Richardson jerked his head, and a IPD uniform came forward.
“Come with me, sir,” the officer said to Nate.
“I’ll drop you off at Polly’s,” Fred told Joan. “I don’t know how long this will take.”
“It doesn’t matter. I’ll ride home with Andrew.”
“You okay?”
“Yes. But I don’t know how you do this over and over.”
He shook his head slowly. “This is worse than most.”
She climbed into Fred’s Chevy. The last thing she heard before he closed the door was Cindy’s long wail, “Naaathaaan!”
30
They didn’t wait for Rebecca, after all. At noon on Monday Joan and Fred walked over to the courthouse with her rubella form and his eighteen dollars. Then they spent the rest of the hour with the minister. After they discussed the wedding ceremony, Eric Young talked with them about good communication and how to fight fair in a marriage.
Joan found the idea reassuring. I tortured myself by trying not to fight this week, she thought, and by expecting Fred to know how I felt when I wasn’t telling him. It was better when we got it out in the open.
“You don’t have to try to settle all your issues before you’re married,” the minister said. “No one can. A good many of them won’t even have come up yet. But you need to know how to deal with them when they do. And you need to trust each other enough not to avoid them when the time comes.”
I was angry because he didn’t trust me, Joan thought, but I didn’t trust him with my feelings.
“Trust like that doesn’t happen overnight,” the minister said. “Achieving it is a lifelong process. I think you’re more ready than most. I’ll see you in the church tonight.”
Fred walked her back to work and stopped at the door, as he so often did.
“We need witnesses,” Joan said. “I’ll have Andrew, of course. He’s old enough to sign.”
“Maybe Captain Altschuler will stand up with me.”
“I never thought of that. I could ask Margaret Duffy, and just let Andrew give me away.”
“And walk you down the aisle. I want to see you walk down the aisle to me.”
“Oh, Fred, not with nobody in the pews.” She’d come to terms with the idea of a tiny wedding. His preference, she knew. After all, she’d had the big folderol with Ken. This second time around, it would be all right to keep it intimate. Maybe even better. But to march down the aisle of an empty church? “It would feel silly.”
“Not to me, it wouldn’t. Go ahead, ask Margaret. And the sooner, the better. I need to get you both flowers.”
Margaret agreed readily and took off to find “something right for a wedding.”
“Whatever you wear on Sunday mornings will be just fine,” Joan said. “This is going to be very small and informal.”
“Don’t you worry, I won’t wear anything inappropriate. But I don’t want to arrive with spots on my front, either.”
When they arrived at the church a few minutes before seven, though, Joan was startled to see that the pews were not empty. Standing back in the narthex wearing her pearls and the soft blue dress that was Fred’s favorite, she counted the backs of a couple of dozen heads and wanted to run the other way. Where had all these people come from? Who had invited them?
Margaret came in, wearing a simple beige suit that made her look like the mother of the bride, and carrying a white box.
“Margaret, I can’t go through with this!”
“Yes, you can, dear. Here are the flowers Lieutenant Lundquist gave me for you.” She opened the box and held out a plain bouquet of white spider mums.
Joan swallowed hard and took the flowers.
And so, promptly at seven, Andrew escorted his mother down the aisle to Jeremiah Clarke’s familiar Trumpet Voluntary, competently played by the church organist. Joan carried the white bouquet, and Margaret, ahead of her, held a smaller one of rust and gold mums.
Looking a little numb, Fred waited by the chancel steps with the minister and Warren Altschuler. Both Warren and Fred wore plain gray suits with miniature mums in the buttonholes, and even Warren’s homely face looked dignified. Coming closer, Joan could see Fred’s blue eyes shining.
When Eric Young asked, “Who gives this woman to be married to this man?” Andrew cleared his throat behind her.
“Rebecca and I welcome Fred into our family, but our mother is not ours to give. She must give herself freely.”
Joan turned in amazement, but he was already stepping back into the first pew next to Annie Jordan, who reached out and patted him on the shoulder.
From then on, there were no surprises. They’d resisted the temptation to use a sexy passage from the Song of Solomon, but Eric Young read I Corinthians 13. The vows were the familiar ones, without “obey.” Fred had long ago measured her finger for a gold band, but they’d never talked about whether he would wear one, and she was pleased when Margaret produced his ring from her bouquet.
Then the minister pronounced them husband and wife, Fred planted a brief, but solid kiss on her lips, and the organist broke into the Mendelssohn. Sailing back on Fred’s arm into the small sea of smiling faces, Joan felt her own face stretch into a wide smile. Most of the old regulars from the Senior Citizens’ Center had come, and there were Alex Campbell, Nancy Van Allen, and John Hocking, too, from the orchestra. Who had invited them all? On the groom’s side of the church she recognized Sergeant Johnny Ketcham, Detective Chuck Terry, and Officer Jill Root, who had been in love with Sergeant Pruitt. How could she bear to attend a wedding so soon?
