Death Dangles a Participle (Miss Prentice Cozy Mystery Series) (10 page)

Gil once more disappeared into the bedroom.

There was a thumping from behind the sofa in the den. I leaned over the kitchen bar. “What’s going on?”

“My tie!” muttered Vern, scrambling on all fours around the coffee table. He only owned one, a wide one in shades of tan, orange, and green with a portrait of Wile E. Coyote in the middle.

“Why would you want a tie? You never wear one.”

He lifted his head, but avoided meeting my gaze. “I, um, kind wanted to get dressed up a little.”

He crawled away from me. Obviously, he didn’t want to go into detail.

“Well, you won’t find your tie in there,” I pointed out as I loaded the last breakfast coffee cup in the dishwasher, “Why don’t you check in your room?”

Still on his knees, he pulled a seat cushion off the sofa and plunged his hand in the crevice. “It’s too messy. I’d never find it. Hey, there’s money down here.” He pulled some coins from the treasure site and counted them in his palm. “Seventy-eight cents, good deal.” He pocketed them. “But no tie.” He shrugged and looked over at me pitifully, still on his knees.

I dried my hands with a paper towel thoughtfully. “When did you wear it last?”

“Quite a while ago. At your wedding, in fact. Then I took it off and—oh, I know!” He jumped to his feet and ran for the front door. “It’s gotta be in my car!” He slammed out.

“Put on your coat!” I called after him, but in vain.

“Do you have any cufflinks?” Gil called from our bedroom door. “If we’re going to go to the Lion’s Roar tonight, I need to wear this dress shirt and it needs cufflinks.” He waved his arms to prove that his cuffs did indeed flop without the proper restraint.

“I have several pairs of Papa’s, but they’re packed in the attic at Chez Prentice.” I turned the knob on the dishwasher. “Why don’t you wear a shirt that doesn’t need them?”

“Because this is my only clean dress shirt. I bought it by accident two years ago. It’s never been worn. The hamper’s full, you know, Amelia.”

He tilted his head in the direction of our bathroom. There was the slightest hint of gentle accusation in his tone.

“Tell me,” I said casually as I followed him into the bedroom, “what did you do with dirty shirts before we got married?” I slipped out of my bathrobe and pulled a pantsuit from the closet.

“Dropped ’em off at the cleaners on the way to work.”

Gil draped a tie around his neck—a tasteful silk one with navy and maroon stripes—and proceeded to perform that most mysterious of male rituals, tying a knot backwards in a mirror: wrap, loop, slip, and pull. He looked at my reflection from under brows lowered in concentration.

“But I had kind of hoped to guilt you into doing it. Isn’t the Little Woman supposed to be in charge of the laundry?” He adjusted the tie’s ends and positioned the knot to his satisfaction. “How about it?”

I was busy struggling to fasten a button at the back of my silk blouse. “Not a chance. I iron worse than I cook. Didn’t I tell you?” I fumbled and missed the buttonhole. “Didn’t you see the ones I washed and ironed for you last week?” I pulled evidence of my ineptitude from the closet and held it up.

Gil snickered.

I replaced the shirt in the closet. “Look, I have to be at work a full half-hour before you do, so tomorrow, why don’t you just take your shirts to the cleaner’s as of old?” I arched my back and reached over my shoulder. “However, if you ask her very politely, the Little Woman might pick them up for you after school Tuesday—ehhh!” I groaned in frustration and turned my back toward Gil. “Would you?”

Smiling, he completed the task. “Tell me, how did you manage to button blouses like this before we were married?” He patted my derriere gently, just to show there was no rancor at my wild-eyed feminist stance on the subject of laundry.

“With difficulty,” I conceded, fastening the button of my wool slacks.

“How do you like that?” I heard Vern moaning from the den. “I searched the car. It wasn’t even in the trunk!”

“Come on in,” Gil called to him, “we’re decent.”

“Just barely,” I muttered and went to brush my teeth in the bathroom.

“What’s the problem, buddy?” I heard Gil ask. “Come on, use one of my ties,” he offered after hearing the details of Vern’s predicament. “This one would match your jacket, or this one.”

“No offense,” said Vern, “but those are Geek City. Thanks anyway. I’ll just wear a turtleneck under my sport coat. I think there’s one on the floor in my room.”

