The Dearly Departed (13 page)

The limo was slowing down for King George's only stop sign. Fletcher looked out the window. The King's Nite appeared, and Dickie pulled into the loop in front of its office. “This is where you're staying?” Fletcher asked.

“It's the only option.”

“In that case, so am I.”

“No vacancy,” said Sunny.

He peered through the tinted glass, then lowered the window. “It appears that the
NO
in the sign is not illuminated. I would read that as
VACANCY
.”

“I've yet to see both words lit up,” Dickie said over his shoulder.

“You won't like it,” said Sunny. “No phones in the room. No air conditioner.”

“What's my alternative?”

“To go back home.”

“You've got the wrong guy,” he said. “Maybe yesterday I was thinking in terms of a round-trip ticket, but that was before I had my graveside conversion. Now I'm convinced I'd be abandoning a sister, not just some alleged future stepsibling. Besides, I have to close up the cabin and pack my father's things.”

“I'm not up to fraternizing,” said Sunny.

“Here we are,” sang Dickie. He scurried out from behind the wheel and around to Sunny's door. Fletcher leaned over to ask, “Could you get my bag out of the trunk? I'm checking in.”

“You'll be very comfortable here,” said Dickie. “Mrs. P is a stickler for cleanliness. Her husband did the squirrel cutouts on the shutters himself. He's got a little workshop out back.”

“Fascinating,” said Fletcher. He stepped out of the car and swiped at the wrinkles in his suit.

“If you need anything at all during your stay . . .” offered Dickie.

“Really? Because I don't have wheels. Any chance you can give me a ride out to Boot Lake tomorrow? Say, eleven? Doesn't have to be the limo.”

“He's an undertaker, not a taxi service,” said Sunny.

“He asked, though. Right, my man? Eleven good? If not, you name the time. What is it? A couple of miles?”

“If I do drop you off, how will you get back?” asked Dickie.

“He can charter a plane,” said Sunny.

“She's in major denial,” Fletcher confided to Dickie. “I'm trying to convince her that we're related. I mean, look at us.” He stooped to line his jaw up with Sunny's, but she moved away.

“Hey! Why not? He was the last person to see my father. He's not the worst guy to consult.”

Dickie's face was composed and professional. But what a day this had been; what bald revelations he'd collected to pass, in strictest confidence, to his wife, sister, mother, aunt.

“Dickie—please don't repeat any of this nonsense,” said Sunny. “Not even to Roberta.”

“Look at his expression,” said Fletcher. “I know what he's thinking: ‘You mean to tell me no one's noticed this before? Everyone in town suspected as much.' ”

“I assure you—” Dickie began.

“The valise, the briefcase, and the clubs, old sport,” said Fletcher.

How Long Has This Been Going On?

 

 

W
hen she served Chief Loach his Polka-Dot Pancakes, Mrs. Angelo asked if he would mind leaving his gun in the cruiser from now on. “How come I never noticed it before?” she asked, refilling his coffee, dropping two more plastic thimbles of cream onto his place mat.

“Because it's new. I mean, carrying it is new. Before, I just carried a nightstick.”

She asked how he was healing.

“I'm still sore. And turning every color of the rainbow.”

She leaned closer. “Are you wearing it now?”

“ ‘It'?”

“The new vest? The free replacement they gave you on TV.”

He touched his chest and shifted inside the padding. “It's why I'm hanging around in air-conditioned comfort.”

“I bet. Like wearing long underwear, huh?”

“Worse,” said Joey.

“Scoot in,” she said, and perched herself on the edge of his bench. “Did you go yesterday?”

Joey nodded from behind his coffee cup.

“I could've done without the speeches from the leading men,” she said. “One eulogy is enough in my book. They said the same thing twice—the same thing any one of us would've said: ‘sweet, sweet woman. Unselfish. Always thought of others first. Worked so hard to give Sunny advantages.' ”

“I liked what the doc said.”

“That poor man! I think he's taking it worse than anybody.”

Joey cut a vee into his pancake stack. “Not worse than Sunny.”

“Was that her boyfriend, the fellow with the gray hair?”

“That was Finn's son. He flew up on a private jet just for the funeral.”

“No one introduced him. But I guess I should've figured that out myself. . . . You'd have thought he would've said a few words about his father. It was kind of a lopsided service. I got the feeling that they tacked on the remarks about Miles at the end but that nobody really knew him.”

“Did
you
?” asked Joey.

“He ate breakfast here a couple of days a week, closer to nine. My second shift—the retirees and the tennis players. Once in a while Margaret would join him. He was a health fanatic. We had to change the menu because of him.”

“How so?”

“We serve oatmeal from October through May, but he wanted it year-round. And he didn't want whole milk in it. I started buying a half-gallon of skim to keep on hand just for him. I remember the days when it was considered a classy thing to serve cream with oatmeal. Not anymore! Today if you want to put sour cream on top of a baked potato, you have to ask first.”

“I still like sour cream on my baked potatoes.”

“ 'Cause you're a kid!”

“Still, I've got arteries. I can't ignore them forever.”

“And here's the funny thing.” Mrs. Angelo paused. “I shouldn't use
funny
in this case, because it sounds coldhearted. But here was a guy who looked after himself and counted his calories and jogged all the way to the lake and back and—boom! Fit as a fiddle and he dies anyway! He could've been eating eggs and bacon and half-and-half every day of his life for all the good it did him.”

The door chime sounded, and both looked up. It was Sunny, wearing Bermuda shorts, a pale pink sleeveless blouse, sunglasses, and Regina's big-brimmed hat. “Sweetie,” cried Mrs. Angelo. “Here, sit. What're you doing up at this hour on a Saturday?”

Joey stood up and snatched his napkin off his tie.

