Death Dangles a Participle (Miss Prentice Cozy Mystery Series)

by E. E. Kennedy

  “Alone at last.” Gil held up his glass in a toast. “Here’s to long honeymoons.”

  We clinked glasses, smiled at one another and settled into a pleasant, companionable silence, listening to the music coming from the dance band.

  “I remember that song,” I said, humming along. . . . you are the wind beneath my wings . . .

  “Me too,” said Gil. “By the way, I like your new dress. You look nice in that color. It makes your eyes look really green. And I like that—” he gestured in a sheepish, masculine way that I found particularly endearing, “—front part.”

  My minor weight gain had enhanced my bosom somewhat, and the bodice of this new dress draped nicely over it. I smiled dreamily at him.

  “Thanks.”

  “Come on, let’s dance.”

  We were threading our way around the tables in the crowded dining room when a now-familiar feeling hit me once again. I pulled on Gil’s arm. “I’ve—I’m—I’ve got to—”

  Without another word, I rushed toward the sanctuary of the sign marked Restrooms and threw myself against the one designated Ladies. I was just in time. Suffice it to say that my lovely dinner in its entirety immediately deposited itself in the nearest porcelain toilet. And all I kept thinking was how thankful I was that it was such a clean restroom.

  “The flu, maybe,” I told myself afterwards as I mopped my face before the mirror with a damp paper towel.

  The reflection of a pretty face appeared behind me. “Mrs. Dickensen, are you all right?”

  “Yes, thanks, just a little woozy.”

  The girl frowned in concern. She was tall and young, perhaps nineteen or twenty, with dark brown hair that formed a halo of delicate curls around her pale face.

  “Is there anything I can do?”

  “No, thanks, it’s all right. I feel a lot better.” Probably a former student, I thought. “I’m sorry; I don’t remember your name.”

  She smiled, and her blue eyes sparkled with amusement. “That’s because we’ve never really met. Vern sent me in. We’re sitting in the corner across the dining room, sort of behind a post. We didn’t want to disturb you, and when that other couple showed up, Vern said we really didn’t want to get into that mess—I mean,” She paused, realizing that her quote might not be tactful. “Then when you came in here so suddenly, Vern sent me to see if I could help. I’m a nursing student, you know.”

  “You’re Melody Branch!”

  She smiled, surprised. “Vern has mentioned me to you?” The idea seemed to please her a good deal.

  “Oh, yes.”

  It was a half-truth, because I had actually dragged the information out of Vern, but I was a sucker for romance and encouraged it whenever I could. I was about to say more, when there was a chirping sound.

  “Excuse me,” Melody said apologetically, “my cell.” She rummaged in her small purse and pulled out a square cell phone resembling a tiny television, tapped it and said, “Hello?”

  Trying to give her some privacy, I turned away and began to soap my hands under the tap, but Melody’s clear young voice rang through the peripheral sounds.

  “What? Sure, I remember you. Why?” There was a pause while she listened. “Well, didn’t he tell you where he was going?” Melody paced and curled one strand of hair around her finger thoughtfully. “No, I know. Of course you can’t. We’ll come get you right away. No, it’s okay. I’ve got an air mattress we can put on the floor. We’ll figure all that out when we get there. Stay cool.” She stowed the cell phone back in her purse.

  I didn’t ask, but she seemed eager to talk. She stepped up to the mirror with a comb and began to repair the damage she’d done to her hairdo. “Sorry about that. It’s an old school friend of mine. She’s pretty stupid sometimes. I told her she shouldn’t go live with this guy. She barely knows him. Now he’s run out on her, and she’s frantic. Her parents won’t speak to her, and she and I haven’t been especially close since high school, but I guess I’m all she’s got.” She shrugged.

  You’re a nice girl, Melody, I thought, rinsing my hands.

  Melody sighed and put away her comb. “If Vern doesn’t mind, we’ll go pick her up. She can stay with me at the sorority for a couple of days until she gets her head straightened out, poor kid.” She went to the door and opened it.

  I said, “I don’t think Vern will mind. He’s a really good fellow.”

