The Marriage at the Rue Morgue (A Rue and Lakeland Mystery)

by Jessie Bishop Powell

  Marguerite stepped behind Mama’s changing screens with her. I turned my attention to Brenda’s dress, the only blue one. It looked like it would be a little shorter on Brenda than Poppy’s was on her. The layered skirt was probably knee length. It had an asymmetrical waist, and the top ran up to a sweetheart neckline in silky pleats. Like Poppy’s dress, Brenda’s had flared sleeves, though Poppy’s looked a bit longer. “Polyester,” Brenda told me when I bent down to touch the fabric. “Can you believe that?” At five foot three, Brenda was taller than I was, but not nearly by so much as Rachel. She wore her curly hair short for running. It was quite a bit longer than Mama’s pixie, but not as long as even Poppy’s bob. The dress suited her perfectly.

  “Taffeta,” Marguerite corrected as she returned with Poppy’s dress draped carefully over her arm. Poppy herself could be heard jumping down the stairs with noisy thuds that shook the walls.

  Brenda ignored her mother and continued, “Mom totally had to show me on the Internet, because I was dead sure it was silk. Doesn’t it feel like silk to you?” I nodded without speaking, touching the beadwork that ran under the neckline. “Isn’t that amazing detail?” Brenda went on. “And there’s more in the hem. I swear they look like they’re held on with air.” She continued talking, though her voice had turned into background noise. “I will absolutely die if one of those invisible strings breaks. You know, one did in the store. The first one I tried on was too tight across the chest, and it went ‘pop’ when I pulled it over my head, and there were little blue beads all over the boutique floor.”

  “Margie,” I said, looking up at my sister while Brenda rattled on about the dress, “these are amazing. They’re perfect.” With an effort, I lowered my voice and went on, “There’s only one problem . . .”

  “What is it?” Marguerite said fast, holding Poppy’s dress a little closer. “What’s wrong?”

  I sighed. Oh, it felt bad to pretend like there was something wrong. “Look at Rachel’s,” I said.

  Rachel’s dress was the most beautiful of the three. It was a narrow sheath with spaghetti straps and fabric that seemed made to drape. “Charmeuse,” Brenda supplied without being asked. “They told me that at the store, because I knew it was different from mine, but I didn’t know how, and I still thought mine was silk.” Still talking, she wasn’t watching my sister and I stare at each other.

  “Hold it up,” I directed Rachel.

  Against her body, it looked even prettier, even over the nightgown. The sea foam green wasn’t quite the same shade as Poppy’s, or else the shine made Rachel’s seem brighter, more sophisticated. As a seamstress’s daughter, I had a good idea of how a formfitting dress like this one would look on Rachel’s slender frame, and as an aunt, I had to applaud my sister for letting her daughter wear something so sensual.

  “Brenda, hold yours up, too,” I said, to give my other niece something to do besides talk. I wondered if I had brought this on by criticizing her behavior. Rachel was holding hers against her chest. Brenda did the same, flipping the sleeves up around her neck a little to get them out of her way. “Now hand me Poppy’s,” I told Marguerite. She handed me the third dress with great reluctance. I displayed it alongside the other two. “Now stand back and look,” I said.

  Rachel, Brenda, and I were arrayed around the dressmaker’s form. We displayed the three gowns for an inspection that would have taken place months ago if I hadn’t been such a lazy bride. Lucky for Rachel that I was, or I never would have found fault with Marguerite’s choices.

  Now I let my sister study us without speaking, willing her to see. Brenda was still talking, explaining the differences between charmeuse, taffeta, and a variety of other silky fabrics. “And you can make taffeta out of silk,” she wound up, “but it’s less expensive with polyester, and a lot easier to clean.”

  Come on, sis, I thought.

  Then Brenda blurted out, “It’s the sleeves, Mom. Everybody but Rachel has sleeves. Auntie Noel has those long sleeves, and Poppy and I have flares. But Rachel has those little spaghetti straps. It makes her the odd one out.”

  “Oh no!” Marguerite said. “Brenda, you’re right.” In an appreciative tone, she added, “Honey, you should really go into fashion.” I wasn’t sure if I could have been so polite to a child who had just deliberately planted her foot on mine. Then she was quiet for a minute before she continued, half under her breath. “Why didn’t I think of that before? I knew you were going to be in Nana’s dress, Noel. I’m so sorry. I should have . . .”

