The Turkey Wore Satin Read online

  Chapter Three

  “Guys?” Marty cried. “Help!”

  It grew apparent that nobody could hear him over Tyrone’s introduction and the Mayfair women’s frenzied cheers.

  Marty tried slapping George in the face to revive him, but that didn’t work. He tried shaking the guy, but George’s head snapped back and forth in a way that did not look natural.

  “Help!” Marty called out. “Kristin? Call an ambulance!”

  He hadn’t stopped shaking his new wife’s uncle, and suddenly George’s dead weight tumbled toward him. When the man’s sweaty face landed against Marty’s bare shoulder, that did it. He screamed in a way that was… let’s just say less than manly. Okay, okay: he screamed like a scared little girl. And, in truth, with a man—a definitely dead man, he now realized—collapsed on his shoulder, who could blame him?

  “What is the meaning of this?” Grandma Iris asked in a huff. “Young man, you are ruining the Amazing Annual Mayfair Family Drag Show!”

  “Help!” Marty shouted, since he’d finally managed to grab their attention. “Help, please! I think he’s dead!”

  The magnitude of what was happening only really hit Marty when the family rushed into the marble foyer with a click-clack of heels.

  Kristin pushed to the front of the crowd, and covered her mouth with both hands. “Marty, what happened?”

  “I don’t know!” His Spanx gripped his waistline so tight he could barely breathe. “It must have been a heart attack or something. He just collapsed like this.”

  “Doing the splits?” Kristin’s mother, Angela, asked. “How bizarre. How very truly bizarre.”

  George’s daughters fell at his sides. While they attempted to revive him in a whirlwind of chest punches and face slaps, Marty managed to shuffle toward the stairs.

  The truth was obvious, at least to Marty. Uncle George was dead. No bringing him back.

  The paramedics were called at Brykia’s insistence. Like Marty, the sweet-faced cook couldn’t understand her employer’s desire to leave George’s body in the foyer while they proceeded with their drag show. A death in the family should to take precedence over a stage performance. It would in any other household.

  The Mayfairs were very strange people.

  * * * *

  Two paramedics in dark blue uniforms arrived on the scene at their leisure. When they entered the foyer of glitz and glam, one asked the other, “What the heck have we walked in on?”

  Grandma Iris told them, “We were preparing for our annual drag show, and I dare say it would have gone off without a hitch if my wretched son-in-law didn’t have the audacity to drop dead!”

  The paramedics exchanged a dubious glance before checking for a pulse. The professionals agreed good old Uncle George was damaged beyond repair.

  “But you called this in as a heart attack,” said the short, shapely paramedic with the ponytail. “Doesn’t look like a heart attack to me. See this mark here?”

  The whole family crept closer to investigate the red spot on George’s arm.

  “Whatever is it?” Grandma Iris asked, clutching a lace hanky just beneath her lips. “Don’t tell me he was killed by a pimple!”

  “Not a pimple,” said the other paramedic, who looked like a male Whoopie Goldberg. “Spider bite. Black widow, I’d say. Not that I’m an expert or anything, but I did minor in entomology back in college.”

  The ponytail paramedic perked up. “Hey, me too! Small world.”

  “Yes, yes, you two should get married some time,” Cousin Beth snapped. “But before for you start planning the honeymoon, would you kindly explain how a black widow spider crawled all the way to our little corner of the planet and ended up on my father’s arm?”

  It was Beth’s mother, Kristin’s Aunt Cynthia, who answered that question. “I’ve heard news reports about dangerous spiders travelling here in bunches of grapes. By the time they end up in somebody’s kitchen, they’re so riled up they bite the first person they see!”

  “Oh, so now you’re an entomologist too?” Beth said to her mother—which, actually, struck Marty as a pretty rude way to talk to someone whose husband had just dropped dead.

  Kristin’s father jumped in to say, “No, no, Cynthia’s right. We did have grapes earlier. Remember, guys? They were part of the cheese platter.”

  “And George had his own dish,” Jonnie added. “Brykia wrapped it up for him—grapes that hadn’t touched cheese.”

  “Because of his lactose intolerance,” Tyrone said. With his hip popped and his knee bent, he looked exactly like Tina. Marty did so many double takes he thought he’d get whiplash.

