She ran to the front room and pulled aside the curtain, peering out onto the street. I crowded in next to her.
The gray car was nowhere to be seen.
“I think it was paranoia on your part,” she said. “It looked like a perfectly normal guy in a normal car.”
“You think Russian assassins have big signs on the sides of their cars?” I demanded. “1-800-MURDERERS? Wekillem4u.com? Wouldn’t you try to be inconspicuous if you were going around knocking people off?”
She gave me a weary look. “Kerry, you’re coming unglued. I’ve been noticing it for a while, now—you’re putting yourself under too much pressure.”
I pretended to give it some thought.
“Well then how much pressure should I be putting myself under when people are being killed left and right? How many pounds per square inch? What exactly should my gauge be reading right now?”
“Right now I’d say you’re hovering around nuclear meltdown. Know what you need? You need to get laid.”
“I do not!”
“Yes, you do.”
“I’ve had lots of . . . laid in my life!”
She gave me a patronizing smile. “You don’t store it up like nuts for the winter. You need it on kind of a regular basis, you know, to function properly. You’re wound way too tight, sis.”
I nodded my head furiously. “Yeah. Yeah! Good thing I’m living with the world’s foremost expert on these matters! Good thing I’m sisters with Dr. Brothers!”
“I think you mean Dr. Ruth. She’s Dr. Brothers’ sex-crazed Mini-Me.”
“Whatever!”
“When was your last time?”
My teeth were grinding so hard I was seconds away from permanent lockjaw.
“That cop is kind of cute,” she said. “What was his name, Boatman?”
“His name was Boatwright. And he wasn’t cute, he was a schmuck.”
“I’d do him,” she said casually, looking at her cuticles.
“Don’t you go near him!”
She grinned, poking me in the sternum. “Gotcha!”
God I hated her!
“You like him,” she said. “Why don’t you call him up and ask for a date?”
“Why don’t we get dressed for the funeral?” I said.
I couldn’t even yell at her anymore. My energy was spent. I imagined it going down the drain of my overwrought psyche, disappearing in a languid, liquid spiral.
“We’ll pay our respects first,” I said. “Then I’ll think about getting laid.”
“Good girl!” she said, poking me again for good measure.
I kept an eye out for the gray sedan as we headed out to Lenore’s funeral, but thankfully it didn’t materialize. Either the driver was a murderer on a bathroom break or I’d been completely deluded about the whole thing. Gee, what were the chances?
When we pulled into the parking lot at Beverly Eternal Rest, it looked like an ecumenical foreign car dealership. Jaguars, Mercedes, Rolls Royces, Bentleys, and the occasional Duesenberg all sitting side by side. This was not your typical SUV crowd. Most of Lenore’s friends and associates were upward of sixty, and clambering in and out of utility vehicles would have been too taxing on their elderly hearts, not to mention a potential hip-breaker for those suffering from osteoporosis.
We stepped into the soothing blue interior of the building, and a somber-faced young woman handed us programs. The auditorium was full of folding chairs adorned with blue satin sashes, and hundreds of calla lilies rising from art deco vases. Sarah Bernhardt herself would have been pleased with the profusion of high-priced blooms. We looked out over a sea of heads—gray, blue, black, bottle blonde, melon orange. They wore pillbox hats with black netting, big sweeping forties-style hats with foot-wide brims, and jaunty black berets. There was even a miniature black cowboy hat perched on the head of a woman in her seventies.
The organ played “Where Thou Art, I Shall One Day Be, Sitting at Thy Right Hand, or Failing That, at Least Somewhere Nearby,” an old southern hymn. Actually I had no idea what it was playing. Our parents had never been too big on church attendance, and most religious songs sounded alike to me, especially when played at one-half time.
A grim man with squinty eyes approached us. “Are you fahm-i-lee?” he intoned lugubriously. The funeral home could have done a better job with their homework, I thought cynically. Lenore had no family to speak of.
