Motherhood Is Murder

by Carolyn Hart

  In retrospect, Renie could remember little of the actual ritual except for the music provided by young members of the Bogawallish. There was no singing as such, only chants and the beating of drums. Bill seemed grim. But Tom and Heather looked ecstatic as they turned to face the onlookers. They were a handsome couple. They looked so right together. Renie remembered when Tom was born. He was a long eight-pound baby with jet black hair, and she’d sworn he looked just like her father. He still did, in the way that Renie resembled Cliff Grover. Renie put a hand to her mouth to restrain the sudden surge of emotion. She couldn’t let go, not now, not yet—maybe not ever. It was her curse and her blessing that she could control her emotions. They ran so deep and so private that if Renie ever unleashed them, she was afraid she’d never get them back under control.

  Shortly before one o’clock, the caravan was on the road again, headed back to the city and Good Cheer hospital. By chance, Joe parked the Subaru next to the Camry. As Renie and Judith got out of their cars, they both looked up at the cross on top of the big brown brick building.

  “I’m glad they left that,” Renie said, “along with the chapel. It’ll seem strange not to see nuns here.”

  “It’ll seem strange not to head for the OR,” Judith noted. “By the way,” she continued, lowering her voice, “did you see anybody who looked like the mystery man at the reservation?”

  “Not really,” Renie replied, keeping her eye on Bill and Tony who were loading Deb into her wheelchair. “I spoke briefly to Woody. He said he’d seen a blowup of the Polaroid. It was kind of fuzzy.”

  Judith nodded. “I talked to him, too. He seemed frustrated.” She winced as Gertrude cussed out Joe, who was having trouble getting his motherin-law out of the Subaru. “None of the men I’ve seen who might fit the description are the right age to have served in Vietnam. So who talked to Father Jim about being in the war there? Didn’t you say Wheezy got his start as an army photographer?”

  “Yes,” Renie said, scanning the area. “And it was in ’Nam, near the end of the war.”

  “Maybe that’s the connection,” Judith suggested. “Maybe Wheezy somehow got the veteran’s best friend killed.”

  Renie grimaced. “And waited thirty years to get revenge? Where’s your famous logic, coz?”

  “I’ll admit,” Judith said as they walked toward the hospital entrance, “it’s farfetched. But it’s not impossible.”

  “True,” Renie agreed. “Nothing’s impossible. Not even three weddings in one day.”

  Good Cheer had undergone some renovations since the cousins had undergone their own on the operating tables. The chapel was also different. It had been stripped of its crucifixes, statues, and votive lights. The stained glass windows had been removed, replaced by pine panels. The altar was a simple wooden table. The once-holy place was now nondenominational and had as much character as a public rest room.

  Which, Renie thought, was fitting. Anne and Odo couldn’t agree on who should marry them—a Catholic priest or a Methodist minister. It had seemed a bit strange, since Odo allegedly had been named for a bishop. But Odo wasn’t Catholic, nor were his parents. In the end, they compromised and sought out a justice of the peace. Renie and Bill had fumed, but to no avail. Like Tom, Anne vowed that they’d have the marriage blessed later.

  By the chapel, Renie entered a small room next door to attend her daughter. The maid of honor and the two bridesmaids were having problems getting into their crêpe de chine dresses. Anne stood alone before a full-length mirror looking as if she’d just swallowed a dose of castor oil.

  “Can you zip me?” she asked, speaking to her mother’s reflection. “My attendants,” she went on, raising her voice, “tried to put my gown on backwards. Or was it upside down?”

  The trio of young women giggled nervously.

  “Hold on,” Renie said, then carefully tugged at the zipper, which seemed to be stuck.

  “Hurry, Mom,” Anne urged, her own nerves on edge. “Is it broken? Can you pin it? What if…?”

  Renie took a deep breath. “Stand still.” Getting a firm grip on the zipper tab, she slowly pulled upward. After a slight resistance, the dress closed smoothly. “There. Now let’s put on the veil.”

  Two minutes later, Anne stood in her wedding finery. The simple off-the-shoulder white silk charmeuse dress with its deep cowl neckline seemed to float on air. The waist-long veil fell from a pearl coronet. Anne wore Judith’s pearl earrings and a single strand of pearls that Odo had given her as an engagement present.

