All the Pretty Hearses

by Mary Daheim

  The clock finished its twelve chimes for the hour. The sudden silence seemed to have a favorable effect on Sidney. He, too, was trying to move just enough to take aim with the knife.

  The unearthly quiet was broken by what seemed like a disembodied voice from somewhere nearby.

  “Yoo-hoo,” Arlene called. “Where are you? I found my tomato paste. Judith?” She glanced into the living room. “Oh my goodness! I didn’t realize you were . . . ah . . . entertaining. I’ll go now.”

  “Arlene!” The name felt ripped out of Judith’s throat. “Help!”

  “What . . .” Arlene, who had momentarily disappeared, poked her head around the corner of the archway. “Oh, dear! Are you hurt? Is he . . . ?” She saw the knife and let out a little cry of shock. “What is this?”

  Judith suddenly realized that Sidney had stopped moving. The knife lay on the carpet. “Oh my God!” she cried. “Help me up!”

  Arlene was spurred into action. “I don’t know what to think,” she murmured, carefully getting Judith to her feet. “You’re shaking like a leaf. You’d better sit.” She looked at Sidney. “Who is this? Is he dead?”

  “I don’t think so,” Judith said, still leaning against Arlene, “but we’d better call 911. Kick that knife out of the way, would you?”

  Hanging on to Judith, Arlene kicked the knife so hard that it skidded all the way across the carpet to land by the piano at the other end of the living room. “Shall I call for you?” she asked, settling Judith back onto the window seat.

  “I can do it,” Judith said, reaching for the phone on the cherrywood table. But before she could steady her fingers to dial, she heard sirens. “Maybe we don’t have to. Is the door still open?”

  “No. I’ll open it,” Arlene said, with a last look at the unconscious man. “I don’t know what to make of all this,” she said, heading for the entry hall. “I thought the wheelchair was your mother’s, but it’s not . . .”

  Her words faded as she went out of sight. The next voice Judith heard was Joe’s.

  “Oh my God!” he cried, rushing into the living room. “Oh no!” He awkwardly circumvented Sidney to get to the window seat and wrap Judith in his arms. “Damn, damn, damn! I knew this might happen!”

  Judith barely heard him. She was still trembling, but all that mattered was that she was pressed against Joe and she was still alive.

  “Brandy,” he said to someone, though Judith wasn’t sure who, as she could tell from the sounds of movement and lowered voices that several people were in the living room.

  “Joe,” she whimpered as he slowly pulled away. “Don’t.”

  “I’m taking you into the parlor,” he said softly. “Can you stand?”

  Judith wriggled her toes, then planted both feet on the floor. “I think so, if you help me.”

  It was only a short distance to the door that led from the living room to the parlor. Judith glimpsed the activity, but didn’t really take it in. She only noticed Arlene, who was apparently heading for the kitchen. “I have no idea,” she was saying to a man whose back was turned. “I came here with tomato paste. I’ve never seen that man on the floor in my life. Maybe he’s a traveling salesman. But that’s not Mrs. Grover’s wheelchair, I can tell you that much. Oh—there’s a knife by the piano. You’d better take that as some sort of evidence, Woodrow.”

  Woody, Judith thought as Joe half carried her into the parlor. Of course. “I must be gaga,” she murmured. “I didn’t even recognize Woofy. I mean, Woody.”

  “Doesn’t matter.” Joe eased her onto the settee. “I should take you up to bed, but I’m not sure I can carry you all the way to the third floor.” He looked a bit sheepish. “I’m not as young as I used to be. We’ll wait until you’re steadier on your feet.”

  “I still don’t understand what happened,” Judith said in a querulous tone. “That man must be insane.”

  “Probably,” Joe said, glancing out one of the windows. “It’s starting to snow.”

  “It is?” The weather was the least of Judith’s concerns. “Who is he? Sidney Foxe, I mean.”

  Joe leaned on the settee’s arm. “Just take it easy. You’ve been through hell. I can see that.” He sighed ruefully. “I’d hoped to keep you out of this. Maybe you should’ve been arrested instead of me. At least you’d have been out of harm’s way.”

  “But,” Judith persisted, “what does Volpe have to do with all this? He hasn’t been chief for several years.”

