Murder With Peacocks(112)

I knocked on his door. He opened the door a crack and peered out.

"Yes?"

"It's Meg."

"Yes, I see." He didn't open the door any wider. I could have told him that he didn't have to worry, I'd already seen his depleted possessions and his shoddy bachelor housekeeping.

"I was wondering if you could keep Mother away from the house tomorrow afternoon while we hang some Spanish moss in the backyard."

It took quite a while to explain it to him, and at the end, I still wasn't sure he believed me.

What if Dad's idea of a wedding present made him think we were too crazy to cope with? What if he called off the wedding?

Well, I could always hope.





Thursday, July 28



I got up in time to see Mother and Mrs. Fenniman getting ready to leave. Mother seemed a little depressed. Or was she perhaps not feeling well? She seemed preoccupied, anyway, which was a good thing. Dad kept popping into the kitchen every five minutes with an air of badly suppressed excitement. He looked at his watch; he made highly visible (though incomprehensible) hand signals to me; he all but shouted, "Is she gone yet?"

"Go back to Pam's and wait," I hissed at him. "I'll call you."

That kept him out of our hair. For about ten minutes.

Finally, Mother and Mrs. Fenniman drove off. I was lifting the phone to call Pam when I saw four wheelbarrows dash into the yard, propelled by four of Pam's kids. Three ladders followed, carried by Dad, Michael, Rob, and Pam's husband and sons. Neighbors and relatives began arriving. More ladders appeared. The wheelbarrows disgorged their loads and were trundled off for a refill. Cousin Horace's pickup pulled into the driveway, laden with Spanish moss. I sighed, and went out to grab a pitchfork and help them unload.

Everyone had a lot of fun for the first hour or two, chattering happily as they hauled or hung moss. Things got a little quieter as it began to dawn on everyone how very much moss there was to be hung and how determined Dad was to get it all hung. By noon, the less hardy souls were beginning to sneak away. Not a disaster; the lower, easily reachable limbs were almost too thoroughly covered, and we were down to a dozen diehards on ladders, trimming the middle and upper branches. And of course the kids, who trundled doggedly back and forth from the moss pile to the ladders, keeping the hangers supplied. Mrs. Fenniman arrived back, having turned over to Jake the duty of keeping Mother away. In the middle of the afternoon, I drove the pickup back for another load and realized that there was a highly visible trail of moss leading from Michael's mother's house to ours. One glance at that and Mother would know something was up. I grabbed a few of the slackers who'd snuck away and set them to work sweeping the street and policing the neighborhood.

Late in the day, Jake called to say they were on the way home. We hadn't even finished the backyard, so we decided to try to keep Mother from looking out and drag her away from the house tomorrow as well, so we could finish the rest of the yard Friday. I did another spot inspection for stray bits of moss and sent everyone off to shower and change.

I then corralled my nephews and got Mother interested in rearranging the furniture again, which kept all of them out of trouble till bedtime.





Friday, July 29



Jake claimed to have important errands Friday morning. He positively put his foot down and insisted that he couldn't haul Mother around for another day. I was so pleased to detect some sign that he had a backbone I almost didn't resent inheriting the task of keeping her distracted. As luck would have it, she made my job easier by coming up with eight or ten absolutely urgent errands that had to be done before the wedding. Pam managed to keep her from wandering out into the backyard until I was awake enough for us to get on our way. I took the cellular phone along so I could call home from time to time during the day to check on the progress of the moss-hanging effort.

"Don't worry, we're getting along just fine without you," Pam would say every time I called. Translation: for heaven's sake, don't come home yet; we're nowhere near finished.

I saw Jake once, in passing, coming out of the local branch bank and heading into the travel agency. Well, at least he was presumably doing something useful about the honeymoon. I had no idea where they were going; Mother had assigned him the job of arranging the honeymoon and surprising her. Presumably she had dropped enough not-so-subtle hints that it would be a welcome surprise.

At about seven in the evening, I called from the candy store and hinted that they'd better wrap things up.

"We're going to be finished soon," I said.

"For heaven's sake, we still have a lot of moss left; can't you stall her some more?"

"No, we're not going to be much longer, don't worry," I said.