arranged as if far more important people than we were coming to taste it. Unless Marcia had had help, this table represented hours of work. But the food itself was comfortingly homely.
“Barbecued ribs!” exclaimed Aubrey happily. “Oh boy. Roe, you’re just going to have to put up with me. I make a mess when I eat them.”
“There’s not a neat way to eat ribs,” I observed. “And Marcia has put out extra large napkins, I see.”
“I’d better take two.”
Just then I heard a familiar voice rising above the general chatter. I turned to peer around Aubrey, my mouth falling a little open in a foolish way.
“Mother!” I said, in blank surprise.
It was indeed Mother, in elegant cream slacks and midnight blue blouse, impressive but casual gold necklace and earrings, and her new husband in tow.
“I’m so sorry we were late,” she was apologizing in her Lauren Bacall gracious woman mode, the one that always made people accept her apology. “John wasn’t sure until the last minute whether he felt like coming or not. But I did so want to meet Aurora’s new neighbors, and it was so kind of you to invite us…”
The Rideouts gushed back, there was a round of introductions, and suddenly the party seemed livelier and more sophisticated.
Despite his tired eyes, John looked well after their honeymoon, and I told him so. For a few minutes, John seemed a little puzzled as to what exactly Aubrey was doing at the party, but when it sunk in that his minister was my date, John took a deep breath and rose to the occasion, discussing church affairs very briefly with Aubrey, just enough to make them comfortable with each other without boring the non-Episcopalians. Mother and John joined in the food line behind us, Mother sparing a cold glance for Arthur, who was sitting beside his wife and eating while giving her a solicitous look or laying his hand on her shoulder every few seconds.
“She’s about to pop. I thought they just got married a few months ago,” Mother hissed in my ear.
“Mom, hush,” I hissed back.
“I need to talk to you, young lady,” Mother responded in a low voice so packed with meaning that I began to wonder what I could have done that she’d heard of. I was almost as nervous as I’d been at six when she used that voice with me.
We sat back down at the picnic tables set with their bright tablecloths and napkins, and Marcia rolled around a cart with drinks and ice on it. She was glowing at all the compliments. Torrance was beaming, too, proud of his wife. I wondered, looking at Lynn and Arthur, why the Rideouts hadn’t had children. I wondered if Carey Osland and Macon would try to have another one if they married. Carey was probably forty-two, but women were having them later and later, it seemed. Macon must have been at least six to ten years older than Carey-of course, he had a son who was at least a young adult… the missing son.
“While I was in the Bahamas,” John said quietly into my ear, “I tried to get a minute to see if the house of Sir Harry Oakes was still standing.”
I had to think for a minute. The Oakes case… okay, I remembered.
“Alfred de Marigny, acquitted, right?”
“Yes,” said John happily. It was always nice to talk to someone who shared your hobby.
“Is this an historical site in the Bahamas?” Aubrey asked from my right.
“Well, in a way,” I told him. “The Oakes house was the site of a famous murder.” I swung back around to John. “The feathers were the strangest feature of that case, I thought.”
“Oh, I think there’s an easy explanation,” John said dismissively. “I think a fan flew the feathers from a pillow that had been broken open.”
“After the fire?”
“Yes, had to have been,” John said, wagging his head from side to side. “The feathers looked white in the picture, and otherwise they would’ve been blackened.”
“Feathers?” Aubrey inquired.
“See,” I explained patiently, “the body-Sir Harry Oakes-was found partially burned, on a bed, with feathers stuck all over it. The body, I mean, not the bed. Alfred de Marigny, his son-in-law, was charged. But he was acquitted, mostly because of the deplorable investigation by the local police.”
Aubrey looked a little-what? I couldn’t identify it.
John and I went on happily hashing over the murder of Sir Harry, my mother to John’s left carrying on a sporadic conversation with the mousy McMans across from her.
I turned halfway back to Aubrey to make sure he was appreciating a point I was making about the bloody handprint on the screen in the bedroom and noticed he had dropped his ribs on his plate and was looking under the weather.
“What’s the matter?” I asked, concerned.
“Would you mind not talking about this particular topic while I eat my ribs, which looked so good until a few minutes ago?” Aubrey was trying to sound jocular, but I could tell he was seriously unhappy with me.
Of course I was at fault. That had the unfortunate result of making me exasperated with Aubrey, as well as myself. I took a few seconds to work myself into a truly penitent frame of mind.
“I’m sorry, Aubrey,” I said quietly. I stole a peek at John out of the corner of my eye. He was looking abashed, and my mother had her eyes closed and was silently shaking her head as if her children had tried her beyond her belief, and in public at that. But she quickly rallied and smoothly introduced that neutral and lively subject, the rivalry of the phone companies in the area.
I was so gloomy over my breach of taste that I didn’t even chip in my discovery that my phone company could make my phone ring at two houses at the same time. Arthur said he was glad that he had been able to keep his old phone number. I wondered how Lynn felt about giving up her own, but she didn’t look as if she gave a damn one way or another. Right after Arthur finished eating and they had thanked Marcia and Torrance in a polite murmur for the party, the good food, and the fellowship, they quietly left to go home.
“That young lady looks uncomfortable,” Torrance commented in a lull in the telephone wars. Of course, that led to a discussion of Arthur and Lynn and their police careers, and since I was also a newcomer on the street the discussion moved logically to my career, which I was obliged to tell them-including my mother-had come to an end.
I thought if my mother’s face held its mildly interested smile any longer, it would crack.
Aubrey had finished his supper finally and joined in the conversation, but in a subdued way. I thought we were going to have to talk sometime soon about my interest in murder cases and the fact that he found them nauseating. I was trying not to think about how much fun it had been to talk to John about the fascinating Oakes case…and it had occurred while the duke and duchess of Windsor were governing the islands! I’d have to catch my new stepfather alone sometime and we could really hash it over.
I was recalled to the here and now by my mother’s voice in my ear. “Come to the bathroom for a moment!”
I excused myself and went in the house with her. I’d never been in the Rideouts’ before, and I could only gather an impression of spotless maintenance and bright colors before I was whisked into the hall bathroom. It seemed like a teenager sort of thing to do, going into the bathroom together, and just as I opened my mouth to ask my mother if she had a date to the prom, she turned to me after locking the door and said-
“What, young woman, is a skull doing in my blanket bag?”
For what felt like the tenth time in one day I was left with my mouth hanging open. Then I rallied.
“What on earth were you doing getting a blanket out in this weather?”
“Getting a blanket for my husband while he was having chills with the flu,” she told me through clenched teeth. “Don’t you dare try to sidetrack me!”
“I found it,” I said.
“Great. So you found a human skull, and you decided to put it in a blanket bag in your mother’s house while she was out of town. That makes perfect sense. A very rational procedure.”
I was going to have to level with her. But locked in Marcia Rideout’s bathroom was not the situation.
“Mom, I swear that tomorrow I’ll come to your house and tell you all about it.”
“I’m sure any time would be okay with you because you have no job to go to,” my mother said very politely. “However, I have to earn my living, and I am going to work. I will expect you to be at my house tomorrow night at