Out in the narthex, Warren claimed his privilege and kissed the bride, while Fred hugged Margaret.
“Since we’re not having a reception, maybe we ought to shake hands out here with all those people,” Joan said.
“Who says there’s no reception?” Margaret said. “Didn’t you notice how few people were at the center this afternoon?”
“What do you mean?”
“We’ve been busy. Come see.” She led them downstairs to the room where Catherine had confronted Joan on Saturday. Joan dragged her feet, not wanting to sully their day by thinking of Catherine. But then she rounded the bottom of the steps.
“Ohhh! It’s beautiful!” The utilitarian room was filled with white and gold balloons, some tied to folding chairs, but most floating along the ceiling, dangling curly white ribbons. The tables were covered with white paper, and on one stood an honest-to-goodness three-tier wedding cake, only a little crooked. “Margaret, you did all this?”
“Goodness, no. It’s from all of us together. You didn’t give us any warning, so this is our wedding gift to you. Ruby baked the cake right after you told me, Lula decorated it as soon as it cooled, and we all did the rest. You should have seen Annie and Alvin blowing up balloons. They popped a fair number before they got the hang of that machine.”
Fred was beaming down at her, not seeming to mind all the fuss.
“Fred! You were in on it, and you didn’t say a word.”
“Not me. I never would have agreed to it.” But his eyes twinkled, and she didn’t believe him.
“You old softy.”
He took her hand in his. “You were the one who wanted to know you were married.”
“Anything else I ought to know about?”
“I hope not. It was all I could do to talk the cops out of a twenty-one gun salute.” He kissed her palm. “I told them we’d make our own fireworks.”
Author’s Note
The quadrennial International Violin Competition of Indianapolis is real and exciting, and the stakes are high, but this book is fiction from beginning to end. Although Josef Gingold’s likeness is indeed on the gold medal of the real competition, all the characters named or referred to without a name are imaginary, as are all the events in the story.
All the music played in the book is real, except the compulsory solo. The real competition commissions a piece from a famous composer for each new group of competitors. So I “c
omposed” one for this group.
I’ve scheduled concerts and rehearsals as needed for the story, and taken a few other liberties with the details of the competition.
Sara Hoskinson Frommer
[email protected]
About the Author
Sara Hoskinson Frommer, a veteran of the Bloomington Symphony Orchestra’s viola section, lives with her husband in Bloomington, Indiana. They have two adult sons.
Her seventh Joan Spencer mystery, Her Brother’s Keeper, will be published in April 2013 by Perseverance Press http://www.danielpublishing.com/perseverance
Visit her website: www.sff.net/people/SaraHoskinsonFrommer
Acknowledgments
Special thanks to:
Peggy T. Alper; Charles Brown; Ann and Richard Burke; David Canfield; Rose and Marcos Cavalcante; Flo Davis; Karen Foli; Gabriel Frommer; Janelle Johnson; Laura Kao; Susan Kroupa; Laura Lynn Leffers; David McIntosh; Joe Morales; Eileen Morey; Bill Pomidor; Rhonda Riesefeld; Anne Steigerwald; Swedish Club of Andover, Illinois; Luci Zahray; and to Stuart Krichevsky, my agent; and to Joshua Kendall, my editor.
Books by Sara Hoskinson Frommer
Murder in C Major
Buried in Quilts
Murder & Sullivan
The Vanishing Violinist
Witness in Bishop Hill
Death Climbs a Tree
Reviews
For Murder in C Major
'Ironing for a corpse wasn't Joan Spencer's idea of fun.' With an opening sentence like that, you surely have to read on. You won't be sorry. Murder in C Major is a virtuoso debut by a new writer.--Washington Post Book World
A chatty, easygoing and conventional first novel....Why C major? Because Schubert's Ninth Symphony, with its great oboe solo in the second movement, is integral to the story.--New York Times Book Review
Murder in C Major is a thoroughly nice mystery with an amiable pair of detectives. It is recommended for those who enjoy a comfortable read on a long winter's night.--Wilson Library Bulletin
For Buried in Quilts
Frommer's second mystery (after Murder in C Major) offers an entertaining family-centered murder investigation while examining the importance of quilts as a means of understanding women's history.--Publishers Weekly
Frommer creates a persuasive Midwest ambience in this quiet book . . . about small-town life, big-time emotions, and the practical poetry of quilts.--Gail Pool, Murder in Print: The Best of New Writers, Wilson Library Bulletin
If you like quilts, music, and low-key mystery, this one will please. --Elorise Holstad, The Verdict Is Murder, Deadly Pleasures
For Murder & Sullivan
Truly suspenseful and chilling finale Publishers Weekly
A neatly plotted cozy filled with deft touches: Joan's affectionate relationship with her college-age son; what to do in Indiana during a tornado; the surreal dream of knowing, even in sleep, that you have to pee. Joan's relationship with local police officer Fred Lundquist is traced in the tentative dance of older lovers, as the debris of their past (she's a widow; he's divorced) swirls about them. A bit of melodrama at the denouement doesn't mask the basic intelligence and warm charm of this series.--GraceAnne A. DeCandido, Booklist