  “But I washed the grapes!” Brykia cried.

  Marty jumped because he hadn’t realized she was standing so close to him. In those rubber-soled shoes, the cook could sneak around like a ghost.

  “I washed them, Madame Iris, I swear.” Poor Brykia probably thought her job was in danger, and she was probably right, knowing what these Mayfairs were like. Brykia pleaded, “No spiders in the grapes. Everything was clean.”

  “Well, perhaps your clean and my clean are different cleans altogether,” Grandma Iris replied.

  “It doesn’t matter where the spider came from,” said Cousin Georgette. “Spider bites don’t kill people. Daddy must have died of something else!”

  “Oh, now you’re an entomologist too?” Cousin Beth scoffed.

  Georgette looked to the paramedics for answers. “Do spiders really kill people?”

  “Not usually,” both paramedics said at once. They blushed and both said, “You go,” “No, you go,” and then they laughed and blushed some more.

  When her giggles died down, the ponytail paramedic said, “Death from spider bites are unusual unless the patient is quite old or quite young, or if their immune system is compromised in some way.”

  “Or,” said the male Whoopie, “if the person doesn’t seek immediate medical attention. He would have felt incredibly ill before he died.”

  Marty spoke up: “Yes, he was. I saw him. He was sweating like a pig!”

  Male Whoopi asked, “What could have been so important that he’d risk his life by not going to the hospital?”

  Tyrone looked at Jonnie, who looked at Jack, who flicked his long black hair behind his shoulders. “He’d never lost the drag competition.”

  The paramedics exchanged doubtful glances.

  “It’s a coveted title,” Jack told them.

  “Coveted enough to die for?” the paramedics asked, both at once. They quickly turned to each other and laughed. “Jinx! Buy me a Coke.”

  “You don’t seem to be taking my uncle’s death very seriously,” Kristin said as she crossed the foyer to hold hands with her bereaved cousins.

  “Well, there’s nothing we can do to bring him back,” said Ponytail Paramedic. “But, hey, I just got an idea!”

  “I bet I know what it is,” Male Whoopie replied.

  They gazed deeply into each other’s eyes like a couple of lovebirds.

  Ponytail Paramedic said, “Guess. I bet you’ll get it.”

  “I know I will. I can read your mind.”

  “Oh really?” Ponytail Paramedic’s voice turned sultry and seductive when she said, “Well, then, tell me what I’m thinking right now.”

  Cousin Georgette rolled her eyes and said, “Ugh, get a room!”

  Cousin Beth said, “No, first tell us what you were thinking.”

  “Oh.” Male Whoopie turned away from Ponytail Paramedic just long enough to say, “We should call Professor Turquay to see if he can identify that bite. He knows everything there is to know about spiders

  “Especially poisonous ones,” Ponytail added.

  “No,” Aunt Cynthia cut in. Her voice sounded strangely hard and unemotional, considering her husband had just died. “No, that won’t be necessary, thank you. Just take George away, to the morgue or wherever it is dead bodies go. Please.”

  The ponytailed paramedic took one step closer to the body, an
d cocked her head at Cynthia. “But Professor Turquay is a leading expert in sexual cannibalism.”

  “In what?” Kristin’s mother cried.

  “I should ask you to watch your language!” Grandma Iris added. “This is a respectable house.”

  “Black Widows are renowned for killing their mates,” Whoopie explained. “The professor will be able to tell us if we’re right about that bite, if it really was a Black Widow.”

  “No,” Cynthia said sternly. Her hands formed fists at her sides. “This is all getting quite out of hand. Now take him away. Go!”

  “It really is rather morbid,” her daughter Georgette agreed. “Strange, though—Turquay. That name rings a bell.”

  “You’re just hungry, dear,” Grandma Iris consoled her granddaughter. “Come, let’s return to the Great Room while these public servants clear the foyer of corpses.”

  Chapter Four

  Beth and Georgette threw back their heads and wailed while Kristin escorted them from their father’s bloated body. Everyone shadowed the young women, with Marty bringing up the rear. He followed the click-clack of high heels while Brykia trailed softly behind him.

