Free Deadly Fall by Susan Calder Page A

above them in the aisle. She wore an enormous brimmed hat.
    â€œYou remember Wendy,” Janice said.
    â€œWendy Watson?” Bev said. “I didn’t recognize you as a blonde.”
    â€œI’ve also put on weight.” Wendy’s high-pitched voice contrasted Bev’s husky one. “Are you sitting with anyone? We can squeeze you in.”
    The women shuffled to make space for their friend. Paula caught a whiff of powerful perfume.
    â€œIsn’t it tragic?” Wendy said in a stage whisper. “I’m in shock. I was saying to Janice that I can’t stop thinking of Callie and us dropping the kids off at nursery school. That was twenty years ago.”
    â€œDon’t remind me of time,” Bev drawled.
    â€œRemember how that first day Ryan clung to my skirts and cried?” Wendy said. “Skye grabbed his hand and marched him right in. All those kids are grown-ups, now. Look at Skye up there, at the front of the church. I wish I had her figure.”
    â€œDid Skye marry or is Ravenshaw a stage name?” Janice asked.
    â€œWho knows,” Bev said.
    Skye took the name Ravenshaw from a high school boyfriend. At school, she had hated all the kids teasingly calling her “Ucksworth.”
    â€œWhat do you make of Skye wearing red to her mother’s funeral?” Wendy said.
    â€œSkye’s the blonde in the clingy red?” Bev said. “She always had to be the center of attention. Who’s the girl beside her, the one dressed like a tart?”
    Janice giggled. “Maybe an actress friend?”
    The girl was Isabelle, Callie’s niece, whose traditionally black dress ended at her upper thighs. She wore fishnet stockings and black boots. Bev’s description was apt, if annoying.
    Paula opened the card. The left inside page reprinted the newspaper death notice that offered minimal detail. Survived by her sister Dorothy and her brother Tony.
    â€œWhen I heard about the murder,” Wendy squeaked, “I figured, oh well, it’s just a hooker or a homeless bum; nothing for us to worry about. I didn’t recognize the name Moss. Janice phoned me and said it was Callie. I almost fell off my chair. I hadn’t known she was divorced.”
    â€œShe came into my store last winter,” Janice said. “She told me she’d remarried, but didn’t add more than that.”
    â€œDo you mind if we sit here?” a man asked Paula.
    She stood to make way for the elderly couple and considered moving across the aisle to get away from the women’s chatter. A trio of youths grabbed the spot. She re-settled on her seat, wondering if the youths were Callie’s children’s friends. The women’s conversation had shifted from Callie to themselves. The organ-like music segued to a folk-rock tune that sounded familiar. One of the women owned an interior design business. Another worked in a clothing boutique in Mount Royal Village. One had divorced and remarried. Someone had given up eggs due to high cholesterol. Wendy had a grandson.
    â€œUgh,” Bev said. “I still think of myself as thirty years old.”
    â€œYou look it,” Wendy said. “So did Callie in her newspaper picture. I wonder how old it was.”
    â€œIt was recent,” Janice said. “At the store, I’d swear she looked the same as she did in our kids’ nursery school days.”
    â€œThe miracle of plastic surgery,” Bev laughed.
    â€œI don’t think Callie had work,” Janice said. “The store lighting is good and I see women our age every day. I can tell when someone’s done it, Bev.”
    It would be interesting to see the face beneath Bev’s hat. The church was now about three-quarters full. There must be two hundred people here already. Were they all connected to the family or were many of them voyeurs? Paula hoped some were better friends of Callie than Janice, Wendy, and Bev.
    â€œWe Are Lost