Suture Self : A Bed-and-breakfast Mystery

Renie was on the phone with her mother. Somehow

Aunt Deb, perhaps threatened by her grandchildren to

have the telephone surgically removed from her ear,

hadn’t yet called her only daughter.

“Yes, Mom,” Renie was saying after the first ten

minutes, “I promise not to let the doctors take advantage of me when I’m in this helpless condition . . . No,

I don’t have the window open . . . Yes, I realize it’s

snowing . . . Of course it’s warm in here . . . No, I’m

not going to wear three pairs of bed socks. One’s

enough . . . Really? I’d no idea Mrs. Parker’s brotherin-law got frostbite . . . After he was admitted to Norway General? That is unusual . . .”

Judith tried to turn a deaf ear, but the conversation

painfully reminded her of not having talked to

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103

Gertrude since she was admitted. Not that her

mother would mind; she hated the telephone as

much as her sister-in-law adored it. Still, Judith felt

guilty for not having called. In her heart of hearts,

she missed the old girl, and assumed that the feeling

was mutual.

She was about to dial the number in the toolshed

when the phone rang under her hand. To her surprise,

the caller was Effie McMonigle.

“I don’t much like paying these daytime long distance rates,” Judith’s mother-in-law declared in a

cranky voice, “but I have to go out tonight to the Elks

Club with Myron.”

Myron was Effie’s long-time companion, a weatherbeaten old wrangler with a wooden leg. His tall tales of

life in the saddle smacked of romance to Effie, but Judith had always wondered if the closest he’d ever gotten to a horse was taking his grandkids for a ride on the

merry-go-round at the county fair.

“It’s very sweet of you to call,” Judith said. “How’s

Myron doing?”

“As best he can,” Effie replied. “Which isn’t all that

good. Say, I got to thinking, how come you never had

an autopsy performed on Dan? He was pretty darned

young to pop off like that. I’ve always wondered.”

“You have?” Judith made a face at Renie, but her

cousin was absorbed in trying to explain to Aunt Deb

why it wouldn’t be a good idea for her to visit at the

hospital. “Well, you know,” Judith said in a strained

voice, “Dan was quite a bit overweight and he hadn’t

been well for a long time.”

“He looked fine to me the last I saw of him about six

months before he died,” Effie asserted. “ ’Course he

couldn’t work, he was too delicate.”

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Mary Daheim

Delicate. Judith held her head. “Actually, Dan

was—”