The Hearse You Came in On (Hitchcock Sewell Mysteries)

by Tim Cockey

  You can also see where the lady made the flag.

  My parents fell instantly in love, and so the discovery that my mother was pregnant with me apparently did not introduce panic. The acting scene in New York had been a constant sputter anyway, so my mother was easily convinced to move down to Baltimore and set up shop here. They married, and some months after my birth my mother began doing odd jobs at the TV station, voiceovers and the like. The station added a Bowling for Dollars show on Friday nights from seven to seven-thirty and tapped my father to host it. He convinced the station to let him bring my mother into the picture to help him in his little chats with the contestants. The pair of them were so charming and silly that soon those chats were taking up nearly as much time as the breathtaking bowling. I made my television debut, in fact, on that show. I was not quite a year old and I brought a whiff of scandal to the program as I nestled in my beautiful mother’s arms unbuttoning the top three buttons of her blouse while she and my father yak yak yakked with some kid from Dundalk who was looking to make a few bucks knocking down pins.

  Eventually the bowling show died—and my parents popped up with a little talk show of their own, one of the first of the now-glutted genre. Cross-dressing in-laws and mothers who sleep with their daughters’ boyfriends were keeping a lower profile back in those days. My parents interviewed players for the Colts and the Orioles, common folk who did interesting things, local chefs, high school coaches, you name it. It didn’t really matter who they talked to or what they talked about, so long as everybody had a chummy time. I popped up occasionally on this show as well, telegenic pip that I was. God help me, I even sat there on the set once in a straw boater and a seersucker suit while my parents chatted with Bing Crosby himself, who was in town to perform at the Painters Mill Music Fair. Bing could barely take his nasty eyes off my mother. All those old Hollywood heyday types are as horny as goats; they’re constantly trolling for it. Bing was sent packing as quickly as possible and my father personally apologized to me for making me wear that getup.

  Most of my looks come from my mother, the dark hair, the blue eyes. Though the pirate’s smile … that’s compliments of my dad.

  As for the wary eye I cast upon the world, you can chalk that up to the indiscriminate Fates that would take such a wonderful pair of people as my parents and send their car hurtling into the path of a beer truck on their way to, of all places, the hospital. My mother was pregnant with my little sister. When her labor pains had begun in earnest, I was dropped off with my ugly Uncle Stu and Aunt Billie, at the funeral home. The driver of the beer truck said it happened in an instant. They swerved. It was over. Ugly Uncle Stu took the phone call. His end of the conversation was minimal, and when he set the phone back down on the receiver all he said was “They’re all dead” and then he dropped into a chair and began to sob. The only time I ever saw him cry. I stayed in the room and watched him for several minutes, then went upstairs and kicked a hole in the wall.

  As I think I’ve mentioned, the turnout for their funeral was huge. The mayor himself showed. Even with the plastic curtain drawn back between Parlors One and Two, the crowd spilled into the entrance hall and out onto the street. I was a handsome devil in my little dark suit. Twelve years old. People touched me lightly as if I were a saint. I remember thinking that there were enough flowers to clog a sewer system and that if Bing Crosby dared to show his face I’d make him eat every single one of them. I also remember thinking, later that night as I stared out the window of my new bedroom, that if nothing else I sure as hell had just gotten over and done with what would certainly be the very worst day of my life. There couldn’t be any doubt about that. Nothing but blue skies from then on.

  At his funeral the next day, Mr. Weatherby didn’t give us any trouble. None of his pallbearers were too tall or too short—which sometimes results in a weight distribution crisis—and none of his mourners flew into show-stopping paroxysms of grief. The widow sobbed politely and was gently tended to by her chums. The weather cooperated. Barometer held steady. Temperatures ran a comfortable seventy-three. We were coming off a mild winter, so the spring bloomings had come early; the burgeoning buds by the cemetery’s front gate provided an appropriately poignant counterpoint to the frank task of planting the depleted Mr. Weatherby deep deep below the topsoil. The canopy over the grave site itself carved a brilliant white triangle against the blue sky and offered a cooling shade to the half-dozen plastic folding chairs beneath it. Mr. Weatherby’s casket (the Embassy model; have I mentioned that?) really showed its stuff there out under the sun. Mahogany is a beautiful wood even in its natural state. Lacquer it up and it practically hums.

