3
Yes, yes, of course it is weird, and yes, of course it upset me, what do you think, you tiresome thing? Josephine wanted to shout. But she wasn’t really the type to shout. She was the type to keep her head down and obey the law, and so she stood there, answering each question as best as she could.
It felt like forever before the officer was satisfied by Josephine’s answers. “We’ll be in touch,” she said, and left to find another victim to annoy.
Josephine wondered where Keith was. Why wasn’t he here? Had he left? Fear coursed through her veins. Had the police taken him in for further questioning? She found Adam. He was staring at the half-eaten feast on the dining table with a thoughtful expression.
“Where is Keith?” she said.
Adam looked up. “Keith? I don’t know.” He peered around the room as though in a daze.
“How you cannot know where you own son is?” Josephine snapped.
He gaped at her, and she wanted to shake him and ask how he could be so calm at this time. Then it hit her that Adam, good-natured Adam, did not realize that his own son was probably the number one suspect in this case. Or maybe he was in shock. But they didn’t have the luxury of staying in shock, she wanted to snap at him. They couldn’t afford to stand here in a daze and let the cops home in on Keith. But the thought of telling Adam that Keith might be a suspect was unbearable. Of the two of them, Josephine had always been the problem solver, the one who made the impossible decisions when they had to. Like that one time years ago when they ran over a coyote on the I-5. They’d gotten out of the car and found, to their dismay, that the poor animal was still alive. It was Josephine who’d taken a rock to it to end its suffering. Adam had dry heaved on the side. Afterward, she’d doused her hands with hand sanitizer, and they hadn’t spoken about it since.
No, she couldn’t bring herself to dump the burden of proving Keith’s innocence on Adam, so in the end, all she said was “I worry about him. His fiancée just die in front of him.”
Adam’s face softened. “Yes, of course. You’re right. We should find him.”
“You go up to his room,” she said. “I will look around on this floor.”
With that, Josephine went through the living room, now in a horrible mess that would take her at least two days to clean, the den, the dining room, and the sewing room. No Keith in sight, but then raised voices from the backyard caught her attention. One of them sounded male. Keith? She jumped up and ran to the den, where there was a sliding door that led out to the swimming pool.
“Keith?” she whispered.
But it wasn’t Keith. Standing next to the pool, bathed in the reflected light from the water, were Yolanda and her ex-husband, George.
“George,” Josephine said. She paused, not quite knowing what to say beyond that. “Uh. Xin nian kuai le.” What? Why had she gone and wished him happy New Year? But it had been instinctual.
“Hi, Josie. Xin nian kuai le.”
Yolanda gave him a sidelong glance, as though to say How dare you speak to my sister after everything you’ve done?
“Why you in my backyard?” She didn’t mean to be so rude, but really now.
“Well, he is leaving now,” Yolanda said.
George looked down at his feet. “I just wanted to see you. You haven’t picked up any of my calls, and—”
“Yes, George, because you cheated on me, remember? You cheated on me with—” Yolanda seemed to remember that Josephine was only a few feet away and stopped abruptly. “Look, it’s been a long and terrible night ...”
“Why terrible?” George said, and Josephine detected a note of hope in his voice, like he was maybe thinking that the reason it was terrible was because he hadn’t been at the reunion dinner.
“Someone died,” Josephine blurted out. A small part of her relished the look of shock on George’s face. He was the bastard who had hurt her sister—Yolanda had been a wreck last year, and all because of this no-good cheater.
“Wh-who?” George sputtered.
“Oh, I don’t think you know her. It was Keith’s fiancée.”
“You do know her,” Yolanda said, and now there was a sly note in her voice that made Josephine’s ears prick.
Josephine gave her sister a sidelong glance. Growing up, they had been close as sisters, but Josephine always maintained a bit of distance from Yolanda because she was aware that her little sister had a bit of a cruel streak, and Josephine never quite knew how to deal with it. Now, that familiar sense of uneasiness rose inside her as she was reminded of Yolanda’s ability to hurt when she wanted to.
“I don’t understand,” George said.
“The girl who died. Keith’s fiancée,” Yolanda said. “Her name was Lacey. Lacey Lee.”
A horrified moan wrenched out of George’s mouth. Belatedly, Josephine wondered how Yolanda knew what Lacey’s last name was. No one had mentioned it when Lacey was first introduced. Then realization crashed down on Josephine’s shoulders. Her mouth fell open, her jaw scraping the ground. Her wide eyes ping-ponged back and forth between George and Yolanda.
“The woman he cheated with,” Josephine choked out.
Yolanda’s eyes remained on George’s face, as though wanting to drink in every flicker of horror in his expression. “Yes,” she said quietly. “It was Lacey.”
“B-but,” Josephine sputtered. The back of her neck prickled, and her entire scalp crawled like it was itching to jump off her skull. “Fran tell me Lacey was her girlfriend.”
