by Maddy Hunter
Oh, God!
“Could it be a Cornish hen?” asked Jackie. “They look like they’d have bite-size organs.”
“Maybe it was a capon heart,” said Gladys.
Jackie looked confused. “What’s a capon?”
“A capon is your standard male chicken with one basic difference,” said Ernie. He scissored his fingers in the air. “He’s been castrated.”
Jackie clutched her throat and sucked in her breath. Uh-oh. I hoped she wasn’t having a flashback.
“How can they castrate a chicken?” asked Ethel. “I thought all chickens were female.”
Ernie rolled his eyes. “There’s girl chickens and boy chickens. The girls are called hens. The boys are called cocks. When there’s too many boys, Farmer Brown snips off their stones and—zap!—they can forget about knocking up Clucky Lucky anytime soon.”
Aha! A perfect example of the incredible strides the feminist movement had made in the poultry industry.
“I thought the boy chickens were called roosters,” said Gladys.
“Clucky Lucky was not a hen,” Jackie corrected Ernie. “He might have acted like a hen, but I think it’s obvious he was a cock…with gender-identification issues.”
“Would that make him a dyke?” asked Ira.
Gladys shook her head. “It makes him a capon.”
“You know what I think? I think you people are all talking bull,” wailed Ernie.
Why was this discussion sounding so familiar? I swallowed the half-chewed mush in my mouth and sat straight up in my chair, stricken.
“Tasted pretty bad, huh?” asked Ethel.
I shook my head. “It’s not that. I just realized I’ve had this conversation before. In Switzerland.” The topic had been bovines instead of fowl, but the level of confusion had been exactly the same. I studied the remaining food on my plate with apprehension.
“You want me to find pictures of the other stuff you got there so you know what you’re eating?” Ethel asked helpfully.
“That would be so sweet of you,” I said with relief. I snatched the water pitcher from the middle of the table, filled my glass, and chugalugged the whole thing in one gulp to get rid of the aftertaste in my mouth.
“I hope that’s well water,” said Ira. “Or spring water. Those are the only kinds of water you should ever drink. And never with ice.”
Sounded like advice Ponce de Leon might have given his men during their search for the mythical fountain of youth. Of course, ice hadn’t been an option back in the 1500s. Especially in Florida. But it seemed the Kuppelmans had discovered the elixir of youth that had eluded Ponce. I regarded their smooth, tanned complexions. Their taut flesh. Their full heads of hair. Their athletically trim bodies. The superior muscle definition beneath their matching jerseys. “Are you really ninety-two?” I asked Ira.
“Born April second, 1908. You do the math.”
“That fluffy casserole you got there,” Ethel said, referring to her book. “That’s tripe and onions.”
I scooped a portion of the casserole onto my fork for a better look. “What’s tripe? Some kind of fish?”
“It’s cow stomach,” said Gladys. “Or sheep. Or goat. They sell it at our corner market. Some people make handbags out of it.”
Not the Irish. They made casseroles. I dumped it off my fork and scooted it to a remote section of my plate.
“How come you don’t have any wrinkles?” Jackie marveled at the Kupplemans. “Most people who look as good as you do have had a ton of face-lifts.”
Ira gestured toward his plate. “Anyone who follows our diet can look just like we do. They won’t develop wrinkles. Ever.”
I guess my mom had actually been on to something when she’d told me to eat my vegetables. But was it worth living to the age of ninety-two, wrinkle-free, if I could never eat another potato chip or doughnut hole? I mean, what was the point?
“That concoction in the middle of your plate with the onions and mushrooms and carrots,” said Ethel. “That’s rabbit stew.”
Rabbit stew. Finally. Something both recognizable and tasty. I poised my fork over a mound of mushrooms, meat, and carrots only to have Jackie seize my hand.
“You can’t possibly eat that.”
“Not until you let go of my hand, I can’t.”
“How can you stoop so low?”
“Because I’m hungry!”
“That’s no excuse! You could be about to eat Flopsy, Mopsy, and Cotton-tail. How can you live with that on your conscience?”
I gave her a long, hard look. She couldn’t be your average, run-of-the-mill transsexual. Noooo. She had to be a vegetarian transsexual.
“Is that ‘the look’?” she cried. “Oh. My. God. You’re giving me ‘the look.’ Don’t deny it. I remember it quite vividly from when we were in New York together. Go ahead then.” She released my hand and crossed her arms over her chest, her lips puffed out in an exaggerated pout. “Eat the baby bunny. And to think that’s the mouth I used to kiss!”
Gladys did something with her face that might have been a failed attempt at a frown. Ira and Ernie exchanged curious glances. I smiled stiffly and kicked Jackie under the table.
“OW!”
“We played the theater circuit together on Broadway,” I explained. “And you know modern theater. It can be very avant-garde. One of the plays actually required us to kiss.”
“Cruibins,” said Ethel.
“You saw these two acting together on Broadway?” Gladys gasped in astonishment. “Was that the name of the play?”
