by Craig Smith
It was like a wedding where the ushers ask, ‘Bride or groom?’ and seat you accordingly.
I had volunteered to do whatever was needed, hoping at least I would be one of the pallbearers. Because Randy had not responded to my offer, I found him the moment we entered the funeral home. What did he want me to do? Randy told me it might be better for everyone concerned if I didn’t participate. I was irritated naturally, but I said I understood.
When Johnna Masterson walked in, I thought about pointing her out to Molly, but decided there was no advantage in showing her the department’s centrefold.
I did, however, try to approach her. I was anxious to know what Buddy Elder had told her and just why she had ended up making her complaint with Denise instead of separately. When Johnna saw me moving toward her, she walked over to Randy Winston.
Touching his arm, she whispered something. Randy’s eyes locked on me at once.
I made no second attempt.
A while later I engaged in a clammy handshake with Roger Beery. He offered a few incoherent grunts when I talked about his parents, but that was the extent of our conversation. I could not decide if he was in shock or just didn’t care. I didn’t want to judge the kid on the basis of tears or a lack of them. I had not cried at Tubs’s funeral. I recalled even that I had managed to laugh a few times with old friends. Lots of stories at that funeral, I can tell you. But Roger neither laughed nor wept. Someone quoted the newspaper to me. Roger had found the bodies. Could I imagine? I shook my head. No, I couldn’t, I said. I swallowed my impulse to observe that in my researches about murder I had learned the killer was often the person who discovered the murder victim.
After a while I gravitated toward people I didn’t know. I did quite well with these folks, especially when I got to talk about how Walt and Barbara had extended their friendship to Molly and me when I had first joined the faculty. I knew Barbara? That was always the question. My answer was always the same. A wonderful woman. This inspired remarks about Barbara’s sainthood. Having never cared for any of the saints other than Jude, I agreed heartily. She sure as hell was.
The funeral home offered a large reception area at the front door, but the majority of people stood in the chapel where the two open caskets offered a last look.
There was, finally, a small room for the family just off the chapel. In the thirty minutes or so I had been there, Roger had retreated to it a couple of times, coming back out after a minute or so. Smoking dope?
Taking swigs? I didn’t know, but I was curious. Three young women at different points had gone into that room. They stayed quite a bit longer than Roger, and since these girls looked a little ragged around the edges I began paying attention to the anteroom, wondering just what was going on in there. The last of them left the room when it was apparently empty and went over to Roger and said something. Roger reacted immediately, walking directly to the room. I followed him, stepping through the door only seconds behind him.
Denise Conway looked stricken at the sight of me.
A moment later, she scanned the room for an exit. By a happy coincidence I happened to be standing at the only one. ‘Denise,’ I said, as if finding her at Walt’s and Barbara’s funeral was only to be expected, ‘nice to see you again.’ Denise retreated behind Roger’s heavy shoulder without speaking. Actually, I think she swore.
Her lips moved at any rate. I turned my attention to Roger, who was glaring at me angrily. ‘I can see why you wanted to keep your love life secret, Roger.’
Roger told me to leave. His request was delivered a bit roughly, however, and to be contrary I didn’t move. ‘You might want to get a lawyer to explain to you what a deposition is, Denise. You’re first on my lawyer’s list to be deposed. You lie to her and you’re lying under oath.’
Roger spoke for Denise. ‘Go screw yourself, Dave.’
‘Did Denise happen to tell you what was going on with her and your old man, Roger?’
It probably wasn’t the nicest thing to say under the circumstances. Then again it’s not real nice listening to a creep tell you to go screw yourself. Roger came at me fast, slamming me into the wall. While I was recovering, he opened the door and shoved me into the chapel. I got my feet under me and turned around, but he was on me again, pushing me back into a small clutch of mourners. Roger was not particularly athletic, but he got his weight behind his arms and rattled my bones. Trying not to fall down, I stumbled back and hit an old woman. We went down together. Several people stepped between Roger and me, ending the attack. The old woman was shaken, but it seemed to be the only damage. By the time I stood up several more individuals had stepped between us. Stabbing his finger in my direction for emphasis, Roger shouted,
‘You’re not welcome here, Dave!’ To the men holding me he said, ‘Get him out of here. If he comes back, call the police!’
Denise stepped cautiously out of the anteroom. She looked at me fearfully. ‘It’s called perjury,’ I said to her. The men pushed me back angrily. ‘People go to jail when they commit perjury, Denise!’
Randy Winston materialized in front of me as the men physically escorted me to the front door. ‘Nice going, David. A real class act.’
Outside, the men let go of me. Including Randy, there were six of them. Their faces were tense, anxious.
They did not want trouble, but they were committed: I was not coming back inside. I knew each one of them. What’s more, they knew me. My sole pleasure at that moment was the fact that every one of them looked terrified when I feinted a charge at them.
I told Randy I needed my coat. He huddled with his fellow bouncers briefly, but before they could decide on how to handle the matter, Molly and Lucy came outside, my coat in Molly’s arms.
‘Ready to go, dear?’ she called to me cheerfully.
