A Catered New Year's Eve

by Isis Crawford

  “See what I mean about the way everyone acts?” Ada said to Bernie and Libby, turning to face one sister and then the other as she gripped the notebook tighter. “If that isn’t a tip-off, I don’t know what is. What? You don’t think so?” she demanded when neither sister immediately answered.

  “Well . . .” Bernie replied, taking three bottles of California champagne out of the fridge and handing them to her sister while she tried to frame a tactful response to Ada’s question. She didn’t want to tell Ada what she was really thinking—that this was a case of Ada crying wolf—if she could avoid it, because she was sure Ada wouldn’t be happy when she heard what she had to say and Bernie wanted to calm the waters instead of roiling them.

  Ada held the notebook up. “There’s proof positive in here that someone killed my dad and his partner and no one cares! No one wants to listen. They don’t want anyone to upset their stupid business deals.”

  “Maybe there’s another explanation,” Libby was suggesting in the face of her younger sister’s silence when Peggy, Ada Sinclair’s neighbor, waved to her from the hallway.

  Peggy paused for a moment. “Lovely dinner,” she told Libby.

  Libby smiled her appreciation. “Thanks. Can I help you with anything?” she inquired.

  Peggy shook her head. “No thanks. I’m just getting the bag with the Christmas crackers out of the hall closet.”

  Bernie wrinkled her forehead. “Christmas crackers?” she repeated, puzzled. She had no idea what Peggy was talking about.

  “Sometimes known as Christmas poppers,” Peggy replied, using the more common name.

  “Oh, those.” Bernie laughed. She knew what they were now. She’d seen them when she’d been in Britain for her junior year abroad. If she remembered rightly, they were small segmented cardboard tubes wrapped in decorative paper and filled with a little prize or a piece of candy or a handful of confetti, and they made a popping sound when you pulled the two ends apart, hence the name. “I thought that was a British Christmas Eve tradition along with a roasted goose and plum pudding.”

  Peggy smiled. “Not to mention the hard sauce and the Christmas crowns and Charles Dickens.” She readjusted her bra strap, which was peeking out from under her peasant blouse. “You’re right about Christmas crackers being a British tradition, but we open them here at midnight on New Year’s Eve. I think it started with Linda, Ada’s mom,” Peggy explained before she continued down the hall.

  “Peggy is wrong,” Ada said as she and Libby heard the hall closet door open, the rustle of coats, then the thud of the closet door closing. “My dad was the one who started the tradition,” Ada continued. Her voice wobbled a little when she mentioned her dad. “He said it reminded him of home.”

  “He was British?” Bernie asked.

  “He came over when he was six,” Ada replied. “We’ve kept the tradition going in his honor.”

  “Sounds like a nice thing to do,” Libby told her.

  “It is,” Ada assured her. “New Year’s Eve wouldn’t be New Year’s Eve without them.”

  A moment later, Peggy waved as she passed by them again, a small shopping bag in hand. Libby waved back. Then she turned to Ada. “Was Peggy here the night your dad died?” Libby asked out of curiosity.

  Ada nodded. “I already told you,” she said impatiently. “Everyone here was.”

  “But she’s not family,” Bernie said, seeking clarification.

  “Neither is Marty. But Peggy has worked in the business for like forever,” Ada explained, her voice rising a notch. She ran a finger around the edge of the notebook. “Anyway, for my dad, family and business were one and the same.”

  “That’s certainly true for us,” Libby noted. “Family businesses,” she paused for a moment, “can have their own problems.”

  Ada nodded vigorously. “You can say that again. I liked our New Year’s Eves when Dad was alive. But now, they’re the same, only they’re not.”

  “I would have thought no one would have wanted to do this again . . . considering,” Bernie noted.

  “Mom wanted to. And my uncle. They said it helped keep my dad’s memory alive. So, sometimes my mom buys the poppers now, sometimes Uncle Henry does. My dad bought them when he was alive.” Ada’s voice cracked. She stopped talking for a moment until she regained her composure. “And my mom is still making a roast turkey with this sausage stuffing that no one eats and these lumpy mashed potatoes.” Ada wrinkled her nose. “I wish she cooked like you.” Then Ada switched subjects before Bernie could thank her for the compliment. “So, what do you think?” she asked.

