Dying for a Clue by Judy Fitzwater

Author:Judy Fitzwater [Fitzwater, Judy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Judy Fitzwater
Published: 2011-10-19T07:00:00+00:00

Chapter 21

“Well, this is a first.” Dee Dee raised one eyebrow at Jennifer, who was dropping dumplings into a large pot of broth. “Since when did you come to, let alone volunteer at a Wednesday night church supper? I thought that when you went to a church, it was First Baptist.”

“Your mom needs the help. She told me so over the phone. You couldn’t expect her to set up tables for over two hundred people all by herself.”

“She has help,” Dee Dee told her with a sweeping glance around the huge kitchen buzzing with women chopping salad, pulling apple pies from one cavernous oven, checking on vegetable dishes, and extracting huge bowls of coleslaw, fruit salad, and various other food jumbles from the refrigerated units.

“I believe how she put it to me was, ‘Jennifer wants to come to the Wednesday night church supper. What’s she up to this time?’”

Jennifer stuck her chin out and continued dropping the soft dough into the broth. It foamed and rolled in the hot liquid.

“Where’s the pepper?” she asked. “This stock’s not going to be fit to eat if we don’t find something around here to flavor it.”

“Don’t change the subject,” Dee Dee warned. “Are you here because I told you Mrs. Collier was coming?”

Jennifer threatened Dee Dee with a large wooden spoon. “I’m here because...because...” It wasn’t right to lie, especially not in church, even if it was only the kitchen. She always felt like God took it personally.

She could tell Dee Dee she was there because she’d hoped to take a decent home-cooked meal back to the girls, but Dee Dee didn’t even know they were staying with her at Sam’s.

“While you’re trying to come up with a fib that you think you could technically classify as truth, you might want to cover that pot if you want those dumplings to cook right.”

As Jennifer capped the pot with an ill-fitting metal lid, she said, “So, does brother Donald make these get-togethers?”

“Collier?”

Jennifer nodded, leaning back against the counter and watching Dee Dee mop up the broth she’d slopped on the stove top.

“Not since his wife died a couple of years back. Real sad story. She was very active in the Right to Life Movement although she never had any children of her own. And then to top off the irony, she died of ovarian cancer.”

Jennifer winced. “Her husband was in the fertility business.”

“Yeah. But she believed people shouldn’t tamper with God’s plans for them, not through abortion and not through fertility clinics.” Dee Dee patted her shoulder. “Check out the door. Ruthie Collier has arrived.”

She was wearing the same navy suit she’d had on at the funeral, complete with white silk blouse and pearl earrings. Her hair was brushed off her full face and her red cheeks and wrapped into a twist at the back. She had Dee Dee’s mother, Fran, in a death grip of a hug.

The woman drew back but continued to hold both of Fran’s hands. “Oh, darlin’, you don’t know

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