“Is something wrong? Your eggs are getting cold,’’ Carlos said.
“It looks great.’’ I took a couple of bites, pushed the food around my plate. “I guess I’m not as hungry as I thought I was. Maybe I ate too much garbanzo bean soup last night.’’
“Not to mention more than your share of flan.’’
Outside the window, a cloud passed over the sun. The kitchen fell into shadow. What was wrong with me? I had a good man, who’d just cooked my Sunday morning breakfast. So why was I obsessing about a murdered woman? Why was I feeling trapped?
“Look at the time,’’ I said, glancing at the kitchen clock. “I’ve got to get home to change into church clothes.’’
“So soon? You’ve barely eaten a thing.’’
I scooped the eggs onto my toast and made a sandwich. “I’ll finish it on the drive home.’’
“We’ve got to talk, Mace.’’
Thankfully, his cell phone rang at that moment, saving me from having to explain my mood change. How could I do that when I didn’t understand it myself? He grabbed his phone from the kitchen counter and checked the caller ID.
“I should take this.’’
I’ll call you. I mouthed the words, hand-signaling a phone to my ear.
He answered his cell, and then burst into rapid-fire Spanish. I couldn’t comprendo a word. Even as he spoke to the caller, he held up a wait-a-minute finger to me. His puzzled frown followed me as I walked toward the door.
_____
The music minister at Mama’s church hit the first chords on his portable piano. “What a Friend We Have in Jesus.’’ I hoped that was true, because I felt a bit short on the friend front that morning. I was playing games with a man who loved me. I’d already insulted both Mama and Sal. And I’d slipped up and called the pastor by the wrong name.
Even the little boy in the pew beside me pinched me on the thigh when I slid in and gave his head a friendly pat. It wasn’t shaping up as my best Sunday morning ever.
We were still standing outside on the sidewalk before services at Abundant Forgiveness Love & Charity Chapel when Mama started sniping about my fashion missteps.
“Is that the only clean blouse you had in your closet, Mace?’’ She picked some lint off my wrinkled collar. “You know what I always say about black fabric: It picks up everything but men and money. Not to mention, it’s more appropriate for a funeral than for Sunday worship.’’
I took in her watermelon-colored pantsuit, accessorized with dangly earrings and bangle bracelets in the same shade of reddish-pink as her scarf. And Mama was calling me out on my wardrobe choices? I lifted her fingers off my collar.
“My blouse is navy blue.’’
“Uh-huh.’’ Mama dug around in her purse, and then held out her tube of Apricot Ice. “Here you go, honey. This won’t make up for that nest of knots in your hair … did you even brush it this morning? But it will perk up your complexion a bit. I wish you’d listen to me when I tell you that those drab shades aren’t your best choice. You should be wearing the vibrant colors from Color Me Gorgeous’s winter palette. ’’
“My complexion is fine.’’ I started to run a hand through my hair. When my fingers snagged in snarls, I realized she was right. “Speaking of color, you’ve got Apricot Ice smeared all over your incisors. I guess your eyes aren’t what they used to be.’’
She whipped out her mirrored compact; rubbed a finger over her teeth. “My eyes are fine, sweetheart. They’re sure good enough to see you got up on the wrong side of the bed today.’’
Sal draped a massive, bear-sized paw over each of our shoulders. I squirmed to get away, but he just drew Mama and me closer. “What’s the problem with my two favorite girls? I want youse two to stop all this fighting. How’s about a kiss to make up?’’
“Jeez, Sal, you smell like a humidor.’’ I waved a hand in front of my nose. “Didn’t you tell Mama you were giving up cigars?’’
His smile faltered, and his grip loosened on my shoulder. He flashed a guilty look at Mama, who was now regarding him through narrowed eyes. Good. Once they got going at each other, I was off the hook. As the minister approached to bid us hello, I had a momentary stab of conscience over stirring up trouble. I think I was breaking that commandment to honor thy father and mother. Or, in my case, thy mother and fourth stepfather. And there we were, right outside God’s house—even if it was a storefront in a strip mall next to the Pork Pit barbecue joint.