  “About what?” Bernie inquired, although she knew perfectly well what Ada was referring to.

  Ada’s jaw muscles tightened. “About the way everyone acted, of course.”

  “Well . . .” Libby began, but Ada cut her off before she could complete her sentence.

  “You saw how they were when I was reading. I could have been reciting the weather report or talking about the wave patterns in the Atlantic Ocean for all the interest they showed!”

  And I was right there with them, Libby wanted to say, before she thought of spending a day fishing and changed her mind. After all, she wanted to calm Ada down, not send her over the edge into tantrum city.

  “About that,” Bernie said, clearing her throat. “I didn’t quite understand the correlation between what you read and the possible homicide of your father and his partner and I’m not sure your family did, either.”

  No, no, Bernie. Don’t go there, Libby thought, making a drop-it gesture with her right hand as Ada snorted and drew herself up.

  “It’s perfectly obvious,” she said.

  “Not to me, it isn’t,” Bernie told Ada, ignoring Libby’s signal, which was getting more frantic by the second. “Can you explain it?”

  Libby clenched her fists. Sometimes she wanted to wring her sister’s neck.

  “I don’t expect you to understand,” Ada informed Bernie, waving the hand with the notebook in it in a dismissive fashion. “It’s not your job to understand. All I asked you to do was watch everyone’s reactions to what I read and tell me what you saw.”

  “Which is what I’m trying to do,” Bernie said. She was getting more annoyed with Ada by the minute.

  “So, why don’t you?” Ada demanded, putting the notebook down on the table.

  “Because you keep interrupting,” Bernie snapped. “You want to know what I saw?”

  Ada crossed her arms over her chest. “I just said I did, didn’t I?”

  “Yes, you did and I’m going to tell you,” Bernie said. “From where I was standing, everyone at the table looked annoyed, or bored, or fed up, or any combination of the three.”

  “They were pretending to be all that stuff,” Ada cried. “They were putting on an act.”

  “I’m sorry,” Bernie said in a gentler tone, “but they weren’t. Isn’t that so, Libby?”

  “Well,” Libby hedged. “That seemed to be the case, but . . .”

  Ada interrupted before Libby could get the last part of her sentence out. “What are you both? Blind or something?” She leaned back. “My stepmother looked guilty as hell and my stepbrother looked as if he was going to pee in his pants.”

  Bernie shook her head. “That’s not what I saw. Your stepbrother looked as if he was about to take a nap, your stepmother was doing something with her cell phone, your stepsister was fiddling around with her napkin, and I’m not even going to comment on the rest of the people there.”

  “My stepmother got to you, didn’t she?” Ada’s voice rose another notch. “She paid you off.”

  “To do what?” Libby asked, genuinely puzzled.

  “To lie, of course,” Ada answered, astonished that Libby was asking a question to which the answer was so self-evident. “To try to drive me crazy.” Ada narrowed her eyes. “But it’s not going to work,” she growled. “I’m not going to let anyone silence me again.”

  Bernie and Libby exchanged looks.

  �
�And why would Vicky do that?” Bernie asked in as calm a tone as she could manage. Oh boy, she thought. I should have lied and told Ada what she wanted to hear, she decided as a bad feeling grew in the pit of her stomach. Maybe Ada was cuckoo. Maybe her dad was right after all about getting involved. Maybe there was no such thing as simply catering a meal, cleaning up, and walking away from this family.

  “Because she’s in on it.”

  Bernie shook her head. She wasn’t sure what Ada was referring to. “In on what?”

  “The murders.” Ada waved her hand in the air. “Don’t you see it’s a conspiracy? People can’t benefit from their crimes. That’s the law. I know because I looked it up. So everyone wants to pin this on me. They do!”

  Bernie and Libby exchanged another look.

