Murder With Peacocks(83)

Nice to see that somebody was.

"Meg, where have you been?" Dad said, when I strolled up the driveway. "I needed you to help out with the investigation."

"What do you want me to do?" I said, trying to feign an interest in his detective work that I was too tired to feel at the moment.

"It's too late now. But--"

"Besides, I need you to help me," Mother said. "I was looking for you hours ago. Michael brought the new drapes and the recovered furniture. We're rearranging the living room."

Michael and Rob were in the living room, leaning wearily against the couch, looking very sweaty and disheveled. They'd obviously been shoving around the newly upholstered furniture for quite a while. It's not fair, I thought, as Michael flashed me a tired smile. No one that sweaty and disheveled should be allowed to look that gorgeous.

"Now, I want Meg to take a look at the different arrangements we've tried," Mother said.

Rob and Michael both became a little wild-eyed. They looked at me, obviously hoping for rescue.

"What's wrong with this arrangement?" I said. "It's fine."

"Yes, but ..."

Mother described her alternate arrangements. I improvised compelling reasons why none of them would work. Rob and Michael watched us, heads moving back and forth with the fanatic intensity of spectators at Wimbledon. I finally convinced Mother to leave the living room alone. Michael and Rob began to look a little cheerful.

"Now about the dining room," she said. Rob and Michael slumped back into despondency.

"We can't possibly do the dining room at night," I said. "It's no good even trying until we see what it looks like in daylight."

"Can't we just--"

"Tomorrow, Mother," I said, firmly.

"I suppose," she said, with a disappointed look. Rob fled. Michael looked as if he were thinking of it. Mother wandered around the dining room twitching the new curtains and flicking invisible dust off the furniture. Dad dashed in.

"Meg, can you--" Dad began.

"Tomorrow."

He looked disappointed, but left. Not without a few reproachful backward glances. I slumped back on the couch, closed my eyes, and sighed.

"Having a bad day?" Michael asked. I felt the couch shift slightly as he sat down beside me.

"It wasn't particularly bad until I got home. I'm sorry; I can't help them tonight. I'm beat."

"Not your fault," he said.

"Of course it is. I'm supposed to be Wonder Woman. I'm supposed to be able to leap tall buildings with a single bound." I paused. "Actually, I think the real problem is that I'm supposed to be here. Back in the hometown. Like Pam. Available when they need me. And I can't do that."

"Yes, we never are quite what our parents want us to be, are we?" Michael said. With perhaps a little bitterness? I had a sudden sharp mental image of a frail little gray-haired lady, peering over her bifocals at Michael with a look of mild reproach in cornflower blue eyes whose beauty was only slightly dimmed by age. Like Barry Fitzgerald's tiny Irish mother tottering down the aisle in Going My Way.

"How is your mother?" I asked, to change the subject. He sighed. I frowned in dismay. Perhaps this was a tactless subject. Perhaps his mother was not doing well.

"Fine, just ... fine. The bandages are off, and she's actually showing her face in the dining room already."

"Bandages? Don't you mean cast?"

"No." He paused for a few moments. "Don't you dare repeat this."

"Cross my heart."

"She didn't break her leg. Or her arm."

"No?"

"She had ... a face-lift. That's why she couldn't come back here to recuperate. She's checked into a hotel in Atlanta and she's not going to come back until all the bandages and stitches and swelling are gone, and if anyone says anything about her looking different, she'll claim she went on a diet while she was convalescing. Not that she ever needs a diet, thanks to all the aerobics and iron-pumping. Next to Mom, Jane Fonda is a couch potato."

"Oh." A face-lift. My mental picture of sweet, kindly, gray-haired little Mrs. Waterston was undergoing radical revision.

"Don't tell anyone," he warned. "She'd kill me if she knew I'd told anyone."

"Don't worry; I'm not into gossip." Mother and Mrs. Fenniman, on the other hand, would have it all over the county within twenty-four hours of her return. Nothing I could do about that. "I'm the oddball around here; I like secrets as much as anyone, but prefer keeping them to myself and snickering at people who aren't in the know."

"I can certainly relate to that," he said. "But sometimes ... well, there's a big difference between simply not telling a secret and having to run around lying and pretending to cover it up. This summer I've gotten very tired of pretending. In fact--"