Two

I blasted the heat in my car and the vents did their level best but the cold still snuck through the cloth roof and down my neck. I hoped Leslie appreciated that coat because I missed its warmth.

When I pulled into the drive, I parked as close to the front door as possible, and, keys in hand, dashed to the door. It opened before I could even insert the key in the lock.

“Where’s your coat?” Aggie, my housekeeper, asked.

“Long story.”

“Your mother is on the phone.”

“She is?”

“She’s called six times in the past hour.” Aggie eyed my cashmere sweater, which had proved unequal to the weather. “If you’d like to take the call in the study, I’ll bring you hot coffee.”

“Thank you.” Coffee sounded better than heaven.

I shuffled into the study, rubbing my arms as I went. Six calls in an hour? Whatever Mother wanted, I wasn’t going to like it. I picked up the phone. “Hello.”

“Ellison!” Mother’s voice was a mix of relief and exasperation. “Where have you been?”

Tell Mother I’d visited a medium? I’d rather hammer shims under my fingernails or wander around outside without my coat. “Out.”

“I need you.”

Time stopped. Mother never needed me. “What’s wrong?”

“I need you.” Apparently that was the only explanation I was getting. “Can you come over? Please?”

Please? What had happened? “Of course, I’ll come. Are you okay?”

“Hurry.” She hung up.

Aggie appeared in the doorway, a steaming mug of all-things-good in her hand.

“Would you please put that in a travel mug?” I asked.

“Of course. Problem?”

“She won’t tell me what’s wrong.” Mother was not given to crying wolf. Whatever the issue was, it was big. A trickle of dread chilled my blood. “The ambiance committee is meeting here at three. I’ll be back before then.”

“I’ll have everything ready.” Aggie was indispensable. How we’d ever gotten along without her was a mystery. With her sproingy red hair, vivid kaftans, and outspoken ways, Aggie was not Mother’s idea of a perfect housekeeper. Mother’s opinion didn’t matter. I thought Aggie was the best thing since sliced bread.

A moment later I was back in the car, snug in a fox jacket with matching hat. I settled the plastic travel mug filled with coffee between my thighs and wished I hadn’t. The plastic was hot. I turned the key and ELO’s “Can’t Get It Out of My Head” nearly deafened me. I sympathized. Even with hitting a pedestrian and Mother’s crisis, there was a man I couldn’t get out of my head. I turned off the radio and motored down the drive.

Mother’s door opened as soon as I pulled up in front of her house.

I took a quick gulp of coffee then hurried up the front walk. “What’s wrong?”

Mother looked from left to right as if her neighbors were hanging around in the cold, waiting to eavesdrop. “Come in.”

With the door safely closed behind me, Mother sighed.

“What? What’s happened?”

The color had leeched from her skin and the perfect helmet of her hair was mussed. “I found a body.”

Mother? A body? It was about time someone in this family besides me found a body. “Where?”

“In the closet.” She lifted her hand and pointed at the hall closet, home to various umbrellas, two pairs of galoshes, the good coats, and two leaves for the dining room table. “It was on the shelf.”

I closed my eyes and imagined a body pretzeled onto the small shelf. “Who?”

“I don’t know.”

I walked toward the closet. “Does Daddy know?”

“Your father is out of town.”

So she’d called me. “You didn’t call the police?”

“Of course not.” She shuddered.

I took a deep breath and closed my hand around the knob. That Mother had closed the body back up in the closet didn’t surprise me. She was an expert at hiding things she didn’t want seen. I opened the door.

Nothing.

Nothing. Not a single coat or umbrella or galosh. The closet was empty. Mother had been joking. I knew it! I scowled at her. “Not funny.”

“You didn’t think I’d leave it in there?”

“That’s precisely what I thought. The police take a dim view of moving bodies.” I glanced again into the empty closet. “And evidence. They don’t like it when you disturb evidence.”

With the wave of her hand Mother brushed away my concerns. “Piffle.”

“Piffle?” My voice might have jumped an octave. Or two.

“This way.” She walked away from me. “I put it in the music room.”

My brain struggled to process this announcement.

Mother looked over her shoulder. “Close your mouth before the flies buzz in.”

“The body is in the music room?”

“That’s what I said.”

