by Molly Macrae
The gym’s double doors put us at one end of the room. Rows of tables covered in paper tablecloths stretched to the right. I joined the people bearing their hot and cold offerings to four more tables along the wall to the left. The Spivey twins met me there. They wore capris and matching polyester blouson tops in virtually the same shade of pink as my blouse. I shuddered.
“Green salad,” Mercy said. It wasn’t an enthusiastic greeting, but it was accurate and brief, so I smiled. She was easy to identify this evening. She’d dosed herself with an extra dash of cologne for the occasion. Up close, the extra dash wrestled with the smell of good cooking. Fortunately for anyone standing within nose-shot of Mercy, the aromas of chicken, beans, and hot rolls were muscular enough to come out on top.
Shirley smiled back at me and nudged Mercy’s shoulder with her own.
Mercy cleared her throat. “Yes. How wonderful. We certainly can’t have too many green salads.” She took the bowl from me and nestled it amongst five or six other bowls on the table.
“Is this your first?” Shirley asked, still smiling.
“Salad?” Not the first at the potluck, anyway. There were actually seven other bowls already on the table—all salads—all green. One or two of them, unless they had avocado or bacon bits lurking under their chopped iceberg, looked even less inspired than mine.
“Your first amp,” Shirley said. Mercy’s elbow repaid Shirley’s earlier shoulder nudge. “Annual meeting and potluck. AMP,” Shirley clarified on an intake of breath.
“Yes.”
“That’s nice,” Mercy said. She sounded less happy for me than she did smug, but maybe that was my jaded perception. “Oh, and I’m supposed to tell you that there’s someone who wants to talk to you.” That sounded less smug than it did ominous, but maybe that was the bared teeth in her smile.
“Who?” I stepped back for olfactory comfort. The two of them stepped closer.
“We’ll let you know when we catch up with you later,” Shirley said.
“When there aren’t so many people around,” said Mercy.
Where? I wondered. In a dark alley? Even meeting the twins in the middle of Main Street at high noon in full sun gave me the willies. Then I remembered that I still hadn’t found out who their confidential source was or asked them if they’d seen or learned anything the day they followed Sylvia and Pen. Such as Sylvia and/or Pen stopping by the library. That meant I should try to be pleasant, or at least polite. But if they planned to catch me later, then pleasant or polite could happen later, too.
“Will you excuse me?” I turned my back without waiting for an answer and spotted Thea and Ernestine two tables down, at the dessert end of the spread. Ernestine still wore her Miss Marple tweeds from her afternoon of surveillance in the shop. Thea looked comfortable in jeans and a sweater. Both their ensembles were delightfully accessorized by the bakery boxes emblazoned with Mel’s logo that they held in their hands. Before I reached them, either to see if Thea had information for me or to give her the evil eye, I was waylaid by Granny’s old pirate beau, John Berry.
“Kath, you’re the picture of Ivy’s flower garden.”
I immediately felt appropriately dressed and less like snarling at Thea. John, being of that generation, of course wore a coat and tie.
“I’m sitting with Ardis at the far end of the middle row.” He pointed and I saw Ardis waving from under the basketball hoop at the other end of the gym. “Will you join us? She’s staked a claim to plenty of seats.”
“I’d love to.”
“Good, I’ll see you there. I’m on a mission to round up enough bodies to fill the rest of the seats. It’s our usual potluck ploy.”
“Ploy?”
He didn’t elaborate, but when I looked over my shoulder toward the twins, he followed my line of sight.
“Ah,” he said, and hurried off in the opposite direction.
In the gym’s far-left corner, beyond the dessert end of the food tables, stood something I hadn’t seen in years—a home-use slide screen. It looked wobbly and frail, its tripod base like the pronged cane of a doddering old man. A laptop sat on a cart in front of the screen, flickering black-and-white pictures on and off the screen. They might have been interesting, but between the warped screen and the gym lights, it was hard to tell. No one watched and no one seemed to care that no one did, so I didn’t, either.
