Trudy, Madly, Deeply (Working Stiffs Mystery Series) (8 page)

“Really … Wally and Sylvia.” Gram folded her arms under her ample breasts. “I’ve heard the rumors, but … you know how people can be. Always leaping to conclusions.” She arched an eyebrow at me.

At least I was being paid for coming to my conclusions.

“Aren’t they cute together,” Marietta said, fanning herself again. “When did they become an item?”

I’d venture a guess that it was sometime after Howard Jeppesen drew his last breath.

“All this is just wrong,” Alice protested.

Duke patted her on the knee. “Give it a rest, honey, and let’s just get through this.”

She pulled out a handkerchief from her handbag and sounded like a Canadian honker as she blew her nose. If we were all very lucky, that would be all we heard out of my great-aunt for the next hour. Except there was absolutely nothing about today that felt lucky.

A minute later, Curtis Tolliver, the funeral director, led Norm Bergeson and his three daughters and their husbands to their seats in the front row. After the family was seated, Curtis turned, his beady eyes locked on my mother as he smoothed back his hair.

Uh oh.

His fleshy face was flushed as he pressed his hand into hers and leaned close. “Very nice to see you again, Ms. Moreau.”

“Marietta, please,” my mother said, well aware that he was looking down her dress, especially since he had done the same exact thing at my grandfather’s funeral.

His lips stretched into a wolfish grin as a bead of sweat trickled down his temple. “Miss Marietta.”

She fanned herself with her other hand. “Curtis, honay, ah know you’re terribly busy right now, but could ah trouble you for a teensy bit more air conditioning?”

“Of course,” he said deferentially. “I’ll see what I can do.”

She leaned in, grazing his hand with her double Ds. “Ah’d be ever so grateful.”

That was an empty promise if I’d ever heard one.

“Mary Jo,” Gram whispered as soon as Curtis disappeared from view, “I didn’t raise you to be such a … a ….”

“Prick tease?” I said, filling in the blank.

Marietta rolled her eyes. “Chahmaine, that’s not very nice. Ah was simply influencing him to make the right decision.”

“Not exactly the technique we use at the department, but whatever works,” Steve said in my ear.

Marietta’s full lips curled with satisfaction. “Damned straight.”

An hour and ten air-conditioned minutes later, Reverend Fleming’s wife played
Ave Maria
on the organ to accompany Norm Bergeson and his family as they filed out of the front pew.

“That was a lovely service,” Gram said after I helped her up from her seat.

“Lovely,” Alice scoffed, sounding like she was rapidly reaching the end of her short fuse. “Is that what you call this?”

Uh oh.

Gram gave her sister the
please-don’t-say-anything
look. Duke stood and offered his hand to Alice. “Now, honey—”

Alice swatted his hand away. “Don’t you dare ‘now, honey’ me.” She narrowed her eyes at Steve. “This is all wrong and you know it.”

Standing, Steve touched her shoulder. “I understand how you feel. You lost a good friend.”

“You need to do something.” Alice’s voice broke as she choked back tears.

He met my gaze. “I would if I could.”

But he was in wait mode for the autopsy results as I knew all too well.

“Time to go,” Gram proclaimed like we were late for dinner. She elbowed me into the center of the aisle, where Heather was standing, waiting, with perfect, blonde-streaked hair, a dark blue, sleeveless sheath, and matching pumps.

I’d heard from Rox that after Heather’s divorce last year from an advertising executive, she’d moved back home from Boston and was working at a Port Townsend boutique. If anyone ever had needed an employee discount to expand her designer wardrobe, it wasn’t trim, tan, and more perfectly gorgeous than ever Heather. Why wouldn’t Steve want to be with her?

The bastard.

“Nice dress,” I said. I knew it sounded lame, but I had to say something to the conniving bitch I’d outed after she tried to steal Rox’s boyfriend back in ninth grade.

Her gaze lingering on my chignon, Heather responded with a fake smile. “Thanks.”

“Awkward,” Marietta sang in my ear.

True, but the queen of awkward silences needed to cut me a little slack.

“See you later,” Steve said to me as Heather sidled up next to him.

“Later.” Which translated into another opportunity to make painfully polite conversation with Heather and Steve at the post-funeral nosh-fest at the Bergeson’s that Gram and Alice had helped organize.

Goody.

