I
surprised myself by driving to the hospital and asking to see Arthur.
“He’s got a police officer stationed outside his room, you’ll have to ask her,” said the stout, elderly volunteer at the information desk. So I trudged through the uncomfortably familiar corridors, thinking that if this kept up, I might even learn the floor plan and figure out the reasoning behind it.
Arthur was in a room at the end of the hall so visitors could be seen coming for a long time. The officer in blue outside Arthur’s room was indeed a woman, husky and tough in her uniform. “C. Turlock” said her little name pin, and it seemed an unpromising sort of name.
Sure enough, Officer Turlock was determined to be the snarlingest watchdog a wounded fellow officer ever had, and she found me highly suspicious. Since my head was approximately as high as her elbow, and I offered to leave my purse out in the hall with her, I couldn’t see the source of her suspicions—did she think my glasses concealed a hidden dagger?
If Arthur himself hadn’t called out to C. Turlock to find out what she was in a lather about, I would have had to give up; but when he found out who was at the door, he ordered C. Turlock to let me in.
Arthur had one of those horrible gowns on. I could see the bandage at the back of his shoulder, where the material had pulled to one side. He looked as if he was in pain; and I was reminded that being stabbed, even with a pocketknife, is a very unpleasant experience.
I stood beside him, looking at him and wondering what to say. He looked right back.
“So, did Perry do it and drop the knife in a garbage can inside the building?” I asked finally.
Arthur’s face went through the most amazing changes. First he looked stunned, then aghast, and at last he started laughing. It was a big laugh, from the belly, and C. Turlock stuck her head in to see what was so funny. Arthur made an imperious sweeping motion with his right hand, and she hastily shut the door.
That right hand kept on traveling and grasped mine, drawing me nearer to the bed. I looked steadily into the pale blue eyes that had once turned my legs to jelly.
“I should never have left you and married Lynn,” Arthur said.
“Yes, you should,” I said briskly. “And you ought to go back to her now, if she’ll have you.”
“Can’t I detach you from that shady bastard you married?” Arthur’s voice was light, but he was serious.
All the troubles Martin and I had flashed through my mind. I shrugged. “Not with a crowbar,” I answered.
“I don’t think Perry did it,” he said, after a moment, dropping my hand.
“Why?”
“Faron Henske hand-searched the garbage cans along the way to the office where Perry placed the call to 911,” Arthur said. “He looked down drains. He took apart a sink. Faron isn’t a ball of fire, but he’s a very reliable searcher. And there were cleaning people still in the community center, plus a few guests who stayed to talk or take down some of the decorations, and they say Perry didn’t stop on his way to the office.”
“And the office was taken apart.”
“Yes. Of course.” Arthur leaned back against his pillow; I’d only seen him look this bad once before, when I’d nursed him through a bout of flu.
“I’m real sorry you got hurt,” I said.
“I’m real sorry I fell on you,” he answered politely. “Took you down to the ground, Paul says. Of course, it made the fall easier on
me
.” A shadow of his hard grin was on his face. “Did you get hurt?”
He sounded rather as if he hoped I had.
“Just some bruises and scrapes.” I pulled back my hair to show him the bump on my forehead.
“Next time I’ll try to fall on someone bigger, and land on her front and not her back,” he told me, trying for bawdy.
“Lynn’s bigger than me.”
“Roe . . .”
“Okay, sorry. I don’t know what went on with your marriage. But I’m not the escape hatch. I’ll always have good memories of you, and I don’t want them to get sour.”
“Straight from the hip, Roe.”
“Had to be,” I said.
“I love you.” Suddenly he looked twenty, vulnerable and yearning.
“You love what you remember. But you were screwing Lynn on the side for the last three or four months we were together. So I’d say your love wasn’t ever an exclusive item.”
“Let me have it when I’m down.”
“Only time I can get you to listen.”
