by Mabel Maney
"There'll be apple pancakes in a few minutes," she smiled at Midge. She motioned for her to be seated at the white and gold speckled Formica table and brought her a cup of coffee and a pitcher of cream.
"You don't have to wait on me," Midge protested, but Bess just laughed. "I always do the cooking, and George does the dishes," she explained. "Sit and eat," she added, bring a basket of biscuits and a plate of butter to the table. "Did you sleep well?" she asked.
Midge broke open a biscuit and slathered it with the creamy butter. "As well as can be expected with that little snoring kid in the room," she said.
Bess laughed. "Maybe tonight Lauren will feel comfortable enough in this strange house to sleep in the living room." Bess grew somber. She sat down across from Midge and poured herself a cup of coffee. "You might think I'm crazy, but..." Her voice trailed off.
"Go on," Midge urged. "I won't think you're crazy."
"I can't explain, exactly, but after hearing what you said about Nancy and her father, I just couldn't sleep. Why, I even got up to make myself a cheese and tomato sandwich, hoping that would put me to sleep, but still I lay awake."
Bess continued breathlessly, her brown eyes growing as big as saucers as she relayed her bizarre experiences in the Clue household.
"This house has always felt a little scary to me. Whenever I'm here, I feel like, well, I feel like I'm being watched. Like someone's standing behind me, watching everything I do." Bess shivered. "Until last night, when I learned of the horrible things that went on here, I thought I was just being silly." She blushed. "I'm not the bravest person," she admitted. "Last night when we heard you in the cellar, I made George pretend she was a man, and I stayed a safe distance behind her."
Bess leaned in close to Midge and dropped her voice to a whisper. One night years and years ago I was sharing Nancy's room and I awoke in the middle of the night and thought I saw someone standing at the foot of my bed.
"I must have been dreaming, though, because when I turned on the bedside lamp, the figure disappeared. I remember smelling the most luscious scent; I thought it was a perfume of some sort until I remembered that a large lilac bush grows right outside Nancy's bedroom window," Bess added.
Midge wanted to quiz Bess further about the strange incidents in the Clue household, both before and after Carson Clue's death, but Bess clammed up when she spied Lauren headed down the hall toward the kitchen. "No more talk like this, or we'll never get her out of your bedroom," Bess giggled. "Anyway, I'm always being a silly goose about things. Why, I'm even afraid of my own shadow. Don't listen to a thing I say about this house. I'm sure there's nothing to any of it."
Midge wasn't so sure, but she let the conversation drop, at least for the time being.
Lauren wandered into the sunny kitchen holding the waistband of her pajamas in an attempt to keep them from sliding down her slender frame. In the oversized pajamas, with her hair sticking up in unflattering angles, Lauren looked more like a kid and less like the smart-aleck teen Midge knew her to be.
"Why, she looks harmless," Midge realized. "How could I have ever suspected that she and Velma..." Her thoughts stopped when she saw the newspaper in Lauren's hand. It would certainly include coverage of Hannah's trial. Midge snatched the paper away from Lauren, and tried to think of a way to get her out of the room so she could freely discuss the trial with Bess. "You stink," Midge said bluntly. "Go take a bath."
"You're not my mother," Lauren replied tartly as she slumped into a chair and reached for a biscuit.
"That is one of the many things I am grateful for," Midge replied sarcastically. "Go take a bath," she ordered again, in a no-nonsense tone that surprised them both. "Now."
"Yes, sir!" Lauren saluted before snatching another biscuit. She put a third in the breast pocket of her pajama top, glared at Midge, and stomped off.
"There're fresh towels in the hall closet and bubble bath beside the tub," Bess called after her. The slam of the washroom door was Lauren's only reply.
"Honestly," Bess sighed as she mixed pancake batter. "She's an odd little duck. What on earth are you doing with her? And where are her parents?"
Midge lit her first cigarette of the day. "She's just a little juvenile delinquent we picked up along the way. I'm sure her family's glad to get rid of her," she chuckled.
Bess quivered in alarm. "Should I hide the crystal?" she wondered.
