The funeral service, straight from Marketing, was a variety show featuring ten minutes each of Patti LaBelle, comedian Ron White, the Reverend Oswaldo Starkey, and Engelbert Humperdinck. None took the stage; they performed in front of it, either to the left or right, of the empty microphone stand. The Reverend’s ten minutes were titled, “All Emcees Go to Heaven”.
I spoke last.
The sound of my red-heeled footfall onto Matthew Thatcher’s stage echoed off the darkened forty-foot ceiling. I stood in the spotlight. I reached for the microphone with heartache, just like Marketing told me (Bianca) to. I examined it wistfully, just like Marketing told me (Bianca) to. I licked it. (I did NOT!) I did, however, hold it at a forty-five-degree angle two inches from my mouth. (Just like marketing…) I waited until you could have heard a gnat whisper.
“Matthew. Thatcher. Loved. The. Bellissimo.” I took a minute to get a hold of myself, just like marketing told me (Bianca) to. “The. Bellissimo. Loved. Him. Back.”
Thunderous, deafening, prolonged applause.
On cue (from Marketing), I waved chocolate diamonds around to quiet things down.
“For the next fifteen minutes,” I scanned the crowd to my right, “in honor of Matthew Thatcher,” I scanned the crowd to my left, “all slot play is free!”
In perfect symphony, the house lights came up, Phil Collins’ “You’ll Be in My Heart” blasted from a thousand speakers, balloons and confetti dropped from the ceiling, and the slot machines reset in unison, creating an opus of bells and whistles.
Baylor rushed me out the back way and into a waiting dark blue van. In white block letters across the side of the van were the words LEE COUNTY CORONER. We still hadn’t heard from Bea Crawford, and the only thing we could come up with was to kill her, then haul her out on a gurney. (Kidding. They don’t make Bea-sized gurneys.)
“Good God, Davis!” Fantasy was waiting in the van. “Who dressed you?”
“Take a wild guess.”
She passed me my phone, a fistful of identification on a chain, and a dark blue coroner’s jumpsuit. “Change clothes,” she said. “You’re hurting my eyes.”
I checked my phone—no calls—and began slinging chocolate diamonds. “Anything show up on the feed?” I sent the hat flying to the back of the van.
“Nope,” Fantasy said. “No Jewell Maffini, no Preacher Beecher, no Peyton Beecher.”
I peeled off the red dress and began climbing into the morgue jumpsuit.
“How are you doing, Davis?”
I stopped mid-jumpsuit. “I’ll be fine, Fantasy.”
“You’re going to need to deal with it at some point, you know.”
“I will.” I zipped. “Just not now.”
We tore out of there, Baylor at the wheel, just in front of the hearse.
TWENTY-TWO
We found Baylor’s special gift; he could flirt.
Our mortuary credentials got us past the front, middle, and rear checkpoints of So Help Me God’s Senior Living Center—it didn’t hurt that it was midnight-thirty; the guards barely looked up from their porn/pizza/paperbacks—but Hazardous Shipping and Receiving, the loading dock behind the Therapy Services building where the cadavers were picked up, had iron gates.
The guard—stick thin, goateed, with a nametag that read “Dannee”—practically climbed in the driver window to drawl, “Well, hey there, Cowboy,” at Baylor. Who froze. Solid.
Fantasy leaned up and whispered in his ear. “You got this, Baylor.”
Baylor saddled up and lassoed us right through those iron gates, and he will forever be known to us, from that moment on, as Cowboy. He was coming in handy in all sorts of ways. First of all, he was a good Bianca babysitter. Enough said. In addition, he looked like an action-hero movie star, and we liked having a driver. He was in his mid-twenties, so we felt comfortable bossing him around. (“I said no cheese, not extra cheese. Run back in there.”)
Earlier, about mid-Alabama, he asked if he would get a gun. “No!” Fantasy and I said together. And not another peep out of him for twenty miles.
