Wed and Buried

by Mary Daheim

  Mike and Kristin were foraging in the refrigerator. “Hey, Mom,” Mike asked, “is Grams making her killer potato salad for the reception?”

  Gertrude’s potato salad was famous. “She’ll supervise Arlene,” Judith replied. “It’s too big a job for Grams to do alone. I need the car keys. I’ve got to run up to the store.”

  Holding a twenty-pound ham in one hand, Kristin closed the refrigerator door with her hip. She was a big girl, a tall girl, a Valkyrie of a girl. Her long blond hair was more or less tamed into a single braid, and her flawless skin was almost as tanned as Mike’s. She wasn’t exactly pretty, but neither was she plain. Judith usually settled for “striking” when describing her daughter-in-law to-be.

  “Aunt Leah and Uncle Tank had a little trouble checking in at the Naples Hotel,” Kristin said in her low, calm voice. “There was some confusion about their reservation, but they got it straightened out after Uncle Tank threatened to shoot the desk clerk.”

  Startled, Judith glanced at Mike. Her son, however, showed no unusual reaction as he opened a loaf of rye bread. Kristin placidly began carving ham.

  “You’re kidding?” Judith sounded dubious.

  “In a way,” Kristin replied matter-of-factly. “The airlines don’t allow guns in the passenger cabin. Uncle Tank left his at home where they live in Deep Denial.”

  Judith’s dark eyebrows arched. “Deep denial? Of what?”

  With only the faintest hint of a smile, Kristin shook her head. “They live in Deep Denial, Idaho. It’s a place, not a state of mind.”

  I wonder, thought Judith. She knew little about Kristin’s extended family. Maybe that was just as well. Mr. and Mrs. Rundberg seemed like sensible people, but that didn’t mean that their shirttail relations were. Judith knew that too well from her own sometimes peculiar relatives.

  But there was no time to discuss family eccentricities. Judith was off to Falstaff’s Market. As she turned on the ignition of her Subaru, the radio also came on. Judith winced. Mike and Kristin had been listening to a young adult music station.

  “Ya-a-a-h!” the DJ shouted. “Turn up the volume and tear off the knob! It’s rockin’-sockin’-slammin’-jammin’-rappin’-slappin’ tunes right here on KRAS-FM, with your freedom-lovin’-gun-totin’-butt-kickin’ Harley Davidson, bringing you all the…”

  “No, you aren’t,” Judith said quietly but firmly, and tuned the dial to a station that featured hits from the fifties and sixties. Andy Williams and “Moon River” caressed her ears as she drove up the steep hill to the neighborhood’s main shopping area. Judith smiled and relaxed behind the wheel. The song had been one of her favorites when she was dating Joe over thirty years ago. They had danced to it, hummed to it, made love to it. And then Joe had eloped with another woman. Judith had never wanted to hear “Moon River” again, refused to watch Breakfast at Tiffany’s, despised Andy Williams, and had secretly admired his ex-wife, Claudine Longet, for shooting her lover, Spider Sabich, in a fit of jealous rage. She would have liked to have done the same thing to Joe. Judith hadn’t known then that Joe had gotten drunk after his rookie encounter with teenaged OD fatalities, and been lured onto a Las Vegas-bound plane by the woman known as Herself. Nor had Judith realized that while she suffered in her rebound union with Dan McMonigle, Joe had done penance of his own as the husband of a dedicated alcoholic. It was only when one of Judith’s guests was murdered at the B&B that the erstwhile lovers were reunited. Joe had been assigned to break the case; his marriage was already broken. After all was explained, much was forgiven. Judith and Joe had taken up more or less where they had left off, and five years later, life was usually good. There were minor problems, of course. Gertrude had loathed Dan, but she’d never liked Joe much, either. After Judith and Joe had gotten married, Gertrude had steadfastly refused to share a roof with her new son-in-law. The move to the converted toolshed ensued, though Judith’s mother never ceased to complain about being thrown out of her own house. There was some truth to the charge, but Judith had been forced into a corner. Gertrude had to go, if only about twenty yards.

  Then, just as Judith foolishly thought life was moving on a fairly smooth course, Herself—or Vivian, as was her real name—returned from Florida. To Judith’s horror and Joe’s dismay, she purchased a house in the cul-de-sac just two doors down from Hillside Manor. While Herself hadn’t quit drinking, she apparently had stopped making passes at her former husband. Judith did her best to accept the other Mrs. Flynn as nothing more than a slightly eccentric neighbor. Most of the time, the approach worked.

