A Catered Fourth of July Read online

  Chapter 2

  Bernie had just finished opening up all the cartons when Libby trudged up the steps. She decided her sister looked like a limp dishrag, to use one of her mother’s expressions.

  The outfit Libby was wearing didn’t help matters. Bernie loved her sister but the truth of the matter was that Libby was sartorially challenged. Bernie had offered to lend her one of her light, silk sundresses, but Libby had insisted on wearing her kelly green polo shirt and green plaid Bermuda shorts. Those were both hot and made her look like a marcher in the Saint Patrick’s Day parade. But try telling that to her older sister. Actually, Bernie had tried telling her several times, and her sister had told her to mind her own business. Bernie was just thinking that as a color, kelly green had absolutely nothing to recommend it when her sister started speaking.

  “The jacket is so tight, Marvin can’t even lift his arms up.” Libby grabbed a bottle of water and began chugging it down.

  “Must make it hard to aim a musket,” Bernie observed.

  “Poor guy. He’s just miserable.”

  “So am I,” Bernie said, not wanting to be left out of the pity party. After all, fair was fair.

  “Yeah, but Marvin is going to be out there marching around in the heat shooting people. At least, we’re in here where it’s marginally cooler.”

  “Marginally being the operative word,” Bernie told her as a bugle sounded.

  “It looks as if we’re about to begin soon,” Libby observed.

  Bernie put her hand to her breast. “Be still my heart.”

  “There’s no need to be sarcastic.”

  “I’m not,” Bernie protested. “I’m genuinely thrilled. The sooner we start, the sooner we can go home.”

  Libby was just about to reply when Jack Devlin, Longely’s modern day answer to Casanova, came bounding up the steps into the gazebo.

  “Ladies”—he bowed low at the waist—“always a pleasure.” He grabbed Hilda and tucked her under his arm. “Come my little chickadee,” he cooed in Hilda’s ear, “it is time for your performance.”

  Hilda oinked and stopped squirming.

  “We are old friends,” Devlin explained.

  Bernie swore Hilda was batting her eyelashes at him.

  “Don’t worry,” he told Bernie and Libby as he scratched Hilda’s back. “I will bring her back unharmed. I treat all my ladies well.” He winked in case they didn’t get it.

  “So I heard,” Bernie replied.

  He grinned. “I’ll be happy to demonstrate anytime. Anytime, anyplace,” he said over his shoulder as he went back down the stairs. “That offer goes for both of you. You name the site and I’ll be there. Reliable Jack, that’s me.”

  “Not bad,” Bernie mused as she looked at Jack Devlin’s retreating behind.

  Libby sniffed. “If you like that kind of person.”

  Bernie rolled her eyes. “And what kind of person is that?”

  “A sex addict. He’s only interested in one thing.”

  “That’s what I like about him. But for the record, I was talking about his ass, which you have to admit is pretty nice.”

  “Brandon wouldn’t like to hear you say that.”

  “He looks. I can too.” Bernie clasped her hands over her head and stretched. “I mean, it’s not as if I’m going to sleep with the guy.”

  Libby smiled. “God knows everyone else has.”

  Bernie brought her arms down and stretched out her calves. “Not everyone, just half the female population of Longely, including Juno.”

  “Why do you say that?” Libby asked.

  “Devlin’s comment about he and Hilda being old friends.”

  “So?”

  “So Juno owns Hilda.”

  “She does?” Libby asked.

  “Yup. All I’m saying is connect the dots.”

  Libby shook her head. “I just don’t get Devlin’s appeal. I mean he’s good-looking, but not movie star good-looking.”

  “It’s easy,” Bernie replied. “He likes women and he’s available. Maybe it’s as simple as that. Young. Old. Rich. Poor. Fat. Thin. Married. Single. You can’t say he isn’t democratic.”

  Libby rubbed her bottle of water over her face to cool herself off then took another drink. “I’m surprised some enraged boyfriend or husband hasn’t shot him yet.”

