Free The Bilbao Looking Glass by Charlotte MacLeod Page B

remained sober enough. Early on, she’d been occupied with her clam puffs. After the cocktail party broke up, some of the crowd would surely have stayed for supper. That meant she’d have been doing her thing in the kitchen, flipping crepes or whipping up two perfect omelets at a time with a frying pan in each hand while the rest sat around the big kitchen table swilling wine and cheering her on.
    She wouldn’t have drunk the wine herself. Putting on a show for company would have been intoxication enough for Alice B.
    When the guests at last cleared off, there’d have been a mess to clean up and Miffy to put to bed because by then the hostess would have been out on her feet. By the time Alice B. got a chance to rest, she’d hardly have required a nightcap to put her to sleep.
    Alice B. couldn’t have been any youngster, after all. She must have been at least Appie Kelling’s age, and Sarah herself had baked the cake for Appie’s sixtieth birthday party ages ago, when Uncle Samuel was still able to be up and about. It was surprising Alice B. had been able to manage as well as she had, especially with tasks like getting Miffy undressed and decently tucked into bed.
    Aunt Appie would have that honor tonight, no doubt. Sarah folded a nightgown her aunt had left thrown over the foot of the guest room bed and laid it back in the suitcase Appie hadn’t bothered to finish unpacking. Just as well she hadn’t. Now it would be easy to close the case and cart it over to Miffy’s.
    As she straightened up, Sarah glanced out the window to see how Pete was getting on with the mowing. Was that a dog sneaking up through the tall grass behind him? No, a dog wouldn’t be wearing a green and purple striped rugby shirt. It had to be one of Lionel’s brats. What was he doing up here? If Pete—good God!
    “Hey!”
    That was the boy shouting. Alive, thank heaven. He’d leaped straight into the air as Pete whirled around and swung the scythe blade viciously through the weeds where he’d been lurking.
    “Pete!” Sarah screamed out the window. “You could have killed that boy.”
    “Yeah? Well—” the hired man was shaken, Sarah could see that. Still he couldn’t help twisting his lips in a self-satisfied smirk. “I got fast reflexes.”
    “Then you’d better slow them down. Stop crying Woody. I’m coming.”
    It was typical of Lionel and Vare that they’d named their first three sons Jesse, Woodson, and James. The fourth and no doubt last now that Vare had switched her sexual proclivities, was Frank, of course.
    Max was just finishing a phone call when Sarah got downstairs. “Sorry I couldn’t cut that short,” he apologized. “I was talking to a guy at the Sûreté. Don’t look at me like that. I charged it to my business account. What’s all the hullabaloo out back?”
    “Pete Lomax just tried to chop one of Lionel’s boys in two with the scythe.”
    “Any particular reason?”
    “Woody was playing the fool, sneaking up through the grass. He startled Pete, and Pete swung on him. He claims he has fast reflexes. I’ve got to go out there.”
    “I’ll go with you,” said Max. “I know all about Pete’s fast reflexes. Remind me to show you his footprint in spike marks on my thigh, if our acquaintance ever progresses that far.”
    When they got out back, Woody was still blubbering from the shock. Pete was unconcernedly cutting grass. Sarah blew up.
    “Pete, if you can’t handle tools in a responsible manner, you’d better leave them alone.”
    “You told me to cut the grass.”
    “I told you three weeks ago. If you’d done it then, this would never have happened. You’ll either learn to take orders or find somewhere else to work. As for you, Woody, what were you doing up here in the first place? I told you to stay away from the main house, didn’t I? Why aren’t you down at the camp where you belong?”
    “I want to make a phone call,” he growled.
    “Then walk down to the pay phone in the