Sunny backtracked to pick up
The Valley Shopper.
“I'll just sit at the counter.”

“I'm breaking the law,” insisted Joey. He pointed to the hand-lettered sign that said
TWO TO A BOOTH DURING PEAK HOURS
. “I'm going to get busted.”

“Okay,” she said. “Sure. Just coffee to start.”

“Such a lovely service,” said Mrs. Angelo.

“Do you think so? I don't remember much.”

“You know what I liked best?” asked Joey. “Besides the bagpipes? I liked the fact that people added their two cents, even if they hadn't planned on saying anything. Like Regina. That stuff about your mother being your biggest ally and fan, giving you lessons with the pro even though she'd rather have been taking you to DeCastro's Dance Academy.”

“What's his name?” asked Mrs. Angelo. “The boy? The son?”

“Fletcher.”

There was a silence until Sunny said, “He's still here.”

“He seemed perfectly nice,” said Joey.

Sunny met his eyes and said with a half smile, “Well, he didn't slap me or steal my wallet.”

“Uh-oh,” said Joey. “That bad?”

A man in a Red Sox cap left the counter stools and stood by the cash register. “I gotta ring up Richie,” said Mrs. Angelo. “I'll be back in a jiff.”

Sunny waited until she and Joey were alone. “There's me, who feels like I was hit by a truck, sharing a tragedy with someone I've never met, who acts as if some casual acquaintance inconvenienced him by dying.”

“Sometimes that's just the way guys act. We don't show how we feel in front of a townful of strangers.”

“He isn't shy, if that's what you mean. He now knows more about me than my best friends do.”

“How is that possible?”

“He grilled me in the limo. About all things professional, personal, and genealogical.”

“You're not gonna stop there, are you?” asked Joey. “I've got good manners, but now you've got to give me the grilling specifics.”

Sunny took a lock of her hair between two fingers and flipped it toward Joey. “This. He claims everyone noticed.”

Joey said, “Go on.”

“He seemed to think that we have the same gene pool.”

“Because of the hair?”

“Which apparently is identical to his father's. And which he seems to think is unique in all the world. And that the whole town unanimously leapt to the same conclusion.”

Joey murmured, “Only the ones at the service.”

“The whole town was at the service!” said Sunny. “And the dozen who stayed home have now received telegrams from Dickie Saint-Onge.”

“It'll die down,” said Joey. “Finn Junior is probably alone in the world now and wants to make you an honorary sister.”

“I'm not turning this into a search for some hypothetical birth father. I'm not that interested.” She looked over her shoulder to ascertain Mrs. Angelo's whereabouts. “I think he happens to be right, but so what? If my mother had a fling with Miles Finn thirty-two years ago and that's why her husband divorced her and that's why she kept me and Finn separate, even when they got engaged . . . so be it.”

Joey began shaking his head before she finished.

“You disagree?” she asked.

“First of all, no one's
not
interested when they find out that a whole new guy might be their father. And second, I don't think it's true, because Finn Senior had been coming to Boot Lake as long as she was here, and I just think at some point she would've taken you aside and said, ‘It's time you knew the truth.' ”

“Do you mean this as a character reference? That Miles Finn would have done the honorable thing and acknowledged I was his?”

Joey said, “I didn't know him. He was just a face and a set of legs jogging to and fro on Old Baptist Road. I knew he and your mother were an item, but I didn't know the details.”

“Neither did I. Neither did Fletcher.”

“Maybe—” he began. “I don't know. Was that the kind of thing you and your mother talked about, woman to woman? Did you tell her about your dates and your romances?”

Sunny's pale cheeks turned pink.

“What I meant was,” said Joey, “were you close these past few months, or whenever it was that Miles Finn became a year-round resident?”

“Obviously not close enough,” said Sunny. She slid Regina's hat off her head and onto the seat next to her, leaving a crown of static floss.

He watched it settle, then said, “There's something to be said for the hair argument.”

Sunny allowed a faint smile.

“What's your argument on the other side? I mean, who do you think your father is?”

“John Batten.”

“What happened to him?” asked Joey.

“He moved to Arizona and married a faithful woman.”

Joey smiled. “And how do you know that? You visit him?”

“Never.”

“Child support?”

“Not for a long time.”

“Did you ever ask him?”

Sunny blinked.

“Don't you think he'd tell you the truth? Because it would make him look like a decent guy rather than a deadbeat dad.”

“I went through a phase in high school when I wrote him letters and he answered them, but all we talked about was golf clubs.”

“It was different back then,” said Joey. “Let's just say Miles Finn got your mother pregnant while she was married to John Batten. She wouldn't have admitted that—not to her husband, not to her best friend or her doctor; maybe not even to Miles Finn.”

“Or herself,” said Sunny.

“And if it hadn't been for the appearance of, well . . .”

“Me looking like Fletcher in drag. Say it. It's what everyone's thinking, right?”

Joey took a menu from behind the napkin holder and handed it to her. “When did Sunny Batten or her brave crusader of a mother care about what King George was saying? If you did, you'd have played field hockey in high school.” He looked at his watch. “Are you going to eat anything?”

“Why?”

“Because I would consider it official business to escort you to the Abel Cotton House and ascertain that everything is shipshape.”

“That isn't necessary.”

“You can't even make that sound convincing. Someone's gotta do it, and it might as well be the chief law officer and ghostbuster of the town of King George.”

“I might have blueberry pancakes first.” She opened the menu. “ ‘Fresh wild blueberries in season.' Is this in season?”

“I eat what they give me. They taste the same twelve months a year.” He called to Mrs. Angelo, “A short stack of Polka Dots for Sunny.” He smiled at her across the table. “Extra fluffy.”

“Comin' right up,” Gus called from the grill.