Chapter Fourteen

All’s Well That Ends Well, Unless You’re Dead or in Prison

SATURDAY, 10:38 PM

As it turned out, not only was no one murdered, but no one had forgotten Ernestine’s birthday after all. They had just been planning the most amazing surprise party for her in the world.

True, it also doubled as a gallery opening, but that didn’t bother Ernestine. And also true, neither a zombie apocalypse nor murder-most-foul occurred during it, which Ernestine normally would have found quite boring. However, for once she was more than happy to just sit back and enjoy the evening, leaving all of the details to other people.

The party had a “Cleopatra, Queen of the Nile” theme. Which meant fancy costumes for everyone, and the fanciest of them all for Ernestine, who loved her sleek black wig and gorgeous golden dress. She also loved the edible vegan pyramids made out of crostini Dill provided for his newfound great-aunt, as well as the nonvegan sphinx that Mr. Talmadge made out of various kinds of ham. She loved the Hep Cats dressed up as princes of Egypt as they wailed away on their instruments in the corner. She loved Mr. Theda, dressed up by Mr. Bara as Set, while Mr. Bara himself came as Ra. She loved that Mr. Price and Principal Langenderfer from school came in costume. She even loved grumpy Mr. Sangfroid, who’d finally been released from the hospital in time to get dressed up as a very wrinkly Marc Antony.

In other words, pretty much an ordinary, everyday party as far as Mrs. MacGillicuddie was concerned.

“I have to admit, this is the strangest case I’ve ever worked on,” Detective Kim admitted as he sat next to Ernestine. Alone among the guests, he was dressed in a very boring suit and tie, having stopped by to wrap up some loose ends with Mrs. MacGillicuddie and gotten swept up into the party along the way. In fact, he was the one who had persuaded Mr. Sangfroid to wear the Marc Antony costume Mrs. MacGillicuddie had picked out for him by pointing out that technically he could be charged with interfering with an investigation for holding back what he knew about the Swanson twins.

“It wasn’t like I had any idea that they were going to try to murder us both!” Mr. Sangfroid snapped at Mrs. MacGillicuddie by way of apology. “I knew they were up to something the minute that old album fell out of the attic. When I saw that picture of Libitina and Morana, I recognized it right away. Libby had her own copy of it, given to her by the nuns at the orphanage. She kept it on the fireplace mantel back when we were seeing each other all those years ago. She and Mora hated their parents for abandoning them, but I didn’t know who their family was until I saw that photo and put two and two together. I knew they must have been some sort of MacGillicuddie relation, so it seemed like enough to blackmail—er, persuade—Libby to go on one last date with me. For old times’ sake.”

“Instead, they decided to frame him for your murder,” Detective Kim explained to Mrs. MacGillicuddie, helping himself to one of the thirteen different cakes Charleston had helped Mrs. Talmadge make for the occasion—one for every year of Ernestine’s life. “They knocked him out in the garden before they broke into your apartment. When things went wrong in there, they still stuck to the rest of their plan. They shoved his head into the pond, making it look like he’d tripped as he escaped. Then, they planted the zombie clothes on him, though with you after them, Ernestine, they had to rush and left two right shoes next to him rather than a left and a right, along with the photo they’d meant to take off of him.”

“Why not just shove him into the water before they broke in?” Ernestine asked, causing Mr. Sangfroid to shoot her an outraged look that she ignored. “Wouldn’t it have been less risky to kill him first rather than risking he might wake up?”

“They didn’t know how long they’d be in Mrs. MacGillicuddie’s apartment and were worried that we would figure out that he died before she did. You can’t murder someone if you’re already dead,” Detective Kim said cheerfully. He took a bite of his cake and looked astonished by its deliciousness.

“But if the plan was to get all of the other MacGillicuddie heirs out of the way, what were they going to do about Rodney, Aurora Borealis, and Lyndon?” Charleston asked, quite pleased by how much everyone was enjoying his cakes.

“After Mrs. MacGillicuddie was dead, they planned on making it look like Lyndon offed his uncle and cousin in a quarrel over his inheritance. Then, with all three of them out of the way, they planned to come forward to claim the MacGillicuddie fortune. The same nanny who found them in Brazil also brought them their birth certificates.”

“So the Swanson twins used their acrobatic skills to climb up the side of the house and break into Mr. Theda and Mr. Bara’s apartment and steal the zombie makeup,” Ernestine surmised.

