Lie of the Needle (A Deadly Notions Mystery) (18 page)

“Sometimes it’s hard to find the right one,” I said carefully. “Joe and I are very lucky, but it’s not always such a smooth path for everyone.”

The rest of the guest list—Angus, Ruth, and Mary Willis—arrived within minutes of one another, and I scurried to take coats and fill drink orders. Angus, ever kind, had given both ladies a ride in this snowy weather. Soon the house was full of the sounds of laughter, chatter, and the clink of toasts being made all around.

“Where’s the rest of the gang?” Angus asked.

“In the kitchen,” I said. “Come on, let’s go check out our own version of
Iron Chef
.”

“Stop her before it’s mashed potato soup,” Eleanor murmured to me as we entered the room. I gently took the bowl from Martha’s hands.

Joe had brought the turkey out of the oven to rest, and we all oohed and aahed at the golden brown skin.

“You can never have too much gravy,” Martha declared as she moved over to the drippings pan. She added some stock and began to stir up all the tasty bits into bubbling brown delight.

I slipped my arms around Joe, and he looked down at me with a rueful smile. “Just surrender to the inevitable,” I whispered. “I love you.”

Peter asked how he could help, and I directed him to open the bottles of Beaujolais nouveau and pinot noir in the dining room. Everyone else took a dish and carried it in, and soon the old table was groaning under the weight of the feast.

The moment everyone was seated, Joe said a prayer. I silently gave my own prayer of thanks for the glorious sight of my family and friends gathered together in our home. I wished that Cyril could have been here, but wherever he was, I sent a fervent message out to whoever was listening up above to keep him safe and warm.

As we said amen, the lights suddenly flickered and went out. The only illumination came from the votives flickering among the white pumpkins.

“Joe, did we blow a fuse?” I gasped.

“It’s circuit breakers now,” he reminded me, “and no, I don’t think so.” He glanced toward the window. “Looks like the whole street is out. The weight of the snow and ice must have brought down some power lines.”

“Don’t worry, everyone, I have more candles.” I pulled a bunch of candlesticks out of the drawer on the sideboard, and soon the room was filled with a magical glow.

“Thank goodness the dinner was cooked first,” Joe said. “Let’s have a toast. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!”

“I think we should toast the chef, too,” Martha said. “Outstanding job, Joe.”

Amid the chorus of agreement and praise, I smiled at my husband and raised my glass in a loving salute.

We began passing dishes around, and I didn’t have to ask anyone twice to dig in. Angus piled his food so high, it was touch-and-go if it would stay on the plate, and Eleanor’s meal wasn’t much smaller.

“Did you ever have this butternut squash casserole before?” Angus asked her.

“No, but I’ll try anything twice.”

“Daddy, you might need to open some more champagne,” Sarah said as she took hold of her boyfriend’s hand. “Peter and I have an announcement to make. We’re getting married!”

Tears sprung into my eyes, and in the hubbub that followed, I managed to hug both Sarah and Peter before I was enveloped in Martha’s arms and thumped on the back by Angus.

“This is the perfect romantic atmosphere, with all these candles,” Sarah exclaimed. “We couldn’t have planned it better.”

“Speaking of planning, did you set a date yet? Where are you going to have the wedding?”

Jeez, there was so much to prepare. I’d need to nail Sarah down on a date soon. She wouldn’t realize that these things could take months, a year, to plan, let alone trying to book a church and a venue.

“Mom! Just enjoy the moment, okay?” She smiled at me. “Don’t start making yourself crazy yet.”

I nodded even as I was forming a guest list in my mind. Joe’s mom had passed away a few years back, but his dad would come, if we could drag him away from fishing off the Florida Keys. My parents, of course, would make the trip for a wedding, even though they weren’t good at traveling anymore. And our friends from Millbury . . .

Sarah nudged me, and I chuckled. She knew me too well. “Okay, okay. I’ll worry about it later.”

While we ate, we took turns at bringing Sarah and Peter up to date on recent events. Jasper sprawled across PJ’s feet under the table and never left her side for the whole meal, ever hopeful for tidbits that I strongly suspected she slid to him every now and then.

“It’s amazing that such a quiet little village has so much drama and violence going on,” Peter said as he sipped his pinot noir.

