Pretty is as Pretty Dies (A Myrtle Clover Mystery) (20 page)

MYRTLE DECIDED THAT WHAT she needed, really needed, was to
have a small dinner party. No, "dinner party" was too extreme. She
just needed an excuse to have Red over for dinner and an opportunity to extract information on the case from him. Getting some
forensic information would be especially useful. Or even some direction for suspects. Red did love to talk, but usually kept his trap
shut when it came to his job. Supper might loosen him up, she
figured. Besides, she wanted him to meet Miles-especially since
Red and Elaine lived right across the street from him. She clucked.
It was a shame how neighbors didn't meet new neighbors anymore. She would fix that little situation, she decided, benevolently.
By the time she picked up the phone to call Elaine, she'd completely convinced herself of her altruistic intentions and nearly
forgotten her scheme.

Elaine seemed doubtful at the invitation. "Tonight? What about
Jack?"

"Can't Monsieur Marvelous take care of him for just a couple
of hours? He'll be sleeping anyway, won't he?"

Elaine had another problem. Myrtle's horrible cooking was legendary to everyone-except Myrtle. How Red had survived, eating
her food, for as long as he had was a mystery to her. "That just
sounds like a lot of work for you, Myrtle. Can I bring a dish with
me?"

"Like some dinner rolls?"

"Or ... how about a roast?"

"A roast?!"

"Well, I was ... going to make one for our supper tonight, anyway. I've actually already started on it. Can't I-?"

"No, no, no! Lord, Elaine, you'd think you were never invited to
someone's house for supper before. The idea is that you're the
guest. Bring a bottle of wine or something, but the main course is
my job. You have enough going on right now, anyway-time to
take it easy and relax. Make your roast another night."

"All right," said Elaine gloomily. Well, she could always tell Red
that she'd tried.

"Let's make it a European-style dinner."

Elaine sighed. This was code for "late"

"Maybe 8:00? I'll call Miles."

"So your Pilgrim is pretty nice, hmm?"

"None of that, Elaine. And don't be making little smirky faces
at us. We're strictly platonic. I'll see you tonight." She rang off and
Elaine was left holding the receiver and wondering how her day
had so quickly gotten hijacked.

Miles sounded much more pleased. "That's nice of you, Myrtle.
I'd love to come and talk to Red and meet Elaine. The last time I
saw Red wasn't exactly conducive to conversation."

"You mean right in the middle of your rescue of a drippingwet old lady?" Myrtle chuckled. "Should be easier to talk to him
this time. Of course, he's a little funny over dinner sometimes. A
big man like that you'd think would be able to put away some food.
I don't know how he survives-he always picks at his food whenever we're together."

"Probably trying to keep trim for his job."

"Anything you can't eat, Miles? You a vegetarian or anything
like that? Allergies?"

"No, 'fraid not. I'll eat it all. Just a human garbage disposal."
With those words, Miles Bradford sealed his fate for dinner that
night.

Myrtle then called her housekeeper, Puddin. She always had
great misgivings when calling Puddin. For one thing, Puddin's
husband, Dusty, usually answered the phone. Dusty was Myrtle's
yard man and as soon as he heard her voice he'd bellow, "It's too
hot to mow!" Then he'd hand the phone over to Puddin who'd
decide if she felt like cleaning or not. Puddin's bad back could get
thrown out at any time. It was especially contrary when silver
needed polishing, toilets scrubbed, or knickknacks dusted.

Puddin sullenly agreed to clean. Myrtle should have been tipped
off that the evening was not going to go as planned when Puddin
slouched in two hours late. Puddin's already-evident ill humor worsened at the amount of dust Myrtle expected her to extricate from
tables and books. With a dour expression on her dumpy face, she
pulled a soiled rag out of her cleaning bucket and resentfully slapped it over the tables. Sunbeams illuminated the dust particles as they
flew into the air before settling lazily back again on their original
location.

Watching Puddin dust would only inspire heartburn. Myrtle
inspected her recipe and pulled the fish out of the freezer.

