The Marriage at the Rue Morgue (A Rue and Lakeland Mystery) (25 page)

“Who was it?” Lance asked.

At the same time, I said, “Was it an alive somebody, or a dead one?”

“Trudy says it was Dr. Oeschle. She doesn’t think he was dead.”

“What do you mean, Dr. Oeschle?” I demanded, pulling away from Lance and Christian both. Suddenly, I was the angry one, Christian the victim of anger that had nothing to do with him.

Lance said, “We saw Stan yesterday down at the courthouse. What was he doing back in our woods?”

I said, “That
was
Gert speeding past the Grocery to Go. I thought that was her head I spotted through the window.”

“I don’t know,” Christian answered. “He’s on his way to Mercy.”
The same place they’d taken Art.
“This is a bad business. I need to get back. Trudy and Darnell have a whole lot of cops with them, but I don’t want them alone long. We need to go out and find that ape before he gets killed.”

“All right,” I said. “Can you take care of Lucy?”

He nodded. “We’ll quarantine her and I’ll get a proper crate to get her to the Ohio Zoo tonight. My staff can deal with the pregnancy there.”

“No pressure,” I said, causing him to bark a dry, sarcastic laugh. “But she’s probably going to deliver soon.”

Christian turned his head to look at me, but at first he didn’t say a thing. Finally, he asked, “How do you get that?”

Lance briefly recapped our conversation with Ace, ending by saying, “That’s all we know, and we all have to leave right now.”

“Yes,” I said. “We’ve got to get to Mercy. What if Stan is dying? He’s every bit as old as Art is, and he’s more frail . . . was. If the . . .”

“We aren’t going to the hospital,” Lance said.

“What do you mean? We have to go to the hospital. The man’s the president of our board. If he’s still alive, we need to be there to support him, and if he’s not . . . if he’s not . . .” I couldn’t finish. Too many thoughts of Art batted around inside my skull threatening to descend and silence me.

“People are going to have to understand,” Lance said. “It’s ten till five. We’re half an hour away from your parents’ house, and that’s if the detective flies back to the station to get us back to our car as fast as he drove to get here. Noel, we’re about to miss our wedding.”

“But . . . but . . .” There was Stan; there was Lucy; and right here was Christian. And all of them needed us. “Where did the
day
go?”

Lance looked at me, asking with his eyes if I really needed him to enumerate our hours. Really, he didn’t. I had been keeping track until we left home. That was close to three o’clock. We caught an orangutan in under two hours. That was something like a miracle schedule. Now, it was down to the last moment, really the last moment, and Marguerite was going to kill me if I got to Mama’s house much past five. But there were so many other needs. Art couldn’t take care of Stan. Art couldn’t take care of Lucy. And he couldn’t go looking for Chuck. If Lance and I weren’t getting married . . . If Art weren’t dead . . . If it were anything like a normal Saturday, we would have divvied up the duties between the three of us. I probably would have seen to Lucy, Lance would have gone looking for Chuck, and Art would have gone to Stan.

But if it were a normal Saturday, there would be no Lucy, no Chuck. Stan Oeschle wouldn’t have been hospitalized. Art would not be dead. And our wedding wouldn’t be on the agenda. It wasn’t a normal Saturday, and I had a decision to make. I could go out and try to save Chuck and establish Lucy in our quarantine for the few hours she would be in our care, or I could go to the hospital where I wouldn’t be able to make a bit of difference for Stan Oeschle. Or I could go get married.

I didn’t care what my guests thought. Now that it came down to what mattered, I didn’t even care what Marguerite and my parents thought. I already had input from the one other person who mattered. Lance wanted to get married. And so did I. “Let’s go,” I said.

We exchanged a few more words with Christian about Lucy, the radio, and our quarantine facilities. Lance gave him Ace’s number, and I went over to promise Olivia that I would get her son’s radio back intact. It was a lie. I was already planning a replacement purchase. In her house, I could feel the pairs upon pairs of little-boy eyes watching me, even though the owners of those eyes were strangely quiet.

As I was about to leave, I realized why things had fallen silent. “It’s going to take us a few weeks,” I said to the faces in the bedroom. “But we’ll have you out to see the primates. We’ll have a primate party.”

“Promise?” a single five-year-old voice asked.

