dark suit and was heavier to tote. I had it over my shoulder and was just leaving the mausoleum when I heard something, a soft singing.
Esta tarde vi llover, Vi gente correr, y no estabas tu.
Leather soles were scraping the marble in the foyer. Charlie and I backtracked into the mausoleum just as a flashlight poked around the corner. The night security guard.
Charlie Riggs flattened himself against a back wall. I heard his rasping breaths and hoped he wasn't going into cardiac arrest. I ducked into a shadow behind the smashed crypt, but there wasn't room for my dead buddy. Crouching like a catcher behind the plate, I gripped the seat of Philip Corrigan's pants. He stood, shakily, leaning against me like a friendly drunk. The flashlight illuminated the floor, clouds of pulverized concrete still rising from it. The dust tickled my nose, and I fought off a sneeze.
The beam bounced oif the walls, and I caught sight of the guard. Private security, over sixty and overweight, probably working for minimum wage on a twelve-hour shift. The graveyard shift. In a footrace he couldn't beat Philip Corrigan.
The flashlight beam struck Corrigan's black shoes and inched up his body, finally coming to rest on a waxy, moldy face, a nose that melted into soggy cheeks.
'Madre de Dios,' the guard murmured.
I was holding my breath, then had to inhale. More dust, then without warning, 'AH-CHOO!'
The sound came from me, but all the guard could see was Philip Corrigan, his head flopping forward as my grip loosened.
'Don't worry,' I whispered from the darkness. 'Dead men don't sneeze.'
The guard took a step backward. 'Jesus Cristo!'
I raised one of Corrigan's arms, stiffly pointed a rotting hand at the waxy face and said, 'No way Jose. Yo soy el anti-Cristo.'
The flashlight clattered to the floor and the guard took off. A moment later, so did we, Philip Corrigan draped over my shoulder, Charlie Riggs hustling behind me, chuckling. Whistling past the graveyard.
The black night had turned to silvery morning and the early commuters were heading north on the Palmetto, tiny shafts of headlights cutting through the mist. We loaded the truck and joined in but headed south. The expressway dumped us onto South Dixie Highway, U.S. 1, the road that starts in Maine and ends at Key West. We aimed that way, past a hundred gas stations and fast-food joints, chintzy strip shopping centers with pet stores and scuba shops, boarded-up small businesses, a thousand broken dreams. Down through Kendall and Perrine, past mango groves, strawberry fields, and packing houses, through Homestead by the Air Force base, over the Card Sound Bridge, through Key Largo and south some more.
None of us said a word, not the three of us jammed into the cab up front, and certainly not the two reunited in a zippered bag in the back. The Corrigans probably hadn't been this close since their honeymoon.
I handled the driving. Susan sat next to me, the closest she'd been since I tackled her on the practice field. Charlie Riggs was slumped against the passenger door, snoring peacefully. Near Tavernier, Susan's head dropped onto my shoulder, and I put my arm around her. This time, she didn't give me the boot. I thought she was sleeping, but a moment later she whispered, 'Thank you, Jake.'
I looked down at her, not knowing where she was headed.
'I was wrong to be so petulant when we first met,' she said. 'I was hurting so much. Losing Mom, then Dad marrying that woman, and Dad dying that way…'
'I understand,' I said, feeling her soften under my arm.
'You've taken a big risk. I know you want to learn the truth about what happened, but I know you did it for me, too. And every time you try to get through to me, I put you off. I won't do that anymore.'
I started to say something, but she put a finger to my lips. So I kissed the finger, steered with my left hand and tried not to put the truck into the Atlantic on the east side of the road or the Gulf on the west. Then I felt her face against my neck, and she nuzzled me with her upturned nose, looped her right arm around my chest and gave me a good squeeze. A fine and dandy squeeze.
