Stork Raving Mad

by Donna Andrews

  Some of them. I recognized the odd, handmade pottery dish in which Cousin Lacey always brought her corn pudding. I made sure to snag a couple of Aunt Bella’s lighter-than-air crescent rolls from her familiar wicker breadbasket. I avoided the cut-glass dish in which Great-Aunt Louella brought her famous pickles. The dish was emptier than usual, probably because the students didn’t yet know that Louella’s pickle recipe contained enough jalapeno and habenero peppers to supply a Mexican restaurant for half a year. We’d be finding bitten-into pickles hidden in corners for weeks.

  But some of the offerings looked more local. I spotted one of Mother’s friends from the historical society arranging gingerbread men on an antique plate. I was almost certain that the duck-shaped lemon congealed salad came from one of Dad’s bird-watching comrades. The tarts strewn with rose petals had to be from a garden-club member.

  When I’d first moved to Caerphilly to be with Michael, I’d decided that one of its charms was that it was close enough to see my family whenever I wanted to, but far enough away that I didn’t have to see them all the time. Now, Rob and Rose Noire had moved to town, Mother and Dad had bought what they referred to as their vacation cottage nearby, and before long—

  “What’s wrong?” Michael said, appearing at my other elbow.

  “Nothing’s wrong,” I said. “I’m in awe. Look at all this food.”

  “Lovely spread,” he said. “Here, let me carry your plate.”

  I was about to protest that I could do it myself, but why should I? Having Michael hold my plate would be a lot easier, and after the kids were born, who knew how often he’d have the time or energy to be chivalrous?

  “I’ll get you some hot chocolate,” Rose Noire said, and flitted off.

  “I see Mother has won over Caerphilly, too,” I said as I speared a slice of Smithfield ham and deposited it on the plate.

  “Won it over how?” Michael pointed to a platter. “Don’t you want some corn bread?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I just don’t know if I have room for it. By won them over, I mean she’s got them all bringing her food.”

  “Bringing us food,” Michael said. “I admit that your mother probably got the word out that with our kitchen off-limits we could use a potluck dinner. But most of this came from our friends, not your family. Minerva Burke brought the corn bread.”

  “That settles it.” I added two chunks of corn bread to my platter. “If I don’t have room now, I’ll take it upstairs for later.”

  “And Randall’s mother sent over the venison stew,” Michael said, pointing. “The samosas from Professor Kumar disappeared a long time ago, but I saved you a few. Professor Ortiz brought some early Christmas tamales, and Abe’s wife sent chicken soup and—”

  “Meg, dear.” Mother appeared at my other side. “We could have brought you a plate.”

  “I’ll be fine.” I was eyeing another table, set at a distance from the others. “What’s over there?”

  “Nothing you’d be interested in,” Mother said. “Would you like some chicken soup?”

  “How do you know I wouldn’t be interested?” What were they trying to hide from me? I’d actually taken a few steps toward the mysterious table when Mother’s voice stopped me.

  “That’s where we put the seafood, dear. Since you seem to find it so . . . unsettling.”

  I blinked in surprise. For years, Mother had treated my seafood allergy as if it were merely an inconvenient personal idiosyncrasy. She never tired of plying me with dainty morsels of substances that I knew perfectly well would give me a rash if I were foolish enough to eat them. Was she now giving up the battle? Conceding that if I was old enough to be a mother, I was old enough to know what was and wasn’t good for my body?

  “Thank you,” I said, and surprised her with a brief but fierce hug.

  “You’re welcome, dear,” Mother said. “Now let’s find you a quiet, comfortable place to sit while you eat.”

  In a few minutes I was tucked up in an Adirondack chair with a blanket over my legs and a large box at my elbow to serve as a table.

  Suddenly music blared out—a lively cheerful tune played by what sounded like a variety of flutes and trumpets accompanied by a small drum. In the open space between the chairs and the buffet, Señor Mendoza was chivvying a dozen or so people into joining hands to form a circle.

