Ill-Gotten Panes

by Jennifer McAndrews

  Nice for who? I suppressed a shudder. Catching up implied sharing with another human being—for all intents and purposes a stranger—the downward spiral my life had been on for the past half a year. I didn’t like to think about it on my own, much less share it with someone. “I might do that,” I told Grace.

  She gave a firm nod, as though the matter was settled. “You let me know when you’re ready to order.”

  She retreated to the far end of the counter—which wasn’t very far, comparatively—and shimmied up onto a stool. Lifting a newspaper from the counter and withdrawing a pencil from behind her ear, she bent her head over the paper and moved her lips as she read. My money was on the crossword puzzle.

  I gave the menu a cursory glance; none of the options jumped out and made my stomach growl. I still wanted that blueberry muffin. And still wondered why Rozelle had all but thrown me out of her store. I gave a split-second’s consideration to asking Grace what would make Rozelle toss a customer out on her ass. Fortunately for all parties, the chime of my cell phone put an end to that idea.

  The response to my inquiring “Hello?” was Carrie’s barely restrained laughter. “You would rather sit around the luncheonette while Tom Harris comes in and out of coherence than come share a cup of coffee with me?”

  I recalled the coffeemaker stashed in the back room of Aggie’s Antiques. “That coffeemaker actually works?”

  Her laughter escaped. “Unfortunately, no. Bring me a cup.”

  “And I would do this because . . .”

  “Because I’m rescuing you, you just don’t realize it yet.”

  “I don’t—”

  “Five-letter word for gravy,” Grace said.

  “Heinz,” Tom shouted.

  “Heinz isn’t gravy.”

  “They don’t make Heinz anymore?”

  “They make Heinz,” Grace snapped. “But not gravy.”

  I clutched the phone a little tighter. “How do you take your coffee?”

  9

  “Are you sure you didn’t hear anything the night Andy Edgers was killed?” Sitting behind the cash wrap counter at Aggie’s, I stared at the wall the antiques shop shared with the hardware store.

  “For the thousandth time, no.”

  “Are you sure?”

  Carrie glared at me from beneath lowered brows. “The wall you’re leaning against? I share it with the pharmacy, and they’re open right now. Can you hear anything?”

  I gave the old listening harder a shot—stilled my breathing, turned my head, leaned closer to the wall.

  Nothing.

  “That’s just crazy,” I grumbled.

  “That’s brick,” Carrie said.

  “Wenwood brick?”

  I’m pretty sure her nostrils flared. “Of course Wenwood brick. What kind of question is that?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t quite understand the boundless devotion to Wenwood brick. Like, take the police station. Their steps are in serious need of repair, serious need. But—”

  “But they won’t mix Wenwood brick with imported brick.” Carrie nodded. “They’ll stick with those steps until they have no choice and then they’ll put in a concrete walk.” Her shoulders sagged as the breath went out of her.

  “I just don’t see . . .”

  She gave me a sad little smile. “You haven’t lived here your whole life. It won’t make sense to you.”

  “I’ve lived here enough.”

  “But on and off, right? At least, that’s what Pete said.”

  “I suppose I would feel differently if I were truly a resident.”

  Carrie froze. “What do you mean if? You’re a resident. Pete said . . .”

  “Pete said what? That I was here to stay?”

  While Carrie nodded, I struggled to determine what to do with that concept. Grandy knew I wasn’t staying permanently. He knew I planned to stick around Wenwood only as long as it took for me to get my life back on track. We’d talked about just that plan.

  Well, I talked. Grandy listened. Agreed. Said all the supportive words.

  But did he believe it?

  Moreover, did I?

  I shook the wayward thoughts from my mind. “However it turns out,” I said, “I didn’t grow up in Wenwood. A few months out of a few school years clearly weren’t enough to bind me heart and soul to Wenwood brick. It’s going to be harder for me to understand.”

  Carrie busied herself straightening pens in a cup beside the register, tidying the little display of business cards for customers to take. “I suppose I could understand that.”

