“How is she?” he asked.
“Still sleeping,” I said. Somehow I didn’t mention to him what she had said earlier. I didn’t say anything then and I didn’t later as the night wore on and Beverly’s breathing grew more and more shallow. I didn’t want to admit to Lars that she’d roused herself long enough to give me one last set of marching orders. And I didn’t want him to know that, in what might well be her last waking moments, Beverly had been thinking about me rather than him.
By midnight it was over and she was gone. I stayed with Lars long enough to see him settled in the apartment he and Beverly had shared. By the time I left Queen Anne Gardens the clouds had returned and it was raining again. A little past one, I let myself into the condo at Belltown Terrace. Mel, with her feet tucked under her, was curled up in my recliner, sound asleep. I stood there for a long moment or two watching her-stunned by how amazingly beautiful she was and wondering how much time we might have to be together, or if we even should. Finally I reached out and touched her gently on the shoulder. She awakened instantly.
Mel searched my face and read what was written there. “Beverly’s gone, then?” Mel asked.
I nodded.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“So am I,” I agreed. “Sorrier than I would have thought possible. Let’s go to bed.”
CHAPTER 4
When Mel woke me up in the morning it was with a cup of coffee and a good-bye kiss. She was almost dressed and ready to go to work.
“I already called Harry and told him you won’t be in,” she said.
“Thanks,” I said.
“He wanted to know when the services would be.”
“I’m not sure. Lars says that’s all handled, but we didn’t really discuss it last night.”
“There’s handled and then there’s handled,” Mel declared. “And I’m sure there will be lots of loose ends that need tying up. And if all the kids are coming home,” she added, “we should probably make some hotel reservations for them. I don’t think having all of us stay here together is a good idea.”
“Yes,” I told her, savoring the coffee and enjoying watching her button her blouse. “Living in sin does have its little complications, especially if you’re blessed with serious-minded young adult children who make no bones about knowing right from wrong now that the shoe is somehow, inexplicably, on the other foot.”
Mel smiled. “You can thank your lucky stars that we have only one set of disapproving young adult children. If I’d had kids, too, it could have been a lot worse.”
There was no point in calling Scott and Kelly, or my good friends Ron and Amy Peters, either. Not right then- not until I had a firmed-up schedule from Lars. I was out of the shower and toweling dry when he called.
“Hate to bother you,” Lars began. “But you said you probably wouldn’t be going in today. If you could take me to the mortuary and to a flower shop…”
“Whatever you need, Lars. All you have to do is ask. I can be there in half an hour.”
“An hour’s fine,” he said. “They don’t open until ten.”
It was sometime during that hour that I realized Beverly had done both Ross Connors and me a huge favor. By dying when she did, she afforded both of us the luxury of cover-time off the clock when I’d be able to pursue the LaShawn Tompkins matter with no one, Mel Soames included, being the wiser.
I used that hour of privacy to cull through Mel’s newspapers, carefully putting them back the way I’d found them when I finished. I didn’t find much. News about LaShawn had been relegated to the second page of the local section, and that was comprised mostly of nothing new to report. In the obituary section there was a brief announcement that gave a quick overview of LaShawn’s short-circuited life. The service for him would be held on Thursday morning at 10 a.m. at the African Bible Baptist Church on Martin Luther King Jr. Way.
For a moment or two I considered putting in a call to Seattle PD and seeing if I could worm any information out of some of my old compatriots. I thought better of it, though. It would be more useful for me to do some of my own investigating. To that end I located an address and a phone number for E. M. Tompkins on Church Street and stuffed it in my pocket. If I had time after I finished helping Lars, I’d stop by and pay a call LaShawn’s grieving mother.
I found Lars hobbling back and forth in front of Queen Anne Gardens’s sliding glass door. He looked agitated. I assumed he was still upset about Beverly. He was, but that wasn’t the only problem.
He climbed in beside me. “Those old ladies,” he muttered, slamming the car door behind him and shaking his head.
“What old ladies?” I asked.
“Back there,” he said, gesturing back toward Queen Anne Gardens. “Beverly’s not even in the ground and here they were all over me at breakfast, wanting to sit with me and bring me coffee.
It was hard not to smile. It occurred to me that since Lars was in his nineties, he had a hell of a lot of nerve calling anyone else “old.” And only a lifelong fisherman would confuse “fresh meat” with “fresh fish” in that particular context. The very idea of Lars suddenly cast in the role of a sought-after and eligible bachelor was one that was difficult to grasp.
“They were probably just concerned about you,” I said.
“No,” he declared heatedly. “I’m old enough to know better than that!”
I had to give him that one. If he thought the randy ladies at Queen Anne Gardens were on the make, he was probably right.
“Where to?” I asked.
“Bleitz,” he muttered.
I knew where that particular funeral home was with no need of additional directions. It was where services had been held for Ron Peters’s estranged first wife back in January. We went up and over Queen Anne Hill and down the back side to Florentia near the Fremont Bridge.
Dana Howell, Lars’s funeral consultant, greeted him warmly. “I’m so sorry to be seeing you again so soon,” she said.
Lars nodded. “
And it turned out it was done. All of it, down to what would be printed on the program as well as what music would be sung and played. Beverly had already been brought to the mortuary from Queen Anne Gardens. There was an opening for a service at noontime on Thursday, if that was appropriate, and Lars allowed as how it was.
“You still want two urns?” Dana asked.
Lars shot me a sidelong glance and then nodded. “Half her ashes go into the lake with her first husband. The other half goes with me. That’s fair.”
That was the first I knew that when the weather cleared, I’d be required to make another pilgrimage to Lake Chelan to scatter a second set of ashes. This time I hoped I’d have brains enough to wear the sea-sick bracelets Beverly had given me. That way I wouldn’t turn green the first time
“My arrangements are here, too,” he added in an aside to me while nodding in Dana’s direction. “Dana here knows yust what I want, and it’s paid for, too. You won’t have to worry about a t’ing.”
After leaving the funeral home we stopped by a florist on top of Queen Anne Hill where Lars blew all of seventy-five bucks on a floral arrangement and then worried about having spent too much. I made a note to call back later and add a few more arrangements to the floral end of things. Beverly Piedmont Jenssen’s memory certainly deserved much more than a single bouquet with a less-than-a-hundred-dollars price tag.
“Anything else?” I asked him, once we were back in the car.
Lars hesitated for a moment, then he nodded. “I t’ink I’d like to find a meeting.”
I wasn’t surprised to hear that, even after years of sobriety, Lars might be thinking about falling off the wagon. If your lifelong coping mechanism for dealing with grief is to numb the hurt with booze, than it’s easy to want to drift back into bad old habits. I made a few calls and located a noontime AA meeting at the back of an old-
