A Catered Halloween (17 page)

J
ust when Libby thought she was going to pass out, whatever was holding her let go. Or maybe, she thought as she whirled around, she’d done this to herself. She wasn’t really sure. Out of the corner of her eye, she caught a fleeting glimpse of a girl dressed in an oxford shirt and pleated skirt. It was the same girl as before. Dressed the same way, too.

Of course, she was. Like she’d have a change of clothes in the great hereafter, Libby thought. They were probably the clothes she died in. Or were they the clothes she was buried in? Libby was trying to decide when the girl vanished. Poof. Just like that. And there was nothing. Libby felt as if she was going to faint again. She closed her eyes and put her hands to her forehead. She was going crazy. She was having hallucinations. Which meant she was a schizophrenic. Or she had a brain tumor. Libby was trying to decide which was worse when she felt a tap on her shoulder. She screamed and spun around.

“Libby,” Bernie said.

Libby looked at her sister and struggled to regain her composure. She had no luck. No luck at all.

“Are you all right?” Bernie asked her.

“I’m fine,” Libby told her.

“Because you don’t look all right.”

“Well, I am.”

“Who were you talking to?”

Libby squared her shoulders and tried to stand up straight when what she wanted to do was sit down. Lying down would be even better. She was suddenly exhausted. More than exhausted. Totally fried.

She moistened her lips with her tongue. “I wasn’t talking to anyone,” she lied.

“But I heard you outside,” Bernie protested. “You were yelling at someone to leave you alone. That’s why I came running in here.”

Was I yelling that loud?
Libby wondered. She didn’t think she was, but if she was being honest with herself, she’d have to say she didn’t remember. She didn’t remember Bernie opening the door, either. A definite brain tumor. She’d be dead inside of a month. Two at the most.

“So who was it?” Bernie said when Libby didn’t answer. “Who were you yelling at?”

“I wasn’t yelling at anyone. You imagined it.”

“I see.” Bernie looked at Libby carefully, something Libby hated. “You look awfully pale.” She reached over and took her hands. “And your hands are freezing.”

“That’s because I’m freezing in this dress,” Libby countered while she pulled her hands out of Bernie’s grasp and tucked them under her armpits to warm them up. “I’m going to get pneumonia standing here.”

Bernie studied her sister’s face some more. Finally, she said, “You saw her, didn’t you?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Libby replied.

“Yes, you do. What did she want?”

“She didn’t want anything.”

“Then you admit that you saw her.”

Libby started walking back to the long tables they’d set up the first evening they’d worked here. “I didn’t.”

“Why are you lying?”

“I’m not lying.”

“I told you. I heard you outside.”

Libby turned to her. “I don’t want to talk about this anymore. Is that clear?”

“Yes. But this could be important.”

Libby started setting up the coffee machines. “This always has to be about you,” she told her sister.

“Now you’re making no sense whatsoever.”

“So, you’re telling me that I’m crazy on top of everything else?”

“That’s not what I said at all, and you know it.”

“And, by the way, I hate this dress,” Libby told her. Now seemed as good a time as any to share that thought.

“Then why did you wear it?”

“Because you wanted me to.”

Bernie snorted in exasperation. “You could have said no.”

Libby shrugged and began measuring out the coffee. She knew that this whole thing with Bernie was about her being scared by—okay, she was going to come out and say it—being scared by Bessie Osgood’s ghost. When she got scared, she had a bad habit of covering up by getting angry, and the more upset she became, the further away she pushed people. She closed the coffee bag with a snap and reached for the unleaded stuff. But that was the way she was. She was too
old to change now. She knew Bernie was watching her. She wanted to say something to her, but somehow she couldn’t bring herself to.

After another moment had gone by, Bernie said, “If that’s the way you want to be, fine.”

Bernie walked over to the table and began to stack the paper plates. Then she grabbed a couple of wicker baskets and arranged the napkins in one, a lot of napkins, because people tended to grab a handful of them at a time, and the plastic knives, forks, and spoons in the other. She liked that they were black. It had taken her a while to locate them at a reasonable price, but white would have ruined the ambience. Although in lots of countries, white was the color of death. But not here. Libby would come around when she was good and ready, Bernie knew. She just didn’t know why Libby was making such a big deal about something like this.

