Motherhood Is Murder

by Carolyn Hart

  Tom studied the small costume for a moment. “You’re right about Clarence. He might get fractious. But won’t that suit be kind of snug on Oscar?”

  “I’ll work with it,” Renie volunteered, stumbling over the carton Tony had left on the kitchen floor.

  “Try working with your feet,” Bill remarked.

  Renie snarled softly.

  To Renie’s astonishment, the rehearsal and dinner went off smoothly. She had worn her red Michael Kors outfit despite Anne’s protests. As it turned out, Velma Mann also wore red, but it was a floral print spring frock, a far cry from Renie’s tailored three-piece silk suit.

  At the church, Father Jim’s hearing aids didn’t emit a peep, Velma didn’t mention root beer once, and Tess Forte spent most of her time praying in front of a statue of St. Thèrésa of Lisieux. Anne and Odo had made up, cuddling and kissing at every lull in the proceedings.

  Renie and Bill arrived a few minutes early at the Cascadia Hotel, giving her time to rearrange the place cards. She was damned if she’d sit between Martin Forte and Velma Mann. Instead, she placed herself between Judith and Joe. Bill was on Joe’s right, with Mike McMonigle on his left. Judith’s son was serving triple usher duty at all three ceremonies. Deborah Grover, in her recently acquired motorized wheelchair, was between Velma and Mike’s wife, Kristin. Gertrude Grover, who had bought a similar wheelchair to keep up with Deb, sat with Martin Forte and her nephew, Tony. Deb was smiling kindly as she listened to Velma expound; Gertrude wore a sneer while Martin belabored her ear.

  Wheezy Paxson was grunting and panting around the private banquet room, clicking off rolls of film. As dessert was being served, he approached Renie.

  “I’m kind of beat,” he said in a low voice. “This heat is getting to me. And I’ve got a problem at home to deal with. If you don’t mind, I’ll call it a night.”

  “Oh, sure.” Renie’s expression was curious. “It’s nothing major, I hope.” Wheezy avoided Renie’s gaze. “Let’s just say I want out of the olive oil racket.”

  “Well.” Renie didn’t know how else to respond. She glanced at the dessert plate set before her. It was some kind of cheesecake, with an encrustation of almonds. “Hey, take my dessert. I’m allergic to nuts,” she said, handing the plate to Wheezy. “I’m sure you can get one of the waiters to give you a box.”

  “Thanks.” Wheezy smiled broadly. “I love cheesecake.”

  “I do, too,” Renie said. “But I don’t dare eat this one.”

  Wheezy suddenly put a hand to his forehead. “I forgot to make those contact prints. I got tied up this afternoon on a fall fashion shoot for the Belle Epoch. And when I got home, I…” He stopped abruptly. “I’m really sorry.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Renie said, catching the attention of a server. “Everybody’s so busy talking and eating that they probably wouldn’t have paid much attention.”

  Wheezy handed Renie’s plate to the waiter who went off to get a take-home carton. “Maybe,” he said, “it’s better to wait until I cull some of the unusable shots.”

  “You’re the boss,” Renie said as the waiter returned with Wheezy’s boxed cheesecake. “See you tomorrow.”

  It was a flawed prediction.

  By ten o’clock, everyone was ready to retire in preparation for the big day. The meal had been wonderful, the company had been tolerable, and the bill had been enormous. As the parents of the two grooms, the Joneses were stuck with two-thirds of it, which, including tip, came to a whopping nineteen-hundred dollars and forty-seven cents for their share.

  “We are so broke,” Renie muttered to Judith as they rose from the table. “Thank God we had only one daughter and not three.”

  “Hopefully,” Judith said, recalling her own painful memories as mother of the groom, “the Twobucks and the Fortes won’t try to stiff you when it comes to the brides’ share.” She glanced around the empty dining room. “Joe and Bill took the flower arrangements down to our cars in the garage. It’ll be a tight fit with our mothers’ wheelchairs. Is there anything else we should take home?”

  Renie also scanned the room. “I don’t think so, unless we steal the silverware. Oh!” An envelope on a side table caught her eye. “Let’s see what that is. Not another bill, I hope.”

