headed for the elevator. I pushed the button for the lobby.
Was I surprised that Barbara Wilburger might be having an affair with Phil McPhee? Not in the slightest. First of all, people of every disposition and description have affairs. And I’d picked up on a couple of signs that first day Gabriella and I met the professor at her mother’s condo. They were small, incongruous signs to be sure, but revealing as hell in hindsight. One was the little BMW convertible she’d sped off in. Not your typical professor’s car. But it was the kind of toy someone trying to break out of a life-long rut might buy. The other thing that struck me was her wristwatch. It was old and gold and obviously expensive. Not the utilitarian timepiece you’d expect to find strapped to the wrist of a woman like Barbara Wilburger. I’d asked her if it was a family heirloom. She’d said it was a gift. From a friend. It’s doubtful that anyone who knew Barbara well enough to be called a friend would give her a watch like that. And Barbara would never wear a watch like that unless it came from a very special friend. One she wanted to keep. A lover. And if it were a gift from Phil McPhee, I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that he’d bought that watch from his other lover, one Violeta Bell. Or that the watch was a fake.
Prince Anton and Detective Grant were waiting for me in the lobby. So was Gabriella. The four of us waited another ten minutes for Weedy. Just as I was about to call upstairs to the photo department to see where in the hell he was, he jiggled down the stairs with his camera equipment dangling from his shoulders and a cellophane bag of Cheez-its dangling from his clenched teeth. “Orry-ooh-eep-ooh-aiting,” he said.
Outside, we piled into the long, black police van Detective Grant had requisitioned for our outing. “I feel guilty just riding in this thing,” I said, as we drove off.
Our first stop was Swann’s, Hannawa’s legendary drive-in, where all of the car hops are muscle-bound college boys in matching green polos and khaki Bermudas. The minute you pull into a parking slot and click your headlights, they run to your car-actually run-and take your order.
So, for the next forty-five minutes our happy crew huddled inside the van wolfing hamburgers and onion rings and French fries and milkshakes, messing the upholstery and ourselves with catsup and salt and mustard and mayonnaise. It was great fun, even though the last thing my already roiling digestive track needed was a double cheeseburger and curly fries. Not to mention the pineapple shake. The prince graciously paid the bill. We hurried off to Bloomfield Township, to the Riverbend Moor Family Memory Garden, the cemetery where Violeta Bell’s ashes resided, inside a pretty purple urn.
We climbed the long walkway toward the columbarium. It was a beautiful evening with only the slightest breeze. Prince Anton, however, looked like he was walking into a hurricane. He was bent forward. Each step seemed a struggle. If he were to be believed, he’d spent the greater part of his life thinking his reunion with Petru would be in heaven. Now it was going to be here on earth. Here and now. I took his arm. “It’s quite a climb, isn’t it?”
He put his hand over mine. “Yes, it is.”
It would have been a wonderfully bittersweet moment if Weedy hadn’t been orbiting us like a wobbly moon, clicking his pictures. Or if every few steps Gabriella hadn’t stopped to scribble in her notebook. Their callous intrusions were the reason everybody hates the media. And why nobody would want to live without it. I apologized for their behavior nevertheless.
“They’re just making their way in the world,” the prince said, managing a weak grin. “Like everyone else.”
We reached the columbarium. Detective Grant held the door open for us.
Our footsteps on the marble floor banged with a hollow sadness. Weedy stopped orbiting. Gabriella stopped scribbling. We reached the glass cabinets. We found the niche holding Violeta’s urn.
The prince studied the urn in silence. It would have been impossible to know what he was thinking or feeling. But it was probably a lot of things. That’s always been my experience at cemeteries. Right when you need them at their solid best, your heart and brain go schizo on you.
I watched the prince’s reflection in the glass. His eyes were meandering from the urn to the objects that the other Queens of Never Dull had placed in the niche. I told him that the ceramic bell was from Kay, the classified section with the garage sales circled from Ariel, the small wooden box from Gloria. “Any idea what’s in it?” he asked me.
