by Shannon West
“I see.” Nick raised his eyes to the ceiling for a moment, took a deep breath and persevered. “Go on, Ms. Smith.”
“Yes, well, I, that is, Rose must have set off some kind of alarm when she first jimmied that front window. Mr. Whatley found her and once I explained, he was nice enough to let us go to the back room to say our goodbyes to Emma Mae.”
Whatley’s eyebrows lifted nearly to his hairline. “Well, I didn’t exactly…”
“Yes, you did,” Pearl answered with a nod and a look that verged on threatening. “Anyway…in all the confusion, I dropped my car keys into the casket with dear Emma Mae. Well, imagine how I felt. When I went to retrieve them, I accidentally bumped into the casket and knocked it askew. Just a tad. And then your grandmother crawled in the back window, and she scared me so badly I bumped into the casket again, and this time it slipped to the floor and Emma Mae just kind of slid out and rolled across the carpet. No harm done, and Willie got her back in with no problem, but he felt he should tell you. We’re so sorry to have bothered you, sheriff. I’m sure you’ll want to take your nana home now, so we’ll just….” She started to sidle toward the door.
“Not so fast,” the sheriff said in a loud, markedly unfriendly tone that didn’t set too well with me. This was my elderly grandmother he was talking to after all.
“Please don’t speak to her like that,” I snapped.
He whirled to turn his attention back on me, his mouth dropping open a little in surprise, as if one of the chairs had just spoken up.
“Like what?”
I gazed belligerently back at him and had a feeling he wasn’t used to being challenged in any kind of way.”In that hateful tone of voice.”
He turned in surprise to my grandmother. “Mrs. Smith, if my tone was ‘hateful,’ then I apologize.” He turned back to look at me and took a step forward, crowding me a little. “Though I’d like to know what you planned to do about it.”
“Att-i-ca! Att-i-ca!” my grandmother suddenly shouted out. I closed my eyes and prayed Nick wouldn’t understand what she was talking about. Only my grandmother would remember and actually use the obscure reference to Al Pacino’s police brutality chant from a forty-plus-year-old movie called Dog Day Afternoon. Rose must have known it too, though, because she joined in to help her.
The sheriff looked back and forth between them in confused amazement, but he backed off a little. “What? What are they talking about?”
“Grandma, Rose, hush, please. You’re only making things worse. Good Lord.”
“Hellooo,” another voice came wafting in just then, sounding almost ghostly as it echoed in the large reception room behind us. “Helloooo? Is anybody there?”
We all jumped and Sheriff Moody was the first one to recover. He strode over to the door just in time to run into a woman who was on her way into the room. He steadied her on her feet. “Hello,” Nick said. “You must be Ms. Reinhart.” He gazed down at her appreciatively.
He didn’t have to look down too far, either, because she was a tall woman. Statuesque, I believe is what the fashion magazines would call her and beautiful in a way. She was dressed all in black, with red stilletto heels, of all things, at oh-dark-thirty in the morning, and she was heavily made up, even at this hour. Her hair was black as sin and hung down her back in rippling waves. Even though I had no room to talk, I couldn’t help but notice she wasn’t wearing any kind of outer wear, even though it was definitely chilly outside.
“Yes,” she said, looking up at the sheriff and then around at the rest of us. “I’m the grand niece. Adrianna Reinhart. I had a phone call about some kind of disturbance at the funeral home?”
Willie Whatley rushed over to her and took her hand, leading her over to the table, murmuring softly to her as he apologetically told her what had happened. She pulled her hand away and looked over at us, as he continued whispering in her ear.
Before I could stop her, my grandmother made a beeline over to her, pulling at her sleeve.
“I’m your aunt’s best friend, dear. And I’ve just been explaining to everyone just how all this happened.”
Emma Mae’s niece blinked at Pearl a few times as my grandmother repeated the complete crock of shit she’d just fed the rest of us, and then, I was shocked to see, she simply nodded politely, her expression blank. “I’m sure my aunt would have appreciated your visit.”
Even my gran blinked at her in confusion.