I said, “Absolutely,” and left the house to a roar of children’s cheers.

Out front, Lance had explained our predicament to Detective Carmichael, who had delegated Deputy Greene to our service. He was waiting for me at the curb. “If it’s all the same,” the young deputy said, “I think I’d better take you straight to your destination.”

“Thank you,” I said. “That would be wonderful.”

Shuffled into the squad car’s backseat, once more like a couple of prisoners, Lance and I wrapped our arms around each other. As Deputy Greene took off for Mama’s house, I laid my head on my fiancé’s shoulder.

As suddenly, I sat up and pulled away, “Oh, Lance!” I said. “What’s going on with your mother?”

He groaned. “She and Dad got on a plane around the time I left to meet you at the house this morning.”

“Are you sure she got on? Is she even allowed to leave the state?”

“We aren’t pressing charges,” he said.

I thought,
We aren’t?
But I didn’t interrupt.

“The insurance company hasn’t made a determination yet. And she was doing nutso stuff in the clink, stripping and putting on nude dances for the jailers. She was a problem child for them. The police released her into psychiatric care. Dad accompanied her as far as the plane, a caretaker from a Columbus inpatient facility actually got on with her, and she’s agreed to go straight into care. I tried to talk to her for a few minutes, but nothing she says makes any sense. I can’t believe how fast she deteriorated.”

The police car accelerated as Deputy Greene wove deftly around parked cars and out onto the larger county route. “She was fine when she got here,” I agreed.

“No,” Lance said. “I’ve barely talked to Dad, but he says not. He says the novelty of our house may have snapped her back for a little while, but she’s been heading in a bad direction for the last six months.” He pulled me close to him again and continued. “She spent time in a psychiatric facility when we were kids. She’s got medications she’s supposed to be taking. This has happened a couple of times since Alex and I went to college.”

“Wait a minute,” I said. “Your mom has been in and out of the hospital and you never told me?”

He shrugged. “I didn’t like to talk about it. Mom and I weren’t all that close,” he said. “You know that. I didn’t want to know, myself. I’m so sorry it’s come anywhere near you. I’ve tried to keep all of my family’s crazy away, and I let her guilt me into inviting her to stay at our house before the wedding.” Now he pulled away from me. “I should have
known
better,” he said. “I can’t believe I let her destroy your car.”

I said, “I’m the one who let her drive it!”

“But I should have been the one . . .”

“No,” I said. “This isn’t your fault, Lance. You aren’t responsible for your mom any more than you’re responsible for your brother. I don’t blame you.”

“Thanks,” he said. “But I feel pretty responsible right now.”

“No,” I told him again. And then, because he seemed to have the case against himself all written up and certified in his own head, I pulled him into me and kissed him hard on the mouth. It was one of those dizzy kisses like the one we had exchanged in front of the spider monkey enclosure yesterday, and it served to silence him.

We kissed like that until Deputy Greene sped up again and cut on the siren. Then we cuddled together in the backseat, loving each other as we rode to get married.

And so it was that I arrived at my wedding in a police car. Deputy Greene seemed to enjoy it very much that I should be as uncomfortable today as he had been yesterday. He turned on the lights and sirens once we got out of Olivia’s neighborhood. “I only waited because they hear too much of us around there as it is.”

“You don’t need that at all, do you?”

He grinned and pretended not to hear me.

I looked up at Lance, who shrugged and then pulled me in tighter. “I’m glad you’re not mad at me,” he said.

“Of course not,” I said. “Why would I be mad at you?”

“Over Mom.”

“Lance,” I said, “I’ve been worried that
you
would be angry with
me
about your mom. Up until last night, I thought I was responsible for keeping you apart from your family. Now, I’m beginning to understand that you and Alex
both
came to the Midwest to get away from them.”

He nuzzled his nose in my hair. “About Bub,” he said.

I found that I was a lot more open to hearing about Alex now that I had seen him looking shamefaced on my parents’ lawn. I almost wished I had been at yesterday’s dinner to see him struggling with their mixed emotions. But then, if I had been there, I don’t think I would have felt compassion toward him. Plus, I’d still have a car. Like Lance, Alex very clearly blamed himself for his mother’s behavior. “Yeah?” I said. “What about him?”

