Authors: Sharyn McCrumb
T
HE WEDDING WAS
three days away. Well, four, if you counted today. Elizabeth’s reckoning depended entirely upon the subject uppermost in her mind at the moment of calculation. If she was worrying about whether her dress would be finished on time, there were four days left. If she was on the verge of hysterics from sheer panic and overexertion, there were only three days to be endured. Anyhow it was Wednesday, the twenty-eighth of June. In ninety-one hours or so, momentous things would happen. The Princess of Wales would turn twenty-eight, the Fourth of July weekend would get off to a rousing start, and Elizabeth MacPherson would be getting married.
Despite an occasional bout of wedding nerves, she had to admit that things had gone very well indeed, thanks, in large part, to the organizing skill of her aunt Amanda. Elizabeth was convinced that if Aunt Amanda had been in charge of the Confederates at the Battle of Atlanta, General Sherman would have had very little time for private study.
With military precision, she had managed to secure the services of an organist and a photographer; commandeered a suitable minister; negotiated with the florist to her own satisfaction; and in a rout reminiscent of the first Battle of Manassas, she had subdued the Earthling catering company—so
that in exchange for her guarantee of a generous donation to Greenpeace, they promised to serve both animal flesh and politically incorrect vegetables at the MacPherson-Dawson wedding reception.
Elizabeth had been to a dress fitting the day before and she was very pleased with the look of her wedding gown.
Definitely the tension was beginning to subside, at least as far as the preparations went. Next would come the arrival of all the people from out of town, which would involve a whole new realm of anxiety, along the lines of: what will
my
mother think of
his
mother—and is Daddy going to tell that awful joke about the Scottish minister, the priest, and the rabbi?
The clock on her bedside table read 8:11. Even now the Dawsons would be in flight over the Atlantic, having left Prestwick in the early morning Scottish time (about five hours ago) for their flight to Atlanta. Elizabeth smiled, thinking how wonderful it would be to see Cameron again, especially since they had sworn off phone calls last week as an economy measure. Her own parents had returned from Hawaii on Tuesday, but they were waiting until Thursday to drive down with Bill, who was unable to escape from work any sooner.
She climbed out of bed and put on a T-shirt and jeans, which was all the sartorial effort she could summon upon first getting up. “Now if only I didn’t look like a dead rat,” she said, peering at herself in the mirror and ruffling her dark hair. “Beauty parlor today.”
A discreet tapping at the bedroom door distracted her. “Come in!” called Elizabeth, eyeing her rumpled jeans. “I’m as ready as I’m going to get.”
Geoffrey sailed into the room, looking like someone
on his way to a regatta. Elizabeth stared at the white cotton sweater and white slacks and then up at Geoffrey to make sure that it was indeed her cousin who had just entered the room. “You must have been up all night,” she declared flatly.
“On the contrary,” said Geoffrey, “I find sleep less beguiling when I am busy.”
“I don’t like the sound of that,” muttered Elizabeth. “Just what are you up to?”
“Why, trying to be helpful with the wedding, of course. In order to relieve Mildred of the more mundane cleaning chores so that she can give her full attention to the coming nuptials, I have straightened my own room and I am now gathering the dirty clothes to take downstairs to the laundry room. So far I have mine, and Charles’s, which I obtained just now by tiptoeing into his room and collecting it off the floor. He is sleeping like a stoat, so I didn’t wake him, but I doubt if he will notice anything amiss. Is there anything you would care to contribute to the basket?”
Elizabeth regarded him with undisguised suspicion. “You’re not having a yard sale, are you?”
Geoffrey put his hand over his heart.
“Moi?”
“I suppose I mustn’t be ungrateful about it,” she muttered. “Although this is so unlike you that I think you probably ought to have a CAT scan.” She gathered up a few items of clothing and placed them on the top of the clothes basket. “Anyway, thank you.”
“Not at all,” said Geoffrey smoothly. “Virtue is its own reward, in clever little ways.” He picked up the basket and turned to go, but, as if struck by an afterthought, he set it down again and said, “Have you heard anything more from the sheriff about the cremation case of his?”
Elizabeth yawned. “No, Geoffrey. I told you, I’m not going to get involved in it.”
