Fowl Prey (22 page)

“Well? What was it?” Renie had one eye on Judith, the other on the sign of a giant steaming crust which denoted the location of Pie-Oh-My!.

“Simple,” replied Judith, pulling into the restaurant parking lot. She gave Renie a puckish grin. “A little bird told me.”

 

Auntie Vance was swearing like a sailor as she stirred the gravy, Uncle Al was expounding on his latest scheme to get rich at the dog track, Uncle Vince was dozing off by the fire, and Bill was smoking a Cuban cigar while he tried to watch the traditional Thanksgiving football game on TV. Mike and Kristin had dashed up to the top of Heraldsgate Hill to a convenience store to get the whipping cream which Uncle Al's girlfriend, known to the family
as Tess of the Timber Mills, had forgotten to bring. Aunt Deb was being waited on by all three of her grown grand-children while Gertrude plotted a new way to booby-trap her sister-in-law's wheelchair.

“If I greased the wheels with turkey fat, I could send her right into the aspidistra,” Gertrude chortled as Judith elbowed her way in besides Auntie Vance to check the green beans.

“Knock it off, Mother,” reproached Judith. “You know darned well you're more fond of Aunt Deb than you'll ever admit.”

Gertrude leaned on her walker and gave Judith a sly look. “I could start a fire under that contraption and see if she's as crippled as she pretends.”

“Shut up, knotheads!” shouted Auntie Vance, wielding a long wooden spoon. “Do you want to eat this gravy or wear it?”

Accustomed to Auntie Vance's little ways, Judith smiled and moved to the cupboard to get down the serving bowls. “That turkey should be done. I'm going to take it out and let it rest for half an hour.”

“
I
should be able to rest that long,” grumbled Auntie Vance, the only living human being who had been known to get the better of her sister-in-law, Gertrude, and live to talk about it. She was also the only one in the entire clan who could feed up to forty without flinching, take care of tiny tots and teenagers alike without turning a hair, and make people laugh when they should have cried. “Move it, goatbreath,” Auntie Vance said to Judith, “I need to get more flour. Your kitchen's so disorganized, I don't see how you could run a third-rate cathouse, let alone a classy bed-and-breakfast joint. Sheeesh!”

Judith smiled some more. Gertrude leaned on her walker as Sweetums wandered by, sniffing at her bedroom slippers. “Judith does just fine, all things considered. Stop picking on my girl.” She gave Sweetums a clumsy kick and her daughter a flinty look. “But you
were
an hour late getting home last night. You said
eight
o'clock, not nine. And you come up with the lamest excuses! Customs agents and begonia tubers! You think I'm an idiot?”

Judith kept her expression bland. She and Renie had not wanted to worry their mothers about their involvement in the Clovia murder. “It couldn't be helped,” Judith said noncommittally as the front doorbell rang. “Drat, that's probably Mike and Kristin. He must have forgotten his key again.”

By the time Judith reached the entry hall, Renie was already there. So was Joe Flynn, standing in the doorway with a shopping bag in his hand. Judith stopped short, her mouth agape.

“Joe! I thought you were staying in Port Royal!”

It wasn't Joe's style to look sheepish, but he came close. “They're getting things under control up there. I thought if I stayed on, my presence might be construed as interference.” He moved aside as Renie closed the door behind him. It was almost dark, with the autumn air clear and crisp, and a golden moon on the rise. “Where,” asked Joe, “is your mother?”

Around the corner in the living room, Uncle Al, Tess, and Aunt Deb craned their necks to get a glimpse of the new arrival. Bill snarled at the Detroit Lions' defensive secondary. Uncle Vince snored peacefully, his mouth open, his head to one side.

Judith was trying to steer Joe out of her family's line of vision. Renie cooperated by twirling into the living room, a cow-shaped oven mitt on her head. “Twenty minutes to turkey time, folks! Come on, kids, help get Nana ready to roll!”

“I'm glad you came,” Judith breathed, getting Joe as far as the dining room.

His green eyes twinkled. “So am I. So far. But listen, Jude-girl, I don't think we'd better make a habit of this. Yet. It may be two, three, even four months before I hear from the chancery.”

Judith's face hardened. “What's taking them so long? Now I know why the archbishop wears that tall, peaked hat—it's to cover up the point on his head!” She fumed briefly, then calmed down, and turned a penitent face to Joe. “I'm sorry, I'm just not sure I understand why we aren't supposed to see each other. What's the problem?”

Joe regarded Judith with a wry expression. “Remember what my enclosure card said? The one I sent with your flowers?”

“Sure,” replied Judith. “It was cryptic. ‘Mum's the word.'”

“There's nothing cryptic about
your
mum,” said Joe. “She makes her feelings pretty plain.”

As if to prove his point, the swinging door to the kitchen was flung open by Gertrude, clumping her way across the threshold. She saw Joe, banged the walker down, and let the door fly back, hitting Sweetums smack in the whiskers. The cat howled, but Gertrude was unmoved. Her beady eyes narrowed and her chin quivered. She didn't speak for what seemed like an eternity. When she did, the words were low and raw:

“Joe Flynn, you son of a bitch. Get out of
my
house!”

Joe had been known to charm the warts off toads, or at least a reasonable facsimile of such an unlikely achievement. He started to smile, to speak, to bow, even to demur. Instead, the hand that held the shopping bag shot out at Gertrude. “Here,” he said. “Truce.”

