Point taken. “Yeah, yeah.”
“We can’t stay long,” my daddy said. “I’ve got to open the Little Shop of Potions and your mama has three weddings lined up for this afternoon.”
My mama owned the Without A Hitch wedding chapel, one of the most popular chapels in town. It was a bit ironic to me that as an officiator she’d wed hundreds if not thousands of couples . . . yet she steadfastly refused to walk down the aisle with my father. They’d been engaged for more than thirty years, which might just be the longest engagement in history.
She was a die-hard marriagephobe (all the Fowl women were), and Daddy was a hopeless romantic. Despite the oddity of the relationship, theirs was a match made in heaven, and they truly loved each other.
“Now tell me where you found all this,” Mama requested, pointing specifically at the family tree.
Crouching, I scratched Roly’s and Poly’s heads. They were sitting at my daddy’s feet, no doubt hoping bacon would fall from the sky like manna from heaven. “Haywood showed me this morning.”
Mama blinked her beautiful brown eyes. “Shut the front door.”
Letting out a gusty breath, Daddy turned the bacon strips so they wouldn’t burn, and said, “How did his ghost find you?”
I grabbed some plates from the cabinet and told them the whole story.
“In light of this ghostly revelation, I suppose I forgive you for running out of the ball last night the way you did,” Mama said. “Besides, there’s no way the Harpies will hold your behavior against your daddy if you’re helping to get Patricia out of jail.”
Speaking of ghosts, on my way home from Mr. Dunwoody’s I’d suggested to Virgil that he search the river walk for any sign of Louella and meet up with me later. Seeing him mope around wasn’t doing either of us any good. Haywood hadn’t yet returned, either, so I was ghost-free for the time being.
Bliss.
“I don’t like you being involved in this investigation,” Daddy said, slipping tiny bits of bacon to the cats.
I was glad Dr. Gabriel wasn’t around to witness Poly pounce on the bacon like he was starving to death.
“You should be home,” Daddy went on, “hibernating just as planned. Patricia sitting in a jail cell isn’t going to hurt her none. Serves her right in fact for her reprehensible behavior toward you all these years. I recall she used to be a lovely woman. It’s a damn shame she has turned into an angry biddy.”
“Now, now, Gus,” my mama said, her color high. “Don’t be making such statements. Without Patricia’s say-so you’re not getting into the Harpies. We need her on our side, and you know she’s not guilty.”
Mama was clearly undeterred in her efforts to see my daddy on the Harpies committee. “You don’t think Patricia killed Haywood?” I asked her.
“Patricia’s mean as a snake, but she isn’t violent,” Mama said, continuing to thumb through Haywood’s papers.
“Rona, sugar, Patricia won’t have a say-so from a jail cell,” Daddy pointed out, all calm and rational. “In addition, with Patricia in jail Carly and Dylan won’t have to deal with her interference anymore.”
Mama suddenly beamed. “Oh! And your chances of landing a spot on the Harpies committee is even better if there are two vacancies. I’ll put together a luncheon for later this week. Invite the remaining Harpies, their husbands. Make a whole to-do about it.”
“That backfired on you, didn’t it?” I poked my father with my elbow.
Frowning, he poured waffle batter into the iron and didn’t say anything else.
Taking pity on him, I said, “I don’t know if Daddy will have time to be campaigning for the Harpies this week, what with him covering for me at the shop. Plus, I need his help with Haywood’s paperwork. My eyes crossed trying to go through all of it. Census forms, employment records, tax notices . . .” I shrugged. “It gives me a headache.”
“Sounds right up my alley,” he said, a mite too eager. “What are you looking for specifically?”
I set out silverware. “A connection between Haywood’s mama, Retta Lee, and Rupert Ezekiel, the last known owner of the Ezekiel mansion. There was a twenty-plus-year age difference between the two and it doesn’t seem like a natural pairing. Besides, how do we even know Haywood is the true heir? All we have is this lone family tree telling us so. I’d like more evidence.”
Mama eyed us suspiciously. “Fine. I’ll reschedule the luncheon for the following week.”
Daddy rolled his eyes.
A moment later, we all looked up as someone tapped on the back door, then swung it open. Limping, Delia came inside, cape hanging askew over her shoulder.
She wasn’t alone.
Jenny Jane Booth was floating right behind her.
“Crrlyyyy,” Delia slurred breathlessly, clearly frustrated. “I neeurelp.”
Chapter Ten
I wasn’t sure how I’d managed to decipher what she said, but I did.