  She dimpled. “Oh, I know that! It’s just that it’s so far. Almost to Canada, so I guess you better not expect him to get home early. See you later!”

  The door closed and I was left to dry my hands and think.

  Vern and Melody were heading out of the dining room by the time I made it back to our table. “The young lady with Vern assured me you were all right,” Gil said as he stood and held my chair. “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine. In fact, I’d like to have some dessert, after all.” I decided that he didn’t need to know that I’d lost my dinner and was starving again.

  “Good idea.” Gil signaled the waiter. We put in our order for the house specialty, Bavarian cream with butterscotch.

  While we waited, I explained about Melody and the telephone call. “Unless I miss my guess, the poor kid in question is Yvonne LaBombard. Her mother told me she was living with a man somewhere in the Champlain area, near the border. They don’t like him very much.”

  “Whoever the girl is, she has a good friend in Melody,” Gil observed.

  “That’s true. I’m so glad Vern has finally found a really nice girl. Ohh,” I murmured with pleasure as the dessert was placed before us.

  “Aren’t you being a little premature?” Gil picked up a spoon and dipped it in the thick butterscotch. “I wouldn’t go ordering the wedding cake just yet, if I were you.” He tasted the dessert. “Mmm, it is good.”

  “It’s the bride’s family who provides the cake,” I corrected him. “The groom’s family gives the rehearsal dinner. Double mmm.” I closed my eyes. “Well, if they do get serious, I only hope they’re as happy as I am at this very moment, Gil.”

  He lifted his glass of cola. “Here’s to things staying just the way they are right now.” His voice grew husky. “I intend to spend the rest of my life keeping it this way.”

  “Cross your heart and hope to spit?” I said, quoting one of my students with a smile.

  He drew a cross over his heart. “You’ll have to imagine the spitting part. This is a classy joint.”

  I imitated his gesture. “And I promise the same thing.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  “But that’s impossible!”

  It was Monday and I had just wasted the better part of two hours, first in the doctor’s waiting room, then shivering in an examination room, wearing a flimsy backless smock, missing my morning classes. I never would have come if I hadn’t been distinctly queasy again in the middle of church the morning before.

  It had happened just as we were about to sing the offertory, and Gil said that even from his seat in the congregation, he could see my face turn a pale shade of green, right in the middle of the alto section. At his insistence, I’d reluctantly agreed to call the doctor today and had been “squeezed in.” I’d also been poked and prodded and had various bodily fluids collected. It had been no fun at all and I was in no mood for jokes.

  “The test is quite reliable, Amelia.”

  With a faintly amused expression, Dr. Benjamin Stout pulled a sheet of paper toward himself on his big desk and peered at it through his reading glasses. He fit his name almost too well: barrel-chested under his white coat and double-chinned when he lowered his head to look at me over his reading glasses. He and old Dr. Henry Lewis before him had been my lifelong GPs.

  “Reliable, unlike some doctors!” I snapped. “I was told, in this very building, by your late partner, that I was unable to conceive.”

  Ben picked up my thick file and flipped back through the pages. “That was . . . just a second . . . here it is. That was over twenty years ago. We’ve le
arned a lot more about hormone levels since then. Turns out, you’ve been capable of conception ever since we corrected that thyroid imbalance.”

  “Then why wasn’t I informed? I got married in December!”

  Ben put the chart down with a wry smile. “It was in the booklet I gave you.”

  I sighed. “It was so long ago, and I never thought . . . ” We both knew what I meant. I never thought I’d ever get married.

  “Look, I’m sorry, Amelia, but you’re an exceptionally healthy woman and an intelligent one. You know the facts of life.” Infuriatingly, he crooked his fingers in quotation marks.

  “But these symptoms, the nausea, the fatigue, aren’t they a little early?”

  He shook his head. “They can occur as early as a week into the pregnancy. Hmm, a honeymoon baby; rare, but not unheard of. By the way, I’m sorry we were out of town for your wedding. Alec told me it was bonnie.” Ben and Alec were golfing buddies.

  “But—but, I mean, this is going to change everything! I never imagined . . . ” Tears sprang into my eyes.