  “It’s okay!” I cut her off. “It’s fine. And I wasn’t sure about Nana’s dress until a couple of weeks ago. All three of them are beautiful. But . . .”

  “I should have been thinking more like a bride,” Marguerite went on. “I got so caught up in matching the girls without really matching them, you know . . . but now, OK. Rachel, we’re going to have to sew sleeves on that thing. I’ll get Mama and Nana on it right now.”

  “What about a cape?” Now that Brenda’s expertise had been complimented, she had moved to stand by Marguerite. It was a little funny to see Brenda still holding her own dress up in front of her while offering her opinion of Rachel’s gown to her mother.

  “Honey, they can’t sew a cape that fast. We need something in a couple of hours, and I bet they could come up with sleeves that go with . . .”

  “Actually, I think Brenda’s onto something,” I said.

  My middle niece’s face broke into a broad grin.

  “How so?” Marguerite asked.

  Brenda almost shouted, “Vintage shop! That lady you’ve been e-mailing with. I saw her store coming into town. It was fancy stuff, too, not like junk.”

  “Yup.” I nodded. “Hannah can fix this. She sold me a lot of my jewelry, and I think I saw a little jacket yesterday that would be perfect if it’s still there.” I moved to join Brenda and Marguerite, so that all of us could examine Rachel’s dress. Rachel herself craned her neck to stare down at her own pajama-clad chest.

  “It can’t be green,” Marguerite said, thoughtful now as we mulled the options. “Unless it’s magically coordinating, and I’m not holding my breath there. But maybe if they had . . . would it be too much to hope for blue?”

  “Ivory, actually,” I said. “If it fits Rachel . . .”

  “Or even if it’s too big, we could put in darts,” Marguerite mused.

  “Right,” I said. “It’s a half jacket, really.”

  Marguerite worried, “But would the contrast be too much? I know you don’t want these to be typical bridesmaid’s things, but really, formal dresses aren’t meant to have a lot of different colors going on.”

  “We don’t even know if it fits her yet,” I said.

  “True,” my sister agreed. “One thing at a time.” Marguerite seemed to suddenly realize that Rachel had been silent throughout this whole exchange, because she said, “Oh, lord. Rachel, I’m sorry. None of us asked what you thought. I really don’t want to minimize your perspective . . .”

  “Oh no, Mom,” Rachel said. “It’s Auntie Noel’s wedding. I want everything exactly the way she wants it.” Her voice sounded strained, like it was an effort to grant this point. I thought the strain came from her fears about the tattoo, but it certainly would give Marguerite the impression that this was anybody but Rachel’s idea, which wasn’t an entirely bad thing.

  “Are you sure?” Marguerite asked her.

  “Absolutely,” Rachel said solemnly. Then, she suddenly beamed. “Besides. Retail therapy is always good, right?”

  I turned to go down and put on some clothes. Dressed, I stepped out of my room. I heard Brenda mutter, “Sorry about the foot thing.”

  I didn’t hear Marguerite’s response. A moment later, my sister was behind me. “Hurry up. I see Nana coming in from the flower beds.”

  “So?” Not that I wasn’t hurrying anyway.

  “She’ll put the kibosh on us for sure.”

  “Hurry,” I agreed. She might be eighty, but Franny Cox too
k Marguerite and I regularly to task.

  We scuttled downstairs and through the kitchen. Marguerite made it outside, but I was next in line, and Nana cut me off in the doorway. Bryce chugged along behind her, loaded down with the majority of the flowers they were bringing in to put in my hastily purchased vases. “Hi Mom,” he said to Marguerite, then added, “’scuse me” as he brushed past her without looking up. He edged around Nana and I into the house. The dogs he had been exercising earlier were now cordoned off in their outdoor run, barking madly, and I thought apologies in their direction for the boring day we were about to inflict upon them.

  We all let Bryce through, since Nana had loaded him up with no fewer than five one-pound coffee cans holding freshly cut roses. He had two under each arm, pinned tightly against his chest, with the fifth held gingerly out in front. He smelled glorious. My parents’ roses were the stuff of legend. They could have easily supplied a florist in season.