  “How do I look?” Anne inquired in an anxious voice.

  Renie couldn’t speak for a moment. “Incredible,” she finally whispered. “You are so beautiful it hurts.”

  “Oh, Mom!”

  Mother and daughter hugged each other tight, though mindful of not damaging hair or makeup. “My little girl,” Renie said under her breath.

  The JP turned out to be a chatty traffic court judge with a skewed sense of humor.

  “Well, well,” he began when Anne and Odo stood before him, “I guess I can’t give you a ticket for speeding to the altar. No baby on the way, I take it? Har, har.”

  “Good God!” Renie said under her breath.

  Bill hung his head.

  Deb frowned at her daughter. “Who is this awful person?” she whispered.

  “They got him out of Clown School,” Gertrude said, loud enough to be heard by everyone in the chapel.

  After a few more tasteless comments, the ceremony proceeded. It was mercifully brief.

  “I now pronounce you Driver and Passenger,” the judge decreed. “Who is which is up to you. God-speed, but stay under the limit!”

  “That was the limit,” Renie seethed when she and Bill were out in the parking lot.

  Velma Mann had overheard the remark. “I thought he was cute,” she declared. “It was certainly better than all that Latin mumbo-jumbo you Catholics do.”

  “We haven’t used Latin in forty years,” Bill said stiffly.

  Velma evinced mild surprise.

  Due to the brevity of the ceremony, the wedding party was on its way just after three-thirty.

  “I want to go home and put my feet up,” Renie said to Bill as they drove out of the hospital district. “I want to change clothes. I want a drink. I want to kill myself.”

  “Renie!” Deb snapped from the back seat. “Don’t say things like that!”

  Renie turned around to look at her mother. “Don’t kid me. You thought that was just as awful as we did.”

  “Of course it was awful,” Deb agreed. “But at least they’re married. I think.”

  Renie didn’t comment. Instead, she got her cell phone out of her purse and dialed Judith’s number.

  “Where are you?” Renie asked, when Judith picked up after five rings.

  “You’re lucky I had my cell turned on,” Judith replied. “I only did it because I thought some of the guests might get lost. We’re almost to the bottom of Heraldsgate Hill.”

  “Come to our house,” Renie urged. “I need to be surrounded by real people, doing real things.”

  “We can’t,” Judith replied. “Woody and Sondra are coming to our place.”

  “Damn.” Renie paused. “Okay. I should check with the photographer and the caterer anyway. See you in church. A real church, I might add.”

  Holding a drink in one hand and the cordless phone in the other, Renie stood in the kitchen, speaking with the caterer. She was assured that everything was moving smoothly for the reception. The food deliveries would be made at the church hall by six-fifteen. If the Mass of Holy Matrimony ran over an hour, the cold food wouldn’t get warm and the hot food wouldn’t get cool.

  Renie next dialed Hal Anderson’s cell phone. She hadn’t been able to talk to him much at the previous ceremonies. He had, however, seemed to know what he was doing.

  “Let me switch phones and call you right back,” Hal said. “I’m at my studio, developing some of the film from the first two weddings. Stand by.” />
  Hal’s studio was located between Heraldsgate Hill and downtown. He was only five minutes away from Our Lady, Star of the Sea. Renie took a deep drink from her glass and waited. Hal called back in less than a minute.

  “Looking good,” he said. “Of course I haven’t had time to develop all of the film.”

  “You don’t do Polaroids first like Wheezy, right?” Renie inquired.

  “No,” Hal replied. “That works for some photographers. For me, it’s just wasted time and effort. If I take enough shots, I’m bound to get some first-rate results.”

  “Just out of curiosity,” Renie said, “do you recall seeing a dark-haired man around forty who looked as if he didn’t belong to the rest of the group?”

  Hal uttered a short laugh. “A party-crasher?”

  “Not really.” Renie grimaced. “I don’t know how to put it. Someone who stayed apart from the others, maybe wearing a sports coat and slacks.”

