"Wow," Mom murmured under her breath. "I think you understated the situation a bit."
We were surrounded by dead animals, two or three times more than when I'd first come in there. And all arranged into bizarre scenarios. There were two wolves in three-piece suits, playing shuffleboard. A bobcat was wearing a leotard and ballet slippers and was in position number two. Four chickens were involved in a strange runway fashion shoot, and a badger was playing a French horn.
"This is new," I said.
"Hello!" Randi came around the corner, wiping her hands on her apron. "Sorry about the delay. I'm working on a custom order in back and didn't hear the bell."
She shook our hands and smiled. I really liked her. Maybe Ronni wasn't around and we could have a nice conversation.
"Randi!" her twin growled as she came around the corner. She was holding a turkey on her left hand as if it was a puppet. And by that, I mean her hand was inside the turkey. "Where's the glue?" It was a question that sounded more like an angry curse.
"In the workshop on the green stool," Randi answered without looking at her sister.
"Who are you?" Ronni scowled at my mother and me.
"What a lovely shop you have!" Mom purred. "I'm Judith, and this is my daughter, Merry."
Randi shook our hands warmly as Ronni simmered in place. Randi introduced her sister and herself. And the four of us just stood there, looking at each other, surrounded by animals that were looking at us.
I wondered how Mom was going to smooth this over.
"A taxidermy business is just what this town needs!" Mom clapped her hands together. "I don't know why we never had one before!"
I tried to picture the musical badger in my parents' house in DC. It was impossible. And I was so buying it for them for Christmas.
"That's so sweet!" Randi blushed. "No one else has said that since we've moved in."
"Have you had a lot of business?" I asked.
"We do mostly online sales," Ronni snapped. "Why are you here? Didn't the crow work out? Typical. You're just a looky-loo. Came here to spy and bought something to cover. Then you return it later. I knew it!"
"No, I love the crow." I held my hands up, ignoring the fact that she was right about the spy part. You never knew when you'd be in a defensive situation. And this seemed to be turning into one. "In fact, I gave it to my fiancé. He loves it."
I'd planned to tell these two about Rex and me. I just thought I'd be able to ease into it after some small talk and a slight lie.
"Whatever," Ronni snapped.
"Please excuse my sister," Randi apologized. "She's okay. Just a little defensive about our work."
"No problem." My mother smiled. "I admire people who are passionate about what they do."
The four of us stood there in silence, staring at each other. I had my eye more on Ronni. If she attacked, I'd take her down, future family or no future family.
"Were you looking for something else?" Randi radiated warmth. Maybe I could spend holidays with her and not her surly sister. But Rex said they'd never been apart, so that probably wouldn't work out.
"Actually…" I bit my lip. What if they didn't like me? Would that impact my engagement? Would I have to fill my house with shuffleboard-playing wolves to smooth this over?
"I wanted to introduce myself last time. I was just distracted by"—I looked into the eyes of a moose who was shaving a billy goat's beard—"all this cool stuff."
The women looked at me expectantly. My heart flip-flopped in my rib cage.
"I'm Merry Wrath. And I'm…"
The shotgun sound went off.
"My fiancé," Rex said as he stood in the doorway.
How did he know what I was going to say? I looked around and saw the windows were open. That, and the fact Mom and I had told him we were coming here.
Rex made no move toward his sisters. He folded his arms over his chest as if waiting for a typhoon to settle in.
"Rexley!" Randi squealed and hurled her tiny self into his arms.
Rexley? I wondered if it was spelled Rexli. That was not going on the wedding program.
My fiancé hesitated but finally hugged his sister back, looking a little confused, as if he'd been expecting a different reaction.
Randi extricated herself and flew into my arms. I hugged her, not really knowing how else to respond. I maintained a defensive stance, however, in case she had hidden taxidermy knives.
"I can't believe it!" Randi looked at me, eyes shining. "I'm so happy for you both!"
This didn't seem like an awkward reunion between estranged siblings.
"Isn't that wonderful, Ronni?" Randi returned to her sister's side.
"You broke my armadillo!" Ronni scowled at her brother.
