Here Comes the Ride

by Lorena McCourtney

  Shirley showed up again, and she and Pam went off to talk to the caterers. The other deputies consolidated their interview areas into one corner of the tent so guests could eat while the questioning went on. I noted that catering people, harpists, and anyone else who’d had any connection with the wedding were being interviewed along with guests. My contribution was to go around and gather place cards from the tables, so people could sit wherever it was convenient to eat. I saw a couple of guys from the crime-scene crew carrying out what I assumed was the fog machine. I wondered if they’d located the machine’s operator, who definitely had some explaining to do.

  It certainly wasn’t a party-time atmosphere as the guests ate. Most people still seemed to be in shock, so even though there wasn’t exactly a reverential silence, the voices were generally subdued. Appetites did not appear to be unduly affected, however. For no particular reason, I thought about the biblical account of Jesus feeding a crowd with just a few loaves and fishes. And he’d done it without a caterer from Tacoma.

  When the line finally thinned, Fitz and I filled plates too. I was a bit ashamed, but I hadn’t eaten much today and, in spite of murder, I was hungry. Michelle hadn’t skimped on the quality of food. The lobster tails were generous sized, the prime rib superb. I didn’t see anyone drinking the expensive champagne she had bought for the reception. The cake was also left untouched, although I didn’t know whether this was by Pam’s orders or some sensitivity of the caterer. In any case, I was relieved. Prime rib and lobster might be rationalized as necessities of life, but wedding cake and champagne under the circumstances would have been . . . macabre.

  Michelle had wanted this to be the wedding of the century. And it was. Though definitely not in the way she’d intended. That thought also felt a bit macabre.

  Afterward Fitz got a couple of oversized garbage bags from the caterer, and we started un-decorating the limo. The questioning of the guests continued. Detective Molino kept Pam at his table longer than anyone else, and her steps were unsteady when she finally stumbled out of the tent. I ran over to her.

  “Pam, can I do anything? Maybe—”

  She brushed by me. “I’m going up to bed.”

  “Good idea. We’ll talk in the morning, okay?”

  ***

  Three taxis had come and gone by the time Fitz and I finished with the limo, although I didn’t see who left in them. About that time, media people arrived, the only surprise about that being the time it had taken them to get wind of this newsworthy event.

  Deputy Molino talked to them for a minute, but I was fairly certain he blew them off. A video cameraman targeted me, and a hyperactive lady I recognized from a TV news show shoved a microphone in my face.

  “I understand you were the first person to find the body!” She said it with the same breathless enthusiasm she might have used if I’d been gold-starred as Limousine Driver of the Year.

  I started to mutter, “No comment,” which probably wouldn’t have deterred her. Fitz had a better solution.

  “She has a problem with English,” he said helpfully. Not exactly an untruth. Who doesn’t have a problem with the English language?

  “Then would you translate the question for her?” the woman snapped impatiently.

  Fitz smiled amiably. “Sorry, I don’t speak Litzomenian.”

  The woman frowned.

  I offered her a rose and said, “Mika ur ubra?” in my best Litzomenian, whatever that might be.

  She turned away and sought more productive pastures. Fitz and I exchanged conspiratorial glances.

  “The Daisy Detectives score again,” he whispered.

  That was what his son Matt had labeled us once, because of our mutual appreciation of those unpretentious flowers . . . and his frustration with our sleuthing activities.

  What would I do without Fitz? A woman could fall in love with a man like this. “Siko umo eaknit yum,” I said to him earnestly.

  “Huh?”

  “It’s Litzomenian. You figure it out.”

  By now a limo-load of released people had gathered for transport to the inn. Joe and Phyllis Forsythe were there, but when I inquired about Sterling, Joe said he’d left earlier in a taxi.

  On a sinking ship, I figured Sterling Forsythe would beat the rats to the escape hatch.

