The Hearse You Came in On (33 page)

“What about you? Bowman knows that there was a Mrs. Sinatra. He’d have gotten a description. Hunchbacked. Shriveled. Wart on the end of the nose. Don’t you think he’s tagged you as my partner, partner?”

“I’m sure he has,” Kate said. “But I don’t think he’ll be so quick to go after me.”

“You’re being inconsistent. If he’s in danger from me, he’s in danger from you.”

Kate set her toast down. “I’ll be fine. It’s you I’m worried about.” She reached across the table at that point and took hold of my hands. Her sleeve dipped into the yolk of her unfinished eggs, but she didn’t care. Whatta gal. Her eyes were pleading.

“Hitch. Just do me a favor, please? Stick around. See what you can do about not getting yourself killed by this guy. I think I’d miss you.”

“That’s almost the sweetest thing anyone has ever said to me.”

Her grip tightened. “I mean it.”

We met over the middle of the table for a slobbery morning-after kiss. Which was how Carol found us as she shuffled in from the bedroom.

“Bob, you’re getting egg all over your hands.”

Edie was dead. Sally fetched a plastic Christmas wreath from her attic and draped it with a black cloth and hung it on the front door of the bar. Naturally, Billie and I were to handle the arrangements. And this
was going to present something of a logistical problem. Jeff Simons’s body had been sent over from Hopkins already and we were busily clearing the decks for the crush of well-wishers who were already beginning to come by to pay their last respects to the TV newsman. Where in the world were we going to put Edie? Jeff Simons had seemed like a nice fellow on TV and all that, and I knew firsthand that his mother was a kindly old sweetheart, but I was damned if I was going to sit back and let Edie’s final hours on earth be shunted aside like an afterthought as the result of a celebrity funeral. The old gal certainly deserved better.

I looked to Edie. The coroner’s report found that the lethal blows to the head had come from “multiple smooth hard objects.” Which is coroner’s lingo for beer bottles. She had suffered a number of cuts to her face but nothing so terribly disfiguring that she couldn’t be put on display for all of her chums and well-wishers.

Not that I wish the untimely death of anyone, but I have to admit that there was a part of me that was glad to have something to occupy my energies. Preparations for the funerals of both Edie and Jeff Simons allowed me to be distracted for a while from the sobering fact that an angry ex-cop out there apparently desired a very brief and definitive meeting with me.

“More flowers,” Billie announced, pulling open the door.

“Hi, Mrs. Sewell. I gotcha more flowers here.”

This was Fred, the flower delivery guy. We’ve known Fred for ages. We call him Fred Flowers. I have no idea what his real last name is. Billie had to go on voice
recognition alone; all she could see was a pair of skinny legs in green pants and a pair of skinny arms hugging a flower arrangement fit for a winner at Pimlico.

“Anywhere, Fred. Thank you.”

The legged flower arrangement tottered off into Parlor One. Fred emerged a moment later.

I was taking all this in from my office. My door was open: a) because I’m the welcoming sort; and b) I thought it would be a smart idea to know as quickly as possible if Lou Bowman were to pay a visit. I have to admit, the sight of Fred crossing the lobby completely obscured by the bouquet of flowers gave my stomach a turn. What if Lou Bowman thought of that? What if a mountain of lilies came crab walking in through the front door and then suddenly pulled a gun and started shooting at me? There were several levels on which the image disturbed me.

I stepped over to see how things were shaping up. Billie and I had already pulled open the plastic curtain. The two-rooms-as-one was choked with flowers. Somewhere in town was a smart operator who was turning a quick buck peddling terra-cotta vases—about one foot square—that were fashioned in the shape of a television set. Somehow this fellow had gotten the word out fast—these guys always manage to do this—for we must have already had close to two dozen of the things, some holding flowers, some holding flowering plants. They all included a photograph of Jeff Simons taped onto the front. His publicity photo. Before the face-lift. Maybe ten years before. That cowlick looked like a little question mark.

I had asked Fred if he knew where the terra-cotta TVs were coming from. He told me he didn’t.

Billie joined me. “Looks like a funeral.” Billie loves that joke.

“What are we going to do about Edie?” I lamented. Edie was currently down in the basement, along with Jeff Simons.

