by Molly Macrae
“I’m glad you think so. I brought that.”
“I know. I recognized Ivy’s bowl.” He smiled and took a helping. “Why the skirt?”
“Why not?” That was probably too quick, too snippy. I glanced along the table. Thea was too far ahead and I couldn’t be sure I’d hit her if I winged a roll at her. Joe had on a pair of jeans less faded than usual and a dark blue sweater. Probably his evening wear.
“No reason,” he said. “You look nice.”
“Thanks.”
I passed my salad by, figuring I’d be taking most of it home as leftovers and eating it for lunch for the next five days. I passed the others by, too, opting for a few pieces of julienned red bell pepper, a baby carrot, and a broccoli floret from a vegetable tray. Joe looked at the veggies and shrugged, but when we came to a dish of lasagna in a pretty red baking dish and I reached for the serving spoon, he shook his head.
“Why not?” That came out louder and more irritated than I’d meant, considering I was feeling more kindly toward him, but I was feeling even more kindly toward the looks of that lasagna.
“Shh,” he said. “Keep moving. Here.” He put a scoop of another pasta dish with tomato sauce and cheese on my plate.
“This stuff looks like—”
“But the flavor is amazing and Shirley’s lasagna always has too much sugar in it.”
“Sugar?”
“Try not to think about it. Do you like green beans? The blue bowl in the middle there. Superb. And the baked beans in the brown bean pot. Made with molasses. Wonderful dark brown flavor. Not the ones in the slow cooker, though.”
“Why not?”
“Canned.”
“What did you bring?”
“The stuff in the yellow bowl,” he said. “I’m a little worried no one will try it.” He caught my look. “It is good, though. And it has a name. I’m just not sure of my pronunciation.”
I browsed surely and quickly to the accompaniment of Joe’s low-volume commentary, taking dibs and dabs and staying mindful of the lines stretching behind us. When we reached the dessert table, we’d ended up with no fried chicken (no matter what the source, all of it always too greasy—according to Joe) and none of the scalloped potatoes (canned milk, fake cheese), but we’d each scored a small wedge of roasted asparagus quiche made by John (asparagus roasted just to the point of crispy tips, extra sharp cheddar—five stars from Potluck Juror Joe).
“What do you recommend for dessert?” I asked, noting the presence of not one, but two of Mel’s coconut cream pies.
“I’m not really a dessert guy.” He surveyed the selection anyway. “Mercy’s brownies always disappear fast.” He pointed to a plate of light brown squares.
“Gah. Oh, sorry.” I looked around guiltily.
“Gesundheit,” he said.
“But what about that?” I pointed to the few slices that were left of a single round dark chocolate layer.
“No idea. I’ve never seen that one before.” He sounded…what? Annoyed? Offended?
Judging from the cross section, it was dense, moist, and covered with a dark, dark chocolate ganache…mmm.
“Never mind,” I said, server already in hand. “I’ll be your guinea pig and give you a review later.”
We took our plates over to the table. He seemed to assume he was part of Ardis’ seating scheme. I assumed he was right, and, sure enough, he greeted the others who were already back and eating, and Ardis, who’d just taken a bite from a chicken leg that looked crispy and not especially greasy, pointed with it toward the place opposite mine. Before I’d moved from beside Ardis, he’d threaded between the tables, put his plate down, and threaded back out.
“Why were you looking for—” I started to ask.
He interrupted. “Tea?”
“Sure, thanks.”
I squeezed past Ardis, who, besides the chicken, had a nice portion of my spinach salad on her plate. I stopped beside Thea—beside Thea who had a large slice of coconut cream pie on her dessert plate. The low growl I heard might have come from my own throat. Thea didn’t notice the growl, though. She was communing with a helping of cheese grits. Joe had had reservations about those cheese grits, but Thea made them look worth trying another time. I was about to subtly catch her attention by kicking her chair, when Debbie waved her fork and caught mine.
“I was looking for you,” she said.
That phrase again. “You, too?”
“Um.” Debbie looked at Ardis, then Mel, then Thea.
