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

“Thanks.” She didn’t even blink. “So, how was your date?”

“Fine until I tripped over the dead body.”

“Good.” She opened the refrigerator and took a pudding, just in case I wasn’t sure she hadn’t heard me. “Tell Gram I don’t have time for breakfast, okay?”

“You can tell me yourself, Candice.” We both spun to face her. “I may be old, but I’m not hard of hearing.”

“Sorry, Gram. Got a study hall before school.” She made detention sound so normal, I smiled. Not that I was about to rat her out. If she wasn’t setting off my mother’s internal alarms, more power to her.

“We’re hungry, Gram,” a chorus chimed. Rosemary’s twins, matching owls also in jeans and sweaters popped out from behind my mother. I could see a theme developing. Only my mother was refusing to fall in the party line. She was wearing her customary casual but dressy pants suit. Not a cozy grandma, but a fond one. Her whole face lit up. When she’d determined what their breakfast desire was, she turned to me.

“How are you feeling today, Isabel?” The question had a tiptoe quality to it. Rose must have told her about the body.

“I’m fine.” This was new territory for us, so I wasn’t sure how to handle it. It would be better when she found a way to make it my fault.

“Good.” She looked like she wanted to say more. I was relieved when she turned and began assembling pancake ingredients, until she asked, “Where’s your sister?”

“Rosemary?”

“Do you have another sister?”

I laughed weakly. “She’s out.”

I got a patient look. “Where?”

“She’s got a date,” Joelle, the diminutive traitor informed her.

Kids. Why do people have them?

Mother looked at me, brows at full arch. “A date?”

Rosemary was out with my vet and I was going to get in trouble for it.

“With Mike Lang.”

“Your Mike Lang? The one you were out with last night?”

“He’s not my Mike Lang. He’s my vet. And a friend.”

“A friend. That’s what you always say. You couldn’t make the effort to be attracted to one of these friends?”

I could have told her how attracted I could be. I could have told her about Kel. About kisses that made me sizzle like a Roman candle and turn as squishy as warm butter. I could have told her I was so attracted to him, I darn near jumped his bones the first night I met him. I could have, but I’m not stupid. I shrugged and looked clueless. I was good at it, because I usually am.

My mother sighed, blowing guilt through clueless, like it was a sieve. “Muir called for you last night. He seemed to think you had an arrangement to discuss his computer program.”

“When people want an arrangement with someone, they should ask, not assume. All he said was that he’d call.”

“Well, he called. And so did Reverend Hilliard.” My mother looked happier thinking about the Reverend.

Which increased my unhappy level. “What did he want?”

“He wanted to know if you’d play the organ for Elspeth Carter’s funeral on Saturday. I told him that you would be delighted.”

“Should I be delighted to play for a funeral?”

“You should always be delighted to help out.”

The Gospel according to my Mother. She interpreted it with the same ruthlessness as Henry the Eighth. I could feel the marital ax inch closer to my neck. The telephone rang under my elbow. I jumped for it and knocked the receiver to the floor. I had to reel it in before I could say hello.

“Stan? Glad I caught you. Marion here.” Marion was my editor. I liked her, even though she liked my roach books and was younger than me. I had to face it, about half the world was younger than me now.

“How are you? You sound close, like you’re right here in town.”

“I am right here in town. I came for the convention.”

“Oh. How nice.” Convention? Her voice told me I should know what she was talking about so my mind tried to race, but it was kind of out of shape after my double crime wave whammy.

“How’s the book coming?”

“Fine.” Defensive leaked through the cracks of tired.

“Problems, huh?”

“Maybe the roach well is dry. Maybe I need a new bug. Has anyone done gnats yet?”

“You always get stuck in the middle and panic. It'll pass. It always does.” She hesitated, then asked, “You're not working on another romance novel, are you?”

“Who, me?”

“Give it up, girl. You're not a romantic.”

“I can be romantic.” My mother and Marion snorted at the same time. “Did you just call to burst my bubble or was there another reason?”

“I thought I'd better remind you about tomorrow. If you'd learn how to use the schedule program on that fancy computer your boyfriend sold you, instead of that circular file you call a brain, it would make both our lives easier.”

“Muir is not my boyfriend.” My mother snorted again, so I rushed to ask, “What about tomorrow?”

“I knew you’d forget about tomorrow.”

A vague memory tried to surface.

“The IRA convention. Autographs at ten?” she reminded me with a hint of steel in her voice.

“Oh, that,” I attempted a bluff. “How could I forget that?”

“I knew you’d try.”

“Well, so would you if you had to sign your name to a bug’s butt.”

“We all have our trials in life.” She gave me directions and rang off. I started to leave.

“I told Muir you’d call him back,” my mother said.

“And I will.” Maybe. “After I get back from my rehearsal.” Unless I could manage to forget that, too. My mother snorted again, but I told myself she was just blowing her nose. It could be true. Cold air made everyone’s nose run.

When I rang the bell at Jerome’s house, his father answered the door. Steven Jeffries, Major, retired, was an older version of his son. Erect and lean, his salt and pepper hair was still cut military style. It was obvious he was suffering from a serious case of war-watching syndrome. We spent a few minutes discussing smart bombs and the