The Windsor Knot (11 page)

She had got engaged to him at seventeen, when he went in the army, and she’d written him letters on pink stationery the whole time he was stationed in Germany. Emmet did take over Mason’s Hardware in 1976, when Daddy Earl had his stroke, but by then he had lost interest in the commercial possibilities in Chandler Grove, Georgia.

“Let’s sell the store and go to California!” he’d say.

Clarine said she hadn’t lost a thing in the state of California.

“Life’s just passing me by here in the sticks!”
Emmet would sigh. “I know I could make it as an actor.”

Emmet had played the role of Emily’s father in the Chandler Grove production of
Our Town;
the
Scout
reviewer had pronounced him “adequate.” The senior English class, following the play in their literature books with tiny flashlights, claimed he hadn’t missed a line.

Emmet followed up that success with a portrayal of James Oglethorpe, founder of the colony of Georgia, in the town pageant. After that, he figured the only thing keeping him out of the movies was geo graphical inconvenience.

Clarine said relocating was out of the question because she didn’t want to star in a real-life documentary about damn-fool Georgians caught in a California earthquake that they hadn’t ought to be in. And besides, there was her mother to think of, past seventy and suffering from arthritis. No, Clarine insisted, there were too many family obligations—not to mention the Mason family business—to keep them in Chandler Grove, and she wasn’t going to see Emmet throw it all away trying to become another Bob Eubanks.

She had been right, too, she thought, scowling at Emmet’s smarmy Kodachrome smile.
Stay home
, she’d said.
You’re not slick enough for California
. But talking to Emmet about show business was like Emily trying to talk to her folks in Act Three of
Our Town:
she just couldn’t make herself heard. In the end, Emmet trumped up a business trip to California for a hardware convention, and he announced that he was staying an extra three days to talk to some Hollywood agents.

Look what had come of that.

The day before Emmet was due back, Clarine received a phone call from the California Highway
Patrol, telling her that Emmet had been killed in a car wreck on the Ventura Freeway. The accident had been so bad that the car caught fire, the officer told her. There wasn’t much left of Emmet J. Mason. Did she want him cremated?

Before she thought about it, Clarine blurted out, “You might as well. A little more heat won’t matter to Emmet at this point.”

So they had. A couple of days after the phone call, the UPS truck had pulled up in the yard and the man made her sign for a heavy package, about the size of a shoe box, wrapped in brown paper. When Clarine took it in the house and unwrapped it, she found a blue-flowered ginger jar with a note attached that said:
Enclosed are the remains of Emmet J. Mason. With our deepest sympathy
, and signed by some California funeral director.

Clarine put Emmet on the mantelpiece between the carved-oak rooster clock and the silver-framed photograph. For a long time she was too shocked to feel much of anything, except an occasional flare of anger when she looked at the jar. Gradually she came to realize that Emmet had probably died happy, pursuing his silly fantasy of stardom, and that she didn’t miss him all that much. So she sold the hardware store, banked the life-insurance money, and lived as frugally as she could, because she didn’t want to run out of money in her old age. She’d never had a job in her life; couldn’t even balance a checkbook till Emmet’s death forced her to learn. She didn’t want to have to clean other people’s houses for slave wages when she was old and feeble, so she did all the chores herself, and she watched every penny.

She was about to get up and dust the mantelpiece when the telephone rang. Clarine hurried out into the hall and got it by the third ring. “Hello?”

“Mrs. Mason,” said an unfamiliar voice, notably lacking a Southern accent.

“Yes,” she said warily, ready to slam down the receiver at the first sign of a sales pitch.

“Wife of Emmet J. Mason?” he continued.

“Yes.” She didn’t bother to correct him. Best not to let strangers know you lived alone. Maybe she’d won a sweepstakes, she thought.

“This is Sergeant Gene Vega of the California Highway Patrol. I’m sorry to have to tell you that your husband Emmet J. Mason was killed in an auto accident here this morning….”

“What,
again?”

