Not knowing what else to do, I bent down and started picking out the few unbroken jars and lining them up on the floor. I looked up to see Paula staring down at me. She didn’t acknowledge me, just shook her head in disbelief and pushed her cart back up the aisle. She had to be thinking I was the biggest klutz she’d ever had the displeasure of meeting.
“Clean up in aisle six,” a booming voice said over the intercom.
The manager and two younger boys showed up almost instantly with mops and towels and other cleaning paraphernalia. The two teenage boys began picking out the larger shards of glass and placing them in a metal bucket. By their expressions, I could tell they were none too pleased with me. I knew they’d rather be hiding out in the back storeroom texting their girlfriends, or sneaking a smoke in the bathroom. The manager asked me if I was okay, but he seemed more angry than concerned about my welfare. I couldn’t blame him. I was a menace to society.
“That’s a very good price you have on the spaghetti sauce, Edward,” I said, inanely, after reading the nametag on his white canvas apron. I gestured toward my cart. “See? I’m buying six jars. I’d be more than happy to pay for all the jars I’ve broken, too, at the sale price of course. I apologize for the mess, but it was strictly an accident. I haven’t had long enough to grow accustomed to this cast.”
Edward, the store manager, was kind enough to not allow me to pay for the damage, even though he still acted upset with me. He told me to continue my shopping and to be more careful with my cast. The young men would clean up the glass and sauce and restack the few remaining unbroken jars. I apologized one last time and slinked off toward the paper goods section of the store. There I added two rolls of paper towels to my cart, so I could wipe as much sauce off my clothes as possible in the parking lot before getting into my new car. God knows I spilled enough coffee on my seats and floorboards without adding spaghetti sauce to the mix.
It was very embarrassing going through the checkout stand with red sauce dripping off my elbows and other assorted places on my body. Everybody stared at me while I pretended to read a People magazine I’d taken off the rack. At least I didn’t run into Paula again. Seeing her at the visitation tonight would be bad enough. Why couldn’t I get through just one full day without causing a catastrophe?
* * *
I walked into the kitchen with two plastic bags. One was full of used, sloppy paper towels. I’d asked for a spare bag when checking out at Pete’s Pantry. I had red stains all over my blue jeans, and scattered red blotches on my pale yellow t-shirt to complement the stains and multi-colored blotches that had been already on it. Wendy looked at me briefly and turned back toward the sink. “I don’t even want to know,” she said. “You look like something even a cat would be afraid to drag home.”
Stone came into the kitchen a few seconds later and I explained what happened at the grocery store to both him and Wendy. I didn’t actually mention seeing Paula Bankston. I just told them I’d accidentally upset a spaghetti sauce display, blaming the entire incident on the unfamiliar cast on my wrist.
Stone and Wendy couldn’t keep themselves from laughing out loud at my expense. I was glad they could find humor in my humiliation. I felt a bit betrayed by the two people I loved most in life.
Stone told me to go get some clean clothes on while he brought in the rest of the groceries, which I had crammed into every nook and cranny in my car. I’d be lucky if I didn’t have egg yolk stains on my floor mats.
Wendy immediately pulled out her cell phone to call Andy so she could amuse him with the story about my mishap at the store. I wondered if it was too late to put her up for adoption.
* * *
Wendy insisted on preparing dinner for everyone. She fixed spaghetti, salad, and garlic toast, with an upside-down pineapple cake for dessert. The spaghetti was just her way of rubbing salt in my wounds. While she was fixing the sauce, I was trying to get some of it out of my jeans and t-shirt. I used an entire bottle of Spray ‘n Wash. I ran the load of clothes through the wash cycle three times, just to be certain all the fresh stains were out, before I put them in the dryer. The clothes weren’t even worthy enough to donate to Goodwill, but I couldn’t bear to throw them away. They may have been barely more than rags, but they were the most comfortable rags I owned.