“Ain’t it just?” Angus took another buttermilk biscuit out of the basket and stuck it in his pool of gravy. If Eleanor had been counting on leftovers, she hadn’t counted on Angus’s mountain-man appetite.

I told them about the neighbor in the Cassell development seeing a flash from the window of the vacant house, and said perhaps Roos was taking photos of someone across the street.

“Or maybe there was a tryst going on
inside
, and he was doing erotic shots of Sally McIntire?” Eleanor suggested.

But Sarah, who was an avid photographer, threw cold water on that theory. “At night he wouldn’t have used a flash, but a big aperture on low speed.”

“Did you ever think that maybe he was signaling for help?” Joe said, his dark eyes solemn.

We looked at each other, and I swallowed some more wine to ease the tightness in my throat. “Well, with all the busybodies in that development, it’s a shame that no one answered his plea.”

“It’s so hard to believe that Althea Gunn is a murderer. She’s such a God-fearing woman,” Mary Willis said, making the sign of the cross.

“Her evil ancestor made money off people’s misery,” I said. “That knowledge must have haunted a person like Althea, who was always so worried about appearances.”

Eleanor snorted. “She was so busy telling other people how to live, she forgot to figure out the right way for herself.”

“So she steals this guy’s truck,” Peter said, ticking off plot points on his fingers as if going through his latest script treatment, “knowing where the keys were kept in the construction trailer. She picks up the photographer on the road and drives him to the site. Did she somehow get him into the house, and
then
he signaled for help?”

“Seems like a long shot,” Joe said. “Don’t think I would sit still long enough to be tied up and spray-foamed if I were him.”

“Maybe she killed him somewhere else.” Eleanor took another helping of Brussels sprouts. “Then she went back and trashed the studio to make it look like a robbery.”

“Good God, woman!” Martha said. “Do you have worms or something? That’s your third helping tonight!”

“Why don’t you just f-f-fade away?”

Sarah grinned at Eleanor. “The Who, right?”

Eleanor nodded as she dished another mound of stuffing onto her plate.

As I looked around the table, I realized we had a lot to be thankful for. Our freedom, our health, one another. “Enough of this sad talk,” I said. “Let’s have another toast to Peter and Sarah.”

Mary shyly raised her glass. “Well, dears, I hope you’ll be as happy as me and my Fred. We were together almost forty years before he passed.”

“Yeah, the old married couple is something of a rare treasure these days,” Angus said, “whether by divorce or, at our age, death.” He raised his glass. “Best of luck, kids.”

Ruth sighed. “I don’t suppose I’ll ever have another chance at marriage. I
would
have been a good catch if I hadn’t made such a stupid mistake. I’d be a wealthy widow now. You wouldn’t believe how many people want nothing to do with me anymore because I can’t go out to expensive dinners or invite them to a fancy party.”

Sarah raised an eyebrow at me, and we shared one of our rare moments of perfect understanding. “Hey, Mom, I just thought of something. I could take the last model photo for free if we can find another guy. I have all my camera stuff with me.”

“Yeah, and I could spring for the costs of the printing.” PJ looked up from handing tidbits to Jasper.

“Thank you both, that’s a wonderful offer, but let’s discuss it later, okay?” I glanced at Martha. The fizz had completely faded from her. I bit my lip, wondering again if I should say something about seeing Cyril in town and the crossword clues. Even though I was pretty sure he was still alive, if he was staying hidden, there must be a very good reason.

No, I decided, I couldn’t tell Martha, who had never been able to keep a secret to save her own life.

*   *   *

A
fter dinner, we said good-bye to Mary Willis, Ruth, PJ, and Angus, and Joe pressed big bags of leftovers into their hands. The rest of us assembled in the kitchen to help clean up.

Eleanor scraped mashed potatoes into containers and grinned at Peter loading the dishwasher and Joe slicing up the rest of the turkey. “Ah, my fantasy. Two men. One to cook and one to clean.”

“Joe, why don’t you leave the rest to me?” I said. “You’ve done more than enough for one day.”

He didn’t need a second invitation, and he, Sarah, and Peter headed for the living room to watch the game.

“How about a nightcap, girls?” Eleanor looked at me and Martha after we’d put the food away and the kitchen was sparkling clean again.

Martha shook her head. “I’m exhausted. I’ve been on my feet since 5 a.m.”