   Sheriff Wesley Rountree was reading this week’s edition of the
Chandler Grove Scout
, an activity that never took as long as his coffee break. The front page was good for about three minutes, if you read slowly, and generally consisted of one city government story, one wreck or weather story, and a heartwarming human interest piece featuring either kids or old ladies. After that came the community news, devoted to toddlers’ birthday parties or visits from out-of-state relatives. Then came the local grocery ads, accompanied by a few freebie news releases from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (
THE GYPSY MOTH IS NOT YOUR FRIEND
) and a page of high-school sports stories that contrived to mention the name of every conceivable person present at the event (
After the third inning, Cheerleader Mascot Shannon Gentry waved to her grandmother, Mrs. Lois Andrews)
.

Wesley glanced at his coffee cup. It was nearly full, and he was already past the high point of the issue: the irate letter to the editor from Mr. Julian, the local curmudgeon.

Deputy Clay Taylor, on the other hand, was already
on his second cup of herbal tea, deeply immersed in a crime novel. He was hunched over his desk, his rimless glasses teetering midway down his nose, lips pursed, as he turned the page of the thick paperback entitled
Sergeant Luger: Crack Shot
Wesley was surprised at his deputy’s choice of reading matter. Usually the Peace Corps veteran restricted his leisure study to socially significant works like
The Coalition for Central American Rights Newsletter
or pamphlets by groups with names like Defenders of the Ozone. Just bringing Clay’s mail back from the post office box could raise your social consciousness, the sheriff contended.

Wesley turned a page of the newspaper. “I see where the Chandlers’ niece is getting married,” he remarked. “I think we met her during the Chandler case, didn’t we? The one that kinda resembled Linda Ronstadt.”

Clay Taylor refused to rise to the conversational bait. He turned another page.

“Says here she’s studying forensic anthropology in graduate school. I used to think that meant analyzing the way different cultures talked, because back when I was in high school, speech class was called forensics. Turns out it means analyzing human remains. Interesting sort of job.”

With an absent nod in the direction of his boss, the deputy turned another page.

He must have reached a sex scene
, thought Wesley, returning to his own choice of reading matter. He scanned the rest of the page and caught sight of a familiar name. “Well, Clay, looks like you got mentioned in the
Scout
this week,” he called out.

The reply was a grunt from behind the cover of
Sergeant Luger: Crack Shot
.

“No picture, though. Marshal Pavlock has written up the Halliburtons’ account of how they called
you to save them from the wild animal in their cellar. Listen here:
A feral whine was coming from the darkness of the Halliburtons’ basement, and upon discovering that the basement light had burned out after being accidentally left on, Bryan Halliburton declined to descend into the basement armed with only a flashlight to confront the beast. They thought that it might be a wildcat, using their premises for its den, and they decided to appeal for help to the local sheriff’s department Enter the intrepid deputy T. Clay Taylor.”

With a weary sigh, the aforementioned intrepid deputy marked his place in his novel with a parking ticket and listened to Wesley’s dramatic reading. “I wish he hadn’t run that story,” he said.

Wesley chuckled. “Why not? It’s a corker.
Deputy Taylor did not draw his gun as he crept slowly down the concrete steps toward the Halliburtons’ washing machine. He heard the menacing noise they had told him about. It was then that he informed them that bloodshed would not be called for.”
The sheriff rattled the paper, too overcome to continue.

“All they had to do was change the battery on their smoke alarm and the noise would stop,”
said Clay, supplying the story’s punch line. He shrugged. “Can I go back to my book now?”

Wesley took a sobering sip of black coffee. “What do you want to read that thing for anyhow?” he asked.

“It’s a modern parable of good and evil, full of riveting authenticity about the deadly game in the inner cities,” said Clay, consulting the back cover for blurbs.

“Oh crap,” said the sheriff. “It’s a male romance novel is what it is.”

“It’s reality,” said Clay, looking earnest as usual.

“This
is reality!” said Wesley, waving the
Chandler
Grove Scout
. “Killer smoke alarms. Two years without firing a shot in the line of duty. That thing you’ve got is what a lot of humorless people
hope
is reality. Because if the world is grim and sordid, then it means they’re not missing anything.”

Clay Taylor shrugged. It wasn’t easy working with an incurable optimist when the world was going to hell in a Central American handbasket. When the phone rang a few moments later, he found himself wishing that it would be someone reporting an axe murder. That would show Wesley.

