Read Online The Marriage at the Rue Morgue (A Rue and Lakeland Mystery) by Jessie Bishop Powell - Free Book Online Page A

clash, and neither one of us is horribly ‘eggshell’ with our white.” Mama hated eggshell.
    Lance had grunted and loosened his tie, which was black.
    “You look adorable,” Mama had said. “Now hop up and let’s get you changed. I’ll run it uptown to the cleaner’s after lunch.” Mama never went downtown. She always went uptown. Downtown meant Columbus, which could have been in Europe to hear her talk about how far away it was. Uptown mean Iron-weed.
    Lance grunted again.
    I told him, “When people have lived together as long as we have, different things matter. Maybe when I was thirty and fresh out of grad school, I’d have wanted everything to be new. But honestly, I don’t think of our wedding like some testament to how pretty I look in lace.”
    “You
do
look pretty in lace,” Lance offered, snuggling in closer on the couch, rather than getting up as Mama had suggested. He leaned around to put his arm around me and try for a kiss.
    I let him peck me but squirmed loose before he could do anything to make Mama blush. “Not now.” I flicked my mussed brown hair out of my face and held several strands up for scrutiny. “Ugh. More gray. Anyway, lots of brides wear family gowns.”
    “I like your gray.”
    “Watch it, or I’ll start talking about your bald spot.”
    He reached up to rub the top of his head like he was checking for bruises, then hauled himself to standing and offered me a hand up. I was fighting my gray one dye bottle at a time, and Lance had long since given up the war against the empty patch in the middle of his head.
    “Bleach it, then nobody will know the difference when you color,” my mother advised. Mama’s hair used to be brown, like mine, before the gray set in. Now she dyed it a shade of blonde so bright that I called it “way-off-canary-yellow” and wore it in a stylish pixie. On her, the horrible color and adorable cut emphasized her femininity. It would have made me look like a prepubescent boy.
    I tucked the offending strands behind my ears and let Lance help me up. “Anyway,” I said, “I’m more interested in the mortgage, the groceries, and trying to pay for this honeymoon. Spending a lot of money for a dress I’ll only wear one time doesn’t make sense to me.”
    “Don’t let her kid you,” Mama said. “You and I both know she wouldn’t have invested money in a dress twelve years ago, either.” She pulled out her cell to photograph us standing awkwardly in front of the sofa.
    “Oh, Mama, put that thing
away,
” I said. “We look absurd right now.”
    But Mama snapped two more shots before popping it back into her pocket, where it promptly started ringing.
    “Oh!” Mama said, “Oh, oh! Smartphones!” as if that explained something. Even though she had been dexterously tapping the screen a moment before to take pictures of us, she suddenly seemed all thumbs when forced to confront the same machine in another capacity. She juggled it from hand to hand, nearly dropping it while she tried to poke the right spot to answer.
    “Mama,” I said, “You have to tap and drag. It’s . . .”
    Before I could finish speaking, Mama’s finger finally connected with the screen in the right pattern. “There,” she said, then, “Hello!” Moments after that, the chipper edge faded and she said, “Oh.” She drifted back toward the kitchen, saying, “Yes, John, you
do
need to dispute the charges with a check card. It isn’t the same as a credit card at all. It’s a formality, dear.”
    “Honey, get me out of this thing,” I had said to Lance. “I think it will work, and I feel like a ragdoll in it. I turned around to present my back so he could undo the row of tiny buttons around the neck.
    As he started tugging, the front door opened, and a voice called, “Ding DONG!”
    “We’re in the back parlor, Nana,” I said. Then, to Lance, I added, “Wait a minute. I want to see what she thinks.”
    Lance smiled, and I turned to face the hall again. I turned