“He offered to go with Mom,” Lance said. “To make sure she got there. But I told him to stay. I asked him to come to the wedding. Having him go would be like . . .”

“Letting her win,” I finished.

“Yeah. I should have asked you before I told him anything, but you didn’t pick up your cell in the middle of that surprise shower, and I had to tell him
something
before he got on the flight, and we’ve been going nonstop since . . .”

“Lance, it’s OK,” I said. “I’m not angry.”

“Really?” He stretched his neck around and look at me half upside down, one eyebrow raised, the other scrunched over toward his nose.

I laughed at his peculiar face and kissed the lips he had put so conveniently near to mine. “Really,” I said, and settled back against him.

Of course, the siren brought everybody out onto the front lawn when we pulled down my parents’ street. And “everybody” was a
lot
of people. The road was lined with cars, and someone had started parking people in the yard away from the flower garden. Mama might have been an only child, but Daddy was one of eleven. My aunts, uncles, and cousins, our friends, and the small delegation from Lance’s family all crowded around to see Deputy Greene open the door and usher us out like some kind of chauffeur. He shut the door behind us and made a sweeping gesture. “Let that be a lesson to you,” he said. “In this county, it’s
illegal
to try and run out on your wedding.”

Then he got back in his cruiser and drove away. “My God, what were you thinking? You’re a
mess,
” Marguerite scolded.

“You don’t really believe that, do you?” I said. “If we’d wanted to duck out, there’s no law about it.”

“But your hair’s a wreck, you smell like a pigsty, and I doubt anybody will be able to get that stain out of your white shirt!”

Lucy hadn’t smelled good, no better than Chuck did yesterday, but she didn’t come close enough to leave her scent on us. Technically, I supposed Lance was the one who smelled like a sty. Working in the enclosures tended to leave one with a distinct odor. Lance was also responsible for mussing my hair on the ride over. And we had both somehow gotten the watermelon smeared all down our fronts. I doubted Marguerite would like to know the number of white shirts I had ruined working at the primate sanctuary.

“We’re here,” I said. “It’s only a little after five, and we have most of an hour to get ready.”

“You nearly gave Nana a
heart attack,
” Margie snapped.

“Oh, no, Nana!” My grandfather really had left her at the altar. She knew what it was to wait and hope for nothing. I bolted through the crowd toward the house, as if by hurrying now, I could alleviate an entire day’s anxiety for her.

“There you are!” she said as I pelted through the front door. But her tone wasn’t scolding. She sounded wryly amused, and she was smiling. Not at all the picture of a woman on the verge of a heart attack. To my look of surprise, she laughed. “Oh, Marguerite’s been fussing over me all afternoon. I knew you’d get here sooner or later. But do tell me, how did you arrange to come by police car? Most couples choose a limousine these days.”

“Much more economical,” Lance deadpanned. “You know us. Wouldn’t want to waste any money on a wedding.”

Everyone who had gathered in the foyer with us laughed, then Marguerite resumed her role as wedding coordinator, shooing us upstairs and guests back outside to wait near the rose garden. “I don’t remember hiring her for this,” I muttered to Lance.

“Let her have her fun,” he said. “Saves us from having to deal with it.”

We separated then to shower. I had barely rinsed out the shampoo before Marguerite was at the door hurrying me along. “Come on, come on!” she said. “I’ve had the girls dressed for twenty minutes now. Poppy is
going
to spill something. You’re the only one left. I brought down my hair dryer. Or do you want me to try and pin you up while it’s wet?”

“Senior prom,” I said.

“What?”

“You reminded me of senior prom.”

“
Your
senior prom,” she corrected. “
I
was a sophomore.”

“Yeah, OK. But you came.”

“Of course!” Marguerite had attended both my junior-senior proms as well as her own. I was no social misfit, but she flitted and flirted and had connections in nearly every class. In ninth grade, she coaxed her way in as a volunteer by nominating Mama to the parent committee. Mama refused to repeat her role the next year. So in tenth grade, Marguerite challenged the captain of the chess team (a junior at the time) to a match. If she won, he had to take her as his prom date. I never found out what she was supposed to do if she lost.

That chess captain was outside decorating Mama’s lawn right now, helping Bryce seat (and now reseat) the various guests. He was still the same hotheaded, overconfident fellow he had been two decades ago. And he still adored my sister shamelessly.