Miles reflected later that the evening had started off like any other.
There had been little warning of the calamity to come. True, Myrtle
had a sour attitude when she greeted Miles at the door, but Miles
chalked that up to pre-dinner-party nerves. Although, considered
Miles, "greeted" was an exaggeration. Myrtle gave a preoccupied
grunt of surprise and wandered back in the direction of the kitchen
while working on a roll of plastic wrap. After an unsuccessful attempt to untangle it from its determined clinging to the rest of the
roll, she tossed it on the floor with a disgusted sound. Miles stooped,
picked it up, and started working patiently at it, glad of something
to do since his hostess had forgotten he'd arrived.

Miles wasn't sure exactly what his role should be and cursed
the punctuality that had driven him to arrive this early. He milled
around Myrtle's small library, pulling out a copy of The Fountainhead, not surprised to see comments written in the margins and
underlined places and even, in one spot, an exclamation point
where the editor for the edition had missed a typo. He took out a
well-worn collection of Yeats' poetry and chuckled over some of
her exuberant markings. Obviously a favorite of Myrtle's. After a
few minutes and since Myrtle still seemed in her own little world, he left the books and walked toward the kitchen. He picked up a
small bowl and admired it out loud, hoping to rouse his hostess.

"Umph?" asked Myrtle.

"This is," said Miles, "a wonderful porringer. I have never in my
life seen one that's brass. Was it yours when you were a baby?"

Myrtle shot him a withering stare. "For your information, it's
sterling silver. Puddin's back was too thrown out to polish. And no,
I am way too young to have eaten from porringers ... it was my
grandmother's. What sort of man knows what porringers are, anyway?"

"I was married for many years, if that's what you're implying,"
Miles protested mildly. Myrtle stewed over Puddin's bad back.

Elaine and Red arrived after another fifteen or twenty minutes.
Miles thought they seemed like nice people, even if Red did appear
a little tense. When Myrtle darted back into the kitchen, Red pulled
Miles aside. "I want to apologize in advance for all the digestive
upset you're about to go through."

Elaine hissed at Red. "It won't be that bad, Red."

"Not bad? Her meat is so leathery we'll be chewing on bits of it
hours later. I'll have a mouth full of cracked-off fillings from her
undercooked vegetables. She'll either take the biscuits out too early
and we'll be eating dough, or she'll forget them and they'll be
bricks. This evening has disaster written all over it."

Elaine hushed him as Myrtle hurried back out of the kitchen to
pour them all a glass of wine, which Red started downing quickly.
Miles could tell that Myrtle was trying to weasel some information
from Red, but she wasn't pressing too hard. Probably waiting for
later in the evening when he might be more relaxed before she really started questioning him.

"So there were probably two perps. Imagine that!"

Red didn't take the bait. "Perps. You watching Law and Order
again, Mama?"

The red flag first went up when Red started sniffing the air and
not in an enjoying-the-aroma kind of way. "What is that smell?
Like something dead." Without waiting for an answer from his affronted mother, he strode into Myrtle's kitchen and yanked open
the oven door. "Oh, ugh!"

Miles took a wild guess that the entree had swum in fresh or
salt water in its former life. He could tell mainly by the smell instead of by looking at the charred mess. Not only was it charred, it
was rapidly becoming charcoal, judging from the flames rising out
of the oven. Red cursed, pulled on some oven mitts, and jerked out
the food. He pulled off a dish towel and beat the fish with it until
the fire went out. The smoke billowing from the oven set Myrtle's
smoke detector off, which alerted the guests with a shrill, angry
sound. Miles opened the kitchen windows and tried fanning the
smoke out with a tray. He ignored the face of Erma Sherman, staring goggle-eyed at him from a window next door.

"Guess the butter must have started a fire," muttered Myrtle.

"Might've helped if you'd put the fish in a Pyrex instead of just
on the tinfoil. Butter splattered all over the bottom of the oven,
Mama."

Myrtle sputtered indignantly, "Well, it's blackened tilapia, Red.
Don't you ever go to restaurants?"