The gym was filling up. People greeted and chatted and laughed. The individual scents of chicken, beans, and rolls disappeared into the delicious swirl of other hot dishes arriving. My skirt and blouse no longer looked out of place in the flow of color and gamut of dress. I smiled and nodded and shook hands on my way over to join Ardis, and I realized this was the largest indoor gathering of people I’d experienced in Blue Plum.
There were five rows of tables running the length of the gym, with chairs down both sides of each long row. That made the seats around the perimeter and the two or three closest to it prime real estate. Reaching the seats in the middle of the cozy arrangement was going to require squeezing sideways, careful juggling of plates and glasses of sweet tea, and a certain amount of apologizing.
I wanted to get over to Ardis before anyone else joined her. We’d stayed busy at the Cat for the rest of the afternoon and I hadn’t been able to ask her if she’d gotten Debbie to talk while I was at the library. Neither of them had given any clues one way or the other. Debbie hadn’t appeared to be either happily unburdened or more on edge than before and Ardis hadn’t acted as though she was suddenly in possession of key or revelatory facts. It was possible Ardis hadn’t had a chance to talk to Debbie at all.
As I rounded the outside edge of the tables and approached her, Ardis called, “Pocketbook? Hurry.”
Alarmed, I rushed over. “What is it? What do you need?”
“Put it on that empty chair,” she said, pointing four seats into the interior. “You don’t have to sit all the way down there when we eat, but I almost lost that one to the new preacher’s wife a minute ago and I’ve run out of clothes to shed.”
“Did you find out anything from Debbie?”
“That can wait. The chair won’t. Quick.”
I hopped to it, standing behind the valuable chair for good measure, not sure I’d be able to stand up to a preacher or a preacher’s wife with as much authority as Ardis had. Tables around us were filling fast. Only a few people were brave enough to ask Ardis if the other half dozen seats sitting empty between the two of us were taken. Thank goodness John arrived with Ernestine on his arm and Mel, Debbie, and Thea in tow. Ernestine moved down the table and settled into the chair next to me, and Thea into the one next to her. Debbie, Mel, and John took the seats opposite, with John across from Ernestine. Ardis remained standing at the head of the table. That left two chairs empty, the one directly across from me, draped with Ardis’ sweater, and another down at the end next to Thea.
“I think we have an extra seat here,” I called to Ardis. She still concentrated on scanning the crowd and didn’t answer, but when I suggested to John that he free up the chair by taking Ardis’ sweater from it, she heard and squawked. I sat down, duly chastised.
“Best not let anyone else get hold of that chair,” Ernestine said in my ear. “Ardis has this down to a science.”
“What’s going on?” I asked her. The joviality in the gym was increasing, though, and Ernestine gestured at her own ear. I obliged, leaning closer. “Why does Ardis need a science?”
Ernestine’s eyes glowed. “Factions,” she said. The word popped out of her mouth with such enthusiasm that Ardis, still standing at the end of the table, heard her and nodded approval.
John looked just as keyed up. “The last time I was in town for one of these,” he said, “Evangeline Lavender poured a pitcher of iced tea over Archie Sullivan’s head when he refused to back her side in the Cola War. I can’t believe I’ve allowed myself to miss out on all this since then.”
“It’s just as well, John,” Ernestine said. “You’re a feisty on
e.”
John slapped the table and hooted in reply.
“Hush,” Ernestine said.
“Cola War?” I looked from one to the other.
John pulled himself together, put a finger to his lips, and shook his head slightly.
“He shouldn’t have brought it up,” Ernestine said. “Bad feelings take so long to die down with some people.”
Clearly Granny had left something out, the times she told me about the Historical Trust Annual Meeting and Potluck. “Social and entertainment highlight of the year” was beginning to sound like a pale euphemism. I looked around with quickened interest, wondering what words “social” and “entertainment” stood for so politely but with increasingly obvious inadequacy.