Watching Steve and Heather make their way past Marietta, I noticed that they didn’t hold hands, didn’t touch. It didn’t make me feel any better about seeing them together, but it didn’t make me feel any worse, either.

“Keep moving,” Gram said, waving me on like a traffic cop. “We need to get Alice out of here before she starts saying things she’s going to regret tomorrow.”

Easier said than done since Marietta was sauntering down the aisle as if she were working the red carpet at the Oscars.

She shook Dr. Straitham’s hand and his gaze followed the swivel of her hips as she moved to the next row to schmooze Mr. Ferris, my high school biology teacher.

I wasn’t the only one watching Warren Straitham’s reaction to my mother. Virginia leveled a cold, hard glare at her husband.

Unfortunately, Mr. Ferris didn’t have a wife by his side to put out the
no trespassing
sign.

Gram extended her hand. “Come along, Alice.”

With her eyes fixed on Warren Straitham, Alice sidestepped my grandmother.

Gram sucked in a breath. “Oh dear.”

“You have some nerve showing up here,” Alice said, her voice cutting through the crowd like a butcher’s knife through butter.

The tall, silver-haired gentleman in the cheap gray suit blinked. “Pardon me?”

Alice wagged her index finger at Dr. Straitham. “Don’t think that I don’t know what’s going on.”

He blanched to a doughy pallor, reminding me of the time I’d caught my ex-husband in the walk-in freezer with Brie, his sous chef. Unlike Chris who’d followed me out the door, all the while trying to spin his dalliance into a palatable confection, Dr. Straitham looked like a human popsicle frozen in place.

Duke reached for Alice’s hand. “Honey, let’s go.”

She shook him off. “You’re not going to get away with this,” Alice said as she inched closer to Dr. Straitham. “I’m on to you!”

The doctor’s silver-brown brows drooped, giving him the appearance of a blue-eyed bloodhound. “Alice,” he said in a hushed tone, sounding like a sympathetic man who understood grief, but his thin lips stretched into something else—fear.

Standing ramrod straight by his side, Virginia flushed a bloody shade of crimson.

“That’s enough,” Duke growled, taking Alice by her thin shoulders and pointing her toward the exit. “We’re leaving.”

I grabbed my grandmother by the arm and squeezed out a smile at Virginia Straitham. “See you later.” Maybe.

“Don’t you think we should apologize?” Gram asked as we filed out of the chapel.

“No.” Quite enough had been said. And learned.

Gram heaved a sigh. “What Virginia must be thinking of us!”

Based on the icy glare Virginia Straitham had directed at her husband, we were the least of her concerns.

“I hope you’re satisfied,” Gram said to her sister’s back once we’d caught up to Duke and Alice in the foyer. “Ginny will probably never speak to me again.”

“Or step a foot into the cafe,” Duke grumbled.

Alice stopped in her tracks. “What’s wrong with you? Didn’t you just see what happened?” She locked on my gaze. “Tell me you saw that look on his face.”

“I saw it.” I had a sick feeling that I had also just seen the face of a murderer.

* * *

A half hour after we left Tolliver’s funeral home, my grandmother and I stood at opposite ends of a casserole and cake receiving line in the Bergeson’s compact, U-shaped kitchen.

Having worked for friends in the catering business I knew from experience that people drink at weddings, but they eat at funerals. Around here, a funeral announcement signals the start of a bake-off that sends the senior set flocking to their recipe rolodexes and ends with lethal volumes of cheese, butter, and chocolate arriving at the doorstep of the bereaved.

Until Sylvia Jeppesen handed me a weighty glass serving dish with a distinctly fishy odor, Trudy’s reception had been no exception.

“Chinese noodle and tuna casserole,” Sylvia announced proudly.

“Yum.” No cheese, no butter, no chocolate—a clear violation of the bereavement food code. At least it had arrived warm unlike the dozen casserole dishes awaiting their turn in the microwave.

I pushed aside a raspberry glazed bundt cake to add Sylvia’s casserole to the smorgasbord laid out on the dining room table.

“Something in here has got to go,” Lucille said, holding a steaming crock pot of Swedish meatballs.

My vote went to the tuna casserole.

“Move Ginny’s bundt cake over here.” Lucille angled the crock pot in the direction of an antique sideboard.

“Ginny?” Picking up the platter with the bundt cake, I scanned the crowd for Virginia Straitham, the last person I expected to see after what had happened at the funeral home. Okay, maybe Virginia ran a close second to her husband.

