When Emily arrived at her house, her cousins Darlene and Betty had already opened the door and laid out the buffet on the sideboard and the dining-room table. There were three natural divisions of people in the house balancing plates of food on their knees and trying to find socially acceptable places to put their drinks while they ate. There were the Kramers, all of them over six feet tall except Phil’s sister Nancy, who was five feet ten inches in flat shoes. There were the McCalls, Emily’s family, who were all about a foot shorter than the Kramers and blond or redheaded except Emily and Darlene. And there were the people who had known Phil from the detective agency, who were much more varied, but who all stood, seemed more interested in drinking than eating, and had a way of speaking to each other in very low voices while looking at some point across the room.
It occurred to Emily that this was probably the last time the Kramers and McCalls would be gathered together in one place. Now that Phil was gone, the relationship was going to weaken, then dissolve. The only connection had been the marriage of Phil and Emily, and that was over. People would forget. It made the hugs and the kind, solicitous words of the Kramers more poignant, because she knew that she might never see some of these people again.
Phil’s sister Nancy wrapped her arms around Emily in a bear hug that left her breathless, then held her by the shoulders and stared into her eyes in a way that made her uncomfortable. “Who did this?”
“We don’t know yet,” Emily said. “The police are working on it, but they haven’t found any leads yet.”
Nancy shook her head, stared at Emily in despair for a few long seconds, and walked away.
Phil’s aunt Toni cornered Emily and told her that she must force herself to come to the Kramer family picnic in September, but there was a distant look in her eyes when she said it that confirmed Emily’s sense that things had already begun to change. Then Phil’s uncle Bill intercepted her and said, “It’s terrible. Just terrible. I told the big son of a bitch years ago that making a living snooping in other people’s business was dangerous. He wouldn’t listen.”
“I know,” Emily said. “It’s the way he was. He loved the business.”
“Well, I suppose if you want a lot of money, you’ve got to take some risks. I guess he left you pretty well off, didn’t he?”
“Bill!” Aunt Toni said.
“What? He was practically a son to me.”
“He always spoke well of you,” Emily said, and moved on.
She tried to make the rounds of the relatives and friends, thanking people for coming and trying to feel grateful that they had. She made an effort to speak to the detectives, the bail-bond people, the lawyers and off-duty police officers. Many of them were people she didn’t know, but she found she could cover it by speaking to them in little groups, which was the configuration they seemed to prefer, and then moving on.
At four o’clock, when her cousins Darlene and Betty were beginning to cover casserole dishes and hors d’oeuvres trays and collect cups and glasses from strange, precarious spots around the living room, Emily sensed that she had lost the last of her energy. She sat at the end of the couch under the front window, and then her cousin Dave’s wife Sandy sat down beside her. Dave stood over them for a few seconds, then pulled a chair close so his knees almost touched Emily’s. Sandy said, “We’re all so sorry, Emily. You’ve really had more than your share of bad luck over the years.”
“I don’t know,” Emily said. “It’s hard to say what someone’s share is.”
“Well, Dave and I just wanted to let you know that we’re always here for you. If there’s anything we can ever do to help, or to make things easier for you, we really want to do it.”
“That’s right,” Dave said.
“Well, thank you.”
“No, we really mean it,” Sandy said.
They seemed so sincere, and somehow so sane and strong as a couple, that Emily thought about their offer. It occurred to Emily that Dave was a successful lawyer-Aunt Lily had been bragging for fifteen years about their big house and their vacation home and how powerful Dave’s firm was-and Sandy had some kind of important job in advertising. “Well, I don’t know what to say. You’re very kind.”
“Come on.” Sandy stroked Emily’s back, petting her like a cat.
“Well, if you’re really able to do it. With the funeral expenses and so on, I’m feeling a little pressed. I wonder if you could make me a small loan, just until I can straighten things out. I haven’t been able to untangle our finances yet. Phil didn’t tell me some things I probably should have known, and it’s taking time.”
At the word loan, she felt Sandy’s hand stop on her back, then felt her withdraw it. “That’s Dave’s field,” Sandy said. Emily could hear from her voice that she was glaring at her husband, ordering him to handle this.
“I’d love to, Emily,” Dave said. “What we’ve got is kind of tied up right now, and locked in, but I might be able to help you out with a few ideas. I assume he had life insurance.”
“We did at one time, term policies for both of us. But they were really for Pete, and when Pete died, I think Phil may have stopped paying the premiums.”
Dave didn’t pause. “You’ll get his retirement, of course, and there’s no tax for you because you were his wife.” Dave looked very cheerful about that.
Emily didn’t tell him that whatever retirement plan Phil had was gone. She just wanted this conversation to end.
“Then there’s the house.”
“I hadn’t thought about moving.”
“Well, think about it now. If you’re alone, you don’t need three bedrooms, a den, and an office.” He looked around. “Even places like this have gone way, way up in the past few years. I think you’ll be surprised.”
“I guess so. I’ll look into it. I’m sure everything will be fine.” Emily wished fervently that she had not asked them for help.
“And then there’s Phil’s car.”
“His car?”
“Well, one woman doesn’t need two cars, and I assume his is the one you’ll sell. Hey! You know, we’ve been looking for a good used car for Charlotte to take to school. I’ll bet we can make a deal that’s good for both of us.”
Emily caught Sandy wincing and shaking her head. Emily said, “The police still have it. Phil was shot in his car.”
“Oh!” Dave said.
Sandy rose. “Emily, we’ve just got to go. As I said, please call me if you need anything.” She bent over, patted Emily’s shoulder, and headed for the door, not looking to see whether Dave was following.
Once a few guests had left the house, the others seemed to feel that they had been released. They began to move toward the door in numbers. If they felt any obligation to Phil Kramer, they seemed to feel that they had now discharged it; and if they felt any sympathy toward his widow, they judged that the kindest thing they could do for her was to give her a chance to rest.
When she was alone, she lay on her bed, and closed her eyes.
Suddenly she sat up. She couldn’t lie here like this. She had to do what she could to find out what had happened to Phil. She stepped out of her black dress, put on a pair of jeans and a pullover top, poured the contents of her small black purse into the one with the long shoulder strap that she used every day, and went down to the car. She could rest when it was her turn to be dead.
5
Emily was in the office sitting at Phil’s desk and examining files. She remembered Phil’s peculiar filing system from the old days when she’d worked with him. He kept the bottom drawer of each filing cabinet for guns and ammunition, on the theory that if he ever needed a firearm in a hurry he would already be ducking down low behind his steel desk. The top drawers were what he called “overhead” drawers: They contained bills and payment records for utilities, the building mortgage, the time sheets and payrolls. He kept them there just to give snoopers a sniff of something real, but useless. The next set of drawers were an odd assortment of ancient billing files interspersed with files that were fake-folders full of junk mail. By the time an interloper had gone this far, he would be too tired and exasperated to face the second row of drawers from the bottom, which looked just like all of the others, but
