Magnolias, Moonlight, and Murder

by Sara Rosett

  “Are you okay, Ellie? You look a little pale.”

  I followed Mitch’s lead and said, “I’m fine. We just got a call with some bad news about a friend in the hospital.” I left it at that. There was no need to trouble everyone at the reunion with the terrible news.

  “That’s a shame. I hope there’s a quick recovery.”

  “Thanks, I hope so, too. Looks like Nathan is ready for a nap.” There’s nothing like my kids to keep me grounded and in the moment. I ran my hand down his limp, plump arm. Lately, he’d been boycotting naps, but he needed one today.

  “Would you mind if I put him down?” Caroline asked, and I said not at all. Then she said, “Thank you so much for hosting the reunion this year. Everything’s been lovely. With the remodel, there’s no way we could have done it.”

  “Glad we could help out. It was nothing.”

  I heard what sounded like a snort from Mitch and leveled my gaze at him, but he kept his attention fixed on Uncle Kenny, who was saying, “The secret to winning at croquet is all in the order of play…”

  “Nonsense,” Caroline said. “I know how much work this is and you’ve pulled it off beautifully.” Uncle Kenny noticed some of the guys setting up a game of horseshoes and went to join them. Mitch fell into step beside me as Caroline and I walked back to the house. One of Mitch’s cousins-in-law, Felicity, nearly ran over us as she marched across the grass.

  “Felicity,” Caroline called, “I haven’t seen Dan. Where is he?”

  “Gone. He’s never around anymore. I should have known better than to assume he’d skip his jog during the family reunion.”

  “Oh, so that was him I saw trotting down the driveway earlier? I thought it was you, Mitch,” Caroline said. “You boys always have looked so much alike—same dark hair and eyes. And, you’re both tall and lanky.”

  “I was going to run with him, but I’m not feeling one hundred percent.” Mitch rubbed his hand over his stomach. “I know I couldn’t keep up with him in this humidity.” Unlike in so many conversations I’d had today when I had no clue about who was being discussed, I actually knew Mitch’s cousin Dan. He and his wife, Felicity, had arrived yesterday and spent the night at our house. Almost everyone else, including Mitch’s parents, had driven in earlier in the day.

  “I knew we shouldn’t have left Aunt Christine’s potato salad in the sun so long,” I said, but Mitch waved his hand and said, “It’s nothing like that. Too much food, probably.”

  “Are you boys enjoying catching up with each other?” Caroline asked. Mitch said they were and Caroline turned toward me. “They got in more scrapes growing up. Have you heard about the time they hid on the roof all afternoon to avoid Summer?” Caroline asked, referring to Mitch’s younger sister.

  “That was the time you called the police when you couldn’t find them?” I was glad Nathan was too young to pick up any details of his dad’s misdeeds.

  “Amazing that I can laugh about it now, isn’t it, Mitch?” Caroline said.

  “It’s amazing I can even talk about it,” Mitch countered. “Besides one heck of a sunburn, I couldn’t sit down for about a week.”

  “Dan’s not nearly as much fun now,” Felicity said crossly. “Unless you’re discussing the new spin class or weightlifting, forget it. You might as well be speaking a foreign language to him.” With her brows lowered and jaw clenched, she reminded me of the dark thunderhead clouds I’d seen as a kid in the Texas panhandle.

  Actually, comparing her to a thunderhead was a bit incongruous, since she was petite and skinny. Correction, she wasn’t just thin, she was toned. There was barely an ounce of fat on her, except maybe in her cheekbones above her pert nose and pointed chin. With curly brown hair cropped short in a boyish style, she looked every inch the athlete she was. A fitness instructor at a gym in Montgomery, she taught Pilates, spinning, yoga, aerobics, and a scary-sounding class called Killer Boot Camp. Felicity continued, “Sorry he talked so much last night about his metabolism.”

  “Well, he is training for a triathlon,” Mitch said mildly.

  Felicity rolled her eyes. “I get that at work all day. Workouts and fitness are the last things I want to talk about at home.”

  A squeaky voice called out, “Felicity! Felicity! Watch me!” Livvy, in her pink ruffled swimsuit, waved frantically at us from the wading pool.

  I said, “Sorry she’s been pestering you so much.” Five-year-old Livvy had taken an instant liking to Felicity. Felicity had hardly stepped through our front door before Livvy was dragging her by the hand down the hall to show off her stuffed animals. She’d practically been Felicity’s shadow all day. I was glad Livvy’s shyness had vanished, but I didn’t want her driving Felicity crazy, either.