  I made two trips to the inn. Fitz came along, riding in the passenger’s seat beside me, welcome company and support. My nerves were beginning to tell on me by the time I finally parked the limo in the graveled driveway by the garage, where it would be out of the way. Police cars still littered the driveway. In spite of my weariness, Fitz and I walked back to the tent to see what was going on. Most of the guests appeared to be gone now. The tent entrance was still blocked with yellow tape. Inside, I saw that the section of carpet where Michelle’s body had lain had been cut out and removed. Which would no doubt come as an unpleasant surprise to the carpet people. I wondered if Pam was now responsible for paying for a new carpet.

  “Did you learn anything interesting from people you talked to tonight?” I asked Fitz.

  “Oh, this and that. We can talk about it tomorrow. You’re too tired tonight.”

  True.

  He walked me back to the house, planted a kiss on my cheek, and said to call him as soon as I felt like it in the morning.

  Inside, I found Shirley gathering cups from the living room. She’d provided late coffee and snacks for everyone, of course. I doubted earthquake, flood, or invasion by ice monsters would stop Shirley from providing coffee.

  “So, did they figure out who did it?” I asked, since it looked as if the House People had spent some time sitting around rehashing the situation.

  “It's a toss-up between two theories. Number One: some unknown stranger sneaked in, purposely sabotaged the fog machine in order to commit the murder, and then escaped unseen. Number Two: the fog thing was a weird accident, and someone already on scene impulsively took advantage of that to commit murder.”

  Someone who just happened to be carrying a butterfly knife?

  “Were they naming names?” I asked.

  “No, but they were watching each other like chickens suspecting a hawk. One sharp noise and they’d all have hit the ceiling.”

  “So what do you think?”

  “I think . . . I’ll just have to think about it some more.”

  Me too.

  I trundled wearily down the hallway and opened the door to my room. And stopped short when I saw the faint outline of a body on my bed.

  Chapter Eleven

  Okay, not a body, just a prone figure, I realized with relief when she sat up.

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you,” Pam said.

  “I thought you were going to bed.”

  “I couldn’t sleep.”

  She’d brought Phreddie along, I saw when I turned on the overhead light. He was curled up on my pillow. Sleeplessness isn’t a problem for cats. I closed the door behind me. Even tired as I was, I realized I probably couldn’t sleep either.

  “Did you want to talk about what happened?”

  For a moment that peculiar haunted look I’d seen out in the tent when she’d stared into the flowers passed across her face. She swallowed convulsively, and her lips parted as if she were about to make some startling revelation. But all she said was, “I just didn’t want to be alone.”

  Flattering that she’d chosen me, perhaps, but under the circumstances, there probably wasn’t a wide choice. “Did you talk to Sterling?”

  “By phone. He’s leaving tomorrow, but his folks are staying for a few days. I think I told you Phyllis is Michelle’s cousin. Though it’s second or third cousin, or some cousin once removed, however that stuff works.”

  Good ol’ Sterling. High-tailing it out of town as if a hanging posse were after him. Which birthed a thought. Should a hanging posse be after him? I couldn’t think why Sterling would want to murder Michelle, but everyone’s a suspect.

  Pam hauled her feet up on the bed to si
t cross-legged. I envied her bendability. If I tried it, I’d hear a snap-crackle-pop that had nothing to do with breakfast cereal.

  “It’s good Joe and Phyllis are staying, don’t you think?” I took off my black jacket and hung it in the closet. It had had a long, hard, and smelly day and needed a trip to the dry-cleaners. “Maybe they can help you with arrangements for the funeral.”

  “A funeral?” she repeated, her tone aghast, as if this thought had never occurred to her.

  “A funeral, plus all the legalities that will have to be taken care of.” I wondered if Michelle had a will, and, if so, who her executor and heirs were, but I wasn’t going to bring that up now. “But we don’t have to worry about that tonight.”

  “Okay.” She sounded willing to put these complications off indefinitely. She peered around the tiny room. “As soon as the guests leave, you can move to one of the bigger bedrooms upstairs if you’d like. The Nautical Room is nice. Michelle did it with seashells and netting and some old steering wheels off boats.”

