Her Brother's Keeper

by Sara Hoskinson Frommer

  “Uh-huh.” A wonderful smell reached Joan’s nostrils. Looking up, she saw Fred holding out a cup of coffee. She took it with her free hand and sipped cautiously. Just right. Fred’s Swedish heritage came through in his coffee.

  Rebecca launched into Elizabeth Graham’s latest interference. “She wants me to buy my dress and the bridesmaid’s dress from her dressmaker. Can’t trust me to have any taste of my own. Do you have any idea how much that would cost? As if there were time to do it now, anyway.”

  “What did you tell her?”

  “I’m getting better at dodging. I told her I’d think about it.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “But she’ll know as soon as she talks to the woman that I haven’t done it.”

  “What are you planning?” Rebecca, as usual, had kept her plans close to her chest.

  “I’m past planning. I’ve made my dress already, and one for you, Mom, if you’ll wear it.”

  “Of course I’ll wear it!” She could hardly believe what Rebecca was telling her. This late, she hadn’t given Joan a clue what to shop for. Now she knew why. “Just promise me it’s not beige lace.”

  “Mom! Would I do that to you?”

  “I didn’t think so.” Joan sipped again. She had to trust Rebecca not to put her in a mini-dress, either. Did anyone even wear mini-dresses these days? Not that what anyone else wore would matter to Rebecca.

  “My only bridesmaid will be Bruce’s sister, and I’ve made her dress, too. I measured her the last time I saw her, without telling her mother. I know your size, but if I’m off, it will be easy to adjust when I’m there.”

  “What about Elizabeth?” Joan couldn’t imagine dictating such things to Bruce’s mother.

  “She’ll wear whatever she wants. Far be it from me to tell her how to dress. If she asks me, I’ll tell her you’re wearing blue, but if she doesn’t, I’ll just let her clash.”

  “You’re learning.” Rebecca was doing fine.

  “So, are a lot of people coming?”

  “Looks like it. We’re going to have to hang them from the rafters. And oh, Rebecca, I heard from Dave today.”

  “Dave who?”

  “Zimmerman. My brother. He’s coming.”

  “Uncle Dave?” Rebecca’s voice rose. “I know I said to invite him, but I didn’t think he’d come. I don’t even know what he looks like, except in your old pictures. That’s exciting.”

  “I hope not.”

  “You what?”

  “Dave used to be more exciting than I’d want at your wedding. That’s why I wasn’t going to invite him.”

  “I’m glad you did, especially if nobody from Dad’s family can be there. Maybe this will bring the two of you together after all these years.” Rebecca, the optimist.

  “Maybe. I’m not counting on it.”

  “What did he do, torment you?”

  Joan thought about it. “No, actually, that’s the one thing he didn’t do. He always had a soft spot for his little sister. Made our parents’ lives plenty miserable, though.”

  “Well, then. It’s going to be fine. You’ll see.”

  My chance to tell her that her mother-in-law will turn into a sweetheart, too, Joan thought, but she couldn’t make herself do it. “You picked a good man. I hope you and Bruce are very happy together. Do you know yet when you’re coming?”

  “A few days early, maybe as much as a week, if I can square it with my boss. We’re driving out together, but after he drops me at home, Bruce will stay with his folks in Ohio before the wedding. Tradition and all that. When is the rest of the family going to arrive?”

  “Most of them will be here the day before, for the rehearsal. But Dave wants to come a whole week early. Maybe more. I don’t know, Rebecca.”

  “Good. Maybe I’ll have a chance to get to know him. I hope you and he have time to feel like family again before the rest of them descend on you.”

  “I suppose.” For better or for worse.

  * * *

  But the first family member to arrive was neither Dave nor Rebecca. Instead, Elizabeth Graham roared into the senior center one afternoon three weeks before the wedding, as if taking it for granted that Joan would drop everything to cater to her slightest whim.

  “What do you mean, she’s not here?” Joan heard through the open doorway of the exercise class at the top of the stairs, where she was standing in for the curvy young woman the men in the group would much rather have had leading them. “She’s supposed to work here!” Although she hadn’t met Bruce’s mother yet, there was no mistaking the officious voice she’d heard in far too many telephone conversations.

