Major Vices

by Mary Daheim

  Renie snorted. “Bill says we should have known. He’s as mad at me as Joe is at you. I called him after I talked to Joe, and he was in one of his one-syllable moods. You know, where he says, ‘Yes,’ ‘No,’ and ‘Good-bye.’”

  “That’s two syllables.” Judith couldn’t resist the needle.

  Renie let out a big sigh. “You know what I mean. He says we should have realized what the weather was going to be like and left immediately. The problem with Bill is that he’s always right.”

  “The problem with Bill is that he doesn’t allow for human error unless he’s getting paid to hear about it from his wacky patients,” Judith replied, not without a touch of anger, directed more at Joe and Bill than at Renie. “Is that all of it?” she asked warily.

  Renie sighed again. “No. I checked in with my mother. She’s having a world-class tizzy. She’d called your mother who didn’t answer. Then she called the B&B. Your mother finally picked up the phone on the ninth ring, apparently having screwed up your machine so that it didn’t switch over to the tape. She’d also screwed up your guests by serving them—guess what?—mush.”

  “Mush!” Judith was aghast. “They’ll ask for a refund!”

  Renie ignored the comment. “My mother is sure we’ll be murdered along with Uncle Boo. She thinks a homicidal maniac must have sneaked into the house to keep warm. I told her that was ridiculous—the furnace doesn’t work that well.”

  Judith smiled thinly, then glanced at her watch. It was just after eight-fifteen. “Gee, with all those calls, you did well. How did you get your mother off the phone so fast?”

  “I told her somebody was sneaking up on me with a meat cleaver. It took only two or three more minutes to get her to hang up.” Renie stared out the window. There was nothing to see but fog. “Oh,” she added, “Mom had no idea who Uncle Boo’s attorney is. She said Douglas de Butts would be as good a start as any. She also said she and your mother got into an argument on the phone this morning over whether or not Flabby was one of the Seven Dwarfs.” Renie shrugged. Arguments, no matter how inane, were a common occurrence between the sisters-in-law.

  Judith made an indifferent sound. “Mush,” she murmured, still dwelling on Gertrude’s aberration. “How could she? And how could Joe go off to work and leave me in the lurch?”

  “Mush is filling,” Renie said in an encouraging voice.

  Trying to put aside problems with husbands, mothers, and guests, Judith recounted what she had heard about Boo Major’s brother. Renie listened with mild interest.

  “If Reuben—Rube—had kids, it would a make a difference,” Judith pointed out. “That is, if Boo really didn’t have a will. But Derek says he did, and it leaves everything to him. Trixie also says Boo had a will, but that she and Aunt Toadie are the heirs. And Zoe says there is no will. How would Zoe know? She’s the maid.”

  Renie frowned at Judith. “Don’t maids always know stuff like that? In books, they listen at keyholes.”

  “If anyone knows,” Judith theorized, “I’d say it would be Zoe’s mother. If Uncle Boo went to see a lawyer, Weed Wakefield would have had to drive him. Or if a lawyer came to the house, Mrs. Wakefield would know about it.”

  “True,” Renie agreed. “But why do we care? You aren’t going to solve this one, remember?” Her expression was wry.

  Judith, who had been gazing with unseeing eyes at the mahogany paneling that went halfway up the wall before it met a border of wallpaper pansies, uttered a truncated laugh. “I can’t help myself. Do you want to walk home?” She saw her cousin’s horrified reaction. “I thought not, but a while ago, I was desperate enough to consider it. What else is there to do except sit around and speculate? Would you prefer chatting with the rest of the guests?”

  Renie admitted that what she would really like to do was put on her jacket. “At home, I’m warm enough in this sweatshirt,” she explained, indicating the blue University of Michigan number she had chosen from her extensive, if ratty, collegiate and sporting-logo wardrobe. “But it’s so damned cold in this place. I’m going to ask Mrs. Wakefield what goes with that furnace.”

  Judith followed Renie into the kitchen. Mrs. Wakefield was at the stove, turning out a fresh batch of French toast. This morning she was wearing another sweat suit, of emerald-green, bright blue, and jet-black velour.

  “It’s an old house, and a big one at that,” she replied with a shrug. “You get used to it in the winter. Try working as hard as I do—you’ll warm up real quick.” She flipped the French toast with a spatula.

