Miz Scarlet and the Holiday Houseguests (A Scarlet Wilson Mystery #3) (15 page)

“Oh, there’s a story,” Larry grinned,
before she disappeared, the reluctant circus master heading into
the ring, all too aware that some of those animals were dangerous,
untamed beasts. Max was close on her heels.

“Maybe we should give them a minute,” I
suggested. “Let them settle down....”

The truth was I was
apprehensive about dealing with Larry’s mother and father. What if
they managed to ruin the holiday for Larry and Mickey? I just
couldn’t let that happen. There had to be a way to make this
work.
Too bad we don’t have an angel
apprentice, a Clarence, looking to earn his wings.

A few seconds later, I heard arguing in
the foyer. Unfamiliar voices were raised in a heated conversation.
The Queen of Clean and the spitball king were going at
it.

“Come on,” I urged them. I was done
playing the good girl. “We don’t want to miss all the
action!”

“I didn’t lie about my age!” I heard
Edna holler as I rounded the corner.

“You most certainly did!” Big Larry
replied, his finger pointing at her. “You’re nothing but a big
fibber, Edna Rae Moore!”

“Guess what!” Mickey came dancing down
the hall. “Grandma isn’t sixty! She’s only fifty nine!”

“Okay,” I replied, not really sure why
that mattered.

“Do you know what that means?” the
teenager continued. “Grandma was only seventeen when she got
married!”

“Ut-oh,” Laurel groaned. “I think I
know what comes next.

“I don’t follow you,” I admitted to my
mother as I stood there, the casual observer rubber-necking at the
scene of the marital fender bender on the highway of love. A tiny
wolverine of a woman was going to town on the man who got into her
face. Bur, wise in the ways of divorce, stood off to the side, with
Max, clearly not interested in breaking up a domestic
fight.

“The age of consent is eighteen in most
states, unless there is parental approval,” said Lacey, filling in
the blanks for me. “Larry’s parents were never legally
married.”

Chapter Thirteen
--

“What?” I was absolutely dumbfounded.
“Are you kidding me?”

“Poor Larry!” said my mother. “Look at
her.”

She sat in stunned silence on the
hallway chair, a wishbone for the short, bristling, gray-haired
woman on one side of her and the tall, bellowing man tearing what
was left of his hair out on the other.

“Mom?” Mickey tried to get her mother’s
attention, even going so far as to wave her hands in front of her
mother’s face, but there was no reaction.

“We should do something,” I said to Bur
and Max. “Larry doesn’t look so good.”

Max knelt down in front of his former
partner, not an easy task given his bad knees. He took her limp
hand in his two.

“Larry Bear, it’s me, old Maxie. Can
you hear me?” he asked in a kindly tone. Those dark brown eyes of
hers focused for a moment on the man in front of her, but then
closed. “Come on now. Don’t shut me out.”

Edna was telling Big Larry that he
never did have much sense, because if he had been any smarter, he
would have known what the problem was and he would have fixed
it.

“Woman, are you out of your mind? How
was I supposed to know you weren’t old enough to get married? You
said yes when I proposed!”

“Well, you were always too busy running
around that field to take care of me and the baby!”

“You’re telling me that you divorced me
because you lied about your age and I didn’t know that?”

“No, you big dope! I divorced you so
that you would ask me to marry you again, and then we’d be legally
married and no one would ever have to know! But you didn’t want
me!” With that, Edna burst into tears. “You didn’t love
me!”

“Good God in Heaven,” Big Larry howled.
“You’re a stubborn old fool! How many times did I ask you to marry
me again and you said no every single time!”

“Maybe we should give them some
privacy,” I suggested, pointing towards the dining room. “Kenny
will be here any minute with the pizzas.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” Lacey
replied. “This is getting good.”

“You never asked me to marry you
because you loved me. It was always because you wanted to do right
by Laurencia,” Edna accused him. Larry looked up at her mother,
wide-eyed wonder in her gaze.