  “That’s right. And I’m not about to drag her down from upstairs for someone who won’t so much as give her name,” Annie Jordan shot back.

  “Well, you’d better, if you know what’s good for you.”

  Time to break that up, tempted as Joan was to find out which of these two stubborn women would resort to physical force. She apologized to the group, dismissed the class, and headed down the steps.

  “Problem, Annie?”

  Annie looked half-grateful to be rescued and half-sorry to give in. “Nothing I can’t handle, Joanie. This—this woman seems to think you have nothing better to do around here than answer the door.”

  “In fact, I mostly do greet guests who come in,” Joan said with a smile she hoped didn’t look as phony as it felt. “But I’m lucky to have Annie volunteer when I’m unavailable. I’m Joan Spencer, director of the center. How can I help you?” As if she didn’t know.

  Wearing a silk shirt, trim tweed suit, and a frown, the slender woman didn’t turn a perfectly groomed blond hair. “I’m Elizabeth Graham.”

  “Elizabeth!” Joan smiled again. “How lovely to meet you at last. Do sit down, won’t you?” Gesturing to the chair opposite her desk, she slid into the one behind it that Annie had just vacated. At least the desk hid her exercise sweats and sneakers. “Thanks for subbing for me, Annie. This is Bruce’s mother. You remember Bruce.”

  Annie merely nodded and left the little office, her back as straight as one of her own knitting needles. Elizabeth sat, almost as unbending.

  “What brings you to Oliver?” Joan asked. “Did your husband come with you?”

  “No, he’s seeing patients.” Bruce’s father was a physician, Joan knew. “But I wanted to make final arrangements for the rehearsal dinner. Seems to be about the only thing our family has any say in.” Her sniff was inaudible, but visible in a tightness of her nostrils and lips.

  “It is difficult, when we’re all so spread out,” Joan said as sympathetically as she could manage. “And Bruce and Rebecca have such definite ideas.” Thank goodness.

  “They certainly do,” Elizabeth said. “But they don’t know what they’re doing. You and I have to set them straight.”

  “Oh? What did you have in mind?” She listened, not for the first time, while Elizabeth launched into how a proper wedding should be celebrated, with a full reception banquet, champagne, a band, and dancing.

  “There’s no venue in this dinky town to do it justice,” the woman said. “I tried to tell them about the Indiana Roof Ballroom up in Indianapolis, but do you think they’d even hear of it?”

  “Is that place still open?” Joan had no idea, though she remembered its huge wooden dance floor and starry ceiling from some long-ago occasion involving some of Rebecca’s father’s wealthiest parishioners.

  “I don’t know, but they wouldn’t even let me check.”

  “Well.” Joan’s admiration for Bruce rose another couple of notches. Whatever Rebecca faced in dealing with this woman, her husband would stand up to his mother.

  “They want to have the ceremony and the reception all in that church. Can you imagine—a wedding reception in the church basement? Nothing but wedding cake and little sandwiches, they said. You can’t treat people like that!”

  Joan smiled, remembering that she and Fred not only had treated their guests like that, but that those
very guests had decorated the room and baked the wedding cake as a surprise gift. “We’re planning to feed the family and friends who have to travel from a distance, and you may want to invite them to the rehearsal dinner, but you’re right that the reception for all the guests will be very simple. It’s what Rebecca and Bruce prefer.”

  “What do they know about it? You can’t let them decide these things! How many weddings have they attended? They need a wedding planner!”

  Joan stuck to her guns. “Rebecca’s father was a minister, you know. She’s seen more weddings in her short life than most people twice her age. She wants to marry Bruce in a quiet, traditional church wedding. No wedding planner’s ‘theme’ and no dinner.” And no crippling expenses.

  Elizabeth glared at her. “I should have known you’d be just as bad.”

  How could she! “It isn’t negotiable. Now, if you’d like to meet the woman who’s agreed to do meals for us, you can discuss your plans for the rehearsal dinner with her.” Poor Ellen. Sending Elizabeth to her was going to be worse than sending Dave.

