Mahjonged (An Alex Harris Mystery) (2 page)

“Especially if they have to hike outside to find the little boy’s room. When is John due back?”

“Maybe Monday. You know, if I came home and found my husband in bed with some meter maid, I’d want to go a lot further than Maine. Paris might be nice. And John’d be paying for it, you can be sure.”

“You two are still on your honeymoon,” Mary-Beth said, as she stabbed a black olive with a toothpick. “And besides, the man is clearly besotted with you.”

“Besotted?” I laughed.

Mary-Beth shrugged, “I have
Downton Abbey
syndrome.”

I sighed. My entire family was besotted with the wonderful PBS series which had taken the country by storm. “I see,” I said sounding a bit like Mary Crawley myself.

“So tell me who’s coming tonight. Anybody I know?”

“A few and several you don’t. I don’t even know them. My mother is bringing a friend and Millie and her mom are bringing a couple of others. And Connie from my health club is also bringing someone.”

“How many are coming all together?”

“Thirteen.”

“Thirteen! Alex you didn’t. It’s bad luck.”

“Pooh. I am not superstitious and besides I think it’s actually going to be fifteen if everyone shows up.”

“Superstition aside, aren’t there supposed to be four to a table?”

“Yeah, but we can play with five. Well, not actually play, but the fifth player at the table can bet on the person she believes will win based on the hands after the Charleston is completed.”

“Stop! Don’t tell me any more. I’m just trying to remember how to play with four. Don’t confuse me.” Mary-Beth put her hand up and shook her head of dark brown hair.

“You sound like Sam. This is not a complicated game, Mary-Beth. You’ll be fine. And it is, after all, only a game.”

Thirty minutes later my house was full of women. Mary-Beth arranged the table in the dining room for the small buffet while I greeted my guests. It was just about this time when all hell broke loose.

“You! What are you doing here! Will someone please tell me what this, this woman is doing here?” Mia Christiansen, who arrived with Millie and who had just come out of the powder room by the front door, shouted into the face of Liz Throckmorton, who came with my friend Connie. Liz’s face turned a shade of red almost the exact color of her sweater. My mother, Mabel Harris, and the three women who arrived with her, Dorothy Dols, Francis Haddock, and Jean Malanski, came and stood next to me.

Millie Chapman came to her friend’s side, “Mia? What’s going on? Do you know this woman?”

“Know her! Know her!” Mia shouted again.

I looked at the young woman who only a few minutes earlier had seemed such a sweet person. Now her face was contorted with rage.

“Of course I know her! She’s the one who killed my father!”

“Now wait just a minute, young lady,” my mother said, stepping in front of Liz. “You must be mistaken.” My mother turned to look at Liz for the first time. “I’m sorry. We haven’t been properly introduced. I’m Mabel Harris, Alex’s mother.”

“Liz Throckmorton. It’s nice to meet you,” Liz said, clearly relieved that at least for the moment no one yelled in her face.

“Who are you? Who are you?” demanded Mia, who obviously liked saying everything twice.

“As I just said to Liz, I’m Mabel Harris, Alex’s mother, and this is her house. I will not have you speaking like this to a guest in my daughter’s home.”

“Mom, it’s okay,” I said suddenly seeing my evening falling apart before my eyes. “Mia, please. Tell me what’s going on.”

Mia began to sob. “She killed my father. At the hospital.”

“It’s not true,” Liz said, finally speaking up. “I was cleared of any wrong doing. It was an accident. I never meant to kill him.”

“Is this true,” Mom asked turning to Liz. “You killed a man?”

“No. Her father was very sick. He had an attack on my shift. His file said DNR so we did nothing. It said right on his chart he was DNR. I swear.”

“What on earth is DNR?” Mom asked.

“I believe it means,
Do Not Resuscitate
, Mom.”

“Yes, that’s right, Alex. It was clearly written on his chart,” Liz said.

“But it was a mistake. A mistake! And you killed him! You killed him!”

I couldn’t take any more of hearing Mia say everything twice. “Millie, please take Mia into the living room. Mom, why don’t you go make her a cup of tea,” I begged, trying to salvage the evening.