“I found the news of the murder of a crematorium director over in Roan County most interesting.
“It could be a coincidence.” She shrugged. “Maybe the business was a cover for a moonshining operation.” This was not so much a serious suggestion as a demonstration of her complete indifference to the lure of detection.
“I found it interesting all the same. Thought I might put out a question or two here and there.”
Elizabeth frowned. “Geoffrey, if you get yourself killed and spoil my wedding, I’ll have you barbecued!”
“I wouldn’t dream of inconveniencing you by my death.”
“Good. And don’t meddle in things, either! Knowing you, you’ll end up getting the minister arrested for murder and the whole wedding will be a shambles!”
“Father Ashland is safe from me,” Geoffrey promised. “Should I witness him torching an orphanage and dancing naked among the fire hoses, my lips will be sealed.”
“Good.”
“To further assure you of my benevolence, I wonder if there are any little errands that I can undertake for you today?”
Elizabeth eyed him suspiciously. “Might this end up in my receiving on the day of the wedding a purple wedding cake, or two hundred unhousebroken doves? You’re not planning to sabotage my wedding, are you, Geoffrey?” Her voice ended on a plaintive note close to tears.
“I’m not,” said Geoffrey, dropping his usual affectations. “Really. I have no pranks in mind at all.
I say this to put your mind at rest while I ask you a rather irrelevant question, the answer to which will not, I vow, be used against you.”
Elizabeth glared at her cousin. “This had better not be about sex.”
“No!” said Geoffrey, sounding quite shocked. “I merely wanted to inquire if you knew what an automobile distributor cap looked like?”
Elizabeth smiled. “Oh, do you know that story about the Queen? During the war when Princess Elizabeth was eighteen, she served as a subaltern in the Auxiliary Territorial Service, and she took a course in ATS vehicle maintenance. You know, how to read maps, drive in convoy, and vehicle service and maintenance.”
Geoffrey looked restive. “About the distributor cap—”
“I’m coming to that.” Elizabeth was enjoying her story. “When she had finished the course, her father the King went to Camberly on an inspection tour, and the princess was going to show off what she had learned by starting an engine she’d just serviced. But she couldn’t get the motor to start! After a few awkward moments, King George admitted to having taken off the distributor cap.”
“Hilarious,” said Geoffrey gravely.
“I learned about distributor caps so that I could fix the car if any malicious relative ever did that to me.” She fixed Geoffrey with a meaningful stare.
“My own motives exactly,” said Geoffrey. “You know what pranksters theatre people are. It’s just the thing they might do to my car. Do tell me where it is and what it looks like.”
Elizabeth thought for a moment. “It’s a domelike plastic thing in the middle of the engine with little chimneys on the top or sides and it has wires going out of it to the spark plugs. They’re usually held on
with spring clips. Cameron taught me that.” Her eyes misted again. “Now, please, Geoffrey, assuming that you would have the intelligence to find one in a car, much less remove it, please
don’t
do this to us after the wedding!”
“You have my solemn word,” said Geoffrey. “I will use the information only for purposes of defense.”
“All right,” said Elizabeth, wiping her eyes. “In that case, I guess you can take the final guest list to the caterer. They’re making little place cards in calligraphy for the guests. You might check at the florists—see if Lucy’s flower orders came through yet. And you could take this zipper to Miss Geneva. I bought the wrong kind and had to get another one.”
“It shall be done,” Geoffrey promised, looking particularly pleased.
“Good,” said Elizabeth. “Then I can spend the day getting my hair done and taking care of about a million other things I should have thought of earlier. Cameron and his mother and brother will be here this evening. We’re making it kind of a party dinner. You’ll be around for that, won’t you?”
Geoffrey considered the possibility. “I have an early-evening appointment, but if dinner is later than seven, I’m sure I can manage.”
“Eight-thirty, then,” said Elizabeth.
“Yes,” said Geoffrey. “I should be through by then.”
Deputy Clay Taylor felt a little uneasy about going out to question the people at Earthling. He had always found them to be very sincere and committed individuals and he had partaken of many a beans-and-rice potluck in support of their causes in Central America. He consoled himself with the
thought that he was not, in fact, in charge of the interrogation, but merely accompanying a colleague as a guide and observer.