  Elizabeth sat stiffly. Had no one ever crossed her before? It was hard to believe. The woman played violin in the Canton, Ohio orchestra, Bruce had told them. Joan suddenly pictured her butting heads with Alex and had to repress the urge to laugh.

  “I’ll be glad to go over there with you, if you like.”

  “I’m sure I can find my way.”

  Good. It would give her a moment to call Ellen. “I’m sure you can,” Joan said. “I usually walk through the park, but you’ll probably want to drive around.” She drew a quick map.

  Elizabeth stuffed it in her purse without looking at it. “Thank you.” She stood and left the office, barely glancing around as she threaded her way among the groups between her and the door.

  As soon as the door closed, Joan reached for the phone. “Ellen? I’m glad I caught you. I wanted to warn you that Bruce’s mother is headed your way. Yes, right now. She’s fit to be tied because we aren’t going to throw a reception that would break us. I hate to think what she’s going to ask of you for the rehearsal dinner or whether she’ll expect you to put her up for the night tonight. You’ll have to decide how much you can stand.”

  “Don’t worry about me,” Ellen said. “I may charge her extra for the aggravation. I don’t owe her the way I owe you.”

  “You don’t owe me a thing!”

  “Only Laura’s life. If you hadn’t protected her when that tornado roared through the park . . .”

  “Oh.” Embarrassed, Joan didn’t know what to say. “I’m glad I was there,” she finally managed.

  “And I’ll never forget it.”

  To think I was worried about sending Dave to her, Joan thought.

  Chapter 3

  “Found him, Lieutenant.” Sergeant Johnny Ketcham stood in the doorway of Fred Lundquist’s office holding a computer printout. “He’s been in prison.”

  So Joan’s instincts were right about her brother. “What did he do?”

  Ketcham’s eyebrows rose above his wire rims. “Could be worse, I suppose. There’s nothing violent on his sheet, but it was his third conviction. This last one was for fraud.”

  “He serve time before?” Fred reached for the printout.

  “Yeah. And this time he’d violated parole.”

  “No wonder Joan didn’t hear from him,” Fred said. “She said he used to phone her occasionally, but for the past few years I don’t think she’s had more than a Christmas card.”

  “So she didn’t know?”

  “No. Only address she had for him was a post office box.”

  “Probably had his mail forwarded.”

  “Or gave his box key to a friend he could trust. Same effect, but no records in the post office.”

  Ketcham nodded. “You gonna tell her?”

  Fred thought about it. He and Joan had never kept secrets from each other. Oh, sure, he couldn’t tell her about cases he was working on, but this was her family. None of his business at all, really, except that he didn’t want this jerk to hurt her. “I’ll have to.”

  “She won’t appreciate it.”

  “No.”

  “You want me to . . .” Ketcham waved a hand in a general sort of way.

  “Thanks, Johnny. Afraid I’d better do it myself.” He folded the printout and tucked it into his inside jacket pocket. Maybe after supper, when they were relaxing together on the sofa. Soften her up with a cup of coffee first. Who was he kidding? She’d be mad no matter what he did. This wedding business had her stressed out as it was, and she’d been bent out of shape when all she knew was that Dave was coming. Had she suspected something of this sort? Maybe she’d be relieved it wasn’t any worse.

  When he pulled up in front of the house, she met him at the door, her face still rosy from her cold walk home.

  “You’re never going to believe who showed up today.”

  Was he too late? Was her brother in the house? “Who?” He bent to kiss her.

  Her own lips curved in laughter. “Mother of the groom, that’s who.”

  Just what he didn’t need. He’d heard enough about Elizabeth Graham to dread this complication to an already complicated day. “Is she here?”

  “Don’t look so alarmed. No, she’s not in the house. She may still be over at Ellen’s, checking her out.”

  “Is she coming here?”

  “She didn’t say, and I didn’t ask—or invite her, so I doubt it.”

  He grinned. “Not your favorite person.”