"Nothing like that," Midge assured her. "I have caught her in a few lies," she admitted. "Well, not really lies. More like creative story-telling. I get the feeling she's not happy at home and isn't too keen on returning. I am, though," Midge admitted. "We've been gone much longer than planned, and my long-suffering friends, Tom and Monty, have been caring for my pets all this time." She shuddered when she imagined what Monty's white wall-to-wall carpet would look like after boarding one dog, five puppies, a cat, and various, assorted rodents.
"One problem at a time," she sighed, scanning the newspaper. She almost knocked over her coffee cup, so shocked was she when she saw the River Depths Defender. For the entire front page was devoted to what the paper was calling "The Case of the Homicidal Housekeeper."
"Horrible Hannah," read the twenty-four point caption below a harsh jail-cell photograph of Hannah Gruel. Midge had never met Hannah, but she could tell from the wan look of her once-pleasant features that the elderly woman was suffering a great deal. "I can't believe this. Look!" Midge cried to Bess, who was absorbed in dropping evenly spaced dollops of pancake batter onto the hot griddle.
"'Hannah's Recipe For Mayhem,' " Midge read a headline aloud in a shocked tone. "It says there's evidence Hannah tried to poison both Nancy and Mr. Clue during last year's Founder's Day Picnic by baking arsenic in a huckleberry pie. They even printed her recipe! "
Bess hurriedly wiped her hands on her apron and looked over Midge's shoulder. She shuddered when she saw how the newspaper had twisted and distorted kindly Hannah Gruel's life so as to make it appear that she was really a manipulative, scheming woman.
"It says here police believe Hannah's been squirreling away money for years! " Midge exclaimed. "Look at this photograph of a jar filled with coins. They're saying it's evidence of her successful scheme to steal money from Mr. Clue."
Bess gasped in horror when she looked at the photograph. "Why, I know for a fact that Hannah keeps her pin money in that jar. She makes extra money baking pies for the neighbors and uses her savings to purchase Christmas gifts for Nancy and Mr. Clue," she gasped indignantly. "What other lies are in here?" she cried, doing her best to flip pancakes while reading over Midge's shoulder.
Midge groaned as she rifled through the newspaper. "Most of the articles are about Hannah!" she cried. "Even on the society page, there's one titled, 'I Never Trusted Her.' " Midge read it aloud.
" ` "I never trusted that woman," Mrs. Milton Meeks, a prominent leader of the community, was overheard exclaiming at yesterday's Ladies' Club Luncheon honoring local poetess Miss Betty Pearl, whose recent publication in Reader's Digest has earned her accolades from around the state.
' "I knew the day Carson Clue brought that woman into his house no good would come of it," Mrs. Meeks declared after sampling a delicious luncheon of tuna salad and vegetable medley. She expressed concern that Hannah's actions would disrupt the happy harmony housewives and housekeepers of River Depths have always enjoyed. Others at her table expressed similar fears.
`A good time was had by all.'
"They're all the same," Midge sighed after a quick scan of the other articles. "There's even an editorial calling for a law to disarm housekeepers," she sneered as she threw the paper on the floor in disgust.
Bess plunked a platter of pancakes on the table in front of Midge and announced, "Why, Mrs. Meeks tried several times to hire Hannah away from the Clues. My mother overheard her cornering Hannah one night after a Ladies' Club meeting, where Hannah served her delicious blueberry tarts. She begged her to quit and come work for her!
"Although she was too much
a lady to ever say so, Hannah never did like that Mrs. Meeks." Bess's pretty face flushed with anger. She twisted a dish towel in her hands. "If I ever see that woman on the street, why, I'll-" But before she could finish, the doorbell rang.
"Who could it be this early in the morning?" Bess wondered aloud as she hurried to answer it. "It's probably the milkman, unable to decipher George's note about extra butter." She pulled off her apron, dusty with flour, and ran a hand through her mussed hair. She flung open the door and to her great surprise saw the very same Mrs. Milton Meeks in the news article, standing on the Clues' front porch. And in her white-gloved hands was a casserole dish covered with a red-checkered cloth.
"Oh, Beth, dear, you're here!" Mrs. Meeks exclaimed in glee.
"It's Bess," Bess corrected, but Mrs. Meeks paid no mind. She sailed right past her and headed for the kitchen.
"Was I ever shocked and pleased to drive by earlier and see Nancy's car out front! " Mrs. Meeks cried.
"Nancy's asleep and can't be disturbed," Bess warned.
