Death by the Light of the Moon (8 page)

“I'm not real comfortable dealing with this unknown factor,” Stanford said. “I wish Miss Justicia'd seen fit to stick with ol' Bethel. I could call him up right this minute, and he sure wouldn't give me any nonsense about being too busy to see me. No sir, he's worked for the Malloys so long he probably knows the first names of all our family skeletons, along with their birthdays and preferences in ice cream flavors.”

Maxie dismissed the heresy with a dainty laugh. “As if Malloy Manor harbored any family skeletons. When will we be able to see this Spikenard, Phoebe? Were you able to make an appointment for later?”

“Florine,” Phoebe said, making the name sound like a disease characterized by pustules, “said he had clients all morning, but he would return my call when he was free.”

Stanford put down his napkin and pushed back his chair. “Then we'll have to occupy ourselves making arrangements for the funeral until this character sees fit to call. I'll check with the mortuary, see what all we need to do. Anybody have any suggestions for hymns?”

Pauline opened the kitchen door. “How about ‘Row, Row, Row Your Boat'?”

I decided it was time to rouse Caron. Mumbling something to that effect, I left the dining room and went upstairs. The bed was empty, but the bathroom door muted the sound of shower water running. I brilliantly deduced her whereabouts, and wandered over to the window to look down at the scene of the—I gritted my teeth and made myself continue—accident.

I was repeating aloud the word, emphasizing the different syllables each time, when the bedroom door opened and Ellie came in. Even in her casual clothes, she radiated more confidence than I'd ever felt, even in graduate school when we'd sat in coffeehouses and condescendingly analyzed the failings of the bourgeoisie.

“Has Malloy Manor finally gotten to you?” she said as she made herself comfortable on Caron's bed. “First making faces at Great-Uncle Eustice, and now talking to the bayou?”

“Very possibly,” I said. I doubted she'd dropped by for a girlish giggle, but I was not in the mood to cooperate by inquiring into her motives. What I was in the mood for contained scandalous amounts of cholestoral and calories, alas.

“I want to ask you something. You're sort of a disinterested party in this whole thing. The others would start snorting and harrumphing, and I'm simply too stressed out to deal with them.”

I sat down on my bed and attempted to smile encouragingly, although my mind was far, far away, at a stainless-steel counter beneath an expansive plastic menu. “You're welcome to ask, Ellie.”

“I realize you're not a lawyer or anything, but you did have to deal with Uncle Carlton's estate. Suppose Miss Justicia's will divides the estate among the six of us. If one of us was already dead, would the shares increase to fifths?”

“Who's dead?” I asked sharply, visions of special sauce banished in an instant.

“I said
suppose
. No one's dead…although Cousin Pauline did look rather gruesome this morning.” She arranged the pillows and leaned back. “I just wondered what would happen, that's all. Another question: What if one of the heirs turned out to have murdered Miss Justicia? Would he—or she—still receive a share, or would we then be at fifths instead of sixths?”

“I thought we all agreed it was an accident,” I said. The water was turned off in the bathroom. I held up my hand, and in a lower voice, said, “Caron doesn't know what happened last night. Somehow or other, she managed to sleep through the entire thing. This is not a good time to continue our discussion of hypotheticals, Ellie.”

“What? Oh, sure, I understand.” She gnawed on her lip for a moment, then sat up and clapped her hands. “I have a wonderful idea! Why don't we run into town and drop by the library? They've got scads of books; surely some of them have legal information.”

“Are there any restaurants in town?”

“There used to be a café with the greasiest cheeseburgers in the state,” she said, lapsing into her sugary drawl as she regarded my famished expression. “French fries, onion rings, homemade pie.”

“I'll meet you downstairs in half an hour,” I said without hesitation. Ellie gave me a little wave and sailed out of the room.

Seconds later, Caron came out of the bathroom, wrapped in a towel and with her hair dripping, and gave me one of her darkest looks. “What is Going On, Mother? It's bad enough to be dragged into this remote area and forced to converse with weird people and sleep on a mattress that ought to be standard issue in a penal colony, but then to—”

I battled an impulse to fling a pillow at her and said, “If you'll stop shrieking, I'll answer your question.”

