Take a Number

by Janet Dawson

  “Let’s just say I’m trying to keep Ruth Raynor out of jail.”

  “She didn’t plug him, huh?” I didn’t answer. “Wouldn’t have blamed her if she had. It was bound to happen sooner or later. Should have been sooner.” He tossed my card onto the dashboard of the Chevy. “Come and see me after the funeral. Meriwell Hardware, Seventh and Monterey. Ask for Tom.”

  He turned the key and gunned the pickup’s engine, its roar drawing looks from the group of mourners in front of the church. I stepped back as he drove away. Then I crossed the street.

  I was relieved to see that the family had chosen a closed casket. I didn’t want to look at Sam Raynor’s dead face, prettified by a mortician’s artifice. The casket sat in front of the altar with a spray of white flowers draped over its dark wood surface. Two flower arrangements on easels stood on either side, one multicolored, the other a collection of white flowers enlivened only by the yellow centers of the daisies. This was dominated by a wide white ribbon with gilt script. I squinted at it as I walked up the center aisle, finally making out the words Beloved Son.

  I took a seat near the front, on the left side of the aisle, behind an elderly couple. A plump silver-haired woman played a series of hymns on the organ. I checked my watch. It was five minutes before eleven. There weren’t many people at this funeral, and they all appeared to be middle-aged or older. The woman at the organ continued her lugubrious accompaniment until just after eleven, when the dark-suited pallbearers filed in from the side entrance and sat in the front left pew. They were followed by the family members.

  The first was a slender, brown-haired man of about thirty. He held the arm of a tall woman whose black dress hung on her frame. She wore a black hat with a brim and a veil. This must be Alma Raynor, Sam’s mother. No Mr. Raynor, I noted, just two other women, one older and plumper, gray hair visible under a pillbox hat thirty years out of fashion. The woman who followed her was blond, much younger, probably in her early thirties. She wore no hat and her dress was short and form-fitting. As they took seats in the right-hand front pew, a man in a dark suit stepped up to the altar and the organist stopped playing.

  A funeral is supposed to provide the mourners with some sort of closure and remembrance. But this funeral was business, a means of finding out more about the late Sam Raynor, and I was not a mourner but a detached observer. Not as detached as I should have been, though. The only emotion I felt for the deceased was dislike. If my gut feelings were correct, and they usually are, there wasn’t much emotion at this funeral, not even from those family members across the aisle. The minister was saying the right words, but he was playing to a disinterested audience. The Sam Raynor he described bore no resemblance to the man I’d met. The old man in front of me had a bald dome as wrinkled as his face. He was whispering to his wife, a querulous buzz that drew my attention. “I only came out of respect to Alma,” he said, “and I can’t hear a thing.”

  Alma’s friends, I thought, even the pallbearers, all of them gray and elderly. There was no one here who was a contemporary of Sam Raynor, besides the brown-haired man and the blond woman. Yet Raynor had been born in this town and presumably lived here most of his life. I didn’t see anyone who might have been a high school buddy, and certainly no one who looked like a Navy acquaintance. I wondered if the rest of Gilroy had the same opinion of Sam Raynor as did the man in the pickup.

  It was a short funeral. The minister was the only one who spoke, and he ended his remarks by saying that interment would follow at the Odd Fellows cemetery on First Street. After that, we were invited to pay our respects to the family at Alma Raynor’s home on Rosanna Street. I had no desire to see Sam Raynor buried. My objective was to talk to the family, to find out as much as I could about the man who had come to such a violent end, a demise that a lot of people seemed to think he deserved. The elderly couple in front of me didn’t want to go to the cemetery either, so I followed them to the house.

  Alma Raynor lived about three blocks from the Methodist church, near the corner of Rosanna and Second streets, in a quiet old neighborhood lined with single-story wood-frame and stucco homes, lawns and sidewalks shaded by trees. The house was plain and white, its wood exterior in need of painting. Three shallow steps led up to a front porch on which sat a low wooden table and two old metal lawn chairs. The house sat close to the sidewalk, and its truncated front lawn was patchy and brown, due to the drought and neglect. There were no flowers or ornamental foliage visible. It didn’t look welcoming.