The sun was well up in the eastern sky by the time we pulled into the dusty road on the Gulf of Mexico side of Islamorada. The shutters were open in the small wooden house and the aroma of strong coffee and sizzling bacon greeted us. We parked in the sand under a jacaranda tree that had lost its flowers for the winter. A royal tern sat in the tree, staring at us from under its black and white cap.
'Look what the cat drug in,' Granny Lassiter said from the front porch. 'Jake, you look like the loser in a mud rasslin' match.' Granny sat in a pine rocking chair drinking coffee from an oversized mug. She wore khaki pants and a colorful Mexican serape. A high-crowned sombrero rested on her upper back, the drawstring tied under her chin. Her features were still strong, high cheekbones and a pugnacious chin. The hair that had been jet black when I was a boy was streaked down the middle with a bright white stripe like the center line on the highway locals call Useless 1. Granny's buddies called her 'Skunky,' but only after downing a gooc portion of her home brew.
I introduced Doc Riggs to Granny. He bowed formally complimented her south-of-the-border outfit, and recounte(one of his visits to the pyramids of the Yucatan with graphic description of Mayan hieroglyphics and burial prac tices.
'It's a pleasure to have a man of learning and culture in my abode,' she said, swiping at some loose strands of her hair. 'Perhaps you could be a good influence on that wastre mouthpiece kin of mine.'
'Granny, please,' I pleaded.
She ignored me and turned her attention to Susan Corri gan, whose dark eyes were puffy from a sleepless night bu still fetching. 'And you must be the gal Jacob's been telling me about. Uh-huh, I see why. You're a keeper.'
'Granny!' I bellowed, warning her.
'Pay him no mind,' she said. 'Like most men, he don't know which end is up. After some breakfast, they'll do their work, and we'll drop a line in the Gulf and do some talking. Tell me, girl, you see anything in Jacob worth losing sleep over?'
'He's got potential,' Susan allowed.
Granny laughed. 'That boy's gonna grow old having potential.'
I had heard enough. 'Maybe we should get to work,' I suggested.
'Sure 'nuff,' Granny said. 'The beer cellar's chilled 164 down all the way, just like you said. Plus I got this filled with ice.'
She pointed at a fish box that came from her old Bertram. It could easily hold both bodies.
Charlie Riggs eyed the box. 'Forty-seven degrees would be perfect. That's what we keep the coolers in the morgue. Too cold is no good. Can't let the tissues freeze.' 'So let's get started,' I suggested again. 'No hurry, Jake,' Charlie Riggs said, beaming at Granny. 'No hurry at all.'
Granny straightened up the front porch, swiping leaves off the wicker chairs with a palm frond. Then she poured everyone coffee, starting with Charlie Riggs. 'Say Doc, I recognized you right off from the TV. The case of the capsized dory. Off Saddlebunch Key. You haven't changed a bit.' 'Twenty years ago,' Charlie said, shaking his head. 'Tempus fugit,' Granny said, and Charlie's eyes lit up as if he'd found a long lost friend.
We all sat on the porch and Granny made a fuss over Charlie, who sat there reminiscing with his feet propped on the fish box that now held the Corrigans. Told us about the man whose wife drowned when their dory overturned, striking her head. The water had been calm, and the husband was a strong swimmer.
'So why didn't he save her?' Susan asked, snatching the bait like a hungry grouper.
A sly smile and Charlie continued. 'Maybe his lifeguard's carry was weighted down by the million-dollar double indemnity policy he just bought on the lady's life.' Aha, we all said.
'He let her drown,' Susan offered.
Charlie shook his head. 'Worse than that.'
'How'd you prove it?'
Another smile. 'I put one of those department store mannequins in the dory facing front, just where the wife had been sitting. Sat in the back where the husband had been, stood up and smacked the mannequin with the oar. Left a mark the exact size and location of the bruise on top the dead wife's head.'
The man got ninety-nine years, Charlie a TV interview.
Granny put her arm around Susan and steered her into the house. I hauled the body bag into the darkened room Granny called her beer cellar. The room was actually on the first floor, it being hard to dig a cellar when your