“I should hope so.” She stalked over to an open suitcase and began to throw clothes over her shoulder in the direction of the bed. Each missile was accompanied by an indictment. “First everyone goes to bed, then everyone stomps around, then everyone vanishes, then everyone starts jabbering downstairs. Cars in the driveway. Doors slamming. Someone chanting, ‘
bumpety-bump!
' About the only thing that Didn't Happen was for some grandfatherly ghost to charge through the bedroom. It's utterly impossible to get any sleep around here!” Her lower lip shot forward until I doubted she could see over it.

“Are you finished?” I waited until she nodded. “I know that anything that happens that does not have a direct effect on your immediate comfort and welfare is of minimal concern, but—”

“All I said was it was impossible to get any sleep. I didn't say I was some sort of egotistical monster.”

Her cheeks were flushed, although I wasn't sure whether out of anger or repentence. I gave her the benefit of the doubt and gently told her about Miss Justicia's death.

She looked away, silently studying the wall for a long while. “I'm sorry about it,” she said in a small voice. “I didn't know my grandmother very well, and I wasn't sure I liked her very much, but still…it's too bad. I feel like some invisible thread has been clipped, just like when Dad died. When I was born, there were all these threads that linked me to people all the way back in history. They went through you and Dad, through my aunts and uncles and grandparents. Maybe all my ancestors are watching to see if I do okay, maybe even cheering for me, but they feel farther away when someone dies.”

I was surprised by her philosophical response. For a brief moment, I wondered if the last three years of hormonal turbulence was abating and she was within sight of maturity. Her analogies in the past had focused on her best friend Inez's lack of discernment or her arch enemy Rhonda Maguire's thighs.

Caron then obliterated my flicker of sanguinity by widening her eyes and adding, “Do you think Miss Justicia left me anything? Not necessarily the house or a lot of money, but maybe one little diamond ring or some old-fashioned brooch with rubies and emeralds?”

“You are not the only would-be heir lost in speculation,” I said as I picked up my purse. “I'm running an errand with Ellie. Get dressed and go downstairs for breakfast, and then amuse yourself until I return.”

“With Those People?”

“Those people happen to be your uncle and your cousins. You know, the threads.”

I hurried downstairs and out to the porch. Ellie was leaning against the sports car, her hand lightly stroking its side as she stared at the ground.

“Oh, good,” she said as I joined her. “It's absolutely morbid inside. Daddy's on the telephone bickering about casket prices, Pauline's humming, and Maxie and Phoebe are rummaging through Miss Justicia's closet for something suitably dignified for her to wear. Malloys wouldn't be caught dead in inappropriate clothing, you know. Nothing less than the best will do at a funeral.”

“When's the funeral?” I asked unenthusiastically. Caron and I had reservations for the following afternoon, and as much as I wanted to look down at the cemetery from several thousand feet, I wasn't sure I could bring myself to do it. Miss Justicia had been Carlton's mother, I reminded myself. Caron's grandmother. And, if I could bring myself to admit it, my mother-in-law.

Ellie climbed into the driver's side and patted the adjoining leather seat. “As soon as Daddy can get it on the schedule, I'm sure. The service has already been edited down to three hymns, a quick obit, and thank you all ever so much for coming.”

I arranged myself beside her, and after a moment of piercing character analysis, put on the shoulder belt and made certain it was firmly engaged. A sheen of perspiration formed on my forehead as I noted the array of gauges, flashing buttons, and obscure digital messages. This was not the family station wagon. Ordering myself to continue coolly, I said, “Will the funeral be tomorrow or Monday?”

I couldn't hear her reply as the engine roared into action like a 747 and we shot out of the driveway like a 748 (or even a 750). The blast of humid wind flung my hair in my eyes and left me gasping for breath. What I gulped down was thick with dust and grit.