Strictly speaking, the music room was a sun porch. It had become the music room because it was the farthest room from Mother’s office. She’d disliked listening to her children practice their scales almost as much as we’d hated practicing them. The room contained an upright piano, my sister Marjorie’s old guitar, a chaise longue that belonged to Daddy’s mother, and one of my early paintings. In short, it was the room where she kept things she wanted to get rid of but couldn’t. Including a body.

I followed Mother into the living room and paused, taking off my coat and hat and folding them over the back of a couch.

“Come along, Ellison.” Impatience laced her tone.

I came.

We entered the music room. There was the piano and the guitar and the chaise. My painting still hung on the wall. No body. “Mother.” My voice had acquired an edge.

“On the chaise.”

The only thing on the chaise was a box. Mahogany. Highly polished.

I stared at that box. “You don’t mean?”

Mother nodded. “I’m afraid so.”

Well at least it wasn’t an actual body. “Who is it?”

“I have no idea.”

I leaned against the door frame. “So someone came to your house with this, stuck it in the front closet, and left?”

Mother nodded.

I ventured into the music room and picked up the box. It was heavier than I expected. Not a single marking marred its shining surface. Carefully, I opened the lid. Inside was a sealed plastic bag.

I closed the lid. Harder than I’d intended.

“Careful,” said Mother. “Don’t break it.”

I did not snap back a quick retort. Wanted to. Didn’t. Instead, I put the box back on the chaise. “I need coffee.”

“I figured you would. There’s fresh in the kitchen.”

Mother had a percolator and the coffee it produced was nowhere near as good as what Mr. Coffee made. I’d offered to buy her a Mr. Coffee. Multiple times. And she’d declined. She’d made coffee the same way for years. Why change now? What did it matter if the percolator could burn liquid? At that moment, I didn’t care if the coffee was burnt. “Lead the way.”

Mother’s kitchen was built as a place for the help to prepare food. Aside from the occasional coat of fresh paint, it remained unchanged and original. There was no place to sit, no place to linger over coffee, no place to stare into space and wonder who sat on the chaise in the music room.

Mother poured two mugs of coffee. I added cream to mine. And together we trudged to the family room.

I settled onto a chintz-covered loveseat. “How long has it been since the closet was cleaned?”

Mother sat across from me. “Before it turned cold.”

“So four months.”

“How often do you clean your hall closet?” She sounded defensive.

Had I ever cleaned my hall closet? Had Aggie ever cleaned my hall closet? “I’m not passing judgment on how often your closet gets cleaned. I’m trying to figure out how long that box was there.”

Mother sniffed.

“Who do we know who’s died recently?”

Mother snorted.

Find a few bodies and Mother never let you forget a single one. I rephrased my question. “Who do we know who’s died who has a relative who might have brought their ashes to a party at your house?”

“I have no idea.

Neither did I. “What are you going to do?”

“You can take the box home.”

“No.”

She raised her brows and looked down her nose. “No?”

“I am not taking home an anonymous box of ashes. Besides, at some point, the person who left them will realize they forgot Great Aunt Sally or whoever it is and come back here to claim them.”

“Well, what am I supposed to do with them?”

“They weren’t hurting anyone in the hall closet.”

Mother glared at me.

“Maybe Daddy knows who it is.”

“Why would your father know that?”

My father and his cronies played cards at the club. Often. If their game lasted longer than the club’s hours, they came here. “One of the men he plays cards with might have brought it.”

“But why bring the box into my house?”

“Maybe he didn’t want to leave it in the car.”

Mother pondered that suggestion.

I sipped my burnt coffee. Mother desperately needed a Mr. Coffee in her life.

“Your father won’t know.” She pursed her lips and glared at the Hassam that hung above the fireplace. “He pays no attention to things like this.”

“I bet if you tell him you found unidentified ashes in the hall closet, he’ll pay attention.”

“And then he’ll tell everyone he knows.”

“That’s probably the best way to identify the ashes.”

“No. Absolutely not. Ours will not be the family that finds bodies.”

If the shoe fit…

Mother must have read something in my face because she drew herself up in righteous indignation. “It’s bad enough that you trip over bodies the way most people trip over shoe laces, now I’m finding them.”

“It’s not as if you’ve become embroiled in a murder investigation. You found a box of ashes.”

Mother’s perfect posture sagged—just for a second. If I hadn’t been looking I would have missed it. She really was bothered by her discovery.

