Gypsy Sins by John Lawrence Reynolds

fact?” Jerome Harper said.
    â€œHow long do you plan to be here?” someone behind McGuire asked in a deep baritone voice.
    McGuire turned to face Blake Stevenson. The overweight man’s thinning gray hair clung to an almost perfectly round head, framing a moon-shaped face dominated by coarse features. The heavy eyebrows, the broken nose, the massive mouth and puffy lips, the sturdy neck, all were in conflict with the modulated voice and careful diction which suggested refinement and culture. Or the pretense of both.
    â€œNot very long at all,” McGuire replied. He’s not asking how long I’ll be staying, he told himself. He’s asking how soon I’ll be leaving.
    â€œA week? Two weeks?” It was Mike Gilroy, popping a slice of quiche into his mouth. Gilroy carried himself easily and was constantly attentive to his wife Bunny who, having replenished the punch cups of the minister and the organist, approached her husband from behind and slipped her arm through his.
    â€œNo idea.” McGuire was the centre of attention, the guest of honor. Even Reverend Willoughby and Jerome Harper were watching him now from the far end of the long table, holding their drinks with pinky fingers extended, sipping from them in the overly formal fashion of awkward guests at a party full of strangers. Willoughby caught McGuire’s eye and nodded, and when McGuire returned the gesture the minister edged past Jerome Harper and came around the end of the table.
    â€œDid you enjoy the service?” he asked McGuire. His tentative smile said he was expecting a compliment.
    â€œI’m not sure I understood it,” McGuire said. “I was surprised you even held one for her.”
    â€œThe service you mean? Your aunt requested it.” Willoughby spoke with the satisfaction of someone revealing the truth to an unbeliever.
    â€œCora? She was hardly religious.”
    â€œNevertheless, she prepared instructions on how the service was to be performed. She wrote the sermon. And she chose the people she wanted to attend. She named you and everyone else in this room.”
    â€œFunny old broad!” It was Ellie Stevenson, eavesdropping on the conversation. Her outburst was punctuated with cold laughter. “She wrote all that crap?”
    Willoughby turned his head to her and nodded with a tight smile, his eyes closed, the kind of gesture he might make to a small child who had asked if there really was a God. “She also instructed me to give you a copy of the sermon for your interest,” he said, turning back to McGuire. He reached a slim hand, the fingers like parchment-wrapped twigs, inside his jacket and removed two sheets of paper, folded vertically. “Here you are,” he said. “She was really quite good at expressing herself in, I suppose we should say, poetic terms. Don’t you think?”
    â€œCora was good at everything she set her mind to,” McGuire said. He folded the papers twice and stuffed them in his jacket pocket. “Thanks for doing that,” he added. “If Cora wanted it done, then it was important to her.”
    Willoughby smiled and bowed his head slightly as though unworthy of an anticipated compliment and backed away through the others gathered around the two men.
    â€œWill you be staying at Cora’s house?” It was Bunny Gilroy. Her voice was high-pitched but attractive.
    â€œNowhere else to go,” McGuire shrugged.
    â€œYou can always stay here. . . .” June Leedale began.
    â€œNo, let him stay at Cora’s house,” Parker Leedale ordered. “He may want to check out the inventory.”
    â€œActually, I wouldn’t mind going over there now,” McGuire said. “Freshen up a bit and turn in early.”
    â€œSure thing.” Parker Leedale set his cup aside and walked to a maple sideboard where he opened a drawer and withdrew a small white envelope and locked tin container the size of a lunch