Legs Benedict

J
UDITH
M
C
M
ONIGLE
F
LYNN
stared at the blank computer screen, hit several keys in succession, and swore out loud. “I'm ruined!” she exclaimed, running frantic fingers through her silver-streaked dark hair. “I'm helpless! All the B&B reservations for the next two weeks have fallen into a big, black hole!”

“No, they haven't,” her cousin Renie said in a matter-of-fact voice as she came to stand behind Judith. “Move it, coz. Let me show you something.” Renie pressed a single key, and the screen scrolled down. “There you go. Somehow, you put a bunch of white space at the top. We delete thatâ¦” Renie pressed another key. “And here comes the Hillside Manor guest list.”

“Ah!” Judith put a hand to her bosom and leaned back in the chair. “Thanks, coz. I was really upset there for a minute. This thing has been giving me fits the last few days.”

“You're still learning,” Renie said, gazing at the names, addresses, and phone numbers that now appeared on the screen. “Even after all these years of working with a computer, I still hit something by mistake, and weird stuff happens. Frankly, you should be using some kind of B&B program. Your system is pretty clumsy.”

“No, it's not,” Judith said, on the defensive. “I use E-mail for almost half my reservations, and all the ones from overseas. Then I type them in and can use the word-processing part of the computer for letters and Christmas card lists and all the other stuff. How is that clumsy?”

Renie shrugged. “You'd make life easier if you had a real program,” she insisted, still looking at the screen. “I'm sure they're available for B&Bs. Why don't you callâ¦Hey, since when have you been reserving rooms for Mr. and Mrs. John Smith?” Renie pointed to the names on the middle of the screen.

“That's Mr. Smith's name,” Judith replied. “Your last name is Jones. Some people really are named John Smith.”

“With a P.O. box in New York City?” Renie was skeptical.

“He explained that on the phone,” Judith said in a reasonable tone. “He lives in an apartment in Manhattan and it's easier for him to pick up his mail at the post office.”

Renie shrugged. “I thought people in Manhattan had doormen to take in the mail. But you know best. You've been in the B&B business for nine years. There can't be many surprises left.”

Judith studied the screen. “Actually, there can be. That's one reason I enjoy innkeeping. But most of all,” she added, more to herself than to Renie, “I love the people.”

Renie was smiling. “We may be as close as sisters, coz, but we're different in a lot of ways. I prefer to conduct my graphic design business from the basement where no one can find me.”

“Rightâ¦yes.” Judith was still peering at the screen. “You know, this is sort of weird. Five of the six rooms booked for next Monday are for two nights. They all booked within hours of each other, and none of them used E-mail. They phoned.” She ran a finger down the screen, indicating the reservations for Doria, Perl, Santori, Schwartz, and Smith.

“Why is that weird?” asked Renie. “They're for the
third week of June. School's out, everybody's on the move. When did the requests come in?”

Judith glanced up at the old schoolhouse clock. “Between eight and eleven-thirty this morning.” It was now a few minutes after noon. “The sixth reservation was made a month ago, by a couple from Minneapolis.”

Renie shrugged, then lighted a cigarette. “As far as I'm concerned what's weird is that you had any openings this time of year. Aren't you usually booked solid from Memorial Day through Labor Day?”

Judith winced as Renie exhaled. “Not in mid-June. Generally, there's about a ten-day lull. The locals know and the tourists have caught on that it always rains in the Pacific Northwest right after school gets out. Coz,” she continued, unable to hide her exasperation, “do you have to smoke in
here
?”

“Why not? Your mother does. And Joe has his cigars.” Renie flicked ash into the sink.

“I almost never let Mother smoke inside, and Joe never smokes anywhere but up in our family quarters on the third floor. Sometimes I wish you'd go back to eating like a disgusting pig.”

“Not me,” Renie replied breezily. “My dry cleaning bills have gone way down. You know how messy I am when I eat. Now I just drop live ashes and set my clothes on fire. That way, I never have to clean them.”

Judith uttered a beleaguered sigh, though she knew that Renie was more or less speaking the truth. Her cousin's obsession with food had often driven Judith crazy over the years, in part because no matter how much Renie ate, she never got fat. Conversely, Judith was always watching her weight. “Statuesque” was her favorite self-description, and at five-foot-nine, she could afford a few extra pounds. Or so she told herself when she dared to get on the scale.

