"Here, have some champagne," Michael said, waving a glass of it under my nose. "Or I could get some water if you're feeling faint."
"I'm not feeling faint," I said, glancing up. He looked worried.
"Sorry I ran away with your rescue attempt," I said.
"Once again, you didn't need much rescuing," he said, with a grin. "I don't know why I bother with these useless acts of chivalry."
"It gave me the chance I was looking for," I said. "And now I know what was bothering me last night. Leaving Mother in the car while I went in to fetch the cake, and then seeing Dad hiding in the tool shed. It was staring us all in the face. I should have realized then how Jake got away with it. He was miles away from here when Mrs. Grover was killed--but so was she. He knew exactly how to manipulate Mother to give himself that cast-iron alibi."
"Well, he didn't get away with it, thanks to you. If you hadn't figured it out, the rest of us would still be wondering. Cheer up!"
"Yes; after all, no one will ever ask me to be their maid of honor again. After Samantha's wedding and now this, I will be considered a complete and total jinx. People will pay me to stay out of town for their weddings." I took the glass of champagne and drained it.
"Oh it's not that bad," Michael said soothingly. "I'm sure it will all blow over."
"I don't want it to blow over. I never, ever want to be involved in a wedding again."
"At least not as a maid of honor."
"Not in any capacity. Ever."
"What about your own?" he asked. "Assuming, of course, you're interested in having one?"
"I'm not. If I ever get married, I shall elope. That has now become my prime requirement in a husband. Willingness to elope."
"Sounds perfectly sensible to me," he said, surveying the chaos around us. "Which reminds me, for some strange reason, and apropos of nothing in particular except that I've been trying to drag the conversation around to the subject for what seems like half the summer, do you think there's any possibility that you might--"
"What on earth is Dad doing?" I interrupted.
"What an odd coincidence," Michael remarked. "He seems to be proposing to your mother." Dad was down on one knee at Mother's feet, and as we watched, she said something to him that provoked applause and raised glasses from the surrounding relatives.
"Hardly coincidental at all. I'm sure he's been planning this for days."
"Weeks," Michael replied. "Possibly months. I always found it slightly odd that he was going to so much trouble to make your mother's remarriage a success. Of course, you realize this probably means another wedding."
"No, I think not," I said. "All they have to do is drag the guests back in and take it from the top."
"Without a marriage license?"
"I imagine they'll manage. The man shaking Dad's hand right now is Judge Hollingworth--Mother's cousin Stanley. Dad is probably arranging some sort of special license."
"I do like your family's style," Michael remarked.
"That's because you're not related to them. You'd feel different if they were your crazy relatives."
"We'll see," he said, cryptically. The sheriff and his remaining deputies used their bullhorns to reassemble the guests. After a pause while Dad gathered an impressive new bouquet to replace the one Mother had destroyed on Jake's head, the revised wedding went forward. I made my absolutely, positively final appearance as a maid of honor.
After the ceremony, the sheriff and the deputies drove off with their prisoner, and the rest of the friends and family settled down to celebrate in earnest.
Rob, I was glad to see, had already found someone to console him for the loss of Samantha. A tall, slightly gawky young woman with bright orange hair.
"Meg, this is Red," he said, in a tone that would have been quite appropriate for presenting the Queen of England.
"How do you do," Red said, pushing her spectacles up off the end of her nose. "Nice bit of deduction, that."
"Too bad I didn't deduce it till the last minute," I said.
"Better late than never," she said, shrugging. "Are you really a blacksmith?"
"More or less."
"Cool!" Red looked impressed. I decided I could get to like her.
"Red's going to help me turn Lawyers from Hell into a computer game," Rob said. They went off discussing RAM and mice and object-oriented programming and other things that I had no idea Rob knew anything about. Well, he was happy, anyway.
