the way home from Chicago, I realized I hadn’t been seeing you much, lately.”
This was going almost too well.
“I’ll try to be at home more,” Martin said briefly, but not without effort. “I guess I didn’t like it when you went back to work without talking to me about it first.”
The shadow of an oak branch tossing in the wind played over Martin’s face.
“Possibly,” I said very carefully, “we should talk to each other a little more.” We looked at each other cautiously and stiffly, like creatures from different planets who basically bore each other good will, but who did not speak the same language to explain that.
After a long pause, Martin nodded in acknowledgment, and we resumed the walk to his car. As we reached the Mercedes, shining whitely against the green carpet of grass, Martin swung me around to face him, gripped both my arms, and to my astonishment leaned me against the car and kissed me thoroughly.
“Well,” I said when I came up for air, “that was wonderful, but don’t you think we really ought to postpone this until we get home?”
“Everyone has left,” Martin said breathlessly, and I saw that that was true, for the most part. On the other side of the cemetery, the group of pallbearers (minus Jack Junior) was deep in conversation by Paul’s dark blue Chrysler, and I remembered all of them were police officers with murders to solve.
The funeral home staff had gone to work as soon as the widow had left. The casket was in the ground, the lowering device had been packed up, and the funeral director and another man were shoveling the dirt into place, while a third man loaded the folding chairs into the funeral home van. I knew from past experience that soon the dirt would be mounded, the flowers laid over it, the artificial turf removed. The tent would stay for a day or so. Then that would be gone; the cemetery would return to its slumber.
“I’ll see you at the house,” I told Martin, and rested the palm of my hand against his cheek.
As I bumped the Chevette along the gravel road leading out of the main gates of the cemetery, I passed Paul’s car. Paul and Lynn were the only ones left of the group that had been there a few moments ago; I raised my hand as I passed, and Lynn responded with a bob of her head, but she didn’t stop talking to Paul. Paul’s pallor and sharp features had never been more evident. I thought he was suffering from some distress. He had one hand extended, resting on the roof of his car, and that seemed to be the main thing holding him up. He didn’t acknowledge, me at all by wave or smile, but fixed me in a stare that seemed to pin me like a captured butterfly. I was glad when I was by him and on the road home; I couldn’t imagine what he and Lynn could have been discussing that would make him look that distraught. I glanced once in my rearview mirror to see Lynn’s car leaving the front gate of the cemetery, turning left instead of right as I had done.
Perhaps Lynn, too, had come to the conclusion that the person who’d attacked Arthur was Perry, Paul’s former stepson and now his friend. That would account for the haggard expression on Paul’s bony face.
I thought of how upset he’d been last night, when Arthur had been stabbed; I thought of his unexpected choice of female companion, a woman with poor taste and judgment, so different from Sally. And yet, this was the woman whose rump he’d groped in front of me. I felt again that flash of uneasiness. That hadn’t really been Paul-like, had it? Paul had always been calm, controlled, and conservative.
He’d sure lost his calm the night before. His voice had certainly been ragged when he’d told Jesse he’d already radioed to the police station.
I braked and pulled over to the side of the road. Luckily, there was as shoulder; luckily, no one was behind me.
He’d called from his car.
There was someone else who’d had a chance to hide a knife. Paul. The detective who’d guarded us till the other officers could get there.
But why? I raised my hands in front of me to cover my face so I could concentrate.
Why would Paul stab Arthur? They’d never liked each other much, but they’d worked together for years without actually harming each other.