by Lynn Bulock
Monica looked away for a moment, pressing her lips together in a thin line before she said anything else. “I’ve seen her a lot more upset,” she finally said. That sounded as though she didn’t want to say any more to me, so I talked a little more about lighter subjects and we separated.
Cat trailed behind me a couple steps as we walked toward the front of the room. Pictures of Nicole ranged around the oak console table holding an urn. Some showed a young girl in what looked like a high school senior portrait. There her dark hair was longer, styled around her face to accent model-sharp cheekbones. Otherwise Nicole at seventeen or eighteen looked younger than her age, just as she had at twenty-nine.
A photo of Nicole outside with her arm around what appeared to be a much younger Monica showed them both in a parklike setting, sun dappling through trees. They both smiled out at the camera, carefree and young.
“She was beautiful, wasn’t she?” Cat said softly behind me. “She could be a real pain to work with sometimes but she always meant well.” We were in front of a graduation photo now that featured the whole family, making me wonder who took the shot. I had to guess it was Nicole’s college graduation, judging from the regalia she wore. Her face looked a little pinched and her smile a bit forced, but not as tight as her mother’s. Her father looked calmer than any of the three women ranged around him. Paige wore the bored expression of the teenager she was, a pout pushing her lower lip out.
“How do you mean what you said, Cat? About Nicole being a pain.” We both spoke in hushed tones while looking at the photos.
“Well, she was so disorganized, but so picky at the same time. She was hard on herself, and rewrote reports so much that she was always late with stuff. Nicole broke a lot of little rules, like carrying her cell phone everyplace and taking personal calls in the hospital. But she also cared about her patients, maybe too much at times, and tended to ignore her own needs.”
“Not a healthy combination,” I said, something tickling at the edge of my brain. Before I could figure out what was nagging at me, we were interrupted in our quiet conversation.
“That’s my daughter. Isn’t she the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen?” Paul Barnes loomed over me, slightly unsteady on his feet. Even though I couldn’t smell alcohol, his demeanor made me wonder if he’d been drinking. “And she was smart, too. Smart enough she could have gone to med school and become a psychiatrist instead of this psychology nonsense. I tried to convince her it paid a lot better, but she said she wasn’t into Freud.”
I angled my body to face toward Nicole’s father. His handsome face looked ravaged by grief or anger, or perhaps both. “She should have moved back home instead of saying yes when that jerk asked her to marry him. She’s the only one capable of holding an intelligent conversation. Now I have to listen to those two natter on about Jimmy Choo shoes and whether it’s time to get their roots done.”
“I’m very sorry for your loss, Dr. Barnes,” Catalina said, gently taking his elbow in a gesture that made me think of how she’d handled Zoë at the hospital. “Would you like to tell me more about Nicole? I worked with her, and I was just telling ” She trailed off, eyes wide when she realized she was about to remind Nicole’s father of my relationship to “the jerk.”
“Gracie Lee,” I put in as smoothly as possible, following Cat’s lead in diverting Paul Barnes toward the front row bench. “Cat was just telling me how much she thought of your daughter.”
“Everybody loved Nicole. She was valedictorian of her class at Newport Harbor High. We almost had to pay them to let the other one graduate. If it wasn’t for her spot on the tennis team they wouldn’t have kept her.” He scowled, nodding his head toward Paige. I looked around him at Catalina, wondering how we could get him on another track. Fortunately we were spared the effort when his cell phone chirped from somewhere in the recesses of his dark suit coat.
“Excuse me. I have to take this. I only gave the number to the hospital for emergencies tonight.” He walked swiftly to the side of the room, a good twenty feet from his family or any other distractions, opening the phone as he went.
“Whoa. I guess I know now where Nicole got it. Can you believe that?” Cat looked after him and I wondered if she meant his outburst with us or his answering the phone at his daughter’s visitation.
“It’s difficult,” I told her, because both things left me stunned. Apparently I wasn’t the only one; next to her mother, Paige watched him with a stricken look. I wondered how much she had heard of her father’s little tirade. Any of it would have been too much.
