the entire day together running errands. I thought it was a very lucky break for Jake that they had. Dad is fond of remarking that in small towns, people tend to kill people they know. The sheriff had heard this often enough to have absorbed it, and Jake was the only one who really knew Mrs. Grover. And might have had reason to do her in, considering the quarrel I'd overheard. But if her death did turn out to be a homicide, not only Mother but half a dozen sales clerks and waitresses would be able to prove that he hadn't been within fifteen miles of our neighborhood between 7:00 A.m. and 9:00 P.m.

The sheriff was particularly interested in the fact that between ten and two-thirty or so I'd been sitting on our back porch making phone calls. Evidently that was a critical time period, and the stretch of the bluff I could see from the porch was the most likely spot for Mrs. Grover to have gone over the cliff, if that was indeed what happened to her.

"And at no time did you see Mrs. Grover or anyone else enter the backyard," he said.

"No," I replied. "I didn't see anyone except for the birthday party going on in the yard next door and Dad on the riding lawn mower."

He didn't look as if he believed me.

Dad, on the other hand, believed me implicitly, but that was because my evidence supported his theory that Mrs. Grover had not fallen or been pushed but had been deposited on the beach.

With the exception of Mother and Jake, nobody else in the neighborhood had anything that even vaguely resembled an airtight alibi for the time of the murder. Of course, the sheriff had yet to uncover anything vaguely resembling a motive, either, so the dearth of alibis was not yet a problem for anyone in particular. I began to wonder if there was a homicidal maniac hidden among the horde of locals, who, from their sworn statements, appeared to have spent the day after Memorial Day wandering aimlessly through the neighborhood, borrowing and lending cups of sugar and garden tools and feeding each other light summer refreshments.

Before Mother could organize another neighborhood soiree, I hid in our old treehouse with a stack of envelopes and a couple of good books. I couldn't concentrate on either, though, and found myself gazing down on the crowd, wondering if Dad was right and one of them was a murderer.

I didn't buy the idea of a wandering tramp. I doubted any stranger could pass through our neighborhood without getting noticed by at least half a dozen nosy neighbors and being reported to the sheriff long before he'd had the chance to knock anyone off.

Even residents would cause talk if they did anything out of the ordinary. Long before we noticed Mrs. Grover's disappearance and had reason to be suspicious, someone like Mrs. Fenniman would be sure to ask, "What on earth were you doing standing around in the Langslows' backyard waving that blunt instrument?"

But a neighbor doing something perfectly normal would be ignored. People wouldn't be suspicious--in fact, they wouldn't even remember seeing an everyday sight like--what? I pondered, wondering if I'd done the same thing myself: omitted mentioning a possible suspect.

A bird-watcher. No one would notice a habitual bird-watcher like Dad strolling along the bluffs with binoculars, I thought. Or a gardener. Gardeners also tended to wander rather casually from yard to yard, borrowing tools and admiring each other's vegetation. A dog owner could pretty much wander at will, I realized, seeing Michael stroll into our yard leading Spike.

At least as long as he or she had a pooper scooper of some sort. Or a neighbor carrying something that looked like prepared food and heading for Mother's kitchen, I thought, seeing three more neighbors arrive with covered dishes.

This is not getting anywhere, I told myself. Ninety percent of the neighborhood falls into one or another of those categories.

Besides, even if I'd forgotten to mention a passing bird-watcher or food-bearing neighbor, I'd have noticed someone getting close to the bluff. The edge is fragile and crumbling; I grew up having it drummed into me to stay away from the edge of the bluffs. And I admit, I've been a little hyper about it myself ever since the Fourth of July when Rob was seven and got carried away while watching the fireworks over the river. Watching your kid brother suddenly disappear, along with a large chunk of ground on which he had been standing, and then seeing him excavated, undamaged except for a broken arm, from a mound of rubble--that sort of thing tends to stay with you. I'd have noticed anyone even approaching the edge of the bluffs, much less someone getting close enough to shove a person, live or dead, over the edge.