The party was definitely hitting its stride. Aunt Catriona tried to convince Natalie to play her bagpipes, but reason--or stage fright--prevailed. Undeterred, Aunt Catriona performed her justly notorious highland fling unaccompanied. With her final kick, she lost one of her spike heels, which arched across the dance floor to lodge in Great-Aunt Betty's bouffant hairdo.
Despite the fact that their usual grounds were occupied by at least four hundred people, the croquet crowd were wandering about with their mallets in hand, trying to set up wickets.
I sat on the edge of the patio wall and gazed over the lawn. These were my family. My kin. My blood. I felt a strong, deeply rooted desire to get the hell out of town before they drove me completely over the edge.
And I could now. The sculptor still had my house till Labor Day, but there was no earthly reason for me to stay here. I could go ... anywhere!
I began to feel more cheerful.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Mother standing at the edge of the rock garden, preparing to launch her bouquet. I gauged the distance, satisfied myself that there was no way Mother's delicate arm could possibly throw the bouquet anywhere near me, and snagged a glass of champagne with a strawberry in it from a passing waiter.
"Aren't you going to try for it?" Michael said, startling me by appearing at my elbow.
"No. I've sworn them off. I've sworn off everything connected with weddings; I told you that already." I deliberately turned my back on the charming tableau of Mother gracefully waving her bouquet over the heads of a sea of laughing, chattering women.
"I don't care if she's had the damn thing gold-plated," I said. I daintily raised my champagne flute to take a sip--when Mother's well-aimed bouquet bounced off my head and landed in the hands of a startled Michael.
"You touched it first," he said, quickly stuffing the bouquet into my hand.
Hordes of relatives swarmed over to congratulate me on my detecting ability, my wedding organizing ability, my bouquet-catching ability. I smiled and murmured thanks and sipped my champagne.
"You're in a very good mood," Michael said.
"The damned weddings are over. I can finally think about something else for a change."
"I'll drink to that," Michael said. "Speaking of which--"
"I can't drink to it, I'm out of champagne."
"Your wish is my command," he said. "Back in a jiffy."
I glanced up at the sky. It was clouding over. Maybe a short, sudden shower would slow down the coming riot. I looked back over the sea of relatives. Then again, maybe it would take a deluge.
The band was playing an Irish jig, and many of the crowd were dancing, although most of them obviously had no earthly idea what a jig was like. I particularly liked Mrs. Tranh's interpretation, though.
"Charming," Michael said, coming up behind me so suddenly that I nearly fell off the wall.
"My God, you startled me," I said.
"Sorry," he said. "I need to talk to you."
"So talk," I said, watching two of my great-uncles, who were perched on the diving board beginning some sort of arm-wrestling contest.
"Not here. Come with me," Michael said, taking me gently but firmly by the arm.
"Where?" I asked.
"This way," he said, dragging me around the other side of the house to a point out of sight of the wedding festivities.
"Michael, I adore masterful men," I said sarcastically, "but what on earth is this about?"
"Sit here," he said, pointing to a picnic bench that had somehow not been requisitioned for the re
ception.
"I can't see what's going on from here," I protested.
"We know what's going on," he said. "Your family are eating and drinking and doing bizarre things. This is important."
"What if someone needs me?"
"They can do without you for a few minutes. This is important. I want to explain something to you."
"So explain."
"No, first you have to promise me something. Promise me you'll hear me out."
"Okay."
"I mean it," he insisted. "No interruptions. If one of the kids comes running up with a broken arm you'll send him off to your father. If your mother needs something, you'll let your sister take care of it. If a dead body falls out of the trees you'll ignore it until I finish."
"Michael, whatever it is, you could probably have explained it by now. I promise you, I'll ignore an earthquake; get on with it."
"Okay," he said. And sat there looking at me.
"Well?" I said, impatiently.
"I'm suddenly speechless."
"That must be a first," I said, starting to rise. "Look, while you're collecting your thoughts--"
"No, dammit, hold on a minute, let me explain," he said, pulling me back down to the picnic bench. And as I turned to protest, he grabbed me by both shoulders, pulled me close ...
