French Polished Murder by Elise Hyatt Page B

raise them.” If Ben was going to write names on their little rumps, he could damn well own them as far as my mom was concerned.
    “Oh,” Mom said. She paused then sighed. “That man,” she said, decisively, “must get married.”
    I mumbled something, and Cas grinned and mouthed at me, “legal in some states,” which I chose to ignore. Instead I said, “You did not call to ask about Ben’s love life.” At least I hoped she hadn’t, although knowing Ben it was entirely possible he had chosen to take Nick by the store, and that my mother, being my mother, had decided to call me to discuss the matter.
    But it turned out I was lucky. “No,” my mother said. “I was going to ask you if all that furniture you bought was from the Martin estate.”
    “Why?” I asked. “It was, but why do you ask?”
    “Ah. Thought so. John called me. John Martin. He said you’d given his housekeeper a check and he didn’t know there was anyone else but my daughter in town by that name.”
    I refused to ask whether it was my first or my last name he recognized. At a bet the first, but I wondered if Mom actually admitted to her friends that she had named her daughter Candyce. “You . . . know John Martin?”
    Mom sounded surprised. “What? He and your father went to school together. And he’s just married the sweetest woman. She works as a curator in the Martin area of the public library. You might have met her.”
    “Does she look . . . colorless?” I asked.
    “Oh, that.” Mom could be heard—I swear—to smile condescendingly on the other end of the phone. “Well, Asia was always a very pale girl. You know, pale and blonde, despite her name. So . . . you know, they fade early.”
    I understood the smile, since my mother was a blonde who hadn’t faded early. I’d found that the older my mother got, the more she was gratified by evidence that her friends were aging worse than she was.
    “Mommy! Peegrass.”
    “Oh, your grandson would also like to tell you we have a cat named Pythagoras,” I said, forestalling my mother concluding something completely different.
    “What an odd name for a cat,” my mother said.
    “Ben named him.”
    “Oh . . .” Mom sounded dubious. The truly sad part of my relationship with my parents was that, though I was an only child, I was not their favorite child. No, that honor was reserved for Ben who was not—not even slightly—gay and who was absolutely and completely the best son anyone could want. “Well, Ben was always so erudite. I must ask him which story he got the name from.”
    I refused to be baited. It was like Mom to think that if someone had named a cat an unusual name, it must be in honor of some fictional detective, and it would take too long to correct her. “I hope you’re not upset I bought the Martins’ furniture?”
    “Oh? No, of course not. I explained about your little business.” The way Mom said it, it made it sound like Daring Finds was a hobby that I played between sunbathing at the Cote D’Azur and attending concerts in Vienna. “Of course, they have to get rid of almost the entire contents of the house, now that old Diane is going into the hospice or the old age home, or whatever it is. At ninety-seven, an old age home is functionally a hospice, I suppose.”
    “She could live to be a hundred and twenty,” I said.
    “Really unlikely,” my mother said. “Frankly, I know it has surprised the entire family that she has lived as long as she has. She was a very frail little girl, I understand. Quite her mother’s darling. So sad.”
    “Her mother . . .” I said, noting that Cas had detached E from my legs and was carrying him to the living room from where, in short order, I heard the reading of the adventures of the lab rats, done in voices.
    If Cas meant something more than just moving in together, was I ready for it? Was it something I could consider after knowing him for only six months? He was kind, considerate, and quite indecently