by Lynn Bulock
“I was getting ready to call you. The medical examiner’s office notified me this afternoon that they’re releasing Mr. Peete’s body to Dodd and Sons. So you’re free to go ahead with whatever plans you have.”
I thanked him for the information, took a deep breath and told him where I’d been and what I’d done there. The silence on the phone stretched to uncomfortable dimensions, and the only thing that I could hear was what sounded like fingers drumming or some other sound of frustration. I’d seen Fernandez enough times now to picture that look like a forming migraine that went along with the drumming. It started getting more intense when I went ahead and told him about the caller ID and my theory.
“So now you think I should just go over there with lights blazing and sirens on and bust into the Millers’ apartment to find out if they’re harboring a fugitive?”
It sounded pretty awful when put that way, and totally impractical. “No, of course not. It’s just that we’ve all been looking for Edna, and now we know where she is—”
“Maybe. Nobody knows for sure unless Carol Peete really was talking to her. And that’s something I can’t very well just call her up and ask, now, can I? Because you just told me that she said she’d had no contact with her former motherin-law, so you wouldn’t have any real, legal reason to think otherwise, would you, Ms. Harris?”
“I guess not. This was all a mistake, wasn’t it? I just thought you’d want the information.”
His voice was even more strident when he answered. “What information? I haven’t heard any information yet, just a few off-track guesses from somebody who shouldn’t be nosing around in the first place.”
He was probably right. I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of admitting that, but it was difficult not to. For a change I felt really bad about what I’d done. “I suppose I should go back to just planning Dennis’s funeral. I’m assuming that will be Friday now, sometime in the morning. I’ll need to call either Carol or Becca with that information, though. Is that all right, Detective?”
There was a long sigh from his end of the phone. “As long as all you do is call either of them, and stick to that topic alone, I don’t think we have another problem, Ms. Harris. Am I clear on that?”
“You’re clear as crystal. Am I also allowed to talk to someone at the newspaper office to let them know about service plans?”
“Of course. As long as you’re discussing your husband’s services, you can talk to just about anybody on the planet.” The detective sounded very tired. “Now if you don’t mind, I need to get back to work.”
I said goodbye and hung up, feeling like I’d messed up everything in just one afternoon. Maybe he was right; maybe I should just go about the business of planning Dennis’s funeral and let someone else worry about who killed him. I knew that I didn’t, and I was pretty sure that Heather hadn’t. At the same time I had to admit that conviction was just based on the other things I’d seen of her as a person, and the fact that she might have had a dose of the same GHB that was meant for me.
Besides that, what did I know, really? Carol could have been talking to anybody on the phone. It could even have been Becca herself, sneaking home for a moment alone for a change without the demands of husband, job and baby that she’d taken on awfully young. I’d been in that situation at her age, and it suddenly struck me how much I treasured every free, unencumbered moment, and how far between they’d been. I felt very tired and quite mixed-up.
There were still a few things I needed to do whether I was tired or not, and the most important things all involved what I told Detective Fernandez that I’d do, namely planning Dennis’s funeral. First I called Scott Dodd at the mortuary, who assured me that he had been contacted by the county medical examiner’s office and everything was under control. He also had the further good news that there apparently was a plan at least partially paid for in Dennis’s name, purchased by Edna. Now all we needed to do was find her and get another signature and that would be taken care of. I assured him that as soon as I found her, I’d be sending her over to give him that signature. In my mind, I decided that I’d even get that taken care of before I sent her over to Detective Fernandez when and if she showed up.
A second call to the church office at Conejo Community Chapel let Pastor George in on what was happening. He wasn’t in the office himself, but Helen took down everything and I trusted her to get the details to him.
After that it was a toss-up as to which call to make next. I owed one to Sam Blankenship at the Star, and I really wanted to talk to my mom. In the end duty won out and I called Sam first. He sounded really excited about hearing from me until I told him that I just wanted to tell him about services and when they’d be held. “I guess I better transfer you over to the obituary desk then,” he said, sounding glum.
“No, wait.” There was a rattling in the background as if he had a bag of something on the desk. It sounded like a rattling snack bag, maybe microwave popcorn or vending-machine chips. I could imagine either being dinner for a hardworking, broke young reporter. “Let me take down everything about the services. I bet the killer will be there. Maybe something big will happen.” I knew he was really just thinking out loud and optimistically as far as he was concerned. I didn’t burst his bubble with what I thought about his notions, just told him that things were set up for Friday morning at eleven at Dodd and Sons in Rancho Conejo and left it at that. Then he transferred me over to the obituary desk, as he put it, and I gave them all of the information a second time. I hoped that if the information ran in the newspaper for a day or two, perhaps it would jolt Edna out of hiding.
Thinking about that jolted me into making one more call, to Carol’s house. She didn’t pick up the phone, and I was forced to leave a message about the services for Dennis. I thought I’d call her back later and make sure I talked to her in person. I wanted to make sure Becca got the information, and that she participated as much as she chose to in her father’s funeral. She and I hadn’t exactly gotten along so far and I owed that much to her.