  “That’s so nineteen hundreds. Anyway, if we were talking about that kind of stuff, my money would be on a discarded lover, the female being the deadlier of the species when it comes to matters of the heart, in addition to having a longer memory.” Bernie paused for a moment. “At least in my experience.”

  “True.” Libby harked back to the homicide cases she and her sister had been involved in, not to mention her lingering homicidal thoughts concerning her old boyfriend, Orion.

  Bernie laughed. “Good thing for Jack, he’s pretty nimble. Not to mention energetic.”

  “He has to be. Otherwise he’d have died of exhaustion a long time ago.” Libby pointed to the meadow where Longely’s citizen reenactors were beginning to congregate. “They’re starting.”

  Bernie brushed a strand of hair out of her face and repositioned her bobby pin. “I guess we’d better finish setting up. The ravening hordes will be here soon.”

  Libby scanned the area. “Certainly not a horde. Hardly even a group. And it’s definitely too hot to raven anything. We should have served a shrub like I wanted to.”

  “Libby, no one knows what a shrub is.”

  “We could have written a sign and explained.”

  “That it’s a drink made with vinegar?”

  “As well as blueberries and sugar, and that the colonists used to drink it back in the day in the summer, and that it’s supposed to be not only cooling but healthful.”

  “I don’t think anyone would have touched it,” Bernie said.

  “Well, we won’t know now, will we?”

  “It certainly would have been a conversation piece,” Bernie said, rethinking her stand.

  “Exactly.” Libby swatted away a mosquito. “Maybe we can do it next year.”

  “Hopefully there won’t be a next year. Or at least if there is, we’ll get paid.”

  Libby thought of their balance sheet. “I certainly wouldn’t say no if the council offered.” She paused for a moment then said, “Remind me. Why did we make so much food?”

  Bernie answered promptly. “Easy. We were going on the head count Rick Evans gave us.”

  Libby surveyed the group of spectators one more time. “I would say he was a little optimistic.”

  “Just a tad. Not that I blame anyone for not coming. I mean, I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t have to. It’s too hot. Would you?”

  “Unfortunately, yes,” Libby promptly replied.

  “I mean if Marvin wasn’t in it.”

  “Then no. Absolutely not.”

  “My point exactly.” Bernie stifled a yawn. “I’m not sure that I would be here even if Brandon was.”

  “Harsh,” Libby commented.

  “No. Tough love. Although, it might be worth it to see him in breeches.”

  Both sisters stopped talking as they contemplated the spectacle that was taking place on the hill. Nine adult wing-wearing women were dancing around in a circle, twirling as they went.

  “I don’t think I could do that,” Libby observed.

  “The wing part?” Bernie asked.

  “The twirling part.”

  “So you could do the wing part?” Bernie asked her sister.

  “Ha-ha.”

  “How about if the wings were black?”

  Libby grimaced. “Even if they were purple.”

  “You know, I didn’t think Wiccans wore wings in their ceremonies. I thought they ran around naked in the forest under the full moon.”

  “Obviously, not these. Maybe they’re inspired by Tinker Bell.” Libby changed the subject. “Given the temperature, I think the deviled eggs should go on a bed of ice when we serve them.”

  “Def
initely. Giving everyone food poisoning would not be a good thing,” Bernie noted.

  “Not if we want to stay in business.”

  The sisters spent the next fifteen minutes setting up the tables, putting tablecloths on them, and laying out the decorations and condiments. While they worked, the redcoats and the colonists began their skirmish. Three of the redcoats snatched growlers of beer away from the colonists. The colonists grabbed them back. Something, Bernie presumed it was water with caramel coloring, sloshed over the sides.

  “You have no business doing this,” one of the colonists (vacuum cleaner salesman Tony Gerard) declaimed.

  “I have every reason,” Marvin replied.

  “State it,” another colonist (Samuel Cotton, a third grade teacher) demanded.

  Marvin drew himself up to his full height and sucked in his stomach. “I do it by the authority the Crown invests in me.”

  “Thou shalt not trample on our liberties,” Elise Montague, the only female colonist in the reenactment, proclaimed.

  “Thou speakest treason,” Marvin roared.

  Libby smiled. “He’s not bad.”

