Let There Be Suspects (6 page)

I was the first one to get there, or almost. Mabyn had ducked into the hallway so not to distract Shirley, and she reached the dining room before me. But I still got there in time to find Ginger sprawled on the table, swimming in eggnog. Sid was standing over her, and she wasn’t attempting rescue.

Worst of all, much much worse, the Women’s Society sacred punch bowl was now only jagged chunks of crystal on the dining room floor.

4

I had an entire night to think things over, and the next morning, over a breakfast of whole wheat pancakes and real maple syrup, I was nothing short of chipper.

“Well, I’d say overall, things went well. Almost nobody saw Sid slam Ginger into the eggnog. Only one gift caught fire when the lights short-circuited, and that was Nan’s toothpick holder. Plus people cleared out of here so fast that there are more leftovers than I’d expected. Nobody will have to make lunch for the rest of the reunion.”

Sid’s head was in her hands. Between moans she’d drained two cups of coffee and was well into her third. Clearly I was not the only one who’d experienced a sleepless night.

Vel was at the stove making more pancakes on the off chance my girls felt safe enough to come downstairs at some point. Ed was already next door choosing between “Joy to the World” and “Oh Come All Ye Faithful” for the Christmas Eve processional. Bix was wherever Bix disappears to. My theory? Old Bix likes to pretend we are really an offshoot of the Kennedy or Bush clans. He needs a lot of distance for this.

“Aggie, I said I was sorry yesterday. About a thousand times.” Sid lifted her head to peek at me, then stared down at the table again. “Damn that mistletoe, anyway. Whose idea was that?”

How often in my life does somebody else cook breakfast? I took another pancake. “Your idea. You said every Christmas party needs mistletoe, then you took Bix off on a mistletoe hunt.”

“Oh, shut up.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t have put it up, knowing Ginger was going to be there—”

Sid lifted her head and glared at me. “It’s not Bix’s fault. I walked in, and she was kissing
him
. Right there between the kitchen and the dining room. It wasn’t a mistletoe kiss!”

I don’t need a definition that measures proximity, pressure, and length. I know the mistletoe score. I can imagine what Sid saw.

She struggled with the rest of it. “And then when Bix lit out of here, she turned to me and she said . . . she said . . .”

I knew what Ginger had said. I’d heard it from Sid yesterday. It had been more of a chant than an explanation.
“First I got your mommy, then I got your boyfriend . . .”

“So what do we do now,” I said, cutting off one more recitation of Ginger’s taunt. “Junie’s no dope. Maybe she likes to look the other way, but yesterday was a 360-degree view of the problems with you and Ginger. Maybe she doesn’t know exactly how Ginger ended up nearly drowning in eggnog . . .”

All morning I had tried not to picture that scene, but now my own words brought it back. Ginger, awash in nog, skidding on the floor as she pushed away from the table. At least two partygoers were cut by glass trying to help, but luckily not badly. The only good thing was that Ginger didn’t tattle on my little sister. She escaped outside, maybe to think over her story. When she returned, Ginger simply claimed she’d tripped, and no one contradicted her.

Personally, I think she just didn’t want people to know Sid got the best of her in a fight.

“I could talk to Junie,” Sid said. “I could try to explain.” There was a long silence. We adore our mother. We also know her faults. Junie hears only what she wants to. She would listen, then she would probably rhapsodize about karma, about the Golden Rule, about all the wonderful things Ginger brings to our lives. It was quite possible that after two paragraphs of this, Sid might baptize Junie in eggnog, too.

Maybe my party and my reputation were on the line, but Vel has strong opinions about the way people should conduct themselves. And Sid, no matter what the provocation, had failed us all. When she finally answered, Vel’s voice was molten steel.

“I’ll tell you what you can do. You can sit quietly at dinner tonight and behave yourself.”

“Oh, lower your voice,” Sid said. “My head is about to come off my shoulders.”

“Well, if that would keep you quiet, I’d be in favor,” Vel said.

I’m used to this. Vel lectures, I find something to laugh about, Sid reacts. Junie’s girls, all grown up.

Welcome to my world.