"Not to places that serve food like this! Because they wouldn't
be open, they'd be shut down by the Board of Health."

Elaine didn't say anything, but her pretty features were contorted as if she were choking back a laugh. Miles' smile looked more like clenched teeth. He was definitely trying to have a good
time, thought Elaine. She really should have warned him what he
was getting into. She said, "It looks like Myrtle has put together a
delicious salad. Want me to help you put it out on the table?"

Red was already lifting lids off pots on the stove and suspiciously peering inside them. "Weren't you supposed to put some
water in with your green beans, Mama?"

"I did!"

"Sure doesn't look that way. They're little desiccated logs." He
switched off the knob and took the pot off the stove, dumping the
contents in the trash can. Red looked cautiously around the
kitchen as though decomposing food might leap out at him from
the shadows. "Anything else I should know about?"

"No, that was pretty much the whole menu," Myrtle growled,
glaring at Red as if the entire fiasco was his fault. He opened his
mouth to argue with her and closed it when his cell phone went
off.

"Bradley Police," he said into the phone. He listened for a minute, then used a placating voice Myrtle recognized. "Well, that's not
really long enough to declare someone `missing,' Miz Hall." He listened again for a minute. "No, really-ten minutes late for an
event does not mean a person has vanished." More listening. "All
right. I'll go check on her."

Red hung up the phone and rubbed his eyes. "Miz Hall says
that Kitty Kirk is ten minutes late to meet her for a movie. I'm
supposed to go make sure she's all right." He shrugged at Miles.
"Welcome to small-town life."

Myrtle said, "Well ordinarily I'd say that Lucia Hall was kind of
batty, but Kitty Kirk is one of those people who lives by the clock, Red. You could set your watch by her. Ten minutes late to something is a bad sign."

"Sorry to break up the party, Mama. Y'all ... enjoy dinner." He
murmured to Elaine, "Saved by the bell."

Myrtle said, "Oh Red! Before you go, remember you promised
to program my new cell phone for me. The default ringtone is just
awful ... it plays the `Star Spangled Banner' and scares the fool out
of me."

Red grumbled, "All right, all right," and stepped into the back
bedroom with her phone. A few minutes later he returned to the
kitchen and laid the phone on the counter. "Nice phone, Mama,"
he said. "It's got all the bells and whistles."

"I know. It's the bells and whistles that give me the trouble. All
I really want is to make and answer phone calls."

"I'll show you how to program some numbers in, Myrtle. The
one-touch dialing is really cool," said Elaine. She took the phone
and programmed in some of Myrtle's most-called numbers while
Red grabbed his keys and left. Looking back, Myrtle later realized
his smirk should have warned her that Red had been up to something.

After Elaine showed Myrtle how to use the one-touch dialing,
Myrtle said to Miles, "Well, that's enough technology for me today.
Let's move on to supper. I'm glad you said you have such a healthy
appetite, Miles, since we have some extra food with Red gone."

Elaine smiled sympathetically at Miles. "I'll open up the wine."

But Elaine's cell phone rang before she picked up the corkscrew.
It was Jean-Marc, calling because Jack was crying and wouldn't stop.
"I'm so sorry, Myrtle. I guess the evening must be cursed. Jack is
probably just teething, but his ears sometimes bother him when his gums hurt, too. It's awful to just hear him cry. Must be driving
poor Jean-Marc crazy-I'd better go." Myrtle turned away to close
the kitchen windows and Elaine whispered to Miles, "Sorry. I
should have warned you about Myrtle's cooking."

With that, Myrtle and Miles and a big salad were left in the
room. Myrtle looked cross. "So much for getting information from
Red."

Miles figured this was a situation that called for some tact. "You
were saying, though, that being ten minutes missing was a big deal
for Kitty Kirk?"

"She's just one of those clock-watchers. Has conniptions if she's
a minute late to something." Myrtle pulled out the wine cork and
poured a couple of glasses. "I wonder how long she really has been
gone. Let's call her house."