“Oh yes. That was how George and Lacey met. Fran brought her home as her girlfriend, and next thing we knew, Lacey and George became an item. George had just gotten a nice year-end bonus from his firm, didn’t you, George? And you thought—hmm, how should I spend this money? On my wife of almost thirty years? Maybe on my hardworking daughter?” Yolanda’s voice turned into a hiss. “Or maybe on my daughter’s gold-digging girlfriend.”
George’s shoulders were rounded, as though he was shrinking into himself with shame. “I’m sorry,” he moaned. “I don’t know what I was thinking. I was a mess, I—”
“Ugh!” Josephine spit. “Yuck! Your own daughter’s girlfriend? George, that is new low. I am very disappoint in you.”
“I know,” George said. “Trust me, no one is more disappointed in me than I am. But you don’t understand, Lacey, she can be so ... persuasive.”
Josephine felt her insides curdle. How dare this man, this full-grown adult man, shift the blame onto someone half his age? And yet even as she bristled, a small part of her whispered: I can see it. She thought again of the way Lacey had touched Keith, that casual stroke of his arm, and the way Fran had said that Lacey had described her as her soulmate and the way Lacey never stopped touching her. That was exactly how she was with Keith, wasn’t it? Her manicured hands never once leaving him. A subtle pat here, a gentle stroke there. As much as Josephine despised George in this very moment, she understood to an extent the bewitching charm that Lacey had. She understood how a man like George, wilted and bored and probably in the throes of a midlife crisis, could have fallen for Lacey.
“But I don’t understand, how is she Keith’s fiancée?”
Even through the layers of shock and disgust, Josephine’s mind had continued adding to the picture of Lacey she was creating. An ugly picture, one of a shameless opportunist who used and abused people for her own personal gain. Ruthlessly ambitious, she’d thought nothing of betraying her business partner, Porter, then of dating Francine before dumping her for her father, George, and after that, leaving George for his rich nephew, Keith. A shudder rippled through Josephine’s body. What a cold, heartless young woman Lacey had been, and to think Keith had been this close to marrying her. Deep in the darkest recesses of her heart, Josephine couldn’t help thinking that Lacey perhaps—just the tiniest bit—deserved to ...
No, she shouldn’t think like that. Nobody deserved to be killed, no matter how despicable their actions. Still, she was relieved that Lacey would never become her daughter-in-law.
And now she gazed at Yolanda in a new light. It was all too easy to imagine Yolanda doing something to Lacey. After all, she had the right motivation. She’d been hurt by Lacey as both a mother and a wife. And with that cruel streak of hers ...
Josephine sighed. No matter what, she couldn’t throw her sister under the bus like that. She’d always been protective of Yolanda, and the thought of turning Yolanda in to the cops sickened her.
Then Adam rushed out, panic written all over his kind face. “Jo, they took him.”
It felt as though every drop of blood rushed from her head. Even as she said “What?” she knew what had happened.
“Keith,” Adam said. “They asked if he’d follow them to the station, and he did!” He noticed George standing there and started. “George, what are you doing here?”
“Never mind that,” Yolanda said.
For a moment, Josephine couldn’t think of what to say or do. Keith had gone to the police station. Keith, her baby, her only child. He whose forehead she’d kissed a million times, whose eyelashes she’d counted every nap time, whose hand she’d sworn never to let go of.
Then it all came roaring back, and she straightened. “Okay, I will fix.”
“What?” Adam said. Sweet, purehearted Adam. Keith had taken after him, and for that, Josephine was grateful.
“You go inside. I will come inside in a bit.”
After so many years of marriage, Adam knew better than to argue with her. With one last confused look at her, Yolanda, and George, Adam turned and walked back inside the house.
Josephine waited until she was sure they were alone again; then she said, “Yolanda, come.”
“Don’t follow us, George,” Yolanda said, and stalked toward Josephine.
The two of them walked away from George and spoke in hushed whispers. “Keith is police suspect,” Josephine said.
Yolanda nodded. She’d always had a soft spot for Keith. “But he is innocent, so I don’t think we have anything to worry about.”
“Pah! You think police care about that? They just want someone to pin it on so they can close the case. I can’t let them do that.”
Yolanda’s eyes searched hers. “No. You are a mother. You must protect him.”
Josephine squeezed Yolanda’s hands. “Yes.” They shared one more look with each other; then Josephine went back inside the house.
“I think,” Josephine heard Yolanda say to George, “you’d better leave now. Go a long way away.”
“But Yol, I want us to—”
“There is no more us .” Yolanda’s voice was as sharp and firm as a steel knife. “And you wanted more excitement in your life? You’re about to get a whole lot of excitement.”
“What do you mean? Yol?”
“Go now.”