Thea looked at me over her shoulder. “Why so jumpy?”
“Hang on a sec.” I finished my squeeze past her and Ernestine, put my plate down at my place, and squeezed back up to the head of the table so I could see all of them. “Okay, sorry, but I’ve heard something like that from three different people tonight and so far not one of them has told me why they were looking for me.”
“She’s paranoid in pink,” Mel said.
“It’s a lovely shade,” said Ardis. “And she looks very pretty in it.”
But I suddenly felt very exposed standing there. More people were sitting and most of them were tucking into their suppers, but I was inviting a few curious looks. That was only natural, I knew, because I still had plenty of the “she’s not from around here” sticking to me. But that didn’t mean I had to like it. At least I didn’t see the Spiveys watching me—although now that I’d thought of that, not knowing where they were made me nervous, too.
“Mel’s right,” I said and started back around toward my seat.
“Wait, Kath,” Debbie said. “I only wanted to tell you that we decided to reschedule the dye workshop. Ardis suggested we do it at the Cat, though, to save travel time. I’ve still got dyes mixed and ready and I can bring them in, no problem.”
If I knew Ardis, she also hoped the change in venue would separate the pleasant activity from its association with that tragic morning.
“We can each dye an extra skein and give it to Bonny,” Ernestine said. “Sort of in memory of Shannon. We thought she’d like that.”
“Isn’t that a nice idea?” asked Ardis.
“It is,” I said, moving back toward my seat again. There went my theory of separating the dyeing from the dying, though. And after that homophonic thought, maybe I should steer us back toward using the original term of “hand painting” instead of dyeing. “Hand painting,” I said, giving the substitution a boost. “Great idea. Looking forward to it. Let me know when you choose a date.”
“Tomorrow morning,” Debbie said.
As much as I wanted the safety of sinking out of sight into my seat, that stopped me in my tracks again, so soon? evidently clear on my face.
“Plus,” Mel said.
“Plus?”
“It’s a perfect cover story,” Ardis whispered, “for all of us getting together so we can report to you and compare notes.”
I looked at them sitting together there, right then, and felt I must be missing something. My open and readable face was open for misinterpretation, too, though, because Ardis and Mel both scanned it, appeared satisfied, and nodded.
“I told you she’d get it,” Ardis said. “She’s quick and crafty as Ivy ever was. Kath, we’re calling it the Double Blind.”
“Sounds good,” I said, completely lost. I crouched over the table, going for conspiratorial while at the same time lowering my profile and hoping to be less conspicuous among the now mostly seated diners. “Tell you what, though. Run through the gist of it so we’re sure everyone is on the same, um, is using the same dye lot.”
“Good use of jargon, hon,” Ardis, murmured, patting my arm appreciatively. “It adds real luster to our cover story.” She looked around to see who else might be listening. The diners beyond my place and Joe’s were laughing at something from their end of the table. “Pssst, can all of you hear me if I keep my voice this low?” Debbie, Mel, and John nodded on one side of the table, Ernestine and Thea on the other.
“Wait for Joe,” Mel said.
&nbs
p; “If we always waited for Joe, we might as well be waiting for…”
“Godot?” It was Joe’s voice behind me. “He probably isn’t such a bad guy, Ardis.”
“Good. Now, sit down,” Ardis said. “I’m laying out a plan.”
“Hmm. Well, first I have a message for Kath from some woman who saw us talking in the chow line. She seemed kind of grumpy. She wanted to know where you’re sitting.”
I resisted the urge to straighten up and look around for a grumpy woman. Instead, I groaned.
“I didn’t tell her anything,” he said. “But she said that if I saw you again I should tell you she’s looking for you.”
I resisted the urge to groan again. Instead, staying in my semicrouch, I squeezed back to my seat. He squeezed in along the other side of the table.
“Who was she?” Mel asked over her shoulder as he passed behind her.
He shrugged. “No idea. She didn’t say please, though, so I didn’t feel obliged to ask her name.” An interesting set of scruples Joe Dunbar the sometime burglar had.
“What did she look like?” I asked.