We made it through Therapy (straight up Stephen King material), and through residential (padlocks on the outside of every resident door), without much incident. In fact, Fantasy was the only incident during the first half of Break Bea Out. She was zipped in the body bag, riding on the gurney, and complained about the odor, lack of oxygen, and our gurney driving the whole time.
“Hush, Fantasy. You’re supposed to be dead.”
To which she replied, “This thing has no padding. My bones are bruising.”
Finally, we reached the Orientation Suites (think Ritz), where we hoped to find Bea.
Hope was the wrong word, we had to find Bea.
There were at least a dozen closed doors. We were at one end of the hall between guest rooms Andrew and Bartholomew.
“Cowboy,” I whispered, “we’ll find Bea. You go run interference.” He sallied off to the nurse’s station.
We found her in James the Lesser, four doors down.
“You can’t stay here, Bea.”
“Why not?”
“Because you have a family,” I said. “And a home. And you’re not really Leona Powell. When they figure that out, you need to be long gone.”
“They’re so nice.” She made no move to get out of the four-poster bed. “The food is so good.” She hugged a pillow and pulled a comforter up to her chins. “This has been the best vacation of my whole life.”
Fantasy was on guard at the window, peeking between the plantation shutters. “Vacation’s over, Bea.”
I was on guard at the door. I could see Cowboy at the nurse’s station wooing a nurse. Seriously, he was about to get lucky with a ponytail girl wearing a stethoscope.
“Get up, Bea.” I stuffed her things into her bag (Tilda Reyes, school-bus yellow and apple green paisley). “It was hell getting in here—”
“Hell for who?” Fantasy asked. “You?”
“—and it won’t be easy to get out,” I told Bea. “Come on.”
One of those little designer pet pigs fell out of the bed and onto the floor. Then its twin sister. Upon closer inspection, those were Bea’s feet.
“Fudge,” she said.
We couldn’t begin to get her in the body bag, so we unzipped it and tucked it over her, like a tarp, that mouth of hers going ninety-to-nothing the whole time. “Bea.” I poked in the general vicinity of her larynx. “You’re dead. Shut up and act like it.” We banged into every wall. “Cowboy, give that girl her stethoscope back and let’s get going.”
He caught up with us and slapped a thick file folder on dead Bea.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“Somebody cut me a air hole!” (Bea.) “I’m gonna pass out!”
“Suit yourself, Bea.” (Me. Spoken through my teeth.) “But do it quietly.”
“The Leona Powell paperwork.” (Cowboy.) “Swiped it off that girl’s desk.”
See? Handy Cowboy.
We made it to the service elevator just as two nurses thumped around a linoleum corner. “Go, go, go!” We shoved Bea in the elevator and I poked the escape button several hundred times.
“Some days.” Fantasy was pinned to the back wall of a service elevator by the gurney full of thrashing Bea. “I want to go back to prison.”
“You were in prison?” Cowboy was impressed.
“Davis is the one who was in prison!” Thrash thrash. “She’s the jailbird.” Thrash. “And you’ll be right back there when I die in this bag, Davis.”
“Do we have a tranquilizer gun?” I asked.
* * *
My niece Riley was born on a noisy Tuesday, both she and her mother wailing their little lungs out, just in time to attend my swearing-in ceremony two weeks later on the afternoon of her
baptism. It was an emotional day for my family, with both Meredith and me dedicating our lives to something other than our own happiness. I remember Meredith looking like someone had beaten the stew out of her, lots of barbecue, and feeling thrilled and terrified at the same time. I couldn’t have known it then, but Bradley Cole was three states away taking the road less traveled too, as he took an oath to support, protect, and defend the Constitution.
Police officers and attorneys are a dime a dozen, but as it turned out, Bradley really meant what he’d sworn that day, as did I. Before we even met, our lives were ones of commitment, with a side of service to our fellow man. (And both marched our righteous ethical butts to casinos. Go figure.)
As a result, we went into our relationship eyes-wide-open about the fact that the other didn’t punch a clock, get summers off, or leave it for Monday. We had careers that required us to run into the fire and stay until it was out. It was who we were and what we’d signed up for.
