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

by Jessie Bishop Powell

  I didn’t care what my guests thought. Now that it came down to what mattered, I didn’t even care what Marguerite and my parents thought. I already had input from the one other person who mattered. Lance wanted to get married. And so did I. “Let’s go,” I said.

  We exchanged a few more words with Christian about Lucy, the radio, and our quarantine facilities. Lance gave him Ace’s number, and I went over to promise Olivia that I would get her son’s radio back intact. It was a lie. I was already planning a replacement purchase. In her house, I could feel the pairs upon pairs of little-boy eyes watching me, even though the owners of those eyes were strangely quiet.

  As I was about to leave, I realized why things had fallen silent. “It’s going to take us a few weeks,” I said to the faces in the bedroom. “But we’ll have you out to see the primates. We’ll have a primate party.”

  “Promise?” a single five-year-old voice asked.

  I said, “Absolutely,” and left the house to a roar of children’s cheers.

  Out front, Lance had explained our predicament to Detective Carmichael, who had delegated Deputy Greene to our service. He was waiting for me at the curb. “If it’s all the same,” the young deputy said, “I think I’d better take you straight to your destination.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “That would be wonderful.”

  Shuffled into the squad car’s backseat, once more like a couple of prisoners, Lance and I wrapped our arms around each other. As Deputy Greene took off for Mama’s house, I laid my head on my fiancé’s shoulder.

  As suddenly, I sat up and pulled away, “Oh, Lance!” I said. “What’s going on with your mother?”

  He groaned. “She and Dad got on a plane around the time I left to meet you at the house this morning.”

  “Are you sure she got on? Is she even allowed to leave the state?”

  “We aren’t pressing charges,” he said.

  I thought, We aren’t? But I didn’t interrupt.

  “The insurance company hasn’t made a determination yet. And she was doing nutso stuff in the clink, stripping and putting on nude dances for the jailers. She was a problem child for them. The police released her into psychiatric care. Dad accompanied her as far as the plane, a caretaker from a Columbus inpatient facility actually got on with her, and she’s agreed to go straight into care. I tried to talk to her for a few minutes, but nothing she says makes any sense. I can’t believe how fast she deteriorated.”

  The police car accelerated as Deputy Greene wove deftly around parked cars and out onto the larger county route. “She was fine when she got here,” I agreed.

  “No,” Lance said. “I’ve barely talked to Dad, but he says not. He says the novelty of our house may have snapped her back for a little while, but she’s been heading in a bad direction for the last six months.” He pulled me close to him again and continued. “She spent time in a psychiatric facility when we were kids. She’s got medications she’s supposed to be taking. This has happened a couple of times since Alex and I went to college.”

  “Wait a minute,” I said. “Your mom has been in and out of the hospital and you never told me?”

  He shrugged. “I didn’t like to talk about it. Mom and I weren’t all that close,” he said. “You know that. I didn’t want to know, myself. I’m so sorry it’s come anywhere near you. I’ve tried to keep all of my family’s crazy away, and I let her guilt me into inviting her to stay at our house before the wedding.” Now he pulled away from me. “I should have known better,” he said. “I can’t believe I let her destroy your car.”

  I said, “I’m the one who let her drive it!”

  “But I should have been the one . . .”

  “No,” I said. “This isn’t your fault, Lance. You aren’t responsible for your mom any more than you’re responsible for your brother. I don’t blame you.”

  “Thanks,” he said. “But I feel pretty responsible right now.”

  “No,” I told him again. And then, because he seemed to have the case against himself all written up and certified in his own head, I pulled him into me and kissed him hard on the mouth. It was one of those dizzy kisses like the one we had exchanged in front of the spider monkey enclosure yesterday, and it served to silence him.

  We kissed like that until Deputy Greene sped up again and cut on the siren. Then we cuddled together in the backseat, loving each other as we rode to get married.

  CHAPTER 22

  * * *

  And so it was that I arrived at my wedding in a police car. Deputy Greene seemed to enjoy it very much that I should be as uncomfortable today as he had been yesterday. He turned on the lights and sirens once we got out of Olivia’s neighborhood. “I only waited because they hear too much of us around there as it is.”