“Of course I did, I was her father! It
was my job to take care of her, to take care of you,” Big Larry
retorted.

“A fine job you did of that. You were
always on the road with your team and all those fancy women, those
baseball groupies!” Edna glared at the confused coach, even as he
scratched his head.

“There was never anyone but you. Why do
you think I never remarried?” demanded the exasperated spitball
king. Larry turned her attention to her father, studying him
closely.

“Oh,” sighed Laurel, “he still loves
her! It’s a Christmas miracle.”

“She was an idiot not to tell him the
truth,” said Bur, weighing in on the matter.

“Shush!” I warned him. “Don’t add fuel
to the fire!”

“Pizza’s here.” Kenny stood at the back
of the hallway, white cartons stacked up in his gloved hands.
“Who’s hungry?”

Larry suddenly took a deep breath and
slowly exhaled, as if she were coming out of a trance. She shook
her head, clearing out the invisible cobwebs that had accumulated
over the years of endless bickering, stood up, put her arm around
her daughter, and walked towards us, even as her parents continued
to go at it. “Come on, folks. There’s nothing to see here at this
wreck. Let’s let the idiots figure it out on their own.”

“You okay?” Max wanted to know, as he
accompanied her to the dining room.

“At the moment, I can’t say that I am,
Maxie. It’s been a tough day and I’m exhausted. Right now, I want
to have some pizza and a glass of red wine. We’ll take it moment by
moment, until I’m back on my feet, okay?”

“Sure, kid.”

“Does this mean Grandma and Grandpa are
getting married again?” Michaela asked her mother, hope shining in
those young, innocent eyes.

“Oh, God, I hope not. At least not
until they’ve worked it all out.”

Kenny and I got busy in the kitchen
putting the pizza on platters, while Bur and Mickey set the table.
Max poured Larry a glass of Chianti, and then did the same for the
rest of the adults. Edna and Big Larry came in and sat down
together at a pair of empty seats just as we were all finishing our
first round of slices. That’s when Bur did what he does best. He
went for the gold medal in the Idiots’ Olympics.

“Just out of curiosity, how did
Michaela get to be named after Mickey Mantle?”

“Have you no sense at all?” I was
incredulous. “We only just now got them sitting at the same table
together and you want to go and spoil that?”

“Shall I?” Edna asked, turning to the
former center fielder. He nodded. “It was Michaela’s parents who
were at fault. We waited and waited for them to pick a name the
baby, but they couldn’t agree on one.”

“Her father wanted to call her
Houston,” Larry informed us.

“Isn’t that where you two spent your
honeymoon?” Max asked. A moment later, he was looking chagrined.
“Oh, right.”

“I suggested Whitney, but my ex said he
didn’t want a kid called Witty, because then the other kids would
call her Witless or Nitwit....”

“Me?” Mickey was flabbergasted, missing
the obvious adult context to the name game. “I could have been
named after Whitney Houston? Why didn’t you do that? It would have
been so cool!”

“After three days of calling her ‘the
baby’, it was time to get serious,” said the assistant coach. “So,
we benched the parents and tried to come up with one that everyone
liked, including the other grandparents.”

“And?” Bur was on the edge of his seat,
anticipating the answer with all the delight of a
twelve-year-old.

“I wanted to call you Elizabeth Louise,
after my mother,” Big Larry told Michaela. “I thought that was a
pretty name for a little girl. But your mother thought you should
have a name that would encourage you to pursue your passions in
life. I chalk that up to the fact that Edna insisted we name our
baby Laurencia.”

“That was your idea, not Dad’s?”
Judging the shocked expression on her face, this came as news to
Larry. Her mother leaned over and patted her hand in a consoling
gesture that just sent it over the top.

“I knew he was hoping for a boy to
follow in his footsteps, and given that our marriage was already
shaky, I wanted you to have a place in his life. I figured the only
way that would happen is if I named you after your
father.”

