Murder With Peacocks(15)

"How nice to finally meet you, my dear," Mrs. Grover said, with a look that somehow seemed to insinuate that she had witnessed my shameless eavesdropping on the porch. "We must talk later."

I stammered a greeting and escaped as soon as possible. In the direction of the bar. I watched her and Mother making the rounds of the party. Well, at least they were both on their best behavior.

The party was in full swing, and I'd already confiscated firecrackers from two small cousins and a golf club from an inebriated uncle when Michael arrived.

"Didn't your mother say she was just having a few people over?" he said, incredulously, as he stood at the edge of the sea of guests in our backyard.

"For Mother, this is a few people," I said.

"She doesn't count family," Pam said. "At least half of the horde's family."

"The weirder half," I added.

"Oh, by the way," Michael said, holding out a bunch of flowers.

"Mother will be charmed," I said. "I'll lead you to her so you can present them in person. Don't get in the way of the croquet players," I warned, giving the flying mallets a wide berth. Michael paused to watch the game.

"Croquet!" he exclaimed, taking in the spectacle of a dozen middle-aged and elderly aunts in flowery summer dresses and sun hats posing among the wickets. "It's wonderful! Like something out of a Merchant Ivory film."

"Yes, the croquet clique do tend to dress the part, I'll give them that," I said. "But if you're under the impression that croquet is a genteel, civilized, Waspy way to spend a summer afternoon, don't look too close--they'll spoil all your illusions. It's a blood sport for them."

"Really?" Michael said, incredulously. Just then, one aunt hit another's ball out with a swing that would have been more at home on a golf course than the croquet grounds.

"Ball!" shrieked all the croquet players, and most of the assembled guests-- family, anyway--either dropped to the ground or flung their arms over their heads. The ball landed harmlessly in the swimming pool. Its owner, after a few minutes of waving her mallet around and verbally abusing her rival, stormed over to cajole Eric into diving for her ball.

Yes, the party was definitely hitting its stride. One of the uncles had taken his favorite perch on the diving board and was enthusiastically conducting a program of chamber music. My niece was lurking near the CD player in the hopes of slipping the 1812 Overture into the program and seeing him fall off the board again. About the usual number of relatives had pretended to think the picnic was a masquerade and had come in costume, including Cousin Horace in his well-used gorilla suit. Eric and Duck were paddling around in the pool, quacking at each other and bobbing for bits of food that the guests threw at them. Mother sat fanning herself with an antique Victorian fan and beaming goodwill near and far.

"Oh, thank you, Michael!" she said, as he handed her the bouquet. "Isn't it nice to have everyone together like this? Though I do wish Jeffrey could have come down for the holiday weekend," she added, turning to me. "You should have tried harder to convince him, Meg."

"Mother, pay attention," I said. "Jeffrey is history."

"Now, Meg."

"Jeffrey has been history for months, and I wouldn't get back together with him if he were the last human male on earth--which would be impossible anyway, because Jeffrey is not human, he is a vaguely humanoid reptile. Please delete Jeffrey from your memory banks. This is a recording."

"I still think Jeffrey is a very nice boy," Mother said.

"Good riddance to bad rubbish I say," Dad put in.

Dad has remarkably sound ideas on what my personal Mr. Right should be like. I should have known something was wrong with Jeffrey when Dad didn't take to him.

"Ball!" came the cry again, and we all hit the deck except for Mother, who watched with mild interest as the croquet ball missed her ear by two inches and landed in a bowl of potato salad on the buffet table. This ball apparently belonged to Mother's best friend, Mrs. Fenniman, who firmly believed that you weren't allowed to touch the ball with anything other than the mallet. Pam and several of the saner cousins hurried to move the rest of the dishes off the table so Mrs. Fenniman could climb up, dig the ball out with the mallet, and thwack it over the heads of the crowd to the croquet field.

"It's almost as good as the croquet game with flamingos and hedgehogs in Alice in Wonderland," Michael said, watching Mrs. Fenniman with morbid fascination.

"Don't give them ideas," I said, noticing absently that since Mrs. Fenniman was dressed in her usual somber colors with a black straw hat precariously attached to the side of her head, her perch made her look even more like a raven than usual. Ravens, flamingos ... something tugged at my memory. "Oh, Dad, do you know of anyone who sells or rents peacocks?"