Before I could say anything else to Cat I heard familiar voices nearby and looked up in time to see Ben introducing his grandmother to Cai Li. Apparently both generations had come in while I was busy with Dr. Barnes. This looked as if it could require immediate attention. “Looks like I may have another firestorm brewing over there, so excuse me while I go attend to some other family business.”
Cat nodded distractedly, her attention still on Nicole’s dad as she watched him pace. I went over to hover near Hal, his parents and the kids, unsure whether to interject myself into their discussion or not. If Lillian got at all rude I’d be in there in a heartbeat. From where I stood I could hear her talking to Cai Li. “And this is my fiancé, Ben’s grandpa Roger. I hope you two stay engaged longer than we’re going to, and have more luck with married life than we did the first time around.” Ouch.At least she was talking to Cai Li the way she’d talk to any girl who had the temerity to snag a Harris male.
Lillian looked past the kids and saw me. “Hello, Gracie Lee. I hope you’ll speak to me tonight. My son tells me I was impossibly rude to you the other day. I’m sorry you took offense at what I said.”
Leave it to Hal’s mother to apologize without apologizing; she only expressed her regrets at my reaction to what she had said, not the words she’d blurted out. After twenty years of Lillian Harris, this didn’t surprise me. For her, it felt like a step in the right direction. At least she was trying to be nice.
In her navy dress, Lillian looked like the Southern matriarch she was and every bit of her nearly seventy years. She tried to hide stress and exhaustion with makeup, but you can only cover so much with foundation and powder. I almost felt sorry for her. “We haven’t been on the best of terms for a long time, Lillian. Maybe we could try a little harder for our sons’ sake.” If anything would soften her, that reminder might. In the meantime both of those sons eyed us warily, while Roger had the good sense to just stand behind his “fiancée” and watch quietly.
“That’s the one good reason I can think of to start over with you. Even my mother-in-law and her sister Gladys called truces for weddings and funerals and other than that they didn’t speak to each other for thirty-six years.” I noticed even Roger didn’t rise to that one. Fortunately, neither did anybody else. I breathed a sigh of relief when the little family gathering broke up without any snarling or bloodshed.
“Do you think I could slip into the services tomorrow without causing too big a hassle for you?” I asked Hal a few minutes later.
“Do it quietly, and don’t sit right at the front and you should be fine. Honestly, I’d appreciate you being there. Since the police didn’t file charges against me, and I could explain to Ellie what actually went on, I think I’m sitting with the family.”
“Good. Are they having any kind of graveside services, or a gathering afterward?” It felt kind of macabre to ask, knowing that everybody had been looking forward to a wedding reception such a short time before.
“Nothing graveside, because we’re still debating what to do with the urn. After the memorial service here there will be a gathering for family and close friends at La Tavola.”
“Was that where you were going to have the rehearsal dinner?” The elegant Italian restaurant was the kind of place Hal liked to entertain. He’d taken Ben there more than once during the school year and Ben always came home gasping about the prices.
He got teary-eyed and nodded. “N
o one else will acknowledge that. I guess they’re afraid to mention it, as if pretending to ignore all the wedding plans will somehow make it easier on me.”
“Nothing’s going to make things easier on you for a while. I think that now that you’re at least cleared of charges in her death, life is as easy as it will get for some time. I’m glad that’s over for you, Hal.”
“Thanks again, Gracie Lee. Why don’t you at least stop in at the restaurant tomorrow? Ellie may have a fit, but if she does I can smooth things over.” A wry smile lifted one corner of his mouth. “If there’s the smallest of silver linings to this whole horrible experience, it’s that after tomorrow I don’t have to be nice to Ellie Barnes anymore. I can stop at merely being civil and no one will fault me.”
I smiled back at him. It wouldn’t do to point out that he had gotten a much better deal on in-laws the first time around. Even after our divorce my mother had always been kinder to him than I’d ever seen Ellie. While I’d think that, now was not the time to say it, so I patted him on the arm and walked away.