He rolled his eyes. "When I was four! I can't believe you're still holding a grudge about that."
"You broke her armadillo?" I asked slowly. "How do you break an armadillo?"
"Stay out of it!" Ronni screamed before disappearing into the back of the shop.
Randi hugged my mother. "So happy to meet you both!" She slid her arm through Rexli's. "It's been so long! Too long. Now, let me run back into the kitchen and make a pot of tea. Don't you go anywhere!"
She vanished.
"See?" Mom grinned. "That wasn't too bad, now was it?"
"What are you doing here?" I asked Rex. "And thank you for coming. I think Ronni was about to kill and stuff me."
My fiancé didn't even look around at the bizarre dioramas. "I couldn't let you do this on your own. This is my family. My responsibility." He kissed me on the forehead. "And it went way better than I thought it would."
"It did?"
"Last time I saw Ronni, she sucker-punched me with a beaver."
I would've paid good money to see that. And I made a mental note to write No dead animals allowed on our wedding invitations.
"Randi seemed happy about our engagement."
He stared off into the distance beyond the door. "She did, didn't she? Huh."
"You're surprised?" I asked.
Mom wandered off to check out a poker game played by some shifty-looking guinea pigs.
Randi's voice called out from the other room, "Do you like sugar in your tea?"
"No thanks," Rex called back, then whispered to me, "maybe you should let me drink first."
My eyes went wide. "Poison?"
"I don't think she'd go that far. But diuretics are a definite possibility."
"Why would she do that?" I asked as Rex's sister burst through the doorway with a tray.
We followed her into another room, where vultures surrounded a tea table with an embroidered linen tablecloth. I sat down, avoiding looking up. At least she didn't have a king vulture. If I brought the girls here and the twins had something that looked like Mr. Fancy Pants, they wouldn't like it.
"Randi," Rex started.
She silenced him. "Now Rexley, I know we left on bad terms, but I'm so happy for this little reunion and your wonderful news!"
"Yes." Rex cautiously sampled a scone. "I can see that. The question is, why?"
His statement seemed to make his sister sad.
"You two…three…" I said, "can work that out later." Preferably when I wasn't around.
"I like her." Randi elbowed her brother as she sipped her tea. "Has she met Mom and Dad?"
I turned to look at Rex.
"We decided to tell you and Ronni first." Rex winked at me.
We were headed into strange territory now. I had no idea what his parents were like. They couldn't be any stranger than the twins, could they?
I dove in. "But we'd love to tell them as soon as possible."
Randi set down her tea and gave her brother a look I couldn't decipher.
"You should. You can't keep this from them, and you can't hold what they did against them."
"What did they do?"
"After all, arranged marriages aren't all that uncommon." She handed me a cookie.
"Arranged marriages?" I gasped.
"You're joking." Had I missed something in his background? I thought of the cultures that participated in arranged marriages, but Rex wasn't Indian or medieval royalty.
A muscle twitched in my fiancé's jawline.
"How interesting!" Mom cooed. "Tell us about it."
Rex didn't look like he wanted to tell us about it.
His sister waved us off. "It was a very long time ago. Mom and Dad have some, well, unusual beliefs." She lowered her voice and looked around carefully. "We are Congregationalists, you know." Randi sat back and smiled. "Besides, they would never have held you to it."
"Until I broke it off in middle school." Rex was very quiet. I knew that look as the calm before the storm.
In all honesty, I'd never seen Rex angry. He had a level head that always prevailed no matter what I'd gotten up to.
"Who were you supposed to marry?" I asked.
Rex refused to say anything. I had a bad feeling about this.
"You don't know her, I'm sure." Randi said. "It was a long time ago. And it wasn't legally binding."
"She thought so." Rex grimaced.
"Who?" I repeated.
"Well sure, the poor girl was brokenhearted. She'd loved you since you were five years old. You had to expect a few tears."
"Tears?" Rex stared incredulously. "She and her family threatened to sue me over something that wasn't even legal. Mom and Dad stopped speaking to me. A few tears?"
