The Chocolate Bridal Bash

by JoAnna Carl

  “I wouldn’t say you were doing so bad, Mom. What brought this on?”

  “That comment you made about my running away from everything.”

  “When did I say that?”

  “When you called and asked me to come for the wedding.”

  “I didn’t mean anything by it, Mom. At that point I didn’t even know that you’d left Warner Pier on what should have been your wedding day.”

  “Nettie didn’t tell you?”

  “She told me later. But she’d never realized that I didn’t know. So she hadn’t brought it up.”

  Mom sighed. “Whatever you meant by it, I guess that comment broke the camel’s back for me. I’d become aware long ago that I dodged all the problems in my life. I guess I’d hoped that you hadn’t noticed.”

  “I hadn’t.”

  “It must have been hard to miss. First I ran away from Warner Pier.”

  “Mom! You were young! After what Van Hoosier said, how could you stay?”

  “That was my excuse at the time, but looking back I see that it was my responsibility to come back, to see that justice was done for Bill. I’m sure he didn’t commit suicide, and I should have told the whole story to someone besides Van Hoosier, someone who would have listened.”

  “But even Bill’s mother told you to stay away.”

  “Yes, but I think she meant for just a day or two. It was Van Hoosier who told me to go away and stay away. Anyway, I ran. Then I got resettled in Dallas, went to airline school, got a job, and two years later I met your dad, and we got married.”

  “And you got pregnant with me, and he dragged you to a town you never wanted to live in.”

  “I guess I was running away then, too. We had so many financial problems.” She sighed. “I thought we could live within our income in Prairie Creek. Of course, your dad would never be able to live within his income. If he earned a million a day, he could spend it.”

  She sighed. “But I learned to live with financial uncertainty. It was Annie I ran from when you were in high school.”

  “Annie? Was Daddy seeing her before you left?

  “If you didn’t know about it, Lee, I’m sure you were the only person in Prairie Creek who didn’t. I’m glad to learn I was successful at keeping it away from you. But didn’t you ever figure out why I packed you off to Phil and Nettie that summer?”

  I shook my head. I felt as if I’d been kicked. I’d always blamed my mom for my parents’ divorce. I thought she’d left because she hated Prairie Creek. To learn that she left my dad because he was involved with another woman—well, it rocked me.

  Mom patted my hand. “I guess I shouldn’t have told you. It’s pointless, now that J.B. and Annie are married.”

  “Why do you say that you ran away from her?”

  “Looking back, I guess I should have tried harder to keep your dad. Tried to cut Annie out.”

  Now I patted her hand. “If things had been right between you and Daddy, Mom . . .”

  “She wouldn’t have been a factor? Or if I’d cared more, I’d have been willing to fight for J.B.? Fifteen years after the divorce it’s hard to say. Certainly there’s no going back now.” She smiled. “There’ve been a few more times I ran that you didn’t know about.”

  “Hal Mead?”

  “Oh? You knew about Hal? He did ask me to marry him, but I was too chicken. And there were a couple of other guys—ones who might have gotten serious if they’d had any encouragement.”

  “It’s not too late! You’re a very attractive woman.”

  She patted my cheek. “You’re the beautiful one. That’s why I wanted you to do the pageants, so everyone could see how beautiful and smart you are.”

  “Smart? You thought I was smart?”

  My mom looked surprised. “Of course. You’re extremely intelligent, Lee. I’ve always known that.”

  “I thought you . . .” I was too choked up to go on.

  “You thought what?”

  “That you believed I was dumb.”

  Mom gasped. “Oh, Lee! You’re not dumb! You talked early, you did well in school, you’ve always been very quick to catch on to what people were up to. I never thought you were dumb!”

  “I always thought you wanted me to be beautiful because you thought I was too dumb to get along on my brains.”

  “Oh, Lee!” Mom stood up and put her arms around me. I realized that tears were running down my face. “Sweetie! I was so proud of how beautiful you are—and maybe jealous.”

  “Jealous?”

  “Yes. I was never pretty. I was always short and dumpy. I simply couldn’t believe I had a daughter who was gorgeous. I guess I wanted to show you off. I wanted the whole world to recognize how beautiful and smart and talented you are! That’s why I wanted you to win those silly crowns.”