  “Did you mention the Silver Fox?” Arlene asked, entering from the hall door. “I poured the brandy into juice glasses. It seemed wrong to use your nice snifters with that man lying on the living room floor. Some of the guests heard the sirens and came into the kitchen. I reassured them it was merely a false alarm caused by Tulip tripping our security system.”

  Judith didn’t bother reminding Arlene that she didn’t have a security system. Instead, she looked at her neighbor with a grateful expression. “You saved my life—and you’ve come to my rescue before. In fact, the first time it was up at church. Thank you, thank you!”

  “Well, what are neighbors for?” Arlene shrugged and raised her glass. “Cheers. Or something.”

  “You usually go to bed early,” Judith said after taking the first strong sip of brandy. “Why were you up this late?”

  Arlene waved a hand. “Oh, Carl! His back is bothering him when he lies down and he was all over the bed, so I decided if I couldn’t sleep, I might as well clean out the kitchen cupboards. That’s when I found my tomato paste. I saw your lights were still on, so I thought while I remembered I’d come over to repay you.”

  Judith smiled. “You certainly did.”

  “Is there anything else I can do?” Arlene inquired. “I can’t tidy up the living room with all those people in there doing whatever it is they’re doing, which I might add, seems rather unpleasant. I don’t think that man on the floor is dead, though. Do you know him?”

  “No,” Judith said. “That is, not exactly.”

  “Some people are like that,” Arlene remarked. “You think you know them, but you don’t.” She drained her glass in one gulp. “I’ll sleep in Kevin’s old room tonight. Call if you need me.” Seemingly unfazed by the midnight terrors and the strong drink, Arlene left the parlor.

  “Incredible,” Judith said. “Arlene is utterly unflappable. Raising five kids has given her some kind of inner strength.”

  Joe rubbed her shoulder. “You’re kind of a tough nut, too. It’s a good thing Woody checked the outgoing e-mails. But I realized you’d know I’d never send such a stilted message.”

  Judith struggled for breath. “You . . . didn’t? Who did?”

  “Del’s crazy uncle, I guess. He’d stopped by just as Del was about to leave. I’d never seen the guy before. How come you let him in?”

  Judith grimaced. “I thought the e-mail was from you. It seemed like a good way to communicate so you could delete it immediately.”

  Joe held his head. “Jeez.”

  “I feel like an idiot!” Judith cried, clutching Joe’s arm.

  “No, no. I’m the idiot. I should have . . . I never thought much about the guy except that he seemed a little weird. Del didn’t mention that his uncle sent an e-mail. Maybe he didn’t know. Damn!” He shook his head. “I wouldn’t have found out if Woody hadn’t checked for messages and saw a new one had just gone to you. That’s what made us race here with all systems on red alert.” He sipped more brandy before putting the glass down on a tiered side table. “I’d better go see if the guy’s really alive, and if so, what they’ll charge him with. Attempted homicide, and maybe get him to confess to shooting Zachary Conrad. I gather he had some grudge against the guy.”

  “Don’t,” Judith said, her voice almost normal. “He didn’t kill Conrad.”

  Joe stared at his wife. “How do you know that?”

  “Sidn
ey Foxe or Sidney Volpe or whoever he is has tinnitus. You know—ringing of the ears. Renie’s uncle Balthazar had it. It’s a recurring disease that, in his case, may have been caused by a car accident that . . . never mind. I’ll tell you later. The grandfather clock chimes set him off. My point is, he would never fire a gun. That’s why he carried a knife.”

  Joe leaned against the parlor door frame, his expression quizzical. “Spare me details. You wouldn’t know who did kill Conrad, would you?”

  “Well . . . I think so. The obvious first suspect in any homicide case. Mrs. Zachary Conrad, née Hannah Paine.”

  Judith slept until almost noon. Joe had seen to the guests, making his special egg dish that Martha Morelli had disdained as “unoriginal.”

  When Judith got out of bed, she was stiff and sore, but grateful to be alive. It was too late to make it to noon Mass. Maybe she’d try for an evening service at another nearby parish. She certainly had a lot to thank God for on this snowy Sunday in January.

