Putting the Fun in Funeral

by Diana Pharaoh Francis

  I needed a lot more sleep and a lot of alcohol and cheesecake before I was ready to tackle the problem of Damon. That, and maybe a dozen appointments with a shrink. Because God help me, I was looking forward to his turning up again.

  Chapter 10

  I fled back through the warehouse, leaving Ajax to catch up. I put away everything I’d got out for Garrett to see and filed away my paperwork. Then I returned upstairs and got Ajax settled before getting into the shower.

  I’d never understood what made my mother hate me, but there can be no doubt she did. Her schemes and tortures weren’t tough love. They weren’t any kind of love. It was all about making me suffer. All the same, it didn’t keep me from wondering what I’d done to deserve it. Even though I knew I hadn’t, I still wondered. I probably needed a therapist. I’d have to settle for the girls and some cheesecake.

  Damon was interested in me. I couldn’t see why, any more than I could see why my mother had hated me. I wasn’t anything particularly special. In fact, I was temperamental, uptight, and slightly insane. If he liked me, could he be altogether sane?

  Bigger question—why did I even care?

  No duh! Because I liked him. I liked that he kept coming back no matter how difficult I was. I liked the way he seemed to want to look out for me. I liked the way he gave as good as he got when we were verbally sparring. I liked the way he looked at me, and I liked the way he kissed me.

  “I’m such an idiot.”

  By the time the girls arrived, I’d ordered a bounty of Chinese food to be delivered and then sprawled on the couch with Ajax because he was glued to me. I have to say I couldn’t mind it. It felt nice to be that kind of important to someone, even one of the furry persuasion.

  Lorraine arrived first. She checked out Ajax, changed his dressings, helped me give him his medications, and went over what I needed to do for him. His jumping around and slamming into my office door didn’t seem to have caused any lasting harm. A little of the knot in my stomach relaxed.

  “I’ll come back tomorrow night. He’s definitely happier here than at the clinic.”

  “Someone told me he might be a wolf,” I said.

  “At least half,” she agreed. “Maybe three-fourths, but the rest? Something big. Malamute maybe. Or possibly a Great Pyrenees.” She looked at me. “Are you worried he’ll be dangerous?”

  “Funny,” I said, seeing her smirk. “Bite her, Ajax. Bite her hard.”

  “Too late. He likes me already.” She stroked his head, and he gave her a doggy smile.

  “Traitor.” He nosed my hand and swiped his tongue over my fingers.

  I went to the refrigerator and pulled out orange juice, then started setting glasses, liquor, and mixers out on the counter, along with a blender and ice. When the doorbell rang, Lorraine ran down to let in Jen and Stacey, who came in with five bags of Chinese food, having encountered the delivery guy in the parking lot.

  “Are you expecting a natural disaster?” Jen asked, setting her load on the table. “There’s enough here to feed us for a week.”

  “I wanted to be sure we had everybody’s favorites since I promised to cook and I totally blew that off.”

  “Yeah, we saw it on the news tonight,” Stacey said, heading for the kitchen and then stopped cold. “Uh, Beck? There’s a patchwork wolf in your kitchen. He doesn’t look like he likes me.”

  “Oh, right. Everybody, this is Ajax. He’s the dog from last night. He’s okay but he doesn’t really trust people very much.” I went to kneel beside him. “Ajax, this is Stacey. She’s my friend.”

  It was a sign of how much she trusted me that Stacey held out her hand. Ajax stretched out to sniff it and then pulled away but didn’t growl or snarl. Progress. Next was Jen. He repeated his sniffing and then looked up at me as though he thought I was kidding.

  “He totally doubts your taste in friends.” Jen laughed. Stacey and Lorraine joined in.

  Ajax pricked his ears and cocked his head at them. He took a step and listed to the side.

  “Uh-oh. Drugs are kicking in. C’mon, boy.”

  I guided him to his bed outside the kitchen, and he collapsed awkwardly onto it.

  “Daquiris, margaritas, or something else?” Stacey asked.

  “Margaritas,” came the unanimous vote.

  Stacey set to work, and the rest of us unpacked the food.

