Maid of Honor Page 5

  “Bring the rest, Persis,” she said, and headed for the kitchen.

  That left Persis alone in the living room. Automatically, she wandered over to the piano. There, next to a pile of music, lay that ten-thousand-dollar bicycle reflector, winking up at her from the mirrored tray. She picked it up, just to see how it felt to hold so much money in her hand at one time. Then she reached down behind the sofa and pinned the brooch to the upholstery.

  She could never have said why she did it. Maybe she was still resenting the fuss they’d all made over the brooch while ignoring her. Anyway, there it was, hidden from sight, and here came her mother shrilling, “Persis, what’s keeping you? Haven’t you got that stuff picked up yet?”

  “I’m coming.”

  She ran around snatching china and crystal off the end tables, then sprinted for the kitchen. Much of the fragile tableware had to be washed by hand, and her parents unanimously elected her to dishpan duty. That was all right with Persis. She could pretend she was back in the apartment with Gran Green. Sloshing around in hot soapsuds was far less disagreeable than listening to Grandpa Dane and Old Man Cowles trying to out-pontificate each other.

  She was sleepy after the heavy meal, the late evening, and her early-morning journey. So she’d almost forgotten her impulsive prank with Mrs. Cowles’s monstrous gift, until she heard her mother shriek from the living room.

  “Charles, the brooch! It’s gone.”

  “Oh, for crying out loud! Calm down, Muriel. Loni took it upstairs with her, naturally. Where else would it be?”

  “She did not take it upstairs.”

  “Then why the hell didn’t she? If she hasn’t got sense enough to take care of a ten-thousand-dollar hunk of jewelry, she doesn’t deserve to have it.”

  “She’d have left it for me to put away. Loni’s not ready for that kind of responsibility.”

  “So what’s she getting married for?”

  “Charles, do you have to pick me up on everything I say? You haven’t even deigned to mention how well the dinner went off, after the way I slaved to get ready.”

  “Okay, the dinner was great. What’s that got to do with the brooch? Persis, go ask your sister what she did with it.”

  “I’ll go myself. Try and get anybody to do anything right around here.”

  Muriel Green went off sputtering. Her husband shrugged.

  “I wouldn’t put it past old Cowles to have palmed the thing himself on the way out. Maybe he’s trying to make it look as if we were careless and let the brooch get stolen, so he can collect his ten grand from the insurance company.”

  “But, Daddy, how could he?” Persis protested. “His wife already gave the brooch to Loni.”

  “Not on your life she didn’t. She gave it to Chet and Loni as a wedding present. There’s a nice little legal distinction there. What it means is that she meant the pin to stay right in the Cowles family, and don’t try to kid yourself it won’t.”

  “That’s a relief.” Persis turned on the faucet spray to rinse a handful of forks. “I’d hate to think I ran any risk of ever having to inherit that monstrosity myself. Did you ever see anything uglier in all your life?”

  “What are you talking about? Real diamonds and rubies.”

  “Daddy, it’s just an expensive piece of junk. Loni will never wear it. Unless she happens to take a course in belly dancing. It might look okay hanging over her bellybutton.”

  “Nice talk for a young girl, I don’t think. Oh, Christ, now what?”

  Muriel Green was screaming again. “Charles! Charles, Loni says she didn’t take it.”

  “Huh? Where is she?”

  “She’ll be down in a second. She’s getting her robe and slippers on. She says it was still on the piano when she went to bed.”

  “How does she know?” Persis objected. “She went out in the hall to wave bye-bye as soon as the Cowleses started to leave, and she never went back into the living room after that for fear she’d get stuck with picking up a few dishes.”

  “That’s right,” said Charles Green. “Remember, Muriel? I told her to help you straighten up, but she said let Persis do it and went upstairs.”

  “Then I suppose she meant it was still there when she last looked. What difference does it make? Don’t just stand there. Come and help me hunt for it.”

  Persis hung back a little, making a production of drying her hands. She’d let them sweat for a couple of minutes, then go in and find the brooch behind the sofa. Not too quickly or they’d smell a rat. She’d better put on a little show of poking around under chair cushions and stuff first.