The corners of his mouth twitched in a smile. “Okay, okay. You listen now,” and he reached for my hand again. “You take care, Roe. I know you love Bartell, but since you told me what you think about my marriage, I’ll tell you what I think about yours.”
Oh, boy, I didn’t want to hear this.
“That guy is out of your league, Roe. He’s tough and he’s ruthless. He’s a lot older. He’ll never think you’re his equal.”
That seemed a very strange charge to level at Martin, and I looked at Arthur in some surprise. I’d been scared, perhaps, that Arthur would tell me he’d kept Martin under surveillance and that Martin had a mistress. Or that Martin was engaged in some criminal activity. Arthur would just love to catch Martin in those situations, and he’d make sure I knew, because he’d warned me from the time I met Martin that I shouldn’t marry him.
If Arthur hadn’t caught him, Martin wasn’t doing it, I suddenly realized. I hadn’t known how worried I’d been until the relief spreading through my body made me giddy with cheer.
“I don’t know if he thinks I’m his equal,” I said. “We’re so different I think ‘equal’ would be hard to pin down. But he lets me be myself, and he’s never tried to change me, and we enjoy each other very much.”
We looked at each other steadily. I thought of how wounded I’d felt at Arthur and Lynn’s wedding, how betrayed. It seemed strange now, as though those emotions had been felt by some other person and only told to me.
“Good-bye, Arthur. I hope you get out of the hospital soon.”
“Bye, Roe. Thanks for visiting. I know you’re curious about what happened. I’ll get Paul to keep you filled in.”
I thought about being embarrassed, decided to skip it.
“Thanks. See you,” I said, and walked through the door.
“Officer Turlock,” I said, inclining my head. She nodded back grudgingly. I didn’t feel I’d made a friend.
A glance at my watch told me it was almost time for the funeral. I brushed my hair and powdered my nose in one of the chemically scented hospital bathrooms, and drove to Western Hill Baptist Church.
Western Hill was easily the prettiest church in Lawrenceton, a town of many churches. It sat by itself on the top of a rolling hill in, obviously, the (north) western part of town, which consisted mostly of newer suburbs. The church overlooked Lawrenceton, a calm, white-spired presence that everyone enjoyed. Western Hill was landscaped to the nth degree, with flowers, shrubs, and grass that looked clipped with a level. In its rivalry with the larger Antioch Baptist, which actually possessed an indoor swimming pool, Western gained points with its parking lot, which surrounded the church on three sides; no long slog to the car at Western.
And Western was undoubtedly the best place to have a funeral, though I was sure that hadn’t crossed Bess Burns’s mind when she’d joined the church years before.
The long black hearse was parked at Western’s massive front doors, on the semicircular drive that curved across the hill in a graceful arc. This was a driveway used only for ceremonies; Western had provided back entrances and that wonderful parking lot for regular occasions. I used one of those smaller entrances, and wended my way through the day-care corridor to the sanctuary door. In the sanctuary, the ceiling was two stories high, and the walls and ceiling were dazzling white, giving the impression of light and sky. The sun streamed through the high arched windows and flung a bolt of dramatic light across Jack’s dark gray coffin, topped with a large casket spray of white gladiolus, resting at the steps up to the altar.
Jack Burns was being buried on a beautiful day.
I had to walk to the back of the church, since I’d entered from the door to the west of the altar area; as I passed, I scanned the row of pallbearers on the left front pew. I knew all of them, from Jack’s fellow officers—Paul Allison, Faron Henske, Chief of Police Tom Nash Vernon, Sheriff Padgett Lanier, and (amazingly) Lynn Liggett Smith—to his son, Jack Junior. I scurried by, not particularly wanting to meet the eyes of any of the people on that pew, especially Lynn.
The church was rapidly filling up, and I ducked into the first aisle space I saw, nodding to Sam and Marva Clerrick sitting in the pew behind me. I was closer to the front of the church than I liked to be, but I didn’t want to sit on one of the folding chairs that had been lined up in the back. I got settled, tried to stick my purse under the pew, began to slide to my knees and just in time recalled I wasn’t in a church with kneelers.