  “I know you think I’m crazy,” Ada told them, correctly interpreting their glances. “I can see it in your faces. And I admit, it sounds nuts. But it isn’t. There are millions of dollars at stake here and bad publicity would wreck the deal. I know what I read meant,” Ada insisted, blinking her eyes to hold back the tears. “I saw how everyone at dinner reacted. I don’t know why you didn’t see it, too. Maybe you just weren’t looking closely enough.” Ada glanced from Bernie to Libby and back again. “You’re wrong, you know,” she told them, even though neither Libby nor Bernie had said anything. Her voice got louder. “You are. Everyone in the room was just pretending not to care. They were pretending to be bored. They were pretending. They were. I don’t know what’s wrong with you that you didn’t see that.”

  Bernie and Libby exchanged a third look. This was heading in the wrong direction. The last thing either of them wanted was a scene. It was time to back it up.

  “Maybe Libby and I are mistaken,” Bernie admitted. She chose her next words with care. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe my sister and I weren’t watching carefully enough. Maybe we didn’t pick up on the signs.”

  Ada dabbed at her eyes and nodded. “Okay. I’m sorry that I yelled. And interrupted. This is just so”—she waved her hand in the air—“distressing.”

  “Of course it is,” Bernie cooed. “How could it not be? Tell you what. Let’s talk about what we saw later. We’ll go over everything comment by comment. How’s that?”

  Ada stuck out her chin and planted her feet on the rag rug on the kitchen floor. “Why can’t we talk about it now?” she demanded.

  She’s acting like a five-year-old, Libby thought. “It’s almost midnight and we need to serve the champagne,” she told Ada in the tone of voice she would use to talk to one.

  “It can wait,” Ada declared.

  “No it can’t,” Libby said. Then she had an inspiration. She held up her hand to forestall Ada’s comment. “And I’ll tell you why. We’re re-creating the evening from ten years ago, right?”

  Ada nodded.

  “So, I bet you served champagne before midnight on that evening?”

  Ada nodded again. “We did. And we pulled our poppers just like we always do.”

  “Exactly.” Bernie smiled, encouragingly. “That’s your ritual.”

  “Yes, it is,” Ada agreed.

  “So, by re-creating that evening and reading from your dad’s diary you were hoping to stir up fear and guilt in the people who were present the day your dad died. I mean that was the plan, wasn’t it?” Libby asked.

  “Yes, it was,” Ada said. Her shoulders slumped. “I guess I’ve been reading too many mysteries. It was a stupid idea, wasn’t it?”

  “No it wasn’t,” Bernie assured her. “In fact, it was genius.”

  Libby jumped in. “Indeed it was. So now that your nearest and dearest . . .”

  “They’re not my nearest and dearest,” Ada objected.

  “It’s just a figure of speech,” Bernie told her.

  “Your enemies, then,” Libby said.

  Ada smiled for the first time. “Exactly.”

  Bernie cleared her throat. Ada turned back to her.

  “As I was saying,” Bernie continued, “now that everyone has had time to think about what you read . . .”

  “And everyone is a little more relaxed . . .” Libby added.

  “Maybe someone will slip up and say something,” Ada declared, finishing Bernie’s sentence for her.

  “Exactly,” Bernie said, relieved that Ada had grasped the concept so quickly.

  “And if you come in quietly . . .” Libby continued.

  “And stand in the back of the room, so no one knows you’re there . . .” Bernie went on.

  Ada brightened. “I might overhear something.”

  Bernie and Libby nodded in unison.

  “Good thinking,” Bernie said.

  “Great idea,” Ada cried. Then she hugged Bernie and Libby and took off for the living room.

  “It must be tough to be her,” Libby commented as she watched Ada go.

  “Agreed,” Bernie said. “All that guilt. All that anger. I wonder how much money we’re talking here?”

  “You mean in the business?”

  “Given the product . . .”

  Libby scratched her chin with a fingernail. “If it works . . .”

  “I don’t think the Sinclair family would be taking the company public if it didn’t.”