“Good morning, Mace.’’ The minister took my hand. “What a pleasure to see you after such a long time.’’
“It hasn’t been all that long, Reverend Idella.’’
Sal smirked. Mama poked me in the side.
“It’s Delilah, dear.’’ She gave my fingers a gentle squeeze before she moved on to greet the next, likely more faithful, member of her flock.
Now, the hymns had been sung. Next to me, the pinching kid was punching his little brother. The Rev. Delilah was preaching her sermon. She’d chosen to focus on the murdered librarian, since that was all anybody in town was talking about.
“I’ve heard, like all of you have, about how that poor girl was dressed. Don’t gossip about her; don’t be quick to judge. Remember what Jesus said: ‘He that is without sin among you, let him cast the first stone …’ ’’
She counseled the congregation not to fear the evil on the loose in Himmarshee that would drive a person to murder: “ ‘Don’t let your heart be troubled,’ ’’ she said, quoting from the Book of John. “You believe in God …’’
But even if God is watching over us, that’s no reason to be stupid, Delilah warned. “If you see something that doesn’t seem right, something that makes you suspicious, let the police know. We need to pull together as a community and make sure the person who committed this sin is not free to kill again.’’
Amen to that.
When the service ended, the worshippers gathered for food and fellowship in a second storefront the church had taken over next door. The little chapel was growing. After that trouble with Delilah’s ex-husband, who had been the previous minister, she was proving to be a popular attraction. At first, crowds came to the church solely because of the scandal, not to mention the murder. But memories fade. Now the congregation was one-hundred percent behind Delilah, and the female perspective she brought to the pulpit.
The tables nearly sagged with plates of goodies. There was a country ham, with flaky biscuits for mini sandwiches. Cold side dishes, prepared with copious amounts of mayonnaise, included coleslaw, macaroni, and potato salad. Pies and layer cakes competed for space with homemade candy, like pecan divinity and chocolate-marshmallow fudge. The members of Abundant Forgiveness definitely took their abundance seriously. Nobody had a hope of counting calories here.
Loading up my plate, I saw D’Vora, from the beauty parlor, alone against the wall. She’d foregone any food at all, watching the crowd as she sipped a soft drink from a plastic bottle. I grabbed the chair next to hers.
“Fancy meeting you here,’’ I said.
She nodded hello, giving me a forced smile. So, even D’Vora was mad at me?
“Was it something I said?’’
“Sorry, Mace.’’ She balanced the plastic bottle on the seat between her knees. “I’m not myself this morning.’’
“Late night?’’
She shook her head.
“Trouble with Darryl?’’
“No more than usual.’’
Sal wandered up. “Why do gorgeous girls always gather together? Youse two are like pretty bluebirds in a garden.’’
I think I must have preened a little, but D’Vora just stared at her soda bottle.
“She’s not herself this morning,’’ I explained to Sal.
“Probably the murder.’’ He took a cigar from his top pocket, caressed it like a precious jewel, and put it back. “That’s got everybody on edge. It’s a hell of a thing. People are trying to make sense of it, and having trouble doing it. What do you suppose h
appened to her, Mace?’’
“Beats me. It’s too strange to even contemplate.’’
When Sal began talking about the murder, D’Vora had shifted her focus to the nutritional information on the soft drink’s paper label. She picked at the paper until the glue gave, and then peeled off the label in tiny strips. She was as intent on the task as a heart surgeon performing a bypass.
My eyes met Sal’s over D’Vora’s head, and I nodded slightly toward her. He shrugged a little, perhaps a sign he’d also noticed that the normally gossipy beautician was strangely uninterested.
The big man took a seat on D’Vora’s other side, lowering his body gingerly into one of the flimsy folding chairs. His voice, usually a Bronx blare, was surprisingly soft and gentle. “Sweetheart, is there something you want to talk about?”
He lifted her chin. Was Sal looking for evidence on her face that Darryl might have hit her? We all knew he liked his beer, hated work, and was as immature as a junior high school boy, but I’d never heard the slightest hint he was abusive.
