Beware False Profits (7 page)

“Wow.”

“Oh, and the final blow? Hazel refused to let us purchase the chocolate that’s made especially for it. We had donated chocolate available, so she insisted we find a recipe ourselves and use it.”

The chocolate fountain was beginning to look a shade less yummy.

Sally must have read my expression, because she put her hand on my shoulder. “It tastes perfectly fabulous. You just add vegetable oil based on the pounds of chocolate you need, but you have to melt the chocolate first and do some adjusting to get it flowing. Then you turn it off and on again every twenty or thirty minutes to reprime the pump. I won’t go on…”

“I’m wondering why you didn’t get Hazel to do this herself, since it was her idea to change the order.”

“Hazel and chocolate? Not a chance. Her views on what foods are acceptable for human beings are way out there. Only food in its purest form. She claims she eats nothing but nuts, whole grains, fruits, and vegetables. Of course…”

Sally’s eyes were sparkling. I knew that look. Sally was listening to her better side, trying to stem the flow of gossip. But I wasn’t above pulling a brick or two out of that dam.

“You don’t think she really follows the diet?”

“You’re a vegetarian, aren’t you?”

“I don’t expect other people to follow the lettuce-lined path.”

“Well, the rumor is Hazel doesn’t practice what she preaches. She’s a junk food junkie. I’m told she’s a hopeless chocoholic, and get this…she smokes!”

I envisioned Hazel, the food Nazi, rolling a tobacco leaf and smoking it “in its purest form.”

“People have seen her smoking?” I asked.

“People have smelled it. I’m one of them. She tries to cover it up, but she’s not successful. I get the feeling maybe she smokes half a pack at a time whenever she can get away with it. I think she more or less stores it up until she can go off on a binge by herself again.”

This was a character flaw that improved Hazel’s resume. She almost sounded human. Imperfections have their place.

“But of course she would never admit it,” Sally continued. “So she rails against the evils of chocolate and lets the rest of us do all the work. She forgets the rest of us have busy lives, too. In fact, the minute I’m done here, I’m heading out of town.”

“Somewhere fun?”

She looked at me as if I needed my consciousness raised. “A conference on urban renewal for small cities.”

In her own way, Sally is as single-minded as Hazel.

I told her again how lovely everything looked, then I wandered over to sample the wares.

Chad Sutterfield was standing by himself at the end of the table, so I went to chat with him after I filled my plate. I planned to save the chocolate fountain for dessert. I wanted to look forward to it.

“You did a great job on the tour.” I offered him one of the tiny spinach quiches that had just been put out, but I guess it’s true what they say about real men. He shook his head.

“You’ll have to tell me how those are. We have thirty boxes in the warehouse freezer.”

“What will you do with them? They don’t seem like the kind of thing families are looking for when they come to get groceries. ‘I’d like dried milk, canned tomatoes, a pound of cheese, and a box of fancy appetizers?’”

“One day next week we’ll probably include them in our meals for the elderly.” He watched me take a bite and smiled when I nodded my approval.

“You get all sorts of odd things like this?”

“We’re always surprised what people think we might use. Once we got a hundred pounds of ground ostrich meat.”

“What did you do?”

“They say it’s really healthy, so we couldn’t see disposing of it. Our volunteers made spaghetti. I won’t tell you where we served it. Maybe you ate some.”

“Nope. I’m a vegetarian, brought on at least partly by too many meals of mystery meat in school lunchrooms.”

“I could tell you some hair-raising stories about string beans.”

“Leave me some illusions.”

A couple more people wandered up to thank Chad for the tour, and I wandered off to find Ed. After his warning, I was going to make him serve me a glass of punch. I might drink half a dozen glasses just to make a point.

I got close to the table just in time for disaster to ensue. The tent flap blew open, in itself nothing to cause a problem. But the same strong gust of wind that had sent it flying swept across the chocolate fountain. I remembered what Sally had said and jumped backwards just in time. Unfortunately, others nearby weren’t so lucky.