  “Maybe you should invite Sterling’s parents to stay here.”

  “Here?”

  “I think the reservations at the inn were only through tonight. And the cost of rooms at the casino may be prohibitive for them. Phyllis seems to be the closest thing Michelle had to a relative.”

  “I guess it would be the polite thing to do, wouldn’t it?”

  “Have you and Sterling decided to postpone the wedding?”

  She twisted the ring that was still on her finger. “Only if postpone means not in this lifetime.”

  Which would make Joe and Phyllis’s staying here awkward to say the least. Which also meant they’d probably decline. Good. Pam didn’t need any more stress.

  “Do you want to talk about you and Sterling?”

  “Not really.”

  I switched on the lamp, turned off the glary overhead light, and plopped down in the swivel chair. My feet gave a big sigh of relief when I kicked off my shoes.

  “I guess what I’m thinking about tonight is . . . other things.”

  Murder, I presumed. So what she said next startled me.

  “Death kind of makes you think about . . . God and stuff. It’s scary, you know, dying. And afterward.” She sounded uncomfortable but determined, back to that fifteenish streak that sometimes surfaced in her on-again off-again maturity.

  “I don’t think even believers relish going through the process of dying, but they don’t have to be afraid of afterward.”

  “Why not?”

  Hey, wait a minute, God. What’s going on? I’m just an amateur here. I don’t understand a lot of things myself. And You expect me to jump right in and spout words of wisdom to some other lost soul? Not fair!

  But she was sitting there looking at me expectantly, so, even though I felt as if I were trying to lead the way with a head of cauliflower instead of a spotlight, I took a deep breath and said, “I think it all comes down to God loving the world so much that He sent Jesus. And the Bible says if we believe in Him we’ll live forever with God.”

  “That doesn’t sound too complicated.”

  Hey, how about that? I was amazed. Maybe God had lit up my cauliflower! Though I hoped she wouldn't ask what "living forever" would be like. I sometimes have these misgivings when it comes down to the specifics. Endless hymn singing? Strolling through fields of flowers? Crocheting angel robes? I had to admit that sometimes it seems a little, well . . . unreal.

  “How’d you get started on the God stuff?”

  The God stuff. A phrase she’d used before. Well, if that’s what we had to work with, so be it.

  “With me it wasn’t a death situation. It was a life thing. I had a young friend who was pregnant, and, through an unlikely set of circumstances, her baby was born in my limousine.”

  Pam sat up straighter. “Really?”

  “Really. Right by the side of the road. A doctor was on the phone with me, but he wasn’t there. I was the first one to hold the baby in my hands, and it just hit me. Here was this miracle, this new life, God’s miracle of creation, and it happened right there in front of me. It made me think I wanted to know more about this . . . God stuff. So I’ve been trying to learn. And what I see now is that the start of life and the end of it are connected, both part of God’s plan.”

  “What happened to the girl and her baby?”

  “The family she works for moved down to Portland, and she went with them.” And how I did miss both Joella and baby Tricia A.!

  “Does God talk to you? I read some of the Old Testament after Dad died, because the guy Michelle had do the funeral quoted some verses. I never could find the ones he mentioned, but from what I read it looked as if back then God was more talkative than an infomercial.”

  “Sometimes I think He’s communicating with me, but I don’t hear a big voice booming out of my mashed potatoes, if that’s what you mean. Though I’ve sometimes thought it would be easier if I did.”

  “Yeah.” She smiled slightly and played with one of Phreddie’s ears. Kind of a beat-up ear, I noticed now. “An e-mail would be nice. Or maybe a text message on my cell phone.”

  “Looking back, I see that God used the birth of Joella’s baby to talk to me.” To give me the kind of "shove into faith" that Joella had said she’d received when she was feeling lost and confused. “I never heard any actual voice or words, but He was communicating. I think, even if we think we want to hear God talking to us, we don’t pay attention when He does. We’re too busy worrying and fussing and trying to do everything on our own.”