So perhaps I should start from the other end. Who had reason to kill Mrs. Grover?

I didn't like the answers. Aside from Jake, secure behind his alibi, most of the other possible suspects were people I knew and liked. Hell, half of them were family. Although Mother was graciousness itself, I could tell she had taken an intense dislike to Mrs. Grover. I didn't suspect my own mother, of course, but someone else might. And while she had been gallivanting about the county with Jake at the time of the crime, I could think of several friends and relatives who would throw themselves over a cliff--to say nothing of an unpleasant stranger--if they thought it would please Mother.

The sheriff would be high on that list, which could account for his being so slow off the mark investigating. But if he was a cold-blooded killer he was certainly a much better actor than I'd imagined. He'd established what he called an observation post on our diving board, and was standing with a glass of iced tea in his hand, watching his deputies' frenzied activity with a mixture of pride and bewilderment. Then again, it could simply be that he was a little out of his depth dealing with a murder other than the occasional domestic dispute down in the more rural end of the county.

I suspect Dad might have brought himself to dispose of Mrs. Grover if he thought it was absolutely necessary to protect Mother's life, but his idea of how to deal with Mrs. Grover as an annoyance was the mild-mannered, rather entertaining plan of harassment we'd developed during the party. He was rational enough to realize that he would be overreacting if he killed Mrs. Grover merely to spare Mother embarrassment and irritation. At least I thought he was. And no matter how much Dad had always longed to have a homicide to investigate, I knew he wouldn't go overboard and actually commit one. That would be crazy, even for Dad.

Pam. Ordinarily, my sister would be the last person I'd expect to do anything as outlandish as murdering somebody. She could shrug off nearly anything; if someone really did cross her, Pam's natural reaction would be to toss off a few witty remarks and then make sure the culprit's name was mud throughout the county. But if she thought Mrs. Grover was harming one of her kids? She'd be capable. Where they were concerned, she could exterminate a hundred Mrs. Grovers as matter-of-factly as she would an equal number of cockroaches. Pam was not crazy, but she was very, very focused.

Mrs. Fenniman, now. She was a little crazy. Fond as Mother was of her, Mrs. Fenniman was indisputably crazy enough to fit right into my family. In fact, she was a relative, more or less. After twenty-five years of intense genealogical discussion, she and Mother had finally found that the sister of one of our ancestors had apparently been married to the nephew of one of Mrs. Fenniman's forebears, so they'd declared each other relatives. I could see Mrs. Fenniman taking matters into her own hands. During a visit to Richmond, she had once discouraged an armed mugger by stabbing him with her hatpin. And she was convinced that she had never been burgled because everyone in the county knew she slept with her great-grandfather's Civil War saber at her bedside, ready to deal with any intruders. The fact that at least 99 percent of the townspeople had never been burgled either was, of course, irrelevant.

Mrs. Fenniman was wandering about in the yard below, wearing--good heavens, no!--a deerstalker hat. That was all we needed, another would-be amateur detective. I was relieved when she spotted Dad and hurried over to deposit the deerstalker on his shining crown. Dad beamed gratefully. He and Michael were talking, somewhat apart from the crowd--though it was hard to tell whether this was because they were sharing inside information on the crime or simply because people tended to steer clear of Spike, who lunged, snarling and snapping, at any human who came within a few feet.

Michael. He wasn't a relative or an old friend, but I found myself strangely reluctant to consider Michael in the role of suspect. But what, after all, did I really know about him? He seemed like a nice person. But who knew what secrets he might be concealing? Secrets worth killing for? As I watched, he offered Spike a sliver of cheese. Kind-hearted of him, considering how nasty the little beast was. Spike gobbled the cheese, and then, when he'd barely swallowed it, lunged at the hand that had just, literally, fed him. What a pity there was no possibility of Mrs. Grover being killed by a wild animal. We could make Spike the fall guy; he certainly qualified.

