The Dearly Departed (11 page)

When she didn't answer, he added, “I can be gracious when I want to be.”

“We
pay
you to be gracious. A campaign manager, by definition, wants to be gracious at every turn, in every single contact—”

“I'm not an idiot. Name one time I was less than gracious in the line of duty.”

“I'm talking about today. I'm saying that you and the dead woman's daughter were one wedding away from being stepsiblings—”

“I never met her in my life!”

Emily Ann hissed, “This is exactly what I mean. You have no innate social graces—”

“I have no interest in social graces.”

“And no table manners!” she threw back.

Fletcher didn't flinch. He swiveled his head slowly to face her. “Then perhaps I should resign and save you the embarrassment of our association.”

“I'm trying to do you a favor. I'm offering you a woman's point of view, but you have so little empathy—”

“Explain to me what the favor is if I don't care what impression I make or how much of a grief counselor I am to a total stranger who will never be my stepsister and whom I'll never see again after this weekend?”

Emily Ann said, “Why do I bother? You're beyond help.”

“Cruel, rude, and beyond help. I'd fire my ass if I were you.”

After a tight-lipped pause, she said, “I can't. My father says I have to stick it out.”

“So you've discussed firing me with your father?”

“Maybe.”

“But he nixed that?”

She didn't answer.

“Is it my payout? Too much up front? And the stock options? He's in too deep?”

“No comment.”

“Just think how you'll feel when it's over,” he coaxed. “No more humiliating polls. No more speeches to empty halls. No more saturated fat at street fairs.”

Was he serious or was he teasing, she wondered. Either way, he was hateful. She wanted her water, but she'd left her bag across the aisle. The pilot's voice announced that they'd be landing in minutes.

“If you paid us back, you could resign,” she said.

Fletcher frowned. “I can't quit voluntarily. I am contractually obligated to see you through until the last vote is counted in Tommy d'Apuzzo's landslide victory.”

“Fuck you, Finn.”

He smiled. “Am I fired?”

“You should be! I won the primary, and look where I am now—in single digits! Even the undecideds want d'Apuzzo!”

“It's me, then? It's my fault? Let me remind you who the candidate is: Emily Ann Marie Grandjean. I never should have signed on. I knew we couldn't win, but I didn't know I'd dread getting up every morning.”

Emily Ann went white.

“I guess we both want the same thing,” said Fletcher. “But you're stuck with me unless we find some loophole.”

“How about insubordination? How about incompetence? How about first-degree murder of someone's political future?”

“Not good enough,” he said.

“The minute this funeral's over, I'm calling my father,” she hissed.

“You can always fire me for an egregious act,” he continued. “Every single one of your father's lawyers will understand that.”

“You just try it,” she said.

He stood up and stretched—noisily, theatrically—in the aisle between them. Emily Ann batted his arm away. Two fingers of his right hand found the barely discernible swell that was her left breast and squeezed.

 

I
t was Regina who picked the beautiful dress from her own closet for Sunny, insisting that several cultures—give her a minute and she'd name them—considered white to be the color of mourning. Regina didn't say that her friend looked lovely or that the dress's long-waisted, pleated cotton voile suggested a garden party between the wars.

Sunny looked down at her feet in borrowed white shoes, narrow and pointed T-straps of a pearly leather. “They look like manicured fingernails,” she said.

“What do?”

“These shoes. They're so . . . you and not me.”

“I'm only interested in the fit,” said Regina.

“A little tight. Not terrible.”

“They'll stretch. They go with the dress. You can't wear black pumps, I'm sorry.”

The hat came last, lifted from a round paisley box on Regina's closet shelf. “No,” said Sunny, ducking out of it. “Now it's looking like a getup.”

“I think you can give me some credit for knowing what's appropriate for a funeral.”

Sunny allowed Regina to place the hat on her head and swivel it into its most attractive lie. “It hides my hair at least,” Sunny said.

It didn't; nothing could. Regina released a few strands caught under the hat's brim. “I love your hair. You must like it, too, or you'd have dyed it.”

“I don't.”

“But?”

“My mother had a thing about it. It seemed to mean more to her than to me.” Her eyes filled. She pulled the brim an inch lower.

“See,” said Regina. “It has several useful properties.”

Sunny turned around and looked over her shoulder at her reflection, smoothing the pleats over her backside and studying the length. “It seems too costumey. People will know it's not mine.”

“Answer this question if you're still in doubt: How do you think your mother would feel about you dressing like a character from—if you insist—
Masterpiece Theatre
?”

“Ecstatic,” admitted Sunny. She plucked a tissue from the box on Regina's bureau.

“She'll be looking down and thinking, Wow. All those beautiful dresses I made for her, the smocking and the tatting, which she refused to wear, and look what she's done for me today,” said Regina.

“Or else she'll look down and won't recognize me.”

“Oh yes she will,” said Regina.

“I'm worried I look like a bride. Or Daisy Buchanan's bridesmaid.”

“It's just right. It's for your mother. Everyone will recognize the tribute.”

Sunny let Regina put her arms around her and readjust her hat.