A ghost appeared to you. So a ghost appeared to you. Especially this time of the year. Cultures all over the world recognized that this was the time of the year when the membrane that separated the living from the dead was at its thinnest. That was just the way it was. It was nothing to be ashamed of.

In fact, Bernie was slightly miffed that Bessie Osgood hadn’t appeared to her. Why pick someone who so obviously didn’t want to have anything to do with you? The only reason she could come up with was that Libby had been in the room by herself the two times it had happened and Bernie had always been here with Libby.

For the next couple of minutes, the two sisters worked in silence. Finally, Libby looked up at the clock.

“Five minutes till we open,” she said.

Bernie grinned. She recognized a peace offer when she saw one. “No one ever gets here before six-thirty or seven,” she countered, extending her own olive branch.

Libby nodded. What Bernie said was true. Most people came after dinner. Actually, their busiest time was between seven-thirty and nine. Then they had lines out the door. But before that, things were pretty dead.
Dead
was a bad word. Things were quiet.

“I made extra pumpkin walnut muffins, so we shouldn’t run out this time,” Libby told Bernie as she began slicing up the pies.

“Good,” Bernie replied. “Sorry I was a little late, but I found some interesting things at Amethyst’s place.”

Libby stopped slicing for a moment. “What were you doing at Amethyst’s place?” she asked. As far as she knew, that wasn’t in the game plan.

Bernie told her sister about her encounter with Inez at R.J.’s.

“You’re kidding me,” Libby said when Bernie was done.

Bernie shook her head. “Nope. I’m not.”

Libby went back to slicing. “Talk about rubbing salt in the wound, as Mom used to say. Boy, if that isn’t a motive for killing someone, I don’t know what is.”

“I wonder if Inez is telling the truth.”

Libby put the apple-cranberry pie aside and began on the apple crumb, which was difficult to cut neatly. “You mean about the whole thing being Amethyst’s idea?”

“Yeah. Maybe the whole thing was Inez’s idea. Maybe she wanted to work for Amethyst so she could get even.”

Libby bisected the pie and then cut the halves into quarters. “Could be,” she said thoughtfully.

“There’s one way to find out,” Bernie said, and she reached for her cell phone and dialed.

Libby continued cutting pies while her sister talked to Ian.

“Well, that was interesting,” Bernie said when she hung up. “Evidently, Ian didn’t even know that Inez was working for Amethyst. She was doing it off the books.”

Libby put the knife down, reached over, took a half-moon cookie off the table, and began to eat it. “So we don’t know who suggested what.”

“And we probably won’t know, either. But we do know that Inez was telling the truth about one thing.”

“What’s that?”

“That Amethyst was going away,” said Bernie. “All of her clothes are gone. There’s no product in the bathroom, and she was definitely a Spackle and spray kind of gal.”

Libby poured herself a glass of cider to go with the cookie. By their nature, half-moon cookies, even hers, were somewhat dry. She’d never been able to find a recipe that kept their half-moon essence and was moist. It was one of those mysteries that still needed to be solved.

“I wonder where she went.”

“Not that far, obviously.”

“Or she went and came back,” Libby said.

“Interesting.” Bernie poured herself a cup of cider and took a sip. “This is really good,” she commented. “Cotter should sell this in the stores.”

“He can’t, because it’s unpasteurized. State law.”

“But we can use it, right?” Bernie asked.

“Correct.” Libby finished slicing the apple crumb pie and went to put the knife away in its case. “Getting
married? Libby asked as she moved her sister’s jacket and bag off the carton the knife belonged in.

Bernie’s head shot up. “What do you mean?”

Libby lifted up the
Modern Bride
magazine that had been buried under Bernie’s jacket.

“Oh that.” Bernie laughed. “I got that from Amethyst’s house, along with a newspaper.”

Libby looked at the date. It was current. “You know,” she said. “What if Amethyst was planning to get married?”

“That’s a pretty big jump.”

“I agree, but bear with me. You said that Inez overheard Amethyst telling someone it was really going to happen, and she was pretty excited….”

Bernie nodded.