Mel, sitting next to John, looked hypervigilant, probably because she’d spiked her short mustard-colored hair straight up for the occasion. But her posture added to the effect. She sat half turned in her seat, with her back toward John and with one ear listening to Debbie. The other ear, from the tilt of her head and the profile I could just see, was intent on a conversation going on at the next table over. I didn’t recognize the couple engaged in that conversation and they didn’t seem aware of Mel listening to them.
John took no offense at Mel’s turned back; he’d turned his toward her. He did a good imitation of a meerkat, sitting tall, neck stretched, eyes moving from person to person down the length of table beyond me. Counting? Looking for someone? Memorizing faces and names?
Ernestine leaned toward Thea to her left. Thea eyed the same conversation Mel was listening to and described the scene for Ernestine, but too quietly for me to hear more than a few words, one of which was either “dimension” or “dementia” and the others “demolition” and “ordnance.” Rethinking it, I hoped that last word was “ordinance” rather than “ordnance.”
Listening out of context in that direction was proving alarming, so I turned to greet the people sitting to my right—but found only backs and shoulders, as they were all looking toward the buffet tables. At first I thought they were poised for a signal so they could jump up and be among the first in the buffet lines. I was tempted to subliminally steer them toward my spinach salad by softly whistling “I’m Popeye the Sailor Man.” Then I leaned far enough to the side to see around the back next to me and got a clear view down the middle of the table to the floor show my tablemates were watching—Shirley and Mercy wrestling with a stand-up microphone.
It was hard to tell what the twins were trying to do to, for, or with the microphone—adjust the height was my best guess. It was also hard to tell if they had any competency for the task or any business touching the equipment, although it appeared to be dawning on the irritated woman waiting to use it that they had neither. When things looked darkest, Angela appeared. It would take longer to describe what she wore than it did for her to separate the twins from the microphone, twist and adjust unseen parts of the microphone’s pole, move it over in front of the waiting woman, and slide from view. She did all that without appearing to make eye contact or saying a word. Because of my tunnel vision down the table of transfixed guests, I couldn’t tell where she’d appeared from or returned to.
For the record, Angie wore black jeans and a tight, low-cut pink tank top. It was the shade of pink that was my new least favorite color.
The twins made one more effort to be helpful. Shirley stepped up to the microphone, turning it away from the waiting, now fuming woman. Shirley tapped it and spoke into it, presumably saying “Testing, testing.” No sound came. Mercy started toward it with a finger extended, no doubt aiming for a switch, but the fuming, no longer patient woman had had enough by then and shouldered Mercy aside. She flipped the switch herself and leaned into the microphone, which promptly deafened the room with wrenching feedback.
My hands instinctively clapped to my ears and I turned, shoulders drawn up, to see how Ardis and the others were coping. Ardis was still on her feet, standing at the head of our table, regarding the scene unperturbed—the picture of a strong woman, sure of her purpose and enjoying herself.
The feedback gained the audience’s attention the way no other amplified request would have. When we were all quiet, the impatient, now feedback-shy woman introduced herself from a safer, though not optimal distance.
“Good evening. I’m Evangeline Lavender.”
She didn’t look violent or excitable. I turned to Ernestine, my eyes asking the question, and pantomimed tipping a pitcher of iced tea.
Ernestine shook her head, as John had before, and mouthed, “Not here.”
I turned back and listened to Evangeline Lavender—slender, permed, bespectacled, and good with improvised weapons. Her pastel shirtwaist dress must belie her true nature. Or at least a hot temper. In fact, she looked like a weedy Margaret Thatcher.
“As president of the Blue Plum Historical Trust,” she said, “it is my pleasure to welcome you to the thirty-eighth annual annual, er, the annual, the thirty-eighth ann…, yes, the Blue Plum Historical Trust Annual Meeting and Potluck. It is our thirty-eighth.” She held several index cards in her hand and at that point decided it would be better to read straight from them.
