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Mrs. Gilmour wailed. At her clarion call, party people gathered. This was a lot more interesting than even a serious discussion on whether Mrs. Speidel was still on her don’t-worry-be-happy Caribbean cruise with the pool boy.
“Go get ’im, Van,” an elderly otherwise-gentleman called out.
“Beat the crap out of ’im,” chimed in his otherwise-lady wife.
“Don’t you touch him,” shouted the museum director. “We need his vote on the new wing.”
Van took a menacing step toward the professor anyway.
“What is going on here?” Cyn cried from the kitchen doorway. “How dare you have this much fun and excitement at my party without me!”
She reached her nephew’s side as he took another deliberate step forward. Breckenridge squeaked. Yes, he really squeaked. He backed up.
Van decreased the distance once more. Breckenridge squealed this time. He turned and ran.
Oops. Make that, he turned and tried to run.
His shoe caught under Guinevere’s belly. She had a lot of belly to do the catching. Lancelot was right beside her, and she would not let him be hurt by the missile Breckenridge had turned himself into. She gathered her haunches under her and stood.
Her timing was perfect. Breckenridge was already half in the air. Her solid, impervious, immovable bulk caught him right at knee level as she rose. By the time she finished getting up, she had flipped him head over heels.
He sailed majestically into the pool. Party-goers rushed in for the best view. He landed flat on his tuxedo-clad stomach. The belly flop soaked everyone nearby, which was most of the partygoers. They werealltooexcitedoverthespectacletomindalittle moisture. In fact, they crowded closer.
The professor surfaced, coughing and choking. The tails on his tuxedo had caught around his head and ears, and streamers of his torn shirt waved around him. He looked like Mickey morphed halfway into a were-mouse. A wet, tattered were-Mickey-Mouse.
Breckenridge windmilled and splashed his way toward the ladder out of the pool.
But Lancelot stationed himself at the top of the ladder.
Then he lifted his leg.
“That’s my dog.” Van grunted in satisfaction.“Don’t you mean your aunt’s dog?”
“Oh. Well — ”
“Are you going to let him keep doing that?” Mary gestured toward Lancelot.
Van stared at the hound. “Yes.”
“Okay.”
Lancelot ran through the last of his ammunition. Mary elbowed Van to get his attention. “See? I’m not cut out for this matchmaking thing.”
Chapter Fifteen
Mother KnewBest
“M
OM,I’M IN TROUBLE.”
Helen Samuel went into full worried mother mode at the other end of the phone. Mary clicked the volume down and waited a full minute before she tried to make a sound.
“No, Mom, not that kind of trouble, at least not yet.” Mary shifted her phone to her other ear and paced out of her kitchen into the hall. She automatically dodged the piece of killer baseboard rail before she remembered Van had fixed it. It no longer lay in wait for the unwary. He did, though.
“Oh,” Mom said. “What kind of trouble are you not in?”
“Not any kind. Yet.”
