Double Shot

Vuitton bag held a couple of tennis balls.

The crowd scooped up the last of their cake and ice cream, glanced at their watches, and rustled in their seats. Oblivious, Ted Vikarios rumbled on about the good deeds Albert Kerr had done. Albert had sold his possessions and taken Holly to England, where he’d gone to seminary. He’d accepted a call to a small Christian mission in Qatar—he really hadn’t liked the cold English weather—and served there for twelve years. He’d fought valiantly against the disease that had finally claimed him, etc., etc.

Again waves of fatigue and pain washed over me. The places where my attacker had hit were killing me. When I’d signaled to Julian and Liz to stop clearing, I’d had no idea Ted Vikarios would talk until mold grew on cheese. On and on he went, about how the Lord had done this in Albert’s life and the Lord had done that. The agnostics among the country-club set were stirring in their seats. To them, a conversion experience was changing dollars into euros.

When a couple of people scraped back their chairs and got up to leave, Dr. V. cleared his throat into the mike. It came out like a thunderclap, and a spontaneous titter swept through the Roundhouse dining room. More people began to stand up and move about. I glanced at Holly Kerr. She kept her chin up and her back straight as she spoke to well-wishers.

If I could just finish the cleaning without losing my temper with the Jerk and accusing him of beating me up, I could count this event as a salvaged success. I scanned the crowd again. Ted Vikarios was still talking. I had to clear away the dirty dishes, whether it made noise or not.

Holly Kerr caught my eye, nodded, and smiled. Then she handed an envelope to a young man and indicated that he was to give it to me. My eyes snagged on Courtney MacEwan, whose rage-filled stare at John Richard—who was again cozying up to Sandee—had not quit. Courtney folded her arms, which made a whole bunch more muscles pop out. Now John Richard and Sandee-with-two-es were exchanging a not-so-

surreptitious kiss. I turned quickly, picked up a tray of dirty glasses beside one of the tables, and only vaguely registered footsteps clicking up to my side.

“Ever noticed,” Courtney MacEwan hissed in my ear, “how people can’t wait to have sex after funerals?”

I lost my grip on the tray. Unbalanced, one of the glasses popped upward and spiraled toward the floor. An alert guest, a bodybuilder-type guy with thick, dry blond-brown hair that resembled a lion’s mane, dove for it with an outfielder’s extended reach. Grinning hugely, he held it high. The guests at the table applauded.

“Courtney,” I said through clenched teeth—and a false smile—“get into the kitchen if you want to talk about sex.”

Courtney fluttered sparkly eyelids and mauve-toned fingernails and slithered ahead of me. It was a good thing, too, because the crowd parted like the Red Sea for that low-cut dress.

“And dearest, loveliest Holly,” Ted droned on.

“Was that a trick play with the glass?” an older woman asked me. Her broad face lit up with an admiring smile. “If you toss two glasses into the air, Dannyboy here will be able to catch both of those, too.” The table giggled and leaned forward. I noticed several bottles of wine between the plates, not served by yours truly. In fact, I was willing to bet that the folks at this table had never worked at Southwest Hospital. There were two guys (including Dannyboy, he of the lion mane) who looked like thugs, and three women, two pretty younger ones and the one who’d first spoken to me. Her thick makeup and dyed black hair screamed Aging Hooker. Still, she looked familiar. But I was distracted from trying to place her by Dannyboy, whose drunk, raised voice announced: “If you toss three glasses in the air, I can juggle those, too!”

“And dearest, loveliest Holly,” Ted Vikarios shouted into the microphone, “was a nurturing presence all along.” Registering the disturbance—Dannyboy, the joker who wouldn’t let me pass—Ted glared in our direction. “She even nursed Albert, whom we are remembering today, whom we are trying to remember today”—more glaring—“beginning when he was sick and missed school as a teenager…”

“So did John Richard cheat on you, too?” Courtney stage-whispered over her shoulder. “And what did you do to his girlfriends?” I kept a white-knuckled grip on the tray and refused to answer.