  “Thanks.” I swirled the last dregs of coffee in the bottom of my cup. Hometown pride. That was something I lacked. As a kid I’d moved so much with my mother, passed from stepfather to stepfather, town to town, that I didn’t really feel tied enough to one place to fight for the preservation of its legacy.

  “By the way,” Carrie said, casual as you please. “What do you have planned for tonight? Anything?”

  Aside from trailing along to the dine-in if Grandy went, checking the Internet for leads on a job, and perhaps cleaning out the garage in search of a caulking gun, I was without appealing plans. “Not a thing,” I said on a sigh. “My Friday nights aren’t exactly action-packed these days.”

  Carrie smiled, the corners of her mouth lifting to highlight the hopeful glint in her eye. “Come with me to the wake?”

  “I’m sor—the what?”

  “The wake. For Andy. It’s tonight and I seriously don’t want to have to walk in there by myself.”

  Okay, this was getting a little weird. Did this woman not have any friends? Surely there was someone else in her life more suitable for keeping her company at a wake.

  “Look,” she said, sinking her weight against the counter, “here’s the thing. I got divorced. Almost five months ago.”

  “And your ex is going to be there?”

  Her eyes slipped closed as she nodded. “And basically when we divided things in the settlement, I got the house and he got the friends. I have to go to this wake. I mean . . .” She gestured to the wall her store shared with Andy Edgers’s. “I just really don’t want to go alone.”

  Had she needed to come up with a sob story to get me to agree, she couldn’t have come up with anything more likely to make me cave. That she explained her situation with the same shame-and-guilt-tinged tone I heard in my own speech all too often guaranteed my agreement.

  I had no particular hesitation about attending the wake. Andy Edgers maybe hadn’t been too fond of me, seeing as I was a member of the Keene family and all, but no one would fault me for turning up to pay my respects.

  The biggest impediment was, of course, Grandy, and the booming displeasure he let loose when I made the mistake of telling him why I wasn’t going with him to the dine-in.

  I started by trying to simply dodge the question. “Just out,” I said. “Nowhere special.”

  “If you’re not going anywhere special,” Grandy said, leaning against the jamb of the open bathroom door, “why are you using that thing to squeeze every curl out of your hair?”

  “It’s called a flatiron.” And an expensive one, too. For what it had cost, the iron should have straightened my hair with less effort than I needed to apply polish to my nails.

  Grandy narrowed his eyes. “Have you got a date?”

  “Hanging out with Carrie is not a date, I promise.” I relaxed my grip on the flatiron, releasing a hank of hair that should have been pin straight and glossy. It was squiggly, with a dull sheen.

  “Has that horse’s ass you blessedly didn’t marry finally turned up to apologize? You’re not planning to see him, are you?”

  I lifted a lock of hair away from my head and clamped it between the plates of the hot iron. “I’m not seeing him. Where do you get these ideas?”

  “Then w
here are you going? There’s no need to get all fancied up just for a couple of beers at the Pour House.”

  “Geez, Grandy, I’m going to Andy Edgers’s wake, okay?”

  The breath he sucked in through his teeth helped him to stand taller, broader, scarier. “Andy Edgers’s wake?”

  “See? This is why I didn’t want to tell you.”

  “Why in heaven’s name would you do such a thing?”

  “I should have closed the door,” I muttered.

  “You know I didn’t get on with Andy.”

  “Yeah, I do know that, but I don’t know why.”

  “And the police have questioned me about his murder.”

  “Yeah, I remember.”

  “I bet half the town thinks I did it.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Grandy.” I selected a new lock of hair to squeeze the life out of. “No one thinks you killed Andy.”

  “Then why . . .”

  He said no more, letting the silence grow until I turned to him. “Why what?” I asked.

  He cleared his throat, shuffled his feet. “I could really use your help at the theater,” he said. “I’ve got to get the payroll done and my head’s not in it. Thought you might lend a hand.”