“Here’s your tea.” He handed me a sweaty glass. “Late twenties, brown hair.” He put his own glass of tea down and indicated the length of hair with a hand at his chin. “Didn’t strike me as the outdoorsy type. Especially the hair.”
It sounded like Carolyn Proffitt. That didn’t bode well.
Joe sat down and fussily arranged his tea glass, utensils, dinner plate, and a dessert plate he’d also come back with. When he finished, our place settings, except for the raw veggies on my plate and the deviled egg on his, were mirror images, right down to the slice of dark, dark, delicious-looking chocolate torte.
“I thought you weren’t a dessert guy.”
“This is primary research,” he said.
“Pfft.”
“If I’d asked, would you have given me a bite of yours?”
“No.”
He shrugged.
“Psst,” came from Ardis at the head of the table. “Let me finish so we can put this in motion. Joe, Kath had a brilliant idea. We’re calling it the Triple Blind.”
“I thought it was the Double Blind,” I whispered back.
“I’ve added something else. It’ll produce better results and faster.”
Why was this beginning to sound ill-advised?
“It’ll be more exciting, too,” she said.
That could be why. Still, none of the others looked apprehensive at the idea of adding excitement to the evening, so maybe I was listening too closely to the paranoid-in-pink side of myself.
“We’ll think of it in terms of dyeing,” Ardis said.
I had a nanosecond of homophone trouble again but shook if off.
“Say we have two skeins of wool, both a subtle, hush-hush gray. One skein represents tonight, when we gather information. The other represents tomorrow, when we analyze it. But—this is the clever part—we overdye the hush-hush gray skeins with more intense colors. We disguise our purpose. Tonight we’re convivial community members, chatting and laughing; tomorrow we’re artisans being inspired and creative. Are you with me so far?”
“Yes, and your food is getting cold,” said Mel. “Mine is almost gone because I’ve been eating. Nutshell the rest or you won’t get seconds and I know you want some of the pie Thea and Ernestine carried in for me.”
I was glad I hadn’t kicked Thea’s chair.
“Right, then. Here’s the new twist,” Ardis said. “Just like you can’t count on always getting the exact color you want when you use natural dyes, we can’t count on hearing the information we want this evening if we just depend on the natural flow of conversations. I, for one, don’t want to hear about Evangeline Lavender’s hammertoe. So we don’t depend on the natural flow. We do something better. We start the conversations we want to hear. We talk and laugh and reminisce—about the river and Will and Shannon. We are old friends remembering better times. Other people will overhear us and they’ll start remembering and talking and the talk will flow to the next table and the next and, with any luck, information will be ripe for the overhearing. We will be the mordant in the dye bath, ensuring better results.” She had trouble keeping her voice down with that last rallying statement.
“Ardis?”
“Yes, Kath?”
“If we’re all sitting here, talking amongst ourselves, what conversations will we be overhearing?”
“And that, friends, is why Kath is our able leader,” Ardis said. “Here’s the important part I left out. When people start going for seconds, we spread out. We sit at other tables, with other people, looking entirely innocent and keeping our eyes and ears open.”
“This is all your idea?” Joe whispered across to me.
“Apparently.”
“And then…” Ardis went on.
“I thought you were finished,” Joe whispered again.
“Apparently not.”
“…we meet at the Cat tomorrow at ten…”
“Nine would be better,” Debbie said. “It’ll give us more time.”
Sunday was Ardis’ morning for sleeping in. A look of pain came and went from her face. “We meet at the Cat at nine, reports in hand. Any questions?”
“You’re including me in this?” John asked.
“Yes. Ivy trusted you.”
“Thank you. Although I’m not entirely sure what we should be listening for when we spread out among the tables.”
“Kath will bring you up to speed,” Ardis said.
John nodded and looked at me. Joe was looking at me, too.
“Why don’t we get the talk and reminiscence going first,” I said.