  I parked across the street, rolled down the window of my car and waited, speculating why Sam Raynor told his wife both his parents were dead. How convenient not to have a mother-in-law to tell you all about your spouse’s past. But of course Sam didn’t want Ruth to know anything about his past. That told me there were a few skeletons in his closet.

  Despite the shade, it was warm in my car as the sun made its midday progress high in the blue sky, heading west, where it would drop behind the Gavilan Hills, looming between Gilroy and the coast. I felt sweat pooling between my breasts and my shoulder blades, dampness wrinkling the gray dress. Finally, a station wagon pulled into the driveway of Alma Raynor’s house, the brown-haired man at the wheel. He and the three women got out of the car and went up the front steps, followed by the minister, who parked his car at the curb. Others joined them, people who’d gone to the cemetery, people who hadn’t, like the old couple I’d followed from the church.

  I heard a murmur of conversation as I came up the low steps. I tapped on the screen door. The younger man loomed up on the other side.

  “Please come in. I’m Mitch Burgett, Sam’s cousin. I saw you at the church.”

  “Jeri Howard. From Oakland.”

  I opened the screen door and stepped into an uncarpeted hallway, offering my hand as I examined him. I saw little resemblance to Sam. Mitch Burgett had a firm handshake, a pair of pleasant, mild brown eyes with hints of green, and a long narrow nose in an equally narrow face. In his dark gray suit his body was wiry. He was a couple of inches taller than my own five feet eight inches. His straight brown hair was a bit long at the back, brushing his collar.

  “We surely do appreciate your coming,” he said, his hand lightly touching my left arm as he escorted me into Alma Raynor’s living room. He loosened his tie, as though he were unaccustomed to wearing a suit. “Did you know Sam well?”

  As well as I’d ever want to. “Not really,” I said. “We’d just met.”

  A big new-looking television set on a stand dominated the left side of the room, with most of the furniture grouped to my right. The carpet was an unappetizing shade of tobacco-brown, not at all helped by the squarish green and white tweed sofa and matching armchair. The flowered needlepoint pillows on the sofa were bright, garish splashes of red and orange. Above the sofa I saw an oil-painted landscape in a too-ornate brown wood frame, depicting an idyllic-looking farm with fields and orchard, hills in the distance. It was devoid of any artistry, simply a generic picture purchased to fill space on the beige wall. In the far right-hand corner stood a recliner upholstered in brown vinyl that was supposed to simulate leather. Its surface was cracked along the arms, and a green and orange crocheted afghan had been draped haphazardly over its high back.

  Nearby was a bookcase that held no books. Instead, it was a shrine to Sam Raynor. Its shelves were crowded with the framed face, first a plump baby with no hair, then the grinning redhead, through various stages of childhood and adolescence, and finally the adult Sam. The top shelf held a silver-framed eight-by-ten color shot of Sam in his service dress-blue Navy uniform, looking like the competent, squared-away sailor everyone thought he was. Someone had placed a single white lily next to the photograph, a sympathy card tucked into the silver foil surrounding the pot.

  Beyond the living room I saw a dining room with a rectangular table and a sideboard on the far wall, next to a door that led to the kitchen. A coffeepot and cups were arrayed on the sideboard, and the table was covered with dishes of food. A f
ew people sat in the living room, drinking coffee and eating, while others were grouped around the table, talking in low voices as they helped themselves to a variety of comestibles, ranging from salads to desserts.

  “May I get you a cup of coffee?” Mitch asked, standing at my elbow.

  “Yes, thank you. I take it black.”

  I followed him to the dining room while he fetched the cup. Just as he returned, the screen door opened and a woman crossed the living room, the youngest of the three women who sat in the front pew during the funeral. As she reached us, Mitch introduced his sister, Nancy Tate.

  She smelled of cigarette smoke. Since I didn’t see any ashtrays in Alma Raynor’s living room, I guessed she’d stepped outside for a few puffs. Her platinum coiffure was the result of her hairdresser’s skill. In her face I saw a strong resemblance to her brother, the same narrow face and brown eyes, but there wasn’t any warmth in the eyes, and her red-lipped mouth had a sullen pout to it. She was about thirty-five, slim-hipped in a short navy-blue dress that showed off a respectable pair of legs.

