Mum's the Word (28 page)

The door did not come crashing open against the wall. And whatever those sounds in the hall were, they had died away. For this infinitesimal moment we were safe from Mary. Easing down onto the chair, I realized I had been very slow on the uptake. Theola Faith had stolen me from the bowlers of Mud Creek to pump me for information.

“The Mangés are a closed-mouthed lot,” I said repressively.

“How dreary. I do hope Pepys and Jeffries have not gone over to the enemy. I have always harboured the suspicion that those two could be bought for higher wages.”

At one time I might have disagreed, but remembering the two of them huddled with Mary in the hall this afternoon … Unwarily I glanced at the coffee table where lay, as conspicuous as a man's unzipped fly at a cocktail party, the familiar red and black dust jacket.
Monster Mommy
.

“Comfortable?” Theola Faith crossed her silken legs.

“Yes, thank you.” I could not drag my eyes from that book. Theola Faith had certainly not returned to Mud Creek for her fortieth high school reunion. She was here in this house for confrontation. But what form would it take? Was she content merely to embarrass her daughter Mary by her presence? Or was she after a more violent attack?

A chill draft crept along the floor and up my skirt. Suddenly my mind panned out to become a movie screen. Opening scene: Theola Faith plotting to destroy her daughter's
credibility. At dead of night she crosses the river and enters Mendenhall. Her house. What could be simpler than to lift two of the swashbuckler knives from the dining room wall and … gulp, make mincemeat of two of the guests? The bodies of Jim Grogg and Divonne get dropped down the well, the knives get slipped into the pocket of a jacket belonging to Mary … What sweet revenge! “Why Sheriff, darling! I kept trying to tell everyone that my daughter is completely whacko, and if a double murder doesn't prove it, what will? But please don't blame her upbringing, the poor poppet fell under the sway of that cult of chefs.”

I almost bounced off my chair when the cat (I'd quite forgotten him) brushed against my leg and my hostess handed me a tall glass in which a cherry bobbed merrily.

Please God, Jim Grogg and Divonne were not bobbing down the well. Ellie, use your head! How could Theola have transported them without help? Pepys' legs barely supported him. As for Jeffries … I pushed away the image of her tossing a corpse over each shoulder and looked up at the portrait of the Cat Cadaver. Had Mary panicked on finding the knife …?

I sipped the fizzy amber liquid, the condensation on the glass making my hand wet. “This is delicious.”

“A concoction of ginger ale, cranberry juice, a squeeze of lemon and crushed ice. My favourite toddy when pregnant with my one and only.” Theola Faith had seated herself on the piano stool, tinkling away with one hand; in the other holding a full-to-the-brim glass of whisky. The cat was stalking the back of the sofa and I asked if she was very attached to him. Anything to get off the subject of Mary, although I was beginning to wish she would come and get the whole damn business over and done.

Theola Faith drained half her glass. “Cats have always been my favourite people. Can always shut them away when they get underfoot or fluff 'em up on a satin pillow when the scene is set for homespun simplicity.”

“Indeed.” Setting my glass down, I pined for Tobias. He'd have bitten off the hand that attempted to turn him into a pajama bag disguised as a stuffed toy. Apparently our feline Charlie Chaplin was not smitten with the idea. When Theola Faith got up to refill her glass, he hightailed it over to the
door. The sound of his scratching was the more eloquent because he made no meow.

“Sorry. To oblige would be to set the cat among the pigeons.”

She had a point, but the notion that we were both her prisoners settled on me like an outfit of wet clothes. The house was eerily silent, like the calm before a tempest.

“Sweet cat, would you leave your Theola all alone to entertain our friend?” Bending over me, Theola splashed ginger ale into my glass and dropped in a long stemmed cherry. The booze on her breath would have made a trifle. “Listen to him! He reminds me of when I was expecting Mary … and felt life for the first time.” She straightened up, the bottle hanging loose at her side. “By the way, have you reached that stage yet?” It was her first—and only—reference to my pregnancy.

“No.”

“Darling, it was like soft paws on a door, asking to be let out.”