  “Moon River” ended as Judith pulled into the grocery store parking lot. She had ordered a very large pork roast, since at least two dozen guests would be on hand for dinner. Maybe, she reflected as she waited for Harold, the butcher, to bring her order, she should get a second, smaller roast. It wouldn’t go to waste; she could always use the meat for sandwiches. Gertrude loved pork sandwiches.

  “I’m not cooking,” said a voice at Judith’s ear. She turned to see Renie, looking resolute. “It’s too hot. We’re getting a couple of pizzas.”

  “So why are you here if you’re not making dinner?” Judith inquired.

  Renie made a face. “It turned out that my mother also needed a few things at the grocery store.” She waved a lengthy list in front of Judith. “I’ve got coupons, too. She can save twenty cents on toilet paper, thirty on flour, fifty on coffee, and a whole dollar off an oilskin tablecloth. Why does my mother need an oilskin tablecloth? She’s been using plastic table covers for twenty years.”

  Judith made sympathetic noises. “She probably wants to save it for good. My mother has eight slips that have never been out of their gift boxes.”

  “So what?” Renie snorted. “My mother has ten old girdles in her closet. The last time she wore one of them, a stay popped up and cut her chin.”

  Harold presented the pork roast with a flourish. Judith gaped at the price, recovered herself, and thanked the butcher. A second roast was beyond her budget. The cousins continued down the aisle, toward dairy.

  “At least you won’t have to cook tomorrow night,” Renie pointed out. “The food at the Naples Hotel should be quite good. They’ve had an outstanding restaurant ever since they remodeled a few years back.”

  “I wish you and Bill were coming,” Judith said with fervor. “I really don’t know any of these people. It’s going to be dull.”

  Renie, who drove a grocery cart almost as erratically as she handled a car, knocked over a papier-mâché pineapple that was part of Falstaff’s “Hawaii Days” display. “You do very well with strangers. That’s why you’re such a success as a B&B hostess. Besides, you’ll get to know most of the in-laws tonight. By the rehearsal dinner, they’ll all be your new best friends.”

  “I don’t know,” Judith said in an uncertain voice as they passed into housewares. “They sound kind of…odd.”

  Renie got tangled up in an orchid lei. “Ooops! Hey, they can’t be any odder than some of our shirttail relations.” The lei came apart, spilling purple petals all over Aisle B.

  “I don’t think they’re used to the city,” Judith remarked as she paused to pick up a box of laundry detergent. “They’re basically small-town folks.”

  “Then they’re probably thrilled to be in a big city,” Renie asserted. “I’ll bet the ones who have already arrived are having a great time sightseeing.”

  “Mmm, maybe.” Judith waited for Renie to choose an oilskin tablecloth. “I’ll be relieved when this weekend is over.”

  Renie smiled at her cousin. “I don’t blame you—weddings are stressful. Not that I’d know,” she added archly, mowing down a plastic pig. “But when you think about it, what can really go wrong?”

  Judith admitted she didn’t know. Indeed, she couldn’t begin to guess.

  TWO

  BY THE TIME the pork roast had been reduced to cat scraps, the dinner party seemed somewhat awkward to Judith. Sig and Merle Rundberg provided pleasant conversation, but the oth
er relatives tended to retreat into themselves. Judith thought they wore an air of suspicion. She said as much to Joe when they were in the kitchen, readying the strawberry parfaits.

  “You bet they’re suspicious,” Joe replied in a low voice. “I’m guessing they’re a bunch of survivalists. Did you look up Deep Denial, Idaho and Trenchant, Montana on a map?”

  Judith shook her head. “I didn’t have time.”

  “You’d have wasted it. Neither one shows up. I figure they’re up north, in the Idaho panhandle, or near the Montana-British Columbia border. These people have a real isolationist mentality. Did you hear them say one word about going outside their motels or hotels?”