  “What’s he up to?” I asked Michael.

  “Teaching them the sardana,” he said. “The Catalan national dance. He thinks Ramon should add it to the play.”

  When Mendoza stood in the center of the circle and demonstrated, the dance steps seemed a simple sequence of steps forward and back, left and right. Occasionally one foot would cross over the other.

  Of course, when Mendoza stepped back into the circle and set his troops in motion, the simple steps he demonstrated proved far more complex for them all to execute, in unison, in time to the music.

  Still, they persevered, and people began deserting the buffets and the rehearsal preparations to hover at the periphery, watching the dancers, trying out the steps themselves, and eventually joining in. A second circle was forming.

  “Go try it if you like,” I said to Michael.

  “Want to join me? It doesn’t look that strenuous.” He held out a hand to help me up.

  “A month ago I would have,” I said. “But now I think I’d better stay in the audience. You go ahead.”

  Michael seemed to get the hang of the sardana almost immediately and threw himself into it with the same enthusiasm as Señor Mendoza. Rose Noire’s sardana matched their enthusiasm, but you could tell she was merely improvising on the footwork. Mrs. Fenniman was dancing with her ancient black umbrella clutched in one hand, to the peril of anyone nearby. I had no idea whether Mother’s rendition was particularly accurate, but it was certainly elegant.

  I found myself wishing Señor Mendoza would switch circles for a little while. The second circle looked a lot less authentic than the first, and whatever the ragtag third circle was doing certainly wasn’t the sardana. It looked more like a crew of inebriated morris dancers trying to perform a group tango. But maybe I was being too picky. Maybe the important thing with the sardana was not accuracy but the emotion and camaraderie of the dancers.

  Perhaps a good thing I’d stayed out, then. I suddenly realized that I felt rather out of step with all these happy, energetic people. Granted none of them had any particular fondness for Dr. Wright, but did they think that made it all right for someone to murder her? Maybe they felt no guilt or sadness, but didn’t any of them feel anything? Not even a little shiver of mingled relief and melancholy at realizing that the Grim Reaper had struck so close by? Or the tiniest inkling of fear that we didn’t yet know who’d been helping the Reaper out?

  But everyone certainly seemed to be having a great time, with the possible exception of Ramon, who was watching the dance with a baleful glare. Somehow I didn’t think much of Señor Mendoza’s chance of adding a sardana to the play. Or was Ramon glaring because Bronwyn had deserted him to dance with Mendoza to her left and the earnest and slightly clumsy Danny Oh on her right? Of course, Danny might not have been so clumsy if he could have taken his eyes off Bronwyn occasionally, to see where his feet were going.

  And there was one other person not joining in the general gaiety: Dr. Blanco. He was sitting on one of the folding chairs, as far from the makeshift stage as possible. His elbows were on his knees, his shoulders were slumped, and he held his cell phone cradled in both hands. Now and then he glanced at it forlornly, as if waiting for a phone call that never came. Or perhaps he was using it as a clock and feeling dismayed at how slowly time was crawling by. Even though his overcoat was tightly buttoned, he looked as if he felt cold.

  I strolled over to him. When he spotted me, he sat up with a look of mingled relief and anxiety. I probably looked much like that at my first school dance—terrified of being a wallflower and even more terrified that someone would invite me to dance and find out how awful I was at it
.

  “How are you doing?” I asked.

  “Fine.” He blinked in surprise. “Why shouldn’t I be?”

  “Well, you seem to be the only one here who really knew the late Dr. Wright very well.”

  “The only one who’s not relieved at her death, you mean.”

  His bluntness was startling and almost refreshing. I couldn’t immediately think what to say next. Luckily a small knot of dancers across the room burst into laughter, drawing our eyes and saving me from having to say anything. When I glanced back at Dr. Blanco, he was frowning, but then the frown dissolved back into a look of gloom.

  “Not their fault,” he said, nodding at the dancers. “I gather there is very strong opposition to some of the standards Dr. Wright was trying to enforce.”