  “You don’t need that at all, do you?”

  He grinned and pretended not to hear me.

  I looked up at Lance, who shrugged and then pulled me in tighter. “I’m glad you’re not mad at me,” he said.

  “Of course not,” I said. “Why would I be mad at you?”

  “Over Mom.”

  “Lance,” I said, “I’ve been worried that you would be angry with me about your mom. Up until last night, I thought I was responsible for keeping you apart from your family. Now, I’m beginning to understand that you and Alex both came to the Midwest to get away from them.”

  He nuzzled his nose in my hair. “About Bub,” he said.

  I found that I was a lot more open to hearing about Alex now that I had seen him looking shamefaced on my parents’ lawn. I almost wished I had been at yesterday’s dinner to see him struggling with their mixed emotions. But then, if I had been there, I don’t think I would have felt compassion toward him. Plus, I’d still have a car. Like Lance, Alex very clearly blamed himself for his mother’s behavior. “Yeah?” I said. “What about him?”

  “He offered to go with Mom,” Lance said. “To make sure she got there. But I told him to stay. I asked him to come to the wedding. Having him go would be like . . .”

  “Letting her win,” I finished.

  “Yeah. I should have asked you before I told him anything, but you didn’t pick up your cell in the middle of that surprise shower, and I had to tell him something before he got on the flight, and we’ve been going nonstop since . . .”

  “Lance, it’s OK,” I said. “I’m not angry.”

  “Really?” He stretched his neck around and look at me half upside down, one eyebrow raised, the other scrunched over toward his nose.

  I laughed at his peculiar face and kissed the lips he had put so conveniently near to mine. “Really,” I said, and settled back against him.

  Of course, the siren brought everybody out onto the front lawn when we pulled down my parents’ street. And “everybody” was a lot of people. The road was lined with cars, and someone had started parking people in the yard away from the flower garden. Mama might have been an only child, but Daddy was one of eleven. My aunts, uncles, and cousins, our friends, and the small delegation from Lance’s family all crowded around to see Deputy Greene open the door and usher us out like some kind of chauffeur. He shut the door behind us and made a sweeping gesture. “Let that be a lesson to you,” he said. “In this county, it’s illegal to try and run out on your wedding.”

  Then he got back in his cruiser and drove away. “My God, what were you thinking? You’re a mess,” Marguerite scolded.

  “You don’t really believe that, do you?” I said. “If we’d wanted to duck out, there’s no law about it.”

  “But your hair’s a wreck, you smell like a pigsty, and I doubt anybody will be able to get that stain out of your white shirt!”

  Lucy hadn’t smelled good, no better than Chuck did yesterday, but she didn’t come close enough to leave her scent on us. Technically, I supposed Lance was the one who smelled like a sty. Working in the enclosures tended to leave one with a distinct odor. Lance was also responsible for mussing my hair on the ride over. And we had both somehow gotten the
watermelon smeared all down our fronts. I doubted Marguerite would like to know the number of white shirts I had ruined working at the primate sanctuary.

  “We’re here,” I said. “It’s only a little after five, and we have most of an hour to get ready.”

  “You nearly gave Nana a heart attack,” Margie snapped.

  “Oh, no, Nana!” My grandfather really had left her at the altar. She knew what it was to wait and hope for nothing. I bolted through the crowd toward the house, as if by hurrying now, I could alleviate an entire day’s anxiety for her.

  “There you are!” she said as I pelted through the front door. But her tone wasn’t scolding. She sounded wryly amused, and she was smiling. Not at all the picture of a woman on the verge of a heart attack. To my look of surprise, she laughed. “Oh, Marguerite’s been fussing over me all afternoon. I knew you’d get here sooner or later. But do tell me, how did you arrange to come by police car? Most couples choose a limousine these days.”

  “Much more economical,” Lance deadpanned. “You know us. Wouldn’t want to waste any money on a wedding.”