Stone set plates and silverware on the large oak table in the dining room, while Wendy dished up the spaghetti and meatballs. She has a great recipe for homemade meatballs that she learned from her grandmother on Chester’s side of the family. I’d always had a great relationship with my mother-in-law. She taught me a lot about running a household when I was a new bride many years ago. But she drew the line at trying to teach me to cook. She told me she’d have better luck teaching a raccoon to crochet. I’d been a tad bit insulted at the time, but, even then, I knew she had a valid point.
After dinner, Stone and Wendy worked in companionable silence cleaning up the kitchen. Wendy was a messy cook; there was more spaghetti sauce on the counter than had been on me when I returned from Pete’s Pantry. She could cook a bowl of oatmeal and use every pot and pan in the house. But as long as she cleaned up after herself, I wasn’t going to complain.
I relaxed in the parlor with my standard cup of coffee and the novel I’d removed from my nightstand. Once again I thought about how lucky I was to have found a man like Stone. Chester had been a wonderful husband and father, but Stone was my soul mate. He made me want to be a better person, and the perfect wife and partner. Of course, I’d once wanted to be an opera singer and failed miserably at that too.
Chapter 8
“How are you feeling this evening, Ms. Starr? How’s that wrist? I’m sorry to see you broke it in the fall,” Reverend Bob said as he came up to greet Stone, Wendy and me at the visitation that evening. He assumed it was the mishap at the church that had caused the fracture. I didn’t feel like elaborating and explaining the second fall that had succeeded it.
I pulled my cardigan tighter around my waist. It was a cool night, and I’d worn black slacks and a nice lavender top, and white ankle socks. I didn’t even consider one of my few dresses, afraid to risk wearing those five year-old, over-sized panty hose again. I’d have never wormed my way into them, anyway, with a cast on one arm. I’d have a run in them before I got them out of the plastic egg. Just finding an outfit in my closet I could wrangle into with the cast on was a big enough challenge as it was.
“I’m doing fine, and the wrist isn’t feeling too bad either,” I assured Reverend Bob. I shook his outstretched hand without making eye contact and kept moving on into the sanctuary. I was embarrassed beyond belief about the debacle during his church sermon Sunday morning. I’d been going to ask Reverend Bob if he’d step in and officiate at our wedding the following Saturday, but was too mortified to do it after the incident at church. I’d been greatly relieved when Wyatt called earlier and told us he’d asked the minister at his own church if he’d marry Stone and me. Considering the circumstances, the minister had no reservations, but he did feel it might be a tad disrespectful with the situation being what it was.
“Wouldn’t they rather postpone it, and wait to ask Steiner’s replacement to officiate?” The Methodist minister, Tom Nelson, had asked Wyatt. Wyatt had replied that we felt Steiner’s temporary replacement, Reverend Bob, probably had too much on his plate right now, and many wedding guests were expected from out of town. It would be difficult to reschedule this late in the game. Nelson seemed to see the reasoning in my reluctance to cancel this weekend’s ceremony. Wyatt went on to give him directions to the inn and asked him to arrive there no later than two-thirty on Saturday. Bless you, Wyatt!
It was with a great deal of relief I’d thanked Wyatt for speaking to his minister and making the arrangements to have him officiate on Saturday. There was still a glimmer of hope the wedding could go on as planned without looking tacky and insensitive. Unfortunately, Pastor Steiner’s murder case appeared to be no closer to being solved than it was at the moment Bonnie B
loomingfield had found his dead body.
Tom Nelson was willing to minister at our wedding, but obviously not without reservations about the appropriateness of doing so while Pastor Steiner’s killer still walked the streets among us. Knowing this only increased my resolve to find the killer and see that he was apprehended and arrested in the next couple of days. Saturday was looming, only five days away.
When we walked into the sanctuary, we saw Wyatt and Wendy conversing up near the casket. We joined them after speaking to several of the church members we recognized. Most of them had been at the church the previous morning when I taken my ill-timed tumble onto the stage. As they glanced at my cast and asked about my welfare, I answered as nonchalantly as possible, wishing I were invisible. I took a quick glance up on stage and noticed someone had tried to temporarily mend the ripped velvet curtains behind the pulpit.
