The Turkey Wore Satin Read Online Free Page A

“Angela,
apologize to Tyrone.”
    “ Mother, we’re not
children!”
    “ Angela!” she
growled.
    Lowering her gaze, Kristin’s mother grunted,
“I’m sorry, Tyrone.”
    He flicked his wig and shrugged. “Yeah,
well, you really think I’m gonna kill my brother-in-law over some
stupid drag contest?”
    Grandma Iris’s eyes flashed. She pounded her
cane on her precious hardwood floor, then hoisted herself up. “The
drag show is not stupid, Tyrone! It is a Mayfair family tradition!
Now if you young people are quite done yammering, on with it! On
with the show!”
    “ Grandma!” Georgette
cried. “Daddy just died! They’re not going to prance around the
stage like a bunch of goofs.”
    “ A bunch of goofs?” Iris
replied. “No granddaughter of mine will refer to our men in skirts
as a bunch of goofs!”
    “ Daddy died,” Beth cut in.
“The paramedics say a spider bite, Marty thinks it’s murder. A
stupid drag show should not be your top priority, Grandma, and I
don’t care if you cut me out of the will for saying so!”
    “ Insolent child,” Iris
grumbled.
    “ Crazy old lady,” Beth
shot back. “Somebody in this room probably killed my dad and you’re
hiding your head in the sand!”
    Grandma Iris scoffed, “Nobody killed
anybody, silly girl!”
    With the tension coming to a head between
grandmother and granddaughter, Marty lifted the microphone to his
lips and said, “I witnessed it! I’m a witness!”

Chapter Five
     
     
    The Mayfair family fell silent as Marty’s
voice echoed through the speakers.
    “ A witness?” Kristin
asked. “A witness of what? What did you see, Marty?”
    “ Well, it’s not so much
what I saw,” Marty replied, feeling less sure of himself now that
all eyes were on him. “It’s more like what I heard. I left the
dressing room just before Brykia brought the grapes
upstairs.”
    “ Yeah, why did you leave?”
Jack asked.
    “ To get away from you!”
Marty wanted to say, but he was on thin ice already. What he
actually said was, “I got nervous. Nervous-hungry, like when your
stomach fills with acid and you need to eat some bread. So I went
to grab something to eat, except I heard a noise in the kitchen:
high heels.”
    “ High heels?” Cynthia
asked. “Well, so what? If you didn’t actually see anything, you’re
not much of a witness.”
    Marty explained to the family, “I think
whoever was clacking around the kitchen planted that spider in
Uncle George’s grapes. We’re all wearing high heels—well, everyone
except Brykia—so it could have been any one of us!”
    “ Could have been you,”
Jack shot back.
    “ Yeah, that’s what I’m
saying,” Marty agreed. “I mean, it wasn’t me, but it could have
been.”
    “ Well, it wasn’t any of us
men,” Tyrone said, in a resonantly low tone of voice. “None of us
left the holding room. We can all vouch for each other.”
    “ Everyone but you,” Jack
heckled. “You’re the only one who left the dressing room,
Marty-Boy.”
    Marty swallowed hard. His heart thundered in
his ears and his cone bra dug into his chest. He had no way of
defending himself, except to say that he didn’t do it and ask,
“What about the women? You were all together down here, waiting for
the show to start. Someone must have left the room at some
point.”
    “ We were all in and out,”
Grandma Iris said. “Powdering noses and such.”
    Scratching his head, Marty said, “There must
be some way to figure this out. It couldn’t have been an accident.
I know in my gut Uncle George has been murdered. But whodunit?”
    “ Sit down, Marty,” Kristin
shouted across the room. She sounded exasperated. “Nobody dunit.
Can’t you see you’re embarrassing yourself?”
    “ A true Mayfair would
never accuse his fellow family members of murder,” Grandma Iris
clucked. “Not even if they were guilty!”
    If Iris was trying to cast suspicion on
herself, it was working.
    “ Brykia.” Marty turned to
the woman in the canvas