All the duty calls finally done, I made a pot of herbal tea, having decided that I’d caffeinated myself enough for the next two days already, and got ready to call my mom and my son. Taking my teacup and a phone into the living room, I noticed all sorts of windows open on my computer screen. Ben had sent me about half a dozen instant messages since he’d gotten home from school.
I made a mental note to change my settings on the computer so that somebody sending me an IM would make some noise. I’d set everything to silent several weeks ago when I’d gotten tired of Edna clucking in dismay every time a chime sounded on the computer. She was sure, no matter how many times I told her otherwise, that long-distance communication like that had to cost something. In her opinion I was being incredibly wasteful with money to be that free with it, just instant messaging all over the place. In the long run it was easier to take the noises away. She wasn’t computer literate enough to know that I was still doing all that annoying instant messaging without the noise.
Really, she hadn’t liked computer noises in general, which is why I’d taken to setting almost everything on every program so that it didn’t activate any noises, or wore headphones most of the time. Of course, that was a problem, as well, given that I startle very easily. I’d be sitting at the screen, typing away on something for school, IM-ing with Ben while I listened to a CD with headphones on, and Edna would come up behind me and tap me on the shoulder. That was all it took for me to shriek like a banshee and rise straight out of my chair. And then conflict would start all over again.
In that respect it was so much more peaceful without her here. Still, I would have welcomed a little noise and conflict if I’d known she was okay. Having her gone this long was just too weird. Sighing about it all, I put the phone down along with my cup of tea and tried to get hold of my plugged-in offspring. He had an “away” message up, saying something cryptic that I suspected would only make sense if one was another seventeen-year-old, but
I sent him a brief “Hi, it’s Mom” instant message anyway.
In thirty seconds he’d replied and we were typing away to each other. School was okay, he maintained, even though it sounded more with each passing week like he was courting senioritis to me. He hadn’t heard from any of his college choices yet, but hoped to soon.
He had come out to California for Thanksgiving and we’d looked at a few schools here, including Pacific Oaks. He’d applied there and to a couple other California institutions of higher learning, as well as to the Missouri state schools where most of his classmates were going. Even though I had no idea how we were going to pay for it, I still hoped he’d get in one of the schools he had applied to out my way so that we could be under the same roof part of the time.
There was still the possibility that I could just move back to Missouri and start over. Tonight, as I sat alone in Edna’s darkening living room, it didn’t sound as bad an idea as it once had. Still, if I did that, my chances of getting the money Dennis had made disappear were as gone as the money. “Is GMa around?” I asked Ben in shorthand on the computer.
“Nope. Bird-watchers or some club or something,” he shot back. “I’ve got music on double loud while I do homework and study for my physics test.”
Since the one luxury I’d insisted on paying for when I gave my mother money for Ben’s care and feeding was a high-speed DSL modem for each of us, I was still free to call him and talk for real at the same time even though my mom wasn’t there to talk to, just my adorable offspring. It was easier on me than the constant typing, although that was Ben’s favored mode of communication. “Turn it down a little, because I’m about to call you.”
There was a long pause and then a one-word message back. “Rats.”
I punched in the phone number, and he picked up on the first ring. “Benjamin Mitchell Harris, are you gaming while you’re doing your homework and listening to music?”
“Hello to you, too, Mom. So nice of you to call. And of course I’m doing no such thing,” he replied smoothly.
Of course he probably was instant messaging with eight different kids at once, most of them girls besides his best buddy, Dave. “Hi, son. And I’m glad to hear you’re keeping to the straight and narrow. Somebody’s got to be.”
“Hey, you sound tired. Everything okay? Or as okay as it’s going to be?” He sounded so mature when he got concerned about me that it made my throat constrict.
“The second one. It’s about as okay as it’s going to get anytime soon. We finally got the okay to set service times for Dennis.” I didn’t say “your stepfather” because that was one area where Dennis had been more lacking than any other. He and Ben hadn’t ever really bonded.
“Mom-zilla ever show back up?” I winced at his nickname for Edna. They’d been less than bosom buddies when he’d come out for Thanksgiving. Apparently her opinion of any teenager compared to her own darling Dennis in years past was low, and she’d made it quite obvious what she thought of my baby.
“Not yet. I’m actually getting really worried about her.”
“Wow, you must be taking this going-back-to-church thing seriously.” I’d told him about the Christian Friends and the chapel, but hadn’t been sure until now whether he’d really heard me or not. “I mean, if you’re being that kind to your enemies and all.”
“She’s hardly an enemy, Ben. For the most part she’s a lonely, worried old lady. And now I’m worried about her.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t be. Maybe she just couldn’t handle all of this and lit out for Mexico or something. You said you were what, three hours from Tijuana, right?”
The image of Edna “lighting out for Mexico” almost made me snort herbal tea out my nose. If anybody I knew was incapable of that kind of flight, it was Edna Peete. “On a good day, we’re three hours from Tijuana. On a bad day we’re three hours from LAX. And I don’t expect she headed toward either.”
“If you say so. Hey, Mom?”
