Free A Stiff Critique by Jaqueline Girdner Page A

cheerfully. “We’ve still got the same number. Lost one. Gained one.”
    Mave certainly didn’t seem unduly upset by Slade Skinner’s murder. As we walked into the dining room, I wondered if anyone in this group had really liked the man.
    Mave’s rosewood table was long enough for a board of directors. It filled the space in the pale yellow dining room with exactly enough room to push back its matching upholstered chairs and walk two steps to the sideboard, almost as if each item of furniture had been built to fit. They probably had been, I realized. We were talking Hutton here, after all.
    “Carrie,” Mave instructed, “you take your place at the head of the table, since you called this here meeting. And you, Kate, why don’t you take Slade’s place next to Carrie?”
    I nodded politely, wondering if I really wanted Slade’s place, metaphorically or otherwise, and took the seat. Travis quickly claimed the chair on Carrie’s other side. Everyone else shuffled and rustled until they were seated, Donna, Joyce and Mave along with Travis across from me and Nan, Vicky and Russell filling in my side of the table.
    “Slade Skinner’s death raises some very important issues,” Carrie began once we were all quiet in our chairs. She paused and ran her dark eyes slowly over each of us in turn. It was a good technique. I was ready to confess. “Issues that need discussion and consideration.”
    “Like what exactly?” asked Nan, her voice loud and bored as if to say that she for one was not intimidated.
    Carrie turned to her and stared until Nan shifted in her seat, then answered. “The first issue, as I see it, is whether the group members will choose to continue as a group without Slade’s presence.”
    “We’re cool by ourselves,” Travis answered, his voice low and angry. “We don’t need Slade Skinner to push us around.” Then he crossed his arms across his chest and glowered across the table. Heathcliff, I realized. He looked exactly like I had imagined Heathcliff while reading Wuthering Heights as a teenager.
    Mave raised her hand. Carrie nodded at her.
    “Joyce Grenfell said it best,” Mave told us with a smile that half-closed her round eyes. “‘If I should go before the rest of you, break not a flower nor inscribe a stone,’“ she recited. “‘Nor when I’m gone speak in a Sunday voice, but be the usual selves that I have known—’“
    “I vote to keep going,” Vicky interjected in a surprisingly high-pitched voice. I took a better look at her bony face. It wasn’t a bad face, just thin. Her mouth looked oddly heavy and sensual against the backdrop of scarcity.
    “‘Weep if you must, parting is hell.’“ Mave continued her eulogy, putting a hand on her chest for emphasis. “‘But life goes on, so sing as well.’“ Then she smiled broadly, wrinkling her face even more deeply, and bowed her head.
    I gave Mave a little round of applause. Donna was the only one who joined me, though.
    “Shall the record show a ‘yes’ vote?” Carrie asked, her tone transforming the formality of her words to a teasing affection.
    “You betcha,” Mave confirmed with a wink.
    “Me too,” Donna chimed in. “Slade wasn’t always, well, exactly in harmony with everyone, but he had, well, integrity. He’d want us to validate our own experience, I’m sure—”
    “I vote yes, too,” Nan put in brusquely.
    “Joyce?” asked Carrie with a look at the brunette.
    “I suppose we should go on,” Joyce answered softly, her pale skin pinkening as she spoke. Debilitating shyness, I guessed. No wonder the poor woman had less of a life than Carrie.
    Carrie turned her eyes to Russell.
    “I’ll go with the consensus,” he said, nodding ever so slightly. I had forgotten how pleasant his voice was to the ear, deep and melodious. I would have expected a harsher tone from a true-crime writer.
    “Then we are all agreed to continue as a group,” Carrie concluded. “Which brings us to the second issue for