And kissed me.
It was a thorough, expert, and fairly lengthy kiss, and by the end of it I would have fallen off the picnic bench if Michael hadn't put an arm around me.
"I've been trying to explain to you all summer," he began.
"Yes, I think I'm getting the picture. Explain it to me some more," I said, pulling his head back down to mine.
It was during the second kiss that the first of the fireworks hit us. Quite literally; the grandchildren had begun setting off an impressive array of fireworks, and one badly aimed skyrocket went whizzing by and sideswiped Michael's ear.
"They're doing it again," he exclaimed, jumping up.
"Have the kids been shooting fireworks at you? You should have told someone; that's strictly against the rules."
"No, I mean they're interrupting us," he said. "They've been doing it all summer. The whole town has, for that matter."
"You can't really accuse everyone of interrupting us," I said. "I don't suppose it ever dawned on anyone there was an us to interrupt. It certainly never dawned on me. Was there a particular reason you decided to pretend to be gay all summer? Research for a part or something?"
"I didn't decide; it just happened," he said. "I turned down some pretty disgustingly blunt propositions from a couple of Samantha's bridesmaids and then I found they'd spread it all over town that I was gay."
"You could have said something."
"I didn't really give a damn at first. I figured, who cares, and it would keep the matchmaking aunts and predatory bridesmaids at bay. But then you came along, and they convinced you, and every time I tried to explain to you, someone would come along and drag you away to do something for one of the weddings, or something would explode, or a dead body would turn up. It's been driving me crazy."
"That's my family for you," I said, nodding.
"Let's go someplace," he begged, pulling me up from the bench. "Someplace where we can be alone. Come on. There's no one at my mother's house. Let's go there. We need to talk."
Actually, I thought we'd done enough talking for the moment, but I figured we'd work that out when we'd ditched the rest of the wedding guests.
As we rounded the corner of the house, watching warily for anyone who might waylay us, a spectacular flash of lightning and an almost simultaneous burst of thunder dwarfed the fireworks, and the heavens opened.
We were ignored as everyone began running for shelter, either in the tent or the house. But then, one end of the tent sagged dramatically as part of the bluff collapsed beneath it, sending buffet tables ricocheting down the cliff. Guests and caterers nearly trampled each other evacuating the tent as larger and larger portions of the bank dropped off. A sudden gust of wind caught the out-of-balance tent and sent it flying out onto the water, while with a final rumbling, one last, enormous chunk of bluff subsided into the river, taking the shallow end of the swimming pool with it. Several mad souls cheered as the contents of the pool spilled over the side of the bluff in a short-lived but dramatic waterfall.
As we watched, the tent drifted gently down the river, with one lone, wet, bedraggled peahen perched atop it, shrieking irritably until the tent finally disappeared below the waves and she flapped to the shore.
"Oh, my God," I said.
"Pay no attention," Michael said.
"We've got to do something."
"No one's hurt, and there's a thousand other people here to do something. Come on!"
We dashed through the downpour down to Michael's mother's house. Which now looked like an Easter egg in a bed of very wet excelsior. With several damp, irritable peacocks sitting on the peak of the roof. We ignored their plaintive shrieks.
"Alone at last!" Michael exclaimed, slamming the door shut. We stood there, looking at each other for a moment.
Looking into Michael's eyes, I wondered how I could ever have been so blind all summer, how I could ever have been so mistaken about him, and whether he'd ever let me hear the last of it.
Time enough to worry about that later. He reached out to pull me close and--
"Michael? Is that you?" came a voice from deeper within the house.
Michael dropped his arms, leaned back against the door, and closed his eyes.
"Not now," he muttered. "Please, not now."
"Michael! What on earth have you done to the dog? And why is there Spanish moss all over the backyard? And where did all these peacocks come from? What is going on around here?"
Michael sighed.
"Your turn," he said. "Come and meet my mother."
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Murder With Peacocks ml-1 Page 32