He even paused to turn his music down a little more, which I thought was helpful of the kid. I could hear clicking in the background, which meant he was still active at the keyboard while we talked. That was okay. He was seventeen. He could multitask.
“Yes, Ben?”
“Do you want me to come out for Friday? I could. Grandma would even come if I talked her into it, I know.” Now my throat constricted even more. He had never cared for Dennis, but would come out here to support me if needed. And he was even offering to talk my mother into coming, when it was the world’s biggest toss-up as to what she loathed more, Dennis or flying.
“That is so sweet. But no. You stay there and study. Didn’t you just tell me that you had a physics test?”
“Well, yeah. But I could get it postponed.” I noticed that he didn’t say he could take it a day early. That much Ben wasn’t offering to do. He was still the same old Ben and it made me grin.
“No need. Save the trip for another time when I might even need you worse. Besides, it would cost a ton of money if you tried to come out this week. You’ve still got the sheriff’s department number if you get worried, right?”
“Right. It’s next to the computer,” he said.
“And you’ve got a name attached to it?” I pushed.
“Yeah. Detective Ray Fernandez. Just like you told me. Honest, I have it all.”
“Good. Hopefully you won’t ever need it. For now we can talk like this some times, and IM a lot. That seems to be your favorite form of communication.” It was the one thing he’d had in common with Dennis, and I mentioned it.
“You know why that is,” he said, while I could hear the different sounds from his computer in the background.
“It’s fast?”
There was more clicking and chimes. “Well, that, too. But really, it’s because it’s so easy. And it happens in real time. And it doesn’t leave a trace.”
“What do you mean?”
There was one of those sighs teens give their clueless parents. “Mom, IMs don’t leave a record. Unless somebody sets things up to put them on digest or records them intentionally, there’s no trace once you close the window you’re in or sign off. And almost nobody ever does digest.”
“Oh.” Now I knew why Dennis preferred them. And here I’d felt so racy and trendy and “fun” instant messaging with him. Meanwhile he was just covering his tracks as usual. The house felt even colder and darker than it had a moment before. Even my tea had cooled off.
We talked a few minutes more, and before I hung up I made it a point to tell my son how much I loved him. Wonder of wonders, the almost impossible happened. Before Ben put down his phone he said the magic words out loud. “I love you, too, Mom. Good night.” After he hung up I went all around the house turning on lights. Edna would have kittens if she came home right now, but tonight I needed to battle the darkness in clear and obvious ways.
I went to sleep that night with most of those lights burning. It was nice to wake up to them in the morning, even if I felt terribly wasteful. I guess I’d almost hoped that somehow having the lights on all night would perversely draw Edna home to cluck at my spendthrift ways. But I was still just as alone in the house when I woke up as when I’d gone to sleep.
I’d taken to checking her bedroom the first thing every morning. Given our spectacular lack of communication in the past, there was more than a slim chance that Edna, when she came home, would just slip on into her bedroom without so much as a “Hi, honey, I’m home.” Not that she’d ever call me “honey” in real life. I was still more than half convinced that the first real hint I’d get that Edna was back would be a load of laundry running, not a hearty hello.
I made a halfhearted effort to look at my schoolbooks in the morning while I toyed with coffee and toast. Soon I was either going to have to buckle down and go back to class and work hard or drop the semester. Most of my classes had had four or five meetings by now, and I’d been to the first one and no more. As Heather had predicted, the instructors were sympathetic when I
’d e-mailed or called them with my predicament, but they wouldn’t be sympathetic forever. Paging through the books didn’t give me an answer right away, so I got busy doing other things.
Another short visit with Scott at Dodd and Sons got everything planned for Friday morning from his end of the preparations. When he’d found the prepaid plan, it included cremation. Dennis’s plan didn’t come with a specific urn or box for his ashes, so I had the slightly odd task of picking that out. Scott told me that most families brought in a picture, or several, of the deceased to display near the front of the room.
For a moment I got this memory flashback to my first Christian Friends meeting, and wondered if Heather and I should both bring our photos. It would provide a clearer picture of just who Dennis had been. Putting that thought away, I went back to planning.
After Scott had asked a few questions about details, it became clear that we wouldn’t need extra time for friends and family to gather on the evening before the services. There weren’t that many people I expected to show up to begin with, and what some of us would say to each other for more than fifteen minutes, I hadn’t a clue. So we settled on having the chapel open an hour before the 11:00 a.m. services, and left it at that.
It would feel odd not having the night before what old-timers in Missouri at least would have called a wake. I didn’t know enough about funeral customs here to know if such a thing was ever done, even for those who had enough family and friends to warrant it. I decided to ask Linnette if the offers of help that she’d given me through Christian Friends would include something more informal. Maybe the group could come by the house Thursday night.
As soon as I thought that, I realized I’d have to work fast if I wanted anything like that to happen. Thursday was tomorrow. The only plus to time moving as fast as it seemed to be was that soon this whole experience would be over and I could pick up the pieces of what was going to be my normal life from now on. I was beginning to feel anxious to see what “normal” was going to be. After the past few weeks, normal would be interesting.
