Deadly Greetings (Book 2 in the Cardmaking Mysteries) (14 page)

“
Never my strong suit,”
Lillian said. “I’m a woman of action, direct and
intense.”

I laughed, despite the cares on my
shoulders. “I wouldn’t recognize you if you were any other way.
Though it might work in your love life, it’s not going to do us
much good tonight.”

“
You’d be amazed by how
productive a direct question can be, Jennifer. You should try it
sometime.”

“
I’m normally a big fan of
straight talking myself, but not tonight.” I glanced over at the
papers and the two embossers Lillian had laid out. “Do you want a
little practice before the club gets here?”

“
Goodness no, I’ve mastered
it. After all, it’s not that difficult, is it?”

“
No, ma’am,” I said, happy
that my aunt’s confidence in her card-making skills had grown since
she’d been working at the shop. “Would you like to lead the
demonstration tonight?” We always started with a demo of the new
tool or technique, then everyone else had a chance to try whatever
we were doing.

“
Are you out of your mind? I
get stage fright when there are more than two people in the room.
No, I’ll let you handle that.”

Speaking in public had never bothered me,
for some odd reason. I could remember leading the Pledge of
Allegiance at school when I’d been in first grade in the
auditorium, and I’d had so much fun, I’d begged Mrs. Ashire to let
me do it again on the spot.

“
I wonder if Hilda’s still
bringing the snacks tonight. I forgot to ask her.” We rotated our
snack provider among members, since I was supplying the tools and
papers.

Lillian spoke curtly. “Can you honestly
imagine her forgetting? Hilda is a model of efficiency.”

I knew the two women didn’t get along, one
of those dreaded personality conflicts that no one could explain or
understand. “Why don’t you leave questioning her to me?” I
said.

“
I’d be happy to. Since Dot
is out of town, I’ll take the dynamic duo.” That was our secret
name for Howard and Betty Hudson, a long-married couple that acted
as if they were one person instead of two, to the point of
interrupting each other in mid-conversation and taking over without
missing a single beat.

“
That would be great,” I
said just as there was a knock at the door. Hilda was standing
outside, a tray of something in her hands. Though she was never a
fashion plate, Hilda’s stocky form was dressed in black, and I
wondered if I should have changed when I’d been home. Oh well, it
was too late now.

I opened the door and said, “Come in. Can I
help you with that?”

She shoved the platter into my hands. “That
would be great. I’ve got two more trips. We shouldn’t go hungry
tonight, should we?”

I waited for Lillian to offer to help, but
when I realized she wasn’t going to, I shoved the platter into her
hands and said, “We’ll be right back.”

I followed Hilda outside, and when the shop
door was closed, she said, “I know she doesn’t much care for
me.”

“
Lillian is a hard woman to
read,” I said, struggling for something to say that wasn’t a direct
confirmation of Hilda’s on-target assessment.

She laughed. “Come on, Jennifer, I know
she’s your aunt. I wasn’t expecting you to agree with me.”

“
Believe me, I’m the first
to admit that Lillian can be an acquired taste,” I said
carefully.

“
Can’t we all? You know,
there are some women on this earth I just have a tough time getting
along with. I’ve always been fiercely independent, even when Karl
was alive, but I would have stayed with that man forever. I’ve
never been able to understand women who go from one husband to
another as if they’re collecting trophies along the
way.”

I stopped for a second, and Hilda looked at
me with concern. “Jennifer, I’m sorry. That was out of line, and I
apologize. Blast my mouth, I’ve grown too used to saying what’s on
my mind.”

“
There’s something you
should understand about my aunt,” I said. “She was deeply in love
with her first husband. I can still remember them holding hands
after twenty years of marriage. When he had a heart attack, we all
wondered if it would have been kinder to bury Lillian with him; she
was that lost. Hilda, since then, she’s been trying to replace him,
and failing at it. You’ve been strong enough to go on alone, but my
aunt has never been the type of woman who could do that. I’m not
saying it’s a flaw, mind you; it’s just the way she’s wired. So
take it easy on her, okay?”

