Karlson and his mother were early for our 2 p.m. gathering, but they could be forgiven because Karlson's mother, Lina, brought cannoli. Cannoli she'd finished that very morning. For his part, Odin produced a bottle of wine and handed it to me.
"It's white," he said. Then he smirked.
I looked at him. His robin's egg blue silk shirt was perfect with his navy blue dress pants. I smiled and said, "Damn. This time I'll have to go for the cranberry relish." There were no cranberries on the menu. I made it up to mess with him.
He turned quickly to my mother, who smiled benignly and shook her head.
"Sucker," I said under my breath. I took the wine into the dining room as my mother and the Swede handled introductions, hung coats, stowed purses, and generally made the guests feel comfortable.
As expected, my mother took Karlson's arm while the Swede escorted Lina. They waltzed into the dining room two by two leaving me, as always, odd woman out. But dinner did get better from there.
Nobody mentioned the murder, the investigation, or the Swede's midnight snooping with the dog. To be fair, I hadn't admitted that last bit to Odin. I couldn't bear the humiliation.
At first, the Swede and Odin talked sports while my mother and Lina exchanged girl compliments about the decorating and the food. I seemed to be watching them like a witness to an accident. Something was going to happen. I didn't know how. I didn't know when. But like Mickey, I could smell it in the air. My senses were reaching out like fingers to feel the first spark.
Then my mother went to work on Lina and found that she had gone back to college to study English. Which, by the way, she'd been speaking with a perfect Midwestern accent all along. Maybe Karlson was right about the many faces of mama.
"Paulette's an English major, too," my mother said. That had been the goal of the whole conversation. To get me involved.
"Really?" Lina said. "I thought she'd studied film. She has such a fluid knowledge of the cinema."
Karlson's mother turned to me and flashed me the family's million-watt smile. Today, her muumuu was powder blue with tiny sprigs of yellow flowers. You'd never guess that a sleek little shark lived inside all that flesh. Fluid knowledge of the cinema, my ass.
"Actually, it was the film festivals," I said.
"Film festivals?" my mother said.
I smiled as big and as brightly as Odin's mama herself. "The English Club used to host Five Handkerchief Film Festivals, Lina. I went to every one."
"And your favorite?" Lina asked.
"Toss up," I said. "I'd have to go for a tie between An Affair to Remember and a British import, Truly, Madly, Deeply."
Lina grinned. "Alan Rickman," she said.
"Bingo," I said.
My mother stared at the two of us as if she'd just discovered that we each had two tongues. I never talked movies at Chez Swede. Mom and the Swede preferred docile books to raucous teenaged crowds. I didn't even know if my mother owned a DVD player, let alone a blu-ray.
"It's out on video," Lina said, "but I'm waiting for the director's cut."
"Excellent," I said. "Any idea what the extras are?"
We chatted through the rest of dinner about movies and actors and scripts. My mother added comments here and there, but the real action was between Lina and me. We liked the same directors, similar films, and disparate scripts.
Besides tear-jerkers, Lina and I shared a taste for the Hong Kong films of Jackie Chan with scatter-gun Kung Fu and copious bullets. For a second time, my mother gave me a look that suggested my tail was showing, only I didn't have a tail. Maybe this year's Christmas gift to Mom would be a blu-ray player.
We all agreed to take a stretch break before dessert, but almost immediately the two mothers were in the kitchen cleaning up, and the Swede was taking Otto for the evening version of his walk.
That left Odin and me in the dining room. We each got up to walk around the table and ended up running into each other at the head. My mother hadn't moved the bottle of wine from the table when she'd taken the plates, so Odin picked it up.
"I'll top you off," he offered.
I went to get my glass and held it out to him.
"You're a brave man, Lieutenant," I said.
He didn't smile, but he poured another inch of liquid into my stemmed glass. Then he refilled his own. He raised his glass. "What shall we drink to?"
"Do we have anything to toast?" I said.
He nodded. "I like your parents," he said. "Let's drink to them."
I shook my head. "They're not both my parents, Karl," I said. "Let's drink to your mother."
Karl's brow furrowed and he began to frown. He put down his glass and stood two chairs away from me. "What, you're adopted?"
I sighed because I really didn't want to be discussing this. For one thing, my family was none of Odin's business. "He's not my father," I said.
I sat down in the nearest chair and placed my glass in front of me.
Odin moved over to stand one chair closer. "Okay," he said, "he's your stepfather."
"No," I said, "he's my mother's husband."
"Exactly," he said. "Your mother's husband is your stepfather."
He sat down still with one chair between us.
"My mother's husband is her husband, Karl. He's nothing to me."
Karl shook his head, got up abruptly, and walked to the mirror behind me. I could hear him tapping his fingers against the glass.
"The scissors didn't kill Deborah Alston," he said.
I twisted around in my chair to look at him. His back was toward me.
"Okay," I said. "She died of fright."
Karl glanced at me. He wasn't frowning now, but he looked stiff somehow, hard. He shifted back to the mirror.
"The fall killed her, Paulette. The scissors were afterward."
"She's still dead."
"Yes, but she'd also had sex before death—with a condom."
"And this would make her less dead?"
Karl turned on me then and glared. "So smug," he said, "so distant, so aloof. Is it fun being superior, Paulette?" He took a step closer. "'He's nothing to me,'" he said in an ugly falsetto.
Then he returned to his arrogant nonchalance. "So, Paulette Goddard is merely a loner, an island, an unfeeling freak who finds dead bodies for fun."
Although I faced Lieutenant Asshole, I looked over my shoulder to locate my wine. I could reach the glass if I moved my left hand back a little. My hand was a few inches off the table and angled toward Odin's head when he caught me.
In the split second it had taken me to find the glass and raise it, Odin took a step forward and grabbed my wrist. He leaned toward me while forcing my hand with the glass back down to the table. He had me pinned.
"Not this time," he said. His lips were inches from my face. I pushed up and forward as hard as I could, but the muscles in his arms merely tightened.
He leaned over me, nose to nose. I gazed directly into his eyes, and only then did I feel his breath on my face and the touch of his skin on my skin. We were touching, something we'd never done before. Always there had been something between us—cloth, air, words—but now there was only his breathing and the quickening pace of my heart.
We stood motionless, tensed against each other, until his telephone rang. Then he released my hands, took a step back, and answered the tiny cell phone in his pocket.
"There's been a fire," he told me.
***
If you like what you're reading, visit my blog at:
http://www.heatherzhutchinswrites.com