Blessed Is the Busybody (9 page)

Unfortunately Lucy was on the other side of the melee, and it took her longer to skirt the edges of the room. By now the whole place was in disarray. The baby doll chorus line had been replaced by a hefty woman in a flowered bikini and sarong singing lullabies in Hawaiian, but apparently our Maui Mama headed back to the islands at the first sign of trouble. A lonely ukelele was the only sign she’d ever been there.

A table was overturned as patrons got into the spirit. Lucy was halfway around when a big guy in black leather bumped into her, then tried the same thing again because it had worked so well the first time. I went to help.

There are multiple advantages to having spent every summer of my childhood with Ray Sloan. When I whacked Black Leather on the shoulder with my purse, he whirled and I ducked, grabbing Lucy by her arm and pulling her to safety just as the guy behind me slammed into Black Leather. Ray says self-defense is all about timing.

We dodged and jumped. Once I pulled Lucy nearly to the floor as glasses crashed into the wall behind us. We reached the door unscathed and bolted into the parking lot just as two of Emerald Springs’ finest joined us there.

I jerked Lucy into the shadows, and we skulked behind cars and under trees at the rim of the lot, watching as the cops jumped out of their cars—one from each—and sprinted toward the door. We were in the Concorde pulling out of the lot when another car passed us. This one was a dark sedan with a flashing light on top, the magnetic kind that rides in a glove compartment or backseat most of the time.

I was torn between turning my head and straining to see who it was.

My eyes met those of Detective Roussos.

No surprise there. I’m beginning to think that my fate and his fate are inextricably entwined.

6

In Emerald Springs the school year begins on the Thursday before Labor Day. I’m never quite sure how these decisions are made. I envision the throwing of the I-Ching in the school board conference room, the consulting of horoscopes, the consumption of multiple bags of fortune cookies.

Whatever the reason, Thursday morning the girls were up by seven. Today was a milestone for both. Deena assembled brand-new collections of notebooks and pens and rearranged them in her backpack for her first day at the middle school. Teddy, who was starting first grade, fought internal battles over whether to try the school’s lunches or bring hers in her brand-new Shrek lunch box, which matched her green jumper. Five minutes before we needed to leave she decided on peanut butter sandwiches and Shrek.

At least she wouldn’t lecture the cafeteria workers on the evils of hamburger on her very first day.

“You look comfortable,” I told Deena when she came down for breakfast, wearing new flared jeans and a salmon colored T-shirt. Since breakfast is mandatory in our household she ate a slice of whole wheat sunflower seed toast with cream cheese and grumbled inaudibly.

“Are you looking forward to being at a new school?” I asked, hoping to stimulate her brain waves into activity.

“All my friends are dorks.”

“The Meanies are dorks?”

“I’m not just friends with the Meanies.” She rolled her eyes.

“Dorkness is even more global than that?”

“It’s all clothes and boys. I’m going to be bored for the rest of my life.”

And
I
was going to be bone-deep grateful.

Ed and I are responsible friends of the earth and proponents of zero population growth. Still, as I dropped Deena at the middle school, then a few minutes later watched Teddy stride purposefully through the front doors of Grant Elementary, my biological clock started ticking forty seconds to the minute. I wanted to rush home, grab Ed, and haul him back to the parsonage bedroom.

Instead I went to Jennifer Marina’s funeral.

Actually, Ed was not grabbable. He was on his way to Columbus for a monthly meeting of Unitarian ministers. And since Ed was in charge of the program, he had no choice but to go. Not that anyone had asked him to perform the funeral. According to the announcement in the paper it was strictly a cut-rate affair at the local funeral home, but even at that, I wondered who was paying for it.

Why did I go? I suppose for the same reasons I went to Don’t Go There Tuesday night. Plus something more. Someone needed to see Jennifer off. Someone needed to say genuine prayers on her behalf.

I was not convinced that anyone else would be there to see this woman laid to rest. Having viewed two of the men in her sad, truncated life, I could not picture weeping and wailing and tributes to the departed. A brawl, perhaps, an endless string of profanity, but no one to help speed poor Jennifer on her journey to who-knows-where-or-what. (Unitarians are not precise or focused on this particular subject.)

By ten I was sitting in the smallest visitation room at the Weiss-Bitman Funeral Home staring at a rectangular pine casket. A
closed
casket, for which I was enormously grateful, since I had seen far too much of Jennifer already.