“Vel has a point,” I told Sid. “The only way Christmas won’t be spoiled is if I invite Ginger and Cliff to dinner tonight and you’re at least icily polite to them. You’ve dunked Ginger good. Let that be enough retribution, okay? Suck it up and be a grown-up.”

Sid narrowed her eyes at me. Generally I try not to side with either sister, all too aware of the dynamics of triangulation-family therapy speak for two against one. But the only way we were going to salvage the holiday for Junie was to pretend that the eggnog episode was an accident, and that Sid and Ginger did not, in fact, despise each other still.

“And what about Bix?” Sid demanded.

Vel and I were silent again. Sometimes silence is the best weapon. Ask any woman with sisters.

“Ginger was kissing
him
;
he
wasn’t kissing Ginger,” Sid said.

Silence stretched and stretched and stretched. . . .

“You just don’t see the things in Bix that I do,” Sid said at last.

Vel’s voice was a bit gentler. “If he’s the man you say he is, dinner won’t be a problem.”

Sid rested her head in her hands once more. “It’ll still be a problem for Junie. I tell you, Ginger’s here to get her money.”

Vel applied logic. “I don’t know exactly how much Junie got for her quilt, but I really doubt it was enough to lure Ginger to Emerald Springs. Ginger’s a success in her own right, and last night Junie said something about Cliff being an inventor with a pocketful of important patents. What does Ginger need Junie’s money for?”

“Then why is she here?”

Since wanting to renew a relationship with old pals was clearly not Ginger’s reason, we fell silent again. I’d asked myself the same question all night long, and no answer had occurred to me.

Junie saved us from a round of pointless guessing. She appeared in the kitchen doorway wearing a vintage pink dressing gown, trimmed at the edges in dyed ostrich plumes. It was worthy of the Smithsonian.

“I had the most wonderful dream.” She smiled brightly. “Just so very, very wonderful. Is there coffee, precious?”

“Precious” is a little Junie joke. Junie polished rocks and made jewelry for many of the years she traveled the craft fair circuit, roughly—as one might guess—from the time I was born until little Obsidian came into the world. Unfortunately Vel was born and named first, when velvet paintings of Elvis and fierce Siberian tigers were a sure route to crafting success.

Technically agate and obsidian are
semi
precious stones, but Junie has never been tempted by accuracy.

I got to my feet. “I made enough coffee to fuel a truck stop. And Vel made great pancakes.”

“I need sustenance!” Junie plopped down on the closest chair and poured herself a glass of orange juice. “Sid, precious, hand me a plate.”

Sid managed to lift her head from her hands and give a sickly smile. She handed Junie a plate from the stack near her elbow, and a napkin wrapped neatly around the morning’s choice of cutlery. That, of course, was Vel’s work.

“So, my dream,” Junie said. “Here it is. I was in a kitchen, one of those sterile, white kitchens. You know, the kind nobody really cooks in. But it was open to the sky, and now that I think about it, the whole kitchen was floating on clouds.”

I tried not to look at Sid. I poured coffee into the largest mug in my cabinet and topped it with whipping cream before I put it in front of our mother. “How many pancakes would you like?”

“Four to start. So there I was in this celestial kitchen. And guess who else was there?”

Vel caught my eye. I could swear she was signaling me to peel open the remaining napkins and get the knives out of Sid’s reach. We both knew what was coming.

“Ginger!” Junie said, before anyone else could.

Sid moaned and put her head back in her hands.

“Agate precious, give your sister something for that headache.”

Nothing manufactured would make a dent in Sid’s headache, but I searched for and found a bottle of something generic with a childproof cap that requires a hacksaw and jackhammer. I handed the bottle to Vel, who glared at me. I shrugged. She began to struggle.

“I suppose I shouldn’t drag this out, but it’s just too good.” Junie was beaming. She took her first bite of pancake and rolled her eyes in pleasure. “So there was Ginger, and she had a huge chef’s knife, you know, the kind they always show on infomercials?”

“This is beginning to frighten me,” I said. “Better make it fast.”

“Well, this is just the best, best part.” Junie chewed, swallowed, then beamed some more. “Ginger was chopping beef, like that fabulous beef she served yesterday.”

Sid took the bottle from Vel, who had managed to wrench off the cap. “Who brings beef to a vegetarian household?”