  He pushed a tissue box toward me. “Cheer up, Amelia, it’s not terminal. A few months from now, all this will be behind you, and you and your husband will have a little dividend to show for it.”

  Little dividend? I thought as I dabbed at my eyes. Gil’s words echoed in my mind: Nosiree. I couldn’t handle the crying and diapers and mess. That’s why Vern is so perfect. No fuss, no muss.

  “But isn’t it dangerous at my age? For the child, I mean?”

  Ben smiled. “Only a little more than for a younger woman, not nearly as much as in years past.” He leaned forward and said in a lowered voice, “If you want a referral to the Women’s Center downstate, you’ll have to ask another doctor.”

  “What?” I looked up, shocked. “Absolutely not! What a suggestion, from you of all people, Ben!” The doctor was a devout Catholic. I sat straighter. “I’ll just have to get used to the idea.”

  “That’s the spirit. Okay then, you’re all checked out until next month. They’ll schedule your appointment out front. Here are some prenatal vitamin samples and a prescription for more.” He pushed several small pill bottles across the desk. “And some information you’ll need.” He fished a thick pamphlet from a desk file drawer and handed it over.

  I dropped them in my purse.

  Ben jotted a note on a pad. “You’ll want to sign up for childbirth classes at the hospital.”

  “Hold on, Ben. Obviously Gil doesn’t know about this yet. I’ll call you about all that later. I have time, don’t I?”

  He shrugged. “Suit yourself, but the classes fill up pretty quickly. Why not drop by the hospital and see when they have an opening. Sometime in July would be best, because you’re due in early September.”

  I left the office in a state of numbness. I had an hour before I was due back at school, plenty of time to go across the street to the hospital and sign up for the class. I walked flatfooted, carefully watching the salted sidewalks for patches of ice. It seemed I was in a delicate condition now and needed to be careful.

  Shortly before her death, my mother had prayed that I not be left alone, and I had thought Gil was the answer to that prayer. Apparently there was more answer to come.

  First Thessalonians 5:18, “In everything, give thanks,” had been one of Mother’s favorite scripture quotes.

  Help me be thankful, I prayed. And please, please, please, help me tell Gil!

  I tried to look on the bright side. Well, at least this explained the nausea and the tightness of my clothes. I was healthy. And apparently Gil was healthy too.

  I paused, feeling a pang. Years ago, when we were first dating, I’d told Gil what the doctors had told me, and he’d accepted it and still wanted to get married. Now, over twenty years later, he was going to find out he’d married me under false pretenses. What would this do to our relationship? Hadn’t we promised each other only last night to keep things just as they were?

  I sighed. So much for cross my heart and hope to spit.

  I cast my mind back to any pregnancies I might have observed. My sister Barbara had a vigorous brood of four, but she had done all her gestating years ago in her adopted home state of Florida.

  Another image swam into my head as I paused at a crosswalk, waiting for the light to change: TV re-runs of Lucy Ricardo, a human beach ball in voluminous smock and rakish beret, squishing a huge mound of clay so her child would appreciate art, waking up at all hours with odd cravings, and generally driving her husband, Ricky, nuts.

  Would that be me? Would the hormones make me impossible to live with? How would Gil react? Tears sprang into my eyes.

  I stopped abruptly in my tracks and frowned. Cut it out, Amelia. Let’s see a little courage here. You’re going to be a mother. You owe it to little what’s-his-name.

  Names! I’d need names. One if it’s a boy and another for a girl. Maybe Janet, after my mother. Or something literary: Oliver, perhaps, or maybe a name from Gil’s side.

  Gil. I sighed again. The fatigue that had plagued me for weeks began to descend. It was just too tiring to think about how to break this to him.

  It needn’t be done immediately. After all, I reminded myself, tomorrow is another day.

  As walked through the automatic doors of the hospital, I had discarded Scarlett as a girl’s name, but was giving serious thought to Melanie.

  The maternity floor was relentlessly cheery. The walls along the passageways were bedecked with colorful nursery rhyme characters, and the waiting room had a bank of telephones and a row of recliners. There was another question: Would Gil want to be in the delivery room, or would he wait outside in the manner preferred by our fathers?