I felt a surge of sympathy and at that unguarded moment—when I was thinking of Mary as an innocent, harmless rosebud-lipped baby—the door opened, sending the cat skittering across the floor. I think I closed my eyes; I know I slopped my drink.

Pepys stood before us, looking as always like a body that had been kept in freezer storage for a thousand years. But he wasn't completely cold-blooded. A flush tinged his cheeks as he looked toward Theola Faith and I noticed a tremor to his bandy legs.

Her eyes narrowed. “Ah, there you are, Pipsqueak!”

“Pepys, ma'am.” If he'd had a hair on his head he would have touched his forelock.

“Whatever!” Free hand moving like a thirties' flapper, Theola reseated herself at the piano. “If you dare to say this is an unexpected pleasure I will toss you out on your ear. Now read my lips. Find my daughter and bring her here.”

“But Miss Faith—” A skeletal rattle as he risked a couple of steps forward. “I don't see as I can …”

Her fingers plunged upon the keys bringing forth musical thunder, and the cat leaped onto my lap. For a moment I feared Pepys would do likewise. “No buts! Out, I say, out!
Or I will make you pay in spades”—she rattled her glass—“for draining the good Scotch from the bottles and replacing it with generic.”

“Jeffries made me!” He backed into the half open door, smacked his head sharply, and was gone.

Minus his white marble presence, the room seemed redder and stuffier than ever. Silence weighed heavily on me, along with the cat. And then Theola Faith began to play a perky tune, one which I recognized:

The piano tinkled away to nothing.

“That's from
Melancholy Mansion
,” Theola Faith said.

I sipped my drink and a chill coursed through me. So that's how I knew the song … from hearing my mother sing snatches of it. Setting my glass down, I said, “You knew my mother.”

Eyes on the door, Theola Faith finished her drink. “Darling, now you sound like every other groupie.” Her smile had a china doll quality and her hair a nylon sheen. Hard to believe forty years had passed since Theola swayed the hearts of millions in her debut film. “Forgive me, sweetie! I see you are being quite sincere. Remind me about your mother. I shouldn't be thought insensitive because I don't remember every chance encounter at a small-town country club or with some teller at a bank!”

The brush of the cat's tail was like the touch of a friendly hand. “My mother has been dead for years. I'm sure you wouldn't recognize the name. She was one of the dancers in the night club scene in
Melancholy Mansion
. Lots of hair, clear pale skin.”

“American?” Her eyes were closed.

“English. She and my father came over here to try their professional luck, but she only landed that one small job and they weren't away more than a few weeks.”

“The water nymph!”

Perfect description. Theola Faith might or might not be a monster, but she was a witch. She made another trip to the drinks table. “Those dancers all fed intravenously and I'm sure rushed to confession if ever they used bad words like ice cream.”

I rearranged my feet. “Was she special? I mean, did she stand out among the other dancers?”

“She stood out all right. Was the worst of the lot. She had a kink in her front kick and a wobble in her jetté. Seems to me there was talk about dumping her but … yes, that's right—Billy Anderson, who played the knife-happy schoolboy, suggested keeping her on for comic relief.”

I buried my face in Charlie Chaplin's fur. Small wonder Mother had given me the choice of seeing
Bambi
or
Melancholy Mansion
. She, who lived to suffer for her art, must have died a thousand deaths when asked to dance for laughs. But what choice did she have, after financing the venture to America by hocking the family silver? As for me, I had been so angry with both parents for abandoning me to Great Uncle Merlin that I had responded with a child's ultimate weapon—indifference. I had asked virtually no questions about that fateful visit to America.

Miss Faith raised a bottle of ginger ale; I shook my head. She swirled her drink so that the ice cubes jangled in her glass. Another glance toward the door and a shrug caused her drink to tilt sideways, no doubt making splash marks on the cream suit. “Seems to me …” Her voice attempted to walk a straight line—one tiny word wobble and over she would go into slurred speech (the wait for Mary was taking its toll on her, too), “One day … between takes … talked to the water nymph. Told me she had a daughter.”

“What a memory!”

“Sweetie, my stock in trade.”