"So she is home," Mrs. Meeks' eyes twinkled in delight. "I wouldn't dream of waking her," she declared. "I just wanted to drop off this special tuna salad I prepared especially for her."
"Oh, hello young man," she said cheerily to Midge as she put the casserole dish in the refrigerator. "You must be one of Nancy's detective chums from Lake Merrimen. Now, which Hardly boy are you? Joe or Frank?" She reached in her handbag hanging from the crook of one arm and took out a pair of jeweled cat glasses. She balanced them precariously on the tip of her pug nose and stared at Midge. She gave her a good going-over.
"Young man, I'd advise you to not sit around the house in your sleeping attire," she warned. "Honestly, what will people say when they find out you and Nancy are staying in the very same house without a chaperone? Beth, does your mother know about this?"
Without waiting for an answer, she added, in a teasing tone, "Unless, of course, you two have a surprise announcement for us? The young man who marries Nancy Clue will be twiceblessed, indeed," she declared with glee. "Not only will he be getting a charming girl, he'll also be marrying River Depths' newest, and some say, richest heiress!"
Mrs. Meeks put a gloved hand against her powdered, rouged cheek and added, "Oh, I guess it's not nice to talk about money at a time like this, with the murder so fresh in everyone's mind and the jury selection for the trial beginning today." A devilish look came into her small, blue, beady eyes. "But a wedding might be just the thing to make everyone forget about that nasty crime."
Mrs. Meeks boldly helped herself to a warm biscuit. She daintily ate it, wiping crumbs from her thin lips with a monogrammed hankie from her purse. "These are quite good, Beth, dear. Not as good as Hannah's, mind you. Oops," she tittered. "I probably shouldn't be mentioning the poor dear's name in this house, should I?" She sighed. "Some people snap, just like that," she declared, illustrating her point by snapping her plump, little glove-encased fingers together.
She rustled through her purse and took out a compact and a tube of red lipstick. After reapplying fresh color, she added, "If I were you, Beth dear, I'd starting reducing now. You're sure to be a maid of honor, and those bridesmaid dresses, lovely as they are, are never very flattering to the, shall we say, fuller figure?"
Bess almost choked on her biscuit.
"And as for your friend George, well," Mrs. Meeks shuddered, rolled her eyes and sighed. "There's nothing anyone can do about her, is there?" Bess was too flabbergasted to say anything and for once Midge kept her mouth shut. She had a feeling it would be a good idea to keep her true identity a secret.
Mrs. Meeks snatched up another biscuit and raced out the door, leaving a trail of crumbs in her wake. "I must hurry off and tell everyone Nancy's back!" she cried.
For the first time since they had arrived in River Depths, Midge felt alarmed. There was something about Mrs. Meeks that made her shiver. "She's not nearly as flighty as she pretends," Midge thought, realizing that she reminded her of a cruel prison matron she had bumped heads with more than once during her stretch in the pen. "That Mrs. Meeks is one dangerous character," she said.
Bess wiped the tears from her eyes and blew her nose on the dish towel in her hands. "I'm a silly goose to let Mrs. Meeks get under my skin, but, golly, I'm awfully sensitive about my figure problem."
Midge looked at the attractively plump, feminine girl and said in a disgusted tone, "It's people like Mrs. Meeks who should be on trial, not Hannah." Midge was relieved to see Bess giggle a bit at this, but she knew by the look in her eyes that her feelings were still hurt.
"Everyone's always commenting about my weight," Bess sighed. "Why, you'd think it was a national disgrace that a girl carries a few extra pounds."
From what Midge could see, Bess was carrying those pounds in all the right places. She struggled to find a polite way to say so, but gave up and just blurted out, "Bess, as far as I'm concerned, you are one good-looking girl, and your girlfriend seems to thinks so, too."
At the mention of George, Bess's cloudy expression grew bright. She smiled, revealing darling dimples in each cheek. "Did Nancy ever tell you how George and I got together?" she asked. Midge shook her head.
"When I was nineteen, I uncovered a family secret," Bess began dramatically. "I was adopted! Mother was afraid I would be destroyed by the news, but I was elated," Bess revealed as she spooned sugar into her coffee and buttered a biscuit.