  I roused a bored receptionist and was given a place in a birthing class the week after July 4th. I sighed as I slid the appointment card in my wallet.

  It’s starting already, Gil, I thought. This parent stuff: the responsibilities, the obligations. Are we up to it? Are you? Am I?

  As I boarded the elevator, I heard someone calling me.

  “Mrs. Dickensen! Wait up!”

  I turned to see Courtney, of the lovely Gervais twins, walking briskly to catch up to me.

  “Everything okay with you?”

  Curiosity shone in her long-lashed brown eyes. Under her open parka, I could see the pink uniform of a hospital volunteer. On her tall young frame, it looked particularly attractive. For some reason, I had little difficulty distinguishing the girls from one another. Crystal was the sturdy one and Courtney was the friendly one.

  “Fine, thanks. In fact, I’m an exceptionally healthy woman,” I quipped, quoting Dr. Ben.

  “Oh, that’s good. I hate going to the doctor, don’t you? Don’t like needles and things, which is funny, because here I am volunteering at the hospital. Now, Crystal, my sister, it doesn’t bother her. She used to pick scabs off her knee, just to watch ’em bleed. Mom could tell us apart that way.”

  “Oh, dear.” I tried to picture the willowy, ethereal Crystal, who worked part-time helping Hester at Chez Prentice, as a scabby little tomboy, and couldn’t.

  “Yeah, weird, don’t you think? Well, I don’t care, I’m weird, too, I admit it. I like helping people and making them feel better, even if I can’t give them a shot or operate or anything. I just want to help.”

  She paused, apparently out of breath, but not yet out of words. She continued, “Let’s walk together, okay? I’m finished at the hospital for today, but I have to be back at school in time for gym class in fifteen minutes. I like to have somebody to walk with, don’t you?”

  I agreed that it made a long walk more pleasant.

  “You wanna know my favorite place? The newborn nursery. I love to rock and hold the babies. And the nicest doctor is Dr. Stout. He delivered me and my sister. He wasn’t the one who was supposed to, but Mom and Dad were over at St Armand’s beach and we just . . . started coming. Her water broke and stuff.”

  “Oh, my.” This story was beginning to get a littl
e more graphic than I cared to hear, especially under the circumstances.

  “Yeah, it was weird. I mean, I don’t know how they did it, because of all the sand and stuff, and I guess I just don’t want to know.”

  Neither did I. Desperate to change the subject, I hastily grabbed at another one.

  “Were you at school when the Rousseau boys were arrested?” The instant the words left my lips, I regretted them. I had no business gossiping like this.

  “No, I wasn’t. I mean, I was outside on the field at band practice. It was horrible. I heard they took them away in chains!” To my surprise, tears filled Courtney’s eyes. “They couldn’t have did what they said they did, Miss Prentice, they just couldn’t! Especially not Dustin!” She sniffed and accepted the clean tissue I found in my coat pocket. “Lots of people don’t think they’re guilty.”

  “I’ll be bringing them their homework tomorrow,” I said.

  Courtney stopped walking and grabbed my forearm. “You will? Oh, please tell Dus—I mean, tell them both what I said. Me and Crystal don’t believe they did that thing, not for a minute, not for a second! Tell them, please? Okay?”

  Apparently, the brothers had somebody else on their side.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Marie LeBow looked happy to see me. “Amelia!” she said as I walked into the kitchen at Chez Prentice at the end of the school day. “We were just talking about you!”

  She was sitting at the table with a small group of guests: Mrs. Daye and a pair of nuns in sedate navy blue, young Sister Priscilla Miller and elderly Sister Margaret DeLancey, in town for a teachers’ conference.

  “All good, I hope,” I said automatically, managing a wan smile. I was hungry. “Could I get a glass of milk?”

  “In the fridge, dear,” said Hester, pulling on her coat as she nodded toward the old kitchen clock, “There’s cookies on the table there. Everybody help yourself. I gotta get home. Bert’s gonna want his dinner early tonight.”