  By the time she got downstairs, all the guests had departed. Joe had cleaned up the kitchen and was in the living room watching a pro football game.

  “Hungry?” he asked when she sat down on the arm of his side chair.

  “Oddly enough, I’m not,” she said. “I don’t remember when I last ate. How’s Mother?”

  “Disgusted,” Joe replied, muting the TV sound. “I thought she’d pass out when I brought her breakfast. She was sure I was gallows bait. In fact, she thought the sirens last night were the cops coming to arrest you as my accomplice.”

  “Maybe if I get a cup of coffee, I can focus on you explaining what was really going on with this nightmare.”

  Joe put a hand on her leg. “Sit. Go over to the sofa. I’ll get your coffee.” He turned off the TV. “Stupid game. The Giants are getting their butts kicked by the Panthers.”

  Judith didn’t argue. She paused only to look outside, where a dusting of snow remained on the ground. Pretty, she thought, and shivered, despite the burning logs in the fireplace. Had it not been for the grandfather clock, she might be in the ground. On her way to the sofa, she blew the clock a kiss.

  Joe had brought coffee for both of them. “Let’s time-travel back to an occasion when you managed to take down a crooked cop,” he said, sitting across from Judith on the other sofa. “Uncle Al was involved in that one, as I recall. After the cop was canned and went to prison, Chief Volpe got a lot of criticism for hiring him in the first place. Lloyd didn’t like criticism. Not long after that he took early retirement—voluntarily. We knew he had kids, a couple of daughters, one in the Bay Area, the other in the Twin Cities, and a son back east, which is where Lloyd came from originally. He was hired, in fact, from the Boston Police Department, where he’d made a name for himself as a hard-nosed drug buster. He never talked about family much, being a private kind of guy. You met him a couple times, right?”

  Judith nodded. “At least. He was pleasant, if not exactly warm. I did my best to be friendly, but he seemed immune. I suspect the only person who knows much about his private life is Arlene. She’s relentless when it comes to eliciting information.”

  “Arlene.” Joe shook his head. “Incredible woman. I talked to Woody this morning. Once they had the doctors check out Foxe—or Volpe or Nut Job—he talked and talked. The current departmental investigation of misdeeds triggered flashbacks for him and he was fixated on the idea that his father’s career had been deliberately destroyed by some amateur.” The green eyes sparked. “Guess who?”

  Judith was stunned. “How did he find out about that old case with the bad cop?”

  Joe leaned back on the sofa. “It seems you have a fan site. Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “It’s stupid. I never look at it. They refer to me as FASTO and half the people who look at it think I’m called FATSO. It’s embarrassing.”

  “You should take a peek now and then,” Joe said. “You might also have told me about it. There are at least two dozen references to the bad-cop incident—just in the past six weeks. That’s what set Sidney off. He was sure you’d caused his father to leave the force. The guy’s psycho, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t clever. Now Woody and Chief Stuart have to give the bad news to Lloyd, who is blissfully basking in the sun on Kaanapali Beach in Hawaii.”

  “Oh, dear!” Judith tried not to feel guilty. “But what about Hannah? Has she been found?”

  Joe chuckled. “Yes. She was at the condo, waiting for Sidney.”

  “What?” Judith shrieked. “But it’s a crime scene!”

  “They took the tape down after my alleged arrest,” Joe said. “We’ve had it under surveillance ever since. She confessed. She’s as crazy as Sidney. Her biggest mistake was letting Sonya act like a caregiver. Sonya figured out that Hannah and Sidney had something going on there and confronted Zachary, who admitted he thought his wife was having an affair. Sonya was so disgusted with the whole bunch of Paines that she stomped off and never came back.”

  “Walter’s not so bad, I guess,” Judith remarked.

  “Walter? Oh—the government agent. Maybe not, but he apparently carries out his jolly-good-fellow act too far.”

  “You know about Walter?”

  “It’s not a state secret to other law enforcement officers. He’s been helping with the ARBS horsemeat violations. That whole family is screwed up. No love lost between the brothers Paine. Andy is going down. I’m guessing, but I figure he caused the so-called accident to Sidney at the food factory.” Joe leaned forward to pick up his coffee mug. “No doubt about it, some of those truck drivers who had ARBS on their route were taking bribes to tote dead horses to Andy and that dink from the parish who owns the plant. Yes, a few of our uniforms were turning a blind eye—or worse.”

