Murder on the Bride's Side by Tracy Kiely Read Free Book Online Page B

Cheshire Cat, except there was no smile on Megan’s round face. I wondered if she came by her ability to disappear naturally or if it was a practiced trait. Next to Roni, Avery sat in his wheelchair, seemingly preoccupied with a mark on the chair’s wheel. At our entrance, he looked up with an expression more normally associated with drowning men seeing life preservers.
    “Ah,” he said, forcing his long face into a smile. “There you all are! Come and join us for a drink.”
    “I’d love to, sir,” said Colin, “but I’d better be getting back to the hotel.”
    “I’m going to walk him out. Be back in a minute,” Bridget said, as the two practically ran from the room.
    Avery’s face fell at their departure, but, spying Peter and me, he rallied. “Elizabeth! I insist you join us, although it’s strange to be offering you a drink. It seems only yesterday that you, Bridget, and Harry were youngsters bent on bedeviling Elsie.” Avery turned to his mother with an inviting smile. “Remember the year that you hosted the local marksman tournament, and Harry threw a rubber chicken out his window and it landed at the feet of the club’s president?” Elsie nodded her head slightly but did not answer. Avery pressed on, a note of desperation in his voice. “And what about the time the three of them snuck out of the house by crawling out onto the roof? Didn’t one of them fall and sprain an ankle?”
    Again Elsie’s frozen expression gave no sign that she was going to answer, so I jumped in. “That was me,” I said. “I had a fun time explaining that one to my mom. But since Harry’s not here to defend himself, I have no qualms about blaming the entire incident on him.” The whole thing
had
been Harry’s fault, too. He convinced Bridget and me not only to sneak out, but to go out by way of the roof. Harry could climb like a cat, but my skills were far less nimble. I skidded off the roof, managed to grab hold of the gutter, and hung for a moment suspended in space before falling into an ungainly heap in the laurel bushes below. In a flash, Harry jumped down to my side—unhurt, of course. He carried me inside and was so overcome with guilt at my injury that he waited on me hand and foot for the rest of myvisit and carried me wherever we went. It was quite a heady experience for an impressionable twelve-year-old girl and effectively cemented my crush on him.
    Avery smiled. “I’ve no doubt of that. My son has a talent for finding trouble. But still, you three always had fun together.”
    Bridget returned to the room in time to hear these last words. “Who had fun?” she asked.
    “You, Elizabeth, and Harry,” Avery answered, “when you were kids.”
    “I had a terrible childhood,” Roni suddenly announced, pausing for effect. We all dutifully turned her way. Bridget caught my eye and quickly placed her right pinkie on the corner of her mouth in a dead-on imitation of Mike Meyers’s Dr. Evil. I knew exactly what she was thinking—Dr. Evil’s hysterical recital of his personal history during the therapy session: “My father was a relentlessly self-improving boulangerie owner from Belgium with low-grade narcolepsy and a penchant for buggery. My mother was a fifteen-year-old French prostitute named Chloe, with webbed feet.” It took all of my self-control not to burst out laughing. Idly tracing the rim of her wineglass with her finger, Roni continued, “My father left when I was only six and my mother had to work two jobs to support us. We had no money and had to wear secondhand clothes. When I grew up, I swore I’d never let that happen to me. But, of course, it did anyway. Megan’s father walked out on me just like my dad did.”
    From the folds of the couch, David mumbled something. I couldn’t hear him, but Claire blushed and shushed him.
    Roni stared at him a moment before shrugging her shouldersand continuing. “I never even had a proper vacation until I was twenty-three.”
    “How positively