  The envelope contained four Polaroids, obviously left by Wheezy before his early departure. Judith joined her cousin to study the pictures.

  “Good Lord,” she murmured, “I look like my nose belongs to Pinocchio in that first one.”

  “You’ve always been a great liar,” Renie replied with a smile. “It’s the lighting. That’s one of the reasons Wheezy does these first before he takes the real photos.”

  The second picture was a long view of the table, and the third was a grouping of the four sets of parents taken before the party was seated. The fourth apparently was intended as a preview for a wide-angle shot of the whole room. Wheezy had been positioned by the windows, facing the dining room’s open door. A dark-haired man in a sports coat and slacks stood on the threshold.

  “Yikes!” Renie cried.

  “I don’t believe it!” Judith exclaimed. “Who is this guy?”

  Renie was staring intently at the picture. “He’s got on a different pair of slacks and a lighter-colored sports coat,” she noted, “but otherwise, he looks the same as the man in the Polaroids at the B&B. Damn.” She pointed to the picture. “That door was right behind us. It’s too bad our backs were turned.”

  “Could he be security for somebody in the wedding party?”

  “Who?” Renie responded. “Nobody in this bunch is involved with anything that’d require protection.”

  “Nobody we know of,” Judith pointed out.

  The cousins grew silent. Both were curious and frustrated.

  Judith changed the subject. “I thought Wheezy was leaving some contact sheets,” Judith remarked, checking around the side table.

  “No,” Renie replied, still gazing at the Polaroid. “He forgot. We’ll see them later. You really need a magnifier for those little pictures. What Wheezy will do is let us see the contact prints, mark all the possible keepers, then make up two-by-four proofs that will look like the finished product. That’s when we get to make the final decisions.”

  “I vaguely remember that,” Judith said, thinking back to her son’s wedding almost six years earlier. “It seems like a long time ago. Mike and Kristin’s two boys are getting so big.”

  “You’re lucky,” Renie said, finally relinquishing the Polaroid and putting all four shots back in the envelope. “Mike could have been posted anywhere with the Forest Service. But he’s been just an hour away all these years.”

  Judith shuddered. “Don’t mention it. That could change any day. We’re not the only state that has national parks.”

  The cousins left the dining room and went down the hall to the elevator, and out through the lobby where the valets were bringing the cars from the garage. To their surprise, Bill and Joe were still waiting. To their astonishment, they were talking to two uniformed policemen.

  “What’s going on?” Renie demanded, hurrying toward her husband.

  Bill waved her off. Judith and Renie stared at each other.

  “Do you suppose somebody broke into one of our cars?” Renie asked.

  Judith grimaced. “I don’t think so.” She pointed to an unmarked city car that was pulling into the curving driveway. As soon as the vehicle crossed the sidewalk, two more police officers began cordoning off the hotel’s main entrance. “If I’m not mistaken, that’s Woody Price behind the wheel.”

  Renie watched open-mouthed as Joe Flynn’s longtime partner got out of the car. He was alone, and walked with his usual deliberate step toward Joe and Bill.

  “Hey! Dopey!” From near the handicapped door, Gertrude waved at Judith. “Get your butt over here!”

  Deb was next to Gertrude. Judith and Renie hurried to their mothers.

  “What happened?” Judith asked the two old ladies.

&
nbsp; “Something ungood, as your Uncle Cliff would’ve put it,” Gertrude replied, referring to Renie’s father. “I think somebody went sticks up in the parking garage.”

  “Who?” the cousins chorused in anxious voices.

  Gertrude turned up her nose. “Unfortunately, none of those nitwits we had dinner with. They’d all left by the time Lunkhead and the Old Perfesser managed to get us out here. The next thing we know, one of those kids who drives cars like a maniac came running out, yelling that somebody was dead as a dodo.”

  Deb shot Gertrude a look of reproof. “It’s a terrible thing. Imagine! Death isn’t anything to be glib about.”

  “It is as long as it’s not mine,” Gertrude shot back.

  Renie glanced over her shoulder. Bill, Joe and Woody were still talking to the officers as well as to a man and a woman who, judging from their professional attire, looked as if they worked for the hotel.

