A Comedy of Heirs (23 page)

“Wait,” I said. “Della Ruth was acting strange—how?”

“Nervous,” she said. “I asked her about it and she said she had a bad feeling. Bad feeling that something was going to happen. Well, we all just figured that was just her acting spooky.”

“Acting spooky? What do you mean by that?”

“She'd do that, every now and then. Say she had a bad feeling and a day or two would go by and if somebody in the next county died, she'd say, See? Told ya. I think she just wanted attention,” Aunt Ruth said and stirred her tea.

“Except this time, she was right,” I said.

Aunt Ruth ignored that statement and went on where she'd left off. “Then she and Grandpa started fighting. I've never been able to figure out just what they were arguing about. Grandpa would say something like, ‘I don't believe you. You're a lying bitch.' Which he said a lot. I mean, this wasn't new behavior.”

“But you don't know what the subject matter was?” I asked.

“No. Before you knew it, though, he was throwing things at her and so forth. Jed showed up and took him outside to calm down,” she said.

I can't tell you how afraid I was that she was going to tell me that Uncle Jed had shot him. Please, don't let that be it.

“Sissy and your daddy came back and Mom sent Sissy upstairs. Your daddy went outside,” she said. She took a drink of her tea and began to twist the fake strand of pearls around her neck. “I heard some commotion going on and I went into the living room and looked out the window.”

“Which window?”

“The one on the side of the house, not the one that looked out onto the porch,” she said. “I heard Grandpa say something along the lines of ‘Go on back to where you came from,' that whoever it was wasn't wanted around here and so forth. I think he said a few profanities and insulted the person and then I heard ‘Move, I said!' in this hateful voice and then the gunshot.”

I sat there for a moment taking everything she said and storing it in my mental filing cabinet. I didn't want to rush her, yet I didn't want her to think I wasn't interested, either. I'd considered taking notes on the napkins, except they were cloth.

“Who was it?” I asked.
Please don't let it be Uncle Jed.

“I don't know.”

“Aargh! That's not possible,” I said. My voice actually cracked from the stress. I shoved my hands through my short hair and then took a deep breath. “You saw them.”

“I saw somebody. I can't say who.”

“You can't or you won't.”

“I can't because I didn't get a good enough look to exactly say,” she said back to me.

“What was he wearing? Was it farmer's clothes or a wealthy man's clothes?”

She watched her glass intently for half a minute and then she looked me square in the eyes. “It was a dress.
She
was wearing a dress.”

She. It was a she. Sarah Clayton McCarthy?

“That's all I know,” she said.

“Wait a minute,” I said. “Account for all the women that were there.”

“I was in the house, Mom was in the kitchen with Grandma, Sissy was upstairs…”

“Aunt Charlotte?” I asked.

“Downstairs in the cellar.”

“You're sure?”

“Yes,” she answered.

“Is there a way out of the cellar other than coming in through the house? Is there an exterior exit?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said. “But it was padlocked. She would have had to have the key in the basement with her to get out…”

“And … your cousin,” I said, snapping my fingers. “Dolly, that's it. She was in the chicken coop? Did anybody see her come out of the chicken coop?”

“Dolly couldn't have done it,” Aunt Ruth said.

“Why not?”

“She was about sixteen years old. A frail and puny thing. A shotgun would have left a bruise on her, if it didn't knock her a hundred feet.”

“Not if you shoot it from the hip. It wouldn't bruise then,” I challenged. “Besides, I shot my first twelve gauge at fourteen.”

“You don't understand. Jed found her shivering in the chicken coop, back underneath some of the nests. Shaking and everything. It wasn't her. She weighed about ninety pounds. You would have to know her to understand,” Aunt Ruth said.

“Okay … What about Uncle Jed's wife? Aunt Dana. She dropped him off, what if she came back?” I asked.

“Why?” Aunt Ruth said. “There is positively no reason for Dana to have killed her husband's grandfather. She can't defend herself since she's dead, by the way.”