Brownie, who had been dipping a strawberry, was now as chocolate as his name. And Hazel had been sprayed with enough dark chocolate to indulge in clandestine licks for a month to come.

The Kefauvers jumped back, sputtering.

“Turn that thing off!” Hazel screeched. “Who’s responsible? Who’s the incompetent who’s responsible!”

Brownie took her by the arm and pulled her away from the scene. She was too busy peeling chocolate off her chin to resist. But she continued to screech more abuse as she peeled.

If you’ve never seen a chocolate tornado, you’ve missed something special. Chocolate flew everywhere. Everything for several feet in diameter was thoroughly coated. Sandwiches, pastries, and the punch bowl. As if that wasn’t enough of a problem, the chocolate that wasn’t spraying the table was bubbling out of the fountain in bursts, as if it was taking shots at the people trying to move food out of harm’s way.

“Unplug it,” Sally commanded, and two men I’d never met dropped to their knees, crawled under the table, apparently bumping heads judging from the profanity, and managed to make a simple job unbearably complicated. While they struggled with the cord, chocolate coated everything in sight.

Ed came over to watch from a safe distance. “Tell me you had nothing to do with this.”

“Oh, ye of little faith.”

“What happened?”

“Sally was just complaining about how hard the setup was. I guess they didn’t get it right after all.” I looked up at him. “I’d built up to the chocolate fountain, you know. I have an active fantasy life, and I was dragging it out. I was just about to indulge. Does this seem fair to you?”

“I’ll buy you a funnel cake.”

“Maybe I could get a little closer and open my mouth. I can always wash my hair.”

“Hazel!”

I wondered what Hazel had done now. I hoped whatever it was, it didn’t involve Sally Berrigan and hands around the throat. Hazel was probably stronger, but Sally had more friends.

I turned to see Hazel facedown on the ground to our left. Hazel is a difficult woman and hard to like, but I knew she wasn’t the kind of person who would faint for attention.

“Ed…” I grabbed his arm. “Something’s got to be wrong.”

“She was furious.” He started forward.

I wondered if in her rage, Hazel had gone after Sally or somebody else, and they had shoved her and she’d fallen.

But now Brownie was kneeling beside his wife, shaking her. “She was okay. She was okay a minute ago. Then she gasped and…then, then she fell.”

Once the tour was over I hadn’t noticed Roussos, but he must have been with a crowd of VIPs closer to the tent door. Now he pushed past us and joined Brownie on the ground.

“Help me turn her over,” Roussos ordered.

“Maybe we shouldn’t. Maybe she hurt her back or her neck or—”

“We’re turning her over now.”

Used to following orders, Brownie pushed as Roussos got on the other side and pulled. I put my hand to my mouth. Hazel looked awful. And the chocolate splattered all over her cheeks and neck didn’t help.

Roussos put his fingers against the side of her throat. He kept moving his fingers, as if he was feeling for a pulse. I knew he hadn’t found one when he tilted her head back so her jaw dropped open, and he felt inside her mouth. He was checking to be sure her airway wasn’t blocked.

“Somebody get the medics,” he shouted.

He turned back to Hazel, positioned himself to blow air into her lungs, and began.

I was at his side in a moment. “I can do the chest compressions.”

“Stay there just in case.” He breathed again.

I watched in horror. Hazel’s chest rose with each puff, but she wasn’t breathing on her own. Just as I was about to repeat my offer, there was a noise from the door, and one of the emergency medical technicians on Mayday! duty rushed in.

I stepped out of the way, and he said a few words to Roussos, did a quick assessment, then took over. Roussos stood above them watching. I don’t think he realized he was shaking his head. Roussos never gives anything away, so I knew the news was as bad as it gets.

I don’t know how much time passed. The fountain was unplugged, people were asked to leave, and finally the ambulance that had been parked at the front of the grounds arrived.

