Vi winked at Lila and rushed into her bedroom, throwing herself into the bath as soon as the door shut. She just barely turned on the hot water faucet by the time Jack came in. She soaked in the tub long enough to stop the shivers and then wrapped herself in a towel and a kimono.
She found Jack and hot coffee in her bedroom and declared, “These are the moments when I realize that you are the man for me and that no other would do.”
“Hargreaves sent it up, unasked for,” Jack told her with a grin. “You’ll have to leave me for him.”
“Don’t think I won’t,” Vi warned. While she’d been bathing, someone had started a fire and put a candelabra in their room.
“Hargreaves is also preparing for us losing electricity.”
Vi nodded, curling into a chair with the hot coffee. It was just what she needed to heat her insides to match her now-warmed toes. She sipped it until she was sure she wouldn’t burn her mouth and then nearly guzzled it.
“Do you ever think how lucky we are when we explore these cases?” she asked, leaning back to close her eyes.
“Because we aren’t stealing from each other and murdering one another?”
Vi nodded. It wasn’t that they hadn’t been touched by murder and envy, they had. But it had never touched their real relationships. Not her brothers or her sister. Or her parents. Vi’s cousin had murdered her great-aunt, and painful though it had been, it was the loss of Aunt Agatha that had destroyed her, not Meredith’s betrayal. Meredith not being part of Vi’s life had caused nary a ripple.
Violet felt almost guilty over that, but they hadn’t been all that close. If Victor had hurt someone, especially someone Vi loved, she’d have been destroyed along with the victim. How did you get past having someone integral to your life being a monster? How did a mother reconcile the crimes of her child? Or a woman her husband?
“I keep thinking about Bertha Meyers. She’s lost the respect and—if not love—tolerance of her children. They have been forced to make decisions between being attentive to their mother and grandmother and allowing her venom to infect the rest of their family or distancing themselves from her entirely. That’s a hard choice, a terrible one.”
Jack pressed a kiss against her forehead. “That won’t be us, darling.”
“Victor tells me that you’ll be watching the girls in two weekends so we can dart to the Amalfi Coast for a little sunshine.” Kate had a light in her eyes as she smiled at Vi. “Are you sure?”
“Of course,” Vi said gaily. “I will spoil them so rotten that you’ll hate me forever, but they’ll be safe and happy.”
Kate paused, and Vi could see the worry in her sister-in-law’s gaze, but Kate didn’t say anything else. Jack squeezed Kate’s arm in assurance as Vi swore that the twins would be all right.
“So, Ham tells me that the client’s house was a little…alarming.” Rita grinned at Vi. “Something about cuckoo clocks.”
“It was as though everything your grandmother might have liked had mated, reproduced, and invaded. A single cuckoo clock is, perhaps, charming. A hundred is horrifying. A few pieces of embroidery is, perhaps, tolerable, but a roomful?”
Lila snorted. “When we learned to embroider, you threw yours across the room and declared it torture of the worst sort.”
“And so it is, but Lila—” Vi shook her head. “It was as if you took everything cozy and good and drowned yourself in it.”
Lila laughed while Victor announced, “Vi, darling, I am going to get you embroidery for Christmas.”
She started to send him a scathing look, but Rita squeaked, “Oh.”
Vi immediately studied Rita. It was a bit shadowed in the dining room as the chandelier threw off only enough light to imitate flickering candles, so she couldn’t tell much.
“I don’t feel good,” Rita muttered. “Does anyone else feel funny?”
“You think we had bad fish?” Ham asked. “I feel all right—”
He was already worried and Vi was surprised he wasn’t seeking out Rita’s pulse.
Before Vi could react to either her brother, Rita, or Ham, thunder rumbled and then there was a snap of lightning and the electricity flickered before it went out. Jack muttered low and Victor groaned.
“At least the babies are sleeping,” Denny said, surprising Vi with the reality that he’d become something a little more than the laziest and less serious of her friends.
“We should gather round a fire and tell ghost stories,” Kate suggested.
“Rita.” Ham’s voice in the darkness cut through. “What’s wrong?”
“I’m fine,” she replied and there was the sound of shuffling.
“Do you think Hargreaves is already coming?” Lila asked lazily. “Oh, I can’t see my wine. What poor luck.”
“Yes,” at least four of them answered Lila’s question about Hargreaves and Jack finished with, “Stay put. He’ll be here, and we can avoid a fall and a broken arm.”
“Oh,” Denny suggested suddenly, “what if our next trip was a long ramble through the countryside, roughing it with tents and catching trout?”
The room fell silent and Vi pictured them as one turning towards Denny even though it was dark. His voice was full of mischief, maybe even more than normal. He giggled and then lights snapped on again, flickered, and then turned off once more. A moment later, Rita squeaked again.
“Rita?” Ham asked, and he was moving in the darkness.
Then the door to the dining room opened and Hargreaves appeared with a lit candle. It threw the sight of Ham feeling Rita’s forehead into relief. Hargreaves paused, and then continued lighting the candles he’d placed in the room when the storm struck.
“Do you need a doctor?” Vi asked, trying to keep her voice even.
As Hargreaves lit the final candle, the lights turned on again, and the telephone rang shrilly. Somehow, Violet thought, given the storm and the presence of nearly everyone
