Perilously Fun Fiction: A Bundle Pauline Jones (the red fox clan txt) 📖

had gathered, she could see an Elvis in black leather with slicked-back hair crooning a love song into the mike.

But no sign of Luci.

“Here.” Fern shoved the drink at Donald and scanned the crowd. “Where is she? We haven’t lost her, have we?”

Donald ignored Fern’s impatience, taking a long drink before answering morosely, “Nah, she’s still there. In the front, by the stage.”

Fern craned her neck, her height enabling her to see over most of the crowd. “Where—?”

Then she saw her. She was, as Donald said, right at the front and center, in the heart of the action, swaying to the music, a look of appreciation lighting her face.

Fern didn’t blame her for the appreciation. He was a fine Elvis, especially in the hip area. Fern turned to Donald. “You know, he kind of reminds me of you. Give him a switchblade and a gat—”

Her voice failed, so she gave Donald a grim, misty smile. His narrow shoulders squared, and without speaking, Donald stood and pulled her against his beer belly, steering her around their corner of the court with an air of sleazy aplomb.

When the music faded into applause, he stopped and looked up into her eyes with a look that peeled away the years, leaving a young thug and a rebellious girl facing each other once more.

“Oh, Donald!” Fern’s scant chest swelled with her sigh. She started to lean her head on his scraggy shoulder, but he stiffened and pushed her away. “Donald?”

“Damn! She’s gone!” He frantically scanned the crowd. “Damn the woman! We lost her, Fern!”

A snowball hit him square in the face.

Miss Theo didn’t enter, she made an entrance. There was much of the grande dame about her, from her elegantly styled white hair to her old-fashioned buttoned down shoes. Of the three, she reminded him the most of Luci, particularly around the eyes, which were intelligent and somewhat amused.

He held her chair, then resumed his. Seated, the differences between the sisters seemed to fade away, leaving only the similarities, especially in the way she looked at him, her gaze calm, yet distant.

“You’re all very much alike, aren’t you?” Delaney said, echoing Mickey’s thought.

Her fine brows arched, enhancing the sense of familiarity.

“Yes, though dear little Luci doesn’t quite fit. Sometimes she doesn’t seem like a Seymour at all, she’s got so much of her father in her. Very forceful gene pool, he had. It’s interesting to see how she turned out, because we all wondered, her being the first in so many years.”

“The first?” Delaney asked with a hint of cautiou.

“Offspring of a female Seymour. The men have produced a hutch-full, of course, and a pretty dismal bunch it was, too. And then Lila’s beaux, not that I didn’t like him, but so forceful and determined he could change us. You can imagine how worried we were when we found out she was increasing. Thank goodness our worries were ill founded. She turned out to be quite sweet and almost normal. Of course, we love her so dearly that we don’t mind her little eccentricities.” Her smile was refined but filled with a child-like wonder from another distant time.

Mickey had no idea how to respond to this, so he looked at Delaney.

Delaney cleared his throat. “We were wondering about the freezer, Miss Theo?”

“Well, isn’t that interesting. So was I. It will have to be cleaned and aired, but do you think that’s enough? I wouldn’t want to upset our guests.”

“Your...guests?” Delaney’s face showed his difficulty in following this.

“The party. For dear Eddie and Unabelle. It’s this weekend, so it’s important to get this resolved as soon as possible.” A wisp of handkerchief fluttered when she used her hands to punctuate the urgency of the situation.

“Uh huh.” Dumbfounded staring was getting them nowhere. Time for a change of tactics. “I can see this is of grave concern to you, and we’ll get back to you on it as soon as we can,” Mickey said. “In the meantime, we need to figure out how the body got there in the first place.”

Delaney gave Mickey a look of respect as Miss Theo stared at them, her brows once more arching toward her white bun. He could see her processing this, see it all playing out in her faded blue eyes.

“Well,” she finally said. “Isn’t that interesting? I never even thought about how he got there. So, do you think someone put him there?”

“Well.” Delaney still sounded like someone was strangling him. “I don’t think he got there on his own.”

“Is it possible,” she asked as she leaned toward them, her voice dropping to a more confidential level, “that the person who shot him put him there?”

“We think so, yes,” Mickey said, a shade too heartily. “Can you think of anyone who could—or would—do something like that?” Her wide gaze stared at him without blinking for a long beat. Mickey found he couldn’t fight the imperative to fill the silence. “It would have to be someone who knew about the freezer, was familiar with the garage area and the comings and goings around the house.”

“But it would also have to be someone who would do that, who would shoot someone and put them in a freezer, wouldn’t it?” Miss Theo’s face showed only gentle inquiry. There was no awareness that this criteria could include her or her sisters.

“That’s a good point,” Delaney said, with obvious flattery. “Anyone who springs to mind?”

“Well, I hate to be ugly, but—Reggie springs to my mind.”

Mickey and Delaney straightened and exchanged hopeful glances.

“He is a Seymour male,” she added, as if this were a crime, too. “And he’s been in prison.”

This turned a weird lead into a hot prospect. Mickey asked, “Really? Prison?”

“I’m afraid so.” She looked pensive. “Perhaps he missed it when his mother died. She was the matron in a women’s prison. His father married an IRS agent a few years later.”

Delaney blinked, probably because he’d run out of the more extreme repertoire of responses. “That would...affect a kid.”

“Particularly one who is