“And then she packed up everything and left. What if what she was excited about was getting married?”

“She could have been moving in with someone,” replied Bernie.

“Then why
Modern Bride
?”

“Wishful thinking? A friend getting married?”

“Amethyst didn’t have friends, and she never struck me as the kind of woman who engaged in wishful thinking.”

Bernie had to admit that was true. “But she came back.”

“Maybe things didn’t work out,” said Libby.

“That’s an understatement if ever I heard one.”

Libby nibbled on her cuticle for a moment. “Here’s another idea. Maybe she went to speak to Ed Banks to see if she could hold the wedding at Lexus Gardens. It would be a great spot.”

“And she did know him through the Foundation.”

“Do we know that for a fact?” Libby asked.

“No. But it seems that they would have met at a dinner party or something like that.”

“Can we find out?”

“We can ask Banks’s personal assistant when he hits land,” replied Bernie.

Libby brushed a strand of hair out of her eyes. “I don’t know. You’re saying the person who killed Amethyst killed Ed Banks to keep him from talking? That’s a definite stretch.”

“It’s a link.”

“A very weak link,” said Libby.

“It’s possible, but not probable,” both sisters said together. They laughed.

“Good old dad,” Bernie said. She could hear him saying it now.

Libby and Bernie looked at each other.

“This is all supposition, you know,” Bernie said.

“But it makes as much sense as anything else,” Libby countered. “It makes more sense than having a ghost kill her.”

“Bessie lied about that, remember? She just wanted to take credit for it.”

Libby took the palm of her free hand and smacked herself on the forehead. “Excuse me. How could I forget?”

“Yeah. Curtis and Konrad are going to come up with the real killer’s name now any day.” Bernie reached over and took a pumpkin bar, broke it in half, and began to nibble on it. “Maybe Amethyst’s husband killed her. You know, she married him under false pretenses, and he realized what he’d gotten himself into.”

“An annulment would have been easier.”

“But not nearly as satisfying,” Bernie pointed out.

Libby laughed. “This is true.” She finished her half-
moon cookie and wiped the crumbs off her hands. “Do you think we should tell Dad what we’re thinking?”

Bernie could just hear her father now.
And you think this based on what? A copy of
Modern Bride
and something a hostile and unreliable witness, a witness who is a suspect in the homicide case, told you?
“No,” she said. “I don’t think so. At least not yet.”

Libby tugged at the top of her dress again. “We could sort of float it by him.”

“It would help if we had positive proof that Amethyst got married.”

“I could go down to the town hall and check it out,” said Libby.

“Go ahead. But the odds are that if she got married, she didn’t get married here.”

“True,” Libby agreed. “She was fairly secretive.”

“Fairly? Fairly?” Bernie opened her eyes so wide, she looked like a Kewpie doll. “She lived in Stanton, for heaven’s sake. She didn’t want anyone in Longely to know her business.”

Libby returned to the subject of Ed Banks. “That’s why Lexus Gardens would fit in so nicely.”

“So go check.”

“I intend to,” Libby admitted. “Although if she did get married, knowing Amethyst, she probably did it somewhere like Palm Springs or Miami Beach….”

“Or Paris or Rome.”

“Or Morocco,” Libby added while she tugged at the top of her dress.

“Here. Let me fix that for you.” And Bernie went over and pulled the back of Libby’s dress up. “Better?” she asked.

Libby looked at her boobs. They were back where they should be. “Much better. Thank you.”

Bernie studied her sister while she tapped her fingers against her chin.

“Are you still thinking about Amethyst?” Libby asked.

“No. I’m thinking that I’m sorry I made you wear this.”

“You didn’t make me. I could have said no. And, anyway, I think you’re right. I think Marvin is going to like this.”

“It might even make him jealous,” Bernie said. “Which would be a good thing.” When Libby didn’t say anything, Bernie said, “Trust me on this. I’m the expert.”

Libby laughed.

Bernie stuck out her hand. “Friends,” she said.

“Friends to the end,” Libby answered. They’d been saying that to each other for as long as Libby could remember.

“So,” Bernie said. “Now that we’re pals again, are you going to tell me what happened before, when you were yelling?”