Mother Knows Best (A Margie Peterson Mystery) by Karen MacInerney

Author:Karen MacInerney
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781503954830
Published: 2016-03-15T03:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

The church parking lot was overfilled when I arrived at Saint John’s Catholic Church for George Cavendish’s memorial service the next day. I was still brooding over Elsie. She had been uncommunicative the night before, so I hadn’t tried to ask about what Kathleen had told me, but I was worried. I had gotten donuts for both kids before school, hoping that starting the day with a little sweetness would help improve their mood. Even though she had the morning off because of the headmaster’s funeral, Elsie still growled when I mentioned Holy Oaks.

Now I was cruising around the Saint John’s parking lot and looking for Lexuses, but I only spotted one, and it had also been at Holy Oaks. I reminded myself to check with Peaches to see if she’d found out who owned it.

The narthex was stuffed with well-dressed people wearing a smorgasbord of colognes and perfumes. Pulling my pre-pregnancy black cardigan around me—it didn’t quite meet in the middle these days, but I was hoping no one would notice—I inched my way over toward the open coffin. I barely avoided running into an earnest Kathleen Gardner, who was regaling another hapless person with her daughter’s ballet accomplishments. “She’s been asked to do the Nutcracker,” she was saying as I sidled by, her strawberry-blonde bob bouncing as she spoke. “It’s a big sacrifice for her in terms of time—her violin lessons are suffering now that she’s only getting an hour a day to practice—but even though her background is in tap, the ballet mistress said the production just wouldn’t have that sparkle without her. Besides,” she said, “it will look so good on her college application . . .”

Mitzi stood in a corner of the narthex, talking with another woman who was her sartorial twin: they both wore belted black dresses and tall, high-heeled boots. Beside Mitzi was Marty, looking bored in a sober charcoal suit, his short dark hair slicked back. He caught me staring at him, and his mouth quirked up in a half smile. I could feel my cheeks warm, but I responded with my own awkward smile, trying to forget that he’d had a ringside seat as I’d wrestled Peaches away from a cream-covered Banana Twirl just a few days ago, and I looked down—right at the late headmaster.

He looked pretty good for a dead guy. They’d de-goggled him before packing him into the casket, which was a tasteful mahogany, lined with a sober blue silk that matched his pinstriped suit. I found myself looking for goggle marks on his forehead, but the makeup team had erased any dents that might have remained. No sign of blood or urine, either. I tried not to imagine him with a pacifier in his mouth.

“Pretty shocking, isn’t it?”

I turned to see Kevin standing behind me. “It is,” I said as we moved away from the casket. “Did they ever find out what happened to him?”

“I don’t know, but I don’t think it was a heart attack,” Kevin told me in a low voice.

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