Then again, Spike had his uses. He whirled and nearly took a chunk out of Barry, who was still dogging Dad's footsteps.

Barry. One of the few people who might possibly be large enough to have heaved Mrs. Grover into the river. Or over it, if he wanted. Or tucked her under his arm and hauled her down to the beach as easily as I could carry a loaf of bread. He was staying at Eileen's father's house, with the path to the beach not ten feet away. He'd had a run-in with Mrs. Grover at one of the parties. He and Dad alibied each other, but incompletely. Barry claimed to have been with Dad all day, helping in the garden, but I overheard Dad explaining to the sheriff that he'd done his best to "park" Barry whenever possible-- to find a chore Barry could do unsupervised and then leave him there where he was out of Dad's hair. It didn't work all that well, I gather--Barry seemed to need to hunt Dad down at regular intervals to ask rather idiotic questions. But still, there were vast stretches of time during which Dad was reveling in Barry's absence and Barry could have been doing away with Mrs. Grover. I would be crushed to find out that any of my family or friends was a murderer. But I thought I could bear up under the loss if it turned out to be Barry. I briefly contemplated life without Barry, or rather with Barry behind bars. I liked the prospect. No more having Barry hang around my booth at craft fairs, scaring away any other, more attractive men who might want to talk to me. No more showing up at Steven and Eileen's to find out they'd arranged to have Barry over at the same time.

Whoa. Steven and Eileen. They would be crushed if it turned out to be Barry. Ah, well, I suppose I would have to hope it wasn't him either, for their sakes.

"Hi, Aunt Meg!" I started; I hadn't even noticed my nephew Eric climbing the tree with Duck under his arm.

"Hi."

"Samantha was looking for you." Drat. "Don't tell her where I am," I said. I tried to think of a reason to give him, but Eric didn't seem to find my request at all strange.

"Okay," he said. Sensible child. He and Duck settled down beside me.

I scanned the crowd until I found Samantha. She was striding purposefully around, stopping from time to time and questioning people. Still looking for me. I drew back a little from the edge of the platform and made sure I was well hidden behind some leaves. Samantha had also argued with Mrs. Grover during the party. Perhaps she was the murderer, I thought, and then was appalled to realize how much savage, triumphant joy that thought gave me.

I really don't like her, I told myself. I could take her or leave her when she and Rob were dating, but after five months of helping her organize the wedding, I truly didn't like her. By the end of the summer, I would probably loathe her. Of course my relationship with Eileen was a little strained at the moment--or as strained as a relationship could be between two people when one of them was so charmingly oblivious. But that was different. After the wedding was over, Eileen and I would still be good friends. But Samantha. I realized I'd somehow been looking forward to her wedding day as if it were the end of my relationship with her instead of only the beginning.

I felt sick to my stomach at the thought of having to see her year in, year out. And felt guilty about feeling that way. I was beginning to suspect Samantha's friendliness toward me when she first got engaged was all a fake. A deliberate ploy to sucker me into doing for her the million and one things I was doing for my own mother and for Eileen, who was not only motherless but perpetually disorganized. Samantha's mother was about on a par with Eileen when it came to practical matters, but I was beginning to think Samantha could have organized her own wedding singlehanded if she had to. But she didn't. She'd trapped me into doing it all instead. I sighed.

"What's wrong, Aunt Meg?" Eric said. "Are you worried about the bad man?"

"What bad man?"

"The one who hurt Mrs. Grover."

"No, I'm just tired. I think I'll take a nap."

"Okay," Eric said. He closed his eyes and curled up to take a nap, too. I was glad. I wasn't sure what I could tell him if he kept asking questions. That there wasn't a bad man? That there was nothing to worry about? I'm not big on lying, even to protect kids. There could be a bad man out there. Or a bad woman.