  I took a breath. Setting the flatiron down on the edge of the sink, I turned my full attention to Grandy. “I’ll go tomorrow in the morning to do your payroll, okay?”

  “That’s not all—”

  “I know.” I reached and wrapped my hand around his forearm. “I know you’d rather I don’t go tonight, but I promised Carrie. She helped me out. I need to return the favor. Besides, paying my respects is the right thing to do. Isn’t that how these small towns work?”

  He grumbled a bit but rested his hand atop mine. “Fine. Go this evening. Just remember, there’s two sides to every story.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  He merely tapped a finger against the side of his nose and strode away down the hall.

  Possessed of a college education and the common sense God gave to all beings not composed of Styrofoam, I understood the meaning behind the phrase two sides to every story. What puzzled me was why Grandy had felt the need to share that wisdom with me—and what he was hiding that had prompted his reminder.

  His words settled in the back of my mind. There the puzzle stayed, beyond Carrie’s picking me up, beyond the drive out of the neighborhood and out to the highway. We’d taken the turn south and zoomed up to highway speed by the time the curiosity morphed into the conviction that attending the wake was a less-than-brilliant plan. If I’d been driving, I could have hit the brakes and reversed direction and decision and gone home. Of course, Carrie was driving.

  “Thank you so, so, so much for coming with me,” she said for the bazillionth time.

  I was running out of responses. No problem was sounding flippant, and my pleasure was downright untrue. I settled for, “It’s the least I can do.”

  She nodded, more, I supposed, as a means of creating a suitable break in the conversation than as a sign of agreement. “Any news from the police?”

  “Not that I know of. Why would they . . .”

  “Oh, I don’t know, just thought maybe . . .”

  “They haven’t stopped by to arrest Grandy if that’s what you’re wondering.” I flipped down the visor and peeked at my reflection in the mirror. What was that crease running down the center of my forehead?

  She shot a glance my way. “That’s not what I meant at all. I was hoping maybe they had called to say they were no longer considering Pete a suspect.”

  “I’m sorry.” Folding the visor up, I put my fingertips to my forehead and rubbed at the tension gathering there. “I’m a little preoccupied.”

  I kept my thoughts to myself as we were passed on the highway by a tractor trailer, a minivan, and a Japanese-made compact car that rolled out of the last century. Maybe it was the last one, the reminder of things from another time that pushed the thoughts free.

  “I’m just trying to figure out something Grandy said to me.” I turned toward her; she kept her gaze focused on the road. “He said there’s two sides to every story, and I should keep that in mind. I can’t figure out what he meant.”

  “I think it’s pretty self-explanatory. It’s just good advice, isn’t it? One of those pieces of life wisdom the older generations get such a thrill out of sharing?”

  “Maybe,” I said, “but I think that’s the less likely explanation.”

  Steering the car smoothly onto the ramp to the access road, Carrie asked, “You think he was talking about something specific?”

  “I do.” I opened my mouth to elaborate, to explain my concern that Grandy’s comment related to the mysterious something dividing him and Andy Edgers, but thought better of it. If Grandy didn’t want to talk to me about whatever had transpired between him and Andy, it certainly wasn’t something he’d welcome me discussing with Carrie.

  “Or maybe I don’t.” I shook my head, forced a dry laugh. “I don’t know what to think anymore.” I gazed out the window at the passing neighborhood—houses larger than those in Wenwood, lawns manicured to magazine-spread standards, no car older than two years occupying flagstone driveways.

  In an earlier time, a little blue house at the corner of the main road served as Wenwood’s funeral parlor. Now the space was home to the Pour House, and Wenwood’s dearly departed were laid out at an elegant, sprawling homage to Margaret Mitchell’s iconic creation, Twelve Oaks. Only this one was the Palmer Funeral Home.

  “Now remember,” Carrie said as we circled to the back of the estate to find a vacant parking spot, “when you see Russ, pretend we don’t see him.”

  “You know that sounds illogical, right?”