  I wiped away my tears and tried to laugh. “Like the Scarecrow’s diploma?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “In The Wizard of Oz, the Scarecrow wants a brain. Of course, all through the story, the Scarecrow is figuring out how to solve all the problems. He’s the smartest character in the movie, but he doesn’t see it. So the wizard—instead of giving him a literal brain, gives him a diploma. The Scarecrow is no smarter or dumber than he was before, but now he has a symbol of intelligence. Maybe you thought being Miss UT Dallas would be my diploma.”

  Mom laughed. “Maybe I did. At any rate, you were a beautiful and gracious Miss UT Dallas, and I was proud of you. And when you called to invite me to your wedding—whether you knew why I left Warner Pier of not—you made me realize that I had been running away from a lot of things in my life. And I’ve vowed not to do that anymore. The pattern was set when Bill sent me away, then was found dead. And I’m going to try to set the record straight on that, as a beginning of my new way of life.”

  She hugged me again, and this time I hugged her back. We were still in this unaccustomed position, demonstrating mother-daughter affection, when I heard the noise outside.

  Chapter 19

  Mom apparently heard the noise, too. We whispered in unison. “What was that?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, “but you call 9-1-1, and I’ll turn out the hall light.”

  Mom picked up the wireless phone beside my bed, and I slid into the hall and flipped the switch. When I came back inside the room, I turned off my bedside lamp, then knelt by the window and peeked over the windowsill.

  Mom was still on the phone. She put her hand over it and whispered. “Do you see anything?”

  “No. I’m going to feel like an idiot if that was a raccoon trying to get the birdseed. I’m going downstairs.”

  “I’m coming with you.”

  There was a night-light at the top of the steps—they built stairs steep in 1904, and Aunt Nettie has a fear that someone will fall. I turned it out as we went by. Mom and I crept down, opened the door at the foot of the stairs, then tiptoed around the corner into the kitchen. We could see out those windows without having to twitch a curtain or lift a shade.

  The snow on the ground reflected the moonlight and the big outside light the neighbors kept on all night, over behind the bare trees that marked the boundary between the lots. So there was a sort of aura outside.

  Nothing unusual was visible from the kitchen window, but I heard that odd noise again. It was coming from the east side of the house, the side that overlooked the driveway.

  I moved into the dining room. Mom trailed along, murmuring into the telephone now and then. We each picked a window and peeked around the edges of the shades.

  For a moment I didn’t see anything. Then I saw a movement beside Mom’s rental car. A dark figure loomed against the light gray vehicle. I kept my voice low. “There. By your car.”

  “I see him,” Mom said. “Who can it be?”

  “Let’s keep quiet. Maybe the patrol car will get here before the guy disappears.”

  The figure stayed beside the car, bent nearly double. I tried to see how large the person was, but it was hard
to tell.

  “I’m sure I locked that car,” Mom said.

  Suddenly a light came on, and Mom and I both gasped. The intruder had opened the driver’s door and was leaning into the car.

  The dome light shone like a spotlight on a dirty white stocking hat with a red pom-pom.

  I gasped again. “It’s Lovie!”

  I’d kept my voice low, but Lovie straightened up as if she’d heard me. Then she trotted down the drive and disappeared around the front of the house. I ran to a living room window, but there was no sign of her.

  “She’s cut through to the Baileys’ house,” I said.

  “Who did you say it was?” Mom sounded completely mystified.

  I realized that I hadn’t told my mother about the changes in Mrs. Dykstra’s personality and position in the community, and even in her name—changes that popular opinion linked to the deaths of her younger son and her husband and to the banishment of her older son, Ed.

  I sighed. “It’s a long story,” I said. “Tell the nine-one-one operator the person has run off, and let’s make a pot of coffee.”

  But seeing Lovie had changed one thing about the situation. I wasn’t scared anymore.

  When I’d heard the strange noise, when I’d realized someone was prowling around Mom’s rental car, butterflies had begun to do a fandango in my stomach. After all, someone had tried to kidnap my mother that afternoon. Had they come again, ready to snatch her or to kill us all in our beds? Yes, I’d been scared.