  “Did you agree with her?” I asked.

  He drew back slightly. Did I only imagine the brief gleam of panic in his eye before the bureaucrat in him rallied?

  “I certainly supported her position as she explained it to me,” he said. “Of course, since then I have come to appreciate that there were other points of view that had not been made available to me.”

  “Well weaseled,” I wanted to say. But I didn’t think it would help the drama curriculum’s cause.

  “Will you continue to advocate her position, then?” I asked aloud.

  “No,” he said. “The whole thing’s really an internal English department issue and should be left to the faculty of that department, don’t you think?”

  I was tempted to point out that it had always been an internal issue and should have been left to the faculty members—all of them, not just one particularly fanatical one with a grudge against the theater. But if he’d decided to cede the field, who cared what words he used?

  “It must be difficult for you here,” I said, waving my hand to indicate the activity around us. “I suppose the chief wants you to stay around?”

  “I imagine I could convince him to let me go home,” Dr. Blanco said. “But the president indicated he’d like me to stick around. Keep my finger on the pulse, as it were.”

  Just then Rose Noire bustled up.

  “You haven’t eaten a thing,” she said to Dr. Blanco. “Why don’t you let me bring you a plate?”

  “No, thanks,” he said.

  “Would you like something that isn’t on the buffet?”

  Something not on the buffet? I glanced over at the four overflowing tables. Was there any food not represented there?

  “Really, I’m fine,” he said. “I’m just not very hungry yet.”

  “But you need to—”

  Blanco’s phone rang. His eyes lit up.

  “I beg your pardon, but I must take this. It’s the president.” He stood up as he flipped the phone open. “Just a moment,” he said into the phone. “Let me find someplace quieter.”

  He scurried across the barn floor and out the door.

  “Poor man,” I said.

  “He has a very forlorn aura,” Rose Noire said. “Nothing like Dr. Wright’s. I think the students are mistaken to dislike him so much.”

  “He’s a pilot fish who’s lost his shark,” I said. “Weak, not evil. And probably not very dangerous. At least not until he finds another shark.”

  “He needs to open up and talk to someone about what he’s experiencing,” Rose Noire said. “But he’s very resistant to the idea.”

  I sighed. Apparently Rose Noire was practicing therapy without a license again. Had Blanco’s phone really rung or had he just been trying to escape Rose Noire?

  “Well, I suppose we should give him some space for now,” Rose Noire said. “I wanted to ask you—do you think I’m to blame for all this?”

  “To blame? Why?”

  “Well, I was the one who brought Tawaret into the house,” she said.

  “You didn’t force anyone to pick her up and attempt homicide with her,” I said.

  “Yes,” Rose Noire said. “But she’s quite protective. Perhaps she sensed that Dr. Wright was a danger to you and the babies. And of course she comes from an age when people were a lot more direct about life and death. And less respectful of human life. Perhaps it was a mistake, bringing her into such a fraught situation. Of course, I didn’t know at the time it was fraught, but still—”

  “It’s an interesting idea,” I said. Actually, I thought it was a crazy idea. Was I going to follow in Mother’s footsteps, and teach my children that when they couldn’t say anything nice, they should fall back on the word “interesting?” I’d decide later. “But maybe you shouldn’t spread your theory around too widely.”

  “Why not?”

  “Imagine how Chief Burke will feel if whoever he arrests tries to use that as a defense,” I said. “ ‘Tawaret made me do it.’ ”

  “You’re just humoring me,” she said.

  “I’m just trying to cheer you up,” I said. Would she feel better if I told her Tawaret wasn’t the actual murder weapon? Maybe, but maybe not. And I’d promised Chief Burke I wouldn’t tell anyone. “Look,” I said aloud. “I don’t think Tawaret magically convinced anyone to kill Dr. Wright. The killer made his—or her—own decision.”

  “Thank you,” she said. “But I’m still going to consider this an important lesson!”

