Her Brother's Keeper Read online

  Her Brother’s Keeper

  A Joan Spencer Mystery

  Sara Hoskinson Frommer

  Her Brother’s Keeper

  Copyright © 2013 Sara Hoskinson Frommer

  First published by Perseverance Press

  Smashwords eBook edition

  * * *

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  To all good mothers and mothers-in-law,

  especially Isabel Hoskinson and Magda Frommer

  Chapter 1

  “No!” Heads jerked up all over the Oliver Senior Citizens’ Center. “He can’t!” The bridge game paused, and Annie Jordan dropped her ever-present knitting and hurried to Joan Spencer’s assistance.

  “What’s the matter, Joanie? It’s not Fred, is it?” Annie was an admirer of Joan’s policeman husband.

  Conscious of her audience, Joan pulled herself together and calmed her voice. “No, it’s my brother.”

  Annie relaxed visibly. “I didn’t even know you had a brother. What were you hollering about?”

  “He wants to come to Rebecca’s wedding.”

  “Did you invite him?” An unnecessary question. Joan was sitting at her desk keeping track of responses to the invitations she’d sent to her daughter’s wedding. The “yes” pile was growing at an alarming rate, mostly from the groom’s side.

  “Well, yes, but I never thought he’d accept. Worse than that, he says he’s coming early.”

  “Is that bad?”

  “Annie, I haven’t seen Dave since I don’t know when. We didn’t bother to tell him when Fred and I got married.”

  “There wasn’t time,” Annie said. “You took us all by surprise.”

  “That wasn’t why. I didn’t want him there. Dave’s middle name is trouble.”

  “So why invite him this time?”

  “Rebecca made me. With all the people Bruce’s mother wants to pack into the church, Rebecca wasn’t going to leave out anyone from our side. But having Dave show up isn’t going to help Rebecca’s standing with her future mother-in-law. Elizabeth Graham is awful, Annie. And what will I do with my brother a week ahead of time? He thinks he’s going to stay in our house. There’s no way—” She fought her voice down to a reasonable level again. “There wouldn’t be space for him with Rebecca here, even if I wanted him underfoot.”

  “Where are you putting Fred’s parents? Didn’t you say they’re coming?”

  “They’ll stay in Ellen Putnam’s bed-and-breakfast. His whole family will. But I couldn’t put Dave there.”

  “Why not?”

  “I couldn’t do that to Ellen.”

  “Of course you can. Ellen’s a big girl. She’s open to the public.”

  “Well . . .” Joan felt herself weakening. Would Ellen ever speak to her again? But maybe Dave had mellowed. No matter what, he absolutely couldn’t stay at her house.

  She felt foolish for making such a fuss, but through the open doorway of her own tiny office, she could see that the old folks around her had gone back to their bridge and handwork. The exercise group upstairs probably hadn’t even heard her squawk.

  “You’re right, Annie. I’ll talk to Ellen. If she can stand Bruce’s mother, she might as well put up with Dave.”

  * * *

  Ellen Putnam had put up with a lot, Joan thought that evening while walking home through the park. The Putnams had been in the throes of adding to their house when a tornado had destroyed the addition. Widowed shortly afterward, Ellen had enlarged the house and turned it into a bed-and-breakfast that was now supporting her and her children. She certainly had little competition in Oliver, Indiana, and she was always booked solid on Oliver College football weekends. But because Rebecca was to be married to Bruce Graham during the college’s winter break, Joan had been able to reserve the whole house for the wedding guests. And Ellen, a superb cook, had agreed to feed them meals—even the rehearsal dinner, if Elizabeth Graham would stoop to holding it in Oliver. From the exchanges she’d had so far with the mother of the groom, Joan suspected Elizabeth would just as soon avoid having any part of the wedding in Oliver. Mrs. Graham was an elegant-hotel type, she was sure. But Rebecca wanted to be married in church, and from her mother’s home. That pleased Joan, after the years in which Rebecca, asserting herself as an independent person, had kept her distance.