The niece turned to the sheriff. “So if that’s all you needed, Sheriff...and you, Mr. Whatley, I have some things I have to attend to before the funeral later today. So I need to be going.”
“Ma’am,” Nick said, stepping in front of her to stop her. “Are you sure you don’t want to press charges?”
I glared at him, but he ignored me. But I guess since his grandmother was involved, he had to make sure there was no question of nepotism or special treatment.
“Oh yes, I’m sure. I’m busy, so I have to go.”
At five in the morning? Busy with what? I could see she was obviously eager to be done with the entire incident, and I didn’t blame her, but I still found her reaction—or rather her non-reaction to this whole thing—pretty damn odd.
For his part, Nick Moody, no doubt wanting to get rid of all of us too and be done with this ridiculousness, didn’t push it. “All right, ma’am. Thanks for coming in.”
The Deputy showed her out of the room, and the rest of us just stood there, not sure what to do next. The sheriff turned back to look at us, frowning at each of us in turn and then stood to the side, giving a little “Hurry up,” motion of his hand. We scurried past him out the door, and he turned off the lights in the interrogation room. The door banged behind us and made me jump.
“Mr. Whatley, what kind of damages were there?” Nick asked.
“I’ll have to total them up, Sheriff. Not too many, though. Mostly the broken windows.”
“You be sure and let me know how much the back window was, and I’ll write you a check. I assume Smith here will do the same for the front window.”
“Yes,” I snapped. “I already said I would.” I couldn’t help glaring at him. Smith, indeed.
I think, as a general rule, when someone’s had your dick in their mouth, you should refer to that someone by his first name.
“Okay, so we’ll be on our way then,” I said, steering my grandmother and Rose toward the exit, hoping to make a clean getaway. I got to the heavy glass door when the sheriff’s voice stopped me in my tracks.
“Not so fast, Smith.”
Again with the Smith. I froze and turned slowly around. “Yes, Sheriff Moody?”
“Can I trust that you’ve got control over this…” he glanced from my grandmother back to Rose, “this situation?”
“Yeah, I got it.”
“See to it you do.” He gave us all an unfriendly look, scanned me up and down again, pausing on my feet again before turning away. I sighed, stifling the urge to ask him if he had his situation taken care of too, but his grandmother was standing right there and I, at least, was raised to have some manners.
I ushered my gran and my aunt to my car. The cold night air felt like heaven against my hot face, and with a tired sigh, I motioned for them to get in. Gran tried to pull away. “I’m parked over by the funeral home, Noah.”
“Never mind. Leave it and we can come back for it later. Get in with me, now. I don’t trust either of you as far as I can throw you.”
“Well, I never,” Gran said with a roll of her eyes. “C’mon, Rose,” she said, looping their arms together before brushing past me. “We’re going to catch our death standing out here in this cold night air.”
As she passed me, Gran gave me a look of betrayal. “I can’t imagine why on earth you’d say a thing like that.”
“Yeah,” I replied. “It’s a mystery.”
Chapter Two
“Noah, no matter what you think, and beyond whatever did or did not happen last night, Emma Mae Millican is…was…a very old
friend of mine. As silly as it may sound to you, I’m going to miss arguing with her.” Placing a hand that seemed surprising cold on my arm, she continued, “I’m truly upset that she’s gone. And to die in such a way.”
“Such a way? What do you mean? She had a stroke, right? I mean, that’s awful, but…”
My grandmother darted a look over at me as I drove down the road the next day, taking Pearl and Rose to Emma Mae’s house after the funeral service.
“Never mind. I just wanted to be clear. I only want to go pay my respects to my dear friend.”
I pulled into an empty parking spot outside Emma Mae’s house and turned in the seat to face my grandmother. “Grandma, look, I’m really sorry about your friend. I know that this must be hard for you, but if it’s possible I’m just asking that you and Rose please try not to…”
“Embarrass you today?”
“I was going to say commit any felonies, but that will work too.”