  Though this was Aunt Billie’s funeral, she had been hit with a nasty cold, so I had taken it. I was standing silently off to the side, hands cupped at my crotch, my eye on the bagpiper who was planted some twenty feet off, getting ready to squeeze his cow bladder. Despite the kilts and feathers and all the rest of it, our bagpiper is no more Scottish than the ayatollah. He is an Italian electrician named Tony Marino. Tony’s sad tale runs as follows: A Highlands lassie on a church choir trip to Rome stole and then broke his teenage heart outside the Colosseum (“… the ruins, the ruins …”) and Tony subsequently took up the bagpipes so as to further torment his forlorn soul. He even traveled to Scotland the following year on an odyssey to track down his lost lassie love, failing to locate her but fully saturating himself in all things Scottish. To this day he starts his morning with kippers and a shot of Macallans. To his credit, Tony Marino is a dynamite bagpiper. Although it is mostly “Amazing Grace” and “Danny Boy” that the bereaved tend to request, Tony includes Verdi and Puccini in his repertoire. He can also bleat out an “Ave Maria” that’ll do you in.

  The Widow Weatherby had chosen “Amazing Grace.” At my discreet signal Tony puffed up his bag and launched into the dirge. How sweet the sound. When Tony finished his tune, he lowered his pipes and wiped an authentic tear from his eye. Love is a needle in your neck sometimes, I swear. The priest scattered his final words over Mr. Weatherby and the deed was done. The widow stood a moment at the coffin, looking like she had just remembered the name of some restaurant that her husband had asked her about last week and that she would now have to simply hold on to forever. She placed a veined hand on the casket and muttered something that I missed altogether, then blended back in with the flock making their way across the graves to their cars. Tony, five foot two and as swarthy as a Sicilian boot, stood erect and stock-still as the mourners passed.

  I lagged behind. My job was done. I don’t usually attend the post-funeral bash. It’s my task—or Billie’s—to get the deceased safely to this point, hovering six feet above their final earthly stop. Then I sign off and pass things along to the cemetery folk. And so it was this time. Four guys you wouldn’t let near your front door emerged from behind the trees and continued an argument they had been having about Cal Ripken’s back pains as they played out the canvas straps holding the coffin aloft. Before the box sank below the surface one of the lugs snatched the flower arrangement off and tossed it aside. They take them home to the missus.

  “Hey, Kid, you gonna help?”

  This was the captain of the crew, a cigar-chomping bulldog with ears the size of Chincoteague oysters. He loved calling me “Kid.” I loved calling him “Pops.” So much love.

  “Not today, Pops. I’ve got a hangnail.”

  Pops thought that was the funniest thing he had ever heard. He shoved the lug next to him. “Did you hear what the kid said? He said he’s got a hangnail!” The guy curled his lip. You could see he thought it was a riot.

  I left them. At the road Tony was packing his bagpipes into the trunk of his car. I declined the offer of a ride. I wanted to walk. I had a few things I wanted to think about.

  I swung by my place—which is four doors down from the funeral home—and took my hound dog Alcatraz out for a walk and a pee. He was ever so grateful. He left his love letters all up and down the block, then I took him
over to Aunt Billie’s for cocktails. Alcatraz had soup. He loves soup.

  “Who was that girl yesterday?” Billie asked me. “You know who I mean. The crasher.”

  I told her I didn’t know. “She said she wanted to arrange her own funeral.”

  Billie was at the lowboy, making old-fashioneds. A post-mortem favorite. She muddled the fruit with a little silver hammer.

  “Isn’t she a little young for that?”

  “I’d say so.”

  Billie brought me my drink and she took hers over to her favorite chair. She slipped off her shoes after she sat down, and Alcatraz immediately trotted over and dropped to the floor in front of her. Billie rested her feet gently on his soft wrinkles.