  Mitch and his mom continued up the porch steps and into the house while Felicity and I stopped by a group of birch trees to watch Livvy. She dog-paddled around the tiny pool, then checked our reaction. “Great job,” Felicity shouted as she leaned against the tree trunk. One of Livvy’s cousins splashed into the pool and drew her attention away from us. Felicity said, “She’s not pestering me. Actually, it’s given me an excuse to get away from Jenny.”

  I was thankful that only one of Dan’s freshly divorced parents had been able to come to the reunion. His dad was somewhere in Indiana, running a weekend seminar for corporate managers. “If Jenny says the word green one more time, I’m going to scream,” Felicity continued. “Her whole save-the-earth thing is driving me crazy. I can’t believe she gave up a great job to start a ‘lifestyle cleansing’ business.”

  Jenny’s announcement that she’d quit her job as a CPA and started a business that helped companies and individuals become more ecologically friendly had caused a stir this morning. She’d even bypassed wearing the family reunion T-shirt because it wasn’t made with pesticide-free cotton and nontoxic dye. Felicity said, “I’ve always known she was weird. I mean, she actually likes jigsaw puzzles. That told me something right there. Anyway, she was raking in the dough. Why would she quit a job like that? This whole divorce thing has brought out—”

  The crack of a rifle shot split the air again. Felicity and I both flinched. She said, “How can you stand that?”

  That rifle shot had been even closer than the earlier one and it seemed to come from a different direction. The shots were usually far away, but that sound seemed to come from the direction of the neighborhood, not the woods. My heart jumped into high gear. “They’re not usually that close,” I said nervously, but the shot hadn’t seemed to spook anyone else. There were a few curious glances, but most people carried on with their conversations.

  Mitch’s dad stood up and shouted for attention. He was the complete antithesis of Mitch’s mom. His family reunion T-shirt was already rumpled and the hem hung crookedly over his faded cutoff denim shorts that trailed a few white strings. Beat-up boat shoes completed the look. His reflective sunglasses flashed in the sun as he rubbed his hands together in exaggerated anticipation and announced, “I think it’s time for the games to begin.” I went to set up the croquet game.

  Uncle Kenny jogged up, holding the croquet mallets like a bouquet. “Are you in the game, Ellie? Winner gets another piece of peach pie.”

  “Let us get it set up, first,” I said as I pushed a wicket in the ground.

  “Here.” Uncle Kenny took a few wickets from me. “I’ll help. You’ll be on my volleyball team later, right? Gwen’s still giving me a hard time about losing last year.”

  “Sure, Uncle Kenny. I’m not exactly a stellar player,” I warned. Winning was what it was all about for Uncle Kenny.

  “You can serve it over the net. We lost last year because of Vera’s net balls, but that won’t happen again. You just get it over the net and I’ll take care of the rest.”

  I positioned the last wicket and surveyed the setup. “I hope I don’t crumble under the pressure. Now for the badminton net.”

  Tradition held that games, croquet, badminton, horseshoes, and volleyball, were the order
of business until sundown. At least I didn’t have to worry about setting an agenda. The reunion pretty much ran itself. Everyone knew the schedule and I knew better than to try and change things. In fact, changing anything was the last thing I was interested in. Right now I was still so thrown by Abby’s news that I could barely get the net taut. Felicity helped me while she kept an eye on the gate, watching for Dan’s return, which is probably why she was the one who said, “I think that lady’s looking for you, Ellie.”

  I turned and saw my neighbor Dorthea hurrying in my direction, her bad hip frustrating her progress. I’d never seen her move so quickly and rushed to meet her. “Dorthea, what’s wrong? Here, sit down.” Under her floppy walking hat, her lined face was flushed to the color of her new cherry red convertible, and her gray hair was plastered to her forehead. She walked every day at a methodical pace and I’d never seen her this out of breath.

  She gripped my arm and pulled me toward the gate. “No time. You’ve got to come now. You and Mitch. Someone from your family reunion has been shot. I don’t know who, but he’s wearing the shirt you’re all wearing, so I came to get you. I saw it all as I came up that steep hill in the new area. He’d jogged past me just a few minutes before. I still can’t believe it. He was at the top. I heard the shot, he shuddered, then collapsed.”

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  Copyright © 2009 by Sara Rosett

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  ISBN: 978-0-7582-5761-1