We’d shared one Christmas. We spent it in Biloxi, at home, just us. (My mother was so pissed.) In the middle of our Christmas Eve celebration that included our first tossing around of the L Word, clothing, and wrapping paper, his phone rang. It was only one of many times his work interrupted our lives, matched only by how often mine did the same. We parted with a kiss, a hug, and I promised I wouldn’t peek at the big gift under the tree until he returned. Which was New Year’s Eve.
On our six-month anniversary, we got up early and drove to New Orleans for the world’s best gumbo roux, then spent the rest of the day in our kitchen over a simmering pot, laughing and crying (him over onions, me telling him the story of how my life had changed when I was sixteen), only for my phone to ring two minutes after we sat down to eat. He told me he loved me and to be careful as he wrapped my gumbo for later. I didn’t make it home for three days. By then the gumbo was long gone and so was he, to Vegas, but the diamond and sapphire anniversary earrings (monsters!) were on the kitchen counter with a note: Bradley loves Davis.
We knew how hot the other’s fire could get.
I knew what was keeping Bradley up at night. Was the Grand Palace negligent in regard to employee health and safety? If Bradley believed his employer was guilty, yet had to do his job to protect the huge corporation’s assets anyway, he was ripped in two, and I knew it. So I’ll give him that; he’s in the fire. It’s the man he is, and it’s what he signed up for.
I was in the fire too. I’d get three, maybe four hours of sleep before I’d be Double Dipping it. We didn’t have a clue who’d spiked the banana pudding, or why. Matthew Thatcher was dead. Peyton was out there somewhere. Then there was Alabama, the Heart of Dixie, my home, being taken for a ride, and the biggest inferno of them all, what I couldn’t/wouldn’t turn my back on, the elderly were being preyed upon. By a church. I had a job to do. It’s who I am, and it’s what I signed up for.
This was the first time Bradley Cole and I had been in the fire at the same time, and on the dark, cool drive from Beehive to Pine Apple—Fantasy and Bea fast asleep, Cowboy at the wheel staring into the night probably thinking about Stethoscope—I admitted to myself that we’d failed the test, and I contemplated, heart breaking, that we may go our separate ways from here. I don’t love Bradley one spec less, but it became clear to me that we could only accommodate the other’s obligations as long as they didn’t get in the way of our own.
Two fires in one house at the same time may have burned it down.
I should have told him I was pregnant the morning I knew. Which was many, many, mornings ago.
Bradley should have had more faith in me than to believe I’d put what we have on the line for a man I never loved, and never would.
I don’t think Bradley had any way of knowing I’d miscarried; I’d been locked up, family only. But he had to have at least suspected it might be me in the hospital. The news had Bianca hospitalized after a meal at Violettes. No way, no way in hell, he could have missed it, even from Vegas. But not acknowledging my email, when we both knew I couldn’t sell the condo for peanuts without his signature, which he knew was Davis Code for Let’s Work This Out, meant he didn’t want to.
And with that, I’m not so sure I wanted to either.
* * *
No Hair’s tie was a huge thumbs-up.
“Your tie is ridiculous, No Hair.”
“How’s that, Davis?”
“I like it,” Cowboy said.
“I can’t even see it.” Fantasy yawned.
It was seven in the morning on Friday. We were in our underground offices, Fantasy, Cowboy, and I only four hours off the road and all in our pajamas, or maybe that was just me.
“Okay.” No Hair was fresh as a daisy. I guess so. “Showtime. If anyone from the church is here to recruit new residents at the tournament, we have to catch them,” he said. “In the act. Right here and right now. Keep your eyes and ears open. Watch everything and everyone. You two get going.” He forked fingers at Fantasy and Cowboy. “Sweep the entire area for bugs or weapons. Go over the guest list for last-minute additions.” Fantasy saluted, weakly. No Hair dropped down to one finger and aimed it at Cowboy. “You come back for Davis at nine.” They hit the road. “You,” he said to me, “sit down.” He dropped his jacket across the sofa back and sat down opposite me. “How are you holding up?”