Inside the house, Josephine walked as though in a trance through the mess of people to find the blue-eyed officer who had questioned her earlier. All noises were muted, as though she’d plunged underwater, and she could see herself moving steadily, see her arm reaching out and tapping the officer on the shoulder.
“I need to tell you something,” she said when the officer turned to face her. “Something about Lacey Lee.”
Something in her voice must have struck a chord, because as Josephine began to speak, the voices around the room gradually fell silent, every pair of eyes turning to look at her. And she told them all about Lacey and how she’d flitted from victim to victim, landing at last on Keith, who she’d finally deemed highly paid enough to marry.
“Let me get this straight,” the officer said. “The victim, Lacey Lee, was your nephew Porter’s business partner, then through him, she got to know the rest of your family and started dating your niece, Francine. But then she decided to dump Francine for Francine’s father, George. Then she got tired of George and decided to date your son, Keith?”
“Um—yes.”
The officer’s eyebrows rose, and she muttered, “Yikes. Okay, so what you’re telling me is there are a lot of people with motives to kill Lacey Lee.”
“Maybe.” She had to be very careful here. She could see Porter and Fran in the corner, staring at her with wide, terrified eyes, as though they were both waiting for her to throw them under the bus. “But I just see my brother-in- law George in backyard. And he is not invited to the dinner tonight, so why is he here? And he has the biggest motive, because Lacey cause him to be divorce, break up his marriage of twenty-five years before she suddenly leave him for Keith.”
“What?” the officer snapped, and she clicked her fingers at her colleagues. Two of the cops rushed out to the backyard. “You could’ve led with that.”
“Oh, sorry, I just so confused,” Josephine said helplessly. She wrung her hands, hoping that George had time to get away. Maybe it was harsh, pinning it on him, but he really should’ve thought better than to date his daughter’s girlfriend while being married to Yolanda. I mean, really now, Josephine thought. He had it coming.
The officer’s radio crackled, and she walked off, snapping orders into it. Near the front door, she turned around and barked, “If any of you sees George, you need to call us right away.” Then she hurried out the door, leaving the dinner guests gaping in silence. For a long while, nobody moved. It felt as though they were suspended in time. Josephine imagined the moment crystallizing, the world wondering which way it should tip. Had she done it? Had she solved the mystery of Lacey’s murder for everyone?
“Wow,” Porter said after a while. “I gotta say, Auntie Josie, I think I prefer reunion dinners at Big Uncle’s house.”
The tension broke. The atmosphere sagged with relief.
Josephine half laughed, half sobbed.
Adam rushed to her. “Oh my god, what just happened? George? Was that why he was—oh my God, he was right outside with you and Yol! Why didn’t you say anything then?”
Josephine sighed. “I didn’t know yet, everything so confusing. Take me a second to work out.”
“My god, Jo. Are you okay? I can’t believe you were out there with him. He didn’t try anything, did he?” Adam’s eyes were burning with concern.
She leaned against him, shoving down the guilt that was coiling in her stomach. “I’m okay.” From the corner of her eye, she spotted Yolanda coming up to Fran and giving her a reassuring hug. “Let’s go get Keith from the station,” Josephine said.
Adam nodded. He looked deep into Josephine’s eyes. “I can’t believe you solved it and saved our son.”
Josephine gave him a wan smile. She hugged everyone as Adam grabbed the car keys. When she got to Yolanda, her sister squeezed her arm and gave her a look. An electric shiver went down Josephine’s neck.
Yolanda knew.
Of course, she must have known this whole time. Because that cruel streak that Yolanda had? The only reason Josephine had recognized it was because it existed within herself too. And she couldn’t let herself get too close to Yolanda because she didn’t want Yolanda to know that Josephine, too, was capable of great cruelty.
But did it count as a great cruelty, to protect her son from the clutches of the likes of Lacey? And the more that she’d learned about Lacey, the more confident Josephine felt that she’d done the right thing, pouring that rat poison in Lacey’s glass. Yes, it had been brash; she blamed it on the whiskey sours Fran had been pushing her way all day. She wouldn’t otherwise be this chaotic. And she hadn’t actually expected Lacey to drop dead, goodness me. She’d expected her to get sick, but how unlucky that she had died instead, and on Chinese New Year as well: talk about bad luck. But never mind that; Josephine believed in making her own luck. Like the way she’d given Big Uncle a gentle push, just halfway down the stairs, mind you. She hadn’t wanted to kill him, either, after all, merely make it impossible for him to host this year’s dinner. And once his broken leg healed, he’d probably bully everyone into having next year’s dinner at his, so no harm done, right?
As Adam backed the car out of the garage, she looked out the window and waved at her sister. Yolanda waved back and held Fran closer to her. A small smile touched Josephine’s lips. Say what you would about today’s reunion dinner, nobody could deny that it had been memorable. They would be talking about this year’s dinner for many, many years to come, and wasn’t that the sign of a great meal?