  “Not at all.” Bernie watched a fourth colonist (Sanford Aiken, plumbing supply store owner), who was holding Hilda under his arm, tell Marvin to “bugger off.”

  Jack Devlin stepped up to Marvin’s side. “For your misdeeds, we take the pig in the name of the Crown,” Devlin pronounced.

  “By God, you shall not,” Aiken thundered.

  “We shall, sir.” Marvin tried to lift his arms up in a menacing gesture, but his jacket was so tight he couldn’t.

  “You did say the jacket was a tad snug,” Bernie noted.

  “I’m afraid we might have to cut him out of it,” Libby replied as David Nancy, redcoat and industrial designer, stepped up and pretended to wrest the wriggling Hilda away from her owner.

  “Give me that sow,” Nancy ordered.

  “I shall not, good sir,” the putative owner replied.

  The two men began circling each other while Marvin made suitably menacing noises. Libby clapped. Marvin stopped and took a small bow before reentering the action.

  At that point, Aiken put Hilda on the ground. “Go. Seek safety.”

  Hilda sat down.

  Aiken lifted up his arm and pointed to a willow tree twenty feet away. “Moveth.”

  Hilda lay down.

  It was an impasse.

  After a minute, Elise Montague lifted her up and put her under the tree Aiken had indicated.

  “Thou art a traitor to the king,” Marvin said once Hilda had left the area. “And thou shall be punished accordingly.”

  Libby clapped again and Marvin paused to take another bow.

  “He’s really enjoying this,” Bernie said.

  Libby shook her head. “Who would have thought he was such a ham?”

  “It’s comforting to know that if Marvin’s father’s business fails maybe Marvin can find an acting job. Not that it’s going to,” Bernie added hastily. “Funeral homes never do.”

  “True. They just get taken over,” Libby replied.

  “I refuse to pay taxation without representation,” Aiken announced.

  Marvin looked temporarily confounded.

  “I don’t think that was part of the script,” Libby observed.

  “Me either,” Bernie agreed.

  After a moment, Marvin rallied. “By God, you shall for the sake of king and country.”

  Aiken put his hand on his chest. “We shall be quit of you before the year is out. This I do swear.”

  Marvin raised his arm as far as he was able and cried, “Let’s go get them, boys.”

  “Somehow I don’t think ‘Let’s go get them, boys’ is a Revolutionary War phrase,” Bernie noted as the four redcoats and four colonists joined in a full scale altercation.

  There were lots of “forsooths” and “by the power of the Crown” and “by God, thou shall not trample on our rights” flying around, not to mention the occurrence of a modest amount of judicious pushing and general threatening, with an occasional pause in the action for a swig from plastic water bottles.

  Bernie found the water bottles somewhat jarring seeing as how people weren’t drinking Evian and Desanti back in the Revolutionary War days. Aside from that, she thought that, given the circumstances, everyone was doing a spot-on job. In any case, everyone was definitely having a good time—especially Rick Evans, who seemed to be pushing people around with abandon.

  She and Libby watched the drama unfold as they worked. They had just finished arranging the paper plates, napkins, and plastic eating utensils at one end of the table and were putting the paper cups out on a second, smaller table when the redcoats and the colonists ran in front of the gazebo. The redcoats stopped and turned on their pursuers. The colonists advanced. The redcoats raised their muskets.

  “By the power of the Crown, I command you to stop,” Marvin intoned.

  Colonist Number One, aka Tony Gerard, pounded his chest. “Kill me if you must, but I shall never betray my country.”

  Jack Devlin said, “So that’s the way of it?”

  “Indeed it is,” Gerard said. “Shoot me if you must . . . excuse me . . . if you will.”

  “Is this your final decision?” Devlin asked.

  “It is,” Gerard said.

  “Give ’em hell, Dad,” Gerard’s son yelled from the bleachers.

  “Then what is done, must be done,” Rick Evans intoned.

  Libby turned to Bernie. “What does that mean?”

  “Not a clue. Sounds like a cross between Dickens and Shakespeare to me.”