  But I couldn’t be afraid of Lovie. She simply seemed too harmless.

  Between Mom and me talking and the arrival of the Warner Pier patrol car, Aunt Nettie was also up within a few minutes. I did make a pot of coffee—I knew my mother was a genuine coffee hound, even ready to settle for decaf—and we gave the patrol officer some after he’d looked around the house and Mom’s car. He found no sign that anything had been put into or taken away from that car. He didn’t find any sign of Lovie either.

  Then he left, and Aunt Nettie and I told Mom the whole story of Lovie’s sad life.

  Naturally, the story made Mom cry. “I can’t believe this,” she said. “Mrs. Dykstra was such a gracious, intelligent woman. To think she’s become the town oddball—it’s just too hard to take in. If only I’d come back after she told me Bill had committed suicide!”

  “Sally,” Aunt Nettie said firmly, “you’re not to blame yourself for what’s happened to Lovie Dykstra. She was a grown woman. She’s responsible for her own life. She told you to go away.”

  “I’ll have to see her,” Mom said. “If she’ll see me. Maybe she blames me for everything that happened.”

  “Wait a minute here!” I said. “Before we get all worried about Lovie and her feelings and what she thinks, let’s find out what she was doing prowling around this house, breaking into your car.”

  “You said you felt sure she was harmless.”

  “That was my first reaction. But what was she doing? I think Hogan and his crew ought to look into it. And her presence reminds me of a second question—one we haven’t really explored.”

  Mom looked wary. “What’s that?”

  “You said that when you and Bill got caught at the McKay cottage, his brother Ed was there.”

  Mom nodded slowly. “Ed wasn’t the only person there. I heard at least three voices. But the only two people I actually identified were the McKay boy—the one I ran into on the porch—and Ed Dykstra.”

  “What connection would Ed Dykstra have had with Quinn McKay?” I said.

  “They knew each other as kids. Ed and Bill helped their dad at the cottage sometimes, and all of them used to swim at Badger Creek Beach. Actually, Ed and Bill knew Quinn pretty well—at least in the summer. But I hadn’t heard Bill say anything about him for a couple of years before that.”

  “Did Ed ever mention him?”

  “Not in my hearing. But I didn’t know Ed very well.”

  “I hope Mac McKay will talk to Joe and me about that side of his family,” I said. “Maybe we’d understand a little more then.”

  We finally got in bed about two a.m. I was still asleep when Joe called at eight thirty and said Mac McKay had agreed to go out to lunch with us.

  “You called him early enough,” I said.

  “Oh, he’s a Presbyterian deacon. I knew I had to catch him before early church. He likes the contemporary service. You know, with guitars.”

  “When do we pick him up?”

  “We don’t. He’d going to meet us at Herrera’s at eleven-thirty.”

  “Mac drives?”

  “You betcha. In the daytime, at least. And he seemed delighted to have an excuse to come over and have lunch in Warner Pier.”

  We both laughed. The cultural gap between Warner Pier—with its reputation for being more sophisticated and artistic than the rest of Warner County—is a joke to Joe and me. Despite its art galleries and upscale restaurants, Warner Pier is still a very small town, in mentality as well as in population.

  “I’ll meet you at Herrera’s,” I said. “I’ll try to be a few minutes early.”

  Herrera’s is one of three Warner Pier restaurants owned by Mayor Mike Herrera. Unlike the Sidewalk Café, it’s quite formal—white linen tablecloths, velvet draperies, heavy silver, and an extensive wine list. It’s one of the places we “sophisticated” Warner Pier-ites take out-of-town guests because it’s elegant. Besides, the food is good.

  Joe and I were waiting inside the front door by eleven fifteen a.m., and if we hadn’t been a bit early Mac McKay would have beaten us there. He pulled up in a pearly white Cadillac, looking so small that I was surprised he could see over the steering wheel, and hopped out energetically. He was dressed in Sunday morning formal—dark overcoat, leather gloves, and plaid scarf. He beamed at us as he came in the door. “I hear the Bloody Marys are really good here,” he said. “Will they leave out the silly celery stalk?”