As the only clergy on site, Ed stayed to comfort Brownie, and I stayed with him. Ed didn’t tell Brownie to keep his chin up or not to lose hope. Because it was clear to us at that point that there was no hope for Hazel. Hazel Kefauver was gone, and all the hope in the world wasn’t going to bring her back.

So
this
is how I got elected to scrape chocolate out of every crevice of the Women’s Society punch bowl.

After Hazel met her maker in the VIP tent, Sally Berrigan was a wreck. Sally, who was one of the first to discover a body on the parsonage porch back in the fall, has yet to develop a tolerance for death. May that continue.

By the time the ambulance carried Hazel away and something approaching order was restored, Sally had to leave for the conference in Washington. Ed and I had taken turns comforting Brownie and Sally, switching partners regularly. Sally had to be convinced that the mishap with the fountain—for which she unwisely blamed herself—hadn’t contributed to a heart attack or stroke and killed poor Hazel. And let’s be honest. By the time she calmed enough to see reason, she was in no shape to be handling an antique punch bowl worth more than the average annual pledge to our church.

There’s a history that goes along with the punch bowl. My mother procured it to replace our previous casualty, and afterwards she enumerated its fine points to me. American Brilliant Cut glass, made between the years 1886 and 1914, is highly collectible, and even in its time, a luxury item. Each piece was created by a team of craftsmen, and there is nothing comparable on the market today. Our bowl looks like a series of interlaced fans with a sawtooth rim. It has aged well, with only the faintest wear on some of the teeth. Junie endeared herself forever to the Women’s Society by replacing their ordinary pressed glass bowl with this one.

With all that history, despite being upset myself, I was the chump elected to take the punch bowl back to the church to be sure it was sparkling clean and stored away before anybody missed it. Sally claimed no one else had nearly as much invested in doing the job right.

Of course no one else had been at least partially responsible for the demise of the other two. I may not be required to confess regularly, but I do understand the concept of penance.

Since the kitchen of the Consolidated Community Church has a sink large enough to accommodate the punch bowl, early Monday morning I borrowed Ed’s keys from our kitchen key basket, carefully boxed and toted the bowl to the back door of the church, and let myself in. Ed was home with Junie and the girls making breakfast, and I would have preferred to be at our kitchen table working on a second cup of coffee. But even though Monday is normally a quiet day at church and Ed’s day off, I knew that later in the morning the building wouldn’t be quiet at all. Our annual rummage sale is scheduled to take place at the end of the week, with bag day after the service on Sunday. Today marked the beginning of the sorting season.

Last year’s sale was an education. Apparently the rummage sale is a litmus test of sorts. If you still feel friendly toward your fellow congregants when the sale ends, then you have evolved into a higher state and may be called on to give sermons instead of simply listening to them.

My kindest instincts tell me that almost every person who volunteers is normally friendly and patient. I don’t know why sorting and sizing old tennis sneakers and grandma’s support hose turns docile lambs into hungry wolves. But I know, having been in charge of the toy room last year, that by the end of the sale, I was ready to shake every parent or child who tried to get a bargain on a leaking kaleidoscope or hotel-deficient Monopoly game.

I guess the sale means too much work, too many people with too many ideas about how things should be done, and too many items that should have gone in the trash in the first place.

Of course since rummage pays some part of my husband’s salary, I don’t make these sentiments known.

The most stalwart of the rummage sale strike force are members of our Women’s Society who have been running Tri-C’s sale for years. While they complain enthusiastically that our new members don’t help, they criticize them when they try, drastically cutting the field of new volunteers.

So the ladies of the Society are still the ones who arrive first and depart last, and this morning I was afraid if I arrived too late they were going to walk in the kitchen and find me chipping hardened chocolate off their punch bowl. Never mind that Sally Berrigan was responsible, and Sally is president of the group. With Sally safely out of reach I couldn’t point my finger. The obvious solution was to finish the job before anyone could see.