“We just have to hold off for another day, dear. There’s really nothing to be done.”

She was right, of course. One look at our flower-choked parlor and the growing collection of terra-cotta TV vases confirmed it. It just hit a mean bone in me, that’s all.

“Edie deserves better than to just sit in the basement waiting her turn.”

Billie left my side and wandered in among the flowers. I knew what she was thinking. I was thinking it too. My parents’ funeral. That had been a two-parlor event. That one had emptied most of the local florists.
That
one had brought out the bigwigs.

Billie put her face to a bunch of lilies and took a good sniff. She turned back to me.

“I have an idea. See what you think.”

We brought Jeff Simons up from the basement just before noon and got him all situated. His mother had come over to help. She did a little motherly fiddling with her son’s tie and she brushed some invisible specks off of his blue blazer. Mrs. Simons went to adjust Jeff’s trademark cowlick, but drew her hand back sharply the instant she touched it. Consulting the publicity shot, Billie had hairsprayed the cowlick to
within an inch of its … well, it was as hard as granite. But it looked good.

Despite the outpouring of flowers and terra-cotta TVs, we weren’t actually expecting a crush for the afternoon wake. This would be mainly family as well as close friends and colleagues. A sizable flow of people to be sure, but not the makings of a riot. That would come for the funeral itself, which the station planned to cover live. They were apparently pushing it heavily on air. What the hell. On air was where the guy had lived and where everyone knew him. A TV funeral was fitting. Stupid, but fitting. The real crowds would turn out for the funeral. Cameras draw people like flies. And we know what draws flies.

Billie assured me that she could handle the lion’s share of the Simons wake. She freed me up to make the arrangements for Edie, which I set to immediately.

Tony Marino was very helpful. He went around to the liquor stores in the area and collected several dozen boxes. I picked up some heavy-duty plastic trash bags and a pair of scrub brushes. Sally met us at the front door of the Oyster. Her eyes were soft and puffy. I could see that she was taking this hard. Like I said, Edie was a fixture at the Oyster. Now the fixture had been ripped out.

Sally let Tony and me in and we went to work, tossing bottles into the boxes and loading up the trash bags with all of those cans. We also came across some interesting artifacts that had found their way into the dinghy lo these many years. We found a wallet belonging to one Ashton Trice III. It contained his driver’s license, an admission ticket to the Museum of Pornography in Indianapolis
and a photograph of a handsome young feller with a waggish sneer on his face, holding up a bowling ball into which had been stuck a long red candle. Birthday, apparently. Sally tucked the photo into the bar mirror. Among the debris we also found several caps and hats, a fireman’s helmet that no one could account for, a leopard-print brassiere, a pair of crutches, an AM transistor radio, a “Nixon’s the One” campaign button (up on the mirror, next to young Mr. Trice), a
Look
magazine heralding the comeback of the suburbs, some decorative screw-on knobs from the beer taps, a spiked dog collar (which I suggested Sally slip around the neck of her sexy old husband) and a paperback copy of
War and Peace,
ripped perfectly in half.

Tony and I hauled the bottles and cans out front, where the street gremlins would whisk them away for the recycling nickel. We gathered up most of the splintered wood and tossed it out the black door into the harbor. Fitting end for a dinghy. I was checking my phone machine every half hour or so. I was anxious to hear from Kate. So far, no calls.

A large piece of the dinghy had remained intact. The bow and about a six-foot-long section of the starboard wall. Tony and I propped this section of the dinghy up against the far wall of the bar, the pointed bow aiming up at the ceiling, then went and fetched Edie. I had put the old gal into one of our coffins with a lid that can be removed altogether. We loaded the coffin into our hearse and drove it over to the Screaming Oyster, carefully set the box into the propped-up remnant of the dinghy and removed the lid. Edie looked beautiful.

It had been Billie’s idea. And it was a brilliant idea. Edie was an Oyster regular. She lived here; she died here. Sally got the word out that Edie was going to be remembered here. Edie’s wake was to be held that evening at the Screaming Oyster Saloon. Drinks on the house. The squeamish need not attend.