  Then something struck me. They’d echoed Damon.

  “Wait a minute. I was on the news?”

  They cracked up laughing. I flushed and then mentally kicked myself. These women were practically my sisters. Their laughter never bothered me, especially when I deserved it. I was feeling too damned raw and for no good reason.

  “What did you think was going to happen?” Lorraine asked. “First the wife kills her bastard husband and then goes nuts and tries to kill the kids. Then there’s a vicious dog protecting them, and you show up out of nowhere and talk the dog down. It’s the biggest story ever around here. I’m surprised they aren’t parked outside and ringing your phone dead.”

  “Actually, you know, the reporters bugging me about my mom’s death are gone too. That’s so weird.” I couldn’t help going to look out my windows, but the parking lot was dark. “What do you suppose happened to them all?”

  “Maybe the coyote dropped an anvil on them,” Jen suggested. “A big-ass anvil.”

  “Maybe they all got Ebola at the same time,” Stacey said and then hit the blend button.

  “What’s this?” Stacey asked, nudging the leather bag on the counter when she’d finished blending and pouring out the margaritas.

  “Garrett left it. Said it was stuff my mom had consigned to him. Or maybe sold to him.” I shrugged. “He said I might want to see it now that she’s pushing up daisies.”

  “What kind of stuff?” Stacey’s blue eyes flashed. She did love to shop.

  “No idea. Have a look.”

  She flipped it open and rummaged. Jen and Lorraine leaned in to get a closer look. Stacey pulled out a handful of jewelry, hair clips, jeweled boxes, and assorted expensive tchotchkes. All three women sorted the items, laying them out across the long counter.

  Jen picked up a cuff bracelet, about two inches wide and inlaid with a design of opals, sapphires, rubies, and what looked like pink diamonds. “This is pretty.”

  “My mother had taste,” I said, taking it from her and turning it over in my fingers. “I think this is platinum.” I put it back down on the counter and looked at the rest of it. There were things that I’d wear—if they hadn’t belonged to my mother.

  “What are you going to do with them?” Lorraine asked.

  “Give them back to Garrett.” I shrugged. “I don’t want anything to do with this crap. If anything looks good to you, grab it. She’d hate knowing you were wearing it.”

  “Well, when you put it that way....” Jen slid the cuff onto her arm while Stacey and Lorraine picked through the rest, selecting what they wanted.

  When they were through, I reached for the leftovers to put them away.

  “You know,” Jen said, “she’d also hate it if you had anything of hers. Maybe you should take something too. Every time you’d wear it, it’d be a big fuck you to her.”

  She had a point. I looked over the collection, picking up each piece. I finally settled on an art deco–style ring. The center stone was a star sapphire in a lavender shade of blue, and baguette diamonds framed it on either side. I slipped it on the middle finger of my left hand. It fit perfectly. “Looks like this is the one. Put the other stuff away now and let’s eat.”

  Stacey returned everything to the satchel. I set it aside to take downstairs to the vault until I could return it to Garrett.

  We got through dinner with most of the conversation focusing on the night before. The ring on my hand felt cold and heavy. I yawned, feeling the lack of sleep catching up with me suddenly. At that moment, I could have crawled into bed and stayed there for a week. Not that the girls would have let me. Cheesecake nights were sac
red.

  I had taken a frozen cheesecake out earlier in the morning, and over dessert, we talked about my mother’s murder investigation.

  “The detectives really don’t like me,” I said.

  “And people say the men in blue suck at their jobs,” Jen said, clinking her glass with mine.

  “Suits, actually, and one is a woman. That reminds me, I have to call that cop who brought my car back. He wanted to know how Ajax was doing. He turned out to be a good guy.”

  “Is he sexy?” Stacey asked, her brows lifting.

  “Not for me,” I said.

  “Fucking hell, Beck. You’re free. You can finally have a relationship,” Jen said, slapping her hand on the table. “You can at least do some casual dating.”

  “Not with Officer Mock. He’s nice enough but looks about ten years old. And no sparks.” No, Damon was the one who caused sparks and a migraine and made me want to cut him in two with an ax, and with any luck, I’d never see him again. Right. He said he’d be back, and I believed him. The irritating thing was that as much as his return made me seethe, I also was looking forward to it, which made me want to stab my eye out with a fork.