Please, let it have been an accident. Maybe she was walking on the beach and a stone tumbled down the cliff and hit her on the head. I made a mental note to discuss this idea with Dad, just before I dropped off to sleep.

Sunday, June 5

Attendance at Grace Episcopal was unusually high the next morning, almost rivaling Christmas and Easter. I went with Mother largely to keep her in line. She was trying to plan an elaborate funeral for Mrs. Grover; I wanted to get Reverend Pugh to contact Mrs. Grover's clergyman or friends back home to make arrangements. I wondered if, knowing Mother, he could be persuaded to utter a small white lie and tell Mother that Mrs. Grover wanted to be cremated quietly, with no service or other fuss. Preferably back in Fort Lauderdale.

Reverend Pugh correctly deduced that Mrs. Grover's death was the reason for the high attendance and preached a very moving sermon on the general theme "Even in the midst of life we are in death." At least I suppose it was moving for those who were able to hear it. I was sitting in the back, where Mrs. Fenniman and the other professional town gossips were busily updating each other on new developments in "the case."

I fled home immediately after the service, but my hopes of getting anything done were dashed by an unusually large infestation of visiting relatives.

Monday, June 6

Even on Monday, accomplishing anything was an uphill battle. No one wanted to talk about weddings; everyone wanted to hear about Mrs. Grover. I stopped by the Brewsters' house after lunchtime to give Samantha some photographers' samples.

Of course, since my arms were completely full, no one answered when I knocked. I juggled the books with one arm and let myself into the kitchen.

"Anyone home?" I called, poking my head into the family room. I interrupted Samantha in the midst of a phone call.

"I'll have to call you back later," she said, and hung up in a distinctly furtive manner. How odd; furtive wasn't usually Samantha's style at all.

"Coordinating your alibi with your co-conspirators?" I teased. To my surprise, she jumped.

"Alibi! What do you mean alibi?" she snapped.

"Where were you on the afternoon of May 31 when the late Mrs. Grover disappeared?" I said, melodramatically.

"I don't think that's the least bit funny. The poor woman is dead."

"I'm sorry. I don't think it's particularly funny either; I've just had it up to here with people putting on their lugubrious faces and wanting to hear all about it."

"Who wants to hear all about it?" Samantha asked. "Hasn't everyone around here heard enough already?"

"Yes, but all day, everyone with whom I've tried to discuss menus, flowers, photo packages, and tuxedo sizes has wanted to hear all about Mrs. Grover before doing any business."

"That's so tacky," she sniffed.

"Yes, but in a small town, one can't afford to offend the limited number of vendors available," I pointed out. "So I give them a thrill by telling them the inside scoop, and with any luck I can turn it to our advantage."

"Well, that's sensible, I suppose," Samantha said, absently. I gave her the photographers' books and beat a retreat.

She seemed to want to be left alone, which was highly unusual. Normally she'd have wanted to interrogate me on my progress and natter on for hours about her latest inspirations. Perhaps I had been too hard on her, I thought, as I strolled home. Perhaps she had really been affected by Mrs. Grover's death. I doubted she could have gotten to know Mrs. Grover well enough to be mourning her personally, but perhaps the death had momentarily jarred her out of her monumental self-absorption. A sobering reminder of mortality in the midst of celebration and plans for the future and all that. Maybe that was why she had seemed so furtive; perhaps she was embarrassed to have her frivolous preoccupation with finger bowls and flower arrangements compared with the grief suffered by Mrs. Grover's loved ones. Whoever they might be.

Then again, perhaps Samantha's touchiness on the subject of the murder was due to irritation about the attention it was drawing away from her wedding. And as for behaving furtively, she was probably up to something. Coming up with some new complication--another one of those "small details that really make the occasion"--as well as making mountains of work for me. Doubtless she'd unveil her new plan, whatever it was, as soon as she was sure she'd figured out how it could cause the maximum amount of trouble for me.