We arrived at the highway long before the dust had settled in front of the house. The stop sign was not worthy of our attention. With an eerily familiar cackle, Ellie slammed into a gear I would have termed
fatal accident
and accelerated. Trees melted away as we sped along a mercifully straight and empty road. Billboards were blurred streaks. Normally unflappable crows abandoned lumps of roadkill as we swerved around them. My hair was not only slapping my eyes but also attempting to tear itself free of my scalp. My face felt as if it had been splashed with scalding water.

“Isn't this great!” Ellie yelled. She switched on the radio, and explosive rock music began to compete with the howling wind and the ear-shattering sounds of the beleaguered engine.

“Just great!” I yelled back. I slumped down in the leather seat, covered my face, and, with admirable stoicism, awaited death.

When the car stopped, the sudden silence was almost as alarming as the previous deluge. I felt Ellie's fingertips on my shoulder. “Are you feeling ill?” she asked solicitously.

“A bit of a headache,” I said as I forced my hands away from my face and looked up.

We were parked in front of a squatty brick building, artfully landscaped with bleached grass and a solitary, leafless tree. A sign proclaimed it the LaRue Public Library. LaRue itself appeared to be a moderately prosperous town of perhaps ten or so thousand residents. One-and two-story buildings lined either side of the main street. There was a fair amount of traffic, predominantly of the pickup truck persuasion, but with a well-seasoned sedan every now and then. Pedestrians moved slowly but steadily along the sidewalks. A bench outside one establishment was lined with elderly men in caps. It looked a great deal more civilized than I felt.

“I'm going to pop in here,” Ellie said as she removed the keys and opened the car door. “The café's in the next block. After you've had something to eat, why don't you come back and read legal textbooks with me? We can pretend we're college students boning up for a big test.”

“How entertaining,” I said, then got out of the car, waited until my knees stopped wobbling, and walked up the sidewalk. The department store promised incredible deals on back-to-school clothes, and the drugstore abutting it promised as much on notebooks and pencils. The occupants of the bench, which proved to be in front of the barbershop, eyed me suspiciously despite my smile.

I gradually became aware of scrutiny from within stores, from within vehicles on the street, and even from within the occasional offices. I paused in front of a window to check my hair; it was slightly aboriginal but hardly worthy of more than a sneer. My pants and shirt were unremarkable. My lipstick had been sucked off during the drive, and I still looked pale, but I found nothing in my general appearance that alarmed me.

A trio of women stopped on the opposite sidewalk and gawked with the subtlety of malnourished refugees. A carload of teenagers almost came to a halt in the middle of the street, and only the blare of a horn propelled them back into motion. A stout male clerk came to the doorway of a record store to stare at me.

It was disconcerting, to say the least. My steps faltered as I contemplated a retreat to the library, where I might cower between the shelves while Ellie pored over laws of intestacy. My stomach protested such a craven act. I continued on numbly, feeling as if I were Lady Jane Grey transversing the lawn of the Tower of London—for the last time.

Moments later, I found the cafe. A faded menu with curled edges and the residue of many generations of fly droppings was taped in the window. A bell tinkled as I opened the door. Much like the shrill cadence of a burglar alarm, the sound was enough to cause conversations to be cut short and all eyes to turn to determine the identity of such a bold intruder.

The stools along the counter were occupied, as were the booths along the wall and a few tables in between. Saturday mornings at the cafe were obviously as busy as Saturday nights at trendy New York bistros—where the patrons enjoyed a certain amount of anonymity. Here, I did not.

Rather than an oily maître d', an obese waitress approached me. “He's in his regular booth,” she told me with enough of an accent to give each word roughly twice it's assigned syllables.

I felt a mischievous urge to mock her, but I managed to squelch it. For all I knew, I might be interrupting the weekly meeting of the Ku Klux Klan. “Who's in his regular booth?” I asked.

“Why, Lawyer D'Armand, honey. That's why you're here, ain't it?”

“I'm here to have something to eat.”

“Then you just settle in back there in the corner and I'll fetch you a menu.” She put her hands on her hips and waited impatiently. All around us, heads nodded and eyes darted from my face to the farthest booth. The consensus seemed to be that I needed to quit stalling and do as I was told.