In the car, Lucy asked what had happened. Molly answered for me. ‘You’re stepfather just got eight-sixed from a funeral home.’
Lucy was quiet, afraid of a fight between us, I expect.
Finally, I laughed. ‘Walt would have loved it!’
While I still laughed, the tears came. Such is the nature of grief.
WE WENT OFF SEPARATELY when we got home.
In my room, looking out the lone window into the darkness of the pasture, I tried to understand my friendship with Walt Beery. I knew there had been a time when he had been very proper, very brilliant, very young.
We were all young once, I suppose, but with people you meet in their late middle age it’s hard to imagine sometimes just what they were like. With Walt, it was practically impossible. What I knew I had picked up in various places. Walt had never been one to dwell on the past. Partly, he didn’t remember it very well, and partly, as with a number of people in their early sixties, the past was a mixed bag of fresh pain and stale laughter.
According to other Olympians, including Dean Lintz, there had been a time when Walt rarely indulged in more than a single drink at faculty parties. In time it became two or three, then four or five. From the occasional happy hour at the faculty club, it started to be two or three nights a week at local bars, far from the observation of other university types. Then came his forays into campus bars. His classroom demeanour began to change, his interests to broaden.
There had been a serious affair with one of his grad students several years before I joined the faculty. I had heard about it from various sources. Walt himself referred to it as ‘problems with Barbara,’ but people who knew told me it was the real thing, the once-in-a-lifetime.
I never really understood how it had ended or how the marriage survived it. My impression was the student had taken the whole thing less seriously than Walt.
Her thesis finished, she moved on. Maybe that isn’t the way it was. I don’t know. I do know that Walt began a radical descent from that point forward. He had flings, one night stands, barroom and classroom flirtations. He drank every night. His classes were nominally rigorous, but there were too many hangovers, then too many classes conducted after long liquid
lunches.
By the time I met him, Walt was a dangerous commodity at the university. Just being in his company could get an untenured professor in trouble. He was also brilliant and funny and passionate about literature and, at the beginning, I paid no heed to the warning looks and Machiavellian whispers. Only later, as I became ambitious, did I learn to keep my distance.
Such behaviour had seemed only sensible at the time.
Now, at the hour of my friend’s passing, it felt less than noble. Walt was a good soul, a great intellect, and certainly worth more than the limited friendship I had been willing to extend to him.
Or, as I told the black fields beyond my window that evening, ‘ …worth more than the whole damn bunch of us.’
Chapter 20
I SERVED MOLLY BREAKFAST in bed the next morning. She was in good spirits, and the smell of her, the wild tangle of her blonde hair, the gentle outlines of her breasts stirred me.
We talked about Walt and Barbara. I thought about David and Molly. When she had finished her breakfast, I took the tray from her and sat down on the bed, our hips touching in casual intimacy. Taking her hands, I said, ‘Do you know how long it’s been since we’ve been on this bed together?’
‘About a month,’ she answered. Then thinking about it, she added, ‘More like a couple, I guess.’
‘If you want some help fixing up a house in Florida, all you have to do is ask. I’ll resign and move down to join you. Whatever you want, Molly.’
Molly considered the offer without much seriousness. ‘Strictly business?’
‘If that’s what it takes.’
‘I can’t do strictly business with you, David.’
‘That must mean you’re still in love with me.’
‘That’s why it hurts. I look at you, and I just start aching.’
‘I didn’t betray you, Molly.’
‘Doc had a girlfriend,’ she offered quietly, seemingly by way of explanation. ‘I don’t know when it started, but it went on for years. Maybe it’s still going on.
Who knows? Olga acts like she doesn’t know about it, but I knew about it when I was twelve. You know what I hated the most? I hated that Olga put up with it, and I swore it would never happen to me.’
‘It didn’t happen, Molly!’
‘Right. That’s why we had a little lover’s spat last night?’
‘You saw Denise Conway? She’s plain. Nothing about her is interesting.’
‘I’m guessing she’s more interesting when she’s naked.’
‘I wouldn’t know.’
Molly smiled without affection. ‘I read her diary, David. I read it so many times it makes me sick to think about you and her.’
‘Makes me sick too.’
She pushed me away laughing as she did. ‘You’re a lying used car salesman! You can’t help yourself. You’ll lie about this until the day you die!’
‘What if she’s lying?’
‘That doesn’t make sense. She didn’t give me the diary. Buddy did. He found it in her closet. She was hiding it from him.’
‘Buddy told her what to write.’
‘Please. This cost him his relationship. The two of them were going to get married until you came along.’
I shook my head, staying calm, pushing my case with the dispassion of a good salesman. ‘Think about it, Molly. Last summer I was here all the time. We were working ten-hour days finishing the house. When did I have time to go into town and seduce this girl?’
‘Denise looks like the kind of girl who doesn’t take a lot of seducing. Besides, you weren’t here all the time.’
‘Talk to her today. Have her tell you something about me, something only a lover would know.’
Molly looked at me strangely. ‘I’m not about to humiliate myself in front of that girl.’
‘She won’t answer you! I’ll tell you right now: she won’t say a damn thing because she doesn’t even know me. Just talk to her, Molly. You’ll see I’m telling the truth.’
