I was glad I’d followed the sheriff’s hints, glad I was the one to dispose of the items now in the box marked with my name. Lacey might happen upon a thing or two I’d missed, but there wasn’t any point in grinding her face in her daughter’s misbehavior.
I began to think better of Marta Schuster. She’d gotten rid of most of the pictures, so now they wouldn’t be added to the local lore; and she’d warned me about the other stuff, so I’d had a chance to get it out of sight before Lacey had had to look at it. We couldn’t block her from all knowledge, but we could dispose of a lot of the more graphic evidence.
By noon, when I had to go, we’d accomplished a lot. I’d emptied the closet and the chests in the larger bedroom, and made a beginning on the closet in the spare bedroom. Lacey had packed most of the kitchen items and some of the towels in the bathroom. I’d made five or six trips to the Dumpster in the parking lot.
A life couldn’t be dismantled so quickly, but we’d made quite a start on Deedra’s.
As I picked up the labeled box and my purse, Lacey asked me when I had more time to spare, and I realized that now I had Friday mornings open, since my client was dead.
“I can meet you here on Friday,” I said. “Early as you want.”
“That would be great. Eight o’clock too early?”
I shook my head.
“I’ll see you then,” Lacey said, “and maybe before Friday I can have Jerrell come over with his truck and get some of these boxes delivered, so we’ll have more room to work.”
She sounded detached, but I knew that couldn’t be true. Numb was probably more accurate.
“Excuse me,” I began, and then I hesitated. “When will the funeral be?”
“We’re hoping to get her back here in time for a funeral on Saturday,” Lacey said.
As I carried the box down the stairs, I returned to a familiar worry. I’d have to get another regular client for Friday mornings. I’d had Deedra and the Winthrops on Friday; then the Winthrops had dropped me, and now Deedra was dead. My financial future was looking grimmer by the week.
I was supposed to meet my friend Carrie Thrush at her office; Carrie had said she’d bring a bag lunch for us both. I got in my car, stowing the box in the backseat. Minutes later, I glanced at my watch to find I was running a little late, because I had to find a business Dumpster on the other side of Shakespeare, one that wasn’t too visible, and deposit the box of sex paraphernalia after removing the two jackets. I was certain no one saw me. By the time I turned in to Carrie’s office, I assumed she’d be in her office, fussing over food growing cold.
But when I pulled down the small driveway marked STAFF PARKING ONLY, Carrie was standing in the little graveled lot behind her clinic, where she and her nurses parked their cars.
“Want to go somewhere with me?” Carrie’s smile was stiff and self-conscious. She was wearing white, but it wasn’t her lab coat, I realized after a second’s scrutiny. She was wearing a white dress with a lacy white collar. I could feel my eyebrows draw together in a frown.
I didn’t remember ever seeing Carrie in a dress, except at a funeral. Or a wedding.
“What?” I asked sharply.
“Go with me to the courthouse?”
“For?”
Her face scrunched up, causing her glasses to slide down her small nose.
Carrie had on makeup. And her hair wasn’t pulled back behind her ears, as she usually wore it at work. It swung forward in shining brown wings.
“For?” I asked more insistently.
“Well… Claude and I are going to get married today.”
“At the courthouse?” I tried not to sound astonished, but she flushed.
“We have to do it before we lose our courage,” she said in a rush. “We’re both set in our ways, we both have everything we could need to start a household, and we both want to have just a couple of good friends at the ceremony. The marriage license list’ll be out in the paper tomorrow and then everyone will know.” The legal notices always appeared in the local paper on Thursday afternoon.
“But…” I looked down at my working clothes, not exactly pristine after getting into closets and under beds at Deedra’s.
“If you want to run home, we have a few minutes,” she said, glancing down at her watch. “Not that I care what you wear, but if I know you, it’ll bother you the whole time.”
“Yes, not being clean at a wedding does bother me,” I said shortly. “Get in the car.”
I couldn’t say why I felt a little angry, but I did. Maybe it was the surprise of it (I’m not fond of surprises) or maybe it was the switch in moods required of me: from death to marriage in a single day. I had become sure Claude Friedrich and Dr. Carrie Thrush would get married, and I’d become sure it was a good idea. The difference in ages was substantial; Claude was probably forty-eight or so, and Carrie was about thirty-two. But I was confident their marriage would work, and I hadn’t regretted turning down a chance to try intimacy with Claude myself. So why was I upset? I owed it to Carrie to be happy.
I made myself smile as Carrie ran on and on about why they’d made their decision, how her parents were going to take it, how soon they could get Claude’s things moved into her small house.
“What about a honeymoon?” I asked, as I turned the key in the lock of my own little house, Carrie practically on my heels.
“That’s going to have to wait for a month,” Carrie said. “We’ll take a long weekend starting today, from now until Monday night, but we’re not going far. And Claude has to take his beeper with him.”
While Carrie alternated staring in the mirror and pacing the floor, I stripped off my cleaning clothes and pulled out my good black suit. No. Couldn’t wear black to a wedding. I grasped the hanger holding my sleeveless white dress. No, couldn’t wear white either.
But after a second’s consideration, I realized I had to. I camouflaged it with my black jacket and a black belt, and I tucked a bright blue scarf into the neckline. I pulled up my thigh-highs, slid on my good black shoes, and replaced Carrie in front of the bathroom mirror to repowder and to fluff my short curly hair.
“I would have given you a wedding shower,” I said sourly, and met Carrie’s eyes. After a little pause, we both began laughing, because that seemed such an unlikely scenario to both of us.
“Are you ready? You look pretty,” Carrie said, giving me a careful once-over.
“You too,” I said honestly. With her short-sleeved white dress, she was wearing brown pumps and carrying a brown purse. She looked fine, but not exactly festive. We got back into my car, and as we passed a florist, I pulled in to the curb.
“What?” Carrie asked anxiously. “We’re late.”
“Hold on a minute,” I said, and ran into the shop.
“I need a corsage,” I told the old woman that came to help me.
“An orchid?” she asked. “Or some nice carnations?”
“Not carnations,” I told her. “An orchid, with white net and a colored ribbon.”
This admirable woman didn’t ask questions, she just went to work. In less than ten minutes, I was handing Carrie the orchid, netted in white and beribboned in green, and she tearfully pinned it to her dress.
“Now you really look like a bride,” I said, and the knot inside me eased.
“I wish Jack were here,” Carrie said politely, though she hadn’t really had much of a chance to know him. “Claude and I would have enjoyed him being with us.”
“He’s still in California,” I told her. “I don’t know when he’ll be back.”
“I hope you two…” but Carrie didn’t finish that thought, and I was grateful.
The courthouse, which occupies a whole block downtown, is an old one, but recently renovated. Claude was waiting on the wheelchair ramp.
“He’s wearing a suit,” I said, amazed almost beyond speech. I’d never seen Claude in anything but his uniform or blue jeans.
“Doesn’t he look handsome?” Carrie’s cheeks, normally on the sallow end of the spectrum, took on a becoming rose tint. In fact, she looked more twenty-five than thirty-two.
“Yes,” I said gently. “He looks wonderful.”
Claude’s brother, Charles, was with him, looking more uncomfortable than Claude did. Charles was more at home in overalls and a welder’s cap than a suit. Shy and solitary by nature, Charles managed to make himself almost invisible even in this small town. I thought I could count on my fingers the number of times I’d seen Charles