“It’s the name of that gunk on her plate next to the rabbit stew. Says here it’s a mixture of carrots, onions, and pickled pigs’ trotters. What are trotters?”
Gladys’s complexion turned chalky. “Pigs’ feet.” She covered her mouth in horror. “You’re going to eat pigs’ feet?”
Pigs’ feet or Benjamin Bunny. Some choice.
“I got a lot of sympathy for pigs,” said Ethel, closing her book. “They’re the size of Sherman tanks, but they have to tiptoe around on these little tiny feet. They must develop some major foot problems. I’ve had foot problems all my life, and believe me, it’s no fun.”
Oh, my God! She was admitting to foot problems? This was perfect! Here was my opening. “What kind of foot problems do you have?” I asked in a voice that I hoped expressed concern and interest without sounding too eager.
“What problems don’t I have? You name it, I got it. Good thing I married a shoe salesman. Would have cost me a fortune for footwear otherwise.”
“You sell shoes?” Jackie perked up beside me, obviously more concerned with her own feet than pigs’ feet. “Do you happen to carry…large sizes?”
“So, Ethel,” I continued, cutting Jackie off, “what are you struggling with? Bunions? Calluses? Corns?”
“I got deformed bones in my feet. Not much I could do about it though. My podiatrist says deformities like mine are usually hereditary.”
My anticipation started to build. “So your relatives all have the same foot problems?”
“Only on my mother’s side of the family. The Quigley side. My father’s side never had so much as an ingrown toenail.”
“‘Quigley’ is Irish, isn’t it?” Gladys asked.
Ethel nodded. “It used to be O’Quigley, but when my great-grandfather arrived on Ellis Island, the O got lost somewhere in the paperwork.”
“Did your relatives emigrate during one of the potato famines?” I asked, growing more excited. I had only deformed feet and Ethel’s Irish heritage to go on, but I could smell a connection. Was it possible the O’Quigleys had been involved with the castle in some bygone era? I tried to suppress the trill of emotion in my voice. “Do you know if your relatives were originally from this area?”
Ethel threw me an annoyed look. “How the hell should I know? And why would I care? Haven’t you ever heard that proverb? ‘He who boasts of his descent is like the potato; the best part of him is underground.’ If you ask me, all that
genealogy stuff is a waste of time. What’s the sense? It’s all ancient history. What good’s it gonna do me to know I was related to some spud farmer in Ireland two hundred years ago? Is that gonna make me any richer? I don’t think so.”
This was the second time she’d expressed her apathy toward all things historical. Could her disinterest be genuine? Or was this a deliberate tactic to shift attention away from herself and her family?
“That’s the right attitude!” Ira tapped his fist on the edge of the table. “I said the same thing to Gladys, but she had an inkling there was royalty in her family’s past, so we had to spend thousands finding out who all her ancestors were. Let me tell you, there are some things better left buried, but Gladys had to know. Didn’t you, Gladys? Go ahead. Why don’t you tell your friends who you’re related to?”
Gladys’s eyes became daggers as she pivoted her head around to glare at her husband. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
Goose bumps crawled up my arms. Geez. What had she found out?
“I’m not even sure why she wanted to visit Ireland after—”
“So help me, Ira, if you say one more word, I’ll make the rest of your vacation a living hell!”
“I bet you’re related to Hitler,” said Ethel. “I wouldn’t tell anyone if I was related to Hitler.”
“I wouldn’t tell anyone if I was related to Jack the Ripper,” said Ernie.
“I wouldn’t tell anyone if I was related to Peewee Eck,” said Jackie.
A hushed silence ensued as all eyes trained on Jackie. Peewee Eck? Yeah. A real biggie in the annals of criminal history. “Peewee Eck?” I repeated.
“First baseman on my grade school Little League team,” Jackie explained. “We were playing for the city championship, and Peewee flubbed up and let a ball scoot right through his legs into right field. The other team scored on his error, and we ended up losing the game and the championship. Peewee was so despised, his family eventually had to move out of town. I think they had to go into the witness protection program or something.”
“You grew up in a real progressive town,” Ethel commented. “Co-ed Little League teams. Imagine. We never had anything like that in Brooklyn.”
I doubted they had anything like that where Jack grew up either, but why confuse the issue?
“That same exact play happened in the ’86 World Series!” Ernie enthused. “The ball rolled right through Bill Buckner’s legs, and the Mets ended up stealing the series from the Red Sox in seven. I bet that Eck kid was related to Buckner.” He puffed out his chest like a prideful pigeon. “I played a little ball before I got drafted. Batted lefty. Used to give the pitchers fits. What’d you bat?” he asked Jackie. “Righty or lefty?”
Jackie smiled with equal pride. “I was a switch-hitter actually. I could go either way.”
A definite precursor of things to come.
