A Death in Duck: Lindsay Harding Cozy Mystery Series (Reverend Lindsay Harding Mystery Book 2) (3 page)

“Only if you’re sure.”

“I’m sure. We purposely built a ton of down time into the schedule. We’re gonna hit the spa, walk on the beach, sleep in. Just relax, you know? I want this to feel like a real vacation for everybody, including me and Drew.”

“Okay, but I’m going to do an extra good job holding your bouquet during the ceremony so that I earn my maid of honor badge.”

“That’s why I picked you. Just look at you now. You’re standing there
and
holding a cup of coffee at the same time. What a pro. Hey, even though I’d love to hang out here all day and help you practice your standing, I’ve got to get home. I’m going to try to catch some sleep before tonight. Even I think it’d be lame if I fell asleep before eight o’clock at my own bachelorette party.”

“Okay, I need to get up to the chapel anyway. I’ve gotta deliver both Sunday services today and I haven’t finished writing my sermons yet.”

“Isn’t the early service in, like, an hour? How much more do you have to write?”

“When I say I haven’t finished it, what I actually mean is that I haven’t started it. It’s okay, though. An impending deadline really gets my spiritual juices flowing.”

Lindsay and Anna headed back down the corridor to the main hospital. As they passed the hall leading to the wards, Lindsay caught sight of a large blonde woman shuffling slowly along. “Hey, Kimberlee!”

“Lindsay! What a nice surprise.” The two women embraced warmly. Lindsay had gotten to know Kimberlee Bullard the previous summer after Kimberlee’s husband had been murdered, leaving her widowed and pregnant with twins.

“Anna, you remember Kimberlee Bullard.”

“Of course. How are you?” Anna asked.

“Taking it day by day,” Kimberlee said. The pain of her husband’s death had been compounded by the recent conviction of her brother for the murder. The crime rocked Mount Moriah the previous summer, and was still very much on everyone’s minds. Kimberlee herself had initially been the chief suspect. Only after Lindsay risked her own life to clear Kimberlee’s name was the real killer uncovered. The whole ordeal had left the two women with a strong bond. “It’s nice to have these little guys to focus on,” she said, gesturing to the gargantuan swell of her belly.

“Well, you look amazing. Bursting with life and energy,” Lindsay said.

“Oh please, Lindsay. I’m bursting, all right. But it’s not with energy!” Kimberlee laughed. “I’m so fat a Japanese trawler tried to fish me out of the pool during my aqua aerobics class.”

“Come on. You look great,” Lindsay said. “When’s the due date?”

“Should be any day now. I was here dropping off some paperwork and now I’m waddling over to my sister’s house to pick up some more baby stuff. I swear I’m gonna need to rent a warehouse just for baby shoes alone.”

“Make sure you let me know the minute you’re admitted,” Lindsay said. “I’ll stake out the two coziest incubators in the nursery for you.”

Kimberlee bid them goodbye and they watched her make her way down the hallway toward the exit.

“Why am I going to be 41?” Anna said mournfully.

“Is that some kind of trick question?” Lindsay asked, regarding her friend with genuine confusion.

“I wish I could have kids. I never thought I wanted a baby. But meeting Drew totally changed my mind. He loves children and he’d be such a good dad. He says it’s not a big deal, but I know he wants kids. Why didn’t I meet him sooner?” Anna pressed her lips together as if she were fighting back tears.

Lindsay took her hands. “What are you talking about? You can still have a baby. This is the age of science. The age of fertility drugs and human cloning and the Octomom.”

“That’s what Drew says, too. But he’s only 35. And you! You’re only 30! I don’t think you guys get it. The difference between 30 and 41 for a woman is like light years in biological terms. My ovaries are so old there are probably little fossilized dinosaur eggs inside them,” Anna said, her eyes on the floor.

“Who cares? All a woman needs is money, a doctor with questionable ethics and a metric ton of crazy, and she can have a baby at any age.”