Our parish house kitchen is informally expansive, a mish-mash of donated utensils, pots and pans, and ancient dish towels. China cabinets line the walls, filled with serviceable crockery used most often for monthly potluck suppers. I let myself in and carefully set the box with the punch bowl on the island behind the sink. Once I found the detergent, I filled the largest sink with warm water.

While I waited, I noticed that the cabinet where the glassware is kept was being emptied. Glasses lined the counter below it. The same was true of the cabinet where cups and saucers reside. I wondered if January, our sexton, planned to scrub the shelves and put in new shelf paper. It was certainly needed.

While the sink filled, I opened cupboard doors, noticing other changes as well. Apparently some group or other had taken on the kitchen as a service project, and I was delighted to see it. Shelves had been organized. The pantry where the coffeemakers hang out together was clear of stems and baskets that hadn’t fit any appliance in residence since 1952. I just hoped we weren’t making room for more mismatched finds from rummage sale donations.

I lifted the punch bowl out of the box and was ready to set it in the water when I realized that as I’d wandered, two cars had parked in the small lot behind the church. Now as I watched, women got out of each. Fern Booth from one, Ida Bere and someone I didn’t recognize from the other.

Had I made a list of people I didn’t want to see, Fern and Ida would have topped it. Between them, the two women share the unofficial position of Consolidated Community Church Critic. Fern specializes in ragging on the minister and his family, and Ida specializes in herding everyone to whatever moral high ground she’s chosen for the month. What a team.

Many people in the church would understand if I calmly explained that the punch bowl had been on a field trip to Mayday! when a gust of wind spattered it with chocolate—just about the time the mayor’s wife fell dead on the ground a few yards away. They would believe I’d only been a prisoner of circumstances and was now doing my sacred duty by cleaning and putting it in the closet.

Fern and Ida were not two of those people. I pictured an interrogation room, a bright light shining in my weary eyes, pleas for water denied.

I pictured them sentencing me to another year in charge of the rummage sale toy room.

I’m ashamed to say I followed my instincts and took the easy way out. I slipped the punch bowl back in the box, folded the flaps so no one could see inside, and set the box under the sink behind a plastic wastebasket filled with sponges and dishcloths. Then I pulled the plug, dried my hands, and made my way to the front of the church. When I heard the back door open, I slipped outside.

Unless ants found the punch bowl and drew attention with squeaky sighs of ecstasy, the bowl was safely hidden for the moment. More important, I was safe from explanations and a week of hard labor matching dominoes and testing batteries.

I could have gone home, but since I was already out and dressed, I decided to tick off the next item on the day’s to-do list. I circled back to the parsonage and gunned the motor on our minivan so Ed would know I was escaping. Then I backed onto Church Street and started toward the Village. I was on the way to Maura Wagner’s house, where I would be plied with calories, caffeine, and enough sugary false cheer to make up for the chocolate I’d missed yesterday.

Although Hazel hadn’t been far from my thoughts, passing City Hall brought her death back to the forefront. Ed and I moved to Emerald Springs for a variety of reasons, but one of them was a desire for peace and tranquility. At heart Ed’s a scholar, torn between a desire to practice ministry or to write weighty tomes about historical ministers and their contributions. Emerald Springs seemed the perfect compromise, a small, established church in small-town America, with a liberal arts college that possesses an excellent library, a healthy congregation with an endowment large enough to pay him an adequate salary, and a decent school system for our daughters.

Ed believed there would be time in his schedule for prayer, contemplation, research, and writing.

Ed is not always right.

Two murder investigations in the past year have provided snags in that scenario. That’s two more than anyone expects in a lifetime, so theoretically, we’re due for some peace. Unfortunately, the last few days had me worried about our future. Joe’s disappearance? Disconcerting, but perhaps if all concerned are lucky, nothing more than a bad case of the flu or a temporary emotional meltdown.