Weiss-Bitman resides in one of the town’s historic homes on Wren Street, not far from the parsonage. Built in the 1850s by a young couple expecting to fill the many rooms with children, it stood nearly empty for four generations as couple after couple tried and failed to provide the house with the patter of tiny feet. When rumors of a curse became so serious that no one else would try, the Weiss and Bitman families bought the house and turned it into the town’s premiere funeral home. The patter of tiny feet would never again be an issue. The house has been devoted to the dead ever since.

The room where Jennifer was secluded was paneled in walnut with one lonely window draped in heavy red velvet. An upright player piano in the corner spewed forth an endless plinking honky-tonk of Christian standards.

I was alone with Jennifer. I let my mind drift and considered the path of her life. To the strains of “The Old Rugged Cross” and “Onward Christian Soldiers” I imagined the crossroads she had come to and the directions she had not heeded. I prayed that whatever awaited her was better than what had come before, and I prayed for peace for her soul. I wondered if anyone would provide a formal good-bye to Jennifer in Pennsylvania where her children lived, so that they could publically mourn their mother.

Five minutes before the brief service was to begin, two other people joined me. I recognized them both. Keely, from Don’t Go There, and Rico Marina.

Rico and Keely didn’t come in together. Rico entered first and took a seat on the other side of the aisle in the back. Keely came in a minute later and sat beside me.

Rico was dressed in a black T-shirt and black jeans, but I suspected black was for show. It helped play down the bruises and swelling on his jaw and along both cheekbones. One eye was swollen shut, and Rico was limping as he found his seat. I knew from the brief account in the
Flow
that he and Sax had been jailed for disturbing the peace. I had hoped the two men were sequestered in separate cells, and here was living proof. Now I hoped Sax didn’t arrive in another minute to alter the “living” part.

Keely wore a yellow buttoned shirt with tails tied under her breasts and low-riding blue jeans with sequined flip-flops. Since this outfit beat the heck out of her blue satin wrapper, I was delighted.

“You been here long?” she asked.

“Long enough to say good-bye.”

“You didn’t even know her except when she was already dead.”

“I’m glad
you
came. I’m glad she had a friend.”

“She did?”

I wasn’t sure if Keely just wasn’t too bright, or if she was preoccupied. She kept turning to glance at Rico.

For the first time I was grateful for the noise of the piano, which effectively masked anything we said. “I’m sure this is hard for her husband.”

“He shouldn’t ought to be here. He was a bad husband and a bad father.”

“Maybe he’ll learn to be a better one and get custody of his kids.”

“Rico? You wish! He don’t care nothing about them. He’ll give them to the state for real now.”

I suspected the children would be better off in state custody. Perhaps now they could be adopted by someone who would treasure them.

“Jenny, now, she was a good mom,” Keely went on. “At least she wanted to be, that is.”

“You said she was saving money so she could get custody again?”

“That’s right.”

“I don’t mean to be rude, but does Don’t Go There pay that well? It doesn’t look like the kind of place where the tips are huge, even if you do a little dancing.”

Keely didn’t seem to take offense. “Heck no. I can barely pay the rent unless I make a little something on the side.”

I did
not
want to know how she accomplished that. I scrambled silently to change the subject.

“See, I paint birdhouses,” she said, before I could open my mouth. “To look like people’s houses, you know? I go through town and draw pictures, then I take plain old wooden birdhouses from the craft store or build them myself and paint them so they match. I add little touches, you know, then I give them to the owners for whatever they want to pay me.”

“Oh.” I figured I would need at least fifteen minutes meditation time to ask forgiveness.

“Jennifer had some problems with a customer or two, so her tips weren’t that great,” Keely said. “But she had options.”

I prayed that the Weiss-Bitman director would continue to cater to the more affluent mourners in the other room. “Options?”

“Last week she told me things were looking up. Pretty soon she’d have the money she needed, then she was going back east, get some kind of office job to make the people at child welfare happy, and get her kids back.”

“That sounds pretty sudden.”

“Yeah. I asked her, and she said it was some kinda inheritance. The money was practically in her bank account. She said she damned well deserved it, too.” She lowered her voice. “Of course, she didn’t want Rico to know. She said he’d get his hands on it somehow. Too bad she didn’t live to get the money, isn’t it?” Keely’s baby blues widened sadly, and it was clear that a connection between the money and Jennifer’s death had never occurred to her.