  She looked very determined. I wasn’t sure quite what lesson she was learning from today’s events. Never give presents large enough to become murder weapons? Never trust pagan goddesses who might have their own agendas? Time would tell. I closed my eyes and tried to wiggle into a comfortable position.

  “Good news!”

  I opened one eye to see Dr. Blanco standing in front of us looking much more cheerful than before.

  “The president is coming!” Blanco said.

  “You mean all the way from Washington?” Rose Noire asked.

  I choked back my laughter. Yes, given the mingled awe and excitement in Blanco’s voice, I could see how she might jump to the conclusion that we’d be meeting the occupant of the White House.

  “No, the president of the college,” Blanco said.

  “Oh,” Rose Noire said. “Well, that’s nice.” She hurried off. I gathered from her tone that either she’d met The Face before or she remembered some of our stories about him.

  Her lack of enthusiasm seemed to take all the starch out of Blanco. His shoulders slumped and he seemed smaller and not nearly as imposing.

  “He’s coming out to see the rehearsal,” Blanco said. “So he can judge for himself what action to take.”

  He sounded anxious. No wonder. He’d lost a staunch ally in Dr. Wright. He’d spent the day with people who obviously wouldn’t mourn if he met the same fate. And now his boss was coming, no doubt to take personal charge of a matter that Blanco thought he was being allowed to handle. To my astonishment, I found myself feeling sorry for him.

  “I’ve got to get things ready!” Blanco exclaimed, and dashed out.

  “Meg, dear.” Mother appeared in front of me. “What was Dr. Blanco so upset about?”

  “I think he was excited, not upset,” I said. “The Fa—the college president is coming to see the rehearsal. Damn. I should go back in to make sure he finds his way out here.”

  “Surely he’ll see the lights coming from the backyard and realize that everyone is out here in the barn,” Mother said.

  “I doubt it,” I said. “In fact, unless Dr. Blanco stations himself in the hallway awaiting his arrival, The Face will probably just stand there ringing the doorbell until someone hears him. Or until he gets tired, after an hour or so, and goes home puzzled and insulted. And possibly with frostbite in his fingers and toes.”

  Mother gave me a sharp look, realized I wasn’t kidding, and closed her eyes. Counting to ten before saying anything, no doubt. I’d learned the habit from her. Though I doubted I’d ever master the air with which she did it, as if bearing up nobly in spite of almost overwhelming trials. When I counted to ten, I usually just looked cross.

  “Then we must station someone to m
ake sure he’s let in promptly and brought back here where he can enjoy the buffet,” she said.

  “I suppose I can do it,” I said. “Just let me finish this.”

  “Rose Noire can do it,” Mother said. “It will be more restful for her.”

  I followed Mother’s eyes. Yes, Rose Noire was probably overdoing it. Had probably been overdoing it ever since the students arrived, trying her best to see that our guests were well cared for. Now she seemed to be speeding around the barn on hyperdrive, darting into one of the sardana circles, then dashing out to wait on someone before dashing back and dancing frantically, as if to catch up.

  I’d have been overdoing it myself if I hadn’t had the twins to slow me down and remind me that the students weren’t our guests, they were temporary fellow residents. And Rose Noire was probably driving herself even harder today out of guilt at bringing Tawaret into our lives.

  I should have seen that. I put down my plate and began gathering myself to rise.

  “Sit down,” Mother said. “I’ll tell her.”

  “I’m not going in to welcome The Face,” I said. “It’s getting near my bedtime. Don’t let Rose Noire know you’re doing it for her own good.”

  “I will convince her that making the president feel welcome is of the utmost importance.” Mother strode off with her head held high.

  “It very well might be,” I muttered.

  I put down my plate and made my way to the barn door. I had to go the long way around, skirting the edge of the dance floor. On my way past the buffet I snagged an empty Tupperware container and filled it with a few delicacies for later.

  Then I donned my hat, gloves, and scarf and went to haul the barn door open far enough for me to slip out. And then a little farther, since I realized I hadn’t allowed for how big Tom and Jerry had become.