Perilously Fun Fiction: A Bundle, Pauline Jones [top 100 novels of all time .txt] 📗

looks, it might be bearable, but they all felt compelled to poke her stomach. Maybe she could have coped with that, if the baby wasn’t kicking her from the inside.

She sat down on a hard chair just inside the door, since Mickey wasn’t around for leverage and extraction, and kicked off her man-size shoes. Someday she’d see her feet again. And hopefully they’d return to normal. All she had to do was push a watermelon out her butt. Make that lose-lose-lose.

Like most houses in a humid climate, there was a damp feel and a musty smell to the air. Even the fresh flowers she brought in from the garden couldn’t quite drive it away. The house, like her aunts, was old and young, an eccentric mix of old and new, the normal and the weird.

Mickey, she knew, wanted her to make it their house when Miss Weena was gone. She just wished she knew when that would be. When she looked at the house, all she could see was what it was, not what it might become. Maybe when the baby came there’d be enough blood flow to her brain again for creative thought. At the moment, all she seemed able to do was eat for the baby, sleep for the baby, and pee for them both. Speaking of which…

She looked at the stairs, wishing there were two bathrooms downstairs. The baby kicked her in the bladder, his favorite spot lately. Already he reminded her of Mickey. She heaved herself upright and battled gravity up the stairs. It was a near thing, but she made it. Once those issues were resolved, for few minutes anyway, she peeked into Miss Weena’s room, smiling as she always did at the sight of the garish Mardi Gras theme that dominated everything but Miss Weena’s personality. The green, gold and purple canopied bed lay empty and abandoned in the dim light that managed to break through the drawn curtains. The silence was almost absolute but not quite. Luci heard the quiet rustle of papers to her right.

“Miss Weena—” Luci waddled further into the room, inhaling Miss Weena’s spicy perfume that invaded all available oxygen.

Miss Weena, seated at her equally diminutive desk, peered at Luci through a pair if sassy bifocals that Luci bought her at Chicos.

“Back already, dear?”

Luci slowed to a stop. She’d lost the ability for abrupt stops when her center of gravity changed. Papers and photographs covered the tiny desktop. A file folder was open, the paper aged, the old edges curling.

“You’re…up.”

Miss Weena nodded, her gaze amused.

“But I thought…” Luci didn’t know how to finish the sentence. She lowered herself into a chair close to her aunt, wincing as the poor old chair creaked in protest.

Miss Weena’s smile was sort of secret and vaguely disturbing.

“I know what you thought. I thought so, too, but I changed my mind.”

“You…can you do that?” Luci asked, not sure she wanted an answer.

Miss Weena looked surprised. “Clearly I can, since I did.” She gave Luci a direct look. “Even the well-planned death can go awry. Once I finish a bit of business, I promise I will move on.”

Her aunts could be clueless or prescient, according to their mood, and occasionally they could both at the same time. Instead of comment, Luci picked up one of the sheets on the desktop, read a few lines and looked at her aunt. “This is the file on Miss Gracie’s murder. Where did you get this?”

“I’ve always had a copy. The detective in charge of the case made it for me.” Miss Weena smiled and fluttered her lashes.

“I’ll bet he did.” Luci grinned, remembering her own attempts to get a police file from Mickey. Obviously she should have asked Miss Weena for some tips. The real question wasn’t how she got it, but why it held up her deathbed performance. “It’s kind of old news, isn’t it?”

Fifty years ago old news.

“When you get older, the past can be more real than the present.”

Luci stared into the suddenly wise eyes for a long moment before looking down at the report, scanning it until— “You found her?”

“Didn’t you know?”

Luci shook her head. “No.” Luci frowned. “Actually, I don’t know much of anything about it, Miss Weena.”

Miss Weena’s brows arched a bit. “Don’t you find that kind of embarrassing? You’re a police officer and this is your own family murder. Really, dear, I’m a bit disappointed in you.”

Actually, she was a bit disappointed in herself. “It must have been very…upsetting for you.” Could Miss Weena be upset?

Her old clock on the mantel ticked into the silence as Miss Weena considered the question. “I’m not sure what I felt. I remember thinking she’d fallen down and I started toward her…but then I saw her.”

“Saw…who?” Luci asked cautiously.

“Gracie. She was sitting on the bench near her body. I could see the bird bath through her.”

Luci took a shallow breath, because deep breaths weren’t possible. “What did you do?”

“At first I just stared, trying to figure out what was going on. And then I realized—so I stepped over her body and sat down beside her. She didn’t say anything. I’m not sure she knew I could see her. So I said something lame about the garden looking pretty after the rain.” Miss Weena looked rueful. “Not my finest moment.”

Luci patted the old hands with her swollen ones. “I expect Gracie understood…kind of.”

Maybe it was her pregnancy that had slowed her brain down. She wasn’t used to feeling…dazed. If this was how Mickey felt around them, no wonder his eye twitched. “Did you ask her—what happened?”

Now Miss Weena looked shocked and a bit disapproving. “After the lovely garden faux pas? I don’t think so!”

“Oh.” Luci was quiet for a moment. “Did Gracie say anything?”

“Before or after agreeing the garden looked lovely?”

Luci bit back a smile. “After.”

“She told me I should go call the police.”

“It is the appropriate response—wait a minute. Did you say call? Did you have a phone?”

Miss Weena looked surprised. “Of course we did then.”

“But…but