Mahjonged (An Alex Harris Mystery) Read Free

little hat my grandmother always wore had miraculously managed to stay on her head, but it dripped rain down Meme’s face.
    “I was the last car they let in to the neighborhood so I hope everyone is already here. Mildred’s Creek is overflowing and flooding the bridge. You really should have moved to a house in an area with a bigger bridge, Alex,” my sister added.
    “Well, I hope everyone brought pajamas. Looks like it’s going to be a sleepover,” I sighed.
    “I am not staying another minute in this house with that woman!” Mia said from where she stood in the foyer.
    “What woman?” my sister whispered in my ear.
    I just shook my head in despair. Not only was I stuck having to play with all these women but now they would be staying the night.
    “Now, I suggest we all calm down. We’re obviously not going anywhere for a while,” Dorothy said. Dorothy is my mother’s best friend and like a second mother to Sam and me.
    “Why don’t we all have some soup and salad? Dorothy, why don’t you take Penelope and Liz into the dining room? Sam, you come with me.” I dragged my sister into the kitchen where my mom prepared a pot of coffee.
    “What the heck is going on here?” Sam asked.
    “Well, if you had arrived sooner, you would know.”
    “Alex, don’t talk to your sister that way.”
    I am a thirty-eight-year old married woman but when my mom tells me to do something, I do it. How pathetic am I? “Sorry. What took you so long, by the way?” I said with a mock smile, while I reached into my jar of M&Ms. They’re my Prozac and I had a feeling I might need a lot of them tonight.
    “That little walk through the neighbor’s yard, which is now a pond, didn’t help. Plus I had Meme holding onto one arm and Theresa holding my other arm,” Sam said. “So, if I may be so bold as to ask again, what is going on here? And where can I put these shoes?” Sam had taken off her ankle boots, which she now held over the sink.
    “Just put them by the back door. There’s a pair of slippers out there. You can wear those. Let’s get in there before another fight breaks out. And let’s try to be cheerful, shall we?” I smiled to the group in the kitchen.
    The group in the dining room had helped themselves to dinner. So much for all hell breaking loose, food being the great pacifier. Millie, her mother Judith Chapman, and Mia, had settled themselves on the sofa in the living room. At least Mia tried to eat something, I thought thinking it must be a good sign. Of what, I wasn’t sure, but at least the young woman wasn’t still yelling.
    Liz came with Connie Cabrizzi, one of the instructors at the health club I belonged to, and I would have to ask Connie if she knew anything about what Mia had accused Liz of. Connie always had some good gossip about people at the club and, while I didn’t spread it myself, I had no qualms about hearing it once in a while. Connie had brought Liz along in the hopes I could find her some administrative work. The woman was a nurse and I wondered, if she had been cleared of any wrong-doing as she said, why she wasn’t still working in the profession?
    After all the introductions were made and everyone filled up on soup, salad, and crusty bread, my mom and Dorothy helped me clear the table and in place of the soup pot, I put a carrot cake and a chocolate cream pie along with another pot of coffee and freshly brewed tea. “Well, why don’t we all go into the library and begin,” I suggested hoping to ease the tension. My evening was not turning out at all like I had planned, but once we started to play, I hoped things would get better. I just had to make sure Mia and Liz did not play at the same table.
    With the other card table Sam brought stuck in her car a block away, Millie and Sam went out to Mrs. Chapman’s car to retrieve a table she had left in her trunk from a meeting she attended several days before.
    Twenty minutes later, everyone had built their Great Wall. The sound of