“Almost hit the ground again, didn’t you?” murmured a voice in my ear.
I had a moment of sheer rage when I thought the speaker was Dryden. Was I going to be approached in every church I entered?
But Martin, perfectly appropriate in a quiet suit, sat down in the pew beside me. I took his hand and squeezed it, my heart thudding in a ridiculous way. I was so glad to see him I was in serious danger of crying, and that would have been noticed this early in the proceedings.
“You came anyway,” I whispered, knowing that was obvious but wanting to say it, nonetheless.
He looked at me sideways, and a little smile curved his lips. “Missed you,” he said.
Then the organ music changed in tone, the funeral director from Jasper’s appeared at the front of the church to signal the family had arrived, and Bess Burns and her daughter walked down the aisle as the congregation rose to its feet. In her black, Bess seemed to have lost ten pounds in a few days, and Romney’s round face was bare of makeup and stained with tears. I knew Romney well from her teenage days, barely over, when she’d come into the library three or four times a week. It shocked me to see her look so adult.
I hastily revised my carnal thoughts for those more appropriate to the occasion; whatever Maker there was to meet, Jack Burns up yonder in the stainless-steel coffin had seen that Maker face-to-face. No more mysteries left to solve for that detective.
I wondered if the pall-bearing detectives on the front row had thought of that. I could see a slice of all their faces, as they looked to the right as the minister entered his pulpit. Paul was looking pale and resolute, Faron Henske solemn, and Lynn Liggett Smith was just blank. I’d never expected to see a female pallbearer, but I heard Marva hissing to Sam that Jack had specified Lynn in his will. Arthur was supposed to serve, too, but his wound had prevented it; Paul had replaced him.
The coffin remained closed after the minister’s address. I could well believe that it had been impossible for the mortician to reconstruct Jack. So instead of viewing the deceased, a ritual I was glad to forgo, we all retreated to our cars and drove to Shady Rest. Though parking space at Shady Rest would be at a premium, I took my own car and Martin took his Mercedes; I didn’t want to leave my Chevette at Western Hill, which was not exactly on the way home.
Martin and I stood in the sun, our heels sinking into the rain-softened ground, while the brief graveside service came to an end. The pallbearers laid their bou tonnieres on the casket, and the minister, reminded by their action, did likewise.
The funeral director, a trim blond man I’d never met, bent down to Bess and murmured something, and Bess, wakening from her thoughts, nodded and stood. The funeral was officially over.
Immediately, most of the attendees left to resume their regular Sunday afternoon pursuits.
Romney Burns went around saying hello to people she recognized while her mother had a quiet talk with the minister. I introduced Romney to Martin and we talked stiffly about the day and the service. Romney seemed remote, numb; I felt so sorry for her.
Jack Junior stood by himself, facing out over the adjacent field, smoking a cigarette, his expression savagely angry; I thought I would steer clear of Jack Junior, who was obviously in a very volatile state.
Not everyone had noticed this, however. Somehow uncued by Jack’s stance, Faron Henske laid a big, brown would-be comforting hand on Jack’s shoulder. Jack twitched away, threw down his cigarette, and abruptly lost control. Those of us looking in his direction could see him pop, and a collective wince ran through us.
The minister was pulling out of the main gate. He should have stayed a few minutes longer.
“One of you did it!” Jack shrieked. Those who’d not seen the windup froze in their tracks; and poor Faron looked devastated at having set off this firestorm.
“He wouldn’t turn his back on someone he didn’t know! One of you did it!”
Martin looked grim and hard. The blond funeral director, closest to the two, was considering whether to intervene; he thought the better of it, and I was sure he was right. The only person who could handle this came striding across the soft ground; Bess, in her black, wrapped her arms around her son and talked quietly in his ear, her eyes dry. Romney, round and sandy as her father had been, stood a few feet away, scared to join them.