“Aside from taking the box home, which I won’t, what do you want me to do?”

“Ask Aggie to find out who it is. We can return the box quietly. No one need ever know.”

“Of course she’ll look into it.” The “but” that followed remained unspoken. It was one thing to find a box of ashes and ask your friends if they were missing a scion, it was quite another to use a private investigator (Aggie’s former job) to identify a body. Everyone would find out. The story was simply too good.

“I can’t imagine someone caring so little.” She shook her head. “If you cremate me and stick my ashes in a closet, I’ll haunt you.”

If I failed to give Mother the funeral of the decade, she’d haunt me. “You don’t need to worry about that.”

She sniffed and sipped her burnt coffee.

  

The first committee member arrived at five minutes till three. Beverly Jenkins was an unlikely committee member. She’d married Arnie Jenkins over her parents’ objections—they said he’d never amount to anything—and produced a son who she named after her grandfather.

Sadly, Beverly’s parents were right about Arnie. He’d failed to amount to a hill of beans. But rather than divorce him, she donned a tight smile and resigned herself to the outskirts of the life she expected. The only reason she’d been asked to serve on the committee was because her grandfather (who was old as Methuselah) sat on the museum board.

I liked Beverly. What she lacked in funds she made up for in enthusiasm.

I waved at her through one of the glass panels that flanked the front door and called, “Aggie is Max closed up in the kitchen?” Max, the Weimaraner with plans for world domination, had a habit of burying his nose in crotches. Not everyone enjoyed the sensation.

“Yes.” The answer floated down the hall.

I opened the door. “Welcome. Come in out of the cold.”

“Am I the first one here?” Beverly asked.

“You are but I’m sure everyone else will arrive soon.” I took her wool coat and hung it in the closet. “We’ll be meeting in the living room. Help yourself to coffee and a cookie.”

She lingered in the front hall. “You have such a lovely home.”

“Thank you. How’s Major?”

She smiled brightly. “Loving his first year of high school.”

According to the grapevine, Beverly’s parents were paying for their grandson to attend Suncrest.

“So glad to hear that. And Arnie?”

Her smiled flickered. “Fine. He’s fine. Is that one of yours?” She pointed to a painting hanging above a bombe chest.

“No. It’s a Cassatt.” A gift from my husband on our first anniversary, when he still found the idea of a woman artist charming.

Ding dong.

I opened the door to a bevy of committee members.

They crowded into the foyer, handed over their minks, and kissed the air next to my cheek.

“Living room, girls. There’s fresh coffee and Aggie baked cookies.”

“Is there wine?” asked Martha Coleman.

“No, but there will be as soon as we’re done.” Business meetings and wine didn’t mix. “Who are we missing?”

“Jinx,” said Cyd Higgins.

“We’ll start without her. Living room.” I spread my arms wide as if I could successfully corral a group of chattering women.

To my great surprise, they moved. Probably lured by Aggie’s cookies.

Plates and cups were filled and we took our seats.

Of all the committees for the gala I was chairing, the ambiance committee was the most challenging. I blamed Cyd, the committee chairman.

Even now, she was throwing wrenches into the works. “I still think we should have the servers dress up as geishas.”

“It’s a Chinese exhibit,” I explained. Not for the first time.

“So?”

“Geishas are Japanese.”

“No one will know the difference.”

“The dignitaries from China might,” said Beverly.

Cyd cast a sneer in Beverly’s direction.

In a weak moment, I’d agreed to chair the gala associated with a Chinese exhibit at The Nelson-Atkins Museum. The exhibit was visiting only three cities—Kansas City, Washington, D.C., and San Francisco—and expectations for the grand opening gala were high.

Thus far we’d agreed on the colors in Kirkwood Hall—crimson, gold and oxidized copper. The flowers—roses, peonies, orchids, and lilies. And the tablecloths—red with overlays embroidered with dragons. But final decisions on everything else were due. The time for discussion had ended.

“The service staff will wear black pants and white shirts,” I said.

There were murmurs of agreement.

“I think Foo dogs flanking the entrance would have the biggest impact.” I waited for Cyd to disagree.

She didn’t.

Ding dong.

A moment later, Jinx breezed into the living room and took a seat near the door.

I nodded a welcome.

She mouthed, “Sorry.”

