Free Family Vault by Charlotte MacLeod Page A

shock when they knocked down that wall and he saw his old girl friend lying there like something left over from a horror movie. Maybe he’d been daydreaming all these years she’d come back to him some day. Maybe it just started him thinking about the past and what he had to look forward to, and he decided what was the sense in going on any longer?”
    “But she wasn’t his old sweetheart,” Sarah protested.
    “He didn’t even like her. He said Ruby Redd was the meanest woman he’d ever known. He was not upset, he was excited.”
    “Look, sister, what a person says and what he feels can be two very different things. Who the hell knows why people kill themselves? It happens a damn sight oftener than you might think. Being a nice old guy, he fixes it up to look like a natural death instead of jumping in front of a subway train and messing up the tracks. And for your information, I’m still going to put heart failure on the death certificate. If you want to report me to the medical association, please feel free. Say, don’t I know you from somewhere?”
    As she had feared, his eye lit on the newspaper. “So that’s the little game, is it? You’re the Kelling girl.”
    Mrs. Wandelowski snatched the paper away from him. “You mean that’s her, the one in the picture? Sure, look, she’s even wearing the same clothes. What gall! Weaseling her way in here, making out she’s a friend of Tim’s. What’s she after, anyways?”
    “Good question.”
    The doctor took a step that brought him nose to nose with Sarah. “What’s the big idea, kid? Figured you’d get O’Ghee to tell you which of your rich uncles was the stripper’s boy friend so you could blackmail him into buying you a mink coat or a trip to Europe?”
    “That’s ridiculous,” cried Sarah. “I—”
    “Don’t you believe one word she says,” Mrs. Wandelowski broke in. “After the way she lied to me, I wouldn’t trust her one inch. Now you listen to me, toots. I don’t care who you are or where you came from, you’re nothing but a little tramp, and I won’t have you in my house. Get out and don’t never show your face around here again or you’ll damn soon wish you hadn’t.”
    “Take it easy, Mrs. Wandelowski,” said the doctor. “Don’t get your blood pressure up. Come on, Miss Kelling, whatever you’re after, you came too late. Sorry I can’t give you taxi service back to the family mansion, but you’ve wasted too much of my time already.”
    He was herding Sarah down the stairs as he spoke, and out on the porch. Mrs. Wandelowski slammed the door behind them. There was nothing Sarah could do except walk back to the subway station and catch a train to Park Street.
    She was much later getting home than she’d meant to be. Edith was in a tizzy, messing around the kitchen, doing her best to ruin the refreshments.
    “Leave that alone and go put on your afternoon uniform,” Sarah ordered. “I told you I’d be here in time to do the food.”
    “Don’t see how,” the maid retorted. “They’ll be here in half an hour.”
    Sarah wasted no breath arguing. She had more time than that, but she was going to need every minute of it. She welcomed the rush, it kept her from brooding on that neatly timed suicide of Tim O’Ghee. By the time she’d arranged her trays of savories and crudités, and got sheets of cheese puffs chilling in the fridge, ready to pop into a hot oven at the first sound of the doorbell, she’d worked herself into a reasonable frame of mind. She even managed to change her dress and be downstairs pouring sherry when Edith, elegant in black sateen, white organdy apron, and perhaps the last frilled lace cap extant on the Hill, opened the door to the first lot of friends and relatives.
    Fortunately, Alexander and Aunt Caroline were in the group. Sarah left them to do the honors, got Edith started passing drinks and food, and bolted for the kitchen. From then on it was back and forth, lugging trays and boiling