  When they bought this home, the old rose garden had all gone wild. Mama and Daddy dug up and replanted. Now they grew ground-cover, hedge, climbing, and long- and short-stemmed varieties and spent hours a day caring for their plants. When Mama had a sewing job, as she had with my dress these last two weeks, the bulk of this tending fell to Daddy, who accepted only limited help from Nana. He was still out back, filling up more of the metal coffee cans with long stems. Peering around Nana, I caught a glimpse of him with his snips. It made me smile.

  Retirement had been very good for my father, and I knew that even when Mama wasn’t tied up with a project, those roses were more his than hers. The coffee cans entering the kitchen in a steady parade were his wedding gift to me today. The tables would have centerpieces. Exquisite centerpieces. And what more appropriate for a June wedding than roses?

  I stopped Bryce for a moment to smell the collection of pink-tipped white ones he held before I let him unload on the kitchen counter. While Bryce hurried past to get in, my grandmother stared at Marguerite, Rachel, Brenda and me like we were a lot of guilty criminals. I remembered that look so well from my childhood. Marguerite and I would think we had pulled something over on our parents, only to be confronted by Nana’s withering gaze that said, You maybe confused those people in there, but there isn’t any fooling Franny Cox. “Where are you all going together?”

  “Shopping,” I said.

  At the same time, Marguerite said, “Fashion crisis.”

  My sister and I glanced at each other, and she giggled like she used to when Nana caught us out.

  Although Nana’s expression asked if we weren’t a bit old for these kinds of tricks, she said instead, “Now what kind of fashion crisis are we talking about here? Because if something needs to be fixed on one of those dresses, your mama and I can fix it, Noel.” She was appealing to me like I, as the bride, had the final authority over such decisions. She didn’t seem to realize my authority had been usurped yesterday by an ape and a killer.

  I told her, “It’s a long story, Nana.”

  “You can’t leave!” she said. “The tents are coming in an hour, Poppy is turning the gazebo into something that would make Georgia O’Keefe fall over dead, and your father wants you over there to tell him if he needs to cut back the Sea Foams or if you think they don’t overhang the path too badly.” Let it never be said that old age had addled my grandmother’s mind. These were clearly but three in a long list of vexations she had been saving for me.

  “The Sea Foams?” I said, since my mind was still on Rachel’s sea foam green dress and not on the Sea Foam white shrub roses lining part of the route I would walk through the garden this evening.

  Lance rescued me. He swept around the corner of the house and somehow wormed between Nana and me before she could say another word.

  “Darling,” I told him. “Can you answer a flower question for my dad?”

  “I’ll try,” he said. “But I would rather sweep you off your feet.” He wrapped an arm around my shoulders and steered me back inside, forcing everyone behind me back too, and slowing down Bryce as he tried to get back outside to collect more flowers from Daddy.

  When Bryce had passed, Lance said, “I need the car keys.” He didn’t seem interested in where I was headed, and probably had a pretty good idea anyway based on our early morning conversation with Rachel.

  “You had them last, but they’re on the dresser upstairs. Where are you off to?”

  Instead of answering, he pulled me into a bear hug.

  “Honey . . .,” I started to protest.

  He released me, then kissed me hard on the mouth. It wasn’t in any way chaste, and I felt a flush creeping up my cheeks even as he let me go again. He whispered, “I’ll find the keys. I wanted to tell you I have to go out to the center. I’ll be back by two, I swear, but Trudy says the cops gave us permission to place more food and bedding for lures. Listen, the cops seem willing to set up surveillance and dart the things for us. No bullets. Trudy thinks they mean it. I have to try to catch those orangutans one more time. If Art were there . . .”

  He stopped suddenly, his own face reddening, and I knew he was close to tears. I knew that he meant if Art were there, the orangutans probably would have already been caught. But I also knew he meant that if Art were there, nobody would think one or both of the apes was a killer, and finding them wouldn’t have so much urgency. “I know,” I told him, suddenly fighting not to cry myself. “I know. Do what you need to, honey. I wish I could go with you.”

  We kissed again, less intensely this time, and he moved to go down the hall.