  “Not necessarily. Sometimes things work on a small scale, but not a larger one. But if it does work everyone will see more money than they’ll know what to do with, that’s for sure,” Libby opined. “A lot of men would pay anything to keep from going bald.”

  “And that’s even more true of women,” Bernie noted as she checked the time on her watch. It was time to get going. “Let’s serve the champagne, finish cleaning up, and get out of here while we’re still winning.”

  “You really want that sofa, don’t you?” Libby observed as she carefully wrapped up her knives and laid them in their box.

  “And you don’t?” Bernie asked.

  “Of course I do.” Libby pointed outside. The snow had begun to thicken and the tree branches of the box elder next to the house were whipping back and forth in the wind, making scratching noises as they hit the wall. “But right now, what I really want to do is get out of here before we can’t,” Libby remarked, saying what Bernie had been thinking a few minutes ago.

  Bernie sighed. “Roger that.”

  The weather report had predicted at least another four to six inches of snow and it looked as if this time the report was going to be correct.

  Chapter 8

  While Libby placed the washed and dried dinner dishes in their quilted, nylon storage containers, then put the foam discs between them, zipped the containers up, and placed them into the cartons they’d brought them in, Bernie began uncorking the champagne bottles and pouring the champagne into the flutes she’d arranged on two trays.

  “Nice glasses,” Libby commented on the ornate crystal glasses.

  Bernie looked up. “But not Baccarat,” she said.

  “I know. Why did Linda say that they are?” Libby asked, referring to the conversation she’d had with Ada’s mother a few minutes ago.

  Bernie shrugged her shoulders. “Someone probably told her that they are and she doesn’t know enough to know the difference.” Bernie ran her ring finger around the edge of one of the flutes. “Aside from everything else, real crystal sings. These don’t.”

  “Remember how we used to do that with the water glasses at Sunday dinner?” Libby reminisced.

  “And Mom would glare at us.”

  “And then Dad would join us.”

  Bernie laughed. “And that would make Mom even madder. We actually managed to do ‘Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star,’ ” she said, remembering.

  “We should start using the crystal again,” Libby said.

  “They’re just sitting in the china cabinet.”

  “We should,” Bernie agreed. “I just hate to think of breaking one.”

  “How much are they now, anyway?” Libby asked.

  “The last time I looked, five hundred dollars, but tha
t was a year ago. They may be worth even more now. They probably are. Luxury goods keep going up.”

  “For four?”

  “No, each.”

  “Wow,” Libby said. “I’m impressed. And we have a whole set.” She bent down and retied her sneaker. “They certainly weren’t that much when Mom and Dad got them as a wedding present,” she observed when she straightened up. “I don’t think anyone in our family had that kind of money. Ever had it, for that matter.”

  “They didn’t, but everything has gone up since they got married,” Bernie pointed out.

  “You can say that again,” Libby replied, thinking of their family Sunday dinners and how much she enjoyed them. “We’ll just be careful,” Libby said, having decided that they would use the crystal. “I think Dad would like it if we did.”

  “Very careful,” Bernie said. “There’s something to be said for cheap,” she observed. “At least you don’t have to worry about breaking them, and if you do, you can always buy more.”

  Libby pointed to the flutes Linda had asked them to use. “How much do you think these cost?”

  “No idea,” Bernie promptly replied and then she got her phone and looked them up. “Not much,” she told Libby as she showed her their image. Then she made a clicking sound with her tongue against her teeth.

  “What are you thinking?” Libby asked her sister.

  “That the glasses are emblematic of Sinclair family relations.”

  “Wow.” Libby opened her eyes wide. “That’s quite the stretch. How do you get that?”

  “People trying to pretend that things are other than they are.”

  “All that from one dinner?” Libby asked. “I think you’re in the wrong business. I think you should be a psychologist.”

  “I’m serious,” Bernie said.

  “I am too,” Libby told her.

  Bernie put her hands on her hips. “So why do you think that Ada didn’t tell her mom she’d hired us to cater the event until the last minute?”

  “Not that that has anything to do with the matter we’re discussing, but I think she wanted to surprise her. Obviously.”