But it was obvious Reba had gone to a lot of trouble for this memorial and I knew she had cared deeply for Lenore at one time. It would be too depressing for those reserved rows in the front to go unused, so I nodded my head and he led us up to the first row.
Well, maybe the first row was overdoing it. I pointed to the second row, hoping he would think we were second cousins or something, not actual offspring. He nodded, pulling aside a blue velvet rope to let us enter. We shuffled down a couple of spaces and sat down. He put the rope back in place, and I actually had the thought, Hey, what if there’s a fire? You’re blocking my egress!
Terry was right. I was wound way too tight. My fear was getting the better of my rational processes, and I had to get it under control. I might even consider going on a date, even though I’d only promised to call Boatwright because she’d bullied me into it. I had no actual designs on the man—
No sooner had that thought crossed my mind than he appeared at the side of the row.
Oh my God.
He was clean-shaven, his hair combed back with just a touch of gel to give it a slightly tousled look. With his hair off his forehead, I could better appreciate his thick eyebrows with their perfect proportions. His nose looked stronger and more prominent, curving down just a bit at the end as if pointing to the full lips below. The hollows under his cheekbones made him look kind of dangerous.
Until he smiled.
The grin sent his whole face into motion, giving him a charmingly goofy look. All that stoniness crumbling into laugh lines radiating from his eyes and surrounding his mouth.
And the eyes. Usually I wasn’t big on blue, but these weren’t the milky kind, or the scary ice-blue kind that you see in huskies and some human beings. They were clear with a navy circle around the edges, patches of lighter blues mixed up inside.
Take me, I thought. Right here between the rows. To the strains of “Amazing Grace” . . .
What?
I’d made a complete ass out of myself in front of this man the night before and he’d helped me do it. What was wrong with me? He probably thought I was a complete idiot, and I wasn’t sure I liked him at all!
But my hand disassociated itself from the rest of my body, lifting up on its own power as if under hypnosis. I watched in detached amazement as it reached over and lifted the blue rope to invite him to sit with us, the fahm-i-lee.
Who could be using my hand? This was pure science fiction! It was Stephen King! The Hand that Reached Out and Grabbed the Hunky Cop and Forced Me into Unspeakably Lascivious Acts of Perversion Against My Will, coming soon to a peep show near you!
Dontsitnexttome, dontsitnexttome, dontsitnexttome, I chanted mentally. Keep on going, sit on the other side of Terry. I was already starting to sweat.
So what did he do?
He sat next to me. His leg touching my leg, his shoulder brushing mine.
I choked, turning it into a dainty little cough, and used this clever ruse to move an inch to the left.
Ah, no more touching. I let my breath out in a silent, controlled stream.
Donttalktome, donttalktome, donttalktome, I beamed to him. But the moron wasn’t picking up my signals.
“How you doing?” he said.
“Fine,” I croaked, and felt Terry dissolve into giggles next to me. She was picking up my signals and loving my discomfort. Perverse bitch. Evil twin. Betrayer of your own flesh and blood.
She leaned over, digging her elbow into my ribs. “How are you, Detective Boatwright?”
He held his palms up in a so-so gesture, then smiled adorably.
Oh quit with the smiling already!
I turned and locked my attention on the dais, noticing for the first time that it was covered in something white and fluffy. Cotton, by the looks of it. Lots and lots of cotton on the top of the stage and bunched around the sides. Then I noticed the absence of a lectern.
Strange.
The organ music stopped, and with it the hushed whispering of the crowd—the silence commanding the mourners’ attention. Throats were cleared and butts were adjusted in seats, as everyone faced front in anticipation of the preacher’s appearance.
But no one came. The silence became oppressive. I had a momentary panic, thinking Reba had forgotten to book a clergyman, or he was lost, or he couldn’t find a parking space in the jammed lot—
Come to think of it, where was Reba?
The lights dimmed. The lights dimmed? Were we in a theater?
