Seances Are for Suckers by Tamara Berry

Author:Tamara Berry
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Kensington
Published: 2018-08-15T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 14

Not even a real psychic could have foreseen the benefits of murder in a place like this.

“This one’s from Mrs. Cherrycove.” Vivian stomps through the dining room door, the aroma of cheese and potatoes trailing in her tempestuous wake. She slams a ceramic dish down on the sideboard. “The interfering ninny. It took me fifteen minutes and four glasses of sherry to get her out the door again.”

“She drank four glasses of sherry in fifteen minutes?” I ask, slightly alarmed. The alarm is only slight because I’m already up out of my seat and piling potatoes dauphinoise onto my plate. I don’t know who this Mrs. Cherrycove is, but it looks like she knows her way around a carbohydrate. “I hope she isn’t driving.”

“She never drives,” Vivian replies. She eyes the bulging sideboard with distaste. “She came with Penny Dautry.”

“Oooh!” From the other side of the dining room, Rachel sits up, a gleam in her violet eyes. “Did Penny bring her famous chocolate cake? We had it at the old vicar’s funeral last year.”

“There will be no cake,” Vivian says in her most quelling voice.

“I wouldn’t have minded a slice or two,” Cal says. He pats his stomach. “Or three.”

“It does seem a shame for you to make her take it back,” Nicholas adds with something like regret.

I’m curious about what kind of cake could move even a man like Nicholas to protest, but we hardly need the dessert at this point. The door knocker has been pounding from the moment we woke up this morning, revealing a succession of inquisitive neighbors laden with food. It’s a veritable smorgasbord of condolence casseroles in here, and it isn’t even noon yet. I’ve never seen people eat so much food in such a short period of time.

Well, everyone is eating except for Vivian and Fern. Vivian because she appears to like her neighbors even less than she does houseguests, and Fern because she mostly looks bored. She managed a few bites of salade niçoise about half an hour ago and has been draping herself in various poses over the dining room chairs ever since.

“I don’t know what we’re doing, sitting around here and accepting mourners like some Victorian family of old,” she says, frowning around the table. In direct opposition to our semi-funereal atmosphere, she’s dressed herself in a white lace pantsuit that’s much more elegant than it sounds. She’s practically bridal. “We should be packing up and moving as far away from this decrepit place as possible. Who knows how many other people are buried under our feet? There could be thousands of dead bodies lying around here.”

Cal’s eyes protrude in a moment of alarm. “Thousands of dead bodies? No, love. Hardly that.”

She waves her hand. “Who would be able to tell, with all the damp and falling bits?”

“I think we’d notice thousands of bodies lying amid the general rubble,” Nicholas says dryly.

“It’s not rubble,” Rachel protests, holding her fork like it’s a trident. “It’s home.”

I keep my mouth shut

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