T
he terra-cotta TV count had crested the forty mark by the time I got back from the Oyster. Billie had learned that they were going—without flowers, mind you—for a cool twenty-five bucks. I’ll do the math for you: whoever was hustling these things had just hit a thousand bucks. Even as I did the math, it ticked up to a thousand and twenty-five as a tearful young woman appeared with another contribution to the shrine. Between sobs she explained to Billie—who had not asked—that she grew up with Jeff Simons. Of course she had never actually met the man in the flesh. But in the twentieth century a person can now officially “grow up with” a complete stranger, love them, hate them, grow cold and indifferent to them, reconcile with them, laugh and cry with them and even attend their funeral… and never once meet them. Kind of creepy, isn’t it.

Billie reported not having seen a stocky man barging through the front door wielding a clutch of lilies and a blazing pistol. In truth I hadn’t filled Billie in on the possible threat to my life and limb. I don’t see the point in being an alarmist, unless you happen to enjoy calling attention to yourself. There wasn’t anything my
dear aunt could do to protect me, so why put her in a tizzy? I tried Kate’s number at the police station a few times but all I got was the message that Detective Zabriskie was out of the office.

Fred arrived with another load of flowers. That’s when I noticed a police car parked across the street. I rewound the tape in my head and realized that the car had been there when I came back from making my preparations at the Oyster. As Fred took the flowers inside I crossed the street and tapped on the passengerside window. I crouched down to peek into the car. A skinny young guy with his police cap pushed back on his head was sitting behind the wheel scratching the silvery stuff off an Instant-Win lottery ticket. Several dozen losing tickets were strewn about on the seat next to him. He looked familiar to me.

“Hi,” I said.

“Hello.”

“Having any luck?”

The policeman finished scratching his card. He blew at the silver dust and squinted at the little box.

“I won another ticket.” He indicated the dead soldiers on the seat next to him. “That’s what half of those are.” He picked up another card off of a stack on his dashboard and leaned over and handed it to me. “Here. See if you get lucky.”

I scratched at the silver dust with my fingernail. “Let me ask you something. Are you parked here for a reason? I mean, besides trying to win the big one? Are you keeping an eye on this funeral home?”

“I keep an eye on everything, sir. That’s my job.”

I had to wonder if sitting in his patrol car scratching
Instant-Win tickets fell under the guise of “doing his job,” but I let it pass.

“You know what I’m asking.”

“Yes sir, I’m keeping an eye on it.”

“Did Detective Zabriskie send you here?”

“Zabriskie? Uh, no sir. I was sent here by Detective Kruk.”

“Kruk?”

“Yes sir.”

Now I remembered where I had seen this guy before. At the Baltimore Country Club. He was the one who drove Kruk out there the day they found Guy Fellows hugging the knife.

“Did Detective Kruk tell you specifically what you were to keep an eye out for?” I was tempted to say
who,
but I held back.

“Anything suspicious,” came the answer.

“That’s all he said?”

“That’s all he needed to say, sir.”

Sharp cookie, this kid. “I don’t mean to tell you how to do your job or anything. But all sorts of people have been going in and out of that place all day. Bringing flowers and whatnot. I just… I guess I was wondering, what
would
you consider suspicious?”

“I’d consider it suspicious if a person coming this way stopped when they spotted my patrol car and turned around and went the other way,” he said. “I’d consider that suspicious.”

“Would you go after them?”

“I’d take note.”

I had been scratching the card without looking. I blew away some of the silver dust. Jackpot! Five million
dollars! I exaggerate. I won a free soft drink. I tossed the card onto the car seat.

“Gee,” said the policeman. “This must be your lucky day.”

Can’t say I was feeling so lucky. “Do you know a guy named Lou Bowman?” I asked.

“Lou Bowman? Sure. I mean, we weren’t tight, but sure, I know who he is. I talked to him sometimes. You know, before his aunt died and left him all that dough.”

Yes. His aunt. Aunt Epoch.

“So if, say, you saw Lou Bowman coming down the street here, would you find that suspicious?”

“Suspicious?”

“Would you take note?”

“Well, I guess I would. Lou’s up in Maine. He’s got a huge place right on the beach. And a big sailboat.”

Well, it’s a decent-sized place and it overlooks a harbor and the sailboat is a motorboat… but why quibble.