  When she went into the living room, Loni was at the piano, shuffling carelessly through Persis’s music and complaining about the fuss. “It slid off the tray and got stuck here somewhere among the pages, most likely. I don’t know what you’re acting so hysterical about, Mama. It’s not your diamond and ruby brooch, you know.”

  “That’s not your music you’re ripping to pieces, either,” Persis reminded her. “Let me do that. I know more about pianos than you do.”

  “Oh, Persis, you’re impossible!” snapped her mother.

  Mrs. Green shoved both daughters aside and began scrabbling through the piles of music herself. That was fine with Persis. She drifted off to the other side of the room and began picking up seat cushions.

  “What are you wasting time over there for?” shrilled her mother. “How could the brooch have got clear across the room?”

  “Somebody might have taken it to look at and dropped it down among the pillows,” Persis argued—convincingly, she hoped. “They were all half sloshed by the time they left.”

  “They were not!” Loni protested.

  Charles Green overruled her objection. “If they weren’t they ought to have been. The way old Cowles swilled down my best brandy, you’d have thought he was drinking Pepsi-Cola. Which chair was he sitting in?”

  That was the cue Persis had been waiting for. “On the sofa,” she said. “I’ll look.”

  She did her performance with the seat cushions, then ran her hand down over the back. All she could feel was nubbly tweed upholstery.

  The ten-thousand-dollar brooch was gone.

  Chapter 8

  That was when the nightmare really began. Persis shoved the sofa away from the wall and scanned every inch of it by the strongest light she could put on, although she could not see how she could ever miss that blazing headlight if it had been where she’d put it. She searched the carpet. She even lay down and squinted along the pile, in case the brooch might have fallen and landed face down so that the stones weren’t reflecting the light. Nothing.

  Between them, she and her mother practically tore the living room apart. Loni stood weeping into the sash of her baby-blue negligee. Charles Green trotted around after his wife and daughter, picking things up and setting them straight, bleating, “Save the pieces, can’t you?”

  They kept at it for hours. After they’d searched the living room right down to the wallpaper, they carried the hunt to the front hall, the coat closet, the downstairs powder room, the dining room. They even searched the stairway and Loni’s bedroom in case she might have carried the trinket upstairs with her and forgotten she had it, which was absurd but showed the state they were in by that stage. Again they found nothing.

  At last they called a halt and fell into bed, so exhausted that all four of them slept late and almost missed getting to the country club in time to keep the appointment with Loni’s future in-laws.

  “Now remember,” Muriel Green whispered to her daughters as they were going in, “don’t say a word about the brooch unless they do, but be extra nice to show how appreciative you are. If anybody asks why Loni isn’t wearing it, you say it’s not appropriate for a bride to wear such lavish jewelry until after she’s married. If they ask what we did with the brooch, tell them Daddy put it away for safekeeping. Got that?”

  “For the eighty-second time, yes.” Loni sighed. “Fix your hair, Mama. It’s all over your
face.”

  Muriel Green did a fast repair job, then stuffed her comb and mirror back in her purse. “Now smile, everybody. Come on.”

  “What a gruesome charade,” Persis muttered as she pasted a kind of snarling grin to her mouth and followed the rest of them into the club lounge. Loni performed like a professional, though, rushing up to Chet’s parents with happy little cries, being girlish with Grandma and Grandpop, paying no attention whatever to Chet. If that was love, Persis would take pistachio.

  Charles Green was exuding the kind of bogus geniality that might have been expected from a salesman trying to sell a used car. Persis had the impression that everybody else was doing the same. Finally she got tired of grinning and nodding and faded into the background. She wasn’t missed. Nobody paid any further attention to her, until Todd Ormsey drifted over.

  “Hi, Persis. What’s up?”

  She ought to feel flattered, she supposed. Todd only noticed the pretty ones, as a rule. He’d been one of Loni’s boyfriends until Chet Cowles’s family had been checked out as being more fiscally solvent than the Ormseys, and Chet himself easier to nudge altarward. Todd was too foxy for Muriel Green to manipulate.