She smiled at Sal, and shook her head. “Nothing’s wrong, y’all. I’m just not feeling great this morning.’’
Uh-oh. Morning sickness? A bawling infant was the last thing D’Vora and the chronically unemployed Darryl needed in that crowded trailer with those three Rottweiler dogs.
“D’Vora, you’re not …” I put my hands over my own belly.
“Lord, no! I’m already taking care of one baby who refuses to grow up.’’
“You’re sure you’re okay?’’ Sal aimed his interrogator eyes at her. She nodded, her gaze drifting back to the label she was shredding.
“I hope you’re feeling better in time for Kenny’s big party. It’s gonna be a blast,’’ he said. “Are you taking Darryl?’’
The plastic bottle tumbled off D’Vora’s lap, bouncing on the tiled floor. The last few swallows of the drink spayed out all over my dressiest flip-flops. My toes would be soda-sticky the rest of the morning.
“Sorry, Mace,’’ she mumbled. She bent to retrieve the dropped bottle, and her church program slid from the chair to the floor. She was trying to pick up that, when her shoulder purse fell off her arm. Sal scooped up the bottle, and I handed her the program and her purse.
“What in the world is wrong with you, D’Vora?’’ I asked.
“I told you I’m fine!’’ Her tone was sharp. “Quit hounding me. If I had anything to say to you, don’t you think I would have said it?’’
Clutching her church program and purse to her chest, she stormed out the door.
twelve
“Mace, honey, close your mouth. You’re gonna catch flies.’’
I was staring slack-jawed out the church-front window. I’d called to D’Vora as she left, but she ignored me, which was becoming a pattern. She was already at the curb, hoisting herself into the passenger seat of Darryl’s big truck. Gunning the engine, he darted into traffic on State Road 70, causing a Hawaiian-shirted tourist in a rental vehicle to screech to a stop. Cars swerved. Horns honked. Darryl flicked a cigarette butt out the window, lifted a beer from the cup holder in the console, and made an illegal U-turn across a double yellow line.
Where was a cop when you needed one?
“Mace!’’
I turned. “I heard you the first time, Mama. Catch Flies. Close Mouth.’’
“See? I told you. No respect!’’ She spoke to one of her fellow church ladies, who tsked-tsked at me in motherly empathy. “We were trying to get your opinion on whether the soprano in the choir and the music minister would make a nice couple.’’
“I suppose so, Mama. Not that it’s any of my business.’’ I glanced out the window again. The truck was gone, and Darryl and D’Vora with it.
“She hasn’t been the same since her husband passed away, poor thing. But it’s been a year. I think it’s time, and Phyllis agrees. Don’t you think so?’’
Both Mama and her pal Phyllis raised their brows, awaiting my answer.
“Everybody’s different, Mama. You can’t put a stopwatch on grief.’’ My focus shifted to the music minister, a middle-aged man with a slight paunch and a quick smile, despite an overbite. Someone standing next to him at the food table said something and his laugh boomed across the room.
“He’s got a heart as big as that laugh,’’ Mama said. “Too bad about those buck teeth, though. He could gnaw an ear of corn through a picket fence, bless his heart.’’
I watched as he scanned the rows of seats until he found the soprano. She studied an open hymn book in her lap. As if she could feel his gaze, she raised her face. Tucking a lock of hair behind an ear, she rewarded him with a radiant smile.
Darned if Mama wasn’t right about the two of them becoming a couple. She might have been unlucky in love, but Mama’s sense about other people’s relationships was uncanny. Of course, I’d rather chew glass than admit that to her.
She jabbed her elbow at her friend Phyllis. “Look at those two. I’m telling you, a musical romance is abloom.’’
She nodded, satisfied, and then turned her attention from the soprano to me. “Now, speaking of couples …”
Before I had a chance to escape, she said to Phyllis, “Have you heard Mace is engaged?’’
I showed her my ring. Her oohs and aahs brought a couple of other church members over to our little group.
“When’s the date?’’ one asked, picking up my hand to turn the ring this way and that.
“There’s no hurry,’’ I answered, extracting myself from her grasp.
