Progressive Dinner Deadly (2 page)

To her credit, Jill appeared thrilled to coo over grandbaby pictures. In fact, Jill was quite disgustingly perfect in every way. Puddin’s sole redeeming quality was her quirkiness. Everything about Puddin was unknown: would she be in a chatty mood and yak at the kitchen table with you instead of cleaning? Would she have a nicotine fit and spend the entire morning smoking furiously outside? Would she show up for work at all?

Jill’s perfection was enough to make Myrtle pine for the wicked Puddin. Almost.

Myrtle grabbed her
cane from next to the front door and tapped her way down the front walk. There were a few birds perching on the gnomes that scattered, chirping, as she approached. She paused for a moment to survey her handiwork. Lots of little gnome backs were facing her since, of course, they were all arranged to maximize Red’s viewing pleasure…and passing motorists’. She chuckled, but the laugh turned into a gasp when a dreaded voice behind her asked nasally, “Fighting with Red again, I see?”

It was Erma Sherman…her evil next door neighbor. Ordinarily, Myrtle carefully checked to make sure the coast was clear before venturing out her front door. Having her house restored to such an immaculate state had clearly made her giddy. As she saw Erma looming over her, arms outstretched for a determined hug, Myrtle reflected how fast one’s mood could plummet.

“Just trying to make a subtle point,” said Myrtle. Not that Erma would know the definition of the word
subtle
. “Red mistakenly thought it would be a good idea to volunteer me for the Kiwanis club pancake breakfast.” Red frequently displayed this shockingly poor judgment. It was an appalling characteristic for a police chief to have.

“How will Dusty cut the grass around the gnomes?” asked Erma, looking pointedly at the spires of grass brushing the gnomes’ bellies. “With a weed whacker?”

As if Dusty would own sophisticated yard equipment like weed whackers. “No, I guess he’ll just cut what he can reach.”

“How long are you planning to feud with Red?” asked Erma, frowning at Myrtle’s grass and at a particularly animated gnome who seemed to be gleefully imbibing a beverage.

“How long are you planning to allow your crabgrass to infest my yard?”

Erma gaped at Myrtle, then erupted with haw-haws of laughter. “Don’t you have that backwards, Myrtle? There’s a whole crop of crabgrass right there that looks like you’ve actually been fertilizing it.”

There was, actually, quite a bare spot there that Erma’s weeds had made inroads with. She’d shoot that Dusty! She’d
asked
him to aerate and seed.

Myrtle turned toward the street when she heard a gentle toot-toot of a car horn. It was her daughter-in-law Elaine, waving out her minivan window and looking sympathetically at her. There went her whole reason for being outside to begin with. “I’ve got to go in,” she gritted out between her teeth.

“But you were coming out for a reason, Myrtle. Can’t you remember what it is? Let’s see, you were heading out here, without your bag. You weren’t planning on going very far, were you? Let’s retrace your steps.” Erma also displayed sympathy, but it was a more salacious version that would likely be spread all over town: “Did you hear? Myrtle Clover has gone completely gaga! Couldn’t even remember why she’d left the house yesterday!” “Oh, what a shame!”

Myrtle spun around and thumped back up the walkway. “Have a good one, Myrtle. See you at book club tomorrow!” called Erma behind her.

Not if I see you first, thought Myrtle. She slipped quickly into her front door and leaned against it. Next time she’d be more careful when she ventured outside. She listened for the sound of Jill in the kitchen, but didn’t hear anything. No sounds of cleaning at all. Curious, she walked through the kitchen to the back of the house.

When she peered through her bedroom door, she saw the light on in the bathroom. She hadn’t meant Jill to waste any time cleaning in there since it was still pretty clean from the week before. She walked back to the bathroom.