She blushed. "For a long time, I had known my feelings for George were more than cousinly, and I had the funniest feeling George felt the same way," Bess said, all starry-eyed. She stirred her coffee and continued her story. "One night we accompanied Nancy to a Happy Homemakers of America dance. When Ted Tickerson and his vivacious sister, Terry, joined us, I grabbed George and sneaked out the back way.
"Nancy used to be head over heels about Terry," Bess confided. "They had a terrible quarrel and Terry left town. Nancy's heart has been broken ever since. Anyway, I asked George to walk to the gazebo with me. I told her I wanted to see the stars," Bess giggled. "While she was pointing out the Big Dipper, I blurted out the news that we weren't related at all, and then I kissed her smack on the lips. George was so shocked, she tumbled backward over the railing. When I tried to help her up, she pulled me on top of her. That's where we were a half hour later when Nancy and Terry stumbled upon us.
"How did you meet your girlfriend?" Bess asked.
"In prison," Midge said nonchalantly.
Bess gasped. "Really?" Her eyes lit up bright as new pennies. "I bet you were the head of a gang, and Velma was your girl," Bess guessed dreamily.
Midge laughed. "Nothing as exciting as that," she admitted. "It's a long story, but...what's that smell?" she wondered suddenly.
"My pancakes!" Bess shrieked. She had been so engrossed in swapping stories with Midge, she had forgotten all about breakfast! She ran to the stove.
"They were pancakes," Bess moaned as she scraped the now-blackened batter from the hot griddle. She mixed a fresh batch and soon perfect circles of luscious smelling hotcakes were bubbling away.
"You are some cook," Midge sniffed in appreciation.
"My job as the home economics instructor at River Depths High is to prepare girls for their future roles as homemakers," Bess said proudly. She laughed. "They say the way to a man's heart is through his stomach. I've found it works on girls, too. What's Velma's specialty?" Bess wondered as she expertly flipped the flapjacks onto a large platter. "Maybe we can trade recipes. I just found a new one for the most scrumptious Swedish meatballs."
Midge laughed. "I'll let you in on a little secret," she said. "But you've got to promise not to tell." She lowered her voice. "I'm the cook in the family," she revealed.
Bess laughed merrily at the thought of Midge in an apron. "Your secret's safe with me," she giggled.
"What secret?" Lauren wanted to know. She tripped into the kitchen, clad in a terrycloth bathrobe three times her size. Her dripping hair hung in a lank braid down her back.
"While I was in the bathtub, someone stole my clothes," she announced, explaining her get-up. Her mouth dropped when she spied the platter of pancakes. "Pass the syrup," she said, hopping onto a chair and pulling the platter toward her. One pancake fell to the floor and was snapped up by Gogo. The terrier raced off with her treat.
"I'll make some more," Bess sighed as she watched Lauren pour half a container of maple syrup over her pancakes. "And I'd better go to the basement for another bottle of syrup."
Midge watched in amazement as Lauren threatened to polish off the platter of pancakes without once stopping for breath. "Come up for air, will you?" Midge gently scolded the girl.
Midge leaned back in her chair and lit a cigarette. "How'd you sleep?" she asked.
Lauren made a face. "Terrible. I heard a bunch of kissing noises right before I went to sleep. Jeez. Maybe I should stay in the living room tonight," she scowled.
"Be my guest," Midge replied dryly.
Velma dragged her sleepy self into the kitchen, her tousled black curls framing her face in the most haphazard, adorable way. She plopped down on the chair next to Midge and put her head on her shoulder. "When I woke up, there was a dog in bed with me, eating a pancake," she yawned. "Honey, it was just like home."
Midge gave her a long, lingering kiss on her full, pretty mouth.
Lauren threw down her fork and glared at the couple. She had lost her appetite.
"Goodness, Lauren, why the sourpuss? Morning, Midge. Morning, Velma." Cherry swept through the kitchen, sparkling with energy and attractively attired in a flowered, shortsleeved house dress that made her look even younger than her twenty five years. In her hands was a laundry hamper. "Velma, wait until you see Nancy's closets. Why, they're stuffed with all the latest fashions! I've never seen so many beautiful things. Nancy's locked in the bathroom, fussing over her hair," Cherry added. "I helped her pick out a nice sky blue linen suit and a simple white blouse with a Peter Pan collar. She wants to look her best when she goes to see Chief Chumley and straighten out this whole mix-up."