Witnessing Hazel’s collapse and death? That’s harder to put a positive spin on. Seeing her on the ground brought back memories. I didn’t really know Hazel, and what I knew about her wasn’t particularly positive, but I feel truly sorry her life ended, and ended the way it did, smack-dab in the middle of affixing blame for the chocolate fountain mishap.

Junie is big on final moments. She believes they epitomize everything about a person’s life. And as you might imagine, my mother thought Hazel’s last moments were sadly significant. Last night she listened as I recounted the story, then she shook her head.

“You watch, precious. That poor woman will come back as an exterminator or a telemarketer. She’ll be forced to spend her next life listening to homeowners scream threats at her until she develops some humility.”

Of course this heartfelt prophecy comes from the same woman who only an hour before Hazel’s death had promised her a long, sexy life. Since that prediction hadn’t quite panned out, I was hoping Junie was going to be two for two on the subject of Hazel Kefauver. I couldn’t picture our mayor’s wife in a khaki shirt and cap, tank and sprayer in hand—although let’s face it, there isn’t a termite or rat that would stand a chance against her.

I pulled up in front of the Wagners’ house, got out, and marched resolutely up the walkway. Today the rag dolls were dressed like Morris dancers, with brightly colored ribbons, hats, and vests. I was surprised Maura hadn’t set up a maypole on the lawn to add to the ambience.

I saw Maura right after Hazel’s collapse. Like everyone else she was shocked. Maura had experienced too many upsets this weekend, but judging by the dolls, she was soldiering on.

Maura answered before I could knock. Today she wore the lilac equivalent of yesterday’s outfit, although to give her credit, this sweater did have tiny cables running up the front.

“Oh, Aggie, I didn’t expect you.” Her smile was PTA chairman perfect.

“I thought I’d stop by and see how you’re doing.”

She seemed almost puzzled, as if she couldn’t imagine why that might be an issue. “I just got Tyler off to school. Would you like to come in for some coffee?”

“That would be nice. How’s Tyler doing?” I now had a bigger stake in knowing, since he and my daughter seemed to be keeping company.

She let me in. We got all the way to the kitchen before she answered. She motioned me to a seat at the table while she bustled around the way she had yesterday. Today it looked as if our calories would be delivered in the form of freshly baked muffins.

“Tyler’s okay.” Maura stacked plates on a tray and poured two cups of coffee from a full pot. I wondered if she set it to brew automatically whenever the doorbell chimed.

She turned with the tray in her hands. “I made sure he did his testing and shots. I’m not as much help as I should be, I guess. I hate needles. They scare me to death. I did natural childbirth just to avoid them.”

We were trading confidences. Now it was my turn. “I did hypnosis when I had Deena. A woman in the church was taking classes and wanted to practice on me. Ed claims I clucked and flapped my arms like a chicken whenever she told me to.”

“Ed was
there
?”

“For both girls. Joe wasn’t?”

“Oh, I didn’t want him there. I wasn’t at my best.”

I’ve yet to meet the woman who is at her best when she’s ten centimeters dilated. Hypnosis or not, had I felt strong enough during either delivery, I would have gotten off the table and wrung Ed’s neck. Still, for most of it, having him there meant everything. To both of us.

“What did Joe do while he waited?” I asked, sliding into one of the reasons I’d come. “Without family to hold his hand? Or maybe there was
somebody
? A cousin, a great aunt?”

“Nobody.”

“That’s going to make it harder…”

“What?”

I hadn’t meant to say that out loud. I shrugged, but Maura was on to me.

She passed me a cup, then set the tray with sugar cubes and cream in front of me. “You’re going to look for him, aren’t you? You’re going to try to find Joseph.”

How could I hide the truth? Maura was my best source of information. Even if she thought she knew very little, she must know
something
that would help.

“I’m going to do what I can. But I don’t know how much help I can be.”

She lowered herself to the seat across from me. “He needs to come back. This is where Joseph belongs. He’s made a good life for us here.”