“I wanted a girl!” Big Larry broke in.
“Woman, you really do need to stop assuming you know what I am
thinking!”

“Get to the good part,” Bur interrupted
impatiently. “Why was Larry’s daughter named after Mickey
Mantle?”

“Big Larry bet me that I knew nothing
at all about baseball,” Edna told us. “He promised that if I could
think of one single other center fielder in the history of baseball
besides him, I could name the baby whatever I wanted.”

“And you just let that happen?” Bur
asked Larry. “You didn’t stop it?”

“Are you kidding? I had no idea my
mother would be able to do it. She was so fierce about her loathing
for the game I figured it wouldn’t matter, so I got in on the bet.
I thought it would be hilarious.”

“I don’t really hate the sport,” Edna
Rae Moore confessed to the group. “I was just jealous that Big
Larry always spent all his time at the ball field.”

“Get to the good part,” Bur encouraged
them. “What made you name your granddaughter after a
Yankee?”

“Big Larry got belligerent,
being the hot head that he is,” she gave him a sideways glance,
“and he demanded that I spit out a name right then and there, so I
did. Mickey Mantle was the only name that popped into my
mind.
I didn’t actually know what position
he played or that he was a Yankee until later.”

Ah, revenge is sweet,
especially when it’s earned by sheer dumb luck. Just like when she
took an earlier flight from Atlanta and needed a ride from the
airport.

“Oh good God! My granddaughter was
named after Mantle because of a lucky guess? Woman, do you know how
much ribbing I took about that? For years, the guys on the Red Sox
gave me hell because my grandkid was named after a
Yankee!”

“Gee,” Edna smiled slyly at the man
beside her, “that must have been tough for you.”

“Time out!” Larry broke in, throwing
her hands into a T formation. “The Rivera family is officially on
vacation. From this moment on, we will be the perfect houseguests
at the Four Acorns Inn. Understood?”

There was a long silence as Big Larry
busied himself with another glass of wine and Edna smoothed out the
non-existent wrinkles of her dress. Mickey watched her grandparents
with fascination.

“I’m waiting,” Larry reminded her
parents sternly. “I expect an answer.”

“Understood,” her father acknowledged,
albeit it a tad grudgingly.

“Fine,” her mother agreed congenially.
I didn’t buy it. I was pretty sure she’d yank her ex-husband’s
chain the first chance she got. Then again, maybe that was part of
the mating dance.

“Michaela?”

The teenager bristled at her mother’s
stern tone. “What did I do? Why am I in trouble?”

“You’re not at the moment. I’d like to
keep it that way.”

“Oh, okay.” She flashed her mother a
metallic smile, the braces catching the light of the chandelier
above. “Can I have the last piece of pizza?”

Mickey glanced around the table, hoping
that no one else would chump her. I put her out of her
misery.

“Absolutely. Eat up. And as soon as
you’re done, how about we show Edna and Big Larry to their rooms?”
I suggested.

“I’ll just collect my things and get
out of your hair,” Max said, standing up quickly.

“You’re leaving?” Larry seemed
surprised, and even a little disappointed. “Do you have to
go?”

“Well, don’t you need the room,
Scarlet?” He looked directly at me. “The inn is rather full
tonight.”

“The more the merrier,” Laurel replied.
“This is a big house.”

“Surely we can figure something out,”
her cousin added. The Googins girls are romantics at
heart.

“Is there any reason you and your mom
can’t share a room, just for tonight?” I asked Larry. “You’ve got
twin beds.”

“I’d like that,” Edna smiled. “After
all, I’m the one who showed up a day early.”

“Yes, you are. But I can go home to my
condo, now that all the drama is over and everyone is safe.” The
off-duty homicide investigator put her napkin on the table, not
realizing the impact of her words on the latecomers.

“Drama? What drama?” Mickey wondered.
“Did I miss something today?”