Murder & Sullivan invites you to kick your shoes off, hunker down on a plush cushion, and lose yourself in a rollicking, old-fashioned, down-home Hoosier-style murder. . . . Frommer excels at creating a small-town ambiance and connecting the story line of the operetta to events aswirl on both sides of the stage curtain.--Edward S. Gilbreth, Mysteries, Chicago Sun-Times
This is a wonderful book full of twists and turns, plotted around a Gilbert & Sullivan production of spooky 'Ruddigore' by someone who obviously loves G&S.--Alma Connaughton, Mysterious Women
For The Vanishing Violinist
Anyone who has ever been involved in the performance of music of an amateur or civic nature will get an extra measure of enjoyment from Sara Hoskinson Frommer's fourth book about Joan Spencer, a sharp and likable woman of a certain age whose interests and concerns are universal enough to win our hearts and unusual enough to capture our minds.--Dick Adler, Chicago Tribune
A well-plotted tale. . . The novel's highlights, however, are the exceptional descriptions of the musical performances, passages in which Frommer proves herself, at least for a moment or two, a Paganini of prose.--Publishers Weekly
It's a fun mystery that focuses on the International Violin Competition of Indianapolis. It's enjoyable because it is so insightful and exact.--Tom Beczkiewicz, executive director, International Violin Competition of Indianapolis, in Indianapolis Monthly
A warm cozy with a most appealing heroine. . . . The rhythms of small-town life, a good bit about music and musical competition, and the contrasts of Joan's easy relationship with her son and her fraught relationship with her daughter dovetail nicely with twinned mysteries that turn out, of course, to be connected.--GraceAnne A. DeCandido, Booklist
Her best to date--Kirkus Reviews
For Witness in Bishop Hill
The prize here is the gently effective interpretation of the Alzheimer's scourge. -- Kirkus Reviews
When Joan and new husband Lt. Fred Lundquist travel to Bishop Hill for a belated honeymoon, the only witness to murder in the small Swedish-American community is Fred's Alzheimer's-afflicted mother. Expect plenty of cosy chills as Joan strives to prevent a vicious killer from striking again. -- Publishers Weekly
The care and handling of Alzheimer's victims is neatly enfolded into this tale, which also gently treats Swedish Christmas customs, the tender and fraught relationship between Joan's college-age son Andrew, his new step-father, and herself, and the long memories of small towns. Frommer is a brisk and clean writer, and she handles the rueful ambivalence of middle age very well indeed. -- GraceAnne A. DeCandido, Booklist
Family dynamics and a Midwestern sensibility are the hallmarks of Sara Hoskinson Frommer's Joan Spencer series. So it's no surprise that the author delivers an insightful take on Alzheimer's disease and domestic issues in the well-plotted Witness in Bishop Hill. . . Yet never once does Frommer stoop to a maudlin viewpoint.-- Oline H. Cogdill, South Florida Sun-Sentinel
For Death Climbs a Tree
Clashes between environmentalists and builders, struggles in the workplace, and blending families combine to make DEATH CLIMBS A TREE an all-too-believable contemporary tale.--Molly Weston, Meritorious Mysteries
"I can't play the concert," violinist Sylvia Purcell informs Joan Spencer, the Oliver Civic Symphony manager, at the start of Frommer's sixth Joan Spencer mystery. "I have to sit in a tree." Sylvia's protest against the development of a wooded area for low-income housing turns deadly when she falls out of the tree in front of Joan and her son, Andrew. Evidence Joan finds points quickly to murder, with Andrew a prime suspect. Low-key suspense and likable characters.--Publishers Weekly
Sara Hoskinson Frommer delivers a solidly satisfying, character driven, small town cozy that addresses not only environmental issues but aging, workplace harassment and the impact of death on family and friends left behind. A very enjoyable read.--Sally Powers, I Love a Mystery
And advance praise for Her Brother’s Keeper
A charming, engrossing, family mystery. With Mozart. To be read with a mug of hot chocolate and marshmallows. What could be better?--Kerry Greenwood, author of The Phryne Fisher Mysteries
In Her Brother's Keeper, the likable Joan Spencer handles wedding disasters, family secrets, even murder with equal aplomb. Sara Hoskinson Frommer's latest is a thoroughly enjoyable visit to small-town Indiana. I'm already looking forward to the next one. Beverle Graves Myers, author of the Tito Amato mysteries
Great to see Sara and Joan back. Interesting characters and a well-plotted mystery. Highly recommended for those who like amateur sleuths in small towns in a book that is very well-written.--Doris Ann Norris, the 2000-year-old librarian
cover photo Shutterstock: © Chen Chien Hung
cover design Susan J. Kroupa
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