I spent the afternoon fretting alternately about what Samantha was up to and what the sheriff was up to, becoming so preoccupied that I actually misspelled several relatives' names on their invitations and had to rewrite them.

"Meg," Dad said that evening, "I'm having a hard time convincing the sheriff how extremely unlikely it was for Mrs. Grover to have fallen from the bluff without sustaining a more serious injury. Could you help me for a while tomorrow?"

"Why not?" I said, rashly. If I couldn't forget about the murder long enough to address a few envelopes properly, I might as well help Dad out and perhaps get it out of my system. And of course my brother, Rob, who was supposed to be studying for the bar exam, was up for anything that didn't involve sitting indoors with his law books, so Dad succeeded in recruiting him as well.

Tuesday, June 7

I was getting ready to throw an impossibly heavy sandbag off the bluff the next morning when Michael came along walking Spike.

"What are you doing?" Michael said. "Helping Dad help the sheriff with his investigation."

"Ready!" Dad called up from the beach. I took a deep breath and then grappled with the sandbag.

"Here, let me help you with that," Michael said, looking for somewhere to tie Spike's leash.

"No, no!" I said. "That would spoil the test."

"Test? What test? That thing must weigh a ton."

"A hundred and five pounds, actually," I puffed. "Stand clear." I wrestled the bag as close to the edge of the bluff as I dared, gave it a desperate heave over the side, and fell back panting. I heard the bag crashing through the brush on the way down. "One more to go," I said, as I collapsed onto the ground by the last sandbag.

"I assume this has something to do with the murder?" Michael said, sitting down on the grass beside me. "Was that all she weighed, a hundred and five pounds?"

"Was that all? You try lugging one of these," I said. "Actually, a hundred and two, according to the medical examiner, but Dad decided to add three pounds for clothes. We're doing some testing for the sheriff."

"Ready!" Dad called again.

"Testing what?" Michael asked. "And why do you have to throw them?"

"If you want to throw some next, that would be fine with Dad. And great with me, I'm done in, and Rob's beat, too, and we both want to keep Dad from doing too much of the throwing. He's very fit but he's not invulnerable. But seeing how much strength it would have taken to have thrown her over is one of the things we're testing. I'm pretty damned strong for a woman, and it's about as much as I can do to drag them to the edge and shove them over. Here goes."

I slung the bag over the side, but this bag didn't go as far and stuck in the bushes. "Damn," I said, and grabbed up the garden rake. I shoved at the bag until it finally toppled over and went crashing down the side.

"All gone!" I shouted over the side.

"You said how much strength it would take was one of the things you were finding out," Michael said. "What else is this intended to discover?"

"All sorts of grisly things. Could the underbrush or the water break Mrs. Grover's fall enough to result in the relatively minimal injuries she sustained?"

"And could it?"

"Not bloody likely. And how much noise a hundred-and-five-pound object makes when landing, on sand and in the water, and how far away you can hear the noise, and the answers are less than you think, and not with the riding lawn mower running."

"Was it running?"

"Much of the time, yes. And whether there's any possibility she could merely have tripped and fallen over."

"Somehow I doubt that."

"Yes, it's so unlikely that we can pretty much discard it, no matter where you try it. Similarly, it's highly unlikely that anyone could have shoved her over. It very much looks as if the only way she could have gone over under her own steam would be if she took a running broad jump at the edge. And even then she'd have to be pretty athletic for a fifty-five-year-old."

"Aren't you afraid of destroying evidence?" Michael asked.

"They've been all over this stretch of the cliff, and found nothing," I replied. "No sign of one-hundred-five-pound weights having crashed through the brush, no scraps of clothing, no stray objects. At least none that could reasonably be assumed to have fallen off Mrs. Grover. That's another thing Dad wants to prove, how unlikely it would be for Mrs. Grover to have fallen over the cliff without leaving any traces on her or the cliff."