“Wait, what?”
“I know, ridiculous. But she’s eighty-three and harmless, so I’m letting her have her delusion.” Mom’s already wheeling away. “Besides, she keeps slipping me fifty-dollar bills to hold him, so really, who’s winning here?”
“Mom, I don’t think you should be charging people to?—”
Too late. She’s gone, cooing at the twins like they’re the greatest thing since sliced bread and also a lucrative side business.
Theyarethe greatest thing since sliced bread. But they’re not a rental service. Although at three in the morning it might be tempting, and perhaps a good case for abstinence.
The sock hop rages around me as I hold three platters of cookies, with no babies to hide behind.
Carlotta gives me a nudge. “Look alive and all that jive, Lot. Suspects at three o’clock.”
I quickly park the cookie platters on the dessert table and follow her gaze.
Midge Thornbury is near the soda fountain, naturally, holding court with a cluster of admirers. She’s wearing a butter yellow dress with a full skirt and a matching headscarf, looking like she just stepped off the set of a wholesome family sitcom.Her smile is bright, her laugh is musical, and she’s handing out plates of—you guessed it—banana pudding as if it were the cure to every ailment.
I also spot Dolly Hatchett at one of the café tables, nervously adjusting her cat-eye glasses and smoothing her floral dress. She looks like she’d rather be anywhere else, and I don’t blame her. Being publicly humiliated by a murder victim and then showing up to a dance hosted by her organization takes guts.
And there, near the back corner by the windows, stands Gigi Wentworth-Crane.
She looks elegant, composed, and untouchable in an ice blue sheath dress, pearls, and her auburn and silver hair swept into a perfect French twist. She’s chatting with two other women, her posture is impeccable, and her expression is serene.
She looks like someone who’s never had a bad hair day or a guilty conscience in her life.
Which makes her either innocent or an extremely good actress.
“Target acquired,” Carlotta murmurs.
“Don’t say it like that. We’re not assassins.”
“Speak for yourself.”
I’m about to reply when a woman’s voice cuts through the music.
“Well, well, well. If it isn’t Carlotta Sawyer.”
Carlotta stiffens. “Oh, heck no.”
I turn around to see Francine Dundee marching toward us, and I hardly recognize her.
Normally, Francine is plain as a pancake—the sort of woman who wears prairie dresses in muted florals year-round, and her hair so long it makes you question whether scissors have ever touched it.
I know Francine. Everyone in Honey Hollow knows Francine. She and her husband Mark run Dundee Diddles and Whittles, a wood-carving business that produces analarming number of novelty birdhouses. I’ve met at least six of her daughters—Mabel, Melody, Margaret, Miriam, Magnolia, and Marigold. She’s got seventeen children in total, and all of their names start with an M to match her husband Mark, and every single one of her daughters dresses exactly like her—long hair, longer skirts, and the haunted expression of women who’ve given up on personal identity, vanity, and perhaps fun entirely.
The grandchildren? Also, all M names. Apparently, the Dundee family tree is less a tree and more a very committed branding exercise.
But today? Today, Francine Dundee is a whole new woman—one who is fully embracing the quirky decadence of the 1950s.
She’s donned a pale green dress with a cinched waist and a full skirt covered in tiny white daisies. It’s actually flattering. Her hair—normally a waist-length curtain of gray-streaked brown—is twisted into one massive bun at the nape of her neck, secured with approximately forty bobby pins. She’s even wearing lipstick, a warm peachy pink. It’s unsettling but looks amazing on her.
She looks fantastic.
Mark Dundee is going to notice.
And historically speaking, when Mark Dundee notices things, another Dundee baby tends to appear nine months later.
“Francine,” Carlotta says flatly. “I thought you’d died, and I just hadn’t gotten the invitation to the funeral.”