  “ ‘Our’?”

  Joe’s ruddy complexion darkened as he lowered his gaze. “Okay, so I’ve spent the last few days playing cop. It’s a hard habit to break.”

  “You never will break it,” Judith said. “It’s your nature. How long did it take you to figure out you’d been set up?”

  Slowly, he raised his eyes to look at Judith. “I knew from the start, as soon as Zachary Conrad insisted on setting a trap with himself as bait so he could be a hero. It also gave him a chance to find evidence that his wife was having an affair at the condo.”

  “You mean there was never any insurance fraud?”

  Joe shook his head. “Only poor Sidney’s so-called accident. But it gave Chief Stuart a chance to try a sting operation, figuring that it might bring out one of the departmental bad apples or at least somebody from ARBS. Maybe offering a payoff to the supposed victim. SANECO was told about it on the q.t., which is how we got to use the houseboat as a surveillance site. Then Zachary muddied the waters by volunteering to replace Sidney. Chief Stuart liked that idea, just in case whoever contacted the supposed victim wouldn’t actually be incapacitated in case things got ugly. Zachary was a big, strong former athlete. Besides, the chief likes to keep the other city divisions happy. It just didn’t work out so well for the would-be hero.”

  Judith was flummoxed. “That’s . . . that’s infuriating! I was worried sick! What about the gun? Who stole it?”

  Joe winced. “Nobody. I had it all along. But it was the only way I could warn you that danger might be lurking somewhere. I knew my so-called arrest would send you into a sleuthing tizzy. I figured that if I sent you off on a false trail, you’d stay out of trouble. Or at least be on guard.” A faint smile played at his mouth. “After all, it’s your nature.”

  “Touché,” Judith muttered. “But why did you leave the safe open when there were still guns in there? Wasn’t that dangerous?”

  Joe looked puzzled. “I didn’t. I locked it, knowing you’d be able to figure out the combination, and even if you didn’t, you’d be on your guard.”

  Judith grimaced. “I think I understand. I’m not the only person
who can get into a safe without the combination. A crafty guest may have the same skills. She turned out to be an industrial spy and was probably trying to figure out what was going on with ARBS and the horses and the Paines coming for the auction event. But that’s up to the Department of the Interior to resolve.”

  Joe was looking flummoxed. “The Department of the—”

  “Skip it,” Judith urged. “It’s a long story and I’ll save it for another time. The main thing about the safe is that my search for the gun offered clues about those initials so that I realized Sidney Foxe was involved.”

  Joe frowned. “Huh?”

  “That slip of paper with ‘LA OR SF’ on it. Sidney Foxe or Larry Appel, the mayor.”

  Joe scratched his head. “I don’t know what you’re . . . oh!” He grinned at Judith. “That was a year ago when I was trying to figure out where we’d go on our vacation—Los Angeles, San Francisco, the Oregon Coast. Then I got the idea for the Scotland trip.”

  “Oooh . . .” Judith leaned her head against the back of the sofa. “I feel like an idiot!”

  “But you’re a live idiot,” Joe pointed out, getting up from the sofa. “How much do you hurt?”

  “I took some Excedrin,” Judith said as he hovered over her. “I . . .” She saw the magic gold flecks in his eyes. “I feel great.”

  Joe slipped his hand inside her sweater. “Yes, you do.”

  The grandfather clock struck two before Judith remembered that Gertrude hadn’t had lunch.

  Hey,” Renie said on the phone later that afternoon, “Bill and I just heard about what happened at your house last night. It was on the news, which we never listen to, but it came on after the ball game Bill was watching. I feel terrible. I should’ve kept talking to you on the phone or stayed with you.”

  “It all worked out,” Judith said. “Come for dinner. I’m making stew and dumplings as penance for Mother missing lunch.”

  “Oh. Bill likes stew and dumplings. Maybe we will. Speaking of dump,” Renie continued, “Bill dumped that client who was being stalked. I can tell you now who it was.”