  “How are you holding up?” he asked her, since the Mayfairs’ staff were usually easier to relate to than the Mayfairs themselves.

  Brykia pouted, “My turkey will be black by the time this is over!”

  While the paramedics clumsily attempted to un-split George’s legs, Marty stared down at the man’s sequined heels. That’s when he remembered the noise he’d heard from the kitchen earlier on, when he’d swiftly escaped the dressing room.

  Heels! He’d heard heels in the kitchen!

  And that was just before Brykia brought up the cheese platter and George’s guilty grapes. It hadn’t been Brykia—she wore soft soles. So who was it?

  Marty was getting a weird feeling about all this.

  When he’d reached the Great Room, something came over him. He ran to the stage, grabbed Tyrone’s microphone from its holder, and said, “I don’t want to ruin Thanksgiving, but I think George was murdered!”

  The family gasped. “Murdered? No! Never!”

  Well, to be accurate, everyone but the Mayfair Matriarch gasped. Grandma Iris just sat there like a queen, looking all around with a quaint smile on her face.

  From what Marty had heard on the family grapevine, Grandma Iris stood accused of slaughtering her share of husbands. But money erases all sins in these parts, and if there was one thing the Mayfairs had it was money.

  “Marty, sit down!” Kristin shouted. “You’re embarrassing yourself.”

  “No I’m not,” Marty said as he tugged his vintage Madonna wedgie out of his butt crack. “There’s something fishy going on here, and I don’t want it swept under the rug.”

  “Hey, you weren’t so keen to hit the stage,” Jack piped up. With a cantankerous chuckle, Marty’s father-in-law said, “Maybe you killed George so you wouldn’t have to perform in the drag show. What’s your alibi, kid?”

  “Alibi for what?” Kristin’s mother asked. “You heard the Ambulanciers. It was a spider bite, not a shot through the heart.”

  “Maybe it was a spider bite,” Marty agreed, “but how, exactly, did a deadly spider get into George’s grapes?”

  Aunt Cynthia shook her head. “Weren’t you listening? It’s been all over the news: Black Widows get shipped north in bundles of grapes.”

  “But Brykia washed the grapes.”

  “And she did a bang-up job of it,” Grandma Iris said, before issuing a dry Katherine Hepburn cackle.

  Brykia brought out her rosary, pleading in silence as she joined Marty on the makeshift stage. He needed to convince the family she wasn’t guilty, not even of being a bad grape-washer. The last thing he wanted was for Brykia to land the blame of Uncle George’s death.

  “Look,” Marty said. “I saw George brush something off his arm when he was eating those grapes. I’m sure a spider did bite him, but I also suspect that spider was planted there… to kill him!”

  The family gasped, and the grieving daughters sobbed on Kristin’s shoulders.

  “Brykia,” Marty asked, “George’s dish was covered in plastic wrap when you gave it to him. Why?”

  The poor woman looked up from her beads, her eyes wide with alarm. She shook her head. “I don’t know. I did not cover it. I…I…” Brykia burst into tears, hollering, “I did not kill him! I swear!”

  “I know you didn’t,” Marty said, wrapping one arm around her.

  “Ouch!” Brykia cried, pulling away from Marty’s cone-bra. “Your bosoms are sharp enough to kill a man.”

  “Yeah,” Jack said. “You were with George when he died, Marty. I’m still not convinced it wasn’t you who did the dirty deed.”

  Marty was getting antsy in a He-Who-Smelt-It-Dealt-It sort of way. “I’m not the killer.”

  “Baby, we know. You wouldn’t hurt a fly.” Tyrone stood dramatically. In a classic j’accuse pose, he pointed at the man dressed as Cher. “You killed George, didn’t you Jack?”

  “I hardly think so,” Jack said, brushing his long dark wig over both shoulders.

  Jonnie picked that one up and ran with it. “Jack, you’re the only one here with a motive. George was all twisted up about that business deal gone bad. He threatened to launch a class action suit after Thanksgiving.”

  “What happened?” Georgette asked Beth.

  “Daddy lost money?” Beth asked Georgette.

  “Girl, your daddy lost a buttload of cash,” Tyrone answered. “And it was all Jack’s fault. Jack has got to be the killer.”