  “I have to go,” Nancy told her brother abruptly, barely acknowledging my greeting. I glanced over the table and rejected the chocolate cake on the grounds that it would be too difficult to maneuver plate, fork, and coffee cup all at once. Instead I selected an oatmeal raisin cookie and nibbled it while I listened.

  “I’m showing a house at one.” She glanced at her watch. “There’s nothing more to be done here. He’s buried.” The edge in her voice made me examine her face. No mourning here. In fact, Sam’s cousin seemed quite satisfied to see him planted in the ground and quite ready to get on with the business of living.

  The older woman who’d worn the pillbox hat entered from the kitchen. The hat had been removed and an apron tied over her black dress. “You’re leaving?” she asked as Nancy dug her keys from her handbag.

  “I have to work, Mother,” Nancy said, mouth tight.

  “Did you have something to eat?” The woman’s voice was high-pitched and fretful, with a hint of Southern roots.

  “I don’t want anything to eat. I’ll call you later.”

  As Nancy made her escape, Mitch smiled apologetically. “My sister’s a real estate agent here in town. She’s always working.” I nodded as he took the older woman’s plump arm. “Jeri, this is my mother, Elva Burgett. Jeri’s a friend of Sam’s from Oakland.”

  “Well, Alma will want to talk to you, then.” Elva Burgett patted my hand and turned to her son with a sigh. “I tried to get her to lie down for a bit. But she’s fussing around in that kitchen.”

  As she spoke, Alma Raynor walked through the kitchen door, a platter of sliced meats and cheeses in one hand, and a basket of crackers in the other. She set the food on the table. I downed the rest of my cookie and examined her. The shapeless black dress she wore did nothing for her tall, broad figure. She didn’t look like a woman who wore clothes with any style, or even cared about such things. She looked dry and stringy, with strong work-worn hands and a short crop of iron-gray hair. Maybe it had once been red. Sam must have gotten his full sensual lips from the absent Mr. Raynor, because this woman’s mouth was a thin slash in her blunt-featured face. He got his blue eyes from her, though. She looked at me across the table and her gaze was cold, flat, and unwelcoming.

  “Who are you?” she asked me in a deep voice as flat as her eyes.

  Mitch quickly introduced me. “This is Sam’s friend Jeri from Oakland.”

  “Didn’t know Sam had any friends in Oakland,” Alma Raynor said. “Did you know him long?”

  I shook my head. “I only just met him.”

  “Nice of you to come, then.” Her mouth twisted down at the corners. “That’s more than I can say for some in this town who knew him all their lives.”

  “Really?” I said, hoping she would go on.

  “I saw that fat slug Tom Meriwell sitting in his truck across the street from the church.” Mrs. Raynor narrowed her eyes and her voice took on an accusatory tone. “I saw you talking to him.”

  “The man in the pickup,” I said quickly. “I asked him if I had the right church.”

  She nodded, reserving judgment about me, but she had no such reservations about Tom Meriwell. “Come to gloat, about my boy being dead.”

  I put on a wide-eyed innocent mask. “Why would he do that?”

  “Lies,” Alma Raynor said. “All lies. They were always picking on him.” She walked into the living room and sat down heavily in the brown recliner with the cracked arms.

  “You’re tired.” Elva Burgett patted her sister on the shoulder. “You need to rest. Put your feet up. Mitchell, get your aunt Alma a cup of coffee.”

  While Mitch fetched the coffee, Alma reached down and brought up the footrest of the recliner. She didn’t look at all relaxed. More like a vengeful harpy, with those flat blue eyes and the bitter set of her mouth.

  I moved into the living room and perched on the end of the sofa nearest to Alma. “Why did everyone pick on Sam?”

  Sam’s mother took the coffee her nephew brought her and raised the cup to her lips. “They needed somebody to blame. Everybody needs somebody to blame. Sam was just naturally high-spirited, like boys are. So they picked on him, all through school. I couldn’t keep track of Sam every minute. I’m a working woman, on my own since that worthless Raynor left me high and dry with a boy to raise.”