“What about kimonos?” said Cyd. No wonder she hadn’t argued about the lions. She was still on the staff’s attire. “The staff can wear kimonos.”

“Japanese,” said Beverly.

I forced a smile and sent it Cyd’s way. “Black pants. White shirts.”

Cyd crossed her arms. “We’re missing an opportunity.”

We were missing an opportunity to offend Chinese guests.

“Duly noted. Let’s move on. Where are we with logistics?”

Transforming Kirkwood Hall into a room reminiscent of the Forbidden City was no small feat.

Anne Smith, as practical as her name, checked her notebook. “The florist arrives at…”

Anne had everything scheduled to the minute. I had no worries on that front. While she spoke I looked around my living room.

The women who gathered round my coffee table were well-dressed. One or two even had a sense of style. They were well-spoken. They were well-coiffed. Their make-up was applied with restraint. The fashion magazines might proclaim glittery turquoise eye shadow as all the rage but such a shade would never defile their lids.

They spent their days completing good works.

They spent their evenings pouring cocktails and getting dinner on the table.

By all appearances, they had trouble-free lives.

Appearances were deceiving. Jinx was fresh out of rehab. Beverly was dependent on her family. Cyd—who knew what Cyd was hiding? Anne kept chaos at bay through sheer will and world-class organizational skills. And the others, Avery and Martha and Gloria, their bored smiles hid secrets. I was sure of it.

I used to have the appearance of a trouble free life. I was a successful artist, my husband a successful banker. Our daughter was lovely and smart and nearly perfect. We skied in Vail, went to the beach in Biarritz, and paid our club bill on time. Also, we barely spoke. Henry cheated on me far and wide. And my being an artist, which began as a charming hobby, became a thorn—a sharp thorn that pierced the delicate hide of Henry’s pride—when I earned more money than he did.

Appearances fell by the wayside when I found Henry’s current inamorata floating in the club pool. Since then, I’d lost interest in keeping up the façade of perfection.

Life was messy. And sometimes painful. And often chaotic. Nothing—not beautiful clothes, not organizational skills that would make a blue-chip CEO jealous, not Valium, not sex—could keep the chaos at bay.

“What do you think, Ellison?” Anne looked at me as if she expected an answer. Too bad I had no idea of the question.

“What do you think?” I replied.

“I think two hours will be enough.”

“Go with that.” I had complete faith in Anne’s skills.

She gave me a curt nod. Not because she was curt (she was) but because even her movements were deliberate and organized. “That concludes my report.”

All gazes landed on me. I cleared my throat. “Thank you all, for all your hard work. This event is going to be simply fabulous. Just so you know, we have a handful of major sponsor tables remaining. And, of course, there’s still an opportunity to come in as a benefactor.” I avoided looking at Beverly, focusing instead on Avery Gant whose husband, if he’d been so inclined, could have underwritten the whole exhibit. “Invitations will drop later this week. I can’t wait for you to see them. As for entertainment, the evening will begin with Chinese music. After dinner, a troupe will perform a dragon dance.”

“What are we having for dinner?” asked Gloria Kimbrough. Gloria kept chaos at bay with food.

“I am not allowed to say.” The food committee needed to make some decisions. Pronto. “Rest assured it will be delicious mix of Chinese and American flavors.” My gaze traveled the room, pausing on women who’d yet to commit to a ticket level. “The hosts for the benefactors’ party are Millicent and Major Barcroft. They have a fabulous evening planned and I do hope you’ll all be there.” We needed another ten benefactor couples to meet our financial goal. “If no one has anything else?” I crossed my fingers in my lap. “We can open a bottle of—”

“I do,” said Cyd.

Dammit.

“I just want to thank you, Ellison, for stepping in at the last minute.” Was she being sincere or reminding everyone in the room that I had not been the first choice to chair the event? The first choice had been murdered. “You are doing a marvelous job leading us all.”

Were she not still seething over no geishas, I might have believed her.

“That’s so kind of you, Cyd. Thank you. But everyone in this room knows the truth. It’s the committee members and—” I nodded at Cyd “—committee chairmen who bring everything together. This is your event and because of you, it will be a night to remember.”

“Is it time for wine?” asked Martha.

Everyone laughed and whatever petty dislikes or dark currents that had flowed through the meeting were forgotten in full glasses of chilled Blue Nun.