  “Christian people don’t seem to have life easier than anyone else.”

  A troubling observation I’d made myself. But I had a little different perspective on it now. “God isn’t a vending machine, where you deposit your faith or your good works and He spews out a great job or fantastic abs or a Ferrari. Although some people come to Him thinking like that. Then they’re disappointed when that isn’t the way it works.”

  “So how does it work?”

  I heard a challenge in her voice, and again I wondered what God was doing here. Surely He could have assigned someone more experienced and competent than I am to talk to Pam. But I didn’t see any volunteers standing in line, so apparently I was elected.

  “When you make a commitment of belief and ask for forgiveness of your sins—”

  “That’s such a old-fashioned word. Sins.”

  “You can call them something more politically correct if you want, I suppose, but a sin’s a sin. Anyway, God then gives you the promise of eternal life. And He also promises to help you cope with this here-and-now life. He’s promised that He’ll never leave you or abandon you. But that doesn’t mean He's going to give you an angelic boost over all the potholes and rough spots. You have to slog through them like everyone else. But the difference is, you have God beside you, and you can lean on Him.”

  She gave this some thoughtful consideration, then asked skeptically, “And you really do believe all this?”

  Leave it to Pam to get right down to the nitty-gritty. I sighed. Sometimes my beliefs and doubts get as tangled as spaghetti leftovers at an Italian greasy spoon.

  “I think I do. Mostly I do. But I don’t understand a lot of things, and I have to admit that doubts creep in on little pitter-patter paws.” Or sometimes clomp in on big clown feet.

  “Like about Noah and his ark? Jonah and his fish?”

  “You did read your Old Testament, didn’t you?”

  “Some in the New, too. Some of that stuff in Revelation is pretty wild.”

  I smiled reluctantly. “Yeah, it is, isn’t it? But some things you just have to take on faith. Unlike, say, gravity, which is also God’s doing, but it’s more self-evident. And there’s also the mystery of how two ounces of chocolate can add two pounds to your thighs.”

  Pam smiled again. “I’ve wondered about that too.” Phreddie rolled over on his back, and Pam absentmindedly rubbed his tummy.

  “I’m sure what I’m saying
is overly simplistic, but I have to go with simplistic until I understand things better myself. But one thing I do know is that God puts a very high value on faith. On believing and trusting even when we don’t understand everything.”

  “Simplistic is okay. I think I can come closer to believing about God when you admit you have doubts and aren’t just swallowing it all like some gullible groupie. Though I have a little trouble taking things on faith. I like things solid. Like a mathematical equation.”

  Pam stood up. She wrapped Phreddie around her neck like a big fur collar, two feet and head on one side, two feet and tail on the other. He purred contented agreement with the arrangement.

  But if I thought she was going to jump into a big “God stuff” commitment, and earn me brownie points in some heavenly rating scheme, I should have known better.

  “I’ll think about all this,” she said.

  “Me too.” Odd, I thought. I still felt in way over my head here, but maybe helping Pam find her way was how God would help clarify things in my head.

  “Thanks for talking to me.”

  I opened the door for her. I still felt she was holding something back, but apparently she wasn’t going to reveal it tonight.

  “See you in the morning," I said. "Although if you decide you want to talk to someone in the middle of the night or anything, I’m here.”

  “Like if I want to confess to murdering Michelle?”

  There it was, out in the open. But all I said was, “Whatever.”

  “And you’re going to pray for me.” Her tone was gently mocking, but she smiled.

  “I am,” I admitted. “You could also pray for yourself. And me too, for that matter. And anyone else who needs it.”

  “I could?”

  “You don’t have to know a special password or anything. God’s always listening. Actually, I find that kind of—” I broke off, searching for the right word, and came up with one that isn’t a usual part of my vocabulary, but seemed to fit. “Kind of breathtaking. Here’s God, with a whole universe to run, and yet He’s still willing to listen to me at any time.”