Chapter 10

“I’ll get it.” I hurried to the front door. I opened it up, expecting to see the mayor’s wife, Helen, but instead I found myself face to face with Ian.

“Ian, no,” I said.

He looked bewildered. “No?”

I gathered my wits. “Sorry, I meant to say that we’re having someone over.”

Ian shot me a pitying look. “Of course I know that, dear. Your Mom invited Helen, the mayor’s wife.”

“Mom told you? Mom invited you over?” I was so shocked that I didn’t reprimand him for calling me ‘dear’.

Ian nodded and stepped inside. “I would think you would know by now that your mother and I have no secrets.”

And that’s really weird and creepy, so you need to stop being friends, I thought. Aloud I said, “Mom’s in the kitchen.”

Ian sprinted for the kitchen as if the devil himself were behind him. Perhaps he thought he was. By the time I reached the kitchen, he had taken my place at the large salad bowl, and was tossing the salad in a vinaigrette dressing.

“What can I do to help?” I asked.

“Nothing,” Mom said as she put a dish into the oven. “You go and wait for Helen to arrive.”

At precisely six thirty, the doorbell rang again, and once more, I crossed to open the door.

“Hi. Come on in,” I said.

Helen smiled warmly at me. “I have to say, it’s always my husband being invited place, and I’m just his plus one. It was nice of you to think of me.”

Ian and my mother rushed into the room and gushed all over Helen. “What would you like to drink?” Mom asked her.

“Red wine, please.”

Mom gasped. “Helen, I must inform you that I do not believe in wine. I signed the Temperance Pledge when I was seven, and I have never let a drop of the Demon Alcohol pass my lips.”

Helen appeared to be at a loss.

“Would you like something else to drink?” I asked her, tempted to offer her my stash of wine that Ian and Mom hadn’t so far found when rummaging through my room.

“What is there?” she asked meekly.

“I have delicious, imitation, non-alcohol white wine,” my mom said smugly. “I bought it earlier today just for you, Helen.”

“Thank you. I would like a glass of that, please,” Helen said.

“Come into the dining room,” Mom said. “Dinner is about to be served.”

Helen took her seat, while Mom remained standing. She poured the fake wine into three glasses, and handed a glass to Helen. Helen took a sip, coughed, and then set her glass aside.

I wondered where Ian was, and why Mom hadn’t poured him a glass of fake wine. I shrugged and sat next to Helen, while my mother sat at the head of the table.

“Laurel, why not sit across from our guest?” Mom asked me, her lips pursed.

“I thought Ian would be sitting there,” I said. And I don’t want to sit next to him, I added silently.

“Oh, Ian isn’t going to be sitting! Why would you think such a thing?” my mother asked me. “Ian serves us.”

I looked at her with my mouth open. “You’re having Ian serve us?” I asked.

She narrowed her eyes at me. “Have you taken leave of your senses, Laurel? It’s what he does, isn’t it?” She looked nervously at Helen.

I was thoroughly confused by that point. I started to catch on when Ian appeared with a tray loaded with three salad bowls. He was wearing a black frilly apron and maid’s cap.

Ian set a bowl in front of each of us.

“Thank you,” Mom said to him in an imperious tone.

And then it dawned on me. Helen was someone of importance, and my mother loved to make herself seem important as well. Apparently, Mom needed to pretend that we had a butler or a servant to impress the mayor’s wife.

I dragged my eyes away from Ian with some difficulty, and turned my attention to the matter at hand. “Helen, I actually saw you not too long ago.”

“The funeral,” Helen said, nodding.

“The clown funeral?” my mother asked, horror-stricken.

Helen looked thoroughly confused. “The clown funeral?”

“No, it was the one before that,” I told Mom. “That man who was hit by a car.”

Mom turned to Helen. “You knew him?”

“The deceased man was a criminal,” I said to no one in particular. “He was a famous jewel thief. He’d been released from prison only recently.”

Helen nodded. “Yes. Some years ago, before he was arrested, he broke into our home and stole jewelry from me.”

My mother gasped and held her hand over her heart. “That’s terrible,” she said. “I will think and pray for you.”

Helen shrugged. “Thank you, Thelma, but it was some time ago, after all. He never did say where the jewelry was. I doubt it will ever be recovered. Of course, he was involved in organized crime, so who knows what happened to it?”

“That’s terrible,” Mom said again, shaking her head. “Thieves will not inherit the kingdom of God. I shall take comfort from the fact that he will suffer eternal torture while burning in hell.”

I ignored her and spoke to Helen. “So he wasn’t a friend of yours?” I asked, knowing full well that he wasn’t. “I mean, with you going to the funeral and all.”

Helen flushed beet red. “My husband was very angry…” Her voice trailed away, and she cast her eyes downward at the table.

“Your husband was angry?” I prompted.

“Oh yes, Gregory was furious. The jewelry was actually his mother’s. She left it to me when she died. Don’t quote me on this, but his mother was miserable and mean to me when she was alive, so it wasn’t anything I treasured. Gregory worshiped his mother, though, and I’ve never seen him so mad. He’s still hounding the police to track down the jewelry.”

I nodded. I still had no idea why Helen had attended the funeral.

Thankfully, she continued. “Gregory was going to attend the funeral, to see if he could get any clues as to Alec Mason’s associates. He figured the murderer would be there, and he figured that the murderer would inherit the organized crime business. He thought that the man would know where his mother’s jewelry was.”

I was shocked. “So he sent you in to spy for him?”

Helen shook her head. “No, nothing like that. Gregory was called away on urgent business at the last minute, so I decided to go, to help him. He wasn’t happy when he found out. He said it was dangerous, and he was right, considering what happened to the funeral singer.”

I nodded. I had been so engrossed in conversation that I hadn’t noticed Ian appearing with dessert.

“You are better off without jewelry,” he said to Helen. “God probably wanted the jewelry to be stolen.”

I couldn’t help myself. I just had to ask. “How do you figure that, Ian?”

He looked pleased to be asked. “Because the Apostle Paul threw everything into the sea when he was about to be shipwrecked. He threw the cargo and the ship’s tackle overboard. Don’t you see?”

“No,” I said, truthfully.

Ian shook his head. “Paul could not be saved unless he got rid of all his possessions. So that proves that God doesn’t want us to have possessions.”

I frowned. “Ian, you’re driving a car. Does that mean you should walk everywhere?”

“Stop annoying the help, Laurel,” Mom said, “and don’t be so smart. You know a car is not part of a ship’s tackle.”

Ian disappeared back into the kitchen with a flourish of his black, frilly apron. I put my head in my hands and sighed.