After a few minutes of pleasantries with my daughter and the police detective, I wandered off to mingle with other people in the crowd. Despite my embarrassment, I was hoping to catch and speak with some of Steiner’s other children. I wanted to determine if any of them beside Teddy might have a motive to kill their own father. I didn’t know if or when I’d get another opportunity to talk to them.
I avoided Teddy and Paula, for obvious reasons, and because they were gathered in a group with their siblings and their families, it was next to impossible to speak to any of the other brothers or sisters. I managed to find one of Steiner’s sons alone at a water fountain and offered my condolences. He introduced himself as Steve Steiner. I spoke with him briefly, just to feel him out. Steve was very solemn and withdrawn, and claimed to have been extremely close to both of his parents. I couldn’t find any aspersions to cast upon him.
A real estate agent in Delaware, Steve and his wife had just arrived in town an hour ago. His wife, Julie, had already been in nearby Overland Park on a business trip the past few days and had met up with him in Rockdale. Steve told me he’d listed his father’s home in Rockdale and some property in St. Joseph with ReMax Realty that very morning, and arranged to have all the furniture and personal items in the house auctioned off. Steve Steiner certainly wasn’t one to let grass grow under his feet. I didn’t think there was anything else to be gleaned from a conversation with him, so I told him he’d better get back to his family.
Despite my trying to sidestep her, Paula did catch up with me as I headed back to join Stone, Wendy, and Wyatt, who were still up near the casket. She inquired about my wrist, and then asked me if I was able to get all of the spaghetti sauce stains out of my clothing. I assured her I had.
“I’ve heard that tomato-based products like spaghetti sauce are the best things there are for getting the stench of a skunk’s spray out of something,” Paula said. “For instance, you can bathe a pet dog in the sauce after it gets sprayed by a skunk.”
“Oh really, how interesting,” I said. I wasn’t sure if she was making polite conversation or trying to infer I needed something to get the stink off me, so I didn’t know whether to be insulted or amused. I chose to be amused, because clubbing her with my cast didn’t seem like an appropriate thing to do at her father’s viewing.
Paula then reminded me of the luncheon at her house following the funeral the next morning, which came as a surprise to me. I assumed she was hoping I’d forgotten about the gathering. I told her my fiancé and I would do our best to make it. I volunteered to bring a dish with me, but Paula declined my offer. Everything had been taken care of, she told me. She was no doubt contemplating the mess I could make out of a large bowl of baked beans.
I kept the conversation with Paula as short as I could. I was certain my face was still as red as those stains she was just asking me about. On the way back to join the others, I stopped to look down into the casket. I had avoided it up until now because the very idea of an open casket at the funeral of a murder victim gave me the creeps. I might need closure, but I didn’t need nightmares too.
However, Pastor Steiner did look very handsome, and as if he were at peace. He didn’t look like someone who’d been the subject of a brutal murder. I had to admit the mortician had done a fine job with him. One would never know my daughter had sawed his body apart like a jigsaw puzzle while searching for the cause of his death.
I looked at Steiner’s hands resting on his abdomen, one atop the other. His nails were nicely manicured, and I noticed they’d left on what I assumed was his wedding ring, even though he now wore it on his right hand. I admired a widower who wore his wedding ring to the grave, even years after the death of his loving spouse. The wedding band was unique, a flower blossom and a leaf, in different shades of Black Hills Gold. Very nice, I thought. Very similar to, and almost as attractive, as the ones we’d purchased for Stone and me for our upcoming nuptials.
“Well, hello again, Ms. Starr,” I heard a female voice address me. I turned to see Sandy Webster, and a stocky man with a military crew cut who had to be her husband, the high school football coach, Buck Webster. He looked like a football coach, or more precisely, a drill sergeant. He didn’t look like a man you’d want to cross. If he had told me to drop and give him twenty, I would have probably done it right then and there, in spite of my fractured wrist.
I was surprised to see them at the visitation, not expecting the Websters to know the pastor. I was pretty certain they weren’t members of the Rockdale Baptist Church congregation. But then, it was a small town, and everybody seemed to know everybody else in town, particularly a man who was as intricately involved with the community as Thurman Steiner.