  “No,” Judith admitted. The Rundbergs had driven four hundred miles from the eastern part of the state and had been understandably tired. Still, Sig and Merle were more outgoing, and seemingly at ease in a social situation. They were staying at the B&B, along with Kristin’s brother, Norm, and his wife, Jewel, Merle’s brother and his wife, Sig’s two widowed sisters, and a curmudgeon called Uncle Gurd. While various other relatives camped out in their RVs and holed up in nearby motels, only Aunt Leah and Uncle Tank had joined the Hillside Manor contingent for dinner. Since Judith had expected to feed another half-dozen, she had urged her mother to join them at table. Joe had invited Herself. To Judith’s surprise, her husband’s ex had dressed decorously, imbibed moderately, and conversed minimally.

  As Judith carried in the dessert tray, there appeared to be a lull in the conversation. Gertrude abhorred a vacuum, and proceeded to fill it: “I’m a lifelong Democrat. Voted for FDR four times—all in the same election.” She chuckled at her own wit. “What about you folks?”

  Glances were exchanged around the table, most of them hostile. “The eastern part of the state is more conservative,” Merle Rundberg said in her quiet, yet forthright manner. She was a raw-boned woman who looked as if she could sit a tractor or a horse with the same ease. “We tend to cast our ballots on farm issues.”

  “Democrats!” Uncle Gurd, who had not spoken until now, practically spat into his parfait. “Crackpot do-good Commies!”

  “Hey, Buster,” rasped Gertrude, “you some kind of nut case?”

  Uncle Gurd glared, but said nothing more.

  “There’s coffee,” Judith put in hastily. “Or tea. Would anyone prefer tea?”

  “Politicians are all crooks,” declared Uncle Tank, whose graying brown hair was cut very short and whose tattoos evoked the Third Reich. Judith found the heart surrounding the SS runes particularly offensive. “Just today I heard this guy on the radio, Harley Davidson, he called himself, who said we got too many politicians and too many damn fools and they were one and the same. Why can’t the government leave us alone?”

  “Kyle died too young,” lamented Aunt Tilda, one of the widows. “Why’d he have to do that?”

  “I’ll have coffee,” Sig Rundberg said with a tight little smile for Judith. “The wife here kind of likes tea. Don’t you, Merle honey?” He put a big paw on his spouse’s shoulder.

  “Marv was younger,” declared Aunt Leota, the other widow. “Kyle was no good anyway.”

  “Tea’s fine,” Merle agreed. “What about you, Kristin?”

  “Marv was shot by the sheriff,” Aunt Tilda said, making a gesture that looked like pulling a trigger. “Gunned down while trying to get away during a bank robbery. There were so many bullet holes, he looked like Swiss cheese.”

  Kristin was sitting between Mike and her brother, Norm. “Tea’s great,” she said, sounding strained. “Are any of you going to the center tomorrow? There’s so much to do. I think you’d all enjoy the exhibits.”

  “Kyle’s best friend was a goat,” Aunt Leota said, making a face at her sister. “Goats stink. So did Kyle. You’re better off without him.”

  “What’re they exhibiting, political prisoners?” growled Uncle Tank. “It’s probably put on by the frigging FBI. Do you know what FBI really stands for? Well, I’ll tell you…”

  “I’m a lifelong Democrat,” said Gertrude in a chipper voice. “I voted for FDR…”

  “I could make lattes,” Judith put in. “Would anyone like a latte?”

  “Too many breeds,” Uncle Gurd muttered. “That’s why I hate cities. Yep, everybody’s all mixed up, just like mongrel dogs. Shoot ’em.”

  “What’s a latte?” asked Aunt Leah.

  “Sounds foreign,” Uncle Tank muttered.

  Joe had reentered the dining room. “Let’s go outside,” he suggested. “It’s kind of warm in here tonight. We can sit in the backyard and cool off.”

  Judith noticed the veiled threat in her husband’s voice but she doubted that anyone else did. “What a good idea,” she enthused. “Maybe our neighbors, the Rankerses, will be outside, too. I’d love to have you meet them. Arlene is putting on the reception.”

  Nobody budged. To Judith’s surprise and relief, Herself finally stood up. She gazed down at Uncle Gurd, giving him a flutter of false eyelashes. “You look like the outdoor type to me, Gourd. Let’s slip out beneath the trees and let the wind play through our…” She paused, apparently noting that Uncle Gurd was completely bald, “…fingers.”

  “It’s Gurd, not Gourd,” the curmudgeon insisted. But he rose, and followed Herself like a gnarled lamb.