  “Did she leave a deposit?” Billie asked.

  “It didn’t get that far,” I said, raising my glass. “She changed her mind.”

  Billie smiled, bringing her glass to her lips. “Oh, she decided to live. That’s nice.”

  CHAPTER 3

  I think I mentioned that on the day that Carolyn James walked into and out of my life, I was in a cranky mood. Saying “yes” when I really mean “no” does that to me. Gets me cranky. And damn my soul to the eternal hell it deserves, that is what I had just recently done, agreeing to slap on a gray mustache and a folksy sort of fedora to play the part of the Stage Manager for an upcoming Gypsy Players production of Norman Rockwell’s Fever Dream, more popularly known as Our Town. Gil Vance, the visionary behind this inspired choice, stressed my height and my solid good looks (that’s a quote) in his campaign to nudge me out of yet another of my amateur retirements from the nonprofessional stage. He also invoked the local notoriety of my late parents. Gil is also never too shameless to swaddle his cudgel with my parents’ former celebrity when he is hammering away at my ego. And of course ego is exactly the place at which you hammer away when you’re trying to convince someone to get up on the stage.

  “Hitch, you have no idea how many lesser talents are after me to get this role. The role of the Stage Manager demands someone of your stature, somebody who can fulfill the sacred contract between the actors and the audience. I can’t have just any old ham up there, Hitch, I need you. You were born for this role. It’s in your blood.”

  “No” is one of the easiest words to form in your mouth; you hardly have to move a muscle. But for reasons only the Laughing Gods know, I had ended up moving too many muscles in my chat with Gil over at Jimmy’s Coffee Shop, and my dozen refusals had culminated in a commitment to do the damn show. All my hopes that my last Gypsy fiasco—the big dopey Swede in Anna Christie—might have been my swan song were obliterated.

  Good lord. The Stage Manager. Not even the gently wooden Dr. Gibbs. No. The Stage Manager. The ringmaster. All those lines. All that corn.

  I’m several generations removed from the days when college kids took to the craze of seeing how many of them they could stuff inside a telephone booth or a VW Bug, but thanks to the postage-stamp-sized stage of the Gypsy Players Theater and the brilliant decision to mount a play requiring several dozen warm bodies, I got a whiff of the old claustrophobic pastime at the first rehearsal of Our Town. Gil Vance herded his cast up onto the little Gypsy stage then sat back in the fifth row and instructed us “to mill.”

  We “milled.” We also bumped and scuffed and knocked elbows and kicked toes. It didn’t feel a thing like a town; it felt like a holding tank. As we stumbled about onstage, I suddenly found myself face-to-face with Julia Finney, my extremely gorgeous semi-nymphomaniac quasi-Buddhist and eternally charming ex-wife. Go figure.

  “Well if it isn’t Hitchcock Sewell.”

  “Hello there, Julia. What brings you to our town?”

  “Very funny, Hitch. I see Gil roped you into this circus, too. What did he do, play on your vanity?”

  “Basically.”

  “Me too,” she sighed. “I’m a fucking pushover, I swear. Don’t we have better things to do with our time?”

  “You’d think so, but here we are.”

  Julia shook her head. “You I understand. You’re around dead people all day. What’s my excuse?”

  I thought about that one. “You thrive on complications? The bigger the mess the happier you are?”

  She squinted at me. “Wait a minute. Wasn’t I married to someone like you?” Before I could parry, she said, “Let’s talk later. I’ve got to mill.”

  She slithered off toward the far corner of the stage—all of some fifteen feet away—then turned and cocked an eyebrow and playfully stuck her tongue out at me. Gil finally clapped his hands together. Like a sea lion.

  “Very good, people. V-e-r-y good. Could you take a seat please. I want to go over with you my concept of what we’ll be doing in this production.”

