So get out of here. Forget all about everything I told you and forget all about me. You got that? ‘Cause if I see so much as a brake light come on, you'll get a slug through the rear window.”
I did what he said. I drove away and I didn't stop, not that I thought he really was following me or that he'd shoot that big cannon at me, but there was nothing to be gained by finding out. I drove to Lexington, pulled into a parking space next to my little “suck-ass” dump and turned off the motor. Too bad I couldn't turn mine off. It was just getting going. Screw him, I thought, as I leaned over and opened the glove compartment. I pulled out my dog- eared Road Atlas. That was when I noticed the three newspaper clippings lying on the floor. The grease-ball had dropped them there. He wanted me to have them. I had to give him credit; he was pushing all the right buttons and there was nothing I could do to stop myself. Not that I really cared what kind of scam they were pulling or what they were using my name for, but they had crossed the line when they began messing with Terri. She was out of bounds.
Columbus, Ohio. I opened the Road Atlas to the mileage table on the back page. My finger ran down the left hand column until I found Boston column, then ran it across to the Cs until I found Columbus. It was 783 miles from Boston, about a twelve-hour drive in the Bronco. I looked at the clock on the dashboard. It was 10:17 PM. Plenty of time to run inside, make a fresh thermos of coffee, throw some stuff in an overnight bag, and make it there my funeral at 2:00 PM tomorrow. After all, I missed the one in LA and I would feel really bad if I missed this one too.
Looking back on it all, if I knew then what I know now, the smartest thing I could have done was exactly what the grease-ball told me to do — forget about it. But if I had listened to him and went home and went to sleep, I would never have made it to Columbus or Chicago, I would have never met Sandy, and my life today would be infinitely poorer.
CHAPTER TWO
Columbus, Ohio: a funeral in the cornfields…
The drive from Boston to Columbus wasn't all that hard, not if you are used to long, boring drives by yourself and you have a large thermos and enough rock stations to keep you company. It was Interstate all the way and I reached the eastern suburbs of Columbus around noon. I stopped in a friendly Marathon station in Pataskala for a refill, a $2.00 Central Ohio road map, and a visit to the restroom to change clothes. This was the second day for the Rolling Stones T-shirt and I thought something more formal might be in order. Unfortunately, being from California, the most formal attire I owned was an old, blue blazer with gold buttons. All in all, it added just the requisite touch of restraint and class to my faded jeans, a green and yellow Polo shirt, and docksiders. I didn't bother with socks, since it was my own funeral and there wouldn't be anyone there I cared about offending anyway.
Like most Midwestern cities, there was a circular beltway around Columbus. Looking at the map, scenic Pataskala was on the rural, far-eastern fringe of the city at about 3:00 on the clock dial. The town of Peterborough, where the funeral home was located, was up at 12:00, followed by a right turn up into the next county. The funeral was at 2:00 and I didn't think it would take very long to drive up there. As I rolled out of the gas station, I pulled out my cell phone and figured I'd better give Doug a call and let him know I was taking the day off.
“Sharon? Hey, it's Pete Talbott. Is the boss in?”
“No, he's having another “out of body experience” with the venture capital guys in the conference room.”
“Again? Jeez.”
“Money. Ain't it the pits?”
“Yeah, the root of all evil. Say, did he get the subroutines I e-mailed him?
“Oh, yeah, I think you saved the corporate ass with that one.”
“Good, tell him I'm taking today and tomorrow off.”
“What's up, Petey? You finally get lucky?” she asked in a husky voice. “It's about time.”
“No, Sharon, I didn't get lucky.”
“Too bad, ‘cause God knows you could use some. Me? Unfortunately I'm married, but you blow in my ear sometime and…”
“Sharon, I had to go to Ohio, for a funeral.”
“A funeral? Oh, sorry. Me and my mouth. Whose is it?”
“Mine.”
“Okay, be that way. But when you get back, I want you to meet my friend, Doris.”
“Your friend, Doris?”
“I'm serious. With Doris, you don't even have to get real lucky, Petey, all you got to do is show up. And you really do need some R&R.”
“Sharon, I gotta go,” I said as I hung up. R&R with her friend Doris? As if that was what I really needed. But it was the same way back in LA. No matter how far or how fast I ran, it couldn't be far enough or fast enough to get away from all the misguided, unwanted help from my friends’ wives and my wife's friends, all of whom thought that if I just had sex with another woman, I would get over the loss of Terri. What one had to do with the other I'd never understand. What I needed was Terri back. I didn't need to get laid.
These days, one urban beltway looks about like another. The traffic might not be as thick as it had been back in LA, but if you've driven past one suburban office building and big interchange shopping center, you've driven by them all. I steered the Bronco around the long, looping beltway until I found the Cedarville Road exit and got off. This was a broad commercial street with strip malls and a gazillion fast-food restaurants, banks, and gas stations that took me north through the suburbs, ex-urbs, and no-urbs until the development turned into cornfields. That was where I found the small town of Peterborough, Ohio. Town? It was more like a wide spot between the cornfields, where a couple of two-lane country roads crossed up in Campbell County about eight miles north of the beltway. Still, this was a beautiful, early-summer afternoon, all hot and humid, and the cornfields were a radiant, green, the farmhouses looked refrigerator white, and you could almost imagine that kinder and gentler America the politicians get all teary-eyed about, when they aren't railing about “values” or the moral quagmire of California pop culture. Me? I was never into the County Fair scene with all those hot sweaty animals, hot sweaty people, ferris wheels, cotton candy, and corn dogs. I kinda liked the moral quagmire. Besides, driving around the beltway had shown me that “kinder and gentler” rural Ohio appeared to be having its problems too; they were paving over the corn with strip malls, big-lot subdivisions, and mini-marts just like the rest of the country.
Fortunately, Peterborough hadn't been given the opportunity to sink that far, not yet any way. Gathered around the intersection at the corner of “walk and don't walk,” I found a couple of dozen turn-of-the-century clapboard Victorian houses with picket fences and window boxes full of geraniums, a Sunoco gas station, a drive-in branch bank, a State Farm insurance agent, two antique shops, a Pizza Hut, and four stop signs. The streets were lined with big oaks whose roots had buckled and tilted the concrete slabs of the sidewalks. By the look of them, it could have been back when FDR was President. Quaint, but other than the neighborhood skateboarders, I doubted anyone cared.
I had no idea where the funeral home was, but the address in the obituary said East Larkin. At the four stop signs that marked the center of town, the cross street said Larkin, so I took a wild stab and turned right, figuring that had to be east. Sure enough, a quarter mile down the road I saw the sign for the Greene Funeral Home. It looked like I expected it to look: a big brick Georgian with white columns. The thought of entering another funeral home sent cold shivers down my back. I hated funerals, but I was angry enough to put up with almost anything for an hour or two, even if it was my own.
The front entrance of the building faced the road and there was a drive-thru portico on the left side for loading the cars and hearses. The parking lot had only one entrance and it wrapped around the front and left side of the building. When I pulled in, the lot was nearly empty. In the far corner beyond the portico, sat two gleaming, black Cadillac limos, an even longer hearse, and five nondescript sedans that must belong to the hired help. I also saw a big, brown sheriff's cruiser parked in the shade of a big, overhanging oak. The Sheriff? The Talbott funerals must be a really big deal here in Peterborough. They brought the town cop in for crowd control.
The only other car in the parking lot was a white Lincoln Town Car parked in the middle. I parked my Bronco