Lucille set the crock pot on the table. “Handed it to me just after I got out of my car. Looked like she’d been crying. I heard what happened between the doc and Alice,” Lucille said at half her normal volume. “Do you think he did it?”

Maybe. I didn’t want to fan any flames of suspicion, so I just shrugged.

“Did what?” Steve asked, stepping up to the table with a paper plate in hand instead of Heather.

Not that I would give a second thought to anyone he might be dating. The bastard.

“Murder Trudy,” Lucille said to Steve in the same stage whisper.

The tic registered in his cheek. “No.”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “Then how do you explain what happened?”

“I don’t,” he said with a casual indifference at odds with the tight cords of tension in his neck. Lifting the lid of Sylvia’s casserole dish, he sniffed and wrinkled his nose at me.

I shook my head. “Sylvia’s tuna.”

He replaced the lid and continued clockwise around the table.

Lucille scowled. “I don’t think you’re taking this very seriously.”

“And I think certain people around here have been jumping to some dangerous conclusions.” Steve met my gaze. “There’s been nothing to suggest that anyone’s been murdered.”

Lucille flushed. “Nothing? You didn’t see Trudy the night before she died. I did. And now we’re here again with another one of these damned tuna casseroles, and if you don’t want to see it again in another few months,” she said, pointing her finger at Steve’s nose, “certain people will do something about it!”

“She makes a good point about the tuna casserole,” he deadpanned after Lucille stalked back to the kitchen. “Someone should do an intervention before Sylvia buys another can of tuna.”

“Be serious.” I added some lukewarm lasagna to his plate. “It’s not a big leap to think that Warren Straitham could be killing his patients.”

He cocked his head. “Give me a break.”

“Okay, it is, but you weren’t there when Aunt Alice told him that she wasn’t going to let him get away with it. He looked scared. Exposed.”

“Hey, she once chased me out of her kitchen with a carving knife. Trust me, the women in your family can be plenty scary.”

I ignored the cheap shot. “I’m just telling you what I saw.”

“I’ll take that under advisement,” he said, sniffing another casserole dish.

“Sure you will. And that’s Mrs. Lundgren’s pesto ravioli.”

“What the hell is pesto?”

“Just try it and stop sniffing around.”

His lips curled into a lopsided grin. “I will if you will.”

“Am I interrupting something?” Suzy Harte asked, carrying a platter piled high with fresh veggies, her light blue eyes gleaming as they darted between Steve and me.

Suzy seemed to be the queen of part-time jobs—one as an ER nursing assistant, one as an aerobics instructor at the senior center, and one as a self-appointed dispenser of unsolicited advice. When it came to sticking a nose where it didn’t belong, she even had Lucille beat.

I took the platter from her. “Not at all. Steve and I were just—”

“I don’t see Heather anywhere,” Suzy said. “Did she have to leave?”

All traces of Steve’s smile vanished. “Something like that.”

“What a shame.” The tiny crow’s feet at the corners of her eyes crinkled as Suzy beamed. Not at him, but at me.

Not the usual effect Steve had on women.

With short, straight, sandy blonde hair and a pert turned-up nose dusted with freckles, the slender aerobics instructor had the look of a middle-aged pixie.

The pixie leaned in, studying my face. “I hadn’t noticed the resemblance before. You do take after your mother.”

We had the same eye color. Other than that I took after
that French bastard
, but I didn’t detect any deception in Suzy.

With eyes wide like a chocoholic in a candy store, she gazed out the dining room window at Marietta, holding court with Mr. Ferris in the shade of a patio umbrella.

I’d seen the look on Suzy’s face many times before. She was a fan, and I was somebody because I was a child of a
somebody
.

“Thanks … for the veggies,” I said, hoping she’d move on to the patio like a good little fan so that she could deliver her adulation in person.

“I thought there might be a few people who’d want a healthy alternative to all these heavy desserts,” Suzy said as I set the platter next to the bundt cake on the sideboard.

No one I knew.

Steve grabbed a celery stick. “Bon appétit.”

Ignoring him, I met Suzy’s gaze. “Very thoughtful of you.”

She smiled contentedly, watching as Steve headed into the living room where Donna and several others from our old high school gang had gathered. “You’re cute together.”

Huh? “We’re just friends.”

“Obviously good friends.” Arching her eyebrows she waited.