  “Hi, Todd,” she replied cautiously. “We’re having brunch with the Cowleses.”

  “So I gathered. You’ve done something to your hair.”

  “Don’t remind me.”

  Persis could see herself reflected in one of the mirrors that hung around the walls of the lounge. Her mother had been too flustered by their late rising to tell her what to wear, so Persis had put on her favorite deep pink shirt with a softly gathered gray skirt, pink strappy sandals, and her grandmother’s handsome gold locket. She’d also dunked Antoine’s revolting hairdo under the shower and given it a quick fluffing with her blow-dryer for a more natural effect. She still didn’t like it, but at least the reflection in the mirror didn’t make her sick.

  Persis noticed another face in the mirror. Muriel Green was looking at her and Todd with a strange expression; but then Chet’s mother said something and Muriel had to put her smile back on, quick.

  “No, honestly, I think it’s great,” Todd was insisting. “Makes you look more grown up.”

  Persis didn’t quite know what to say to that, so she changed the subject. “Still got your Fiat?”

  “No, I got rid of the Fiat a few weeks ago. It was giving me problems. I’m driving a real classic now, a white 1967 Sting Ray.”

  “How come?”

  “Had a chance to make a deal, and grabbed it.”

  Todd went into a lot of technical detail about why he’d been so smart to take the Sting Ray. None of what he said made any sense to Persis, but she listened anyway, wondering why Todd Ormsey was squandering so much of his famous charm on Loni’s kid sister all of a sudden. Then she realized he wasn’t. He was using her to put on an act for Loni’s benefit, making her see what she’d passed up for Chet Cowles.

  Furthermore, Loni was getting the message. Persis wasn’t surprised when their twosome was ever so neatly turned into a foursome, and she herself got maneuvered into making small talk with Chet while Todd took Loni over to one of the big picture windows to feast her eyes on the white Sting Ray.

  That didn’t last long. Muriel Green called sharply, “Loni, tell Chet we’re going into the dining room now.” Loni bade Todd a laughing farewell and came over to take Chet’s arm.

  “Time’s up, Persis. Chet belongs to me now. You’re just the maid of honor, remember?”

  How could she forget? Persis faded back again and got snared by her mother.

  “What was Todd Ormsey handing you a line about?”

  “It wasn’t a line,” Persis replied sulkily. “He was only telling me about his new car.”

  “What new car?”

  “A 1967 Sting Ray.”

  “Huh. Down to driving old clunkers, is he? I’m not surprised, considering the shape his father’s in with the SEC. Did he ask you to go for a ride in it?”

  “Fat chance.”

  “Well, if he ever does, don’t you dare say yes. You hear me? Todd Ormsey’s no fit companion for a girl your age.”

  “He was fit enough for Loni, till Chet turned up. Besides, a 1967 Sting Ray isn’t a clunker, it’s a classic.”

  “I don’t care what it is. You stay out of it.”

  Muriel Green rearranged her upper lip into more agreeable contours and went back to telling Grandpa Cowles how wonderful he was, as if he needed to be told, while they walked in and joined the line for the brunch buffet.

  The meal was endless. Persis got so sick and tired of so much talk about nothing that she kept going back to the buffet and getting more food she didn’t want, merely for the sake of something to do. Then dear, kind Grandma Cowles pranced up to the dessert table and got her a huge, gooey pastry to top it off. So she stuffed down the dessert out of politeness and had to sit through a lecture from her mother about getting too fat to fit into her maid of honor gown.

  Even getting away, at last, from the Cowleses didn’t improve the situation. Muriel Green went into another anxiety attack about the missing brooch. Charles Green was sleepy and cross because he’d eaten too much and had had to miss his usual Sunday morning game of golf. Loni was in one of her moods, silent one minute, flighty the next, finally throwing a temper tantrum and storming upstairs.

  When she came down, she was wearing tight designer jeans, cowgirl boots, and a brown suede jacket and cap that belonged to Persis. That was a surprise. Loni seldom liked any of her sister’s clothes well enough to borrow them.