“If you go on smoking here,” Judith threatened, “I'll have to bar you from the house.”

“If I go on smoking,” Renie countered, “you're afraid you'll start again. Besides, since Bill retired from the uni
versity at the end of this past quarter, we're trying out hobbies we can share. He's started smoking, too.”

“Aaargh!” Judith twirled around, arms covering her head. “I don't believe it! Bill's like Joe, he never smokes anything but cigars!”

“He does now. We may even take up pot.” Renie flicked more ashes in the sink. “Got to go, coz. I have a meeting downtown at one.”

For once, Judith was relieved to see Renie depart. The phone was ringing; the cleaning woman, Phyliss Rackley, was yelling from the basement; and Sweetums had scooted through the open back door where he was sitting in the pantry, batting at cans of cat food.

The call was from a Mr. Harwood, asking for Judith's mother. He sounded like a salesman, but Gertrude Grover could deal with him. Indeed, Judith's mother probably would make him wish he'd gone into an easier line of work, like guiding climbers up Mount Everest in a blizzard. Judith gave Mr. Harwood her mother's separate number and hung up. Phyliss was still yelling.

“What's wrong?” Judith called from the top of the basement stairs. Behind her, Sweetums was reaching for the cat food tins.

“There's a mouse in your dryer,” Phyliss yelled back. “He's deader than a dodo, and gone to see the Lord.”

Judith turned to remonstrate with Sweetums, who had just managed to knock three of the cans off the shelf. The cat leaped out of the way and began rolling one of the cans with his forepaw.

“I'll get the mouse,” Judith said wearily, and headed down the stairs.

Phyliss, her gray sausage curls more disorderly than usual, was standing on a discarded kitchen chair. “There might be more than one,” she declared with a grim expression.

“If there is,” Judith assured the cleaning woman, “Sweetums will catch them. He's a good mouser.”

“He's Satan's spawn,” Phyliss retorted. “That cat is Beelzebub's familiar.”

“That cat is a cat,” Judith said, using a paper towel to scoop the mouse out of the dryer. “I'll put this in the garbage.” She started back up the stairs just as a can of cat food rolled past her and hit the concrete basement floor with a clatter. “Okay, okay,” Judith muttered. “I get the hint.” She glared at Sweetums as she went out the back door.

“Knucklehead!” The raspy voice came from the door of the converted toolshed. “Where's lunch?”

“Jeez.” Judith tried to ignore her mother until she had dumped the dead mouse into the garbage can at the side of the house. “I'm coming. It's been a hectic morning.”

“Not in here,” Gertrude Grover called, motioning inside the toolshed with her walker. “Nothing happens in my so-called apartment. Mold is growing between my toes.”

“Didn't you just have a phone call?” Judith asked.

“I hate the phone. Okay, okay,” Gertrude admitted, “so what? It was some census taker or something. I told him I was dead. I might as well be. In this boxy place, I feel like I'm already six feet under.”

Judith also tried to ignore her mother's complaints. They weren't new, but they were annoying. Seven years earlier when Judith had finally married Joe Flynn, the great love of her life, Gertrude had gone into self-exile in the backyard. Although she'd despised her daughter's first husband, the late and usually unlamented Dan McMonigle, Gertrude had never approved of Joe, either, and refused to live under the same roof. She griped endlessly about the toolshed, but preferred it to sharing space with her son-in-law.

“I'll be right back,” Judith called over her shoulder.

In the kitchen, she hurriedly opened a can of cat food for Sweetums and spooned it into a dish in the rear hallway. The cat eyed her coldly, then, with his long, plumelike tail waving with disdain, he pranced away to consume his meal.

Five minutes later, Judith appeared at the closed toolshed door. “Lunch,” she called, trying to sound cheerful.

There was no response. Judith balanced the tray in one
hand and knocked with the other. “Lunch!” she called again, this time louder. “Open up!”

Judith was about to knock again when the door opened just a crack. “Who is it?” Gertrude hissed.

Judith sighed. “It's me. Your daughter. With lunch.”

“Lunch?” Gertrude's small, wrinkled face displayed confusion. “What about breakfast?”