My grandmother chewed on her bottom lip for a moment and then patted my leg. “Noah,” she said in an uncharacteristically quiet voice, “regardless of what you might think, I know how to act in polite company.”
“I’m not saying that you don’t, but—”
“No, that’s enough,” Gran said, flashing a wrinkled hand up to interrupt me. “I didn’t need a chaperone today to attend the funeral, but you insisted on going with us. Now we’re going to the house to pay our last respects and bring a dish, and we don’t need lectures on how to act from a boy who spent most of his high school years in detention for fighting.”
“What? I did not! Okay, twice! And it wasn’t my fault. You know I was teased when I came out.” And then there was that time in Chemistry class when my project inexplicably caught on fire, but that hadn’t been my fault, no matter how many times the Chem teacher said it would have been impossible for the fire to start on its own and I must have done it deliberately. All I know is, I had stayed up late the night before to watch a movie—coincidentally, the movie was Towering Inferno, as it happened. I fell asleep and woke up to a fire that had destroyed my Chemistry Project. So not my fault.
She sniffed. “Be that as it may.” She glanced over her shoulder into the backseat. “Rose, are you ready to go in?”
“I am.”
With that, they exited the car, putting up their umbrellas in the drizzling rain and leaving me to watch as they picked their way toward the modest home, my grandmother adjusting her little black hat with the fingertip veil, and Rose readjusting her fur wrap. Both of them were carrying bags of food. Seemingly satisfied that they looked the part, the pair continued on to the front door, which stood open behind the screen door, despite the cooler temperatures outside today. The sounds of talking and dishes clinking came sailing across the lawn to me on the stiff wind that was blowing.
I had found out on the way over that the women of the Baptist church Emma Mae had attended had taken it upon themselves to plan this reception thing for her. More or less a gathering of family and friends following a funeral service or memorial, it was open to everyone, an invitation usually announced at the end of the service by the preacher or by one of the family. According to what I’d heard Pearl and Rose saying, the good ladies of the church had been appalled to discover Emma Mae’s niece hadn’t planned any kind of reception afterward. They took it upon themselves to do it for her. With the same general attitude of indifference she’d displayed at the funeral home last night, the niece had simply gone along with it.
I wished for the hundredth time I could have just stayed home, but I was afraid of some kind of reoccurrence of the night before. So I’d gone along with my gran and Rose to the funeral, and now I’d go in the house with them for the traditional food afterward. Traditional in the south, anyway, and I didn’t know much about funeral customs anywhere else.
As they go, Emma Mae’s funeral was one of the nicer that I’d attended over the years. It was short and sweet. A couple of nice old hymns played in between way too many words from the Baptist preacher. I wondered who had planned the service? The music chosen, which were old hymns my ancestors probably listened to back in the day, certainly didn’t sound like anything the niece might have picked out, but then what did I know?
After the sermon, which was apparently obligatory in a southern Baptist funeral, during which the preacher reminded the audience we would all be going to meet our Maker one day soon ourselves, so we better get ourselves right with God, the roughly thirty people in attendance all filed out of the funeral home chapel. Then they convoyed to the cemetery on the edge of town to pay their last respects. There was a short graveside service and white doves were released to end the proceedings. Had I not been so engrossed in the spectacle that ensued when one of the doves divebombed the preacher’s wife during the fly over, I would have heard the invitation to meet at Emma Mae’s house afterward for refreshments. But as it was, I was too caught up in watching the spectacle of the preacher’s wife fluttering about the cemetery and dabbing at the bird poop on her dress with her husband’s handkerchief to intercept my grandmother before she had the chance to accept.
“Noah, be sure to get you some of those deviled eggs. They’re really good,” Rose called over to me, her plate already stacked impressively high. Turning my attention from a shelf lined with a rather large collection of cookbooks, my grandmother and Rose were joining me in the little corner of Emma Mae’s living room that I had staked out. Each of them held a Chinet paper plate in one hand and a red plastic Solo cup in the other.
I nodded and then, knowing that we were in close company, tried to keep my voice low as I spoke to the pair. “I still can’t believe I let you talk me into bringing you over here after what happened last night.”
