Lucy busted out laughing and dropped the booty into the center console. She lit a second cigarette off the cherry of her active smoke. Murray noticed her skin was flushed, her eyes alight with excitement.
“Double fisting? Are you trying to get the black lung?”
“I’m suicidal but lack conviction,” she quipped, flicking the spent butt out the window. “Can I come?”
He felt his brows do the wave. “Is that a proposition?”
“The day is young.” Lucy shrugged, her delicate shoulders as beautifully expressive as the rest of her. “I mean to Marion.”
Murray’s mind swam at the bizarre request. He realized his headache had vanished. He considered her motivation and came up shorthanded. “Why?”
“I’ve never been in a pawn shop before. Never had anything worth anything. So, can I tag along?”
“That depends.”
“On what?”
“On why you’re crashing a stranger’s funeral. You’re not into necrophilia, are you?”
Instead of taking offense, Lucy surprised Murray by snorting. “I like my men stiff, but not that stiff.”
His stern expression notified her that her bawdy joke wouldn’t distract him from getting a real answer. She toyed with one of her red ringlets.
“Poor college student in search of free food. I’m a walking cliché.” He knew she was lying this time. The hair twirling was an obvious tell.
“Try again. Third time’s the charm.”
They swung wide, crossing through the gates of the cemetery. Murray knew their captivity in close quarters was coming to an end, and every second counted now. He needed to know what made her tick.
“Funerals bring out the best and worst in people. You get to see a lot of what’s beneath the surface the rest of the time.”
“Why on earth would you want to see that?” Murray’s distaste was obvious.
Lucy’s eyes swept him, as if memorizing the details of him. “People are fascinating.”
“People are terrible,” he shot back without missing a beat.
A pregnant pause followed, and the only noise in the hearse was the distant pattering of raindrops.
Lucy’s slanted gaze cornered him one final time. “Are you?”
He blinked, any trace of a smile wiped from his lips. “I just took a hundred-dollar ring off a dead man.”
She was no longer amused, and the steel behind her gaze cut him to the quick. “Do you need one hundred dollars more than he does?”
“Yes.” It was out of his mouth before he could consider the consequences.
She took another drag, but her eyes never left his. “Then I wouldn’t call you terrible.”
His brows bobbed. “Then what would you call me?”
She lifted one shoulder, then relaxed back against the headrest. “Enterprising.”
Murray’s pulse raced at the delight in Lucy’s pale eyes. He wished they were elsewhere, preferably somewhere with a big warm bed. He wished he had nothing to do but her and no place to be but inside her. But as his mother always said, wishing was wasted energy, and the line of cars behind them were his responsibility.
As he parked on the closest path to the Garrett family plot, he saw Martha hovering under the overhang of a nearby mausoleum. The cemetery’s caretaker didn’t bother to return his wave, and he knew she was pissed. Her long gray-blond braid and denim overalls were several shades darker than usual. She was clearly a victim of working in the downpour.
By the time the crowd had finally managed to tiptoe through the treacherous mud and muck to the graveside, the sun had reappeared, and the coffin was hovering above its final resting place. As Reverend Townes began act two, his graveside performance, Murray looked around for Lucy and noticed she’d found Martha. The hermit caretaker had not only welcomed Lucy to share her shelter, but it seemed she’d accepted one of Lucy’s filterless Pall Malls. Lucy was scribbling in her lime green notebook again, a concentration line evident between her brows. Aching to know her inner thoughts, Murray made up his mind to get his hands on that notebook before the day was out.
Thanks to some family theatrics and the unwelcome puddles, his obligations took much longer than he anticipated, but once Murray was free to leave, he was pleased to discover Lucy was still loitering by the aged mausoleum. As he neared her, he realized she was snapping photos of its architecture with her smartphone.
“Gonna send a postcard home?”
She shoved her phone into her purse. “None of them can read. I’d kill to see inside.”
Murray glanced around. Cars were slowly clearing out, and no one was around except Martha, who was busy with her shovel, knee deep in black earth. Murray gestured with his head at the entrance to the mausoleum, and Lucy’s eyes widened. She nodded, and he put his arm around her to usher her into the squeaking iron gate. It was easy to pluck the notebook from her open purse and stuff it into the inside pocket of his suit.
Jackpot.
Inside, long shadows stretched through the narrow space. Six crypts flanked them, three on each side. The only other features of note were a stained-glass window at the far end and a stone bench directly beneath it. Someone had left a candle on the window ledge. Murray heard the unmistakable sound of a Zippo flipping open and watched as Lucy explored, fingers tracing the engraved names and dates on each and every crypt.
“Barnabas, that’s quite a name,” she mused.
“That sounds even more ‘old man’ than Murray.”
She graced him with an appreciative smirk and moved on to the next one, several inches above her head. She was up on her tiptoes, reading the inscription. “Poor Maude. Only sixteen years old. What a shame. I wonder if she even had a chance to get laid before she kicked it.”
“God, I hope so,” Murray said. “I was 15 and felt like the last virgin on earth. What about you?”
Lucy didn’t respond at first, then she manufactured a saucy smile, like a half-hearted Mae West. “Oh, you know Appalachia. Old enough to crawl…”
If she’d meant to
