cousin has contributed to his success as  an elected official. After five decades of  dealing with Mother, he can listen with a perfectly  straight face to almost any inanity uttered by a  constituent.

  'I don't want to worry your mother,' he said  to me as I showed him out. 'We can't be one  hundred percent sure, but there is something real  strange about Scotty's death. You keep an  eye on your folks, you hear?'

  Did the man think I was an idiot? I  intended to keep a very close eye on my parents,  particularly Dad. Scotty had been killed  riding a lawn mower that everyone in the  neighborhood knew Dad almost never let  anyone else use. Scotty had died, but I  would bet anything Dad was the intended victim.

  And I remembered the night Scotty had  dropped by to apologize to me. He'd said something  about seeing something odd. And I'd cut him off.  I mentally kicked myself. Scotty had  probably seen something that would have solved Mrs.  Grover's murder and the other strange incidents.  And had been mistakenly killed instead of Dad  before he could reveal it.

  Then again, what if the murderer had heard  Scotty say that and deliberately killed him?  Even if the odd thing Scotty saw had nothing  to do with the murder, what if the killer's guilty  mind jumped to that conclusion? In which case the killer  might have been aiming at Scotty after all, and not  Dad.

  I thought of mentioning it to Dad, but decided not  to. Whatever Scotty had seen, it was gone for  good now. Reminding Dad that we'd had a chance  to hear it and failed would only frustrate him further.

  And of course, there was the depressing task of  recruiting a suitable usher to replace  Scotty. After much discussion of the candidates,  Samantha dragged in Rob to rubberstamp her  choice: someone named Ian who, although apparently  not a close personal friend of either of the  principals, was tall, dark, and handsome enough  to please the bridesmaids and well connected enough  to suit Samantha and her mother.

          Thursday, July 14

  The next casualty--not, fortunately, a  fatality--was from Eileen's wedding party.

  'Oh, Meg, my nephew Brian has the  measles!' she wailed.

  'Well, so much for a ring bearer,' I said.

  'Oh, Meg, we have to have a ring bearer,'  Eileen said. 'The costume is so darling, and I  don't want poor Caitlin to have to walk down the  aisle alone.' Caitlin, I suspected, would  rather prefer to have the limelight all to herself, but I  doubted Eileen would see this.

  'Don't you have any other little boy cousins?'  I asked.

  'There's little Petey, but he's only two.'

  'No way. What about Eric? I think he'll  fit the costume.'

  'Oh, that would be perfect, Meg!' Eileen  enthused, and hung up reassured.

  Now all I had to do was talk Eric into it. I  ended up having to promise to take him and several  of his friends to ride the roller coasters at the  nearest amusement park as a bribe. Dad was so  touched by this show of auntly devotion that he offered  to foot the bill. No one else volunteered a  damned thing.

  'By the way, Dad,' I said, 'one more thing.'

  'I have to run, Meg,' he said. 'I have  to talk to the medical examiner.'

  'Fine. I'll tell you later about Jake  scattering Great-Aunt Sophy in the river, and  Samantha sneaking out of her house late at  night with someone other than Rob, and what Rob's  been doing instead of studying for the bar exam.'

  That got his attention. He listened intently as  I gave him a dramatic account of everything  I'd witnessed while skulking about the  neighborhood.

  'How odd,' he muttered, when I was  finished.

  'My words exactly.'

  'This doesn't add up at all,' he said.  He wandered off, looking very puzzled.

  'Well, don't bother telling me anything,'  I said to his departing back. 'It's not as if  I've contributed anything to this investigation.'

  He didn't seem to hear me. The hell with  it. Let Dad detect; I had to go over to the  Donleavys' to keep Steven and Eileen from  getting up to anything. Like changing the theme of the  wedding at the last minute.

  Like everyone else in town, I kept looking  over my shoulder, watching for sinister figures  lurking in the shadows. And seeing them; although so far  all the reports of prowlers had turned out to be  plainclothes state police scouting the  neighborhood.

          Friday, July 15

  Michael and the ladies managed to get Eric's  outfit ready for Friday evening's wedding  rehearsal. We'd decided to hold it in partial  costume, so everyone could get used to some of the  unusual gear they'd be wearing. The  bridesmaids adapted easily to the trains, but  it took a while for the men to learn to walk without  tripping over the swords.

  'What do you think?' Michael asked, as we  surveyed the bridal party.

  'I think most of these men ought to have known better  than to agree to wear tights. And arming them was  another mistake,' I added watching two of the  ushers draw their supposedly ornamental swords  and strike what I'm sure they thought were dashing  fencing poses.

  'Let's go and straighten them out,' Michael  said. 'The same thing happens whenever we do a  period play with weapons. Everyone starts thinking  he's Zorro.'

  'Oh, give it a few minutes,' I said, as  one overzealous usher narrowly missed skewering the  beastly Barry in a particularly painful place.  'Maybe his aim will improve.'

  I glanced at Michael, who was leaning  elegantly against a tree trunk and watching the  ushers' antics with lofty amusement. I sternly  suppressed the distracting mental picture of how much better he would look in tights than  any of the ushers.

  Or, for that matter, in the elaborate  Renaissance priest's costume he'd modeled for  us in the shop. Like Michael, Father Pete was  inspired by the costume to do a little swashing and  buckling. Unfortunately, aside from his height,  he bore no resemblance at all to Michael.  He was only a little on the pudgy side, but his  round, fair, freckled face, and thinning sandy  hair looking distinctly incongruous atop the  elegant sophistication of his costume. Ah,  well.

  The rehearsal went about as well as could be  expected, which meant it fell slightly short of  being an unmitigated disaster.

  'A bad dress rehearsal makes a good  performance,' Michael remarked to anyone who  fretted.

  'It damn well better,' I muttered through  gritted teeth. Having Barry hovering over me  was not helping my mood. Or having to listen  to Eric gloating over the payment he was getting for  his bit part as ring bearer.

  'Aunt Meg is taking me and all my friends  to ride the roller coaster!' Eric informed Barry.  Not for the first time.

  'Not all of your friends,' I said. 'One. And  only if you behave yourself during the wedding and the  reception.'

  'Right!' Eric said, and trotted off, no doubt  to be sure I couldn't actually catch him doing    anything that constituted not behaving.

  'I think that's great,' Barry said, and then in  an apparent non sequitur, added, 'I want  a large family myself.'

  'How nice for you,' I said. 'Personally, I  prefer being an aunt. You can take your nieces  and nephews out and have fun with them and then dump them  back on their parents when they're tired and  hungry and cranky.'

  Barry blinked a couple of times and then wandered  off.

  'You don't really feel that way about kids,'  Michael said, over my shoulder.

  'No, as a general rule, I like children,' I  said. 'But I'm sure I could make an  exception for any offspring of Barry's.'

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