  “I hope we’re reaching the end of this. Marvin looks as if he’s going to faint.”

  “Yeah. Bright red is not a becoming facial color. Actually, Rick Evans doesn’t look much better,” Bernie observed. “In fact, they all look as if they’re going to collapse from heat stroke.”

  Libby leaned over. “Speaking of heat stroke, where’s the pig?”

  “Good question.” Bernie began scanning the area for her. She wasn’t a big animal person, but she’d become rather fond of Hilda in the short time she’d made her acquaintance and she didn’t want to see anything bad happen to her. Who would have thought?

  She had just located her lying in the grass under the Rose of Sharon bush when Marvin yelled, “Ready.”

  “Ready,” Devlin echoed.

  “Aim,” Marvin called.

  “Aim,” Devlin repeated.

  “Fire,” Marvin ordered.

  “Fire, lads,” Devlin yelled. “Into the breech,” he added for good measure.

  “What is a breech?” Bernie asked Libby.

  Her sister shrugged. “I’m guessing some kind of opening, but if you really want to know you’ll have to ask Marvin.”

  The redcoats fired their weapons. A thick cloud of smoke and the acrid smell of gunpowder filled the air. It was difficult to see anything for the moment.

  Then Bernie and Libby heard Jack Devlin scream.

  The smoke cleared. They saw Devlin’s musket fall as he let go of it and clutched his face. Then he fell to the ground and began to writhe.

  “Bravo,” someone on the hill yelled. “Great dying. Can you do it again?”

  Devlin didn’t answer.

  Libby leaned over and confided to Bernie, “This is a little too realistic for me.”

  Marvin began speaking. “I will avenge you in this life or the next.” Then he got a good look at Jack Devlin and stopped talking.

  Libby could see blood seeping through Devlin’s fingers.

  For a nanosecond, Libby and Bernie thought wow, great special effects, great acting! Then they realized that everyone had turned quiet. No one was making a sound. No one was moving. Everyone was frozen in place.

  They looked at each other. Along with everyone else standing there, they had the same thought at the same time. This isn’t an act. This is real.

  That’s when all hell broke loose.

  Chapter 3
/>   “Oh my God,” Libby cried as she ran down the steps and plunged into the crowd of people below.

  Bernie was right behind her.

  The scene was pandemonium. The reenactors, plus the spectators and the Wiccans, were gathered around Jack Devlin. Marvin was yelling, “Someone call 911, someone call a doctor,” while Rick Evans was repeating, “I don’t understand,” over and over again. Three colonists and four Wiccans had whipped out their cell phones and were talking on them.

  Libby and Bernie heard snippets of their conversation as they made their way through the crowd. Phrases like, “You’re not going to believe this,” “You should come down and take a look, seriously,” and “I’m surprised it took this long,” peppered the air as they elbowed their way to where Jack Devlin lay. By the time they reached him, Elise Montague, former commodities trader and putative EMT, was kneeling down next to Devlin and feeling for his pulse.

  “So?” Bernie asked her. But she knew the answer before Elise shook her head.

  It was obvious to her as well as to Libby that Jack Devlin was going to be needing Marvin’s services instead of a doctor’s.

  Rick Evans pointed to Devlin’s musket, which was lying on the ground beside him. The barrel had melted from the heat. He bent over and touched it, then drew his hand back quickly. “Hot,” he cried, waving his finger in the air.

  Bernie squatted down to get a better look. The musket barrel wasn’t glowing, but the top part of the barrel was peeled back. The metal reminded her of the skin of a half eaten banana. Obviously, the thing had misfired.

  “I wonder what would cause that,” she murmured to herself as she straightened up and took a quick look at the other muskets the men were holding. They all seemed fine.

  Rick ignored Bernie and turned to Marvin. “Didn’t you have charge of the guns?” he loudly demanded.

  Libby snorted. She’d always thought that Rick lived by the principle assign blame early and often. This just proved it.

  Marvin nodded and blinked. “Y-You know I did,” he stammered. He looked as if he was going to cry.

  Libby wished there was something she could say that could make things better as Rick pointed to the musket.