Gertrude eyed the shopping bag as if it contained a live grenade. “I told you to take a hike,” she said in her rasping voice. “What do you mean, prowling around my girl when you're a married man? Haven't you got any
morals?
”

Joe looked around as if he might actually have misplaced his morals somewhere in the dining room. “To be honest with you, Mrs. Grover, I was just about to say the same thing to Jude—to Judith.” He gave both women a
tight smile. “You're absolutely right, I wouldn't be here at all if I had anywhere else to go.”

Only the faintest dimming of Gertrude's bright little eyes revealed that she was the least bit touched by Joe's plight. “What about one of those do-good shelters or mission places downtown? Don't they pass out free meals on Thanksgiving?”

Her retort annoyed Judith. “Mother, don't be so mean! I asked Joe to come!” She grabbed Gertrude by the sleeve of her baggy chartreuse cardigan. “May I remind you, it's
my
house, too?”

“Faugh!” Gertrude growled at Judith, yanking her arm free. “The last time I talked to this shanty Irishman, I told him to go to the devil. I haven't changed my mind in over twenty years!”

Puzzled, Judith looked from her mother to Joe. “When was that?” During Judith's four-year romance with Joe, Gertrude hadn't deigned to speak to him more than five or six times. And while always sharp-tongued, Judith didn't recall her mother ever being so specific in telling Joe off.

Gertrude avoided her daughter's probing gaze. “It was a long time ago,” she mumbled.

The kitchen door had opened a crack, no doubt Auntie Vance, satisfying her curiosity, thought Judith. The living room had grown very quiet, except for the squeaking of Aunt Deb's wheelchair as she edged ever closer to the scene of conflict. Even Bill had stopped cursing the Lions and was half turned toward the dining room.

Joe spoke up in a matter-of-fact tone. “It was when I called from Vegas, the morning after Herself and I got dead drunk and eloped.” He paused, pointing an accusing finger at Gertrude. “You wouldn't let me talk to your daughter. You hung up on me and took the phone off the hook.”

Gertrude thrust her chin up at Joe. “So what? It served you right for running out on my girl.”

Judith felt her legs go weak, and had to brace herself on the marble-topped Victorian washstand that she used for an impromptu bar. “
You
called
me?
” Her voice was very faint.

“Of course I did.” Joe looked angry now, his round face dark, the gold flecks turned to amber in his eyes. “I knew I'd made a terrible mistake.”

Judith wanted to cry. Or murder her mother. Or beat Joe into the floor. Or shoot herself. It was all too bizarre, too ironic, to discover that perhaps she had misjudged Joe Flynn for more than twenty years. At the very least, she had not been quite fair to him.

Gertrude was looking a bit chagrined, if still pugnacious. Joe continued to proffer the shopping bag. Auntie Vance opened the kitchen door a good six inches and poked her bleached blond head into the dining room. “Come on, half-wits, we've got a dinner to serve. Get the lead out before I cut up that ugly cat and put him in with the giblets.”

Slowly, Gertrude took the shopping bag by its handles. She eyed Joe suspiciously before she looked inside. “Chocolates!” she exclaimed. “Hey, five pounds of Granny Goodness Dark Creams and Chewy Centers!” She was weakening now, digging into the bag for the second gift, a slim package wrapped in gold foil with a russet bow. “What's this? Don't just stand there, you dumbbell,” she said to Judith, “give me a hand.”

Judith complied, unwrapping the foil and handing the bow to Auntie Vance, who made as if to plaster it on Gertrude's rump. Judith showed the wooden box to her mother, and then clicked open the little brass latch.

“A cribbage board!” cried Gertrude. “Now there's a really useful present!” She started to grin at Joe, caught herself, and pursed her lips. “You can't buy your way into this old heart, kiddo.” Her glance strayed to the crib board with its finely polished wood grain. “You
can give it a try, though. At least this once.” Briefly, her wrinkled face softened. She watched the others file into the room, led by Aunt Deb in her wheelchair. “Maybe,” muttered Gertrude, “there are still some things to be thankful for.” With a hitch of her hips, she clumped to her place at the far end of the table, just as Mike and Kristin came through the front door. “Okay,” called Gertrude, “let's say grace. This old pilgrim could eat Plymouth Rock!”

Bill intoned the prayer in his best lecture-lector style. Judith surveyed the long oval table, now augmented by two extra slats in the middle to accommodate the large gathering. The entire crew was happily immersed in passing around turkey and dressing, cranberry sauce, creamed onions, green beans, giblet gravy, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, and Renie's not-so-famous rolls, which, for once, had turned out to be edible. In the kitchen on the counter, the pecan, mince, and pumpkin pies awaited their dollops of whipping cream.

Judith let out a little sigh of pleasure at the sight of her loved ones piling their plates, talking and laughing, teasing and taunting. Some of the places were empty, chairs from the past that had been pulled away for good. But the faces remained, familiar, locked in memory, easily recalled by a word, a thought, a gesture. Grandpa and Grandma Grover. Her father. Uncle Cliff. Dan.

Judith glanced at Joe, who was squeezed in between Tess and Aunt Deb. He leaned forward, handing Judith the butter plate before he took the beans from Tess.

“I'm putting together a new field hockey team come spring,” he said in a low voice, his ingenuous expression in place. “Interested?”

Judith tipped her head to one side as she placed a pat of butter on her plate. “Maybe.” She gave Joe a sweet little smile. “It all depends on whether or not you can give me a real good puck.”

Joe spilled the beans.