saturated dough, and my nieces were expressing disbelief that a “nice” girl like Bridget Honeycutt had a drinking problem?
The difference, of course, was that by the time these calorie-laden little balls had ripened in cake boxes out in the cold garage for several days and I had drizzled chocolate over them, most of the alcohol would have evaporated, leaving only the flavor behind.
Some of my brothers—their dads—had abused alcohol in their younger days, A.K. was known to sneak an occasional beer, and Reese had a DWI on his driving record, but bourbon balls had never led any member of my family down the primrose path to alcoholism any more than Aunt Zell’s fruitcakes had.
“Bridget’s no drunk,” Emma said hotly. “She couldn’t drink much and still keep up with the rest of us, but she says that it helps take the edges off things.”
She would not elaborate on why Bridget needed some edges blurred, but I got the impression that Jess and Ruth probably knew.
“You said you saw booze,” I said. “What about drugs?”
“No!” Emma cried. “Why do you keep asking me? I told you. I wasn’t there long enough to see who was doing what.”
My nieces aren’t dummies and it was sweet levelheaded Jessica who said, “You know something, don’t you, Aunt Deborah?”
I nodded. “But you absolutely can’t talk about it right now. It’ll come out soon enough. Mallory had alcohol in her system when she died, and her dad seems to think someone spiked her drink or maybe even added drugs to it to make her so disoriented that she would run off a straight road on a clear night. Who at that party would do that to her, Emma?”
But Emma had immediately realized that there would be an inquiry into that party and she had leapfrogged to what was, for her, the larger issue. “I’m dead,” she moaned. “Mother will make me quit the squad. She’ll take Lee’s car keys and he’ll hate me forever.”
“Not necessarily,” Jane Ann said soothingly. “If you were only there for a minute, chances are that no one really registered it.”
Emma shook her head and golden hair swirled around her anguished face. “Laurie knows and so does Kevin. As soon as Uncle Dwight starts asking for names, mine’s going to pop out.”
Annie Sue had continued to roll bourbon balls through all this, but now she paused and said, “So here’s what you do. You’re going to the visitation tonight, right?”
Emma nodded tearfully.
“It’ll be perfectly normal to talk about the last time you saw Mallory. You will probably cry. That’s when you tell your mom how good she was at the game and how your last memory of her will be taking a sip of her Coke at Kevin Crowder’s party.”
“Annie Sue! I can’t. She’ll go ballistic!”
“No she won’t,” Annie Sue said calmly, “because when she asks what you were doing there when you were supposed to come straight home, you’ll explain about this Laurie kid and how the only reason you and Lee stepped inside was to make sure that Laurie had a way home. You got home around your usual time, right? So clearly you didn’t stay. Don’t make a big deal out of it and Aunt Barbara will think you did the proper thing. That she’s raised two very considerate and responsible kids.”
There was more cynicism in her voice than I wanted to hear, but I had to admit that she really did have Barbara pegged.
From the sudden look of relief on her face, Emma knew it, too.
Two minutes later, Jane Ann was the one in trouble with her mother when her cell phone rang and she had to admit that she had come here first instead of going straight home.
I could hear Isabel’s outraged voice from the other side of the table. “Your daddy’s out there pacing a rut in the yard, worried to death that you ain’t come, and you’re over yonder making cookies?”
“I’m coming right now,” Jane Ann assured her. She clicked off and hurried to the sink to wash her hands.
Annie Sue was right behind her. “I’ll drive you,” she said, “but I’m not coming in to find out if you’re okay.”
CHAPTER 9
—“The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle,” Arthur Conan Doyle
I took Mary Pat and Jake home shortly before sunset and left Cal there, too, to spend the night. Kate and Rob planned to treat the children to pizza and then to a Christmas lights theme park near Raleigh while Dwight and I went to the funeral home in Cotton Grove where Mallory Johnson’s visitation was being held.
As a sitting judge who has to run for office every four years, I get invited to a lot of weddings and I attend a lot of funerals. My inner pragmatist knows that it’s a chance to shake hands and remind the voters that I’m in and of the community. My inner preacher worries about taking advantage of a family’s emotional state.
Weddings are usually fun and I don’t mind funerals for the terminally sick or nursing home elderly. These can turn into a celebration of the person’s life, with more smiles than tears. Anecdotes and good memories can surface again and the survivors talk about their loved one’s release from suffering or dementia. You often sense their own release from grief and exhaustion, a relief tinged with guilt for being glad that the deathwatch is over.
Funerals for adults cut down in their prime are usually sad, but they are laugh riots compared to the rituals for a well-loved child. Those are hard, hard, hard, and I knew that the evening would be a tortured ordeal for Sarah and Malcolm Johnson as they touched the hands of Mallory’s classmates and were reminded over and over again that those kids were going to move on into bright futures that their own child would never see.
The visitation was scheduled for six to eight, so Dwight and I had supper first at my cousin’s barbecue house, which is only four miles away.