  “I didn’t kill anyone, you little puke! Jonnie, rein in your husband.”

  Jonnie waved a hand in the air. “Honey, I have triiied…”

  “Marty, you were there when George threatened me,” Jack called across the room. “Where would I have gotten a poisonous spider between then and the time Brykia handed him those grapes? I never even left the room!”

  “That’s right,” Kristin’s mom said, holding hands with her Cher-look-alike husband. “If anyone killed George, it was probably Tyrone.”

  “Oh, sure! Blame the black man! Real original, Angela.”

  Kristin’s mother rolled her eyes dismissively, which pretty much said it all.

  “I think what my wife is trying to say,” Jack picked up, “is that George always took home your coveted Best in Show title.”

  Angela nodded decisively. “You’d have run over your own mother with a dump truck to get your hands on that prize.”

  Tyrone stamped his heel on the ground. “What’d you say about my mama?”

  “My floors!” Grandma Iris cried. “How dare you!”

  “I’m sorry, Granny, but you heard your daughter disrespecting my mama.”

  Iris turned decisively and said, “Angela, apologize to Tyrone.”

  “Mother, we’re not children!”

  “Angela!” she growled.

  Lowering her gaze, Kristin’s mother grunted, “I’m sorry, Tyrone.”

  He flicked his wig and shrugged. “Yeah, well, you really think I’m gonna kill my brother-in-law over some stupid drag contest?”

  Grandma Iris’s eyes flashed. She pounded her cane on her precious hardwood floor, then hoisted herself up. “The drag show is not stupid, Tyrone! It is a Mayfair family tradition! Now if you young people are quite done yammering, on with it! On with the show!”

  “Grandma!” Georgette cried. “Daddy just died! They’re not going to prance around the stage like a bunch of goofs.”

  “A bunch of goofs?” Iris replied. “No granddaughter of mine will refer to our men in skirts as a bunch of goofs!”

  “Daddy died,” Beth cut in. “The paramedics say a spider bite, Marty thinks it’s murder. A stupid drag show should not be your top priority, Grandma, and I don’t care if you cut me out of the will for saying so!”

  “Insolent child,” Iris grumbled.

  “Crazy old lady,” Beth shot back. “Somebody in this room p
robably killed my dad and you’re hiding your head in the sand!”

  Grandma Iris scoffed, “Nobody killed anybody, silly girl!”

  With the tension coming to a head between grandmother and granddaughter, Marty lifted the microphone to his lips and said, “I witnessed it! I’m a witness!”

  Chapter Five

  The Mayfair family fell silent as Marty’s voice echoed through the speakers.

  “A witness?” Kristin asked. “A witness of what? What did you see, Marty?”

  “Well, it’s not so much what I saw,” Marty replied, feeling less sure of himself now that all eyes were on him. “It’s more like what I heard. I left the dressing room just before Brykia brought the grapes upstairs.”

  “Yeah, why did you leave?” Jack asked.

  “To get away from you!” Marty wanted to say, but he was on thin ice already. What he actually said was, “I got nervous. Nervous-hungry, like when your stomach fills with acid and you need to eat some bread. So I went to grab something to eat, except I heard a noise in the kitchen: high heels.”

  “High heels?” Cynthia asked. “Well, so what? If you didn’t actually see anything, you’re not much of a witness.”

  Marty explained to the family, “I think whoever was clacking around the kitchen planted that spider in Uncle George’s grapes. We’re all wearing high heels—well, everyone except Brykia—so it could have been any one of us!”

  “Could have been you,” Jack shot back.

  “Yeah, that’s what I’m saying,” Marty agreed. “I mean, it wasn’t me, but it could have been.”

  “Well, it wasn’t any of us men,” Tyrone said, in a resonantly low tone of voice. “None of us left the holding room. We can all vouch for each other.”

  “Everyone but you,” Jack heckled. “You’re the only one who left the dressing room, Marty-Boy.”

  Marty swallowed hard. His heart thundered in his ears and his cone bra dug into his chest. He had no way of defending himself, except to say that he didn’t do it and ask, “What about the women? You were all together down here, waiting for the show to start. Someone must have left the room at some point.”