“Any mention of my weight problem?”

“Don't think … she ever said … word about your size. Plied me with the usual mother mush. You were the most marvelous, spunkiest …” Theola Faith was weaving her way across the room. “… best kid in the world.”

A warmth eased into me that had nothing to do with holding the cat. But was Theola Faith making this up? Was
her aim to keep me talking? Was she lonely? Fleetingly, I thought of the terrible stories Mary had told of her mother.

She half drained her glass, swayed, then recovered to stand ramrod straight. “Can see your mother. Jeffries was there—pinning tucks in my costume. One of them stuck me. Remember … last straw. All that sand-
stand
ing around! Such a frigging waste of time, and here was this woman who was being kept on … to prove that Hollywood does have a heart. Like hell she needed my pity. She had a husband whose name she could remember. She had a daughter.”

“So did you,” I tried to stand up but the cat wouldn't let me.

The panda eyes found me. “Mary!” She cleared her throat with the name. “Darling, my precious daughter loathed me way back then. And for what? Some small neglects that couldn't be helped? Some tiny discomforts? I had my work, my fame, my life as a sexually active woman.”

Desperately searching for something to say, I followed her eyes to the door and in fear and trembling, watched it nudge open. The cat leaped to investigate and I too was on my feet, about to make my exit speech when … another false alarm.

Jeffries came bopping in, her face screwed up so that it was all mouth under the white cap. “No flying at me, Missie Theola, ain't none of this my fault, or Pepys' for that matter—though you've driven him to bed with a migraine.” Taking no account of me she scooted, like a walking feather duster, to an inch or two of her employer, hands on her hips, tiny chin in the air. “Even that French Count of Monte Cristo we have here couldn't produce Miss Mary Faith out of no hat, because she ain't on the premises. She informed me this afternoon that she'd had a word with the Reverend Enoch Gibbons a couple of days back and he'd invited her over for a meal of fasting and abstinence this evening. He wants to interview her for his church paper. Modern Day Martyr—that sort of snappy headline.”

Gripping the back of a chair as if it were a walker, Theola Faith worked her way round to the front. And fell into the seat. “You're all in league with her.” Speaking in a drone, the limpid eyes which had thrilled millions looked straight ahead. “But she can't escape me forever. All Pastor
Enoch's prayers won't keep her from me.” Her lip curled. “Wouldn't he like to know that his wife is residing with me in Jimmy's apartment? I needed someone to do the cleaning …”

“Pepys tried to tell you about Miss Mary.” Jeffries was doing her Crosspatch prance. “He took her over in the boat earlier. She said His Reverence would bring her back—whenever. How say I go fetch you a nice cup of hot milk, Miss Theola?” The pillar box smile should have warmed the cockles of anyone's heart.

Theola Faith hurled a cushion at her.

Jeffries' gnomish face darkened. “That's it, I quit!” The door smacked shut.

“Now what were we saying?” The china doll smile was back in place. The silvery hair bounced forward. Only the glint of her eyes betrayed her as a woman thwarted of her prey. “Oh yes, your mother. How sweet that I can open the door to the past for you, Ellie Haskell! And all because I was kind to a line dancer. How it all comes back! She told me you had been sent to stay with a wild and wacky uncle in a dungeon of a house by the ocean. Amazing you survived. Amazing you haven't written all about it in a charming little exposé.”

“Who would read it? Mother wasn't famous.”

Again the china doll smile. Theola Faith said nothing. I thought of the lurid headlines, the Donahue show on abused daughters, the Theola Faith
Monster Mommy
T-shirts, the upcoming paperback, the movie.

My legs had gone to sleep, causing Charlie Cat sufficient offence that he leaped from my lap to a table, and skidded across it on a doily, which he dragged with him under the sofa. Only the tip of his tail provided warning that he was listening to every word. Loyalty to Uncle Merlin forced me to say that he wasn't the ogre of my imagination.

“How disappointing! Mary's visit to her Aunt Guinevere was a scream from beginning to end. The little imp convinced herself on the scantiest of evidence that the sweet old lady hated her.”