“It wasn’t my fault,” Liz said. “There was another man on the floor. He had the same first initial, E, and his last name was the same, but spelled differently. Somehow, the charts got mixed up and the DNR was written on the wrong one. But I didn’t do it.”

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” I said placing my hand to my heart. I led Liz over to the sofa and we sat down.

“Did someone need a cup of tea out here?” Mary-Beth asked a few minutes later.

“It’s for Mia. Now where did she go?” I asked as I looked around.

“Maybe she left,” Mary-Beth suggested.

“No one’s going anywhere,” my sister said, coming into the house followed by Meme and Theresa. The three of them stood there making a muddy puddle on the hardwood floor. “There’s a giant tree down at the end of the road. We had to park one street over. We cut through your neighbor’s backyard, Alex.”

“Scared the dog half to death,” Meme added. “Good thing I wore my galoshes. Their dog must dig a lot cuz their yard is real muddy.” The little hat my grandmother always wore had miraculously managed to stay on her head, but it dripped rain down Meme’s face.

“I was the last car they let in to the neighborhood so I hope everyone is already here. Mildred’s Creek is overflowing and flooding the bridge. You really should have moved to a house in an area with a bigger bridge, Alex,” my sister added.

“Well, I hope everyone brought pajamas. Looks like it’s going to be a sleepover,” I sighed.

“I am not staying another minute in this house with that woman!” Mia said from where she stood in the foyer.

“What woman?” my sister whispered in my ear.

I just shook my head in despair. Not only was I stuck having to play with all these women but now they would be staying the night.

“Now, I suggest we all calm down. We’re obviously not going anywhere for a while,” Dorothy said. Dorothy is my mother’s best friend and like a second mother to Sam and me.

“Why don’t we all have some soup and salad? Dorothy, why don’t you take Penelope and Liz into the dining room? Sam, you come with me.” I dragged my sister into the kitchen where my mom prepared a pot of coffee.

“What the heck is going on here?” Sam asked.

“Well, if you had arrived sooner, you would know.”

“Alex, don’t talk to your sister that way.”

I am a thirty-eight-year old married woman but when my mom tells me to do something, I do it. How pathetic am I? “Sorry. What took you so long, by the way?” I said with a mock smile, while I reached into my jar of M&Ms. They’re my Prozac and I had a feeling I might need a lot of them tonight.

“That little walk through the neighbor’s yard, which is now a pond, didn’t help. Plus I had Meme holding onto one arm and Theresa holding my other arm,” Sam said. “So, if I may be so bold as to ask again, what
is
going on here? And where can I put these shoes?” Sam had taken off her ankle boots, which she now held over the sink.

“Just put them by the back door. There’s a pair of slippers out there. You can wear those. Let’s get in there before another fight breaks out. And let’s try to be cheerful, shall we?” I smiled to the group in the kitchen.

The group in the dining room had helped themselves to dinner. So much for all hell breaking loose, food being the great pacifier. Millie, her mother Judith Chapman, and Mia, had settled themselves on the sofa in the living room. At least Mia tried to eat something, I thought thinking it must be a good sign. Of what, I wasn’t sure, but at least the young woman wasn’t still yelling.

Liz came with Connie Cabrizzi, one of the instructors at the health club I belonged to, and I would have to ask Connie if she knew anything about what Mia had accused Liz of. Connie always had some good gossip about people at the club and, while I didn’t spread it myself, I had no qualms about hearing it once in a while. Connie had brought Liz along in the hopes I could find her some administrative work. The woman was a nurse and I wondered, if she had been cleared of any wrong-doing as she said, why she wasn’t still working in the profession?

After all the introductions were made and everyone filled up on soup, salad, and crusty bread, my mom and Dorothy helped me clear the table and in place of the soup pot, I put a carrot cake and a chocolate cream pie along with another pot of coffee and freshly brewed tea. “Well, why don’t we all go into the library and begin,” I suggested hoping to ease the tension. My evening was not turning out at all like I had planned, but once we started to play, I hoped things would get better. I just had to make sure Mia and Liz did not play at the same table.

With the other card table Sam brought stuck in her car a block away, Millie and Sam went out to Mrs. Chapman’s car to retrieve a table she had left in her trunk from a meeting she attended several days before.