  The bed-and-breakfast was just at the top of the hill beyond the park. The new addition and its extra bedrooms had more than doubled the size of their substantial home, using up most of the Putnams’ lot. But beyond the picket fence that kept little Laura Putnam’s dog in bounds, their view was of the park—all the advantages of a big yard, but no lawn to mow. Coming to it today, Joan debated warning Ellen about Dave. She could always just give him Ellen’s address and phone number and let him do the rest himself. No. She owed Ellen fair warning.

  Laura and the gangly mutt met her at the back door. “Mama, it’s Joan!” Laura called into the house. New big front teeth dominated her little face, and her fair hair threatened to escape its pigtails.

  Ellen hurried to the door in paint-spattered jeans. “Come in, come in. I’m glad to see you.”

  “You’re painting? Don’t let me interrupt.” Any excuse not to have to face this.

  Ellen looked down at her pants. “No, that was last week. I think we’re going to be ready for your wedding gang. Come, sit down.”

  Joan joined her on the big old sofa that dominated the living room. Now that the house was as much hotel as family home, the clutter of Laura’s books and toys that she remembered had turned into a neat coziness, with just enough books to welcome a visitor and fresh flowers on a low table. The dog, its scraggly tail wagging, laid its head on her lap and drooled on her well-worn corduroy skirt. Joan reached out a hand to rub it between the ears.

  “Take the dog out back, Laura,” Ellen said.

  “Yes, Mama,” the child said. “Come on, puppy.” She slapped her leg, and the dog, its puppyhood long behind it, bounced in her wake.

  Ellen looked after her. “I can’t complain. That dog has made all the difference. She was headed for a real depression after she lost her father. But you probably didn’t stop by to talk about Laura.”

  “Maybe a puppy would have helped Rebecca. She had a rough time, too, back when her father died. But you’re right. I came to throw myself on your mercy.”

  Ellen waited.

  Why was this so hard? “It’s my brother,” Joan said.

  “Yes?”

  “He’s decided to come to the wedding. He wants to stay with us, but he just can’t, not with Rebecca in the one spare room I have.”

  “We still have space.”

  “But you don’t want Dave Zimmerman!”

  “What is he, an ax murderer?” Ellen’s dimples showed.

  Joan suddenly felt silly. “Not that bad. At least, not that I’ve ever heard. And maybe he’s matured. But when he was still living at home, he got into one scrape after another. Underage drinking, pot, reckless driving, gambling, even got picked up once for shoplifting. I’m sure I didn’t hear all of it—I was younger, probably too young to tell. But sometimes I heard my parents talking when they thought I wasn’t listening. I haven’t seen him for years. I don’t know what kind of thing he’d pull now, but I wouldn’t want to cause you any tro
uble.”

  “Don’t give it a thought, Joan. He can’t be any worse than some of the people who stay here. I didn’t repaint the walls because I changed my mind about the color, you know. You should have seen the stuff the last bunch threw at them.”

  “They didn’t!”

  Ellen shrugged. “I’m still in the hole for repairs this time.”

  “That’s terrible!”

  “The risk you take when you open a place like this. Good thing I can do most of the work.” Ellen didn’t sound sorry for herself.

  “Oh, I forgot to tell you the worst of it!”

  Ellen’s eyebrows rose.

  “He wants to come at least a week early. I’ll pay you, of course.” A wedding expense she hadn’t anticipated.

  “Good. It’s the slow season. Nobody comes to Oliver right before Christmas. And I’ll have a good week to show him who’s boss.”

  Joan laughed. The set of Ellen’s jaw made her believe that she might just pull it off. “Thanks, Ellen. I couldn’t dump him on you without at least warning you. But I’m glad you’re willing.”

  “You watch. By the time he leaves, he’ll be washing dishes.”