“They also used the crowbar to make it look like someone from outside the house had broken in through the laundry room window, in case anyone became suspicious about how the chandelier came to fall. At that point, they were planning on making it look like Rodney had killed his mother. But then they saw Mr. Sangfroid take the photo album at the Mardi Gras party, so they had themselves a new victim to frame.”

“The very idea!” Rodney interjected, puffing out his chest beneath the bejeweled pharaoh’s collar he wore. “We may fight all of the time, but she’s still my mother!”

“They also snuck through your parents’ apartment earlier in the day to loosen the screws holding the chandelier to the attic floor. If you recall, they were the ones who told Mr. Talmadge that Dill had commissioned one of your stepfather’s sculptures. They did it knowing that Mr. Talmadge’s competitiveness with Dill would drive him to commission one, too. Then they used the cover of all the noise Frank was making with his power tools to sneak through your apartment and get to the storage attic on the other side. Then, they used the bad blood between Dill and Mr. Talmadge to instigate the fight that got everyone out in the foyer and Mrs. MacGillicuddie beneath the booby-trapped chandelier,” Detective Kim explained.

“What I don’t understand is how they had time to make it out the back gate, back into the house, and up onto that tightrope from the time we saw them in the garden to the time we made it to the foyer,” Ernestine said crossly, not at all liking that she hadn’t been able to figure that part out.

“Oh, that wasn’t them.” Surprised, Detective Kim set his fork down. “They’d jimmied the laundry room window open earlier in the evening. That must have been someone else you saw go out the gate. One of the other partygoers, probably.”

“Hm, maybe.” Ernestine still didn’t like it.

“They also said they didn’t dig up the grave in the cemetery,” the detective continued, dabbing his lips with a napkin.

Before Ernestine could open her mouth to ask him whether they’d found a body somewhere down in that grave, Dill cut in with an objection.

“But—but—the video from my grocery store showed that they walked up from the direction of the Palace Theater a few minutes after Mrs. MacGillicuddie was attacked by the zombie!”

Understandably, he still seemed to be in a state of shock over discovering that not only were his mother and aunt would-be murderers, but he had a much larger family full of awful relatives than he’d realized. He was so upset that he’d even absentmindedly eaten a piece of ham, which he’d promptly spewed out again into a potted palm.

“I’m afraid that your mother and aunt planned that as well,” Detective Kim said gently, laying a hand on Dill’s shoulder as he got up to go. “After they planted the evidence on Mr. Sangfroid, they ran through the alleyway and went in the back door to the Palace Theater. Then, they came right out the front again, making it look like they’d been there the whole time and were just leaving. Mr. Talmadge just assumed that the reason they were sweaty and out of breath was because they’d been practicing their routine.”

“I just can’t believe my mother and Auntie Libby would do something like this.” Dill said as the detective left. Charleston shoved a piece of vegan chocolate cake in his direction to cheer him up. He’d helped Mr. Talmadge make it as a peace offering for Dill, but the grocer looked down at it as though he couldn’t figure out what on earth it was. Like the whole experience had zapped his brain.

“Oh, darling. I keep saying, the whole family is awful.” Mrs. MacGillicuddie waved her carrot juice cocktail about dismissively. Eduardo lounged nearby, and, like Ernestine, he was letting other people do the work for once, having had a rough enough week himself. He lay on a dais as attendants surrounded him, waving peacock fans and offering him radish canapés shaped like lotus leaves. “Don’t worry. You’ll get used to it. Half of the MacGillicuddies tried to murder the other half at some point in their lives.”

“They never would have tried to hurt the rest of you, if it wasn’t for me.” Dill hung his head miserably. “They knew I needed money to expand my grocery store into a proper restaurant.”

“Now, now. It does no good to think like that.” Mrs. MacGillicuddie patted his hand and then shoved a forkful of cake in his mouth. Immediately, Dill brightened a bit. “If they had just asked, I’d have been more than happy to just hand them wads of cash! As it is, I’ll have to pay for an excellent lawyer to get them off. Can’t have family sitting in jail. Things will be much more interesting if they’re out and about, plotting awful things! Just imagine all of the jolly holidays we’ll have together! Won’t it be thrilling?”

“Mother!” Rodney protested, prompting Charleston to plunk a piece of cake down in front of him, too. “They tried to frame me for your murder!”

“You framed yourself, actually,” Eduardo pointed out gently from his dais. “They were trying to frame Aurora Borealis when you confessed.”

Rodney went bright red in the face but turned to his daughter, reaching over to give her hand a squeeze. “I didn’t know if you did it, Aurora, but either way, I wasn’t about to let you rot away in some prison.”