Judith sighed again. “You ate breakfast at seven-thirty. Now it's after twelve. You asked for lunch. Here it is.”

“Lunch.” Gertrude shook her head in a bewildered fashion. “If you say so, Toots. Come on, don't just stand there like a tree stump.”

Gritting her teeth, Judith entered the small sitting room and set the tray down on her mother's cluttered card table. “Liverwurst sandwiches, lemon Jell-O with mixed fruit, carrot sticks, sweet pickles, and coconut bars I made this morning. Oh, and coffee. Okay?”

Warily looking at the items on the tray, Gertrude struggled to set the walker aside, nudged the card table, and eased her frail body into the shabby old orange and yellow armchair.

“Phew!” she exclaimed as Judith tried to help her get settled. “That was quite a trip! I'm all worn out.”

Judith didn't ask her mother what trip she had been on. Maybe Gertrude referred to the trek from the door; maybe she was recalling some long-ago journey with Donald Grover, Judith's father. As age eroded her mother's mind and body, Judith often didn't know what Gertrude was talking about. And neither did Gertrude.

“All set?” Judith asked with a forced smile.

The watery eyes suddenly sharpened. “Huh? If you mean do I like this slop, guess again, kiddo. Since when did I eat liverwurst you can slice? You know what I likeâthe kind that comes out of one of those tube things, and you smear it all over everything, including your elbows.”

“Falstaff's is carrying this new brand,” Judith explained. “It's supposed to be healthier.”

“Healthier?” Gertrude made a slashing gesture with one
arm. “How can eating sliced liverwurst give me new organs? Or,” she asked slyly, “do I get a new liver?”

Judith had to smile. It was always a relief when Gertrude showed signs of her perverse old self. “If you don't like it, I'll go back to buying the other kind,” she told her mother. After all, what was the point of serving low-cal, nonfat, high-fiber foods to a ninety-year-old woman who had been raised on lard and bacon grease?

Buoyed by Gertrude's temporary lapse into sanity, Judith returned to the house. Phyliss was running the vacuum cleaner in the living room, and two more calls had accumulated on the answering machine. One was a reminder from the dentist for a cleaning and checkup, the other, a reservation request for the Fourth of July. Hillside Manor was already full during the holiday weekend, and had been booked since early April. In its location on the south slope of Heraldsgate Hill, the B&B had a perfect view of the annual fireworks out in the bay. Guests who were in the know always made their reservations well ahead of time.

The rest of Friday was spent on the usual tasks. When Phyliss left at one o'clock, Judith finished up the housework that the cleaning woman hadn't quite managed to get done during her four-hour daily stint. A woman called to cancel the Doria party of one for Monday, but within fifteen minutes a man phoned to reserve the room for a Mr. du Turque. Judith returned other calls that had backed up on her answering machine, computer requests were checked, and the appetizers were created for the incoming guests who began arriving around four. All six rooms were occupied by the time Joe Flynn arrived home from his duties as a homicide detective with the metropolitan police force.

“The rain stopped,” he said in a cheerful tone after kissing Judith hello. “Dare we barbecue tonight? I'll take over.”

Judith considered. She had the meal planned and had just begun to peel potatoes. The menu would keep. “Why not? If it starts raining again, we'll come inside.”

“I'll thaw the hamburger,” Joe announced, heading for
the refrigerator. “Will your mother be joining us or will her broom have landed by dinnertime?”

“Joeâ¦” Judith started to remonstrate, then shut up. It was so pleasant of late to have her husband come home in a good mood. It was also unusual. “Mother likes hamburgers,” Judith said instead. “But she'll probably eat in the toolshed. I take it you had an easy day?”

“A snap,” Joe replied, putting a pound of hamburger in the microwave. “Wife whacks husband with fireplace shovel. Wife confesses. Woody and I get home on time,” he said, referring to his longtime partner, Woody Price. “That's the way I want it until I retire at the end of the year.”

Originally, Joe's prospective retirement had been a bone of contention between the Flynns. Judith felt that deep down, under the complaints and the grouchiness, her husband loved his job and knew that he was doing something worthwhile. But spurred by Bill's example, Joe had decided that as soon as he could take Social Security, he too would bid farewell to the workplace. He was tired, he was burned out, and murder on a daily basis ravaged the soul. Judith understood her mate's attitude.

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