Free The Main Corpse by Diane Mott Davidson

was followed the dull roar of Tom s Chrysler. I looked out the rolling room window and saw the dark blue car move slowly past. In the backseat, Arch and Jake pressed their noses against the rain-smeared window. Both looked gleeful.
     
     
5
     
     
When I returned from the first service at St. Luke's Episcopal Church and a quick visit to the grocery store to pick up supplies for the Aspen Meadow Women's Club dinner, I found Macguire Perkins sitting on my doorstep. Rain still washed across my waterlogged front yard and ran in rivulets down the sidewalk. Yet Macguire wore no rain gear, and his hair was as sopping as his sweatshirt and torn blue jeans.
     
     
"Macguire," I said impatiently, "why don't you put on..." Oh, forget it, I thought. It was hard enough trying to be mom to one kid who did his best to ignore me. I unlocked the door and disarmed the security system - needed protection against the Jerk's periodic rampages - and shooed him into the house.
     
     
Macguire snuffled, tilted his head backward, and shook his hair. Raindrops sprinkled across the room. Taking lessons from Jake, apparently. "I'm okay." He snuffled again. "The rain's not too bad, you don't really need a coat." His long strides propelled him, camel-like, toward the kitchen. "Besides, I brought my uniform stuff in the car. It's not wet. In the car, I mean. I'll be all right."
     
     
Well, fine. We had work to do. I put vats of thick, tomato-rich Bolognese sauce on for a last simmering. Macguire washed his hands, grated hillocks of gold-threaded Parmesan and creamy fresh mozzarella cheeses, then looked around for more work. The pizza dough I'd taken out to rise before church had come to room temperature. He carefully punched it down. As the Bolognese sauce began to bubble, the phone rang. Mrs. Kirby-Jones, no doubt. Clients invariably feel duty-bound to call on Sunday morning. They want to make sure you're not sleeping in. They expect you to be slaving away in the kitchen for their evening shin-dig. In fact, they expect you to have been working there since dawn.
     
     
"Goldilocks' Catering," I said with agonizing sprightliness as I reached for a package of the frozen green lasagne noodles I'd made the week before. "Where everything is just right!"
     
     
"It's me," Marla said morosely. "I'm in hell. I feel so damned guilty. Tony just phoned, and he's on his way over. I am about the farthest thing from just right that you could possibly imagine. Matter of fact, I'm sitting here thinking about what I'm going to say when I get a call from Albert Lipscomb's lawyer."
     
     
I cradled the phone against my ear and tried to un- wrap the noodles. Whenever Marla plunged into precipitate action, she ended up in exaggerated remorse. "For heaven's sake," I soothed, "why do you feel so bad? Didn't Tony talk to Albert?"
     
     
"Oh, I doubt it. Tony went straight to the Aspen Branch Bar after the party and got plastered. Now he's nursing a hangover. He has a conference tomorrow morning, so he can't be in on our meeting." I heard her bite into something. I hoped it was one of the lowfat lemon muffins I'd given her. I also prayed her use of the term our meeting didn't mean she was counting on me for tomorrow's confrontation with Lipscomb. She went on: "Okay, I'll tell you what I'm worried about with Albert. He throws around those terms like year-over-year and same-store sales and technical support. Now he's all ticked off, so he'll probably treat me like a dummy."
     
     
"But how can year-over-year data or same-store sales have anything to do with a mine being reopened?"
     
     
"Ooh, Goldy," she whined, "I don't know. I guess I should have just hashed it out with Tony, or called my lawyer or the state consumer fraud people, or somebody, instead of going after Albert like that yesterday. It's just Episcopal guilt. You know, you worry about how you're handling your money."
     
     
"Wait, wait," I said with a glance at the clock. By the time we got through a litany