  Listening to her, I could guess who “they” were. Teachers and school administrators and Sam’s classmates. Alma Raynor described her son as “high-spirited,” but the man I’d met was mean-spirited. Duffy LeBard had called him a sociopath. A psychologist might concur. Such aberrations are formed early. I’m no expert, but Sam Raynor seemed to fit the pattern, with an absent father and a mother who thought her baby boy could do no wrong.

  Elva Burgett sat down next to me. “I remember the time he took Ida’s car and she wanted to call the police.”

  Alma shook her head. “Ida never did have a sense of humor. He didn’t steal it, he just borrowed it. That boy of hers put him up to it.”

  “Ida?” I asked. I was having trouble keeping up with all these names.

  “Our sister Ida,” Elva said.

  “Is she here?” I looked around for someone resembling the two sisters.

  Elva shook her head. “No, she’s gone off on a cruise to Mexico with her second husband. They left last week, before we got the news about Sam.”

  “I wouldn’t go on no cruise to look at a bunch of Mexes,” Alma said with a snort. “But Ida never did have good sense, especially when she married that no-account Ed Coffin.”

  With Alma, Elva, and Ida, their parents had utilized three out of the five vowels. I wondered if there were two more sisters with names starting in O and U, but I resisted the impulse to ask. There were more important questions to be answered.

  “Why would this Mr. Meriwell gloat about Sam’s death?”

  “That slut sister of his.” The words that hissed out of Alma Raynor’s mouth were dipped in venom. Mitch Burgett stood in the doorway between living room and dining room and as his aunt spoke he flushed, two splotches of red coloring his cheeks. I wondered if he was embarrassed at these revelations concerning his cousin, though most of the mourners had drifted into the dining room and were now gathered around the table, talking in low tones and sampling the food. Or did his sudden reaction have something to do with Tom Meriwell’s sister?

  Mitch saw me looking at him. “Sam was married to Denise Meriwell,” he explained.

  “I didn’t know Sam had been married before,” I said, somehow not surprised. “He mentioned that he was in the process of divorcing Ruth.” I looked closely at Alma, searching for some reaction to the name of the woman who was accused of killing her son. But Mrs. Raynor was angry at the world in general. No doubt she had been angry for most of her life.

  “A couple of tramps. They trapped him, both times. Got pregnant, so Sam had to do the right thing and marry them. The one that shot him, I never met he
r, though Sam did send me a picture of their little girl.” Alma set her coffee cup on the end table and her thin mouth compressed into a tight line. “Sam said she and her family was too hoity-toity, rich people with their nose in the air because her father was some officer. They didn’t want me cluttering up the wedding. Never mind that I’d like to see Hawaii. I’m just a poor working woman from Gilroy.”

  What would Alma Raynor think of her boy if she knew he’d told his current wife that his mother was dead? My guess was that Sam Raynor hadn’t wanted his new bride to know anything about his first wife. I leaned forward, eager to learn more about Denise Meriwell Raynor.

  Fortunately, Alma was more than willing to discuss her first daughter-in-law, and it was clear she had a low opinion of the woman. “A cat in heat,” she said, words issuing from her mouth like a hiss. “That Denise was sleeping around all the time she was in high school. With Mexicans and colored, I wouldn’t be surprised. When Sam said he was gonna marry her, I told him how could he be sure that baby was his.”

  “Well, it was,” Elva said. “Scott had red hair from the day he was born.”

  “I never saw much of the boy. His mother didn’t want me around. Probably because she was catting around on Sam.” Alma seemed to be telling her tale with relish. I glanced up at Mitch. The red spots on his cheeks had faded but he looked as though he were biting his tongue.

  “Where is Denise now?” I asked.

  “She lives in—where was it, Mitch?” Elva looked up at her son. “Mitch ran into her a couple of months ago, while he was making a business call. Where was it, honey?”

  Mitch’s voice sounded rusty. He cleared his throat and began again. “Benicia. I saw her in a bank in Benicia. That’s where she works. She’s married again, to a guy named Padilla.”

  “A Mex,” Alma said, scornful in her casual bigotry. “She likes those dark ones.”

  The minister came to take his leave from Mrs. Raynor, his impending departure triggering a general exodus among the funeral attendees. I homed in on Mitch Burgett, who I suspected had far warmer feelings for his cousin’s first wife than did his aunt.