  Everyone who had gathered in the foyer with us laughed, then Marguerite resumed her role as wedding coordinator, shooing us upstairs and guests back outside to wait near the rose garden. “I don’t remember hiring her for this,” I muttered to Lance.

  “Let her have her fun,” he said. “Saves us from having to deal with it.”

  We separated then to shower. I had barely rinsed out the shampoo before Marguerite was at the door hurrying me along. “Come on, come on!” she said. “I’ve had the girls dressed for twenty minutes now. Poppy is going to spill something. You’re the only one left. I brought down my hair dryer. Or do you want me to try and pin you up while it’s wet?”

  “Senior prom,” I said.

  “What?”

  “You reminded me of senior prom.”

  “Your senior prom,” she corrected. “I was a sophomore.”

  “Yeah, OK. But you came.”

  “Of course!” Marguerite had attended both my junior-senior proms as well as her own. I was no social misfit, but she flitted and flirted and had connections in nearly every class. In ninth grade, she coaxed her way in as a volunteer by nominating Mama to the parent committee. Mama refused to repeat her role the next year. So in tenth grade, Marguerite challenged the captain of the chess team (a junior at the time) to a match. If she won, he had to take her as his prom date. I never found out what she was supposed to do if she lost.

  That chess captain was outside decorating Mama’s lawn right now, helping Bryce seat (and now reseat) the various guests. He was still the same hotheaded, overconfident fellow he had been two decades ago. And he still adored my sister shamelessly.

  That first date, for prom, she wanted finger curls, so she slept with her hair in tiny rollers and wore them around the house all the next day. She got in the shower with the curlers still in her hair, and when teenaged vanity caused her to try and wash the hair without taking it down, her nails caught and she had both hands tangled screaming, “Mama, Noel, get me loose or I won’t be able to dance!” We freed her, she danced, and now she needed to leave the bathroom so I could finish my own hair.

  “I meant that my hands aren’t all caught up in my curlers, OK? They can’t exactly start without me, and I’ll be out soon.”

  Marguerite sighed heavily, but presently I heard the door bang shut behind her. I re-sudsed my scalp, letting the hot water run down my back. Outside the shower, I could hear my phone ringing in my pocket. I ignored it. Whatever it was, it would wait. I was getting married.

  The door popped open again. “Margie, go away I said.”

  “It’s me,” Rachel said.

  “Oh. What’s up, honey?” With my eyes closed, I fumbled for the conditioner.

  “Two things.”

  I added conditioner and scratched my hair. Rachel did not continue, so I said, “What’s the first?”

  “OK, first, Lance’s brother Alex sent you a message. He said to tell you ‘Mom is absolutely in Seattle.’ I guess he’s worried you’ll think she’s coming to blow up more cars or something.”

  I rinsed, then opened my eyes, looking for a razor and not finding it. With everything else that had happened, I had hardly processed my car’s untimely demise. From the back of the deputy’s cruiser, I had noticed the blackened patch by the curb in a distant way, almost like it didn’t relate to me at all. “To be honest, honey, she’s not even on my radar.”

  My legs were hairy like an ape’s. I tried to remember if I had shaved them yet at all this year. Mostly, I left off shaving sometime in late September when the shorts went up into the attic and picked up the razor again in April. I was pretty sure I had forgotten to start up again this year. Oops.

  I moved assorted soaps and shampoos around without finding any razors. I was tempted to skip it, given our current hurry. It was a hygiene ritual I engaged in largely for Lance’s benefit anyway. In bed, he liked to reach down and run his hand around from my calf to my shin and up to my knee. He never said so, but I knew he liked it best when the path was smooth.

  “Does Grandmama have a razor over there in the medicine cabinet?” I asked my niece. Her grandmama was my mama, and Mama didn’t ever leave her legs unshaved.

  Sounds of rummaging while I lathered up my legs. Then, “No. Do you want to borrow mine?”

  “It will probably be the last thing the razor ever does if I do,” I warned her. “I haven’t shaved since last fall.”