I picked at my pajama pants. “I’ll make it.”
“Have you heard from your fella?”
I shook my head.
No Hair rubbed his extra-large jaw. I could hear his whiskers. “Have you caught any news these past few days, Davis?”
“No.” I studied the ceiling. Nine feet, maybe? “Why? Is he in it?”
No Hair shrugged. “The Grand Palace is all over the news,” he said. “The smoking thing. Maybe look it up when you have a minute.”
“He’s putting out his fires, No Hair,” I said, “and I’m putting out mine. I’m sure we’ll talk at some point.”
I showed No Hair the patient file on Leona Powell.
“How’d you get this?” No Hair asked.
“Cowboy swiped it.”
No Hair switched to a defensive position and fired up the finger he loves to wag at me. “Don’t start calling that boy a name, Davis,” he said. Wag, wag, wag. “I don’t know who you’re talking about half the time and I get tired of trying to figure it out.”
“Are we really taking him on full time?”
“Why?”
“Because he’ll need his own sofa,” I said. “I don’t think we have enough room for another sofa.”
No Hair blinked at me for several seconds. “Can we talk about sofas later?”
“You can’t keep putting things off, No Hair.”
He rubbed his big bald head, looked up at the nine-foot ceiling for help, sighed, shook his head, then reached for the Leona Powell file. Paper flew for a few minutes; he took financials and passed me medical.
Another cup of coffee later, No Hair said, “What we have here are the projected earnings on Leona Powell. They have her going in valued at six hundred and fifty thousand, they think she’ll live another dozen years or so, and it looks like her long-term contribution to the cause,” he used air quotes, “will be a million dollars directly, and they estimated her healthcare,” air quotes again, “contribution to be half a million.”
“That healthcare contribution,” I said. “She’s scheduled for cognitive, electroconvulsive, obesity, depression, animal, physical, occupational, and mental therapies.” I looked up. “I’ve known Bea all my life, and there’s no doubt she needs every bit of it. But what in the heck is animal therapy?”
“That’s when they bring in Golden Retrievers for the patients to pet,” No Hair said.
“And they invoice the state of Alabama for that.”
“No.” He passed me a Medicare worksheet. “They inv
oice the federal government for that.”
I compared it to Leona’s GOBAHIP worksheet. I stared at the patient number on both documents.
My brain began clicking. Click, click, click.
No Hair’s phone rang. Ring, ring, ring.
Someone was coding themselves in the door. Door, door, door.
“Covey.” Which is how No Hair answers the phone. Unless it’s me. Then he answers, “WHAT?”
Cowboy dropped a folded page of newspaper on top of Leona’s paperwork, then rode off into the sunset.
“Got it.” No Hair hung up. “That was Richard,” he said. “His flight has been delayed. He won’t be in tonight. He’s going to stop off in Vegas tomorrow, drop off the contracts, then be here Sunday. Go tell Bianca.”
“Why can’t he tell her?”
“I didn’t ask,” No Hair said.
“Why can’t you tell her?”
“Because he said for you to tell her.”
No Hair opened the newspaper and spread it out between us, probably to shut me up, which it did. Page Six was two half-page photographs, each with a small blurb of print. I was below the fold. Bianca wouldn’t like that. It was me in the Christmas red big-hat getup as I stepped into the casino for Matthew Thatcher’s funeral. My eyes were sparkling saucers, my chocolate-diamond on full display, the expression on my face one of amazed delight. On second thought, Bianca would be thrilled.
Worry not Highest of High rollers, as we welcome you to our fine city for the most exclusive of slot tournaments, the Bellissimo’s Double Dip. This breath of fresh and sophisticated air, our own Bianca Sanders, will be behind the microphone for you hosting our biggest event of the season. If you’re lucky, it will be your name on her lips as she announces the big winner.
The top half of Page Six, the lead photograph, was heart-wrenching, as if my heart wasn’t wrenched enough.
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