  “Say, Mrs. Wakefield,” Judith said, deciding to shelve any more complaints for fear of losing the housekeeper’s good humor, “what’s all this talk about Boo’s will? Did he or did he not have one?”

  Mrs. Wakefield opened the oven and removed a broiler pan of bacon and sausage. “A will? Oh, sure, he had one.” She drained the meats on a paper towel. “Of course, I don’t know if it’ll stand up in court. The heirs he named probably won’t show up to back their claims.” Bacon and sausage were scooped into a serving bowl; the French toast was put on a plate. The housekeeper chortled as she cocked a devilish eye at the cousins. “Boo Major left everything to Space Aliens. Excuse me, I’ve got to get this out for the next round of rum-dum relations.”

  NINE

  “THIS IS CRAZY,” Renie declared as they continued their exhaustive search of the master bedroom. The door was locked for secrecy as well as safety. “If Boo really did make a will leaving everything to men from Mars, wouldn’t it be on file in his attorney’s office or in a safety deposit box at a bank?”

  “Probably,” Judith agreed, searching through the last shelf of the second closet. “It might even be in the den, which we can’t get at. But it doesn’t hurt to look.”

  So far, the cousins had turned up nothing more interesting than memorabilia. Uncle Boo had several bound volumes of The Stars and Stripes Army newspaper from World War Two, a boxful of infantry combat medals, and a few souvenirs from France and Germany. There was also a shoebox filled with photographs. For lack of anything better to do, the cousins decided to go through the snapshots.

  In sepia-tinted pictures, they found Grandpa John on the farm in Minnesota, behind a plow, riding a tractor, loading a truck. Grandma Alice was a shadowy corseted figure on the wide front porch. There was Dunlop and Helga Major’s wedding picture, in all the Edwardian splendor that a Midwestern farmer could muster. Then came the children, and sure enough, there were two boys, both dark-haired, handsome, and looking as though they didn’t enjoy sitting for the camera.

  “So that’s Rube,” Renie remarked, fingering a photograph that had probably been taken in the twenties. Reuben Major stood next to his younger brother, Bruno. They appeared to be about twelve and nine, respectively. Both were barefoot and wore overalls but no shirts. The snapshot had obviously been taken in the summer.

  “Here he is when he was older,” said Judith, handing her cousin a photo of the brothers in front of a stone church set among evergreens. “This must have been taken after they moved out here, but before Rube ran away. The boys are all dressed up. A wedding, maybe?”

  Renie nodded once. “Could be. Rube looks close to twenty—Boo’s in his mid-teens. I’d recognize Boo from this one. His face never changed that much.”

  “That happens,” Judith replied, “when you don’t leap into life with both feet. Rube did, though, in his way. I wonder what he looked like after he got older. There’s quite a resemblance when they were kids.”

  Rube Major’s pictorial history seemed to end with the church photo. The cousins perused numerous shots of Major Manor while under construction and after completion. There were photos of Dunlop and Helga Major, now middle-aged, and of Boo in his Army uniform. Dunlop looked like a taller, thinner version of Uncle Boo. Helga was pretty, but without character. As she grew older, her clothes became more lavish, as did her jewels. The last picture, probably taken when she was close to seventy, showed a wrinkled, tiny dowager in layers of lace with a diamon
d-studded tiara on her white curls and a choker with rows of gems covering her throat. Next came buxom, bellicose Aunt Rosie, in a beige suit with a double strand of pearls, and carrying a spray of orchids. The contrast between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law was remarkable, in substance as well as in style.

  A single snapshot was stuck to the side of the box. Judith fished it out and gave a start. “Egad,” she exclaimed, “it’s a Nazi!”

  Renie adjusted her reading glasses and gazed at the photo. “It’s a German soldier, all right,” she said in a thoughtful tone. The picture showed a uniformed man smiling blankly at the camera. In the background was a shelled-out stone building. Renie peered more closely. “For Pete’s sake,” she murmured, “this looks like Rube Major!”

  Judith snatched the photo away and thoroughly scrutinized it. “You’re right,” she said in awe. “It sure resembles Rube. No wonder he got disinherited! He wasn’t just a free spirit, he was a German sympathizer. Wow!”