  The suede jacket was special, however, soft and beautifully tailored, though a bit heavy for an afternoon in early June. The cap had been bought big to acommodate the heavy head of hair Persis had still owned when she’d picked it out. On Loni’s cropped head, the cap was so loose that it came down over her eyes, or would have if she hadn’t propped it up with enormous sunglasses.

  Persis felt a surge of fury, not only that Loni had taken her favorite clothes without asking but also that she was managing to look so much smarter in them than Persis did. She was about to raise a howl of protest, then decided she needn’t bother. Her mother was already advancing to the attack.

  “Loni, where are you going?”

  “Out.”

  “What do you mean, out? Is Chet taking you somewhere?”

  “Chet’s tied up with his aunt and uncle. You heard him say so.”

  “I naturally assumed you’d be included.”

  “Well, I naturally assumed I wouldn’t. I’ve had enough of that bunch for today, thank you.”

  “What are you going to do when you’re married to them?” Persis couldn’t keep herself from asking.

  “I’m not marrying the whole family, dummy.”

  “That’s what you think.”

  “Will you two quit bickering?” shrieked their mother. “Come and help me search the living room again. Maybe in the daylight—”

  “Will you please shut up about that brooch?” Loni shrilled back. “I don’t want to hear it. I told you I’m going out.”

  Muriel Green asked again, “Where?” but Loni’s only answer was to slam the front door. Watching her out the window, Persis was surprised to see that she didn’t get into her car, which she’d left parked out in front of the house since yesterday. Instead, Loni walked on down the street and turned the corner.

  She was worried about her figure, no doubt, and had decided she’d better try to walk off some of that too-hearty brunch. Typical of Loni to do it in pointy-toed boots instead of comfortable walking shoes. She’d be limping and moaning before she got halfway around the block. Who cared? Persis had her own worries. How could that brooch possibly have disappeared from the back of the sofa?

  It was senseless to search any more, considering how thoroughly they’d done the job last night. Nevertheless, Persis willingly joined her mother in the hunt, poking into nooks and crannies with a yardstick, fishing around inside the piano, feeling over every inch of the
soft-piled carpet. At last she had to face what she’d been pushing to the back of her mind ever since last night. The brooch wasn’t just lost. It had been stolen.

  Then who took it?

  Her mother had gone upstairs at last to lie down with an ice bag to her aching forehead. Her father was crouched in front of the television screen in the family room with a box of pretzels and a highball, watching a sports program. Rather, he was pretending to watch. He didn’t even appear to notice when the action changed from a baseball game to a motorcycle race. All he wanted, Persis thought, was an excuse not to think.

  That was how she herself felt. She’d have liked to play the piano, to drown her anxiety about the brooch in music. But how could she? The moment she touched the keys, her mother would begin screaming down the stairway about her headache, and her father would yell over the roar of the motorcycles, “Why the hell can’t a man have a little peace and quiet in his own home?” She might as well go eat something.

  Alone in the kitchen with a glass of milk and a sandwich cut from last night’s roast beef, Persis sat on a stool at the counter, racking her brain over who had taken the brooch, and how.

  The how was easy enough. Unpinning the brooch from the sofa wouldn’t have taken a second. She hadn’t bothered to fasten the safety clasp when she’d committed her insane prank of stabbing the pin into the upholstery. She couldn’t recall whether she’d left the pin pointing up or down. If that heavy mass of frozen assets had been in a position where it could swivel around, she supposed it would have been dragged out of the cloth by its own weight. If it had fallen on the plushy wall-to-wall carpeting, though, it wouldn’t have made enough noise to be heard and investigated. And fishing it out would have involved either pulling the sofa away from the wall or getting down on the floor and pawing around behind. That would have taken time and almost certainly have attracted notice from some other member of the family. So it had more likely been taken from the spot where she’d put it.

  Yes, but how would the person who took it know it was there? Maybe that wouldn’t have been so hard, either. The living room was roughly thirty feet in length, but not more than eighteen feet wide. The sofa had been the logical place to hide the brooch, if there was any logic connected with this crazy situation, simply because it happened to stand at the far end of the room near the piano. It sat parallel to the wall, but not tight against it because the baseboard heating ran behind.