Blessed Is the Busybody (11 page)

“Ummm . . . Modern technology 1, Aggie 0. I’m sorry. This worked like a charm on our home computer. I’ll have to get the bugs and the cheesecake photos off the laptop. But I hope you can see where I’m going with this?”

There was applause, and from some quarters enthusiastic applause at that. Gelsey got to her feet, and I steeled myself.

She lifted one brow and smiled thinly. “Well, we seem to have lots of time left for questions. Does anyone have any that our scintillating Mrs. Wilcox might possibly be prepared to answer?”

“I’m sure it’s not anything you did, Aggie. Gelsey always seems more stressed in the autumn. I’ve noticed it before. I suppose it’s just getting back into the groove after a restful summer.”

I was dejected after my dismal failure and didn’t answer. I was only listening halfheartedly to Yvonne, who had volunteered to take Jack’s projector back to his office. She was parked in front of the parsonage to leave room in the church lot for the oldest members of the Society.

Yvonne gave a dramatic sigh. “But you didn’t imagine it. Gelsey was just plain rude. Maybe she misses New England this time of year. The leaves, the festivals. I know I always miss Santa Fe in the summer, and I’m cranky when I can’t get back there.”

Chitchat was better than contemplation. “I didn’t realize Gelsey’s from New England.”

“Oh yes. Boston. One of the old Back Bay families.”

“Ed’s mother grew up just off Newbury Street.”

“Well, Gelsey is Mayflower all the way. Her family had a summer cottage in New Hampshire, a ski chalet in Killing-ton. She goes home twice a year to be with her sister and cousins, but I’m sure it’s never quite the same.”

I was ready to offer the woman one-way first-class airfare to Logan International myself. I helped Yvonne store the projector behind her seat and thanked her for taking it to Jack. Then after I had waved good-bye, I went inside through the front door, just in time to catch the telephone.

“Agate, dear.”

“Dear” came out as “deah.” Ed’s mother Nanette has what Ed calls an “eastern prep school” accent. There are no
“R’s”
after
A’s
or long
E’s
. Of course, with good old Yankee frugality, the
R’s
are never thrown away. They show up in the darndest places.

I fell into the chair beside the entry hall telephone and wondered if my luck could get any worse. “Hello, Nan. How are you?”

“Well, I’m as fine as I always am. I just thought, perhaps, something had happened to you since it’s been so long since I’ve heard anything.”

I knew that Ed had called his mother the previous week. Both of the girls had described their classes in detail. Teddy had recounted my explanation of the body on our front porch in an eerie imitation of my voice. Nan had hung up quickly.

“There’s not much to report,” I told her now. “Did you have a nice Labor Day weekend?”

“Oh, I lunched with friends, went to a new exhibition at the museum. A quiet day.”

We had invited her here for our end to summer celebration, but Nan had pleaded migraines. In advance. In Nan’s opinion, Ohio, which was not one of the original thirteen colonies, is wilderness best left to trappers and river boat-men. She came for Ed’s installation, and she is still recovering.

I told her about our Labor Day celebration, assured her the girls knew they had to make good grades so they could get into an Ivy League college, promised we would make certain they took part in extracurricular activities to make up for our annoying inability to afford a real school like Exeter or Andover.

“And, I can assume there have been no more . . . incidents on your lawn? You really must be more careful, Agate.”

I filed that away. In the future I would murder my victims elsewhere.

I cast around for something else to pass the time and remembered what Yvonne had told me. “Nan, I just discovered one of our members is from an old Back Bay family, too.”

Nan perked up immediately. I explained about Gelsey, at least those things which could be said. “Gelsey Falowell.” I struggled and failed. “I’m afraid I don’t remember her maiden name,” I finished.

“Back Bay, you say?”

“That’s what I was told. She has a sister, cousins who are still there.”

“You say she’s a woman about my age?”

“Indeed.” Nan brings out my subliminal aristocrat.

“I don’t remember any Gelseys. You’re certain of her name?”

For some reason the question stopped me. I couldn’t remember why. “That’s what she goes by,” I said. “Might be a nickname, but it’s certainly what she’s called.”

“I know virtually everyone from the important families.”

Personally, I thought all families were important. And Nan, if challenged, would certainly agree. But snobbery crept into even her most well-intentioned offerings. She believed in equality, she just believed equality was a sliding scale.

“Perhaps you might find out her maiden name,” she said.

I remembered the day Gelsey had showed me a lovely sterling silver monogrammed brooch along with more jewelry she thought me incapable of appreciating. I struggled to picture it. “It might begin with an
R,
” I said.

“That hardly narrows it enough, dear.”

“Railford!” I was so proud. I remembered now that there had been two coats of arms above Gelsey’s fireplace. Falowell and Railford. And I had noted this with a secret smile because a girl named Julia Railford had been the sluttiest coed in my college dorm.

Ed may remember the names of obscure fifteenth-century theologians, but I remember the important stuff.

“Yes, well,” Nan said. “That doesn’t sound familiar, either. I suppose my son isn’t home?”

Nan never seems to understand that Ed works during the day. Despite being a lifelong Unitarian she often calls on Sunday mornings, and is always perplexed when she reaches our answering machine.

I hung up a moment later. Ed is a mystery to me. Either he’s a changeling, or else a pediatric nurse with a sense of humor swapped him for Nan’s real offspring. Maybe somewhere in the worst slum of Boston there’s a man in a bow tie who prefers polo or yacht races to the Red Sox and wonders why.

By the time the girls arrived home I had recovered from my morning and cleaned out our bedroom closet in preparation for painting. When we moved into the parsonage, it was clear no one had changed anything but the light bulbs in decades. I only agreed to move in if we were given free rein to paint or paper as we saw fit.