  “Oh.” There was a long pause at the other end. “Maybe you’re talking about the guy who hung out behind the trees at the reservation. He was the same one who stood at the door of the chapel but never came in. I figured him for the wedding planner.”

  “No,” Renie replied. “Each of the brides selected her own wedding planner—all women. Any chance you got pictures of the lone wolf?”

  “I’m not sure,” Hal said, then paused again. “I’m looking at some of the shots now, but I don’t see him. Of course I haven’t developed all the film yet.”

  “When you do, let me know if he shows up,” Renie requested. “It’s important.”

  “Sure.” Another pause. “You didn’t say exactly what happened to Wheezy Paxson. Was it a heart attack?”

  “Well…I guess so. Wheezy didn’t lead a very healthy lifestyle.” Renie went on. “He was a good sixty pounds overweight.”

  “That’s a real shame,” Hal said. “See you at the next wedding.”

  Bill was in the living room, adjusting Oscar’s tux. In her wheelchair positioned by the fireplace, Deb looked up from the magazine she’d been reading. “By the way,” she said, “who is Mr. Paxson’s next-of-kin?”

  Renie, who had been on her way upstairs to change, came back into the living room. “I don’t know. I think he had a brother somewhere. But not around here. California, maybe.”

  “He must have had an attorney,” Deb pointed out. “Don’t photographers get sued occasionally?”

  “I suppose,” Renie replied. “Everybody else does these days.”

  “The police should find out who it is,” Deb asserted, her instincts as a former legal secretary coming to the fore. “Then they can notify the survivors. It’s possible that his former wives might also want to know of his passing. In fact,” she continued, “if Mr. Paxson had a will, it might have been made out years ago, while he was married. Time and time again, I’ve seen a first wife inherit an estate simply because the former husband never bothered to change his will when he remarried.”

  “I’ll mention it to Woody when we see him at the reception,” Renie promised. “Incidentally,” she said, turning to Bill who had propped Oscar up in his special place on the sofa, “when do the kids get to open the Surprise Box?”

  As he considered his response, Bill gazed up at the ceiling. “Since they’re coming here tomorrow for brunch before they leave on their honeymoons, why not then? There’s no point in hauling it up to church.”

  “True,” Renie agreed. The three couples were spending their wedding nights at three separate hotels in the downtown area. They were all due back home around eleven for a brunch that Renie would have to put together by herself. A Mother’s Day breakfast-in-bed was not for her. Nor, she thought, had it ever been.

  She went up to change for the third and final wedding. She was already tired. At least Bill wouldn’t want to stay over-long at the reception. It was likely that the senior Joneses would leave before the bridal couples did.

  In the hallway that separated the upstairs bathroom and the four bedrooms, she stopped. The boys’ doors were open; so was Anne’s. The rooms looked as they always did. Tom’s clothes were strewn all over the place; Tony’s area was neat and tidy; Anne had left cosmetics and lingerie on every conceivable surface. It was as if they’d be back at any moment. For tonight, tomorrow, and the days to come.

  But they wouldn’t be back, except to retrieve their belongings. Renie fought tears she rarely shed. “Keep your pecker up,” as Grandma Grover used to say to one and all.

  Renie cleared her throat and went into the master bedroom to change her clothes.

  Our Lady, Star of the Sea, had thus far been spared the ravages of the savages who believed that a church should look like a bowling alley. The red brick and brown stone Gothic edifice that crowned Heraldsgate Hill showed its age on the outside, but within, the old-fashioned statues, the stained glass windows, and the side altars were reminders that this was a sacred place, not a public meeting hall.

  Renie’s spirits lifted. The bridal decorations were beautiful, with the long rows of wooden pews festooned with pink rosebuds, baby’s breath, and maidenhair fern. Above the statues of the Holy Family, the late afternoon sunlight filtered through the Nativity window with its wooden stable, tiny manger, elegant angels, and humble shepherds. Moving down the side aisle to the shrine of Our Lady, Star of the Sea, Renie lighted three blue votive candles—one for each of her children. Maybe she should light all of them. Or maybe she should light a fire under each of her offspring, to introduce them to the real world.