  The rest joined them. Judith watched Mike help Gertrude make her way through the kitchen to the back door. “Say, Mike,” Gertrude was saying as they headed into the narrow hallway, “did I ever tell you about Harry Truman coming through here back in…”

  Judith sighed and slipped her arm through Joe’s. “You’re right, I think this bunch is extremely right-wing. Mike says they’ve asked him all sorts of questions about his background. Being Catholic is definitely strange. I wonder how Kristin turned out so well?”

  Joe shrugged. “Her parents seem okay. But I don’t think we should talk about politics any more.” He held back, stopping by the sink. “I also don’t think we should let them know I’m a cop.”

  That, Judith decided, was good thinking.

  The evening had wound down without further mishap, though Uncle Gurd had insisted on sleeping under the Rankers’s hedge. Small rooms confined him, he asserted. He preferred the open air, the stars above, the bugs in his pants.

  That was fine with Judith. Friday was going to be a busy day, with last-minute details and final preparations for the rehearsal dinner. Judith’s cleaning woman, Phyliss Rackley, arrived promptly at nine. As usual, she first headed upstairs to strip the guest beds. Judith stopped her on the landing.

  “I’m afraid the guests are still in their rooms,” Judith said apologetically. “They’ve had breakfast, but they don’t seem inclined to leave.”

  Phyliss’s fluffy white eyebrows lifted. “These are the in-laws? Can’t your roust ’em?”

  Judith grimaced. “I don’t think so. Kristin’s parents are going off with her and Mike to check on the hotel dining room in a little while, but the rest of them seem to enjoy just sitting up there.” Judith gestured towards the second floor. “They’re from rural areas. They don’t care for cities.”

  Phyliss snorted. “Didn’t the good Lord preach in cities? He wasn’t put off by people. Maybe I should have a little chin-wag with them.” The cleaning woman patted the small Bible she kept in her apron pocket. “I’ll bet they don’t know Scripture. Let me give ‘em a few good words.”

  “I wouldn’t be too sure of that,” Judith said, recalling from recent news items that survivalists were often knee-deep in Old Testament references. Indeed, Phyliss’s fundamentalist credo might be right up the in-laws’ alley. “Do what you like, Phyliss. Just try to get them out of the way so we can clean this place.”

  Fired with missionary zeal, Phyliss’s squat figure thudded up the stairs. Judith retreated into the kitchen where she began wading through her list of phone calls. The one she dreaded most was to Artemis Bohl, the local fashion designer who had created Kristin’s gown. Bohl was brilliant, expensive, and temperament
al. Kristin’s choice had struck Judith as uncharacteristic. But Bohl sold his exclusive designs through I. Magnifique, the city’s most prestigious apparel store. Sig and Merle Rundberg wanted the best for their baby girl, and as wheat ranchers, they could afford it. Kristin’s gown was simple, almost austere, but it suited her perfectly.

  “Mr. Bohl,” Judith began nervously when the designer finally came on the line, “this is Mrs. Flynn. We were wondering what time we could pick up…”

  “Mr. Artemis,” the faintly accented nasal voice cut in. “To my public, I am always Mr. Artemis.”

  “Oh. Sorry. Well, Mr. Artemis, I know there were some final alterations on…”

  “Not alterations! Never alterations! Enhancements! Mr. Artemis does not alter, he enhances! One cannot alter—or change—perfection. One can only enhance it.”

  “Okay, enhancements.” Judith muffled a sigh as an unusually listless Sweetums entered the kitchen. “Are the enhancements done yet? The bride would like to pick up the gown and veil this morning while she’s in the downtown…”

  “I must go. I have a fashion show to mount. All is chaos. All is confusion.” Artemis Bohl hung up.

  Annoyed, Judith clicked off. Kristin would have to take her chances. Sweetums laid down at Judith’s feet. Puzzled, Judith reached out a hand to pet the cat. To her surprise, he didn’t balk at the affectionate gesture. Perhaps Sweetums wasn’t feeling well. Judith tried to put the cat out of her mind as she dialed Nottingham Florists. The table arrangements for the rehearsal dinner would be delivered at five. The wedding flowers would be at the church by ten, the reception bouquets would arrive at Hillside Manor before noon. Judith said thank you and hung up just as tramping feet resounded overhead and the strains of “Onward Christian Soldiers” floated down the backstairs.

  “What the hell is that?” demanded Joe Flynn who was coming in the back door.

  “Phyliss,” Judith replied weakly. “She’s bonding with the in-laws.”