“It is so nice to see so many familiar faces here tonight,” she read without looking up at any of the faces, “and also exciting to see faces new to our lovely and historic town. You can be sure I will be calling on you new faces in the very near future to sign you up and get you involved in our wonderful annual Blue Plum Preserves Heritage Festival, which we hold annually in July.” She did look up then, and straight down the middle table at me. “Is that Ivy McClellan’s granddaughter I see?”
“We told you it was,” came a Spivey voice from somewhere off to the side.
“Thank you, yes,” Evangeline muttered in their direction. “A friendly warning, then,” she called, shaking her finger at me and smiling to show how much fun we were having. “I know where you live and work, so brush off your volunteer hat. I’ve got something special in mind and I’m going to come looking for you.”
There was polite laughter. I laughed too and nodded. Then I moved into the lee of the back to my right and wondered what Evangeline was planning to talk me into and how easily I could keep myself out of it. Maybe her threat was good news, though. Maybe she was the one the Spiveys said was looking for me. Judging from her puny proportions and dependence on note cards for simple opening remarks, I felt confident I was a match for her, with or without a pitcher of iced tea.
After that, Evangeline reminded us that the business portion of the meeting would follow quickly on the heels of dinner, including an update on plans for Blue Plum Preserves from the festival chairman.
“We will keep the business meeting and any accompanying discussion brief,” Evangeline read from her note cards and to an undercurrent of skeptical snorts, “so that we may move on to welcome this evening’s very special guest, Grace Jenkins, who is going to tell us about her fascinating research into the local china-painting trends of the 1920s and thirties.” That was met with several delighted “ohs” and one soft groan. “And back by popular demand,” Evangeline plowed on, “is our ‘Stroll Down Memory Lane’ slide show, just beyond the dessert table there, so don’t forget to stroll over and spend some time in yesteryear.” This was met with more than several groans, punctuated by an “oh” that sounded more like an “oof,” as though a groaner had been corrected.
“Will you all please join me now,” Evangeline said, “in a prayer of thanks for the wonderful town in which we live and for the wonderful food and fellowship of which we are about to partake? After our blessing, please remember to form two lines at the buffet table and be mindful of those in line behind you. You may go back for seconds, but please don’t take your seconds along with your firsts. Let us pray.”
Some heads bowed, some eyes closed, and when Evangeline said, “Amen,” the audience surged forward.
Our group, under Ardis’ superlative leadership, ended up very near the front of the two buffet lines.
I wasn’t sure how we did that, considering the location of our seats—back end of the middle row of tables—but no one else in our group or anyone around us showed any surprise at all.
Chapter 24
“I’ve been looking for you.” A hand with long fingers appeared before my face. “By the way, you’ll want to take some of that in the yellow bowl next to the hummus.” The fingers indicated the dish in question before helping itself to a deviled egg from an adjacent platter. It was Joe Dunbar suddenly in the line across from me. He’d somehow ambled out of the crowd and made it to the front of the line behind Mel and John without my noticing. No complaints of line jumping rose from the line behind him, though, so I shrugged and took a dollop of the brownish, greenish mashed…
“What is this?”
“Here.” He reached over and redolloped my plate with a larger helping.
“Hey.”
Before I pulled my plate out of range, he added a helping of the hummus to it and pointed to a basket of small flatbreads. I started to ignore him, and them, to prove myself capable of making my own choices. Luckily I recognized the feeling of self-defeating perversity bubbling up within and ignored it instead. Those flatbreads—slightly puffed, beautifully mottled with darker brown, lightly brushed with oil—called to me and to the hummus on my plate. And to that other stuff Joe had talked me into, whatever it was. Despite fried chicken being the first and most prevalent aroma to cross paths with my nose that evening, I had the beginnings of a decent-looking Middle Eastern meal in my hands.
“I forgot,” I said, feeling more kindly toward his bossy dining instructions.
“Forgot what?” He moved forward, casting a critical eye on the acres of green salads ahead of us.
“That you told me you were an expert hunter-gatherer at these dos.”
“Honed through years of experience. You’ll want to avoid most of the salads,” he said, “except for the spinach there in the green lettuce-leaf bowl. It’s probably decent.”