“Absolutely right.” Ardis turned to Thea and turned up her volume. “Do you remember the time that Will…”
John took his cue and told Ernestine about running into Shannon at the post office not two weeks earlier and how pleased he was when she remembered him. Debbie and Mel turned so the people at the next table could hear them laughing over some shared memory. Joe continued looking at me. I’d finished my dinner while Ardis talked. Now I took a bite of the chocolate torte. It was superb.
“Why do you call this plan the Triple Blind?” Joe asked.
“You’ll have to ask Ardis. She knows more about the wily machinations of my brain than I do. You could call that stuff you brought in the yellow bowl the Triple Blind, though. It’s just about as mysterious. What’s in it?”
“Did you like it?”
“Maybe not as much as this cake, but yeah. It was great with the humus and the flatbread.”
“It’s in a different category than the cake,” he said, sounding put out by my comparison.
“Right. You’re right, and it was really good. In fact, if you’re willing to share, I’d like the recipe, whatever it’s called.”
“Basically, mashed squash,” he said. “Or maybe squashed squash. Anyway, it’s zucchini and a lot of garlic, some mint, lemon. Simple.” He relaxed and started eating his own piece of the torte, looking it over bite by bite, no doubt storing his assessment in a mental file labeled Potluck-slash-Dessert-slash-Chocolate.
He and I weren’t contributing to Ardis’ mordant, though, so I cast around for something I could say that might spark interest in surrounding ears. The trouble was I hadn’t known Will or Shannon and hadn’t ever spent much time on the river. So no memories to dredge up. What to do, what to…ah. I could ask questions.
“So, Joe, did you ever find out who Otterbank is?”
Joe choked on the last bite of his torte.
Chapter 25
John Berry gave Joe a few pounds on the back. That did the trick for Joe, but it was the beginning of the downward slide of the evening. While we’d been laying our plans and starting them in motion, someone else had arrived at the potluck, causing a stir and the kind of rolling wave Ardis had pictured our happy chat and reminiscences creating. No one had expected Bonny, so recently and tragically bereaved, to appear at this, the social and
entertainment highlight of the year. Surprise and excitement didn’t begin to cover it.
She looked amazingly normal—makeup, hair, stylish pantsuit. The makeup didn’t hide her red eyes, though. She reached our table just as John finished pounding Joe, as Joe was avoiding my eye, and just as one of those spontaneous, communal silences occurred—into which Debbie tripped.
“Yeah, I could’ve fallen for Will,” Debbie’s sweet, clear voice said for the whole room to hear, “but he was so in love with Shannon.”
Mel saw Bonny before Debbie did. Mel is a good friend. She tried to get up and out of her chair and around Debbie’s chair fast enough to deflect Bonny. But the woman sitting behind Debbie scooted her chair back at the wrong moment, blocking Mel. The communal silence continued, only now it was also an uncomfortable silence. And whereas Debbie had tripped into it, Bonny barged headlong.
“Don’t you dare talk about my daughter in the same breath as that murdering son of a—”
“My dear—” John started to get up.
“And don’t you start, John Berry.” Bonny rounded on him. “You and your brother didn’t have any more use for Will Embree than I did, and don’t pretend you ever did. This one, though”—she jabbed a finger at Debbie—“is spreading despicable lies. My girl was a good girl and she was going to marry a good man.”
She faltered then, seeming to realize, suddenly, that she didn’t have just an audience; she had the whole audience. She looked unsure, vulnerable, and I hoped she would stop or just slip away. Debbie had made herself small and sat staring at the table, biting her lip. Someone near the doors coughed. One chair scraped back—Ardis. She watched Bonny closely but didn’t move to interfere.
Then Bonny sucked in a breath. She’d made up her mind and she set her jaw and she plowed forward.
“Shannon was engaged to Eric,” she said, her voice choked. “Did you know that? Did any of you know that?”
There was a murmur down the table to my right and movement, and Evangeline appeared. Ernestine uttered a small “Oh my” and I wondered whether she was worried or hoping that Evangeline carried a pitcher of iced tea. Evangeline went to the microphone, though. It was a good move on her part. If she could draw the audience’s attention, maybe someone—Ardis—could ease Bonny away.