Lie of the Needle(19)
“So much food,” Martha murmured.
Eleanor and I dragged her away from the buffet and back to the living room.
The mass of people seemed to have swelled even more. Frank and Nancy Fowler were doing their civic duty and greeting Ruth as we joined the end of the line. I watched her carefully through the gaps in the crowd, cursing myself as I did so.
“She seems to be in shock, poor thing,” Martha said as we waited for our turn to approach. “The doctor must have given her something to get her through this.”
When we finally made it through a gap in the crowd, I could see what Martha meant. We each hugged Ruth in turn, but her eyes were glassy and it was as though she could hardly stand up under her own power. The frailty of her thin frame seemed even more pronounced in black attire, and she wore a torn black ribbon over her heart.
“I’m so sorry, Ruth,” I said. She didn’t speak, just nodded. “I’ll call you tomorrow,” I promised, not knowing what else to say.
“She’ll need us more later on,” Martha declared once we were all outside the house again. “Days from now, when this crowd has gone home and the shivah is over, she’ll be feeling lonely, and that’s when we’ll show up with a casserole and a bottle of wine.”
Beau Cassell stepped out of a metallic brown Mercedes and came striding up the driveway. I caught a whiff of fresh cigar smoke as he gave a curt nod in our direction and walked inside without washing his hands.
At the bottom of the hill, the carriage house was dark.
“So where the heck are Cyril and Alex?” Eleanor said. “I can’t believe they’d be shooting this late. The light’s gone.”
I stared at Eleanor in admiration. She was braver than me. I wasn’t about to bring up the elephant in the room. I suspected that Martha was embarrassed at having to justify Cyril’s absence, which only added to her fury.
Her eyes blazed and her freckled hands fisted into knots. “When I get hold of that man, he’s going to feel the sharp edge of my tongue, let me tell you.”
I winced and glanced at Joe, who closed his eyes briefly in dismay.
Cyril was probably enjoying a whiskey at the pub right now with Roos, but he was playing with fire in his quest to break loose. I didn’t envy him the reception he’d receive when he finally did decide to show up.
Martha was going to kill him.
Chapter Four
As I hurried down Main Street the next morning, frost mottled the car windshields and a covering of white blanketed the sidewalks. A bitter wind tossed the light snow into swirling flurries and made me run the last few yards from our house to Sometimes a Great Notion.
Winter was early this year. I hated these dark mornings and brief afternoons before the dark descended again. My favorite season, fall, had been late to arrive and quick to leave, like a boorish dinner guest.
On the porch in front of the shop, a merry arrangement of holly branches sat in an oversize tin watering can. Red berries on the vine wreath I’d hung on the door peeked through the recent powdering. Once inside, I cranked up the heat, set a pot of coffee on to brew, and plugged in the string of white lights that were arranged like a three-strand necklace on Alice, the mannequin. I dressed her according to the season, and today she was sporting a 1960s holiday dress with a velvet top and a plaid taffeta skirt. I would have loved to put a fur muff on her hands, but didn’t want to catch any flak from Eleanor.
The store was full of extra-special merchandise now that would be appropriate for holiday gifts, like linen dish towels bundled with red rickrack trim and Belgian linen pillows stitched with crewel wool in a holly pattern. There were lots of affordable stocking stuffers, too, like wax seals, potpourri sachets, holiday postcards, or sweet antique Christmas ornaments in the shapes of a pine cone, trolley car, or owl.