  An occasional flashbulb went off as Hal Anderson checked his photography equipment. Father Hoyle, not yet in his vestments, was giving last-minute instructions to the altar servers. The ushers were clustered together by the Resurrection window, apparently going over their duties.

  Shutting out the preparations behind her, Renie knelt and prayed. At the base of the Blessed Virgin’s statue was a silver plaque, naming the shrine’s donor, a long-dead Heraldsgate Hill matron whose descendants still attended SOTS. Renie had barely finished the Memorare when one of Hal’s flashes went off. She blinked in disbelief. The split-second reflection in the plaque had revealed a dark-haired man in jacket and slacks.

  Hurriedly, Renie blessed herself, stood up and turned around. The person she’d seen in the reflection had to be standing across the nave, by the confessionals. Anxiously, she stared in that direction.

  Nobody was there.

  “I saw him!” Renie whispered to Judith out in the vestibule. “He was over by the confessionals!”

  “Are you sure?”

  Renie nodded, then explained about the reflection in the silver plaque. “Either he practically ran down the aisle or ducked into one of the confessionals. I was tempted to look for him, but the florist was headed my way with a couple of questions.”

  Judith scanned the vestibule where guests were beginning to gather. “I haven’t seen Woody and Sondra yet. In fact, where did Joe and Bill go?”

  “Bill’s with Tony wherever the men are getting dressed,” Renie replied. “Maybe Joe’s there, too, with Mike.” She checked her watch. “It’s ten to five. Would I be remiss if I didn’t check in on my future daughter-in-law?”

  “I didn’t,” Judith replied, easily spotting the six-foot-tall Kristin McMonigle by the rest rooms. “I was too afraid.”

  “It’s warm in here,” Renie said, nodding to a young couple she recognized as friends of her children. “Let’s go outside.”

  The sky was almost a flawless blue. The forecast had called for temperatures in the mid-eighties. Renie, in her silver satin cocktail frock, felt overwarm and overdressed. After greeting the Rankers clan along with Auntie Vance and Uncle Vince for the third time that day, the cousins moved to the shelter of the cloister by the convent.

  “We can watch for the Prices from here,” Renie pointed out, nervously twisting her hands. “We can also stop grinning like a couple of ventriloquist dummies.”

  “Maybe we should be searching the church grounds,”
Judith suggested, “looking for our man of mystery.”

  “My feet hurt,” Renie replied, pointing to her four-inch silver slingbacked shoes. “I can barely walk in these things.”

  Judith, who didn’t dare wear anything but sensible footgear since her hip surgery, looked askance. “It’s your own fault if you insist on…hey, there’s Woody and Sondra. Yoo-hoo!” She waved her arm and started toward the new arrivals.

  “You both must be exhausted!” Sondra exclaimed. “This is the worst matrimonial marathon I’ve ever been through, and I’m only a guest.”

  Renie and Judith knew that Sondra meant well. “You’re absolutely right,” Renie agreed. “The last few days have been a killer.” Abruptly, she put a hand to her mouth. “Sorry.” She turned to Woody. “Speaking of which, is there anything new?”

  “Yes,” Woody replied. “I checked with downtown after Sondra and I left Judith and Joe’s house. Further results from the autopsy show that the victim ingested a large quantity of cheesecake just before he died. Meanwhile, the hotel employees found the empty boxes in a trash can by the garage elevator. Mr. Paxson must have eaten the cheesecake on the way to his car.”

  “Boxes?” Judith said. “As in plural?”

  Renie clapped a hand to her head. Her coiffure had been so thickly sprayed into place that she figured a rake couldn’t dislodge it. “I forgot! Bill gave Wheezy his cheesecake, too. He must have eaten both slices.”

  Judith wore a quizzical expression. “Could the Persantine have been in the cheesecake?”

  “The ME says it’s possible,” Woody answered cautiously. “Apparently, Mr. Paxson swallowed the Persantine about the same time he ate the cheesecake. In tablet form, it’s not soluble in water. But if someone broke up the tablets and put them in the dessert, then Mr. Paxson might have thought they were almonds. In fact, I wondered at the time I checked the body if cyanide had been used to kill the victim. It has an almond-like odor, you know.”