“What are you talking about? We couldn’t have not come. What kind of people do you think we are, Noah?”
The kind who bring a whiskey flask in their purse to a funeral is what I wanted to say, catching the distinct aroma wafting from my grandmother’s cup, but instead I just shook my head. “Never mind.”
“Noah, sugar, why don’t you go fix yourself a plate?”
I smiled back at Rose, who was nibbling on some little pieces of fried okra. “I will, in just a minute.”
Speaking of fried, that chicken on the table did look and smell good. There was nothing like a southern funeral to get people to rally around, and as usual, the ladies of the Indian Springs Baptist Church all tried to outdo each other in how much food they brought. My gran had brought two pecan pies and a German chocolate cake, and Rose had carried in a whole honeybaked ham.
I looked past Rose to the impressive amount of food being piled on Emma Mae’s dining room table. Although there were relatively few events in our little corner of Alabama where I wouldn’t have expected to see copious amounts of fried food amassed, it was still something to behold. I’d long been of the opinion that there may actually be an Alabama state law that mandated if three or more people gathered in one room, at least one of those people had to bring a casserole. I’d actually seen buffet lines in Las Vegas that didn’t have the selection currently laid out in Emma Mae’s dining room.
“I’m not particularly hungry right now,” I said.
Rose took a swig of her drink and nodded. “Pearl,” she said, motioning towards the other side of the room with the glass, “do you want to go and try?”
She hadn’t spoken loudly, but Rose’s words set my nerves on edge. “Try? Try what? What are you two up to?”
My grandmother dropped the bacon wrapped shrimp she was eating and glared at me. “Why do you constantly accuse us of being up to something?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” I said, drawing out the words as I crossed my arms. “Maybe because you constantly are.”
“I think the only constant is your overreaction to the least little thing.”
“Seriously? How many drinks have you had?” I hissed at her. I did a quick scan of the area to make sure there was no one within earshot before continuing in the sa
me harsh whisper, “Do I even need to mention what happened at the funeral home?”
“Oh, sweet Jesus, here we go again.”
“Jesus isn’t the one who rolled Emma Mae out of her casket now, is he?”
“You’re just never going to let that one go, are you?”
“Now, now,” Rose said, pushing between us, ever the peacemaker. “There’s no point in getting into all that again.” She waved her drink hand in the air as she spoke and then placed the cup on her plate. “Noah, you can relax. Your grandmother and I aren’t up to anything. We were just going to go over and speak to Emma Mae’s ex-sister-in-law when people got out of the way.”
“Oh, ”I mumbled, still not convinced.
Rose patted my leg. “You look very handsome today, dear, in your nice blue suit. And I like your hair, I don’t care what anybody else says.” I rolled my eyes, knowing she was referring to my man bun. A bun was just fine for downtown Atlanta, but not so much for Indian Springs, Alabama. I kept meaning to get it cut, because it was bad enough to be gay in a small, backwater, redneck town, but to advertise it too much was definitely a grievous error in judgment. Not that wearing your hair in a man bun meant you were gay, but then again, it pretty much did in this town.
Rose sighed and patted the back of my hand. “You’ve always been such a handsome boy.”
“Takes after his mama,” Pearl said. “With all that curly blond hair and those big blue eyes. Poor girl was dumb as a rock though.”
I glared over at her, tightening my lips, and she lifted one shoulder. “Well, now, Noah honey, you know it’s true. Your mama didn’t have any common sense. My son used to have to remind her not to look up when it was raining hard outside or she might have drowned.”
“Lay off my mother, Gran.”
“But I always loved her, dear. Not only was she the prettiest girl in the county but the sweetest too. You take after her. All except the sweetness. Too bad you didn’t get some of that, instead of your daddy’s quick temper. But Lordy, your daddy was crazy about her. He took one look at her in high school and that was it for him. Never looked back. She just wasn’t the brightest bulb in the box, that’s all. That doesn’t mean I didn’t love her like my own and don’t miss both of them every single day.”