“Vero!”
Her laughter died, the last few chortles bubbling out of her as she struggled to contain them while I shushed her.
I tipped an ear to the window, but I couldn’t make out any of the conversation happening inside. I could see all the women, except for a few whose backs were to the window. I recognized most of them from the last book club meeting. One of the women definitely hadn’t been there the previous Saturday, but she still seemed vaguely familiar to me. I didn’t know her name, but I was fairly certain I’d seen herwalking her dog in my neighborhood. This must be the new member Mrs. Haggerty had signaled with her flashlight—the one whose note I had intercepted a few nights ago about joining the club.
The woman’s face was red and puffy. She sat in the center of the sofa, holding a wad of tissues. The women on either side of her rubbed her back and patted her shoulders, doting on her as she dabbed her eyes.
The woman who’d been wearing the Hello Kitty scrubs last week gave their newest member a pale blue gift bag with a shiny paw print embossed on the side. I couldn’t see what was in it, but the contents of the bag were heavy enough to strain the decorative paper. Viola passed her a mahogany keepsake box, topped with a red bow. Someone else handed the woman an envelope with a logo on the front. Her eyes welled with fresh tears as she peeked at the certificate inside.
The woman looked up at her new friends and smiled, her lips trembling as she thanked them, overwhelmed with gratitude.
I relayed everything to Vero as it was happening.
“That’s some welcome party,” she said, crunching on a chip. “I don’t remember you giving me any presents when you invited me to move in with you.”
“I didn’t invite you. You invited yourself. And you charged me forty percent of my income,” I reminded her.
“I should have held out for forty-five.”
A fourth and final gift was placed in the woman’s hands. She untied the ribbon and peeled back the tissue paper, revealing a paperback book. She held it to her chest. The women clapped and called out congratulations, and someone declared it time for a toast.
One of the guests got up and poured wine into plastic cups.Another went to the kitchen, returning a moment later with a charcuterie board in one hand and Mrs. Haggerty’s platter of desserts in the other. She set the food on the coffee table and the women attacked the snacks like circling hyenas.
“I see the brownies! I’m going in,” I told Vero.
“Finlay, don’t—!”
I shoved my phone in my pocket and sprinted to the front of the house. I jabbed at the buzzer and pounded on the door. The laughter abruptly died. Footsteps shuffled inside. After a prolonged silence, the door cracked open.
“Hi! So sorry to interrupt.” I smiled brightly and shouldered my way into the house. The women turned to gawk at me as I rushed into the living room. “I know your meeting just started, but I was waiting in the car, and I got hungry. I hope you don’t mind if I just help myself to some of your… Oh, would you look at that! Brownies.”
I hurried to the table, picking the brownies off the plate and stuffing them into my coat pockets. When my pockets couldn’t hold any more, I scooped the rest into the front of my sweater. I stole a brownie from one woman’s hand as she held it halfway to her mouth. “Thank you, that looks delicious! I’ll just take these back to the car so I don’t disrupt your meeting. Before I go, may I use your restroom?” I turned eagerly to the host, planning to lock myself inside her bathroom and flush the drugs down her toilet.
She pointed at a closed door with a dumbfounded expression. “Someone is using it. There’s another upstairs.”
“Great!” I held the front of my sweater closed as I start toward the steps.
“Not so fast!” Mrs. Haggerty called behind me. She turned me around sharply by my elbow. She held the empty cookie platebetween us with the same uncompromising look she’d worn when she’d made Zach surrender the thick, black Sharpie he’d stolen off the kitchen counter that morning.
“Mrs. Haggerty,” I said, dipping my head close to hers, “I really don’t think I should give these back to you. It would be a very bad idea. They’re not what you—”
“I know what they are,” she snapped. “And I know you didn’t bake them.”
“You do?”
“Of course I do. Who do you think gave Stacey the recipe? If I’d thoughtyou’dmade the brownies, I wouldn’t have brought any. Now give those back.” She thrust the plate at me, looking impatient. “Youcan’t have any. You’re driving.”
With a contrite smile (and more than a little shock), I lowered the hem of my sweater, releasing a cascade of brownies.
“Right, sorry,” I said, dusting the crumbs back onto the plate. “I’ll just be going, then.”
The weepy woman with the tissues shot to her feet, pale and shaken. “I should go, too. Robert doesn’t know I’m gone. He’ll be angry if I’m not back by the time he gets home.” She scooped up the envelope with the logo on it and stuffed it inside her coat. Her hands shook as she tucked her book under her arm. She picked the gift bag up in one hand and juggled the mahogany box in the other, struggling to carry it all as she hurried to the door. She averted her eyes as she raced past me.
“Your book,” I said as it slipped from her arm. I bent to pick it up. She scurried to retrieve it, but my fingers held stubbornly to the cover. It was a brand-new copy ofThe Tuesday Club Murdersby Agatha Christie—the same collection of Miss Marple storiesI had seen in Penny’s and Mrs. Haggerty’s houses. I stared at it, open-mouthed.
She jerked it from my hands and ran out the door.
I excused myself from Mrs. Haggerty’s book club meeting to wait for her in the car. The longer I waited, the more I regretted not using the bathroom while I had the chance. I hoped the woman who had been locked inside it the whole time I was there wasn’t having some horrible reaction to the brownies.