“Oh, Daddy.” For once, Aurora put down her phone and gave his hand a squeeze back. “If I was going to murder someone, I’d make sure to tell you first so you wouldn’t worry. You’ve always been there for me, especially when I need a lawyer but even when I don’t. I love you.”

“I love you, too, Aurora.” Beaming with pride, Rodney gave his daughter a hug. Well, as much of a hug as his naturally stiff nature and his uncomfortable costume allowed.

“You see, Rodney darling, I was right to let the nannies raise you,” Mrs. MacGillicuddie said cheerfully. “They taught you much better parenting skills than I ever would have! I love you, too, you know.”

“And yet you didn’t hire a lawyer for me, Mother!” Letting go of his daughter so she could scoop up her phone again, Rodney turned back to Mrs. MacGillicuddie, his moustache quivering with outrage. “I had to have my own come and bail me out! If that strange Montgomery family hadn’t intervened, both you and Aurora Borealis would be dead, Lyndon and I would be locked up in prison, and those terrible aunts of ours would be able to contest Granddaddy’s original will without anyone left to fight them!”

“My last name is Wheeler, actually,” Charleston pointed out. “Not Montgomery.”

“I was getting around to bailing you out, my darling boy, I swear! You’d only just been arrested, you know! You always were terribly impatient.” Mrs. MacGillicuddie waved her hand dismissively. Then, seeing the continued hurt on her son’s face, she softened just a bit. “Rodney, I do love you, but it’s just how we MacGillicuddies are. We wouldn’t be MacGillicuddies if we didn’t let each other stew in jail a bit from time to time. At least we aren’t trying to murder each other. That’s a bit of an improvement over previous generations, don’t you think?”

She reached over and took her son’s hand just like he had taken his daughter’s a minute ago. They didn’t squeeze them or hug, but for the first time since Ernestine had known them, they did look at each other with genuine affection.

Taking advantage of the calm, Charleston finally just wheeled an entire cake over to their table and handed everyone in Mrs. MacGillicuddie’s family forks. They all immediately dug in, Mrs. MacGillicuddie included.

It looked like things were pretty much back to normal for Mrs. MacGillicuddie and her family. Well, their version of normal, anyhow. At least the psychiatrist Rodney had hired to prove that his mother was insane was happy as a clam, having gathered enough research on the psychosis of the MacGillicuddie family to write a book.

Much, much later that night, they all returned home exhausted. Charleston fell right to sleep, and for once, her parents didn’t stay up creating weird stuff out of old dishwasher springs and automobile fenders. Ernestine climbed into bed in her pajamas, but just as her head hit the pillow, she realized she hadn’t put out fresh hay for the goat. Which now lived in the vintage Mustang convertible Mrs. MacGillicuddie stored in the carriage house along with her limo.

Getting out of bed with a resentful groan, she pulled on her boots and winter coat and trudged sleepily out to the carriage house. The swans, chickens, and peacocks cooed at her in a rather charming sort of way as she raked the old hay out of the backseat of the Mustang and added in some clean hay. On the other hand, the goat tried to eat her coat, her hair, her boots, and her hand, but that was a goat for you.

A clattering out in the alleyway made her freeze for a moment. Then, pitchfork in hand, Ernestine let herself out the back door into the alleyway beyond. Something shadowy rooted through the garbage cans. Under normal circumstances, Ernestine would have assumed it was a homeless person and offered to bring him or her out something fresher. Quite frankly, though, her nerves were shot, which is why she banged her pitchfork against the dumpster and shouted, “Hey! Oi! No trespassing!”

The figure looked up in terror. In equal terror, Ernestine fell backward against the brick wall. The face looking up at her was half-decayed, the skin around the eye sockets pulled back to show rather a lot of eyeball with a tooth or two showing through where the cheek should be. Leftover roses from Fluffy-Wuffy-Kins’s funeral jutted out of its mouth, showering its tie-dye shirt with white petals.

Rather than attacking and sucking out her brain, the zombie squealed and shuffled off as fast as it could in the other direction.

The shadowy figure that had darted out the gate that first night. The open grave last night. The figure she had seen in the alleyway.

So they really hadn’t been part of the Swanson twins’ plan after all.

For a long time, Ernestine just slumped against the wall, heart pounding. Eventually, she pulled her notebook and pen out of her coat pocket. Carefully, she made a note: They’re as afraid of us as we are of them.

It looked like the apocalypse was back on.