SAD WOMAN BLUES
by
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It was one of those times when silence descends upon a gathering. Out of it, Nate finally said, in a manner masquerading as humorous forbearance, “You seem continually a step behind the play tonight, Chuck. As usual, actually. Either keep up or go to bed, man.”
Chuck, surly, replied, “I’ll go to bed when I damn well please.”
Nathaniel laughed. “Well, naturally. What else? No need to be so defensive, Chuck.” He paused, then added, “Though I suspect you’ll be on your own, whenever you go. Again as usual, no doubt. Tory seems quite taken with our Mr. Willoughby, wouldn’t you say?”
There was an agonizing silence now. People stared into their steaming paella or busily buttered bread. Dorothy Oldham, finding the exchange dreadful but irresistible, had turned from the dessert table and faced the dinner party. She watched Chuck’s face pale, then purple with rage. Melinda, standing to Nathaniel’s right, seemed frozen in place, a bowl of paella hovering near his elbow. Only Lottie, face avid with excitement, studied the others. Her quick eyes darted here and there.
It was Tory herself who spoke. Flushed, but trying for a tone of weary boredom, she said, “Oh, goody. We are to be treated to one of the Pierce brothers’ displays of childish vulgarity. It makes this a sort of degraded dinner theater.”
She was ignored. Chuck leaned into the table, towards his brother, and brayed his drunken laugh, a thick sound quite devoid of humor.
He said, “Good one, Nate. You manage to slur my wife and our host in the same breath. I’m slow on the uptake, as you keep reminding me, but I caught that at once.
Good one.” He laughed again.
Nathaniel shrugged and raised one hand, as though to wave off further conversation.
“The thing is, though, Nate…the one thing is, I still have a wife. Mine has not found it necessary to kill herself in order to escape me.”
Beside Nathaniel, Melinda hissed sharply. The dish of paella shook a bit as she set it on the plate in front of him. Chuck lurched to his feet and stared down at his brother.
Nathaniel glared back. Chuck said softly, “What? Without a come back for once? Hah.
A first, I do believe.”
He turned from the table and weaved across the room to the door that opened onto the central hallway. As he left, he laughed once more, and called out, “Since no one else will say it, I will. Good one, Charles! Oh, absolutely! Very good one, indeed!”
* * *
Lottie Emerson murmured to her paella, “Extraordinary! The look in those eyes!
Death, pure and simple. I must tell Jennifer.”
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About the Book
As this sequel to the author’s SPIDER SONG opens, Joanna Bryce and Dina Miller are struggling to create a harmonious life together. And then the process becomes further complicated by murder-Sweet Birch Lodge seems the perfect place to wait out the Spring Blizzard of ‘98: old; rustic; creepy creaky; home to a bloody ghost or two, no doubt. Or so the weekend guests at the Ashton Arboretum believe, as they prepare for a night of stormy mayhem.
In the morning, when the sleep-deprived visitors assemble in the dining room, it gradually becomes apparent that an unfortunate one of their number is absent. Permanently so. Joanna, naturalist at the arboretum, once again finds herself drawn into the world of murder. Although at first not much involved, additional crimes alter that situation drastically.
In the end, she and Dina must combat an unknown killer in a desperate effort to rescue someone they love.
Exhausted, with nerves stretched thin and anger at the firing point, they also must rescue their failing relationship. Or let it go.
Before the story ends, more than one will have sung the Sad Woman Blues.
About the Author
Upon graduation from
Ms. Alexander lives in