  Maybe we thought we had been speaking only to each other, but my family had heard every word. I turned away from Lance’s retreating body to see them staring at us. Then Nana spun the cold water tap on the kitchen sink and loudly plunked her coffee can into the basin. Marguerite shooed Rachel and Brenda out the door with far too much gusto, though she herself remained behind; only Bryce, who had returned with another load of flowers, made no effort to stop eavesdropping. Instead, Bryce left Nana at the sink with the flowers and came over to us. “Are you talking about the orangutan that killed your friend?”

  “The orangutans didn’t hurt anyone,” Lance said, turning back to the kitchen. “Some horrible person killed our friend, and . . .” Lance was crying. He swiped at his face a couple of times, but it wasn’t enough to keep me from seeing. The sight of his damp, pinched face brought on my own tears. The kitchen felt too long, and my feet wouldn’t cross to him. I swallowed and cleared my throat, trying to find words to fill the void between him and my eight-year-old nephew.

  “And I’ll thank you not to introduce the topic to my son again,” Marguerite cut in, shooting Lance a dark look as she turned back from ushering Rachel and Brenda out to take hold of Bryce’s shoulders and steer him toward the sink.

  “Sorry,” Lance said. He might have been speaking more to Bryce than his mother, but Lance was looking at me, and I finally found my voice to answer him.

  “Don’t worry about it,” I told him, dabbing my own eyes with a shirt sleeve. “Go. See if a day of living on Ohio foliage has convinced the animals that the humans and their fruit trucks are worth their time. They’re somewhere on the center’s property. I’m sure of it.”

  “Thanks, honey.” He came back and kissed me again, a peck this time, and turned away once more, asking, “Did you say the dresser?”

  “Yes!” I called to him. Then I snapped, “Marguerite, come on. We’ve got to hurry up if we’re going to have time for this.”

  “Oh no, you don’t!” Nana had been pretending to work with the roses, but as soon as she saw Marguerite and me headed for the back door again, she turned off the sink and ignored a can of stems being extended by the startled Bryce. She marched toward us, hands on her hips. “You two are not sneaking off on some lengthy, unrealistic search when we have a wedding to put together.”

  “I don’t have time to argue about this,” Marguerite told her. “If you don’t want us going off alone, then come along to chaperone.”
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  She and Nana glared at each other for a long moment, and then Nana said, “I do believe I will.” She took off her apron and hung it over a chair back with a snap before following Rachel and Brenda to the minivan. “And someone round up Poppy before she starts making plans to decorate the guests when they arrive.”

  Marguerite turned to me. “Are you coming?” she asked, advancing across the room.

  “Yes,” I told her. But more than anything, I wanted to be getting in the truck with Lance, to try and find the animals running loose at the primate center. Marguerite gave me a tissue she had acquired from the table. “I’m beginning to think my in-laws are right,” I said to my sister.

  “What do you mean?” she asked.

  “I’m beginning to think this whole wedding is cursed.”

  CHAPTER 17

  * * *

  “Nonsense,” Marguerite said. “Your mother-in-law is a curse, and I don’t even know what to think about Alexander anymore. Now hurry up and let’s see what we can do about getting Rachel some sleeves,” and she preceded me out the kitchen door.

  In the car, I blew my nose several times and wiped my eyes. Nana had taken the van’s passenger seat, and Rachel and Brenda had the middle bench. I scooted all the way over in the third row and buckled in. Poppy catapulted in beside her sisters just before her mother shut the door.

  I tried not to look at the scorched hulk of my former car as we pulled out, but it was hard to avoid, parked as it was on the street outside the house. Daddy would have it removed before the ceremony started, but for now it squatted there, homeless and ugly.

  It was a silent ride, and I tried to lose myself in the scenery, but it was hard. This part of Ohio is all flatland. Corn and soybeans, soybeans and corn, with a little hay sown here and there for variety. Fields and fields of green at this time of the year. The corn wasn’t quite knee-high yet, and the soybeans still grew in orderly leafy rows. By late summer, the corn would be tasseled out and the soybeans dry and brown, ready for harvest, the hay ready for baling. But it was early June, and the earth was fresh and abundant. I felt like the fields were talking to me, saying, See, here is life as it should be. Lance would tease me for such a sentiment. But Art would have understood. Art, who was no longer here to understand.