Murder With Peacocks(77)

"Aunt Meg is taking me and all my friends to ride the roller coaster!" Eric informed Barry. Not for the first time.

"Not all of your friends," I said. "One. And only if you behave yourself during the wedding and the reception."

"Right!" Eric said, and trotted off, no doubt to be sure I couldn't actually catch him doing anything that constituted not behaving.

"I think that's great," Barry said, and then in an apparent non sequitur, added, "I want a large family myself."

"How nice for you," I said. "Personally, I prefer being an aunt. You can take your nieces and nephews out and have fun with them and then dump them back on their parents when they're tired and hungry and cranky."

Barry blinked a couple of times and then wandered off.

"You don't really feel that way about kids," Michael said, over my shoulder.

"No, as a general rule, I like children," I said. "But I'm sure I could make an exception for any offspring of Barry's."

We ran through the proceedings a second time with slightly better results. I decided to leave well enough alone.

"Okay, everyone, you can leave now," I said. "But be back here at eleven tomorrow. No exceptions."

"You'd make a great stage manager," Michael remarked.

"Or a drill sergeant," I replied. "I think everything we can control is under control."

"As long as we don't have a thunderstorm we'll be okay," Eileen's father said, frowning at the sky.

As if in answer, the sky rumbled. "Uh-oh," Michael said.

"Red sky at morning, sailors take warning," Mrs. Fenniman chanted. "Red sky at night, sailor's delight."

"Was there a red sky tonight?" Michael asked.

"Who had time to look?" I said.

"Meg, we're not going to have a thunderstorm, are we?" Eileen asked. As if there were something I could do about it if we were.

"Not according to the weatherman," I said. "Not according to all three of the local weathermen."

"Weatherpeople, Meg," Mother corrected. "Channel Thirteen has a weather lady."

"Whatever," I said. "All the weatherpeople say sunny skies tomorrow, thank goodness."

"But what if they're wrong this time?" Eileen wailed. "It would absolutely spoil everything if we had a thunderstorm!" Then why did you dimwits shoot down every backup plan I suggested, I said to myself, and then immediately felt guilty.

"Don't worry," I said. "They'd be able to tell us if it were going to rain cats and dogs all day. If it's only scattered thundershowers, all it can do is delay us slightly. And that's no problem. I mean, nobody's going to kick us out of your yard if we run late. Your cousin the priest isn't going anywhere. The guests are there for the duration. It'll be fine."

"Oh, I just know it's going to rain," she moaned. And repeated, several times, while the rest of us were exchanging farewells. In fact, as I walked down the driveway with Dad and Michael, the last thing I heard was Eileen, plaintively wailing, "Oh, I just know the rain's going to spoil everything." Followed by my mother, in her most encouraging maternal tones, saying, "Don't worry, dear; if it does, Meg will think of something."

"Please, let it be nice and sunny tomorrow," I muttered.





Saturday, July 16.



Eileen's wedding day.



One should be careful what one wishes for, as Mother always says. Eileen's wedding day did, indeed, dawn nice and sunny. Nice was over by nine o'clock, when the temperature hit 90 degrees and continued climbing. But it certainly was still sunny. By two o'clock, when the ceremony was supposed to begin, it would be absolutely hellish.

"Oh, for a thunderstorm." I sighed, fighting the temptation to look at the thermometer again. What difference did it make if the temperature had broken into triple digits or was still hovering at 99? It's not the heat, it's the humidity, and we had more than enough of that.

"I'm afraid the air-conditioning's busted," Mr. Donleavy apologized. For about the fifty-seventh time. As if I thought his air conditioner normally shrieked like a banshee while emitting a tiny thread of air not appreciably cooler than the air outside. "And with Price still in the hospital ..."

"It's okay," I said, as graciously as I could manage. "Not your fault."

One good thing about the heat, it tended to keep the members of the wedding party under control. Virtually comatose, in fact. No clowning about with the swords today. The men lounged around in the kitchen with their doublets off, or at least unbuttoned, waiting for the first guests to show. And resentfully swilling quarts of iced tea. Eileen's elderly aunt had caught two of them with beer cans earlier and was now sitting in a corner, sternly enforcing sobriety. I wondered if so much iced tea was a good idea. If all these tights-clad men waited to hit the bathroom at the last possible moment before the wedding started, they'd find out why women's trips to the john take so much longer. I thought of warning them, but it was too hot to bother. Let them learn the hard way.