  “If they don’t, I’ll take it out personally,” I said. I gave Mac a kiss on the cheek. “Thanks for coming.”

  “Joe said somebody’s been bothering your mother,” Mac said. “I’ve still got a streak of chivalry alive. If I know anything that will help, it’s yours.”

  Joe had already snagged a corner table, so we settled Mac there and ordered Bloody Marys all around. Mac smiled gleefully and rubbed his hands together. “Now, what can I do to help you?”

  Joe leaned toward Mac and dropped his voice. “I guess we want you to rat out your relatives.”

  “If you mean the Chicago–Warner Pier side of the McKay family, we parted company long ago. What I know about them may not be reliable. We’re not well acquainted.”

  “You said that Quinn McKay worked for you one summer.”

  Mac nodded. “The summer before he was kidnapped.”

  “And you said he and his father didn’t get along.”

  “That’s mainly gossip. Quinn never complained. He never talked about his dad at all. But I heard from people who knew them over here on the lakeshore that there was a long history of Ben making fun of Quinn, sneering at him.”

  I asked the next question. “Why? What was wrong with Quinn?”

  “Nothing that I could see. I thought he was a nice young guy. Smart.”

  “How did he happen to do an internship with your office?”

  “Quinn was in prelaw at the University of Michigan. He wrote me a letter asking if my office could give him a summer job. I managed something for him. His father thought he should have been at some big Chicago firm, if he was going to condescend to take a summer job. So Ben wasn’t happy, but Quinn and I got along fine.”

  “What was the problem between Quinn and his father?” Joe asked.

  “I’m not even sure there was a problem. Like I say, a lot of this was gossip. But the story is that Quinn was one of those meek, quiet little boys—the ones who get bullied on the playground. One version was that as a kid he was afraid of the water, and Ben the third was a big sailor—he always had a boat in the C
hicago to Mackinac Race. He apparently didn’t like having a son who hung on to the mast instead of hauling up the jib—or whatever you haul up on a sailboat. The fact that Quinn was a good student didn’t make a big difference to his dad. Ben was a rough-andready, break-the-rules type. He would probably have preferred a son who looked at the world the way he did.”

  “How did the mother fit in?”

  “Benson the third was a serial monogamist; he was married four or five times. Quinn was his only child, but I don’t think his mother had been around much.”

  “And there was a new stepmother every couple of years?”

  Mac nodded. “Right. Awful way for a kid to grow up.”

  “How did the father react to the kidnapping?”

  “Oh, he handled everything according to the rules. What family there was huddled up at the Chicago apartment. They supposedly worked closely with the FBI.” Mac leaned over confidentially. “Of course, anything I heard was secondhand. But I had a good source.”

  “He didn’t pay a ransom?”

  “No, Quinn managed to escape—or else the kidnappers let him go. The whole thing was never clear, not even to the FBI—or so I hear. But it was definitely a Patty Hearst copycat case, you know. Quinn was darn lucky he survived.”

  Joe spoke. “As I recall, some student radical group claimed to have kidnapped Quinn. Had he been mixed up in the student demonstrations at Ann Arbor?”

  “Not that I know of. But Quinn probably wouldn’t have confided his political opinions to me,” Mac said. “He never said anything about Vietnam, for example.”

  “By the summer Quinn was kidnapped, Vietnam protests were pretty well finished,” I said.

  “Right. I always figured that was why the people who kidnapped Patty Hearst had changed their focus. There was no war to protest, so they claimed they were fighting poverty and injustice.”

  “I never could figure how either the SLA or Quinn McKay’s kidnappers thought holding people for ransom would help their cause,” Joe said.

  “I never saw it either,” Mac said. “Anyway, Quinn worked in my office that one year. He stayed at the McKay cottage over here and drove to Dorinda every day. I asked him to come back the next year, but he wrote and said his dad had arranged an internship in Chicago. I guess Quinn had gotten the rebellion out of his system by working for me that one summer. He said his father and current stepmother were going to Europe for the summer, so the Warner Pier house wasn’t going to be opened. He didn’t think he’d be up that year at all.”