office.
Joanna looked at Frank and grinned. “Well,” she said. “I’m two for two. Aren’t you going to stomp out and slam the door shut as well?”
“I don’t think so,” he said. “Whatever the provocation, I think it’s bad form to slam doors until after everyone in the office has had a chance to finish at least one cup of coffee.”
Frank did leave Joanna’s office fairly soon after that. Between then and nine-fifteen, when it was time for her to leave for Bucky Buckwalter’s funeral, Joanna at last had some time to make a little progress on the paper debris that covered her desk. As she shuttled through the messages once again, she threw away the ones from her mother and Marianne Maculyea. When she rediscovered the one from Larry Matkin, the mining engineer, she tried to return the call. He had left only one number, however, and there was no answer.
At thirty-five years of age and a height of six feet six, Little Norm Higgins was both the youngest and the largest of Norm Higgins’ three sons. He collected Joanna Brady at the door of Higgins Funeral Chapel and Mortuary. Taking her arm and speaking in low, respectful tones, he led her to the third row of seats, a place evidently reserved for dignitaries unrelated to the deceased. She was seated between Agnes Pratt and Alvin Bernard, Bisbee’s mayor and chief of police, respectively.
Agnes had a tendency to develop skin cancer. On doctor’s orders, she always wore hats, although the wide- brimmed, flowered and/or feathered affairs she favored might not have been exactly what her dermatologist had in mind. The one she preferred to wear to funerals was an enormous black straw contrivance with a velvet ribbon and single peacock leather. Over time the feather had become quite bedraggled. Her Honor inclined her head as Joanna slipped past her into an empty seat. “So sad,” Agnes murmured. “So very sad.”
Seated as close as she was to the front of the chapel, it was impossible for Joanna to see who all was present. From the noise level it was clear that the place was jammed to the gills. Joanna wondered if the attendance was due to Bucky’s prominent position in the community or if, somehow, word had already leaked out that the murdered vet was about to become a posthumous papa.
Shortly before the Reverend Billy Matthews from the First HU~Ie Baptist Church took to the podium, Little Norm was forced to go to the front of the chapel. There, in his whispery, bowling announcers’ voice, he urged people to move closer together in order to allow a few more attendees to squeeze in at the end of each cushioned pew.
As the organist droned on and on, playing something mournful but totally unrecognizable, Joanna wondered how Billy, pinch-hitting for Marianne Maculyea, would be able to pull together a meaningful service. If Terry Buckwalter wasn’t particularly grief-stricken over her husband’s death, would anyone else be?
It turned out that the answer was yes. Any number of people had been touched and saddened by Bucky’s passing, and a few of them were willing to come forward and say so. The selection of speakers wasn’t exactly standard funeral fare, but they all did well.
First to step forward was an adorable little girl named Winnette Jeffries who also happened to be Agnes Pratt’s great-granddaughter. Barely able to see over the podium, a breathless Winnette told how Dr. Buckwalter had saved her puppy after someone had fed the animal poison.
Maggie Dodd, one of Bisbee’s most outspoken animal-rights activists, told about how the Buckwalters had saved numerous strays from the fate of lethal injection by offering an adoption service alternative to the local animal shelter.
Last of all was Irene Collins. She tottered up the steps to the podium to give a tearful account of how, on the last day of his life, Bucky Buckwalter had removed a stuck chicken bone from the throat of Irene’s poor little kitty, Murphy Brown.
Knowing some of the background, Joanna wasn’t surprised that the speakers stressed Bucky’s skill as a vet rather than mentioning his interpersonal relationships with human beings. Terry Buckwalter, dressed in a properly conservative navy-blue suit, sat in the first row almost directly in front of Joanna. The widow listened to the various speakers with no show of emotion at all. Bebe Noonan, on the other hand, seated on the far side of the chapel in the same row as Joanna, sobbed uncontrollably from the moment the service started until it was over.
It was only then, when people congregated outside, trying to decide who would be going from the chapel to the Ladies Aid’s luncheon, that Eleanor Lathrop managed to catch up with her daughter.