  “Just give him the cold shoulder treatment,” she continued.

  With the car parked and the engine switched off, Carrie crawled out of the car with the speed of someone who had been superglued to their seat. “Let’s get this over with.”

  “I don’t know what you’re worried about.” I tugged my skirt away from where it had adhered to the backs of my legs on the car ride over. “You probably won’t even see Russ.”

  Carrie shot me an incredulous look.

  “What?” I asked. Would she be unable to resist looking for him? Did she expect him to seek her out? Why the disbelief?

  But she only shook her head as we drew level with a family of mourners, none of whom looked familiar. As a group we entered the funeral parlor, silent aside from the occasional hiss of a whisper.

  The last wake I had attended was for a coworker, a well-liked administrative assistant who had suffered an aneurism on a train platform—the sort of freak tragedy that made everyone realize how tenuous life truly is. Her viewing was standing room only. When my grandmother had passed, she’d been laid out at the tiny old Wenwood parlor, and the mourners had spilled onto the street. With these sorts of indelible memories, I supposed it was only natural that once inside the Palmer, I migrated toward the most crowded room and joined the end of the line of waiting mourners.

  Carrie set a gentle hand on my elbow. “I think Andy’s in the next one.”

  Of course she was right. The person whose line I was waiting on turned out to be someone whose name featured a lot of M’s and W’s and was most likely female. Andy’s parlor was at the end of the hallway running the length of the mansion. The farther along the hallway we walked, the quieter the space became until I could have sworn I heard the crunch of the foot pad in my shoe.

  “Ten minutes,” Carrie whispered. “We’re in and we’re out.”

  I gave her a thumbs-up and followed her into the room.

  The absence of a crowd gave me a new understanding of Carrie’s concern over seeing Russ, and gave me new regret over Andy Edgers’s passing. There seemed so few to remember him.

  We were h
alf an hour into viewing hours already and still several rows of seats remained empty. The few occupied chairs were taken by folks whose faces I’d begun to recognize as Wenwood locals. Grace from the luncheonette sat chatting quietly with Rozelle, her hand on Rozelle’s shoulder as though comforting her. One of the clerks from the pharmacy kept her head bent over her rosary. And at the far side of the room, hands in pockets as he studied one of the bereavement bouquets, stood Tony Himmel.

  “Thank God.” Carrie seemed to shrink six inches all around as the tension left her. “I don’t see Russ.”

  It was my turn to speak, but my gaze and my thoughts were focused on Himmel. I should have been wondering why he was present. Instead I wondered where he got his suits. Were they store-bought and well-tailored? Or custom-made? What kind of fabric was it that hung so well?

  A motion to my left brought me back from my study of Himmel’s silhouette. A gentleman approaching, balding head lowered, hand extended. “Thank you for coming,” he said.

  I did my best to elbow Carrie forward without being too obvious. She reached to take the man’s hand. “Carrie Stanford,” she said. “I have the store next to Andy’s.”

  “My dad’s spoken of you.” The gentleman turned to me, again with his hand out.

  “Georgia. Kelly,” I added. I watched his eyes for a reaction, some narrowing or widening that might indicate he knew Grandy, or had knowledge of whatever had transpired between our ancestors.

  But my name clearly sparked no interest in him. He turned back to Carrie with attention brightening his eyes. “You’re next door to the hardware store?”

  “Aggie’s Antiques,” Carrie said.

  With that information, poor Carrie was stuck answering again all the questions I’d asked her about whether or not she’d heard anything the night Andy was killed.

  Rather than standing beside them like a silent interloper, I slipped away and walked sedately to the closed casket at the front of the room.

  Calling on dim memories of childhood, I made the sign of the cross and knelt on the prayer stool. Religion—much to Grandy’s frustration—had been a haphazard affair, and the prayers I may once have known were no longer in my memory. In my mind I put together a makeshift prayer—an entreaty to God to keep Andy close in heaven, and to bless with peace those he left behind.