Regardless of what Aunt Ruth said, Dolly could have done it. Aunt Charlotte could have somehow got out of the cellar and done it. Aunt Dana could have come back, even though I don't know of a reason. Or it could have been Sarah Clayton McCarthy.

Or it could have been Della Ruth's sister who lived three miles down the road or one of the women that Nathaniel Keith had gotten pregnant. It didn't have to be somebody who was on the property. I don't think this helped at all. It seemed like it made it worse. I was unaware of all the people that it could have been until Aunt Ruth said it was a woman. It narrowed it down but it also opened it up.

“So now you know,” Aunt Ruth said. “Are you satisfied?”

“Well, it certainly makes a difference,” I said. “I appreciate you sharing this information with me.”

The waitress came and gave us our food and then set the check down on the end of the table. Aunt Ruth looked at it and then gave me a sharp glance. That meant I was picking up the tab. Which was fine, I had intended to all along. She just didn't have to be so blasted annoying about it.

“Do you think you can drop the subject now?” she asked. “I don't want to hear a word of this mentioned at Jed's wake later today. Not one word.”

Oh yes, ma'am! I couldn't very well say anything. She'd told me what I wanted to know. I would owe her for the rest of my blooming life! I bit into my turkey on sourdough and watched her eat her quiche across from me.

“Just one more thing,” I said.

Aunt Ruth rolled her eyes heavenward and clenched her jaw. “What?”

“Why did Della Ruth sit at the door with a shotgun and threaten everybody if they opened the door or went outside? What was that all about?”

“Who told you that?” she asked with narrowed eyes.

“Did it happen?”

“Yes,” she said. “Grandma was trying to
protect
us.”

“Protect,” I repeated.

“Yes. That's all she needed was for us to go outside and get shot, too. Who's to say if the killer was still there or not?” Aunt Ruth countered.

“So, you think she was keeping you all inside so that none of you would get shot?” I asked. “Then why did she make you wait until Nate Keith was dead? Why not an hour before or an hour after? How come it was just until he was dead?”

Aunt Ruth shrugged. “Guess she was just being safe,” she said. “Now, can we drop this? For good?”

“I will never speak of it to you again,” I said. I now knew that it was definitely a woman. “Oh, except one thing. Did you tell Mr. McCarthy that it was a woman?”

She thought on that for a moment with a mouth full of quiche and then nodded her head. “Yes, I did.”

I would be seeing, or talking, to Hubert McCarthy tomorrow.

Thirty-two

I hate that dead body–formaldehyde smell. I hate funeral homes. I stood in the foyer of the Progress funeral home with its fancy chandeliers and real wood moldings and doors. And that smell. It was the same funeral home that both of my grandparents were laid out at the day before their funeral at the Pine Branch Methodist Church. I waved to my cousins as I made my way through the winding hallways and passed several other rooms with “occupants.” Rachel was on one hand, Mary on the other and Rudy bringing up the rear.

Finally, I made it to Uncle Jed's room. My father was standing next to the casket with his hands clasped behind his back. He didn't own a suit, so he was dressed in his best black shirt and jeans with his dress shoes, and I'd bet you ten to one, white socks. I waved to Aunt Sissy who stood next to her very pregnant daughter.

“Girls, get your coats off,” I said. “Set them on the end of the pew.”

“Is this a church?” Rachel asked.

“No,” I answered.

“Then why is it called a pew?”

“I don't have any idea,” I said. “I guess they try to make it look like a church.”

“Why?”

“Because they used to have funerals and stuff at churches.”

“Why don't they now?”

“I don't know,” I said. Which I truly didn't. “Sometimes they do.”

“Mom,” Mary said. “What is that?” She pointed to the casket at the end of the carpet runner.

“That's Uncle Jed,” I said. “I told you he died.”

A horrible mixture of fear and disgust played across her face. Then a tad of curiosity and a long silence as she weighed what I said against what she was seeing at the end of the room. “Do they just let dead people lay around here?”

“Yes,” I said. “They lie here until the family has had enough of a chance to say goodbye and then the family takes the body and the casket to the cemetery and they bury it.”

“Why?”

