A Veiled Antiquity (Torie O'Shea Mysteries) Read Free

Basically, my mother-in-law doesn’t claim me because I’m neither of the two.
    Rudy can tell anybody anything they want to know about holy days, holy weeks, how many candles to light for what, and any tidbit of information about saints and martyrs, especially if it’s kind of gross. He can even name the popes in order.
    But I’ll be damned if he can tell you where the Battle of Jericho was fought.
    He’s not been to confession in several years and even longer since he went to church. I think the last time he went to confession was to confess that he hadn’t been to church. Anyway, his mother of course blames this on me, along with our children’s less-than-pure bloodline, of which I am wholeheartedly and completely innocent.
    Rudy and I met in a hardware store where I was working. I was standing on a ladder in the hardware aisle and he was buying a drill. He swears that he was so taken with my shapely legs that he didn’t realize he was walking straight into the ladder. He knocked it over and I crashed. Our first date was in the hospital when he wheeled me down to the cafeteria for chicken-fried steak, which I detest, but it was the thought that counted. He insisted on paying for it, because after all he was responsible for my broken leg. I think I fell in love with him at that moment.
    This morning, he had accompanied me to the funeral of Marie Dijon.
    “I can’t thank you enough for going to Marie’s funeral with me,” I said to Rudy. He took off his tie and placed it neatly on his chest of drawers, next to the 5×7 photograph of our two daughters.
    “Well, I wish I hadn’t,” he declared.
    “Why?”
    “That was the weirdest funeral I’ve ever been to. Nobody cried,” he said.
    “Well, none of us knew her that well. I’m sure we’re all sad to see her go, but I didn’t know her well enough to cry.”
    “Yeah, but no family members cried,” he said.
    “I didn’t see any family members. I only saw about six or seven people that I didn’t recognize. It was weird. And if you hadn’t gone with me, Bernice Thorley would have insisted that I attend the funeral luncheon.”
    Rudy sat on the bed and pulled off his shoes. He reminded me of a child because he didn’t untie them first. Instead he pulled and yanked and tugged until the shoe came flying off. I could have told him to untie his shoes first, but after ten years of marriage, if he wanted to keep his shoes tied when he took them off, so be it.
    “What were you and Bernice Thorley discussing during the funeral, anyway?” he asked.
    “I wasn’t talking,” I said. “I was listening. She went on and on about how unusual Marie’s will was.” I took my right high-heeled shoe off with the help of my left foot, and then did the reverse with the left shoe.
    “How so?” Rudy said.
    “Well, everything is to be auctioned. Only a citizen or business owner of New Kassel will be allowed to bid on it. No outsiders.”
    I was sitting at my dressing table. I took off my small silver earrings and noticed that Rudy watched me from the other side of the room. “What?” I said.
    “You should wear that dress more often,” he answered.
    “It’s too short,” I said. “But I had nothing else in black.”
    “I know it’s too short,” he said. He smiled like a schoolboy. “That’s why you should wear it more often.”
    “Oh, no,” I said. I laughed and jumped up from the dressing table. “Rudy, I have to get to the Gaheimer House and get some work done, before Sylvia has a fit. And you know Sylvia having a fit is one of the scariest sights ever recorded by modern man.”
    “The kids are with your grandmother,” he said with a mischievous grin. He came toward me, a growl starting low in his throat. When he gets like that, I may as well just give up. He grabbed me and kissed me on the neck, tickling my ribs in the process. I giggled and squirmed and he tickled all the more.
    “Rudy! I mean it, I have to get some work … done. Stop it!” I