  “The food wasn’t bad,” Gertrude remarked. “Except I got those almonds stuck in my dentures.” To prove the point, she pulled out her upper plate and examined it. “Hunh. I canth thee it now.”

  “It was very enjoyable,” Deb declared, “although I’m afraid that salad is making my diverticulitis act up. I suppose I’ll have a miserable night. Oh, well.” She gave Renie a pitiful look. “But don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine. It’s so much easier to get up and down five or six times at night now with my new wheelchair.”

  “Mom…” Renie began, but was interrupted by Joe.

  “I’ve got bad news,” he said in a low, calm voice. “Wheezy Paxson is dead. It may be foul play.”

  Neither Renie nor Judith could believe it. Gertrude and Deb could, however.

  “That’s what I’ve been telling you,” Deb said to Renie. “You have to be so careful when you go anywhere these days. You may think I’m a foolish old woman, but the crime rate is terrible, especially downtown.”

  “Who croaked him?” Gertrude asked after putting her teeth back in. “Did they use a hatchet? You know, like Lizzie Borden. How does it go? ‘Lizzie gave her mother forty whacks, then she gave her father forty-two.’ Or something like that.”

  Judith flinched, Renie winced, Deb made a tsk-tsk noise, and Bill stared at the ceiling frescoes. Woody was silent. Joe kept his distance from his motherin-law, which was always a good idea, since Gertrude insisted she couldn’t stand the man who’d married her darling daughter.

  “It may have been a robbery,” Joe said. “Wheezy’s photography equipment is gone. He was found outside his car. Maybe,” he added to annoy Gertrude, “you did it.”

  “You’d like that, wouldn’t you, sonny boy?” Gertrude snapped. “You’d love seeing me in a dark cell eating thin gruel with a ball and chain on my wheelchair. Of course the cell wouldn’t be any smaller or less comfy than that tool shed you’ve got me in now.”

  The tool shed was where Gertrude had chosen to live instead of being under the same roof as her son-in-law. It had recently been refurbished, along with the B&B itself, and was a very pleasant little apartment. But Gertrude would never admit it.

  “Never mind,” Joe responded, then turned to Judith. “I’m going to stick around with Woody. You can ride home with Bill and Renie. We’ll send the…mothers…in a cabulance.”

  Woody Price had joined the little group. As always, he was unruffled and remembered his manners, greeting the old ladies first, then Judith and Renie, who both hugged him.

  “Actually,” he said in an apologetic tone, “I have to talk to you folks for a few minutes. Let’s move into a quiet corner of the lobby.”

  “You’re going to grill us?” Gertrude asked. “Will you shine a bright light in my eyes and make me sweat because you won’t let me smoke?” To ward off the latter indignity, Gertrude got out her cigarettes. “I’m lighting up right now.”

  “Disgusting habit,” Deb murmured as the old ladies wheeled themselves through the handicapped entrance. “One of these days, you’ll burn yourself up. Excuse me, Bill dear,” she said to her son-in-law as they approached a grouping of sofas and chairs around an ornate coffee table, “but would you mind maneuvering me so that I can sit away from Gertrude’s smoke? I have trouble getting in between objects that are too close together.”

  Wordlessly, Bill obliged.

  “Oof!” Deb exclaimed. “Isn’t this carpet a bit…bumpy?”

  “No,” Bill replied as Renie caught the evil glint in her husband’s blue eyes.

  “You’re right, Aunt Deb,” Joe agreed, giving Gertrude an equally rocky ride. “They must have laid a bunch of cable under this thing.”

  “Stop it, Joe,” Judith hissed.

  When they finally settled in, Renie noticed that Woody hadn’t joined them. “Where’d he go?” she asked Joe.

  “To see the victim,” Joe replied. “Bill and I’ve already been down there.” He avoided Judith’s gaze. “I found the body.”

  “You what?” Judith cried.

  Joe’s expression turned belligerent. “Wheezy had parked just a few stalls away from our car. I practically fell over the poor guy.”

  Judith wagged a finger at her husband. “Don’t you ever again give me a bad time about finding corpses! And talk about timing! You have to discover one the night before the weddings!”

  “What about Mike’s rehearsal dinner when you saw a woman being pushed off the roof across the street?” Joe shot back.