I set my teacup down. "Your arranged bride was going to sue you?"
"Well, they didn't, did they?" Randi patted his hand. "Besides, it was a long time ago."
Rex said nothing.
"She's probably forgotten all about it and moved on, right?" Randi asked.
Rex still said nothing.
I had a very bad feeling about this.
"Let's talk about something else," Mom said, ever the diplomat.
"I'm sure I'm right about Julie…" Randi said.
"Julie?" I squeaked.
Rex sighed heavily. Clearly, he'd hoped this was going to go in a different direction. "Julie is short for Juliette."
CHAPTER EIGHT
"Juliette Dowd?" I screamed as we walked to our cars. "You were promised to that psycho? No wonder she hates me!"
"Who's Juliette?" Mom seemed confused and alarmed.
"A redheaded demon who has tried to make my life hell." I was shaking with rage. "Of all the people for you to have been betrothed to—Juliette Dowd!"
Rex put his arm around me, but I pulled away. He'd kept too many secrets from me lately, and I wasn't happy.
"Anything else I don't know about you?" I stormed. "Any children? A career as a stripper? Have you murdered anyone?"
It shocked me just how much about my fiancé I didn't know. From the first dead body he investigated attached to me, I've been upfront with him. There's no way I thought he had secrets from me. And Juliette Dowd? Really?
"Merry"—Rex held his hands up—"I didn't mean to keep you in the dark. In spite of what she thought, we were never a couple."
"And yet, here we are," I grumbled. Turning to the shop, I thought I saw a curtain flicker. His sisters were watching.
"This is why I didn't tell you." He looked at the window. "My family is toxic. They love to cause trouble."
"How can you say that? Randi was great! She was so nice about everything! She made us tea!"
He gave me a look. "And yet, she still made sure the first thing she said was about this whole arranged marriage thing."
I opened my mouth and then closed it. He was right. That's exactly what she did.
"Your family is something else," I said finally. "And I have too much going on to deal with it right now. Head back to work. I've got a meeting with a king vulture."
He looked stunned. But he nodded and did what I asked. He gave me one last glance before he drove away.
Blood was roaring in my ears as Mom drove back to my house. Rex lied by not telling me the truth. That really bothered me. Way more than I'd have thought. He knew everything about me, from my former job to my one-time fling with Riley.
And I knew next to nothing about him. Was this a deal breaker? Should I call the wedding off? What else didn't I know? Since he didn't have any groomsmen in mind, was his best man going to be a dead polar bear on wheels?
Kelly was waiting for me when we got back. "It's 3:30," my best friend said. "Let's go!"
Mom decided to stay and make some calls to caterers. She insisted I go to the meeting. Kelly started pulling out of the driveway before I even had the door shut.
We drove in the direction of the zoo. Most people would find it odd that a small town would have a zoo. About seventy-five years ago, a prominent doctor in town decided that we needed our own hospital. At the grand opening he announced that we also needed a zoo because, as he said, "You can't have one without the other."
No one knew what that meant then, but he spent a small fortune on the facility, and when he died, he endowed both the hospital and the zoo with fifty million dollars. Each. This confused people because no one knew he'd had that kind of money. Dr. Aken had spent his whole life in Who's There, driven a beat-up car several decades out of date, and lived in a tiny ranch house.
There had been rumors that the money had been ill-gotten, but nobody ever found a link. And the hospital and zoo fought to keep it quiet.
So, we have a state-of-the art hospital and an impressive, if small, zoo. We even had an elephant. Obladi Zoo was just outside of town. For decades Whovians (people from Who's There) believed the word Obladi meant "shining bear." A few years back, a cultural historian from the University of Iowa was giving a talk at the library on the languages of the Ioway and Ho Chunk tribes. A little kid asked Professor Higgins to confirm the meaning. The professor told the astonished audience that Obladi meant nothing and suggested the late Dr. Aken had been drinking while listening to the Beatles.
Higgins has never been invited back.
We pulled into the parking lot where our girls stood, literally vibrating with excitement over seeing their beloved Mr. Fancy Pants again.
