“Oh, I see your mother! I simply must give her the first taste!” She takes off like a bullet with her heels clicking across the patio stones like gunshots.
Mom, much to my chagrin, looks delighted. “Midge! I’m so glad you brought your famous banana pudding. I’ve been havingsome serious cravings for this stuff. I’m like a junkie, and you’re my supplier!” Both women dissolve into cackles.
I frown as she takes a cup and digs in with the enthusiasm of someone who apparently forgot I exist and also happens to make banana pudding.
But before I can get a single feeling in a frenzy, before I can formulate a response that doesn’t involve weaponized pastry, Francine Dundee appears.
She’s dressed to the fifties-style nines—pale green dress with white daisies, her massive bun somehow even more massive than the other day and secured with enough bobby pins to set off a metal detector.
“Well, well, well,” she says, zeroing in on Carlotta. “If it isn’t Honey Hollow’s resident troublemaker.”
“Did that lipstick do the trick?” Carlotta barks at the woman. “When is baby eighteen due? I’m guessing January!”
Francine glowers at her. “Still hoping to steal that Golden Whisk from under my nose?”
Carlotta smiles sweetly. “Francinie wienie, I wouldn’t dream of stealing something you were never going to win in the first place.”
Francine’s eye twitches. “I have seventeen children and thirty-two grandchildren who would beg to differ.”
Carlotta tilts her head. “Seventeen children and not one of them had the courage to tell you that casserole was a cry for help.”
I suck in a quick breath. “Did you bring your famous mac and crack?”
Francine nods, and that bun of hers does a precarious wobble. “You bet your honey buns I did.” She turns to Carlotta and narrows her eyes. “And just for the record, no one is taking that Golden Whisk away from me today.”
“Says you!” Suze appears, balancing a tray of my banana pudding cups with the confidence of someonewho knows she’s already won. And oddly, that entire tray is still filled to capacity. It’s as if no one is interested in my poor banana pudding. I really need to find out what Midge is putting in hers to make it so addictive. “That Golden Whisk is mine, ladies,” Suze is quick to set the catty record straight. “I can feel it.”
She sweeps past, and Francine looks like she’s been personally victimized by my dessert.
I’m about to join my sisters, desperately in need of sane human interaction, when I spot her.
Dolly Hatchett.
She’s standing alone near the edge of the garden, clutching a glass of lemonade like it’s a life preserver, her red bouffant catching the sunlight. She’s wearing a floral dress that’s trying very hard to be cheerful, but her expression suggests she’d rather be anywhere else.
She’s all alone and very much isolated. And looking exactly like someone who’s either innocent and traumatized or guilty and spiraling.
Time to find out which.
Because somewhere in this garden full of pearls, pastels, and banana pudding, there’s a killer hiding behind a perfect smile, and I’m about to have a very friendly, very pointed conversation with the woman who might just be her.
LOTTIE
Mother’s Day at my mother’s B&B looks like a vintage postcard come to life—if the magazine specialized in vintage dresses, unresolved grudges, and the occasional ghost.
Francine Dundee is laughing a touch too loud near the punch bowl. Midge Thornbury is holding court by the buffet, smiling like a woman who never once imagined what life might be like if she didn’t win a banana pudding championship.
Gigi Wentworth-Crane glides through the crowd in a pale blue vintage number, looking every inch the polished matriarch she is.
And Dolly Hatchett?
She’s sitting alone at a tiny wrought-iron table near the edge of the garden with her hands clasped around a glass of lemonade, staring at absolutely nothing.
Bingo.
“Target acquired,” Percy murmurs from my shoulder, his feathery tail brushing my cheek. “Suspect number… I’ve lost count. But she’s my favorite so far. Tragic posture, but she has excellent potential for melodrama. The marshmallows are in the yams with this one.”
As if there’s another way to eat yams.