“Here,” Regina said. “A handkerchief, which I'm putting in this little beaded purse. Just hang if from your wrist. And some extra tissues just in case.”

“What was your wedding dress like?” asked Sunny.

“My wedding dress?”

“Because this feels a little . . . something old, something newish . . . as if you're dressing me for a ceremony.”

“My wedding dress was like a thousand others you've seen stuffed with tissue at the dry cleaner's—lace and tulle. I wish I'd thought of something original.”

Sunny walked to a window overlooking the street and pulled the curtain aside. “Did I at least R.S.V.P.?”

“I'm sure you did.”

“Did I give a convincing excuse?”

“I knew why you couldn't come. I should have called you and said, ‘I insist you come to the wedding. I insist you walk down the aisle ahead of me.' ”

Sunny said, “Be serious: The groom would have veto power over your choice of maid of honor—”

“Bridesmaid. My sister was the matron of honor in, I'm sorry to say, a plaid dress.”

“No!”

“You know she's Annemarie McNab now? She's embraced the clan and its tartans. This was red and green taffeta. It looked like a Christmas tablecloth.”

Sunny laughed, then her eyes filled again.

“Did I say something wrong?” asked Regina.

Sunny shook her head.

“Just this . . . everything? Your mom?”

“You,” said Sunny, then choked out, “What I've missed.”

“Stay awhile,” said Regina.

Sunny looked at her watch.

“I meant afterwards. Stay in King George while you're deciding what to do next.”

“Everyone's been saying that.”

“Like who?”

“My mother's fellow thespians. All of whom have spare bedrooms.”

“What about here?”

Sunny rolled her eyes.

“What about home?”

“I can't. Every time I walked down Station Street, I felt as if people were saying, ‘There's Sunny Batten, all dressed up and going to the nationals. Who does she think she is?' My mother made the best of it, stayed in that pathetic little house, as if to prove it wasn't so unworthy and embarrassing in the first place. And look what it did to her. It's probably out to get me next.”

Regina rubbed Sunny's back in circles. “No,” she said. “It's not. Sean and Danny fixed the furnace, and everything's right as rain now. Besides—it's ninety degrees outside. You certainly won't be needing the furnace anytime soon.”

Sunny felt her scalp prickle under the hat. “It was June earlier in the week, too,” she said. “Why would my mother need heat in June?”

“An unseasonably chilly night?” asked Regina.

“We always set the thermostat for sixty-two at bedtime. Could it have fallen below that?”

“It was broken,” said Regina. “It could have done anything.”

“I'm going to call Joey Loach,” said Sunny. “I have to know if my mother had the heat on or if there was foul play.”

“He won't be there. He'll be directing traffic outside the cemetery. Anyway, hon, this isn't a good time to be playing detective.”

“I could dial 911. Someone has to answer.”

“It's a regional system. An operator in Grantham won't know what you're talking about.”

Sunny picked up the phone next to Regina's bed and intoned, without dialing, “This is Sunny Batten. Perhaps you heard about my mother. She died before her time, of carbon monoxide poisoning, which I think sounds a little fishy. I'm about to bury her around noon today, but what if she died of something else? I'll never know.”

Regina took the receiver and replaced it in the cradle.

“Not fishy. There was an autopsy—you know that. We'll ask Joey when we see him. Okay? You all right?” Regina's dress and shoes were pale, too, in solidarity. Her eyes were red.

Joey took off his sunglasses and crouched down to the level of the limo's back window. “We looked into this,” he said. “Don't think it wasn't the first thing I thought of.”

“And?”

“More bad luck,” said Joey. “There was an air conditioner cranked way up. It got cold enough in the bedroom to kick on the heat. The thermostat was set for sixty-five.”

“My mother hated air conditioners,” said Sunny. “She thought she caught colds from them.”

Joey looked in both directions at the traffic backing up. “It was purchased the day before by Miles Finn. At Aubuchon Hardware. A gift, apparently. Didn't think you'd particularly need the fine points of what caused the heat to go on.”

“He bought her an air conditioner and turned it up so high that it made the heat go on. Which killed her.”

“And him, too,” said Joey. “Completely and totally an accident, without a shadow of a doubt.”

“Miss?” said the driver. “We're causing a major bottleneck here.”

“He killed her,” said Sunny.

“Not under any statute we have on the books. And you're just going to make yourself miserable thinking like this.”

“I'm not talking about murder or manslaughter. I just mean . . .”

“Reckless endangerment?” offered the driver.

“Sunny? Realistically?” said Joey. “The heat would've gone on in the fall or on the next cold summer night. So let's not get litigious over the fact that Finn wanted to cool off your mother's house. Okay? It's not a productive road to take, and there isn't one single thing I can do about it. I'm sorry. It was a freak accident and lousy luck, but I have to get this traffic moving.” He took a step away from the limousine and touched the brim of his hat in a salute.

“You're not a lawyer,” called Sunny hoarsely. “I'm blaming him.” She raised the electric window, then lowered it halfway. “I have to blame someone.”

“Miss?” said the driver.

“Nobody killed anybody,” said Joey.