I started my renovation with the girls’ rooms and now Deena’s is a pale lavender with a wide stenciled ivy border that took us a week to finish. Teddy wanted Puritan gray and compromised on a grayed blue with ruffled white curtains and one of Junie’s quilts, country churches pieced in cheery reds and golds. Junie’s handmade dolls adorn chairs or tables in every corner.

For our room I wanted deep red, but like Teddy, I was willing to compromise. I did not want anyone from the Women’s Society, on the way to an upstairs bathroom, fainting in horror at my solution to the dingy flocked wallpaper that had graced the master bedroom walls since the 1970s. So I was going to settle for a medium sage green with sheer curtains and botanical prints on the walls instead of the Kama Sutra batiks Ed brought me from India before we were married. Those were, regretfully, stored away.

I planned to start painting in the closet to see how well I liked my color choice. No matter what I decided for the room itself, the closet interior can remain this shade. No time wasted.

I had oatmeal cookies, apples, and milk out for the girls when they walked through the door. Deena took one look at my expression and shook her head.

“How did you screw it up?”

I poured the milk. “I did not screw up the presentation. It more or less self-destructed.”

“You are so totally lame with anything that plugs in.”

I couldn’t fault her. It hadn’t been said with malice or disrespect. “Maybe you can help me see where I went wrong. Next month when I can face looking at a computer screen again. How was school?”

“I’m surrounded by lunatics.”

The choices were many. “Administration? Teachers? Custodians?”

“Shannon was supposed to sit with us at lunch. She sat with Jeff Matthews instead, and his friends.”

“I’m surprised you care where Shannon sits. You have a lot of friends to sit with, don’t you?”

“For how long? They’re all paying more attention to boys than they are to each other. Carlene says she’s going out with Sean Hutchinson.”

“Going out? Dating?” Even for Crystal O’Grady’s daughter, this seemed premature. The girls were eleven.

“No.” Deena shook her head as if I were hopeless. “They don’t go anywhere. They just go out.”

I scrambled to understand. “What do they do when they go out?”

“They don’t do anything.”

“So going out means they’re not doing anything together. And this is somehow different from
not
going out?”

“Tara, Maddie, and I are the only Meanies who still have a brain.” Deena took an apple, polished it against the hem of her T-shirt, and carried it upstairs.

Teddy arrived next. This was her first day of walking to and from school with two third graders who live on the next block. Teddy’s school is only three blocks away, and there are crossing guards at every intersection. I still felt bottomless relief when the front door opened.

After the mandatory hug, I served cookies and milk at the table and sat for the mandatory blow-by-blow description of her day. Teddy is careful not to leave out any detail, a stickler for accuracy. When we got to recess, the news—good up to that point—soured.

“Some of the kids won’t play with me.”

I was irrate. I managed not to show it. “What bad taste they have.”

“They said somebody died in our yard.”

I sat back. “I’m not sure I understand what that has to do with playing with you.”

She shrugged, apparently less concerned than I was. “Me, either.”

“Just some of the kids?”

“Mostly friends of Jimmy Betts. He said I’m scary.”

“You’re not scary, Teddy.”

She frowned. “I know that.”

Of course she did. I gave myself a mental slap. “Do you like Jimmy Betts?”

“I don’t know. He won’t play with me, so I can’t find out.”

“What did you do instead?”

“I ran around a lot and climbed on the jungle gym with the other girls.”

Clearly Jimmy’s prejudices had not ruined her day. I hoped they faded.

By the time both girls had gotten a start on homework and Ed had come home from a day of committee meetings and hospital visits, I had put my morning in perspective. By the time the four of us had washed dishes and set the kitchen to rights, I’d almost forgotten my presentation until Deena reminded me.

“Where’s the power strip you borrowed from my room this morning?”

I had taken the strip to be sure I had enough outlets for my equipment. Unfortunately, I hadn’t remembered to bring it home. I threw myself on her mercy and promised to go over to the parish house and retrieve it so she could work on a book report.

Ed was on the telephone in the study when I went to tell him where I was heading. From his end of the conversation, I knew this was a discussion of the church budget that could last until bedtime. I pointed toward the church and rummaged on the desktop for his keys to the parish house. “Ten minutes,” I mouthed. He waved me out.

The sun had already set and a light rain was falling. Autumn wasn’t yet official, but the temperature was dipping into the fifties at night. I cut through our yard and the church parking lot. There was only one car, and it didn’t look familiar. Sometimes people use the lot when they’re shopping or eating in town, even though we have signs asking them not to. But clearly there were no meetings here tonight or Ed would be in attendance. Only a few lights were on inside for security.

I unlocked the backdoor and entered through the kitchen, turning on lights for company as I went. The parish house is meant to be filled with noise and laughter and people. When it’s not, it seems bereft, and somehow, accusing. I hummed under my breath, hoping to appease it. I wasn’t at all sure that helped.

January, our sexton, had already vacuumed and set the lounge to rights. Of course he had thoughtfully stored the power strip somewhere out of sight, as well. I began a search, humming louder, turning on lights everywhere I went.

There are one million, possibly two million places where someone could hide in the parish house. There was no reason to think of that, of course, except that not long before a body had turned up on my porch. My imagination is vivid, but I’m not given to paranoia. Still, the longer I searched the more aware I became of every creak of the old building, and every darkened nook and cranny.

The power strip turned up in the religious education supply closet on the second floor, between an antiquated 8 mm movie projector and a cardboard box of tempera paints.

“Yowsa!” I snatched it and started downstairs, flicking off lights as I went. By the time I made it to the kitchen, I slowed down and began to breathe normally again. Everything was fine. No cause for alarm. I was out of there.