by Joan Hess
She was seated at a picnic table beneath a wisteria-entwined lattice that provided shade and a pleasant redolence. Her long, tanned legs were clearly visible in scandalously short shorts, and her black hair was tucked under a baseball cap. As I joined her, she filled a plastic cup with beer from a pitcher and set it down in front of me.
“You didn’t mention Peter when you called earlier,” she said by way of greeting. “Are you having prenuptial jitters? It’s unbecoming in a woman of your age.”
“My age is damn close to yours,” I said, “and I’m not the one who scrambled all over the Andes with a bunch of virile young Australian men for six weeks.”
“I kept claiming I needed to rest just so I could watch their darling butts wiggle as they hiked past me. So what’s going on with Peter?”
“The captain sent him to FBI summer camp so he can learn how to protect our fair town if the terrorists attempt to create havoc by jamming the parking meters. It’s a real threat, you know. The mayor will have to flee to his four-bedroom bunker out by the lake. The Kiwanis Club won’t be able to have its weekly luncheon meetings at the diner behind the court house. The community theater won’t be able to stage its endearingly inept production of ‘Our Town’ for the first time in nineteen years. All hell could break loose.”
Luanne failed to look properly terrified. “How long will he be gone?”
“Three weeks at Quantico, and then a week at his mother’s.”
“Oh,” she murmured.
I took a long swallow of beer. “It’s not like that. She’s resigned to the idea that Peter and I are getting married, or so he keeps telling me.”
“But she’s not coming to the wedding.”
“No, she’s not,” I said. “She always goes to Aspen in September to avoid the hurricane season.”
“Rhode Island is hardly a magnet for hurricanes, but neither is Farberville,” Luanne said as she refilled her cup and mine.
“It’s a tradition. She goes with a big group of her widowed friends. They take over a very posh condo complex and party all day and night. Besides, it’s not as if this is Peter’s first marriageor mine. I’d look pretty silly in a flouncy white dress and veil, with my teenaged daughter as maid of honor. There’s no reason why she should disrupt her long-standing plans for a simple little civil ceremony in a backyard.”
“She’s probably afraid she’ll have to eat ribs,” said Luanne, “and toast the happy couple with moonshine in a jelly jar. Have you spoken to her on the phone, or received a warm letter on her discreetly monogrammed stationery?”
The topic was not amusing me. “Not yet. Peter thinks we ought to give her some time to get used to the idea, and then go for a visit. Will you loan me a pair of jodpurs?”
“Yes, but they’ll make your thighs look fat.”
I brooded for a moment, then said, “Did you happen to encounter Pester the Jester this afternoon?”
“Oh my, yes. I couldn’t take my eyes off his codpiece.”
I told her about the letters Caron and Inez had received from the history teacher. “They’re appalled, of course, and were rambling about their constitutional right to spend the summer sulking. I didn’t have the heart to remind them that they’d already had their fifteen minutes of fame a month ago, when they were interviewed by the media after that unfortunate business with the disappearing corpse.”
“Fame is fleeting,” Luanne said.
We pondered this philosophical twaddle while we emptied our cups. The remaining beer in the pitcher was getting warm, and a group of noisy college kids arrived to take possession of a nearby picnic table. I told Luanne I’d call her later in the week, then walked the few blocks to my apartment on the second floor of a duplex across the street from the campus lawn. A note on the kitchen table informed me that Caron and Inez had gone out for pizza with friends. It was just as well, since my culinary interests were limited to boiling water for tea and nuking frozen entres. In the mood for neither, I settled down on the sofa to read. I hoped Peter would call, but as it grew dark outside I gave up and consoled myself with images of him on the firing range, learning how to take down grannies with radioactive dentures and toddlers with teddy bears packed with explosives. Or librarians and booksellers who refused to turn in their patrons’ reading preferences to cloak-and-dagger government agencies.
What I did not want to think about was the wedding, scheduled for early September. Not because I was having second thoughts, mind you. I was confident that I loved Peter and that we would do quite nicely when we rode off into the sunset of domestic bliss, which would include not only more opportunities for adult behavior of a most delectable sort, but also lazy Sunday mornings with coffee, muffins, and The New York Times, and occasional squabbles over the relative merits of endive versus romaine. He’d been suggesting matrimonial entanglement for several years, and I’d given it serious consideration. But after my first husband’s untimely and very unseemly death, I’d struggled to regain my self-esteem and establish my independence. I hadn’t done too well on the material aspects, as Caron pointed out on a regular basis. However, the Book Depot was still in business, and we lived on the agreeable side of genteel poverty.
A distressingly close call with mortality had led me to reassess my situation. The emotional barrier I’d constructed to protect myself collapsed during a convoluted moment when a hitman had impolitely threatened to blow my brains out ( not in those exact words, but that was the gist of the message) . If commitment meant sharing a closet, then so be it.
The problem lay in my inclinations to meddle in what Lieutenant Peter Rosen felt was official police business. It wasn’t simply a compulsion to outsleuth Miss Marple. In all the situations I’d found myself questioning witnesses and snooping around crime scenes, I’d never once done so for my personal sa-tisfactionor to make fools of the local constabulary. It just happened. Peter, with his molasses brown eyes, curly hair, perfect teeth, and undeniable charm, never quite saw it that way. He’d lectured me, had my car impounded twice, threatened me with a jail cell, and attempted to keep me under house arrest. One had to admire his optimism.
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
A REALLY CUTE CORPSE
Copyright © 1988 by Joan Hess.
Excerpt from Damsels in Distress copyright © 2006 by Joan Hess.
eISBN 9780312982911
First eBook Edition : June 2012
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 88-18202
ISBN: 0-312-98291-7
EAN: 978-0-312-98291-1
Printed in the United States of America
St. Martin’s hardcover edition published 1988
Ballantine Books edition / December 1991
St. Martin’s Paperbacks edition / June 2002
St. Martin’s Paperbacks are published by St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