  I couldn’t tell if the sound she made was smothered laughter or not. “It’s OK,” she said. “It’s disposable.”

  When Rachel opened the door to go get it, Marguerite said, “Is she hurrying up in there?”

  “Yeah,” my niece said. “But she still has to shave.”

  “That’s going to take forever!” my sister wailed. “She never mows that down. You can’t see the forest for the trees on her legs!”

  I definitely forgot to shave this year. The only thing surprising about that was that Lance would normally have fixed the problem. If I didn’t shave my legs for too long, he was apt to do it for me. I didn’t hear Rachel’s answer to her mother, because she closed the door, but whatever it was, it drew Marguerite down the hall, and their voices retreated. A few minutes later, in which time the soap had run all off my legs, the door opened again. “Thanks, honey,” I said, poking one hand out of the curtain for the much-needed implement and reaching down again for the soap with the other.

  “Oh, you’re most welcome.”

  It wasn’t Rachel.

  I heard the lock snick shut, and I stuck my head out of the shower in time to see Lance drop his borrowed robe. “Trust a man with a razor?” he asked.

  If the shower hadn’t been so hot, I think I would have broken out in gooseflesh. I know I felt his words with an electric jolt. “I trust you not to cut me,” I said. “And that’s about all.”

  He said, “Give me your leg.”

  At home, this ritual could last until the shower ran cold and had to be turned off. Lance was a leg man, and our thick bathroom rugs had been a purchase dedicated to that pursuit. “We don’t have time to fool around right now,” I said.

  “Then I’ll have to hurry up.” He followed that statement with a positively wolfish smile.

  Our eyes locked, and it was only a few seconds before I handed him the soap. The wedding was going to have to be delayed by a few more minutes. My sister shouting at us on the other side of the door only added to the thrill. She had absolutely no idea what was really going on in the bathroom. She didn’t figure it out until Lance and I emerged, either.

  “You said you did this all the time at home!” Marguerite accused him. “You said you could get it done for her faster than she could do it herself!” Somewhere around the middle of that second sentence, the double entendre finally stuck in her prudish mind, and she suddenly flushed scarlet.

  “My legs are shaved now,” I told her. “And it’s not like we ever
agreed to wait until the honeymoon.”

  The sound she made was a cross between an angry teakettle and a coach’s whistle.

  I pecked Lance chastely on the cheek and said, “Come on, Marguerite. Help me with my hair.”

  Up in the sewing room, my wedding dress faced me from its dressmaker’s form. Beside it, in an inelegant pile, I found my stockings and petticoats. (I would need two, the second meant to give the skirt a little bit of flare at the bottom.) I got into the hose and the first petticoat before someone knocked.

  Marguerite, who was already tugging on my bangs, pinning them back as she got ready to put my wet hair in its French braid, said, “I’m hurrying,” around a mouthful of bobby pins. “I’ll have her down there as soon as I can.”

  Because of the pins, it was doubtful the person on the other side understood her. “It’s me,” Rachel said. “You decent, Aunt Noel?”

  “Yeah, reasonably. It’s safe to come in.”

  She did. Her bridesmaid’s dress was even more stunning on her than it had been laid out this morning. Now she had a shiny matching jacket with three-quarter sleeves. The dress hung lower in the back than the front, so it framed her body and emphasized her curves. “That’s breathtaking,” I told her.

  “Thanks,” she said. “I wore it to prom, too, without the jacket. It works as more than a bridesmaid’s gown.”

  “That’s wonderful,” I told her. Then, to my sister, “Hang on, Margie. Let me get the top petticoat on before you do anything drastic up there.”

  Marguerite let go of my head long enough for me to tuck it through the topmost layer of underwear. She said, “What do you need, Rachel? Can you tell everybody we’re about fifteen minutes out?” Again, most of her message was lost to the pins in her mouth.

  “I’ll tell them,” she promised. “I had two things to say earlier,” she said to me.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Margie, do you want me to sit down?”

  “No, I can reach the top if you’re standing.” Some handy things about having a tall little sister.