Anna met Lindsay’s gaze. “That’s true. I have all those things. Especially crazy. I have so much crazy.”

“More than almost anyone I know. You and Drew will have children if you want them. And they’ll be beautiful. And you’re both doctors, so they’ll be smart and rich.”

“You’re right, Lins. Our kids are going to be way better than everybody else’s kids. We’re going to give them really cool names, too, like the Jolie-Pitts.”

“I can just picture them. Little Charlemagne in the drawing room composing an elegy on her viola; the twins, Topeka and Paddock, making up complicated puns for each other in Mandarin while eating the organic lentil and fennel seed stew prepared by their imported English nanny.”

“Thanks, Lins,” Anna said, wiping a tear from the corner of her eye. “You’re halfway to your maid of honor badge already.”

Chapter 3
 

“So, do you have any eccentric relatives coming to the wedding? Can we expect any out-of-control drunks or sleazy old uncles?” Rob asked.

“I come from a very long line of WASPs,” Anna replied. She was reclining on the couch with a pillow half-covering her face. “My family is nuts, but only in very indirect, subtle ways. For example, my mother never just comes out and says anything. She hates negativity of any kind. It would take an anthropologist several years of close observation to pick up on the way she manages to convey her disapproval of me through barbed compliments and the preparation of mayonnaise-based potluck salads.”

Lindsay and Anna were well into their second bottle of champagne and had abandoned all pretense of playing board games. Rob had just brought in a fresh batch of dumplings and was deftly popping them into his mouth with chopsticks. He didn’t drink champagne or any other alcohol. Lindsay had convinced him to try it a few times in college, thinking that he just needed to build up a tolerance, but even small amounts caused him to turn bright red, feel nauseous, and break into rivers of sweat. Even though Anna reassured him that this reaction was caused by a genetic mutation involving liver enzymes and was shared by many people of Asian descent, he was inclined to believe that his conservative parents had somehow managed to brainwash his body into rejecting alcohol.

“You know, I’m dreading staying with Aunt Harding next week,” Lindsay said talking a mournful sip of her champagne.

“Why don’t you just stay at the Sandpiper with all the other wedding guests?” Rob’s question was a reasonable one. Anna and Drew had booked rooms for all of their guests at the Sandpiper Resort in the town of Duck; it was one of the most luxurious hotels on the Outer Banks. They had offered to pay for up to a week’s stay for any of the guests who wanted to arrive early and make a vacation of it. Lindsay, however, had declined their kind offer. Instead, she would be spending most of the week in her aunt’s weather-beaten cottage outside Corolla, a little enclave about 20 minutes’ drive up the coast.

Patricia Harding was her father’s only living relative other than Lindsay. He had applied gentle but constant pressure to convince Lindsay to spend a few days over Christmas with the cantankerous old woman. Most years, it was Jonah Harding himself who spent part of time between Christmas and New Year on the Outer Banks. Lindsay had passed the sum total of perhaps ten days there since she was a child. However, this year a slipped disc prevented Jonah from making the drive, and he was adamant that his aunt shouldn’t be alone. With a full week off work and Anna’s wedding taking place just down the road, Lindsay hadn’t managed to find an excuse not to go. She had arranged to stay with Aunt Harding for four days, starting on Christmas Eve.

“Actually, I called earlier this week to see if I could get a room after all, in case I can’t make it through all four days, but now they’re completely booked,” Lindsay sighed. She was seated on the floor next to the coffee table with pieces from different board games arranged in front of her. Rows of little green
Monopoly
houses clustered around the buildings on the
Life
board. These miniature enclaves were each completely surrounded by walls built of dominos. The gingerbread men from
Candyland
rampaged across the open spaces, wielding weapons from
Clue
.

“Lindsay, what exactly are you doing?” Rob asked.

