“Where did he go?” I asked.
& Son pointed toward the front parking lot, and I took off.
We practically threw ourselves on the trunk of Wickham’s car as he tried to back out of his parking space. He jerked to a stop.
“Wow,” I said, breathing heavily. “He can really move.”
“It’s all that pent-up anger. It’s like rocket fuel,” Daisy said between pants.
As if on cue, Wickham got out of his car, ranting and raving about us wrecking his paint job and if there was so much as a scratch, we would pay.
“Stop, stop, stop,” I said, holding my palms out. “We just have some questions for you.”
“What in tarnation could you want to ask me on a day of grief?”
“Well, for starters, why are you here?” I resisted the urge to take out my notebook and pencil.
“Why is anyone here?” His face was red and sweaty. “This is a funeral. I’m here to pay my respects.”
“Were you and Gerald Farley close?” I asked.
He jabbed a finger at the funeral parlor, where an entire flock of & Sons were staring us down warily from the open doorway. “Nobody in that building was close to him. He was a terrible man. And a cheat.”
Again, with the cheating. It was like nobody had ever been dishonest during a high school football game before.
“His wife was close to him, I’m sure,” Daisy said, and then wilted. “Oh, nuts, Hollis, I left the bag of tarts inside. You’ll have to go in and get it for me.”
“I’m not going back in there!”
“You have to. I can’t just leave a bag of tarts lying around a funeral. It’s unprofessional.”
“Look at them!” I gestured toward the irately glowering & Sons. “I’ve seen friendlier faces on death row. They’re not going to let me back in there.”
“Well, I can’t go back in there. What if I dropped it in the embalming room? If I go back in there, I might pass out. Did you notice the—” She lowered her voice. “Body?”
Thank goodness for lack of athletic ability—I was so busy trying not to trip or pass out, I never noticed a body in the embalming room. “If I go back in there, I’ll notice it. And neither of us wants that.”
Wickham sneered. “If you’ll both get out of my way, I’ll be leaving now. Have your girl fight over there.” He pointed toward some bushes and started toward his open driver’s door.
“Wait. No. One more question,” I said. “Was that your hood ornament he was holding at the scene of the accident?”
He stopped in his tracks. “He was holding a hood ornament?”
I nodded. “A Mercedes hood ornament. I can’t help noticing that your car is missing one just like it.” I nodded toward his car’s crumpled and unadorned hood.
“Well, I’ll be! Stolen from by a dead man. Can you believe it? Stealing our plays wasn’t bad enough, he went and stole my hood ornament to boot! And here I searched for it and searched for it out on that street corner. Got down on my hands and knees looking for it. Almost got run over three times, because teenagers these days are too busy with their gadgets to pay attention to what’s on the street in front of them.” He angrily mimed texting, back hunched, eyes half squinted, then poked a finger in the air indignantly. “I ought to march right in there and demand that widow of his buy me a new hood ornament. It’s the principle of the matter! He can take the old one to the great beyond for all I c—”
“Wait,” I said, interrupting him. “Are you saying the hood ornament was missing after the accident?”
He looked at me like I’d lost my marbles. “Well, yes. When did you think it went missing?”
“It’s just…well, he was holding it when he died, and I guess I thought—”
He let out a bark of laughter, making Daisy and I both flinch backward. It sounded like a rusty hinge suddenly snapping in half. “You thought he reached up and grabbed my hood ornament as I ran over him? That’s what you thought?”
“I mean…yeah.” I felt my face burn. When he said it out loud like that, it did sound kind of ridiculous. “I guess I thought maybe he was facing the car when he got hit and grabbed at the ornament on his way down.” Then it dawned on me what made that idea sound so preposterous. “Except he was facedown. Right.”
Wickham hooted again.
“It’s possible,” I said, planting my hands on my hips. True, it may have been possible that Farley may have grabbed the ornament in the split second before the force of the hit spun him around. But plausible? That was another story. “You were so mad at him just a few hours before he died. And, by the way, I don’t think the day of the funeral is the best day to put the squeeze on someone’s widow over a silly hood ornament.”
“Yes, I was mad. Mad enough to write a nasty letter to the editor about that stop sign being a danger to the city.” He wiped his eyes. It was weird seeing Wickham Birkland smile. I didn’t know he could do that. I waited for parts of his face to crack off and crumble to the ground, revealing the old, mean Wickham face beneath. “I was mad at him for running a stop sign and hitting my car. And I was mad at him for ripping off my hood ornament and throwing it on the ground in the middle of our altercation. Come to think of it, that young cop made me leave first, told me to go file a report at the police station.” My stomach fluttered at the mention of Brooks. I willed the
