“Good.” I’d felt guilty that I’d considered Spring a dirty cop, but at least Tommy Lee and I had never taken that theory public. “So the timing for my retirement seems perfect.”
“When’s Fletcher leave?” Tommy Lee asked.
“The same time he’s always been leaving. Tomorrow. His classes start next Tuesday.”
“And you’re sure you can’t do both—funeral serve and protect?”
“I gave Fletcher the last two days off to get ready for his trip. Believe me, working for the department and managing the funeral home are more than I can handle.”
I expected some smart remark, but all Tommy Lee said was, “Damn. Somebody’s gotta be ice skating in Hell.”
I followed his gaze to the promenading couples on the street. There, with his arm wrapped around the woman I only remembered as “Liver Spots,” Uncle Wayne high-stepped to the beat of “Alabama Jubilee.”
“You’re right,” Tommy Lee said. “Maybe holding down two jobs is too tough when your help starts a-courting for the first time in seventy-five years.”
I stood up. “Susan’s got to see this. Can you save our seats?”
“Don’t I look armed and dangerous?”
I hurried along the crowded sidewalk. People stepped aside, letting me move freely. The candied apple stand was in front of Larson’s Discount Drugs and a line of customers stretched to the curb. Susan wasn’t among them.
“Barry.” Fletcher called from the head of the line. He juggled four apples while the vendor stuffed change in his shirt pocket. “Are you looking for Susan?”
“Did you see her?”
“Yes. I was already in line when she got here. Two of these apples are for her. She and Cindy went to look at some summer clothes on sale at the shop across the street. They said they’d be right back.”
I took two of the apples. “‘Right back’ in shopping language could mean before the next millennium.”
“Guess we’d better stay here unless you want to look at dresses.”
“What do you think?”
Fletcher laughed a little too loudly. He seemed nervous.
“Can we talk a few minutes?” he asked.
“Sure.”
He walked away from the apple cart to the door of the drugstore. A “For Lease” sign hung in the window, and what little daylight penetrated inside showed the inventory had been removed.
We stood facing one another, a caramel-coated apple on a stick in each hand. To passing pedestrians, we must have looked like some vaudeville juggling act.
Fletcher shifted his weight from foot to foot. “I was going to write you a letter, but I never could get it started the way I wanted. Now I’ve let it go to the last minute.”
“You can tell me anything. I hope the summer’s been a good experience, once that little unpleasantness resolved itself.”
“Oh, no, it’s been terrific. I thought what I had to say should be more official, but then Cindy said I should just ask you.”
“Cindy?” Fletcher was losing me.
“Cindy. And Susan. And Tommy Lee.”
“You talked to all of them?” I tried to lighten what suddenly seemed a serious mood. “Why not Uncle Wayne?”
Fletcher missed the point. “I would have, but he was always playing shuffleboard.”
I’d missed that change in Uncle Wayne’s behavior. So much for my detecting abilities. “What is it that required a panel of advisors?”
“You know I’m graduating this December. My family expects me to take my place in the corporate business.”
“Great opportunity.”
Fletcher shook his head. “You’d hate it. Meeting after meeting until you’re meeting simply to plan more meetings.”
“It’s your family business,” I said.
“No. It’s a conglomerate that happens to have family members working there. Not like your family’s business. When your dad got sick, you came back because you were needed. You make a difference.”
“Then what do you want to do?”
“I want to come back here. After I graduate.” He broke eye contact, afraid to see my reaction. “I should have talked to you earlier, but if you said no, I didn’t want to make things awkward between us while I was still here.”
“Fletcher, I’d love to have you work for me, but we’re such a small operation. I couldn’t afford to pay you anything like what you should be earning.”
He nodded and cleared his throat. “This is the part I need to put in a letter. I don’t want to work for you. I want to work with you. As a partner.”
“Partner?”
“I asked Susan and Tommy Lee whether you’d even consider such a thing. They told me about the Hoffman deal you turned down. But I thought this could be different. You’d still be an owner. People in Laurel County would see us working like we’ve been doing these past few months. You could continue to help Tommy Lee.”
“But you have so many opportunities even if you don’t go the corporate route.”
Fletcher raised his hands. “Now where else could a deal be made where the participants couldn’t shake on it because they held candied apples?”
“You’ve got a point there,” I said.
“Here’s my pitch. You get me for a partner, the Sealey Corporation to handle centralized accounting if you want, volume purchasing for better discounts and customer savings, your mother gets some cash for her share, and you get the chance to step out of the day-to-day operations and chase down bad guys.”
To protect and to serve, I thought. “And what do you get?”
Fletcher swept his two apple-filled hands in a wide arc. “The best end of the bargain. This town. These mountains. These people. What my grandfather started and lost through success, not failure.”
The last sliver of the sun was setting behind the western ridges. The rapid-fire banjo rolls of Albert Dickens the Fourth rose above the sound of laughter and dancing. Locals and tourists swung from arm to arm in an undulating circle. The moment brimmed with the joys of being alive. I was part of it all—life and death. I had seen my father deal with both, for the community he served and for himself. I had witnessed the grace with which he descended into shadows and the triumph in the hospital room as he woke in the light. And I had been changed in the process.
In Fletcher Shaw I recognized a part of myself. This community would become his community.
A wave came from the crowd at the curb. I spotted Susan. She stood with Cindy and Tommy Lee. I realized Fletcher Shaw had been part of a conspiracy after all.
Fletcher saw them too. He blushed.
“Well,” I said. “You’ll get all that—this town, these mountains, these people—for better and for worse, for life and for death. But you’ll also get a seventy-five-year-old funeral business. Before you put anything on paper for me to consider, you’d better know what you’re in for. I’ll update the documents I prepared for Hoffman Enterprises and send them wherever you tell me.”
Fletcher beamed and clicked his apples against mine like sticky champagne glasses. “That’s great, Barry.”
“Maybe. See what you think after the Sealey accountants have had their say.” I nodded toward Susan and Cindy. “I see the shoppers have returned. Take these and give mine to Tommy Lee.” I handed him the apples. “I’m actually on my final night of duty so I’d better make a pass around the street.”
Fletcher hurried off.
I looked in the empty window of Larson’s Discount Drugs. The fading light had turned the plate glass into a mirror. I checked the uniform I’d been wearing the past two months while continuing the investigation. I looked good. Maybe I’d just keep it in the closet till Fletcher’s graduation.
I started down the sidewalk away from the band. A family hurried toward me, a girl about six pulling her mother forward. A toddler sat on his dad’s shoulders and gazed in wonder at the new world around him.
“Good evening, Officer,” the young father said.
“Yes. It certainly i
s.”
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Final Undertaking: A Buryin' Barry Mystery (Buryin' Barry Series) Page 26