  “She didn’t die,” Judith countered. “It turned out to be someone else and the body wasn’t found until after the wedding.”

  “You were there at the time,” Joe accused Judith.

  “I was going to lunch with…”

  Judith was interrupted by the female hotel employee they had seen in the driveway. “Excuse me,” she said softly. “Would you mind holding your voices down? You’re startling the other guests. As you know, we have enough problems tonight as it is.” She turned to Gertrude. “I’m sorry, but this is a no-smoking section. Let me get an ashtray so you can extinguish your cigarette and not leave ash on the Persian carpet.”

  “How about this?” Gertrude retorted, tossing the butt onto the rug and grinding it out with her foot. “Saves you a trip, right?”

  The woman blanched, examined the carpet for damage, and walked away without another word.

  Renie was sitting next to Bill and holding her head. “This is terrible. Poor Wheezy. He was a nice man and a good photographer. Who’d want to hurt him?”

  “His equipment looked pretty expensive,” Joe pointed out. “He was probably killed by druggies.”

  Renie gazed around the lavishly appointed lobby that looked as if it belonged in an eighteenth-century Italian palazzo. “They should have tons of security. Most VIPs who come to town stay at the Cascadia.”

  “They can’t be everywhere,” Joe pointed out. “As far as admittance goes, these days you can’t tell a rock star from a drug addict. Hell, they’re often one and the same.”

  “It’s after ten-thirty,” Renie fretted. “We have to get up early tomorrow. How long is Woody going to take?”

  “Not too long,” Joe replied. “He’s probably waiting for the ME and the other techs.”

  “I’ve missed my snack,” Bill announced. “And it’s my bedtime. What can we tell Woody anyway?”

  “You don’t need a snack,” Renie declared. “You just ate dessert.”

  “No, I didn’t,” Bill retorted. “You know I hate cheesecake. I gave mine to Wheezy.”

  “So did I,” Renie murmured. “The poor guy never got to eat it.”

  Joe eyed Renie curiously. “So what’d he do with it?”

  “What do you mean?” Renie asked, puzzled.

  “There wasn’t anything by the body,” Joe answered. “His car was still locked.”

  “That’s weird,” Renie remarked. “I saw him take the carry-home box from the waiter. Maybe he ate it before he went to the garage.”

  “Why,” Judith said suddenly, “would he go to the garage in the first place? Why didn’t he
have the valets bring up his car?”

  Renie wore a sad little smile. “Wheezy had a fetish about his car. It was a classic Thunderbird—a ’fifty-six, as I recall—that he’d refurbished. He wouldn’t let anybody drive it. In fact, he never drove it to location shoots. He used it only in the city.”

  “Is there a Mrs. Wheezy?” Judith asked.

  Renie shook her head. “Not for years. He’d been married and divorced twice. No kids. Wheezy was kind of a loner. The only way he seemed to be able to get close to people was with a camera.”

  A waiter appeared, asking the group if they’d care for something from the bar. After some hesitation, Joe ordered Scotch-rocks for himself and for Judith. Renie requested Drambuie. Bill wanted his usual nightcap of Sleepy Bear herbal tea. Aunt Deb said water would be fine, and how kind to offer a nice beverage, although she didn’t want to be a bother. Gertrude, whipping out her dentures again, demanded, “…a toofpid.”

  “That’s ‘toothpick,’” Judith translated with an embarrassed expression. “My mother would probably like some water, too.”

  “Yeth,” Gertrude agreed. “I can thoak my teef.”

  Woody appeared before the drinks did. Renie, who hadn’t seen him for several months, noted that his cocoa-colored skin had new lines in it and there was more gray in his walrus mustache and at his temples. With a pang, she thought back some thirteen years to the first time she’d met Joe’s partner. He was new to the job, new to marriage, and he’d become a new friend to both the Flynns and the Joneses.

  “I’ll try to make this brief,” Woody said, sitting in one of the brocade-covered armchairs and turning to Renie. “Tell me what you know about Mr. Paxson.”

  Renie elaborated only a little on what she’d already related to the others. “I’ve worked with him off and on for close to ten years. Honestly, I’ve never heard him mention any problems or squabbles he’d gotten into other than the usual tensions between photographer and client or photographer and subject.”