“I invented a new board game.” Lindsay slurred her words slightly. She laid her chin on the edge of the table. “A giant meteor has struck the earth and the survivors have banded together in small warrior tribes to survive. They drive between their walled villages in the
Life
cars, kind of like a plastic version of
Mad Max
. I think I’m gonna call it
The Four Gingerbread Men of the Apocalypse
.”

“I’m sure that’ll sell like crazy,” Rob said wryly. He moved Lindsay’s champagne flute to the other side of the table, beyond her reach.

Lindsay leaned back against the couch. “Anna, Rob took my champagne away. Tell him that it’s your super fun, wild bachelorette party and it’s your official prerogative as bride-to-be to decide whether inventing a disturbing, post-apocalyptic board game means that I’m drunk.” She looked over her shoulder. “Anna?”

“She passed out, I think,” Rob said.

“Oh.” Lindsay gently flicked the gingerbread men with her index finger, causing them to fall over one by one.

“Do you think the blushing bride is going to be able to bounce back in time for her trip to Duck? She looks pretty rough,” Rob said.

“Who, Anna? She’s got an iron constitution. Don’t you remember when she did that half marathon the day after a bout of salmonella poisoning?” Lindsay knocked over the last gingerbread man and looked up from the table. She noticed for the first time that an 8 x 10 framed picture of her, looking rosy cheeked and happy in an oversized fur hat, stood on the mantelpiece. The image had been taken the previous winter when Mount Moriah had had its first significant snowfall in years. “What’s with the picture?” she asked. 

“I’m just sprucing things up,” Rob said, not meeting her gaze. “To get ready for my mom’s visit.”

Lindsay snapped to attention. “Your mom’s coming? When?”

“She arrives on Christmas Eve.”

“That’s the day after tomorrow! Why haven’t you said anything?” Rob’s parents had not travelled to the States since Rob and Lindsay’s sophomore year of college, more than ten years previously. Lindsay had a clear memory of watching their arrival from the window of her dorm. Rob’s father, a twitchy little raisin of a man, had practically leapt through the roof of the rented car they had driven from Raleigh-Durham airport when he caught sight of Rob. He hastened up the path towards the dorm while Rob’s mother, a lumpy woman with a wide, flat expanse of face, had toddled along, ten steps behind him. She had worn a yellow Jackie O suit, complete with a coordinating pillbox hat. Shortly after that visit, Rob’s father was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and began a long, slow decline into oblivion. He had finally passed away the previous summer.

“It was kind of last-minute thing.” He paused. “Anyway, she’s really excited to see you.”

“I’m surprised she even remembers me. We only met that one time.”

There was a long pause.

“I have something to tell you,” Rob said slowly. “We’re married,”

“Who’s married?”

“You and me. We got married last summer. Quiet ceremony.” He went on, his voice becoming increasingly shrill. “She kept asking when I was going to get married. I had to tell her something.”

Lindsay swung herself up to standing, knocking the
Life
board off of the coffee table. She tried to grab it as it fell, but the little plastic world went flying in every direction. “How about telling her the truth?!” In reality, Rob had been living with his boyfriend, John Tatum, for almost nine years. Rob had never dated anyone else, male or female.

“How could I tell her? My dad was dying. She was stressed out and exhausted from caring for him. It would have killed her to know the truth, but thinking that I got married made her so happy. You know how traditional they are. I’m the only son. Asian sons are supposed to become doctors or engineering professors or, at worst, world-famous concert violinists. They’re supposed to get married and have kids, and those kids are also supposed to be doctors.”

“That’s a crock! Your parents were proud of you for becoming a chaplain.”

“Yeah, but only because they think that’s equivalent to being Mother Teresa or some kind of missionary.”

“But your sister knows. She stayed with you and John when she visited,” Lindsay reminded him. “Didn’t she say anything to your mom?” A few years previously, Rob’s sister, Connie, had spent the better part of a summer with Rob before returning to Taiwan to begin a nursing degree.

“Connie doesn’t think I should tell her either.”