Twenty minutes later, everyone had built their Great Wall. The sound of mahjong tiles being moved around the table was a welcoming sound from the screech of Mia’s voice. But, as any good weatherman will tell you, this was just the calm before the storm.

“Mahjong!” Millie shouted from the other side of the room. Again. “Pay me. Twenty-five cents each.”

The wind howled outside as each table continued their games, players picking tiles from the Great Wall and discarding others. I suddenly felt a fluttering of air across my ankle where the skin of my leg was exposed between the hem of my jeans and my sock. Almost imperceptible but then I felt it again. I glanced around the room and other than hands picking up and discarding mahjong tiles, I saw no movement. I lived in an old house, and one which was obviously not wind proof. Just another thing to add to John’s ever-growing list of home projects.

I looked around at each table. I played at a table with Mary-Beth, Meme and Theresa. Everything seemed calm. Mia sat at the same table with Millie and Sam along with Millie’s mom, Judith. My mom played at a table with Penelope Radamaker and Liz and Jean while Dorothy and Connie played a three-handed version with Francis Haddock.

I had met Francis Haddock a couple years earlier while investigating the murder of a woman who worked at the local mannequin factory. My mom had taken Mrs. Haddock under her wing and she fit in perfectly with the seniors group. My grandmother was also systematically turning her into quite a Bingo player.

I watched Penelope, Liz and Jean. Until tonight, I’d never met them before. Penelope arrived with Judith Chapman. She had lived in Europe for many years and now lived here in Indian Cove. She seemed to be a lively woman and from the look of her clothes, probably a rich woman as well. She, like Liz, dressed in red. Come to think of it, Connie and my mom also wore red and so did Mia. I then looked at Liz. There was obviously a story there. I would have to find out the details later from Connie. My mom had invited Jean Malansky, another friend from the seniors group. She had been quiet all evening, though very friendly whenever anyone talked to her. Mom hoped to bring her out of her shell. Jean didn’t say a whole lot but she seemed to be one heck of a mahjong player and I would have to remember to include her in any future games I organized. Jean was tall and thin and had pale red hair with a lot of gray she didn’t bother to color. Comparing her to Penelope and her own head of thick, wavy red hair there was a striking contrast. One looked like she lived the life of Jackie O and the other like Jackie O’s maid.

“Honey, it’s your turn,” Meme said, bringing me out of my musings. “You’re tryin’ to figure out what’s going on between Liz and Mia aren’t you?”

Nothing got past my grandmother. The only difference between her and her daughter, my mom, was my mother would admonish me to stop immediately, whereas Meme usually wanted in on whatever I was up to.

“I’m sure there’s a good story there, but now’s not the time. I’ll have to stop over at the club on Monday and ask Connie what it’s all about,” I whispered to the group at my table, knowing full well I sat with a bunch of nosy snoops just like me.

“What the heck hell? You’re cheating!” Sam pouted from the other side of the room as Millie won again.

I smiled at my sister’s use of “what the heck hell.” My nephew Henry had a habit of saying “what the hell,” which we all knew he picked up from his mother. My sister, being the good mom, and trying to keep him from getting kicked out of school, told him he should be saying “what the heck,” and before we knew it, the phrase morphed to “what the heck hell.” My sister promptly claimed it as her own and loved saying it.

“Before I give you one more red cent, Millie Chapman,” Sam huffed, “I just want to say two things. One, don’t forget you work for me, and two, I want Alex to check your hand before we pay up.”

Millie, who had won three games in a row, just smiled and said, “No problem. Alex, do you mind coming over here to check my tiles?”

I walked over to their table. “Millie, you got a Small Chow! Nice going. This is a difficult hand to get.”

“Wait a minute,” Sam said getting up and moving over to Millie’s side for a better look. “What in God’s name is a chow? I thought we were supposed to be working on Pungs or Mungs or some damned thing.”

“Pungs. And there are also chows, which are three tiles in sequence in the same suit. And it’s a double. So you pay her fifty cents.”

Millie beamed. Her mother gave her another twenty-five cents and Sam continued to pout.

“I can’t even figure out which wind I am,” Sam moaned, referring to the four winds, East, West, North, and South, which were part of the game. She finally went back to her seat and took fifty cents out of her wallet and handed it to Millie.