Hilda mumbled something and started walking
again. Wonderful, Jennifer, you’ve managed to step in it again. If
I took half the time I spent trying to make the world get along
better and devoted it to my own life, I’d be the most successful
woman in all of Virginia. As we loaded up our arms at Hilda’s car
and walked back to the shop, I tried half a dozen times to make
light conversation, but my card-making friend wasn’t having any of
it. If I ran her off, I’d never be able to forgive myself. As we
neared the shop, I tried one last time. “Hilda, sometimes I have a
big mouth, too.”

Great. I’d planned it better in my head, but
then I blurted out the backhanded apology.

Hilda just shook her head sadly, and I knew
in my heart that I’d failed. I pounded at the door with my foot,
and Betty Hudson let me in. Betty was a slight, petite woman with a
full head of gray hair and a steady smile on her face, though it
was gone tonight. From the look of her eyes, I could tell that
she’d been crying. I hadn’t realized that she and Maggie had been
that close. I saw her husband, Howard, in deep conversation with
Lillian. He wore a bright knit sweater over his rotund form that
made me feel better about my own clothing choices.

“
Let me
help you with that,” she said as she took the large Tupperware
container from me. I held the door so Hilda could come in, then
locked it behind her. I’d been trying to add on to the club, and
Daniel might join later, but for now, I just wanted to deal with
the original members. Flipping the sign to
closed
, I joined the
rest of them at the card table where Lillian had set up the first
tray. I always found it ironic that we ate at the card table and
made cards on the other table, but I refrained yet again from
commenting on it. Instead, I said, “What a lovely sweater,
Howard.”

His cheeks reddened slightly as he said,
“Maggie made it for me for my birthday. I can’t believe she’s
gone.”

At that, Betty mumbled, “Excuse me,” and
bolted for the bathroom in back.

Howard looked at us all apologetically.
“She’s been like that since we got the news. I don’t know what to
do.”

I started to go back to the bathroom when
Lillian said, “I’ll talk to her.”

Hilda surprised us all when she said, “I’ll
go with you.”

Lillian certainly didn’t know how to react.
“Perhaps it would be better if you dealt with her yourself. After
all, you’ve been friends a great deal longer than I’ve known either
one of you.”

Hilda locked her arm in Lillian’s.
“Nonsense. You’re a part of this group, too.”

Lillian had no choice but to be dragged into
the back. I didn’t know what Hilda was up to, but at least it
didn’t look like I’d driven her away. If the circumstances for our
meeting hadn’t been so dire, I would have had a tough time not
laughing aloud at the sight of my aunt doing anything in this world
she didn’t want to do.

That left Howard and me standing by the
food. He looked over the opened trays, then said, “I know we
probably should wait, but I haven’t had much to eat lately.”

Before I could stop myself, I blurted out,
“Are you on one of those new diets?”

He patted his stomach, and if Howard took
offense by my abrupt question, he didn’t show it. “No, it’s not
that, but I never really learned to cook, and Betty seems to have
lost interest in it altogether.”

“
She’s really taking it
hard, isn’t she? I didn’t realize you’all were that
close.”

He bit his upper lip for a moment, then
said, “Closer than you might think. Jennifer, I need a bit of air.
Do you mind?”

“
Of course not,” I said.
“I’ll join you. It’s a beautiful night.” It was chilly out, but I’d
never minded the cold. Despite living in the South, we got our
share of snow, being so close to the mountains, and I always
reveled in the change of seasons.

“
If you don’t mind, I’d
rather be alone.”

That was plain enough. I unlocked the door
and Howard could barely wait to bolt through it. The three women
walked back in as I was securing the door again.

“
Where’s Howard?” Betty
asked.

“
He said he needed some
air,” I explained.

“
He’s not running away from
this,” Betty said firmly. “Stay by the door. I’ll be right
back.”