‘You should have stayed on the car lot, David. You’re so earnest when you lie.’
From anger to amusement. Was I making progress or had I lost her so completely that I had become a joke?
I SPENT THE DAY PAINTING the largest room in Lucy’s new apartment. Molly called different people, then left early, intending to visit the Sloans before she went to the funeral at two o’clock. We caught snow flurries late in the afternoon. Lucy rode Jezebel in the pasture, working lead changes. I watched for a while, then worked in the barn until she brought Jezebel back to her stall.
After she had kicked down some hay for both horses, she told me she had talked to her mother about the grass. ‘And?’
‘She was glad I told her. I think she was proud of me for being honest about it.’
‘Get a lecture?’
‘It wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be.’
‘Olga around?’
Lucy handed me a conspiratorial smile. ‘Next room.’
Molly came back to the farm around seven o’clock.
I tried not to sound too curious about where she had gone after the funeral, but Molly picked up on my insecurities at once, and seemed almost to enjoy my discomfort. ‘After the funeral, quite a few of the faculty adjourned to Friday’s.’
She named some of the people who were there, including the men who had participated in tossing me out of the funeral home the night before. As an afterthought she mentioned Buddy Elder. ‘Actually, Buddy and Randy Winston talked me into leaving Friday’s and going to Caleb’s.’ Noting my exasperation, she explained, ‘Everyone was dying to talk about you, David. As long as I was there, they couldn’t.’
‘So you went out with the two men I dislike more than anyone else on campus?’
‘That was a plus, but mostly I did it because it was fun. I had a nice time.’
‘Anyone make a pass?’
‘Randy couldn’t stop. When I didn’t pick up on the subtle stuff he put his hand under my dress.’
‘The son of a bitch.’
‘I told him I’m staying at the farm until Sunday. If he wants to drive out and pick me up sometime for a real date, I’ll be his love slave for the night.’
‘If he shows up, I’ll break his nose.’
‘I think he knows that, David. He said he thought it might be a good idea if we met in town.’
‘You’re not going to go out with the guy?’
She shrugged indifferently. ‘I haven’t decided.’
‘I feel like I’m the one who died. Damn vultures. So what about Buddy? Was he on his best behaviour as usual?’
‘He thought I should give you another chance, considering the way Denise is.’
‘Sweet guy,’ I answered.
‘He is. Sexy, too. I can’t get enough of that southern accent. He makes whatever he’s talking about sound like hot maple syrup has just been poured over it.’
‘The guy pulled a gun on me, Molly. Twice!’
She laughed at me, imagining more lies, I expect.
She had not heard about the gun, so twice was just typical David Albo hyperbole. ‘I guess he and I have a lot more in common than I thought.’
THE PHONE RANG. LUCY answered it. A moment later she joined us, telling Molly, ‘For you.’
Molly left the living room with the phone. I heard her laughing. Lucy rolled her eyes and said, ‘ Robert.’
I snapped to attention. ‘Who’s Robert?’
‘He’s supposed to be showing her real estate, but I think he’s been showing her something else.’
I felt the blood leave my chest. ‘What does he look like?’
‘I don’t know. Old.’
I didn’t know whether to be gratified or irritated.
‘How old?’
‘Your age... maybe.’
‘Maybe?’
‘Maybe younger.’
‘Big gut, smelly, bad breath?’
She laughed. ‘Noooo. Cute. Kind of. Nice ass.’
It was our general polic
y not to say the really bad words in front of Lucy, so I walked out on the front porch.
Molly finished her call fairly quickly and caught me as I was coming in.
‘Robert?’ I asked.
Molly glanced at Lucy, who simply shrugged. ‘Not really your business anymore, David,’ she said.
‘Is this the guy you were out with the night I called?’
‘The night you called I think I was entertaining the Miami Dolphins.’
With that, I made a fast exit for the den. An hour later the phone rang again. I had been reading without much concentration, thinking about getting ready for bed or making a drink or driving to Florida and finding Robert. Molly had already gone to bed, and I wondered if Robert had called back for some prearranged phone sex. Curiosity getting the better of me, I walked over and picked up the extension.
A young woman’s voice said, ‘Is Dr Albo there?’
Molly started to speak, but I interrupted. ‘I have it, Molly.’ Molly hung up.
‘Dr Albo?’ I thought it was Johnna Masterson’s voice, but there was an edge of excitement or fear that made me uncertain. I asked who was calling.
‘It’s Johnna.’
‘What do you want, Johnna?’ I said this without the pretence of courtesy. If Johnna Masterson had wanted to talk she might have tried the funeral home the night before.
‘I have to talk to you.’ She spoke in near-panic tones, shuddering and gasping at the finish.
‘Then talk.’
‘Not on the phone. I’ll meet you at the Denny’s on Washington Avenue in an hour. Please!’
‘Why would I want to drive into town? You won’t even tell me—’
‘It’s about Buddy!’ She sounded scared. It sounded like she was crying.
Was Buddy’s game coming unravelled? If so, Johnna might have the information I needed.
‘Please!’
‘One hour,’ I said.