There she saw Jill, face obscured by the medicine cabinet door. There were several bottles of pills on the sink and a couple of other bottles in her hand. Myrtle tiptoed back to the front of the house. Why was Jill rooting around in her medicines? Was she a prescription drug addict? No, Jill was too clear-headed, too detail-oriented with her cleaning. She seemed a lot less befuddled than Puddin did. Maybe she sold prescription drugs on the black market? There had been an article in the newspaper recently about drugs being sold on the internet at rock bottom prices. Could it be yet another way for Jill to make extra money?

Myrtle slipped out the front door and then noisily re-entered. By the time she’d thumped back into the kitchen, Jill was busily cleaning in there. “Elaine wasn’t home, so I’ll have to catch up with her later. Instead, I ran into Erma Sherman,” Myrtle couldn’t repress a shudder. “Otherwise known as the neighbor from hell.”

Jill laughed. “Is she that bad? I’ve always kind of liked her when I’ve seen her at book club, but I don’t have to live next to her. But I noticed she didn’t take care of her yard. I’m such a stickler about the yard, it would drive me nuts to have crabgrass creeping over the border.”

“You must be a good neighbor to have, then,” said Myrtle in a wistful voice. Aside from the possibility she’d sneak in your house and searching through your stuff, of course.

“Oh, I have a lot of fun with the house. The yard is one of my hobbies, I guess.”

When the heck did Jill Caulfield find time for a hobby? Between two jobs, volunteering at church, and trying to keep her husband out of trouble, she must be pretty busy.

“When I think about your yard, Jill, I think about all those Christmas lights you string up every year.” Myrtle was careful to smile. No need to have Jill realize that her Christmas extravaganza didn’t put Myrtle in the holiday spirit. In fact, Jill’s decorations made Myrtle quite Grinchy. How many times had she nearly been mowed down by a creeping car whose occupants were gorging their eyes on neon Santas and twelve foot nutcrackers with ominous grins? On top of that was the music—
Holly, Jolly Christmas
and some other annoying tunes on a loop blasting from speakers from November fifteenth through January fifth.

Jill smiled. “So many people have told me the same thing, Miss Myrtle. They look forward all year to our light and music show. It’s just not Christmas for them until they drive past our house, they say.”

“Do the lights and music go on all night?” Myrtle was scandalized. This was definitely cause to revise her thoughts on Jill’s suitability as a next-door neighbor. “I can’t see your house from here since it’s right around the bend in the road.”

“Only from five to midnight. Everyone is simply crazy over it. They’ve told me our display is such a blessing. Jill, they say, when the
Twelve Days of Christmas
starts playing, we get tears in our eyes.”

Especially Sherry Angevine next door, guessed Myrtle. “So you string all these lights and speakers and things up yourself? Doesn’t Cullen help you?” That dog.

Jill suddenly glowed with an almost spiritual, evangelistic radiance. “Not with his disability. He couldn’t, could he? No, I’m
honored
to put them up for him. Really. Then he has a Merry Christmas and doesn’t have to worry about the decorating.”

She clearly loved this Jill-the-Martyr act. Myrtle said, “Would you like some sweet tea, Jill? I think I need something sugary to bolster me after my encounter with my next door monster.”

“No thanks, Miss Myrtle. I’m getting ready to finish up. I’ll see myself out, okay? And then I’ll be back tomorrow for the club meeting. Did you read the book?” Myrtle looked at Jill blankly. “
Jennifer’s Promise
? Remember?”

Myrtle’s skin prickled with irritation at the thought of subjecting herself to
Jennifer’s Promise
. “No. No, I didn’t get around to it, Jill.”

“Well, don’t worry about it, dear. These books get so complicated. I only read the first few pages, myself. I wish they’d choose a really quick read—you know?”

Clearly Jill was
not going to be on the side of great literature during the book club coup. Myrtle took her tea into the living room to think a little more about Jill. She wouldn’t just have been in her medicine cabinet for an aspirin. No, she was after something. Not that she’d found it there. The cabinet was crammed with ancient amoxicillin bottles, dated over-the-counters, some blood pressure meds, and an old bottle of witch hazel.

Was Jill’s snooping the reason Blanche Clark fired her? Did Jill discover something about Blanche that made it impossible for her to keep her on?

