Move Over, Miss Marple

The new evidence started everyone talking again.  Once again I was the Queen of Coffee Hour, since everyone wanted to know who I thought the murderer was.  I felt guilty that I didn’t have anything to offer. 

Karen, Nikki, and I decided to imitate those soccer moms in the mystery books who are always getting together to eat and solve murders.  Usually they have confrontations with the perpetrator and almost get killed, but we decided to ignore that.  We made a list of places Margaret could have met the killer.  (As Nikki pointed out, even if Margaret had used “he,” she could have done it just as a further cover-up.  So I still wasn’t in the clear.)

Of course there was the college and the library.  And the Methodist church.  Maybe it was a neighbor.  We decided to go through the college yearbook.  Karen, who really likes to throw herself into things, decided that she could check out the Methodist church.  She’d been thinking that maybe her boys could use some religious training.  Nikki would check out the neighborhood and chat with some of the workers in the stores.

“What was her type?” Nikki asked. 

I thought.  “The actors she liked were Anthony Hopkins, Peter Lawford, and William Powell.”

“Who’s he?”

“He played Nick Charles in the old Thin Man movies.”

“Oh, I love them,” Karen said.  “And Peter Lawford played him on TV in the fifties.  My mother has a bunch of DVD’s of the series.”

“I love Peter Lawford.  He was Laurie in Little Women.  Liz Taylor got him”

“I never liked that version.”

We all agreed that Peter Lawford was the only good thing in the ‘fifties Little Women.

“So, anyway,” Karen got us back to business, “She liked Nick Charles and Dr. Lector.  I wonder how that affected her sex life?”  And she made the fava bean noise from Silence of the Lambs.

I wanted to laugh, but then I remembered that we were talking about this because my friend had been murdered.

“But Anthony Hopkins played Richard the Lionhearted in The Lion in Winter.”

“But what do we remember him for? “  She had a point.

“So we’ve got debonair charm or smoldering menace.”

“Hello, Margaret.” And she made the fava bean sound again.

I didn’t know whether to laugh, shiver, or cry.

We’re going to do our separate investigations.  I don’t know how much information we’ll find, but maybe Karen will find Jesus. I’d been worried that her boys didn’t go to Sunday School.

I may not have much time for detective work.  Kate and Janet are going to get married and it looks like I’m going to be the de facto mother of the brides!