For now I wanted to go home and call Linnette to talk over everything I’d heard tonight. I felt fairly sure that somewhere in the jumble of all that was the solution to how Nicole had died. However going over it all alone wasn’t going to bring me closer to finding that missing piece of the puzzle.
In the lobby of the funeral parlor, or whatever a more modern native Californian would call this place, Paul Barnes still paced with a cell phone to his ear. “Look, I don’t care what you’re doing, Brian. You promised to cover for me the next two days and you’re going to do it,” he said too loudly to ignore. I don’t think he ever noticed Paige, ashen under her tan, as she walked past him shaking her head as she headed away from the gathering. Looking at the two of them, I wondered how long it had been since he’d really seen that particular daughter. I had a feeling it had been much too long for both their sakes.
FIFTEEN
Even talking to Linnette Monday night didn’t make things any clearer for me. I told her what Monica and Cat had said about Nicole, and what I’d heard from Paul Barnes. I shared with her my interaction with Ray, and we puzzled over that together. And of course we discussed what I should wear the next day in order to be appropriate and inconspicuous.
“I’m still not sure going to the restaurant afterward is such a good idea,” I told her. “But if Hal really wants me there, I’ll probably do it.”
Linnette sighed. “It seems like so many people are asking heavy-duty favors of you right now. I can’t complain too much, since I was the first one pressuring you for something.”
“Hey, nothing I’ve done for you put me under pressure,” I reassured her. “I did it all because I wanted to. You would have done the same for me. As far as that goes, you’ve already done similar things for me. If you hadn’t approached me in the campus bookstore about a year and a half ago, who knows where I’d be now.”
“Probably not in our Christian Friends group, anyway. And I’m so glad you’re here. Now get some sleep so you don’t look too washed out in that eggplant-colored sheath I’m lending you.”
“Okay. I’ll be over to get it about nine,” I said, and after some small talk we hung up for the night. Just the act of talking to Linnette helped, even if we hadn’t come to any big conclusions this time.
Thinking about everything kept me awake until I heard Ben’s car pull in. He knocked on my bedroom door to tell me he was home a few moments later, as if all the noise hadn’t already alerted me to that fact. Still, I was glad he checked in. He stood in the partially opened doorway for a moment and we talked for a while. His grandparents had been fairly receptive of Cai Li, much to his relief.
“I really wasn’t sure about Grandma Lil,” he said. “But I guess she’s so wrapped up with Grandpa right now she’s not worried about me marrying an Asian girl.”
“I worried more about Grandpa Roger, but he was cool, too,” I said. “Right now he seems as focused on Grandma as she is on him.”
“I know. I can’t decide if it’s really romantic or very, very creepy.” Ben sounded so confused he made me want to crack up. Maybe at nineteen it was inconceivable that folks in their sixties and seventies could still feel romantic about each other. Personally I hope that when I’m Roger and Lillian’s age I still feel capable of a romantic relationship. By then Ben should be a little more comfortable with the idea. Since he’d be middle-aged himself by that time, we can only hope.
We talked a bit about his plans for Tuesday, which included picking up Cai Li and meeting Hal at the memorial service. Ben worried a little about his lack of a suit, but I tried to reassure him that his dark pants and shirt, along with his all-purpose navy blazer would work well. “I can’t hang around at La Tavola for long afterward, because they want me to work at one,” he said.
I thought he was doing the right thing by supporting his dad during the service, and then going to work later in the day, and I told him so. After a little talk about less serious issues he told me goodnight and I finally dozed off, listening to him rattle around in his room.
Tuesday morning came very quickly. By eight-thirty I stood on Linnette’s front porch with a couple of lattes and two scones. She let me in and we chatted and ate breakfast while I tried on her dress. “With the weight you’ve lost you probably fit in this, too, don’t you?” In the mirrored closet door of her bedroom, I had to admit that I didn’t look quite as inconspicuous as I’d wanted, but it was very attractive in an understated way.