  “It would do him good. He’s probably just lazed around for years.” But she wondered. She had no idea what Dave had been doing since their parents died. He’d moved out west and then to a town in Illinois, but his brief Christmas cards told her nothing about his life, and he never asked about hers.

  Feeling a weight lifted, she swung along the rest of the way home with a lighter step. If only Bruce’s mother were as easy to deal with. But at least there was no question of putting her up. She hadn’t said a word about where she wanted to stay. She’d probably choose to drive from their home in Ohio the very morning of the wedding, or maybe spend a night in Indianapolis, if she didn’t want to cut it too close. Not my problem, Joan thought.

  What was her problem was tonight’s orchestra rehearsal. Her very part-time job as manager of the Oliver Civic Symphony often threatened to take over her life, or so it felt sometimes. Last-minute calls from players begging off from rehearsal were a routine feature of her Wednesday afternoons. “The dog ate my homework” didn’t apply here, but people came up with their own creative reasons for being unable to play. Some days Joan suspected they just couldn’t face another evening of playing under their irascible conductor. Some days she wasn’t sure she could, either. Even so, she climbed the steps to the front porch of her little house in a more cheerful frame of mind than usual.

  Not even the blinking light on her phone message machine fazed her. She listened to the messages while changing from her work clothes to jeans and a sweatshirt. More comfortable for playing her viola, not to mention hauling those heavy boxes full of music folders. Her other part-time orchestra job, as music librarian, took more muscle than she had expected when she’d first agreed to it. Finally, she pulled a brush through her straight brown hair and fastened it back on top of her head in a loose twist, as usual when she was in a hurry.

  Back when she’d first arrived in Oliver, money had been such a big worry that she would have agreed to almost anything short of selling her children. Now, with a regular job as director of the senior center, and married to Fred Lundquist, detective lieutenant in the Oliver Police Department, she felt less pressed. But she hadn’t dropped any of her jobs.

  No real bombshells on the answering machine tonight, thank goodness.

  She thawed some burger buns in the microwave and zapped the filling for sloppy joes left over from a couple of nights before. While it heated and the teakettle worked itself up to whistle, she pulled out greens for a salad and cut up a tomato, as much for color as flavor, stuck forks into the salad bowl to toss later, and set the bowl on Grandma Zimmerman's old oak kitchen table. She had just sliced some fruit for another bowl when the phone rang and Andrew, her son, came through the back door. A scholarship student at the college, he still lived at home to save money.

  “Get that, would you?” she asked Andrew. “My hands are wet.”

  He did, but immediately held it out to her. “It’s Alex.”

  Joan wiped her hands on her jeans and took the phone. “Hi, Alex.”

  “You finally get the Mozart?” Whatever else you might want to say about their conductor, Alex Campbell, you couldn’t say she didn’t get right to the point.

  “Yes, and the bowings are all marked.” Might as well beat her to the punch.

  “He’ll probably want to change them,” Alex said gloomily. Nicholas Zeller, the orchestra’s concertmaster, had strong opinions about how the strings should bow their music.

  “He’s already seen them, Alex. I copied his bowings onto the other parts, so they’re ready to hand out.” It hadn’t been as big a job as usual, since the music to Mozart’s 40th Symphony had last been used by an orchestra that hadn’t erased its bowings, and Nicholas had made very few changes on the parts for the first folder of each string section. “I’ll see you soon, or was there something else?”

  “Thanks, Joan.” Alex hung up. Amazing. Thanks from Alex were rare and almost never unqualified.

  Deciding to be grateful for small favors, Joan checked the sturdy plastic boxes of music to be sure she’d put the newly bowed parts into them, but of course she had. Good. The last thing she needed was to make a promise like that to Alex and then blow it. One collapsible box was built into the wheeled carrier she’d bought to ease the burden of hauling the folders to and from rehearsal, but it couldn’t hold all the parts she needed to carry when they began rehearsing for a new concert, as they would tonight. She stacked a second, rigid box on top of the built-in one, tied them together with bungee cord, and hoped against hope the top one wouldn’t fall off when she was pulling the whole contraption over a curb. At least the weather was clear. The folders, tall enough to hide any messy music from the audience in performance, stuck up out of the boxes too high for a lid to fit. She made do with an old rain poncho, but it had a habit of falling off at the worst possible times.