After a few minutes of pleasantries, I excused myself and rejoined the others in my group. I listened as they discussed the season-opener baseball game for the Royals. When there was a pause in the conversation, I turned to point out the Websters to Stone and Wyatt, but they were no longer looking down into the casket. I glanced around and didn’t see them anywhere else in the sanctuary either. They must have paid their respects briefly and left.
“I just ran into Buck and Sandy Webster,” I said. “I wonder how they knew Pastor Steiner.”
“Like us, they probably banked at the Rockdale Savings and Loan, where Sandy works,” Stone said.
“Yeah,” Wyatt agreed. “And Steiner’s youngest son, Quentin, played football at the high school before he moved away from Rockdale a number of years ago. He was a sophomore on the team when I played for Coach Buck my senior year.”
We chatted with fellow church members, and I reluctantly walked through the receiving line with Stone to give our condolences to the family of the deceased. I stopped for a couple of minutes and spoke with the Jacksons, the relatives staying with us at the inn, and then continued on down the line. When a good-looking young man in his upper thirties introduced himself as Quentin Steiner, I asked him if he’d seen his old coach.
“No, I haven’t seen him. Is Coach Buck still here?” He asked.
“I think the Websters left already.”
“Darn, I’d have liked to have seen Coach Webster,” Quentin said. “He was like a second father to me back in high school. I haven’t seen him in years. Anyway, it’s nice to meet you. Thanks for coming.”
“It was nice to meet you too, Quentin, ” I said, sincerely. “We thought very highly of your father. I’m so sorry for your loss.”
The line was still moving ahead of me and people behind me were waiting for me to move, as well. There was no way I could continue to converse with Quentin at this time, so I stepped forward to offer my condolences to his brother, Steve, who in turn introduced me to his wife, Julie. She had an air of sophistication about her, like her husband, Quentin, and beautiful long blond hair and sparkling blue eyes. They both had a very polished, upper crust appearance, and an authoritative demeanor.
On the way home I congratulated myself for getting through the visitation without incident. Even Stone seemed to breathe a sigh of relief as we pulled into the driveway. Now if the funeral tomorrow could go just as smoothly, I’d be happy. And then i
f a murder suspect was identified tomorrow afternoon, I’d be even happier.
* * *
At nine-thirty Tuesday morning, we were getting into Stone’s truck to head to the Rockdale Baptist Church for Pastor Steiner’s funeral. I had on a gray and pink pantsuit that hadn’t been easy to get on. As it was, I popped a button off the cuff of the blouse, and ripped open a seam up the sleeve that I could mend later on. Stone had on a navy blue sports jacket over a new pair of jeans. I’d ironed creases in them to make them look more dignified. Wendy, who was riding with us, wore a strapless tan and brown trimmed spring dress. I feared she’d be a little chilly in the outfit, but had to admit she looked fresh and youthful.
“Mom,” she had said, while getting dressed. “Do you think I should cut my hair? I’m getting tired of this style.”
I’d worn the same short curly hairdo since I was a senior in high school, so I was hardly the person to ask about trendy new hairstyles. But I thought it was time Wendy updated her look to something more flattering to her thin face. Her straight, dark brown hair hung down to just below her shoulder blades. It had a tendency to look stringy, but I didn’t think cutting it was the answer. All it really needed was some waves to look fuller. “Have you considered getting a perm wrap, or something like a spiral perm? I like the length, but I think it might look better with a little more body to it.”
To get an idea how a spiral perm might look, Wendy had borrowed my curling iron and added some waves to her hair. I thought it looked terrific now, as we headed down the driveway. She seemed to be pleased with the results too. She even wondered out loud about how Andy would like the new style.
Finding a parking spot was next to impossible. We ended up parking two blocks from the church. As we walked down the sidewalk, we noticed a small faded red truck slowing down and pulling over to the curb in a spot Stone had thought was too narrow for his full-sized truck.
Jeanne Glidewell - Lexie Starr 04 - With This Ring Page 11