Gil joined me in the bathroom, closing the door behind him. “Now what am I going to do with this awful thing?” He reached in the clothes hamper and pulled out the missing tie.

“Gil, you hid it? That’s terrible!”

“Shhh! No more terrible than this,” he whispered, holding it over his own tie and looking at himself in the mirror. Wile E. Coyote sneered. Gil shuddered. “Can you believe he paid actual money for this atrocity? Sometimes I forget how young he is. A little over a year ago, he was still a teenager.”

I was brushing my hair. “That doesn’t matter. He likes the tie, and you had no business hiding it—ouch!” The comb had grazed my ear, which was still delicate from an injury sustained last autumn.

Gil looked into Wile E Coyote’s eyes. “I’m telling you, Amelia, no relative of mine is going to be seen in this tie in public. When he no longer wants it, I’ll just return it.”

“Well, you’ve outsmarted yourself. He’s looked everywhere, so you can’t just put it back where you found it.”

“Sure I can,” Gil said, returning the tie to the laundry hamper. “I’ll just toss it behind his computer in a few days and he’ll never know the difference.” He held his wrists up in pitiful supplication. “Are you sure you don’t have any cufflinks?”

I finally persuaded Gil that a pair of conservative gold-colored clip earrings from Mother’s old jewelry box would serve the purpose nicely. He showed these to Vern, who shrugged blankly.

“What? No joke? No wisecrack? What’s wrong with you, kid?” Gil locked the front door and we, cozily decked out in our bulky parkas, navigated the treacherous icy walk to our respective cars.

“I don’t know. Not in a funny mood, I guess.” Vern ducked into his car, slammed the door, started his engine and rolled down the driveway, much slower than usual.

“Kid’s a piece of work,” Gil noted with a cloudy sigh as he pulled a snowbrush from the trunk.

“Interesting,” I said, wiping off the back windshield with my gloved hand. “He once used the same phrase to describe you.”

Gil worked on a stubborn frozen section with the scraper end of the brush. It wouldn’t budge. “Guess I’ll have to melt it off. Hop in.”

We took our seats in the car and Gil turned the key. I breathed a thankful prayer when it started up right away. Back in town, too many balky ignitions on too many cold mornings had put me in the healthy habit of walking everywhere. Now that we lived miles from town, that was out of the question, and I was going to have to make up the exercise somehow. My clothes were getting tight.

Patiently, we sat watching the defroster slowly warm its way through the thin layer of ice on the windshield.

“So you don’t regret that we waited so long?” I asked Gil.

“Hmmm? Regret?”

“Getting married so late,” I prompted. I wasn’t sure how I got on this subject, but all at once there were questions that needed answers.

“Of course I regret it, Amelia,” Gil said, suddenly comprehending my question. His right glove grabbed my left one, and he held it against his cheek. “I regret that I was too thick-headed and full of myself to see what was right in front of me all those years. I regret that it took that crazy Vern to open my eyes.”

“But children. Didn’t you want to have them?” Before our marriage, in the interest of total honesty, I’d confided to Gil about my inability to conceive, a fact of life that I’d had to accept years ago.

He frowned at me and turned on the windshield wipers, which made short work of the remaining melting ice. “I used to, once, I think,” he said, “but now, nosiree, not any more. I couldn’t handle the crying and diapers and mess. That’s why Vern is so ideal. No fuss, no muss.”

“No muss?” I said, laughing, “Vern?”

“Well, you’ve got a point there. But what I’m saying, Amelia, is that I’m content with things just the way they are and very, very happy.” He leaned over and kissed me. “I wouldn’t change a single thing.”

I could feel myself glowing, even though the poor Rousseau brothers were in jail, Lily was still being distant, Principal Berghauser was his difficult self, poor old Sam was missing and a stranger lay dead in the morgue. No doubt about it, lots of things were going wrong, but at least Gil and I had it right this time.

After Gil got out at the newspaper office, I got into the driver’s seat and headed in the direction of Chez Prentice. Weekends were the busiest times for Marie and Etienne, and I usually tried to stay out of their way, but as a partner in the enterprise, it was my responsibility to stay informed and available to help, if necessary.

At the traffic light just before the turn to Jury Street, I pulled up behind a battered pickup truck full of precariously stacked lumber with a red rag tied to the longest piece that jutted from the back.