Then a beautiful, clear voice rang out from the back of the auditorium. A full-bodied alto-soprano without accompaniment, but with great feeling:
“Did you ever know that you’re my hero . . . ?”
Oh dear God in heaven—what was this?
I heard the other mourners turn in their seats to look at the singer, but I couldn’t. I was afraid of what I would see. I heard her take a deep breath, then she belted out the next line:
“You’re everything I wish-sh-sh-sh I could be . . .”
She really hung on the word “wish.”
Her voice was getting closer. I stared forward, now completely overwhelmed by the fear of losing it in the middle of a funeral. Terry was on one side of me and I could feel her trembling with incipient laughter. Boatwright was on the other side, making me cringe with sexual discomfort. I’d be prime for exploding, if only to get release from the combined tension.
This was not fair, not fair at all! I was under altogether too much pressure. Would I crack? Would I spontaneously combust, singeing the blue satin sash on my chair and rising like a smoke ring above the crowd?
I guess it depended on what came next. The song was vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t yet place it.
“I could fly higher than an eagle . . .”
And then the organ kicked in, blaring on all its pipes, with a rockin’ drumbeat to underscore the signature line.
“For you are the wind beneath my wings!”
Oh no—I recognized it now! The theme song from Beaches, a Bette Midler movie about two women who were best friends, and the schmaltz anthem for middle-aged women and gay men the world over. A real tearjerker.
Well, I was about to burst into tears, all right.
Girls in white gowns emerged from the sides of the room, golden halos gracing their heads, white cotton wings fluttering from their backs. A candle-bearing choir, they moved quickly but gracefully to their places on the stage, while the lead singer made her way down the aisle at a clip.
I had to look at her as she passed.
She was a well-preserved sixty, with a huge bosom and a massive double chin, and I thought that if I were a little more cultured I would probably recognize her as an international opera star. She wore a headset microphone, her voice slamming against the walls and bouncing back to our eardrums with a decibel level just this side of Metallica.
Then the wind kicked up. Actual wind, coming from loud, whirring machines. And thousands of blue satin ribbons fluttered into existence out of nowhere, all over the room.
I was going to lose it, I thought. Right here, right now.
Terry took pity on me and got up from her chair, moving further down the row to avoid adding her psychic vibrations to my already dangerously high level of horrified amusement.
The opera star bellowed the next stanza from the stage, then she waved into the audience and shouted, “Everybody!”
And sure enough, all the mourners chimed in on cue, some of them sniffling and tone deaf, but all willing to give it a try. They hooked their arms and swayed with the music, which had truly reached an historic level of loudness and badness. More than a few hearing aids had been left at home as unfashionable accessories, that much was obvious.
They warbled about beautiful faces hiding the pain, swore that they would be nothing without you, achingly sang about love hidden away in their hearts . . .
I still didn’t know who was using my hand, but it reached out and grabbed Boatwright’s. I laced my fingers into his, clenching in agony as a woman in labor does the hand of the guilty man. Or father, as they’re sometimes known.
Then there was a cranking noise, audible even beneath the singing, and a bit of gold appeared beneath the blue velvet curtain hanging above the stage. Down came a gold-framed portrait, slowly and with great dignity. It was an oil painting done in the 1950s, to judge by the hairdo of a very young, smiling Lenore Richling.
She looked like Jackie Kennedy. Dark hair in a smart bob, bright red lips, and grease-pencil eyebrows. She leaned on a Corinthian pedestal strewn with grape leaves, surrounded by yards of emerald-green satin—the folds of her off-the-shoulder evening gown—and she wore a sparkling emerald necklace with matching earrings. The painting was enormous, at least eight feet tall, a pathetic monument to Lenore’s past glory, her lost youth, her hocked jewels, and the dissolution of her physical body.
The giggles left me and I felt a sudden surge of compassion for the woman who’d been so desperate to maintain her standard of living that she’d stooped to selling off her own treasures and possibly to blackmailing others for theirs. The woman who’d fallen so far and met an ignominious end, one-eared and utterly alone.