“Can I tell you later?” I asked. I really didn't want to go into the fact that the body would start to smell and turn colors and all that gross stuff, when Uncle Jed's children and grandchildren were within earshot.

“No, tell me now,” she demanded

“I'll tell you later,” I said.

“Mom,” Rachel said. “Do we have to go up there?”

“Not if you don't want to.”

“Good,” she said with relief.

“Does he smell?” Mary asked.

“Rudy, why don't you take the girls down the hall and get a soda,” I suggested. Rudy, who had been studying the lint on the carpet looked up with a knowing smile. It was as if he was saying, Glad you got those questions and not me. He nodded and took the girls' hands and they disappeared.

I took a deep breath and walked down the carpet runner to the casket. Gladioluses sprayed forth from nearly every bouquet of flowers that surrounded the casket. My mother-in-law always said that she would never plant gladiolus in her flower garden because they were the funeral flower. She won't go to a cemetery after the person is buried, either. I laced my arm in my father's arm, and he gave me a nervous smile.

“You okay?” I asked.

“No. Dumb question,” he said. “Why does everybody ask that question?”

“Because they don't know what else to say.” I laid my head on his shoulder for a second and then took another deep breath and walked over to say my goodbyes. God, I hated this kind of stuff.

The person lying in the casket was not the person I'd known three or four days ago. It was just a shell. He didn't look like himself. Dead bodies hardly ever do. For some unknown reason the undertakers apply tons of makeup and fix their hair and make them look, well, like mannequins. Real people don't look like that. I remember the one thing I noticed about my grandfather when he was laid out, was that they'd covered the tobacco stains on his chin with makeup. For months, I was convinced that he had been replaced with a body from the FBI bank of unknown cadavers.

Jedidiah Keith was also in a suit. Uncle Jed had never been in a suit in his life. Why should he start in death? He should have been laid out in his flannel shirt. Why do we do this? Where did all this ritual begin? Just who was the brilliant person who said we had to drain all the bodies of fluids, sew their mouths shut, pop their eyeballs out, pump them full of a toxic substance, put this shell of a human being on display for everybody to see, and then stick them six feet under the ground? Am I the only one who thinks that this is morbid?

“Well, Uncle Jed. I know you're not in there anymore, but I'm going to say this anyway,” I said softly. “I don't want you to take this the wrong way, wherever you are, or if you can hear me. I really hope that you were just drunk and fell into the river on your own accord. I need for that to be true. I apologize from the bottom of my heart if you are dead because of me or because of anything I might have said or done.”

That really sounded horrible.

He, of course, said nothing back to me. No thunder or lightning or skies parting. No apparitions, not even so much as a cockroach went across the floor to give me some sort of sign that he heard, understood or forgave me. I reached into my coat pocket and pulled out a pint of whiskey.

“This is for you,” I said. I laid it in the casket next to him. “It's even the good stuff. Crown Royal. The quickshop was out of Jack Daniel's.”

I fought back tears as I said, “Goodbye.”

My father came over and took my hand and sat me down in the front pew. He crossed his leg and, sure enough, white socks. Why do men do that? “Whiskey?” he asked me with a smile.

“I know it's not him. All that was him is long gone. It left the moment he died,” I said. I swiped furiously at the tears on my cheeks. “I just … I don't know. Call it a peace offering. In case he could see me.”

My father looked at me strangely. Which he does a lot, but this time he had a specific meaning behind it. He didn't understand, exactly.

“To me, that is just a hunk of flesh. But in case he can see me somewhere, I wanted to give him the whiskey,” I explained.

“I see,” he said. “You know, he could never afford the good stuff.”

“I know,” I said. We sat there a moment in silence. Father and daughter. More alike than I ever wanted to admit. I was amazed my mother hadn't gone crazy from having such a close copy of her ex-husband as her daughter. It was weird. The things I liked about my father, I prided myself on, too. The things I didn't like about my father, I tried to pretend didn't exist in me. We were both stubborn and predictable in an unpredictable sort of way. All of my obsessive traits … from my father. My mother has never been obsessive over anything a day in her life. My father? He gets on something and he doesn't stop until he's mastered it.