“All right!” Gladys sobbed in an agonized voice. “I can’t stand this any longer! The secrets. The guilt. I’ll tell you! But you have to promise that what I’m about to reveal will go no further than this table. Do all of you give your word of honor not to repeat anything I’m about to tell you?”
We all leaned back in our chairs, stunned by Gladys’s sudden turnaround. I guess this proved something I’d suspected for a long time: Some women would do anything to avoid a lengthy discussion about baseball. We nodded in agreement and hunkered low over the table to catch Gladys’s every word.
“Ira’s right,” she said in a confidential tone. “I never should have dug into my genealogy. I discovered I’m related to the most contemptible, the most vicious, the most brutal person ever to walk the face of the earth.”
“Oh, my Lord,” said Jackie. “You’re related to Joan Rivers?”
“Worse than that,” said Gladys. “I’m related to…Oliver Cromwell!”
Breath hissed through Jackie’s nostrils like air through a leaky valve. “That’s the son of a bitch who destroyed all the watchtowers and abbeys and churches with his son of a whore bastard troops…bnnrk ig athwart.”
Ethel tapped my arm. “What’s ‘bnnrk ig athwart’?”
“I had no idea the man was so ruthless,” Gladys continued, “or that his name was so cursed over here. I thought he might have captured a couple of villages and treated the people according to the rules of the Geneva Convention, but that wasn’t his style. He leveled everything! Did you see all those ruins today? He left nothing standing! He was a monster. A monster! And I’m related to him! Honestly, I wish I were dead.”
“You better not tell our driver about this or you might get your wish,” warned Ernie. “You heard him on the bus today. He’s got a real grudge against Cromwell. I wouldn’t wanna be in your shoes if he finds out you’re related to the guy.”
The backs of my knees went weak. Oh, this was nice. I’m surprised the castle’s brochure didn’t read, “Welcome to Ballybantry, an equal-opportunity hotel, where you’re as apt to be knocked off by a ghost with webbed feet as by a bus driver with a grudge.”
A sick feeling roiled in the pit of my stomach. I scratched a sudden itch at the back of my neck. I pushed my plate of half-nibbled food away from me. There was only one way to deal with a crisis of this magnitude. “Dessert, anyone?”
Chapter 9
The hotel had arranged for our tour group to be entertained by a troupe of Irish fiddlers and dancers in the dining room after supper, so while the furniture was being rearranged to provide some open space, I excused myself to check at the front desk to see if Etienne had returned.
“He picked up his key about ten minutes ago,” Liam informed me.
Thirty seconds later, I was standing in front of his door at the end of the hall.
“Missed you at dinner,” I said when he answered my knock. I did a visual scroll down the length of his legs. “Nice pants.”
He closed the door behind me and drew me into his arms, nuzzling my neck. “I thought you preferred me in a towel.”
“I’d prefer you in nothing at all,” I said, breathless and light-headed from being cocooned against him.
“That can be arranged.”
“When?”
“After I make one phone call.”
“How long will that take?”
“Far too long for what I have in mind for you this evening.” He lowered his hand to stroke my leg, found the slit in my dress, then glided his palm upward over my bare thigh to ride the curve of my hip. “Nice dress.” His lips lingered at my ear. His tongue made slow, teasing explorations of my lobe, arousing both a surge of desire and an irrational fear that my earring was about to become snack food. I never should have worn studs. Hoops would have been a better choice. They’re harder to swallow.
“I missed you today,” he rasped against my earlobe. “I had to hit three different towns before I found anything that resembled a men’s clothing store. I’m not sure how the natives tolerate having such limited access to goods and services.”
“L.L. Bean.” I stroked the back of his arm, holding him close. “They mail anywhere in the world, except maybe to some of the lesser known archipelagos in the South Pacific.”
Our bodies were fused together so perfectly that I could feel the rapid beat of his heart, the lean sinew of his body, the hard steel of his gun. Gun? The fact that he was packing heat inflamed me more, not to mention its opening up great opportunities for fantasy role-playing.
“I imagine your day was more exciting than mine,” he said as his mouth grazed the outer edge of my ear, causing my heart to pound, my knees to sag, my instep to tingle.
“It was pretty average,” I said in a breathless whisper.
“How average?”
I moistened my lips and rushed through the litany. “I got locked in the bus. Ashley had to be rushed to the hospital. Bernice thought the phone was going to explode. Ethel Minch has webbed feet. And Nana found another dead body in her room.”
He stiffened. His breath rattled in his throat. His voice grew strained. “Em
ily, darling?”
“Yes?”
“Are you suggesting that your grandmother’s finding a dead body in her hotel room is an average part of the day?”
“It seems to be an average part of my day.”
He held me away from him and searched my face, his eyes losing their fire to become darkly serious. “Who died?”
“The custodian. Archie. Nana found his body crumpled in the closet of her new room. There was no sign of foul play and no visible wounds, but he had a really terrified look on his face. His death looks just like Rita’s, except I didn’t see any evidence of bloody footprints anywhere around him.”