"Good afternoon!" A tall, middle-aged woman joined us. "Are you the Girl Scout troop?"
I grabbed Betty and clapped my hand over her mouth before she could say something rude.
"We are." Kelly smiled. "Girls, this is Dr. Wulf. She's the executive director of the zoo!"
The girls nodded as if they'd always known this.
Dr. Wulf stepped forward. She was wearing a tailored pantsuit on her slim frame. She brushed a strand of silver hair from her face.
"We are very excited to have you visit the king vulture."
Lauren blurted out, "His name is Mr. Fancy Pants."
If she was surprised by this, the director didn't show it. "That's better than what we've been calling him. Let's go with that."
I made a mental note to give a nice donation to the zoo.
We followed Dr. Wulf into the zoo. It hadn't opened yet for the season, so we didn't have to worry about buying tickets. The zoo had changed a lot since I'd been there as a kid. For one thing, it was filled with colorful signs about the exhibits. There were interactive displays and huge flowering trees.
"Hey!" I shouted. "They still have the train! Can we ride the train?"
Dr. Wulf gave Kelly a questioning glance, to which Kelly rolled her eyes.
"I think we can make that happen another day," she said. "The train conductor is out of town."
We were cool.
At last we entered what looked like an educational center. I knew this because there were no animal signs. As we walked through the building, I noticed a huge aquarium taking up a full wall. Then, we walked into some sort of classroom. Standing on a large branch was the king vulture. His eyes were covered with that mask they use on falcons. Why was that, I wondered. He kind of looked like a bird version of Hannibal Lecter.
The girls beat me to the question.
"Why is he blindfolded?" Hannah the First (I also have two Hannahs) asked. The
other girls all nodded.
If I hadn't seen Fancy Pants in action back in DC, I would've thought this a fair question. The bird was obsessed with cookies. Especially Girl Scout cookies. I patted my purse and felt the box of shortbread cookies inside. I wasn't sure if I was going to bring it out in the open.
"We've noticed," Dr. Wulf said, "certain inappropriate behaviors of Mr. Fancy Pants. We've had to change his keeper twice because, apparently, when he sees cookies, he tackles people."
"That's so cool!" Inez clapped her hands together. I'd forgotten the girls didn't know this.
"He could be a superhero—fighting bad guys with cookies!" one of the Kaitlyns said.
"But what if he attacked Cookie Monster?" Ava asked.
Dr. Wulf held her hands up. "It's okay, ladies. There are no cookies in here."
I blanched. Bringing the cookies might not have been the best idea. Could he smell them? Did birds smell anything?
Kelly motioned to the girls, who took their seats around a large table.
"Who can tell me where king vultures are from?" the director asked.
Twelve hands went up. She called on Emily.
"Central and South America," the girl said.
"Right!" She handed the child something.
Emily held it up. It was like a baseball card, but with Mr. Fancy Pants on it. I wondered if it had stats. Every girl in the room flung their hands into the air. We weren't leaving here until at least eleven more questions were answered. Preferably by a different girl each time.
"What do they eat?" the doctor asked. She chose Caterina.
"Dead things!" the girl squealed.
"Right!" Dr. Wulf said as she handed out another card. "Carrion is the remains of a dead animal. Lizards, rats, anything."
The girls were rocking back and forth in their seats, waiting for the next question.
"Does anyone know how long they live?" she asked.
Again, twelve hands went up in the air. Kelly walked over and physically pushed Emily's and Caterina's hands down in an attempt to let the other girls have a chance.
"Thirty years in captivity!" Lauren answered when called upon.
"Wow!" Dr. Wulf handed her a card. "You girls have done your homework!"
I didn't doubt it for one minute. My girls were addicted to animals and frequently obsessed about them. At Girl Scout camp they'd spent almost a whole year mourning Cookie the Horse, who the equestrian director said was going to have to go. You'd have thought she'd said "glue factory" from the way the girls keened and wailed. Kelly and I endured many months of memorials for Cookie, only to find out that camp had decided to keep him after all.
Motto for Murder (Merry Wrath Mysteries Book 6) Page 6