“Hey, caterer,” Dannyboy was saying as he tugged on my apron. Behind him, his table laughed wildly. “C’mon, let’s have some fun. With the glasses, I mean.”

I tore myself away and limped painfully toward the kitchen. When I finally made it, I placed the tray next to the sink, then walked over and carefully closed the door to the dining room. I took a deep breath before facing Courtney, who had almost screwed up this already-almost-screwed-up event.

“Doggone it, Courtney, what is the matter with you? I’ve been divorced from John Richard for over a decade! Of course he cheated on me. I didn’t do anything to any girlfriends of his except feel sorry for her, whoever she was. And as to the sex-after-funerals question, how should I know? When I’m catering a funeral lunch, what I do afterward is dishes.”

She looked over at me, then pressed her lips together. But it was no-go. Tears slid down her cheeks. In an effort to look stronger than she apparently was feeling, she rolled her shoulders and flexed those arm muscles.

“God damn him,” she said. “He owes me.” She slapped tears away. I plucked a clean tissue from my apron pocket and handed it to her. “I just hate him so much now.” She honked into the tissue. “We were going to get married. We’d been together for less than a month, and he sent back my stuff from his house in boxes from the golf shop, for crying out loud. Why the golf shop?”

She started to cry. I rinsed dishes, wondering how long this would last. The golf shop, she kept repeating. Why the golf shop?

“Maybe Sandee gave him the boxes,” I offered. “I mean, she’s some kind of golf expert, isn’t she?”

To my great surprise, Courtney burst out laughing. “Oh, yeah, Sandee’s a golf expert, all right! Puts the ball right in the hole!”

Her facial muscles jumped and twitched. Oh boy, she had it bad. This was unfortunate. John Richard never went back to a woman he’d abandoned.

“What is going on in here?” Marla demanded as she banged through the kitchen door. She was holding an envelope, which she handed to me. “This is from Holly Kerr. Some guy was waiting to give it to you, but was afraid to come into the kitchen because the door was closed. Ooh, yummy, leftover cake.” She daintily helped herself to a corner of chocolate, then noticed Courtney MacEwan. “For crying out loud, Courtney, what are you so bent out of shape about? I mean, besides being dumped for a twenty-one-year-old?”

Courtney glared at Marla, who shook her head at Courtney’s decollete dress.

“Very sexy, C. You ought to be able to pick up somebody new, right here at this funeral.”

Courtney lifted her chin and appraised Marla’s black linen dress. “You look pretty inviting yourself, Marla. Did you have a hot date before the funeral?”

“Oh, darling, did I!” Marla replied, rolling her eyes.

“But what are you doing here?” I asked Marla, once I’d stashed Holly’s payment, which I intended to refund to her since we’d never had the poached salmon.

Marla turned her attention to me. “You are so ungrateful.”

“But what about you-know-who?” I whispered as Courtney cracked open the kitchen door to check on the whereabouts of John Richard. I didn’t know if she was listening to Marla and me or not, but you couldn’t be too careful with Courtney. I was pretty sure she still blamed me for being hostile to her relationship with John Richard. I had been nothing of the kind, of course; this had been John Richard’s excuse to Courtney for why they had to break up. (“ ‘Goldy is such a jealous ex-wife,’ ” Marla said the Jerk had claimed to Courtney. “ ‘If she finds out you’re staying here at the house, she’ll go back to family court and try to have my visitations with Arch reduced!’ ”)

“At this very moment,” Marla said as she picked up a corner of cake and checked her new diamond Rolex, “my lawyer is in the office of your favorite district food inspector, claiming he’s going to sue him and his entire staff on behalf of his client who has food poisoning.”

“You’re so bad—” I began.

Courtney let out a gargled noise and reeled back. None other than the Jerk himself popped his head into the kitchen. He looked all around, then grinned widely.