“Go straight, go straight,” I directed the driver when the light turned green, then as the pickup’s flasher gave a delayed signal and made the cumbersome right turn, muttered, “Oh, great.”

The poorly loaded wood rearranged itself and the longest board slid backward, threatening to carry its cheery red bandana straight through my windshield. I gasped and slammed on the brake.

Thank goodness, the street had been recently plowed and sanded. You never knew who was going to take to the road. I gripped the steering wheel harder. This was why I preferred to let Gil do the driving.

One had to look on the bright side, however. Chez Prentice was located six houses up the street on the right. Once I reached the B&B, this pestilential nuisance could drive itself off into somebody else’s nightmare. Gritting my teeth, I slowed to a snail’s pace behind the truck, being careful to keep several car lengths behind the red rag at the end of the sagging, bouncing board.

But it didn’t drive off. It slowed to a near stop to the right of my old family house and began a heart-stopping ascent up the low incline of Chez Prentice’s newly graveled driveway. Gravity had its way at last, and the longest board slid completely out of the truck bed, accompanied by a few of its shorter fellows and, after a clattering roll, came to a stop directly in front of my car.

No sooner had I pulled to the curb and emerged from my vehicle than a burly figure came ambling over, his work-gloved hands raised in apology. “Sorry ’bout that, Miss Prentice!”

“It’s all right, Bert,” I said politely. “I didn’t recognize your truck.”

Hester Swanson’s handyman husband grinned and bent to lift the errant plank. “That’s because you never seen this one. It’s my fishing truck. I keep it out at camp.” He grunted at the effort, but managed to drag the board back to the truck.

Bert’s allusion to camp meant neither a military base nor a place where children spend the summer, but simply a dwelling where locals vacationed. One’s camp could range from a sagging shack to a fully equipped modern home, but it must, by definition, occupy land on the lakeshore. Come to think of it, our own house might qualify as a camp.

I followed him as he retrieved the other fallen pieces of wood. “What’s this all about? Are you making more repairs?”

“Nope, me’n Etienne’s got another business going.” He heaved the boards back on the truck. His eyebrows shot up his forehead. “Say, you don’t mind, do ya? I mean, he said it’d be okay if we worked here.” He pointed toward the rear of the house with a gloved hand.

“Of course not. I’m sure whatever you two are doing is fine.”

“That’s good, then.” Bert mounted the cab of the truck. “Well, I better be getting back there before the Frenchman gets in trouble.”

“I’m glad to hear that.”

I couldn’t help but smile. It was to Etienne’s credit that the two men had developed
camaraderie
,
esprit de corps
, and
vive la compagnie
!

At the turn of the driveway, I abruptly stopped mining my memory for French expressions. There at the back of the yard, beyond Chez Prentice’s new gravel parking lot, was the old detached garage. During my tenure as sole resident of the place—and indeed, most of my life—this outbuilding, containing cast-aside furniture, broken tools, cartons of old magazines, and a little-used car, had been kept padlocked.

Now it stood with its wooden doors flung wide. Bert’s truck was moving so slowly that I passed it easily on foot, stopping at the garage door, head swiveling to take in the spectacle.

“My goodness, you two have been busy.”

“You’re right there,” Bert huffed as he dragged wood from the back of the truck and laid it in a pile to the right of the building.

“But it’s empty. What happened to the things that were inside?”

“Don’t worry. I didn’t throw out nothing. It took me all day yesterday to drag your folks’ old stuff up to the attic. The Frenchman—” He grinned as he used the word. “Etienne, I mean—cleaned up the rest this morning.” Bert pulled off his watch cap and wiped his forehead on a sleeve. “The stuff weighed a ton. No kidding, Miss Prentice, why would anybody want to keep all them old
National Geographic
s anyway?”

I answered him absently as I moved forward into the dark cavern. “My mother thought they’d help with our school work. What’s this?” A large machine occupied the center of the place.

He replaced his cap and resumed loading. “Band saw. We rented it.”

“What exactly is this project?” I called after Bert as he rounded the truck for another load of wood.

“Swanson and LeBow, Angler ’ousing.”

Etienne LeBow, his arms full of packages, walked up to me. His handsome face was flushed with cold and, I suspected, enthusiasm. In the years prior to his reconciliation with Marie, he had begun and built seven successful businesses, all due to his canny good sense and energy.

“You’re building fishing shanties?”