  I jumped up and started clearing the dishes. The girls followed suit, and Stacey mixed up another batch of margaritas before we all headed for the couch. We’d barely sat down when Ajax flung himself up and over, curling up beside me.

  “Looks like you’ve got yourself a friend,” Lorraine said, grinning.

  “All the male I can handle,” I agreed.

  Silence descended and the other three women exchanged speaking looks. Then they all looked at me.

  “All right,” Jen said. “Your bitch of a mother is dead. Time to spill the beans.”

  “What beans?”

  Stacey rolled her eyes. “Oh, please. We know your mother kept you under her thumb with threats, intimidation, and worse. We know you didn’t tell us so you could protect us. But you don’t have to anymore and you also don’t have to carry the baggage alone. A burden shared is lighter.”

  “So talk to us,” Lorraine said, patting my thigh.

  I opened my mouth, and nothing came out. I didn’t even know what I wanted to say. A tidal wave of emotion crashed over me, and all of a sudden, I was balling like a colicky baby.

  Ajax got in my face and started licking me, the girls all clustered around, trying to hug me, much to the dog’s increasing distress. Thank goodness he didn’t snap.

  By the time I got myself somewhat calmed down, my nose was full of cement, I’d gone through an entire box of tissue and was working through a second, my eyes were swollen, and my face felt blotchy and hot. I had slouched down on my side and curled my knees up to my chest. Ajax had burrowed in between to wedge his head against my stomach.

  I hadn’t cried since I could remember. Not once. Then suddenly I was a sprinkler turned on full blast. I couldn’t blame my period. It was still weeks off. I groaned and hid my eyes in the crook of my elbow.

  “I’m so stupid. Go away. All of you. Leave me with what few shreds of dignity I still have.”

  “Who are you kidding?” Jen said. “Your dignity got wadded up in a pile of Kleenex about a half hour ago.”

  Oh, God. My face heated and I flushed harder. I probably looked like a beet. “Have mercy on me and go away.”

  “Nope,” Stacey said and settled a cold bottle of water into my hand. “We are utterly merciless. Drink that. I’ve got some ibuprofen for you too. Then you can start talking.”

  “At least we know she’s human,” Lorraine said when I didn’t move. “She can both cry and wallow. I was beginning to think she was robo-Beck.”

  “Har-dee-har-har,” I said, lifting my elbow just high enough to peek at her. “If you prick me, do I not bleed?”

  “Shakespeare? And here I thought you only read the funny pages.”

  “Shakespeare in the Park,” Jen clarified. “Last summer. Remember? Merchant of Venice. We were flirting with those guys from ErroTech. All except our girl Beck, who insisted on watching the play. Which brings us back to the question at hand. What did your mom do to you?”

  They weren’t going to let it go. I dropped my arm, twisting onto my back and staring up at the ceiling. I refused to look at them. “You really don’t want to know. It’s over and that’s all that matters.”

  “It’s not over for you,” Stacey said. “We’ve let you shut us out all these years because we didn’t want to make things worse for you, but we’re done letting you hold on to this alone. We aren’t leaving until you tell us. If we have to, we’ll get you so drunk, you’ll tell us all your deepest, darkest secrets. I’ve got two more bottles of tequila in my trunk, plus a fifth of vodka.”

  “My mother is my deepest, darkest secret,” I said. Even though that wasn’t entirely true. She was one but I was never going to let them know about the basement. And then there was my magic. I had never let them see it. “That and this whole crying thing. You guys didn’t record it, did you? I don’t want to see myself on YouTube.”

  “Too bad. Your exploits last night probably already got you up there,” Jen said unsympathetically. “Stop stalling.”

  “Trust us,” Lorraine said. “You need this. All those emotions you’ve kept bottled up tight, and now that your mother is gone, all your walls are coming apart. You need to talk, whether you know it or not.”

  “The detectives were right about one thing,” I said after several breaths of silence. “I wanted her dead, so much. I thought of all kinds of plans to kill her, but I wasn’t going to jail for her.”