Another pause, stretching into infinity, ensued. Lindsay wished she hadn’t drunk so much. The room rotated like a fairground ride, and she could hear the tinny echo of her own breathing in her ears. Finally, she spoke.

“Are we going to have kids?”

“Not yet. You have something wrong with your cervix, but we’ve been seeing a specialist.”

“My cervix.”

“Yes.”

“I see.” Again, the silence organized itself into piles of minutes. Lindsay didn’t need to ask the larger question of “Why?” Although they’d never really spoken about it, on some level she had always known that Rob’s life with John had been hidden from his parents. What she was more curious about was how Rob had maintained a fabricated marriage over the period of almost six months. “How’d you explain them not getting invited to the wedding?”

“I did invite them. But I knew Dad was too sick to come, and I knew Mom wouldn’t leave him.”

“What about pictures? Didn’t she want to see pictures?”

“I sent some pictures from John’s sister’s wedding. There were some nice ones of you and me in that gazebo by the rosebushes.”

“Why didn’t we have the wedding in Taiwan? Why didn’t I ever visit them?”

“You’re terrified of flying.”

“But I love flying! They bring you those trays with all the food separated into different compartments so that nothing touches anything else. Those are my favorite thing ever. Like when we went to Florida last year and they gave us a mini lasagna, a little salad, and a tiny brownie.”

“I’m sorry, Lins. I know you loved that brownie.”

Lindsay waved away his apology. “Okay. Why haven’t I spoken to your mom on the phone?”

“You know that she barely speaks English. You always tell me nice things to say to her, though.”

Lindsay sank onto the arm of the couch. Rob’s eyes were pleading.

“I can’t do this, Rob. You have to tell her the truth. John had the same hesitation in telling his dad about your relationship, but he managed it. It was hard, but he did it.”

“This is different. I’m not asking for my own sake. I’m sparing my mother from pain and embarrassment. She’d have to tell everyone at her church that she has a gay son. She’d have to disown me.”

Rob’s face seemed to twist into itself, as if he were sucking on something sour. Lindsay realized that she had only seen him cry once before, when she had dropped a length of sheetrock on his foot while they were renovating the house he and John shared.

“Please help me, Lins. Please? It’ll only be for a few days. She’s only in North Carolina until after Anna’s wedding. Then she’s meeting up with Connie in Tulsa to visit the place where she and my dad lived when they first got married.

“I already told her that you had to go to Duck early to help Anna with the wedding plans. And since I have to work, she and I are going to stay here until the day of the rehearsal dinner.”

“What about John?”

“He hates weddings. And anyway, he’ll be away to help Old Joe at the farm, so there’s really no problem.”

John’s family owned a Christmas tree farm about 30 minutes from Mount Moriah. John’s father lived there alone for most of the year, but during the weeks leading up to Christmas, John and his sister would move in with him to help manage the pick-your-own tree harvest. The weeks from Christmas until mid-January were taken up with all of the farm chores that had been neglected in the busy months leading up to the holidays. 

“No problem?” Lindsay covered her eyes with her balled-up fists. “Stop. Just stop, Rob. I can’t believe you’re even asking me this.”

Anna’s eyes fluttered halfway open. She squinted at Lindsay. A thin stream of drool leaked out of the side of her mouth. “The town got painted too red. It makes my head hurt.” She rolled over and her arm flopped heavily off the end of the couch. “I’m asleep now.”

Lindsay rose and covered Anna with a blanket. “Good night, honey,” she said, smoothing Anna’s hair away from her forehead. Lindsay staggered to the stairs. Behind her, she could hear Rob’s muffled sobs interrupted occasionally by a throaty snore from Anna. Lindsay was surprised to find her hands still clenched into fists. When she unclenched them, she found that she had been gripping a small, metal game piece in her left hand. She’d held it so hard that its form had made an impression on the inside of her palm. A perfect miniature revolver.