“I laid out towels for you on the guest bed, and there’s an extra comforter in the closet,” I said. “Make yourself at home. I won’t be far behind.” I hugged her. “Good night.”

Eleanor and I repaired to the study, and I poured two glasses of port.

“Congratulations again, Daisy,” she said. “That’s wonderful news about Sarah and Peter.”

I grinned. I felt like I’d been doing a lot of that this evening. “It certainly is. I’m glad that Sarah finally gave this relationship a chance.” As I put some more logs on the fire, I thought about Ruth and Stanley, Martha and Cyril, me and Joe, Eleanor and her lost love. The couple who fought in that vacant house, and the anger and bitterness they must have felt. Jim and Sally McIntire, and the jealousy over her supposed affairs. Angus getting divorced from Betty after all those years. My daughter and Peter just starting out in their new life together. How hard relationships could be, but how rewarding if one was prepared to put in the effort.

“How about you, Eleanor? Would you ever consider opening up to love again?”

She snorted. “A lot of good it did Martha.”

Jasper rested his head on Eleanor’s knee, and we were quiet for a few moments as we sipped our drinks and enjoyed the warmth of the flames. The power was still out, but there were so many fireplaces in this house that we should survive the cold night.

“You know, he lives in my dreams, still,” Eleanor murmured, startling me out of my reverie. “Sometimes they’re so real that I wake up disoriented, and it takes me a while to adjust to the fact that he’s gone. The dream world is so much happier than this one.”

I sipped my port and just listened. We’d been friends for a long time, but she’d never talked about this before.

“I often have the same dream. We’re sitting on a park bench together and I can hear his voice, clear as day. We laugh and talk, and then I look back and he’s fading away, until I realize I’m alone on the bench.”

Jasper heaved a sigh and she stroked his head. “I want to be a dog in my next life. Humans always live in some abstract notion of the future, or the past, but we don’t really enjoy life the way we should. Look at this guy.”

He opened his mouth in a wide grin and swished his tail.

“You know what, you’re right,” I said. “Instead of constantly worrying about what’s going to happen, or looking back in longing, we should enjoy this moment, right now. After all, you can’t live in two places at once. And Jasper is probably the happiest . . . being I know.”

Eleanor grinned. “You were going to say
human
being, weren’t you?”

I nodded, but I wasn’t about to lose the thread of this particular story. “What did he look like?” I asked softly. “Your beau?”

She smiled wistfully. “Oh, he was beautiful, Daisy. Tall, dark-haired, with a smile that could make me melt. A bit like a younger Serrano, as a matter of fact.”

I struggled to find exactly the right words. “You know, Eleanor, you realize that you’re in love with the memory of a beautiful young man, but you’re comparing him to guys our age, and that’s not really fair because they’ll always come up short. I mean, Tony Z might have been pretty cute in his day. Heck, he’s still cute.” I had a soft spot for the little barber, who kept a jar of dog treats for the dogs who passed by his store on Main Street.

“Yeah, but Tony Z
is
short.”

“Everyone comes into your life for a reason, Eleanor. Maybe Serrano is playing the part of the prince coming to wake Sleeping Beauty.”

Eleanor chewed her lip thoughtfully. “You mean, to make me realize that those feelings still exist, somewhere deep down?”

“Exactly. Sort of like Cyril did for Martha. And in turn, she brought the light back into his life.”

“More like a klieg light. The kind that turns night into day on a movie set.” She grinned at me, and then her expression turned serious again. “Do you think Cyril’s alive, Daisy?”

“I think he may be in real trouble, which is why he’s gone underground and can’t contact her. Look, promise me you won’t repeat this to anyone?”

Eleanor rolled her eyes.

“Okay, okay. I don’t know why I said that.” If anyone could be trusted to keep a secret, it was the dark horse sitting next to me, so I told her about the crossword clues, and the fact that I thought Cyril had stopped home at one point and then vanished again. “Eleanor, it’s eating away at me. I feel like such a heel about keeping this from Martha, but—”

“He’s obviously trying to protect her,” Eleanor said firmly. She tossed back the last of her port. “That man adores her and he’s depending on you to keep her safe. End of story.”

I exhaled. “Thanks, E.”

After Eleanor left, struggling a little under the weight of her to-go bag, I said good night to the group in the living room and headed up to bed, Jasper at my heels. The electricity suddenly came back on, and the old heating system roared as it powered up again.