Since the murder of crematorium director Jasper Willis had occurred in Roan County, the task of investigating it fell to Wayne Dupree’s organization, but since many of the suspects were in Wesley Rountree’s jurisdiction, the two departments had decided to team Clay with an officer from Roan County to carry out the questioning. Meanwhile, Dupree’s other deputies were checking the possibility of faked deaths in their own county.
“Though they might not be as likely suspects,” Wesley had explained to his fellow sheriff, “because they didn’t know about Emmet’s reappearance, so they had no reason to become nervous. If you didn’t know about Emmet, you’d think you had still gotten away with the scheme.”
So far Clay and the Roan deputy had been working together for three days. They were nearly finished with the list of suspects. So far they had turned up nothing suspicious and no one had admitted any knowledge of Emmet Mason’s reappearance. Clay would be glad when the partnership was over, because, while Charlie Mundy was an excellent officer as far as Clay could determine, he was also a humorless, narrow-minded pain in the patoot. He was a burly six-footer who looked like the ex-linebacker that he was, and he was a combat veteran from the Marine Corps, all of which may have enabled him to become a first-rate law enforcement officer, but it had done nothing for his somewhat canine personality. It was like going on patrol with a pit bull, Clay had thought—
often
during the last three days. Charlie Mundy had a perpetual squint of suspicion and a crooked smile that he employed when he was least amused. Clay, who
managed to combine a career as a peace officer with what he hoped were noble sentiments about the rights of man and the responsibility of the human species to the ecological well-being of the planet, was profoundly uncomfortable in his massive colleague’s sneering presence.
“Will you look at this?” Mundy was saying, in his most disdainful tone. He had just pulled into the parking lot of the old gristmill and was presently leaning on the steering wheel, staring malevolently at the Earthling sign above the door. “Earth Shoe people!” He reminded Clay of a shark in a swimming pool.
At the risk of deflecting the attack toward the vicinity of his own soft tissues, Clay ventured a mild defense of the potential suspects. “Actually, Charlie, I know most of them socially. They’re very gentle people.”
Charlie Mundy sneered. “I don’t like cults.”
“Actually,” murmured Clay, “a cooperative community bears very little resemblance to a cult—”
But Charlie Mundy had already slammed the car door behind him and was slouching toward the door of the herb shop. Clay hurried after him, hoping that he could salvage some of law enforcement’s positive image by toning down Mundy’s attack.
Rogan Josh met them at the door, looking politely terrified. “May I help you?” he quavered. A glance at Clay indicated that he recognized the deputy, but would not venture to say so.
Charlie Mundy whipped out a notebook. “Name?”
Some minutes later, the entire Earthling contingent had been rounded up and their names had been duly recorded by an ever-more contemptuous Charlie Mundy. His expression suggested that anyone whose name was not a classic English appellation of one syllable was a self-proclaimed eccentric
and potential criminal. Considerable time had been taken up in the spelling of the Earthling monikers.
His attitude certainly commanded the full attention of the huddled group, but their cooperation was less apparent. By the time he finally got around to the salient questions, the Earthlings would have denied all knowledge of tofu, much less anything more relevant.
“Christopher Greene?” said Shanti vaguely. “That was Ramachandra, wasn’t it?”
A couple of others nodded in agreement.
“Yeah, we had him cremated. He
requested
it,” another one offered. “We still have the will, of course.”
Charlie Mundy scowled at the assembled suspects. “And he left his money to you?”
They all looked down at the floor. “Oh, money,” one of them remarked. “It’s of so little consequence.”
“Didn’t we give it all to the Central American Freedom Fighters?” asked another.
“Or was it the Endangered Wildflower Fund?”
“We want to see financial statements,” Charlie informed them. “Tax records. I’ll check the courthouse.”
“Of course,” said R. J.
Clay almost burst out laughing, picturing the courthouse encounter between the snarling Charlie Mundy and the surly Susan Davis. It would either be a match made in heaven (or thereabouts) or a window-rattling dogfight.
Serenely unaware of the encounter that awaited him, Charlie Mundy pursued his next line of inquiry. “Did you know about the case of another local individual, one Emmet Mason, who was supposed to have died five years ago, but who reappeared in California?”