  “That answers that,” Jen said.

  I lifted my head to look at her. “Answers what? You thought I actually killed her?”

  “Wouldn’t have blamed you if you did.”

  “None of us would have,” Stacey said. “We’d have helped.”

  I inched upright and stretched my legs out in front of me. Ajax wriggled over so he lay across my thighs with his head on my shins. It looked hideously uncomfortable, but I was glad for the weight and the warmth, not to mention his concern and desire to protect me.

  “I’ll tell you some things,” I said. “But I won’t answer questions.” I looked at them, and they each nodded. I uncapped my water and took a drink and then dived in.

  I kept the details to a minimum, sticking to matter-of-fact descriptions. I described the water-wall torture. How she put me in the cage with the rock climbing wall and made me climb, all the while blasting water cannons at me to knock me off. Every time I fell, something would force me off the ground. Magic, but I couldn’t tell them that. She’d send bees to sting me mercilessly or start beating me with invisible sticks. Eventually she figured out that all she really needed to do was start describing how she’d hurt my friends. She was vicious, and worse, I knew she’d follow through.

  I’d get up and start climbing again and fall again and rinse and repeat. It would go on for hours. Giving up wasn’t a choice. Failing wasn’t a choice. When I made it to the top, I could drop down in the hollow on top of the wall. It was always full of water by then. I’d stay there until she got bored and left, and then I could climb down.

  I never missed school. I never gave her the satisfaction. No matter how long I’d been up there, no matter how bad I hurt, I never let her win.

  Then there was the running torture. The reason I still ran. She had a track. Made me run. Sometimes I could go slower, sometimes I had to sprint. When I went too slow or tried to stop, she’d hit me with electric shocks. Sometimes she’d drag out a pig and butcher it, showing me exactly what she’d do to my friends if I didn’t do what she demanded.

  I could go weeks and even months with her ignoring me, and then she’d focus her attention on me every day for a week. I started training so I stayed in shape for her sessions. I ran, I swam, I lifted weights, I climbed. I was fanatical about it. I still was.

  I stopped talking after twenty minutes. My voice was thick and hoarse. My eyes were dry and gritty. I stared blindly at the opposit
e wall, lost in memories. Those were the least bad things she’d done to me. The other things—I didn’t even want to think about them, much less talk about them.

  “I need a drink,” Stacey said.

  I looked at her. She’d been crying. She climbed up over the couch and poured a shot of tequila. She drank it, then poured three more in quick succession, downing each. She lifted the bottle.

  “Anybody else?”

  “Fuck yes,” Jen said, and it sounded like a prayer. She stared at me, face pale, eyes shadowed. “God, I wish we’d known.”

  “I don’t,” I said. “I never wanted you guys to know. You’d have tried to help, and she would have really gone to work on you. So long as I cooperated in her little torture sessions, she stuck to just harassment. Pissed her off, though, that you guys didn’t walk away from me. She couldn’t understand it. God, did I love you for that. You’ve no idea.”

  “She needed killing,” Lorraine said in a shaken voice. “She was evil and someone should have put her in the ground a long time ago.”

  “If I ever find out who killed her, I’ll give him a medal,” I said then grinned. “I told the detectives if I figured out who did it, I’d suck his dick.”

  They laughed. It was a little too loud and a little too long, but it broke the tension.

  “I’m pretty sure saying that didn’t make you any less a suspect,” Jen observed.

  “I’m definitely sure you’re right. Telling them I hated the bitch probably didn’t either, but since I have an alibi, they’ll have to set their sights on someone else.”

  “Have they?” Lorraine asked.

  I shrugged. “Not so I’ve noticed. They want me to go to the estate and play tour guide for them.”

  “Take you back to the scene of the crime, as it were,” Jen said, nodding. “Makes sense if all those episodes of Law and Order got anything right at all.”

  “Of course they did. TV and movies always show exactly what happens in the real world,” Stacey said with a perfectly straight face. “I mean, The Real Housewives. Need I say more? By the way, if you believe any of that tripe, did I mention I have some beachfront property in Nebraska for sale?”