“I’m sure Ginger doesn’t know Aggie and Ed are vegetarians,” Junie chided gently.

As a matter of fact, Ginger’s Kobe beef had looked mighty good to this vegetarian. But now was not the time to say so.

“So there she was, chopping away,” Junie said. “Chopping, chopping, chopping . . .”

The gleam in Sid’s eyes was more frightening than the thought of Ginger with the knife. “And then?” I prompted.

“The knife slipped,” Junie said triumphantly.

Sid’s eyelids snapped shut. I could tell by her smile exactly what she was imagining.

“So far, this isn’t all that nice a dream,” I pointed out.

“Because I haven’t told you the best part! The knife slipped, and it turned into a dove and flew away. A white dove! Now do you see?”

I didn’t. Call me clueless.

The silence was thick enough to pour on the pancakes. No one seemed to get it. Junie looked from face to face, and hers clouded with disappointment. “I thought for sure you’d understand. It’s prophetic. Ginger’s culinary career has turned her into a peaceful, loving woman with endless spiritual potential! My dreams are never wrong.”

Actually, Junie’s dreams are never
right
. But after years of pointing this out to her, my sisters and I have given up. Junie believes she has great prophetic powers. When the evidence goes against her, she’s willing to say her interpretations aren’t perfect, but that’s as close to reality as she gets.

“While you were at it, did you have any dreams about how long Ed will keep this church?” I was afraid the answer might depend on how many people had seen the fight, and how many people
they
told. Right now I was pretty sure Mabyn Booth had witnessed the demise of the punch bowl, and if she told Fern what Sid had done, my family’s reputation would be blackened beyond recognition.

Junie understood. “I am so sorry about that lovely punch bowl, but last night, I thought of just the man to replace it for you, a dealer in fine glassware. He’s at the Jacksonville Art and Antique Show every single year. We always spend the best time together. I’ll give him a call myself.”

I pictured returning all my Christmas gifts for the necessary cash. I hoped they were expensive gifts.

“He owes me a favor,” Junie said, lifting one eyebrow provocatively. “A big favor. It won’t cost you a thing.”

This was territory I did not want to explore. I could tell from my sisters’ faces that they felt the same way. “That’s, uh, so generous of you,” I said.

“Well, it’s my responsibility. I was the one who asked Ginger to come here. I just had no idea she was so clumsy.”

Unfortunately Sid had been in the process of swallowing tablets. Now she choked at Junie’s words, and Vel whacked her between the shoulder blades.

With unnecessary force, I thought. But I could relate.

The house Lucy and I are renovating on Bunting Street was built in 1897, at a time when detail and craftsmanship weren’t add-ons but expectations. In my year in Emerald Springs I had probably driven by the house a dozen times, but I had never noticed it until Lucy made me.

The sand-colored house sits behind a hedge of sickly, gnarled viburnums that are as tall as the first floor. Beyond the hedge is a fussy little yard with nondescript evergreen shrubs pruned within an inch of their lives, and a standard-issue sidewalk lined with statues of gnomes, fairies, toad-stools, and gargoyles. Built in an era of larger families, the house is surprisingly small, just 2,500 square feet counting an ample attic. But it’s a proud house and seems larger. The moment I got past the shrubs, I saw the potential.

A porch graces the west side of the front while a bay window graces the east. There are two stories, and along the way someone had the sense to open the tiny rooms downstairs and combine them into larger spaces. The tin roof is unusual around here, and the gingerbread was carefully restored or replaced in the last decade. The house is a style known as Stick Victorian, with wonderfully detailed roof trusses, cornices, and brackets.

Unfortunately the last owner settled into the house in the forties and continued to live there until her death last year. Along the way she collected every relic of the Victorian era she could afford on a fixed income. Lucy had warned me, but I had an instant attack of claustrophobia the first time I walked through. The woman wasn’t a hoarder. There were no empty cans or cardboard boxes, only enough doilies to smother an army. And on those doilies? Knickknacks, paddy whacks, give the dog a simpler home. The Bunting house was a museum of tacky Victoriana. Lace, ruffles, angels, dried flowers, mass-produced porcelain tea sets adorned with violets and shrub roses, potpourri. I could go on.