“What a wonderful service,” Eleanor crooned. “Very uplifting, for a funeral. Terry’s holding up remarkably well, buy did you see how devastated that poor little Bebe Noonan was? Why, the way she carried on, you’d have thought her heart was broken. Bucky must have been a wonderful boss for her to be that torn up over his death.”
Joanna looked at Eleanor then, shocked to realize that, for the first time in her life, she knew the whole story behind something while her mother had less than a glimmer. For once Joanna’s personal knowledge had outpaced even Helen Barco’s incredibly reliable gossip mill. That realization made Joanna feel odd somehow, and old as well. In that instant, it seemed as though their roles were suddenly reversed-as though Joanna were the mother and Eleanor Lathrop the innocent child in need of protection. Not only did Joanna know what was going on, she wasn’t at liberty to say.
“You’re right, Mother,” she said. “Bucky Buckwalter certainly was a boss in a million.”
At Evergreen Cemetery, winter had turned the sparse gross yellow. As the vehicles in the funeral cortege emptied, Joanna stayed near the fringes of the group coalescing around Bucky Buckwalter’s open grave. In the funeral chapel Joanna had been so close to the front that it had been difficult to get any kind of an overview of what was going on. Maintaining a little bit of distance in the cemetery allowed for better observation.
Bebe Noonan, dressed all in black, continued to carry on in chief-mourner fashion. Her behavior had already sparked several derogatory comments that, Joanna knew, would only get worse once the real story came out. As it was, her wild abandon of grief stood in marked contrast to Terry Buckwalter’s stony reserve. As far as Joanna was concerned, her long talk with Terry at the clinic the previous afternoon had eased some of her concerns about Terry’s possible involvement in her husband’s death. How Detective Carpenter was viewing the unmoved widow’s performance, however, was another question entirely.
Joanna caught sight of Dr. Reggie Wade making his way toward Bebe Noonan. He spoke to her briefly for a few moments. When he finished whatever he had to say, Bebe threw herself into his arms, weeping with renewed vigor. Reggie, looking uncomfortable, held her for a moment before setting her aside and moving on.
Reggie headed toward where Terry Buckwalter was standing, talking to someone else. It took a moment for Joanna to recognize who it was-Larry Matkin. No wonder Matkin had been unavailable to answer his phone. He had already been on his way to the funeral.
Seeing him there, Joanna couldn’t help wondering why. Larry Matkin was a relative newcomer to town. What was his connection to Amos and Terry Buckwalter? The thought crossed her mind, but only briefly. It was quickly obscured as Reggie Wade walked up to Matkin and Terry. He moved between them and reached out to pat the widow’s shoulder. During the whole ordeal of the day, that simple gesture caused a crack in Terry Buckwalter’s unbending self-control. She looked up at Reggie and gave him a wan smile.
Joanna recognized the entire pantomime-the wordless gesture, the answering smile. She herself had been the recipient of the same kind of awkward pats. They had con mostly from Andy’s buddies, from men who had found themselves helpless and tongue-tied in the face of Joanna’s awful loss. Seeing the whole scene reenacted there in the cemetery brought back far too much of Joanna’s own pain. She had to look away.
Eva Lou arrived just then. “What is the matter with that girl?” Eva Lou Brady whispered to her daughter-in-law, nodding in Bebe’s direction. “Doesn’t she realize that she’s making a complete spectacle of herself?”
Still almost strangling on her own flashback of grief Joanna shook her head. “No,” she said. “I don’t think she does. And even if she did, I don’t think it would make any difference.”
Eva Lou abruptly changed the subject. “Are you coming to the luncheon?” she asked.
By then, all Joanna Brady wanted to do was escape the whole thing. “I don’t think so,” she said. “I’m so far behind that I really shouldn’t be away from the office that long.”
Eva Lou peered at her closely. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine.”
“You don’t look fine,” Eva Lou said. “You’re so pale that you look as though you might keel right over. You must be working too hard.”
‘‘Probably,” Joanna agreed.
“Well, cut it out,” Eva Lou said severely. “It’s tempting to try to be everything to all people, but