  “That’s really weird,” Renie said in a voice of wonderment. “But Dunlop’s wife was German, wasn’t she? Maybe she filled Rube with a lot of bunk about the Homeland and Deutschland über Alles. Didn’t somebody say she had a picture of Mussolini in her darning kit?”

  Judith was slowly shaking her head. “People are very strange. And in the Midwest, they still have those little ethnic farming communities. I wonder if Helga Major was a big Hitler fan. It’s funny we never heard any mention of it.”

  Renie’s expression was ironic. “By the time our family got hooked up with the Lotts and the Majors, the war was over. If you were Helga, would you hang a pinup of the Führer on your living room wall? He lost, remember?”

  “Right.” Judith’s reply was vague; her thoughts were obviously elsewhere. She fingered the snapshot before placing it on the pile of pictures they’d already viewed. “Well, I guess that explains Reuben Major. Let’s sort through the rest and see if we can come up with something else of interest, like Dunlop Major in fishnet stockings.”

  Dunlop Major, however, appeared in various poses with his employees at office parties and company picnics. As he grew older, his face became more stern. Dunlop’s rigid posture, stiff neck, and tight lips presented a portrait of unyielding determination.

  “One tough old coot,” Judith remarked as she reached the Age of Aunt Rosie. “Here, see how grim Dunlop looks at Boo’s wedding.” She handed Renie a colored snapshot of the bridal party.

  “I remember when Rosie and Boo got married,” Renie recalled. “Somebody spiked the punch and your father danced with the wedding cake on his head.”

  Almost forty years later, the memory embarrassed Judith as much as it amused her. Donald Grover had been a quiet, dignified, scholarly man. His escapade with the Majors’ wedding cake had been out of character—and thus, endearing. Judith smiled at the memory.

  “Mother threatened to divorce him,” she said, remembering the anxiety over what her youthful mind had understood as a serious threat by Gertrude. It hadn’t been, of course. Donald and Gertrude Grover had been devoted. Sometimes Judith felt that her mother’s crankiness was the result of an inability to forgive her husband for dying before she did.

  “Who’s this?” Renie tapped another snapshot, also taken at Boo and Rosie’s reception in the Cascadia Hotel.

  Judith stared at the picture. There was Boo, his arm around Rosie. At their sides stood the best man and the matron of honor, longtime friends who had introduced them. But in back stood another couple, a handsome man in his forties who resembled Boo, and a woman whose head could barely be seen above Aunt Rosie’s shoulder.

  “Rube?” Judith guessed. “Do you remember him being at the wedding?”

  Renie, who was older than Judith by two years, bit her lip. “No. But there were so many people there. Gee, I was what? Fourteen? I was trying to bat my eyelashes at Cousin Denny. I showed cleavage. But Denny always disdained my attempts at seduction. I was heartbroken when I caught him necking in the hotel freight elevator with some auburn-haired hussy. Denny turned beet-red, and I stuffed a cocktail napkin down my sensuous bosom. The napkin was inscribed ‘Rosie and Boo—Love, Like Wine, Takes Time.’”

  “Gack,” said Judith. “I don’t remember that. I wish you hadn’t. If Rube was there, his wartime escapades must have been forgiven. But why didn’t Derek remember meeting him?”

  Renie calculated on her fingers. “Because he would have been about four at the time?”

  Judith gave a shrug of assent. She went through the rest of the wedding pictures but found no more recognizable shots of Reuben Major and his wife. They progressed to the late fifties. Derek showed up, first as a small boy, then on vacation as a teenager, and eventually as a college student. There was another wedding, Derek and Holly’s, with a very small Jill as flower girl. Jill grew up; her parents matured. Uncle Boo was shown at a Fourth of July picnic by the gazebo. Aunt Rosie was lighting firecrackers under his lawn chair.

  Only one other picture excited the cousins’ interest. Judith fingered it in a tantalizing manner. The photograph was in color, but the images weren’t clear. Whoever had held the camera had possessed an unsteady hand.

  “I think it’s Rube and his wife,” Judith said as Renie finally grabbed the picture. “Who’s the young woman?”

  Renie studied the photo. “She’s wearing a poodle skirt and white bucks, so it’s got to be the fifties. Her face is turned, and the damned thing’s fuzzy. What’s that in the background?” Renie handed the snapshot back to Judith.

