Jill Churchill - A Groom With a View

“Two of them?"

“No, just one," Jane said curtly, feeling that he might flee if informed that the other vehicle was transporting the body of another employee.

Jane was enormously pleased that there seemed to be no hitches with this stage of preparation. There were three men on the truck. Two immediately got busy hauling in a table to go in the side room where the bridal shower and bachelor party would be held. The tables and chairs for the main room wouldn't arrive until the morning of the wedding because there was nowhere to store them. The third man brought the folding chairs that were placed in the side room where the bridal shower and bachelor party would take place today. The chairs were wooden, painted a rich shade of ivory, and had real fabric seats and backs.

“Good choice, Jane," Shelley said, watching and nodding.

Jane was too weak with relief to reply. One thing, at least, was going right.

The rental people were providing the linens, plates, and silverware for these events as well. Mr. Willis had made the selection of these items,with Jane's approval. The rental company workers would come back and set up the main room the next morning, remain during the wedding ceremony itself, and be ready to whisk the chairs away as soon as the bridal party went outdoors for pictures and set up the buffet table and then hang around somewhere until it was all over and they could take everything away. It was expensive to have them hanging around for so long, but given the available space, there had been no alternative.

“See," Shelley said smugly. "I told you everything was going to work out from here on.”

Mr. Willis appeared at Jane's side, looking considerably less frazzled. "That Uncle Joe person has found me two local women who will come in and replace my help," he said. "But it's going to cost a little more."

“I don't care," Jane said. "Hire them."

“Better and better," Shelley said. "You deserve a break now that everything's back under control. There's somewhere I want you to go with me."

“Where's that?"

“Wanda's Bait and Party Shoppe. I can't miss the chance to see it.”

seven

They sought out Eden to show them the way. "Thank goodness! I'd like to get away from here for a while," she said. "The aunts are driving me bonkers."

“Speaking of the aunts," Jane said. "They were up to something late last night."

“What kind of something?" Eden asked, trying (and failing) to hide her surprise at the state of Jane's terrible old station wagon.

Jane caught the look. "I could afford something better," she said. "I just hate to shop. As for the aunts, I have no idea. I tapped on Iva's door to ask her something and there was a lot of rustling and whispering before she opened it a bare inch."

“A greedy scheme, no doubt," Eden said. "They're always trying to con somebody out of something. It never works. Never. But that doesn't discourage them. They're weird old things. Marguerite must have been quite a number when she was young. My dad says she was a stunningbeauty once, and had whole flocks of suitors. Dad's never admitted it, but I think he might have been one of them. But Iva never married."

“Why is that?" Shelley asked from the backseat of the station wagon as they turned onto the main road.

“I don't think she found one rich enough," Eden said. "That's just a guess though. She anticipated being very wealthy in her own right someday when their father, Oliver Wendell Thatcher, popped off. And she had Marguerite as a bad example."

“Bad example of what?" Jane asked.

“Getting taken to the cleaners by a man. Marguerite fell head over heels for an Englishman my dad always said reminded him of Bertie Wooster without the money. Rowe, his name was. Percival? Lancelot? Tristram? Something classic and silly. He claimed, in a convincingly bumbling way, to be the scion of an ancient British family. Very posh stuff for a snob like Marguerite. So she married him without checking this out thoroughly enough."

“How many of us do that!" Shelley said with a laugh.

“Marguerite should have. It turned out that he was the great-great nephew or second cousin three times removed of an 'honorable,' which I think is the lowest rank of the aristocracy, and that his line of the family had been fishmongers. Or maybe it was eel fishers. Something to do with slimy water creatures. By the time Marguerite fig‑ ured out why he kept dawdling about taking her to see the 'family estate' back in Merry Olde England, he'd spent nearly all her money. Marguerite went to O. W. for more and he said he'd only give her enough to get a divorce. Which she did."

“And she never remarried?" Shelley asked.

“Nope. Once was plenty. Turn right at the next corner, Jane. And Iva has never let poor old Marguerite forget her mistake."

“You said she expected to be rich when O. W. died," Jane said. "She wasn't?"

“Oh, yes. All three of them, Iva, Marguerite, and Jack, inherited a lot. Well, a lot by most people's standards," Eden said. "Take the right-hand fork at the bottom of the hill. But they'd all expected it to be much more. Jack got the company, of course. Iva and Marguerite got some stocks and a couple of pieces of good commercial property in downtown Chicago that's given them both generous incomes. But they were expecting something along the lines of what the Sultan of Brunei might leave. They had an extremely exaggerated idea of what their old daddy was worth."

“Oh! The treasure story!" Jane exclaimed. "I wanted to ask you about it."

“Treasure? Oh, the secret treasure! I'd almost forgotten that," Eden said. "Where did you hear about it?"

“Larkspur. The florist. He mentioned having heard about a treasure at the lodge.”

Eden waved this fantasy away. "There was talk of hidden riches years ago when O. W. died.

Mainly put about by Iva and Marguerite to explain why they weren't fabulously wealthy, I think. Jack never bought the theory, though. He told my dad he'd expected there to be more, too, but thought O. W. had spent all the rest of the money on women. He was quite the old roué. Nearly eighty when he died, I think, and still had two mistresses."

“You're kidding!" Shelley exclaimed.

“Well, they probably weren't technically mistresses anymore," Eden said with a laugh. "One was in her fifties, the other sixty-something. But O. W. had supported them both for decades and Jack, to his credit, continued to pay for their apartments and give them an allowance."

“Does he still?" Jane asked.

Eden shrugged. "I have no idea. I never thought to ask my dad if Jack kept it up. They may not still be living. O. W. died about fifteen years ago and they weren't spring chickens. Anyway, that's probably where the rest of the fortune went. There might have been any number of other women as well who benefitted from old O. W.'s hormonal largesse."

“So there's no treasure?" Shelley asked.

“Oh, I guess there could be," Eden said. "But if there had been, surely somebody would have found it by now. And Jack must have gone through his father's records very closely. It would be tricky to convert very much cash to something secret without having a paper trail. Oh, Jane, turn left here.”

Wanda's Bait and Party Shoppe was something of a disappointment. It was a tiny combination of convenience store, old-fashioned dime store, and sports shop. Everything was dusty and antiquated, including the elderly clerk who they assumed was Wanda herself. Shelley bought a fishing reel for her husband Paul in the belief that it might actually be an antique that he'd get a kick out of.

Jane found a tube of Tangee lipstick. "It's probably dried up into a little orange pebble," she admitted, "but I used to love the stuff. My mother wore it and the smell was wonderful.”