  “No. Even worse in the flesh than on the phone. Now I understand why Bruce never lets his family come to his violin competitions. Or his professional concerts, now that he’s making some progress in the musical world. I don’t think it’s his family—I think it’s his mother.”

  He tipped up her chin. “I don’t see any bruises.”

  She laughed out loud. “It wasn’t that bad, though I thought for a minute she and Annie Jordan might come to blows. She showed up at the center and tried to throw her weight around, but Annie wasn’t having any. I was all the way upstairs, but I could hear the two of them going at it in my office.”

  He put his arm around her slender waist. “Let’s go in out of the cold, where I can listen.”

  Her face changed, and she let him lead her into the house. “Oh, Fred, I’m sorry. You’re early—I haven’t even made supper yet.”

  “Want to go out?”

  “Not tonight. I’m going to throw leftover chicken and rice in the microwave.”

  “You do that. Then I have something to tell you, too.”

  She was always quick to catch his tone of voice. “What’s wrong?”

  “It can wait.” With a show of casualness, he pulled off his warm hat and coat.

  “Fred Lundquist, you tell me right now.”

  “Okay, soon as I change. You start supper. I’ll be right back.” Abandoning her to the kitchen, he went into their bedroom.

  How to break it to her that her brother was an ex-con? He could hear her throwing dishes onto the table. Better go in there before she got so mad at him for making her wait that she broke something she cared about.

  The back door slammed. Good. Andrew could run interference for him.

  “Supper’s almost ready,” Joan called from the kitchen. Fred ran his fingers over his head, squared his shoulders, and went to face her.

  “Hi, Fred,” Andrew said.

  “Andrew.” Fred nodded at him, but kept his attention on Joan.

  Andrew looked from one to the other of them. “Want me to make myself scarce?”

  Joan shook her head. “It’s all right, Andrew. Fred’s about to tell us something, that’s all. Unless it’s personal.” She looked at Fred.

  “Nothing he can’t hear.”

  “All right, then. Come sit down, both of you.” In no hurry now, she began passing food around the table. She wouldn’t ask again, he knew.

  He helped himself to chicken. “We found your brother.”

&nb
sp; “Was he lost?” Andrew asked, reaching for the nearest bowl.

  “Not exactly.” He looked at Joan. “But you can’t tell much from a post office box number, and that’s all your mom had for him.”

  “So what’s with Uncle Dave?” Andrew ladled chicken and rice onto his plate as if there were no tomorrow. How did he stay so thin?

  Joan just sat there, waiting.

  “He’s been in prison,” Fred said.

  “Prison!” Andrew said.

  Joan didn’t look surprised. “What for?”

  “Fraud.”

  “Is that all?”

  “It’s plenty, and this was his third conviction.”

  “But he didn’t hurt anyone?”

  “Physically, you mean?”

  She nodded.

  “No.”

  She didn’t answer, but her eyes teared up.

  “Are you all right?”

  She patted her eyes with her napkin. “Oh, Fred, I was so worried.”

  “Why?” Andrew asked.

  She smiled at him. “Dave was a wild kid, Andrew. I’ve hardly seen him since he went away to college, but I didn’t think he changed much there, either. My parents used to talk about him when they thought I was asleep. I couldn’t hear everything, but I know they worried about him. When I married your dad, Dave kept his distance from us. He showed up once in a while at family gatherings before you were even born, and sent you kids gifts a couple of times when you were little, but he never gave us any idea what he was up to. For years now, he’s just sent us Christmas cards that looked like something he ran off on a printer. No note, nothing. No response to anything I wrote him. Now we know why.”

  “He could have written from prison,” Andrew said.

  “I imagine he was ashamed to let us know,” Joan said. “To let me know. He hardly knew you and Rebecca. He probably thought your dad disapproved of him.”

  “Did he?”

  “Not really. He wasn’t the disapproving sort.”

  “Bad enough you married a minister. But then you married a cop.” Andrew looked up at Fred.

  “Yeah.” Joan looked at him, too. “I told Dave, when I wrote to him last year, so he knows, but somehow he’s decided it’s okay to come to this wedding. You’re not going to give him a hard time, are you?” But her face had relaxed. She was teasing him.