I admitted that I didn’t know. “I never saw,” I said. “And Gloria never said.”
“Probably something personal. Between the two of them.”
“Very likely.”
“Probably wouldn’t mean a hill of beans to any of us.”
“Probably not.”
Prince Anton turned to Detective Grant. “Would it be possible to take a look?”
Grant rubbed his eyebrows. He pulled his thumb and fingers down the bridge of his nose. He stroked his chin. He ran the back of his hand back and forth on his double chin. The body language of an important man who didn’t know what to say. “I don’t have the foggiest what the law books have to say on matters like this,” he finally said. “But if I had to guess, I’d say you don’t have the legal right to touch anything until the probate court gives you custody.” Then he shrugged and added this: “But, if I was in your shoes, well, I wouldn’t give a shit about the law.”
The prince chuckled. “So, you wouldn’t feel compelled to arrest me?”
“Not particularly,” Grant answered. “But there is a photographer and a reporter here. Not to mention the world’s nosiest librarian. Whether they’re as attitudinally laissez faire as me, I can’t say.”
“I don’t see a photographer,” Weedy said.
“I don’t see a reporter,” Gabriella said.
“And I don’t see a librarian,” I said.
“Well, then,” said Grant, “let’s go find the man with the keys. Whoever and wherever that may be.”
The prince had another idea. “I could just jimmy the lock. Save a lot of time.”
Grant offered three more useful foreign words. “ Que sera sera. ”
The prince gave him a quick, appreciative bow. Then he turned to me. “Wouldn’t have a bobby pin, would you, Maddy?”
I dug into my purse and produced one. I handed it to the prince. He pried it open, and with the skill of a burglar, inserted it into the tiny lock on the niche’s glass door. He wiggled it back and forth. Then up and down. Then sort of round and round. Clockwise then counterclockwise. Nothing. Grant took over. He, too, wiggled the pin every whichaway. With equal failure. I also tried-it was my bobby pin after all-but after two minutes of frantic jiggling handed the pin to Weedy. It took him about five seconds. “It’s pretty much the same kind of lock they have on our vending machines,” he explained.
Gabriella was shocked by his criminality. “You steal from the vending machines?”
“Not steal-get the candy I paid for.”
The prince opened the glass door. Put his head inside and lowered his nose over the little box. He lifted the lid. Without a smile or a frown he whispered, “Oh my!” He closed the lid. He pulled back his head. Moved his hands to the urn. He stroked it. Then he gently lifted it. Then he cradled it against his chest and kissed the shiny purple lid. “I wouldn’t have expected it to be this heavy,” he said. “Not that I ever held one before.”
That’s when Detective Grant had his epiphany. “Oh shit!” He coaxed the urn out of the prince’s hands and gently put it on the floor. He got on his knees and bent over the jar. The rest of us bent over him. He unscrewed the lid. He took a pair of latex gloves from his jacket. He wiggled his fingers into them. He undid the twist-tie on the plastic bag inside the urn. He held his breath and pulled the bag open. He slowly drilled a finger into the ashes. He slowly pulled out a small pistol.
Prince Anton had been a regular Rock of Gibraltar since the day he arrived in Hannawa. Sweet and patient. A gentleman. Now he went crazy.
And why wouldn’t he go crazy?
Can you imagine standing in that cold columbarium looking at the ashes of someone you’d missed horribly every minute of your life for fifty years? Then see that pistol emerge through those lifeless ashes like some ghastly demon? Good gravy, can you imagine it?
“What the hell kind of a country is this?” he screeched. “What kind of people?” He was grabbing at the pipe in his shirt pocket. I swear if it had been a knife he might have driven it through his heart.
Grant held the pistol just above the bag of ashes while Weedy snapped his pictures. While Gabriella furiously took her notes. I tried to comfort the prince. “What a horrible shock,” I kept repeating. I walked him to a pair of