  The citizens of Grover’s Corners gathered round. I’d say that maybe half of them actually listened to Gil in earnest. The other fifty percent had been through all this before and we took the time to catch up on our daydreaming. Gil’s “concept” probably had some interesting angles, but it didn’t really matter. They’d never make it to the stage. The Gypsy Players have a long tradition of panic. Costumes rip, tempers flare, scenery wobbles, the lighting board burns up, rehearsals bog down over minutiae, the flu du jour sweeps through the cast just before opening … In all my experience with this outfit, there has never been time for “concept.” Learn the lines, say them in order, pray for a moment or two of panache. That’s the concept. Whatever daring conceits Gil Vance cooks up in the privacy of his own head simply drains through the floorboards. I’m sure it frustrates the hell out of him—if he even notices—but that’s show biz.

  So I tuned out while Gil explained exactly how this production would ultimately never be. He kept referring to “our stage manager” and sweeping his hand in my direction, a dozen or so dutiful heads swinging with him each time. As the ringmaster of this circus, I would be playing a pivotal role in bringing the concept to life. I guess I should have been listening, but I just couldn’t. I had other things on my mind. The closest I could come to paying attention to what was going on around me was to imagine the funeral scene at the end of the play. Natch. But in my version, seated there in the cemetery among the dedicated Gypsy Players, playing dead, wasn’t sweet Emily Gibbs. It was Carolyn James.

  Bury me.

  Julia wasn’t paying attention either. She sat on the edge of the stage fiddling with her long black braid. When our eyes met she held the braid up for me to see. A hangman’s knot. And for the second time in twenty minutes, she cocked an eyebrow at me.

  Oh. I see. It’s going to be like that.

  Julia’s studio is on the second floor of an old fire station which had—irony of ironies—been gutted by a fire years back while its crew was off battling a blaze several blocks away. A new firehouse had been built elsewhere, the old one left vacant for a number of years until Julia’s number hit and she started getting big bags of money for her paintings. That’s when she took up work and residence on the second floor of the old fire station and opened up her gallery down below. The old fireman’s pole had remained in place, both a decorative touch as well as a nifty way to sweep down and check on the customers.

  In the rear of the studio was Julia’s kitchenette and behind three antique screens, her bedroom, consisting of a bed and a bathrobe. A sculptor friend had designed the bed. Its headboard was a tangle of black steel in the shape of a spiderweb.

  My fingers were still laced in it when Julia came in from the kitchenette with a tray. She was wearing the room’s other accoutrement—the bathrobe—along with the devil’s grin that was all too easy for me to translate. Gotcha.

  Julia folded onto the bed and set the tray on my stomach.

  “Remind me again why we divorced?” she said.

  “We didn’t get along? We fought?”

  “I miss our fights.”

  “I don’t.”

  She sighed. “There it is then. We don’t see eye to eye.”

  There were two tiny cups and a bra
ss coffeepot on the tray. Julia poured out two thimbles of mud, took one up and sipped on it. She gave me a rabbit’s wince. “But we schtupped well together. That’s important.”

  I agreed with her. I untangled my fingers from the headboard and scooted up. She lifted the tray from my tummy and set it on the bed. “You schtup well with everyone,” I reminded her. “That was one of the reasons we fought.”

  “You are such a prude, Hitch.” Julia’s black braid was snaked around her neck where it disappeared into the cleavage of her robe. “Promiscuity is the last great weapon against the increasing sterility of our culture,” she declared.

  “You’re telling me that you screw for the betterment of mankind?”

  “Absolutely.” Devil’s grin. “And don’t you feel better?”

  I had to admit that I did. Julia’s cobweb bed had a way of inspiring its inhabitants to behave as if they were suddenly endowed with several extra sets of limbs. The hour just passed had been so filled with arms and legs moving in so many directions it might have seemed that the entire cast of Our Town had been involved in the bacchanalia.

  Why Julia and I had decided to get married in the first place was a mystery. Why mess up a good thing? The divorce—a mere year and a half later—made so much more sense to us both that we had consummated it right here on this very playing field. Since then I had only occasionally found myself drawn back to the web. Sex with Julia was a difficult habit to break. Especially since I was the only one of us trying to break it.