  It took Judith a while to figure it out. “Advertising,” she finally said. “Billboards, like in a baseball park.” She turned the picture over. Her black eyes lighted up. “‘March 1955.’ Spring training in Arizona. Want to argue?”

  “Heck, no,” Renie replied. “But so what? We know that Rube and his wife died in a car crash in Arizona. It must have been circa 1970, because Derek said it was while he was in college. Rube and his wife might have lived in Arizona. At least they got out of war-torn Germany, as we used to call it.”

  Judith was leaning on the bed. She thrust her chin at Renie, who was lying with her head against the sunburst. “They had a daughter, coz. Where is she now?”

  Renie’s eyes devoured the snapshot. “A teenager. Our generation. Shoot, she could be anywhere. Are you saying she could be Boo’s legitimate heir?”

  “It beats being a Space Alien,” Judith replied. “I think we should call Tucson or Phoenix.”

  Renie sat up and bounced on the bed. “Oh, I’d like that! An heir who Toadie and Trixie don’t know about! Let’s do! Where’s a phone where we won’t be heard?”

  Judith’s bubble of excitement burst. “Drat. I don’t know. There’s no phone upstairs that I know of. The basement, maybe? We could go down and sneak in a call. But to who, on a Saturday?” Judith sounded discouraged as well as deflated.

  Renie, however, was off the bed and heading for the door. “The Arizona Republic. It’s the Phoenix daily. We’ll have them check the obits for a Reuben Major. Maybe his daughter was married by then and they’ll list her as a survivor.” Over her shoulder, she gave her cousin a reproachful glance. “Hey, you’re a librarian by trade. You ought to know how to do these things.”

  Judith gave Renie a dour look. “I used to. Now I’m just a B&B hostess who serves her guests mush. I’m a failure, coz.”

  Renie patted Judith’s shoulder. “Nonsense. Your mother probably made terrific oatmeal. At least you don’t buy Major Mush.”

  Shaking her head dejectedly from side to side, Judith followed Renie down the staircase. “My mush isn’t Major, but Mother has made me a minor. Hostess, that is. Word will leak out. My reputation in the hostelry business will be ruined.”

  Before Renie could try to console Judith further, Trixie appeared at the bottom of the stairs. Her red crepe pantsuit looked tired in the wan morning light. So did her face, which was devoid of cosmetics except for a dash of scarlet lipstick. She seemed disappointed when she saw the cousins.


  “I thought you were Mummy coming down,” she said, starting to pout. “I have good news for her. Mason spent a restful night.”

  Renie made as if to click her heels together on the stairs. “Oh, wow! I’m thrilled! And here I was afraid he’d die from lack of character!”

  Judith craned her neck to give Renie a warning look. “Knock it off, coz,” she muttered, then offered Trixie a weak smile. “Good, good. Glad to hear it. By the way, I forgot to tell you that Marty called late last night. He wondered why he hadn’t heard from you.”

  Trixie seemed unperturbed. “Marty’s such a goose. He worries too much. I talked to him just a few minutes ago. The sun’s out over on the other side of the lake.”

  It was apparent that Trixie didn’t realize someone had mentioned her alleged phone call to her half brother. Judith decided on tactful confrontation.

  “Uh—Trixie…I heard you told some of the others you left the living room last night to telephone Marty. Couldn’t you get hold of him?” Immediately, Judith bit her tongue. She’d been too tactful; her own words had supplied Trixie with an alibi.

  “That’s right,” Trixie replied after a slight pause. “That’s right! He didn’t answer. I suppose he was…in the bathroom.” She giggled. “You know Marty—he keeps a magazine rack in there!” She ran up the stairs.

  “Butt,” muttered Renie. “Liar, too.”

  Judith gave an absent nod. Looking into the living room, she glimpsed Buck Doerflinger conferring with Officers Rigby and Foster. Presumably the dining room was still being used to serve breakfast. The cousins dawdled in the entry hall. Judith eyed the door to the den.

  “If only,” she murmured, “we could get in there.”

  “What for?” Renie asked in a cantankerous voice. “We were in there, last night. What else do you expect to find?”

  Judith drifted off toward the kitchen. “Think about it. Really think, coz.”