“Oh, yes there is,’’ said another woman, as she too grabbed at my hand. “You’re not getting any younger.’’
“That’s certainly true,’’ Mama said.
Et tu?
“The bigger issue, though, is whether my daughter will stop this back-and-forth with her wonderful fiancé, Carlos. Now, y’all know Mace’s rocky history …”
“You do realize, Mama, I’m standing right here? Maybe your friends would like to hear a story about someone who drank too much pink wine and managed to misplace her own fancy ring?’’
She gave me a long look, and then continued. With an eager chorus chiming in, she narrated the highs and lows of my notorious love life. Mainly the lows.
“Remember when Mace spotted an ex-boyfriend on Cops, on TV? What was he in trouble for again, honey?’’
When I didn’t answer, one of the church ladies chimed in. “Wasn’t that the mo-ron who robbed the Booze ’n’ Breeze, only to have his old truck break down when he pulled out of the drive-thru to make his getaway?’’
“Yep,’’ another of the women said. “The sheriff’s deputies caught him when he ran off and jumped in a canal. Mo-ron forgot he couldn’t swim. And all of it caught by the TV camera, too.’’
I tuned out, and began to think about what Mama said about me going back and forth with Carlos. There was more truth in her accusation than I wanted to admit. What was my problem, anyway? With my thumb, I spun the engagement ring on my finger. I still wasn’t used to the heft of it on my hand, or the way the diamond on top poked into my pinky when the ring slipped off-center.
“How ’bout that rodeo cowboy?’’ I vaguely heard one of the women say. “Didn’t he leave Mace way back when for the homecoming queen?”
“He gambled something awful, I heard. Good-looking guy, though,’’ another one of Mama’s friends added.
“Honey, the bad ones always are.’’ Phyllis chuckled.
I was half-listening, half-watching the music minister as he took a seat next to the soprano and handed her a coffee. I’d learned long ago it wasn’t worth interjecting when Mama and her church pals got going on a topic, even if this one happened to center on me.
“Wasn’t there a little something she had going with Lawton Bramble’s boy, too?’’ someone asked.
“That was the awful year we did the horseback ride on the Florida Cracker Trail. Even Carlos had to understand Mace wasn’t in her right mind when she started messing a
round with Trey Bramble. That’s what happens when somebody’s trying to kill you.’’
“Rosalee, you mean trying to kill you, right?’’ one of the women said.
“Well, both of us, the way it turned out.’’
“Awful sad about what happened to Lawton, though.’’ All the women nodded at the redhead who spoke. “Just proves you can be as rich as Croesus in cattle and still wind up dead, face first in a vat of cow-hunter chili.’’
Their momentary silence was broken when Phyllis gasped, her eyes as wide as collection plates: “Speaking of murder, what if one of Mace’s exes had something to do with that poor girl at the dump?’’
“Don’t be ridiculous!’’ Mama slapped Phyllis’s arm. “None of my daughter’s loser boyfriends ever committed anything more than petty crimes. Plus, now she’s engaged to a police detective, one of the good guys.’’
A newcomer to the conversation turned my hand to peer at my ring. I feared a stress fracture at the wrist from the repetitive motion.
“Murder is a nasty business, y’all.’’ Mama clucked her tongue. “Now, about Mace’s love life …”
Someone interrupted her, drawing talk back to the deadly fate of the unlucky Camilla. A gruesome homicide with sexual overtones would always trump rocky romance. Mama realized she’d lost her audience.
She hooked an elbow through mine and pulled me aside. “Honey,
I just want to make sure you’re not going to jack around that man of yours again. He won’t take it another time.’’
I sighed. “Carlos is the one, Mama. I’m certain.’’ I held up my hand. “I’ve got the ring to prove it. It’s settled.’’
The engagement ring really was lovely. Not so the skin around my wrist, which was starting to redden from all the church ladies tugging at my hand.
Mama looked dubious. She eyed the assembled crowd, stopping when she located a knot of church folk gathered by the coffeepot. “Maybe you should have a backup in case things go wrong. A Plan B Man.’’
Mama Gets Trashed (A Mace Bauer Mystery) Page 6