It certainly occurred to me.

The assistant to the assistant funeral director came in to conduct what passed for a service. At lightning speed he read from the Bible, raced through two prayers, asked if anyone had anything to say, then sped on to the benediction before anyone could draw a breath. Jennifer’s send-off was accomplished in record time.

Keely and I stood, and I glanced in Rico’s direction, but he was already gone. Since Jennifer was scheduled for cremation, there was to be no graveside service.

“Gordy couldn’t come. We’re still closed, on account of the fight. The place got pretty wrecked. Sax, he didn’t want to come,” Keely said. “Says funerals are stupid.”

“Sax is a bit of a philosopher.”

“I don’t want to end up like Jennifer, you know? Nobody here to say good-bye to me, except strangers and a man who beat up on me.”

I felt a wave of sympathy. “I live over behind the Consolidated Community Church. If you paint a birdhouse, I’ll be happy to buy it. You come, and we’ll have coffee.”

Keely smiled, but I doubted I would ever see her on my doorstep.

This was a day of new beginnings. At noon, Bob Knowles, the owner of Book Gems, picked me up at the parsonage to drive to Cleveland to attend a children’s book trade show. My very first day as a bookseller.

Bob only got the bright idea to include me when he remembered I had kids. Yesterday he had started his telephone pitch with “trade show,” morphing belatedly into “children’s books” in time to cut short my impending panic attack. I don’t think Bob needs help choosing literature for the “little room” that’s upsetting so many of the Emerald Springs citizenry, but I was relieved to find I would be spending
my
afternoon with Lemony Snicket and Captain Underpants.

Although, let’s face it, if that last title wasn’t already taken, some X-rated author could have a field day with it.

When I got into the car Bob was smoking what must have been one of a long line of cigarettes. Smog billowed out to greet me. He’s a big guy, with a unhealthy grayish complexion and prominent incisors. The combination gives him a Dracula-at-sunrise sort of look. He thoughtfully opened his window and tossed the latest butt into the street as I fastened my seat belt.

“I’m a smoker,” he said needlessly. “Do you mind?”

“ ’Fraid so,” I told him.

“Then we’ll leave the windows down.”

It was not yet Labor Day, but the air was cool enough that ten minutes into the drive I was chilled. Not so Bob, who had his own little firesticks to keep him warm. After the next cigarette I asked how the preparations were going.

“So, the paint’s all done, the shelves are in, the carpet’s installed. We’re going to be stocking the shelves after Labor Day, and cranking up the cappuccino machine. You’ll be ready to start work?”

“All ready.”

“I hired two women besides you, and two guys. All part-time.”

I was sure we would all stay that way. I bet Bob didn’t want to pay benefits. “You’ll be barraged at first,” I predicted. “I don’t know why the chains never targeted Emerald Springs, but the town needs something more than what the college bookstore can offer.”

“Yeah? The way some people are attacking me, you’d think I was opening a peep show.”

“You could dispense with the adults only room.”

“You know, most booksellers keep all this stuff under the counter. Every reader knows they can get it if they ask. So I’m just putting it out where people can look and find what they want. Nothing crude. Good stuff. I just don’t get it. No kids will be going back there.”

Clearly he
didn’t
get it.

“Where did you live before you came here?” I asked. It seemed relevant.

“L.A., Chicago. Detroit for a few years.”

“City people have different expectations. They don’t see every store as an extension of community values.”

“The people doing the complaining are a bunch of hypocrites. The same ones kicking up the sand will be sneaking to the back of the store next month to check out my stock.”

I was sure he was angry, but I wasn’t sure he was right. At the very least, he didn’t seem to understand the people to whom he would be selling books. I tried again. “Why Emerald Springs?”

“I used to have family here. I visited as a boy and liked it. I was tired of cities after I retired from my job at IBM. I thought I’d give Emerald Springs a chance and see if I want to live here. But I’m too young to twiddle my thumbs.”

I was beginning to wonder how long my job at Book Gems would last. The idea was solid. The choice of location was excellent. But I doubted Bob had the experience or insight he needed to make a go of this.

“Why books?” I figured I needed all the bad news up front.

“Because I read all the time. My second wife left me because I read so much. I don’t know anything the way I know books.”