The painting stopped its descent and hung suspended halfway to the floor.
Then through a trick of mechanics that I would have thought beyond Reba’s imagination, and certainly beyond her ability to orchestrate, two large feathered wings popped out from behind the painting and began to flap up and down in synchronization with the song’s refrain.
“Thank you, thank you,
Thank God for you, the wind . . .
Beneath . . .
M-Y-Y-Y-Y-Y . . .
W-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-N-N-N-N-N-N-G-G-G-G-S!”
The audience jumped to their feet and applauded as if it were the climax of an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical, which it very nearly was. I found myself wondering if Reba actually knew Lord Andrew Lloyd or Lord Webber or whoever—I wouldn’t put it past her to have such a big name pal in the wings—and I swear to God the moment the word “wings” had formed in my head, those on the back of the portrait sprang out of their moorings. The choir and the opera singer screamed and ran in circles, dodging the enormous bird appendages that plummeted to the stage.
Then the painting shifted, to the sound of wires creaking, and before you could say crash landing, the cable on the right side of the portrait snapped and it hitched to the left, swooshing down and clunking the opera singer on the head.
She teetered for a moment, then put her hand to her breast and collapsed to the ground with a long, melodic “Uhoooohhh,” and lay in a heap on the stage.
Very Wagnerian.
An appropriate ending, really.
The audience obviously agreed, because they started shouting Bravo! and Encore! and Diva! and the applause went on for what seemed like hours.
Eventually I realized that I wasn’t applauding, and neither was Boatwright. He couldn’t because his hand was between my teeth. At some point during the whole Nightmare on Broadway funeral production I had put the heel of his hand in my mouth and bitten down hard on it to avoid screaming.
I looked at him and smiled around his hand.
“Can I have it back now?” he asked.
I pried open my teeth, and he extracted his hand, wiping it on the side of his coat.
“Thanks,” he said. And smiled in a way that made my heart go thump, even over the roar of the crowd.
You see, Lenore and Reba truly had been best friends at one time. I don’t know who was the wind and who was the wings, but I thought it best not to be too literal about the whole thing. Either way, i
t was the sentiment that counted.
I thought about the possibility of having a lifelong friendship with a woman who wasn’t my twin, and realized it would never happen. I’d had good friends, of course, I had some of them still. But that Girlfriends4Ever kind of giggly, nail-painting, talking about boys and trying on each other’s bras kind of friendship that blossoms into mature woman-of-the-world friendship, that would elude me in this lifetime. Terry had never been into giggling and boys, and once when I’d made the mistake of borrowing her training bra at the age of twelve, she’d wrapped it around my neck and swung me around the room like a lassoed calf until I cried.
Terry simply took up too much space in my life. There was no room for a best girlfriend. And I guess I’d have to accept that there’d be no one for whom I’d be throwing an extravaganza of a funeral, like Reba just had. Terry and I would probably go within seconds of each other anyway, bickering our astral heads off even as they lowered us into the ground.
I covertly scanned the reception room looking for Boatwright. I’d lost him in the confusion following the opera singer’s accident—the crowd surging toward the stage, the arrival of the ambulance and paramedics. They thought the singer had only suffered a mild concussion, but she’d been carted off to the hospital anyway as a precaution. Happily, nothing stopped the Grim Reaper from his appointed rounds, so the funeral reception had gone on as scheduled after the famous woman had been spirited away. Her name still escapes me, but I learned she had recently sung the role of Romeo in the LA Opera’s production of Romeo and Juliet. Gender, age, and breast-size being irrelevant, apparently, in that fine art of yesteryear.
I was contemplating pouring myself a cup of punch when Boatwright walked up with two glasses of white wine.
“Ah, I had been thinking of punch,” I said, taking the wine.
“Nah, after a performance like that, we have to toast.”
I smiled and held up my glass. “To Lenore. May she have passed to the other side before she saw her send-off.” We clinked.
The Butcher of Beverly Hills Page 23