   Amanda Chandler downed the last of her grapefruit juice with an expression suggesting that she would refuse the offer of an antidote. Normally, she had orange juice, hot chocolate, and sweet rolls for breakfast, but an unhappy interview with her dressmaker the week before had changed her regimen. She would
not
wear an empire waist to “hide her tummy,” and that was that. Perhaps no one else at the wedding would know her dress size, but
she
would. A new note of austerity crept into the menus at Long Meadow Farm, prompting Geoffrey to inquire if this was the anniversary of the Bataan Death March. Amanda was not amused.

“I have to go and get my hair done this morning, Elizabeth,” she announced, frowning at her niece’s plate of bacon and eggs. “I have asked the caterer to stop by this morning, and I shall leave that detail of the wedding to you.” Her tone suggested that the mere discussion of petits fours and pound cake could be fattening.

Elizabeth took a swallow of black coffee. “All right, Aunt Amanda,” she said meekly. “Is there anything in particular that I should ask for?”

The words
melba toast
hovered on Amanda Chandler’s lips, but she said, “Draw up a list of things
you like, and ask if they can do them, and for how much. If that doesn’t work, see what they recommend. I will, of course, check with you when I return.”
And change everything to suit myself was
the unspoken message.

“Who are the caterers?” asked Elizabeth as an afterthought. “Anyone I know?”

“No. They are a new business. I haven’t used them before, either. They are called Earthling. Charles recommended them.”

As a reflex, Elizabeth looked around for her cousin, but Charles was gone, of course. With the wedding frenzy increasing exponentially by the hour, the Chandler men had taken to fleeing the house as early as possible each morning to avoid the day’s disruptions. Even Geoffrey, who normally kept bat’s hours, managed to wrest himself out of the house and down to the community playhouse before nine.

“I will be back in time for lunch,” said Amanda, who was changing from her reading glasses to her driving glasses. “Will you be here?”

“No. I promised Jenny Ramsay that I’d meet her for lunch.” Seeing her aunt’s look of stone-faced resignation, she added, “I’m having a salad.”

“Right. I’ll be off then. You might make a list of questions for the caterer while you wait. Goodbye.”

Elizabeth found a notepad beside the telephone. She wandered off into the parlor, muttering, “Carrot sticks … cheese cubes … onion dip …” The prospect of interviewing a caterer made her uneasy. The word conjured up visions of a heavyset older man with an Olivier accent with a rosebud in his lapel. And he would know what kind of rose it was. Elizabeth shuddered, knowing that she was not equal to the task of directing such a being.

Her list was going badly. She had changed the
flavor of the wedding cake six times—mostly from chocolate to something else and back again—when she heard the doorbell chime. “Why am I so nervous?” said Elizabeth as she walked toward the door. “I’m sure he’ll be very polite—in a condescending sort of way.”

Summoning her brightest smile, she flung open the door. “Good morning!” she called out. “I am the bride.”

“Far out,” said the visitor.

Elizabeth stared at the apparition on Aunt Amanda’s personalized Orvis doormat. It was a gaunt, bearded man in his late thirties (or forties, or fifties). He was the type that made it difficult to tell. He reminded her of somebody—matted black hair, gaunt triangular face, and burning black eyes. A photograph from her world history book back in high school. She had it now! Idly, she wondered what he was doing on her doorstep in thongs and a Rainbow Sweat Lodge T-shirt.

“Er-uh?” said Elizabeth, trying to adjust to the fact that the Admirable Crichton she had been expecting had defaulted in favor of the mad monk Rasputin. She was trying frantically to invent conversation, but nothing in English or Russian or even sign language occurred to her.

“You called for a caterer?”

Elizabeth’s eyes widened, but she managed to say, “Yes, of course. And you must be the director of Earthling.”

He shrugged. “I’m one of the group. Anybody who’d claim to be the head of the company would have to be on some kind of domination trip, and I’m not into that, but, yeah, I’m the caterer you asked for.”

“I’m Elizabeth MacPherson. Won’t you come in, Mr.—”

“Josh.”