Free Naked Once More by Elizabeth Peters Page A

well-remembered aroma rose gently into the air.
    The color of St. John’s face rivaled that of the infant. He flapped his arms and gobbled with rage. “Oh, God, how disgusting! Get him out of here. Do something. I told you not to bring the children!”
    “I’m sorry, Sin-John,” the woman said. “Benny, baby, you shouldn’t… Come to Ma.”
    Having finished what he set out to do, the toddler easily eluded her, scampering on all fours and chuckling fatly. He was captured by his elder sister, who hoisted him onto her shoulder. “I’ll take him in the kitchen, Ma.”
    “Not in the kitchen!” St. John screamed.
    “Take him upstairs, Mary Bea,” her mother said in a lazy drawl. Mary Bea, or Marybee—it had been pronounced as a single word—complied, and her mother sank into a chair. She looked exhausted. No wonder, Jacqueline thought. The younger girl, whom she judged to be about five, looked like another Benny. Her father grabbed her as she headed purposely for a plate of hors d’oeuvres.
    Jacqueline raised her glass to her lips to hide their quivering. The obligatory touch of humor, she thought. It had removed the last vestige of her nervousness; her only problem now was how to keep from howling with laughter. Poor St. John; he had struggled so hard to create a genteel ambience. Her eyes caught those of the children’s father. Fascinating, how many different shades of red the human countenance could turn when embarrassed or angry.
    He was dressed in work clothes, clean and neatly mended, but worn. Embarrassed
and
angry, Jacqueline thought. She lowered her glass and gave him a broad, uninhibited grin.
    The hot color faded from his face. “How do, ma’am,” he said. “I’m Earl Smith, Laurie’s husband.”
    “You’re late,” St. John snapped. “And I told you not to bring—”
    “I’m sorry,” Laurie said again. “Earl’s ma couldn’t watch them, she was going to the stores, and the kindergarten gets out at noon, that’s why we were late, and I thought, better bring Marybee too, she can help take care of them.”
    Earl obviously didn’t want her to apologize. “You was the one insisted we come, St. John.” He pronounced it as his wife had done—Sin-John—but while hers had been an earnest, if unsuccessful, attempt to imitate her brother’s accent, Earl’s tone suggested that he was engaging in intentional parody. He went on, “Don’t see why you want us anyhow. I hadda take time off work.”
    St. John began, “You have a voice—”
    “No, we don’t. Leastwise, I don’t. And Laurie don’t know no more about this writing business than I do.”
    Craig Senior cleared his throat. “The will clearly states that all the heirs must be consulted before any decisions are made in regard to the disposition of the assets of the estate. This book is a very large asset indeed; you stand to gain a great deal of money from its sale.”
    Earl didn’t like Craig Senior any better than he liked St. John. “My wife, not me. It’s her money—if anything comes of this, which I can’t see as how it will. We don’t need it anyhow. I make a good living.”
    “What do you do?” Jacqueline asked.
    The Craigs turned identical looks of astonishment on her, but she didn’t care, she was genuinely curious. She liked Earl Smith: A fine upstanding figure of a man he was, if a little too short for her tastes. She liked his bluntness and his resentment of patronage.
    “Bricklayer.”
    “Ah,” Jacqueline said, pleased to have her Sherlockian deductions confirmed. Those characteristic callouses on the palms and the insides of the fingers of the left hand… (In fact, few professions leave unique marks of that sort, but Jacqueline, and Conan Doyle, enjoyed their pretense.) “That’s a skilled trade, Mr. Smith.”
    The young man expanded. “Yes, ma’am, it is. I can do just about anything in the building line. One of these days I figure on opening my own business.”
    “That’s great. But really, Mr.