When book club
morning dawned, Myrtle climbed out of bed with high hopes. Minutes later, she was already devising what novels might be a good introduction into the world of books. Because, Myrtle thought, the stuff that the book club had been focusing on definitely couldn’t qualify as books.

Milton
might
be a little ambitious for the group, she admitted as she boiled grits and threw in a liberal amount of butter into the spitting, spattering mixture. Dickens would be an easy adjustment. Everyone was familiar with his books anyway and it would be a popular place to start. Yes, maybe
David Copperfield
instead of
Paradise Lost
. Milton’s masterpiece was too richly worded—book club might get ill on the richness of the imagery after starving themselves on beach rot for years.

Hours later at
the meeting, though, Myrtle had given up hope of proposing Dickens as a book club selection. The coup was not going well. Everything had actually started out just fine with the ladies trickling into Myrtle’s living room like little lambs and lining up sweetly for their muffins, cookies, and iced tea. Both Blanche Clark and Jill Caulfield were there and successfully keeping apart from each other. The entire book club membership was actually very well represented, considering it was late summer and prime traveling time. There were about fifteen ladies in Myrtle’s living room and kitchen.

Miles stood next to Myrtle’s fireplace, looking uneasy. He clutched a copy of
Absalom! Absalom!
and fingered the knick-knacks on the mantle. Myrtle had cleverly designed new end tables by several of the chairs by stacking large books from her personal library on top of each other. Each book was a masterpiece, of course. “What a fun idea, Myrtle!” chirped one of the ladies. Myrtle beamed. If the members were
surrounded
with excellent literature, Myrtle knew they wouldn’t be able to resist.

Finally Tippy Chambers, the well-heeled club president, called the meeting to order. After the minutes to the last meeting were read (Tippy being a stickler for Parliamentary Procedure, even for a book club), She asked if there were any new business. Myrtle straightened in her chair, then rose carefully to her feet. She noticed that, like a seesaw, when she stood up, Miles sank down into a chair. He looked pasty white and a bit of perspiration trickled down the side of his head. How
had
he survived the dog eat dog world of business?

Myrtle cleared her throat and used her best retired-teacher voice. Even after all these years of retirement, it still had a weighty pitch that carried to the corners of the room. The right kind of voice to make an important announcement.

“I’ve been thinking,” she intoned, “about ways to improve our book club. What has brought us together is our mutual love for literature.” There were nods of agreement and Myrtle soldiered on, taking a deep breath.

“But I don’t think that the books we’re been focusing on,” here she lifted up a copy of
Jennifer’s Promise
in illustration, “are worthy recipients of our leisure time. I think,” Myrtle said sternly, “that our time could be better spent.”

There was a small pause. Then Erma Sherman piped up, bobbing her head emphatically. “You know, I was thinking the same thing, Myrtle.” Myrtle doubted it. “The books we’re picking only take a little bit of the meeting to review.”

There was a chorus of agreement.

Myrtle said quickly, “So what I was thinking…” she bent to reach for a handy volume of Charles Dickens.

Erma jumped in again from the floor. Why did Tippy’s Parliamentary order nonsense never occur when it needed to? “So why don’t we change the club?” she demanded loudly. She was warming up to the subject and seemed to be on a roll. “Instead of reading books, we could turn it into a…supper club!”

There were oohs of agreement and stomach rumblings among the ladies. Even Tippy was caught up in the fervor. “We could,” she suggested, “make it a progressive dinner supper club. You know—one house for the drinks and appetizers, another for soups and salads, a third for the main course, and dessert at the end.”

Now the room was buzzing. “That way it wouldn’t be too much for just one person!” said Jill Caulfield.

“Our husbands could even participate in it,” said Blanche.

Erma proudly surveyed the room, which had become electrified with her idea. Myrtle stood there, open-mouthed, clutching Dickens. Miles looked torn between amusement and horror. What would he care? thought Myrtle viciously. He was a foodie just as much as a reader. It would work out well for him no matter what.