  By the time she made it back to the kitchen, Andrew had set the table.

  “Want me to put the rest of the food on, too, Mom?”

  “Sure.”

  “Is Fred coming home for supper?”

  “I’m here.”

  Joan hadn’t heard the front door, but Fred came in from the living room in his winter coat and hat. When he kissed her, his nose was cold. He pulled off his hat and smoothed his thinning blond hair. A handsome man, even if he was balding. Blue-eyed and blond, Fred was all Swede. Andrew, as tall as Fred, was thinner, as his dad had been, with dark curls like his father’s and Rebecca’s.

  “It’s not fancy, but it’s hot.” Joan added the buns and sloppy joe filling to the table, and they sat down. Unusual on a Wednesday, eating together. They talked about nothing in particular. Then, for the first time since leaving Ellen’s, she remembered her brother and was again filled with dread. “I have some news.”

  They both looked up.

  “My brother’s coming.”

  “To Rebecca’s wedding?” Andrew asked.

  “Yes, and he wants to come early. I about lost it at work today after I read that, but then I talked to Ellen. She says she’ll risk letting him stay there.”

  “Whaddya mean, risk?” Andrew said.

  Joan exchanged glances with Fred. “It’s a long story, and I’ve got to get out of here. Tell you later.”

  “I’ll get the music,” Fred said.

  “Thanks.” She picked up her viola, and Fred, ignoring its handle, picked up the cart with its boxes as if they held feathers instead of heavy folders. “You going to be home?” she asked when they reached the car.

  “Probably. Town’s pretty quiet, with exams coming up at the college.” He kissed her, gave her old Honda wagon a pat on its pockmarked fender, and waved her off.

  Chapter 2

  The orchestra rehearsal went better than usual. Alex seemed to lack the energy to chew anyone out. Despite some clinkers in the Mozart t
hat ordinarily would have enraged her, she just kept beating time, ignoring missed entrances as well as wrong notes and sloppy bowing that made what should have been clear and sharp ragged, instead.

  “Not bad for a first reading,” she said finally.

  It wasn’t the way it had been when she was in love with their narrator to Britten’s Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra, when she’d praised them in ways Joan had never heard from her and even let the kid who played tuba join the piccolo in the “Stars and Stripes Forever” solo. It was more as if she just didn’t care. She really is depressed, Joan thought, but the last thing she wanted was to become Alex’s confidante, much less her counselor.

  In fact, Alex was one of the first to leave after the rehearsal. Joan waited for the last slowpokes to sign out their music and then hauled the boxes of too many unclaimed folders out to her car, relieved not to have had to put out any orchestral fires. Nobody weeping about the concertmaster’s heavy hand, nobody wanting to change seats, nothing.

  Fred met her at home when she was unloading the car. “I’ll take those,” he said. Joan gladly yielded the cart with its boxes to him and slung her viola over her shoulder.

  “Thanks, Fred.” She shucked her jacket and boots, tucked her feet under her on the old sofa, and took it from him, wondering whether the next shoe was about to drop. So far, the evening had been too calm.

  “Hi, Mom.”

  Hearing her daughter’s voice made her smile. “Rebecca! How are you doing? How is Bruce?”

  “We’re okay. But his mother is driving us both wild.”

  You, too, Joan thought. “What about?”

  “Everything. She puts down everything we decide. Tells us we’re doing it all wrong.”

  “You’re talking about the wedding?”

  “For starters, but I can see that she’s not going to stop there. She’s going to be like this our whole lives. No wonder Bruce keeps his distance.”