“I guess I probably would. I honestly hadn’t considered it.” Linnette smiled. “Anyway, I think it looks better on you. Once you bring it back, I’ll try it again. I’m not sure how it will go with this particular red that my hair is tinted right now, but it’s worth a try.”
I hugged her, my spirits lifted. “I think you must be on the way back. Look at us. We’re talking about hair and clothes and you’ve actually eaten most of that scone.”
Linnette giggled, a wonderful sound. “I guess I better go easy on that if I want to fit into that dress. But you’re right, Gracie Lee. I feel like I’m on the way back. It’s a very good feeling.”
With my shoes and Linnette’s dress, which had a short-sleeved jacket to match, I felt like I might be okay at the memorial service. The drive back to Dodd and Sons didn’t take long. I checked my lipstick in the vanity mirror of the car and sat there for a few minutes, not wanting to be among the first to enter the service.
Once several other cars had pulled into the lot and their occupants had gone inside, I joined them. Nothing much had changed since last night except for the flowers being moved around some to group around the low console table holding the urn. A podium with a microphone replaced the chairs in the front of the room. Ellie, Paige and Paul Barnes were standing in front of the first bench on the right side, talking to a middle-aged couple who didn’t look familiar.
No one in the family looked as if they’d gotten much rest overnight. Ellie’s outfit made me think that perhaps everyone had gone with the “rehearsal dinner” theme today, wearing the outfits they had probably bought for that occasion. Her tailored blue-green dress and duster style jacket of fabric that looked like silk would have been much more festive with different jewelry.
Dr. Barnes, of course, wore another dark suit. I imagined that as a successful plastic surgeon he probably had a collection of them. He looked like the kind of man who owned a current tuxedo, too.
Very near Nicole’s family stood her “other” family, Hal and his parents arrayed just outside the group talking to the Barneses. Hal looked even more tired than Nicole’s parents, if that was possible. He seemed to have far more silver at his temples than I remembered from just two weeks ago, and I wondered if the events of the last fourteen days had aged him that much. That or he’d been touching up his hair before, and without Nicole here to remind him, he’d stopped doing it. In either case his graying temples added to the air of sorrow around him. I felt glad that I’d agreed to come for hi
s sake. If Ellie didn’t like my presence, I hoped she’d keep that opinion to herself.
From a distance Hal’s parents also looked older than usual, although they supported each other more than I’d ever seen, Lillian’s hand on Roger’s arm and Roger standing protectively close to her. I felt glad that they’d been able to get back together, and I hoped that they were in some kind of marital counseling back in Tennessee. With everything they’d gone through and put each other through, they were going to need to do some serious talking for all of this to work out this time.
As I stood in the back of the room considering where to sit, Ben and Cai Li walked in. Ben looked handsome in his outfit and Cai’s dark dress might have been a bit shorter than I would have chosen, but otherwise was just right for the occasion. They made a beautiful couple and for the first time I let myself daydream, just a little, about what their children might look like. That daydream didn’t last long, because I shook myself out of it quickly. It was time to find a seat. I chose one of the left-hand benches about halfway back. Soft music played as background for the several conversations going on around me, and I let myself sit and center down in prayer for the shortened life of this young woman and the pain that her early death had caused her family.
As I prayed the room began to fill up. I began to wonder who was working at Playa del Sol today, because the bulk of the staff that I remembered seeing from my trips there appeared to be here. Cat and Monica sat directly behind the Barnes family while Hal was flanked by his parents on one side and Ben and Cai Li on the other. A few people that looked closer in age to Nicole’s parents might have been her father’s colleagues, and I imagined there was a fair amount of extended family here, as well.
Closer to where I sat, about halfway from the front rows there were many younger people who either worked with Nicole or probably went to school with her. I had no idea how large or close knit her doctoral program in psychology was. Somewhere in the crowd her professors more than likely made up one of the groups of professional-looking folks talking softly over the formless New Age music.