I felt like the doorman at the Sherman Arms
Hotel as I let her out, too. I wanted to discuss Howard’s odd
comments with Lillian, but Hilda was entrenched beside her. I
wasn’t sure what she was up to, but she was certainly being earnest
about it. We could all hear Betty calling to her husband, and there
was a whip in her voice I’d never suspected. In two minutes, we
were gathered together again.

I met each of their gazes, then said, “Thank
you all for coming. I was surprised when Hilda insisted we have our
regular meeting tonight, but now that we’re gathered here, I
believe it was the right thing to do.” I wasn’t about to mention
Maggie’s card to Hilda to the group, let alone the one I’d received
myself.

Hilda did it for me. “They all know about my
card, Jennifer. It’s how I got them here.” She looked sideways at
Howard, which caught me by surprise. If anyone had needed
convincing to show up, I would have bet my next-to-last dime that
it would have been Betty.

It was time to get started. “I’ve got a
demonstration set up, if you’all would like to make some cards, or
we could just eat instead.”

Betty spoke up, her voice strong and clear.
“I don’t think we should change anything,” she said, and no one
else was about to disagree with her.

I moved to the table and picked up one of
the embossers. “We just got these in, and Lillian and I have been
having a lot of fun playing with them.” As I explained the layering
and pinning procedures, I tried my best to be enthusiastic, but it
was tough with Maggie’s ghostly laughter hanging in the air around
us. She’d embraced our little card-making sessions even more than I
did, gleefully making mistakes and learning as she kept us all
entertained with her wild and outlandish stories.

I embossed a sample vine pattern on a sheet
of smooth card stock and handed it around. “Isn’t it lovely?”

Hilda took the sheet after everyone else had
seen it and said, “I used to do this for my scrapbook pages.
Jennifer, do you mind if I show you another trick?”

“
Be my guest,” I said. It
was our custom to dive in if any of us had something to add, and
I’d easily learned as much from the club as I’d managed to teach
them myself.

She walked over to one of the aisles and
grabbed a fine paintbrush and some gold paint. “It just takes a
light touch, so I won’t use much.”

“
You’re the teacher,” I
said.

Hilda put a little paint on a paper towel,
then lightly touched her brush to it. “You need a gentle hand for
this.” She stroked the paintbrush across the top of the card,
barely touching it. When she showed us the results, I could see
that the embossed areas were highlighted with the gold, while the
brown stock I’d chosen remained untouched.

“
That’s beautiful,” I
said.

Everyone had to try their hands at it after
that, and soon we were chattering away again. It was almost as if
Maggie’s spirit was with us, urging us to have fun in her memory
instead of waste a single second mourning her.

By the time we were ready to eat, the
tension in the air had nearly dissipated, and I almost hated to
ruin it by grilling any of my friends, but I’d made a promise to
Maggie, even though it had been after her death, and I was going to
follow through on it.

Chapter 9

“
It’s hard to believe
Maggie’s gone,” I said to Howard as we nibbled on the crab puffs
Hilda had brought. I’d been trying to get started with my
interrogations, but it was hard to get any one member
alone.

“
I can barely believe it
myself. I’ve known her for years,” he said.

“
So did Betty know her
equally well?” I asked, hoping to come up with some way to focus
the conversation on my investigation.

He shrugged, trying to dismiss my line of
questioning, but I couldn’t stop there.

“
Were you surprised when you
heard it was an accident?” I watched his reaction, hoping for
something that would tell me what was on his mind. He was too good
at masking his emotions, though.

Howard stared at me so hard I thought he was
going to slap me. “What are you doing, Jennifer?”

“
I’m making conversation,
that’s all,” I protested, lying.

He wouldn’t avert his gaze. “I think there’s
more to it than that.”

If he was going to accuse me of being too
direct, I might as well take advantage of it. “Did you see Maggie
the day she died?”

Howard snapped, “Are you asking me for an
alibi?”

“
Why, do you need one?” I
shot the question right back at him. Why was he acting so strange?
I hadn’t even zinged him with a good question yet.