He stuck his face into the refrigerator to get the seltzer, muttering something about interference from the clothing police now. Guess Dad is feeling stressed about this hoedown, and you were a bit late on the pickup, the critical voice in the back of Sunny’s head commented. At the last memorial service they’d attended, Mike had been all over the place, chatting with various political cronies. She put the glasses on the table, and then took her father by the hand. “What’s the matter, Dad?”
“Sorry, honey, I shouldn’t have been mouthing off,” Mike apologized. “It’s just that it’s going to be society people, that whole Piney Brook crowd there.” Mike’s face screwed up as if he’d tasted something bad. “They look at me and see a truck driver. It’s kind of funny—Helena was this way and that about going. She didn’t want to go there alone. Well, neither did I—with her along, I figure I’ve got a touch of class.”
Sunny smiled and patted his shoulder. “I wouldn’t worry about that, Dad. You’ve got more class than most of the snobs who’ll turn up tonight.”
*
Sunny took her shower and got dressed as quickly as she could. Don’t give Dad a chance to complain, she thought as she pulled on the jacket from her lightweight black suit over a pewter-colored blouse. She threatened her curls with a hairbrush and put on a minimum of makeup, added a pair of black flats, and headed downstairs.
Mrs. Martinson had just arrived, and as usual Sunny felt barely adequate when she compared her outfit to the one the older woman was wearing, a classic skirted suit in a deep French gray, the skirt just hitting the right length on a pair of legs that would be the envy of women twenty years younger—or in Sunny’s case, thirty-something years younger. A simple white blouse with a brooch at the collar and tiny gold earrings completed the look.
Mike looked proudly at both of them. “Those snooty Piney Brook types may have the big houses, but I’ll be walking in with a pair of women looking like a million dollars—apiece!”
Helena smiled. “You clean up pretty well yourself, Mike.”
He wore the summer-weight version of his blue funeral suit, an off-white shirt, and his latest Father’s Day tie.
Sunny grinned. “You look like you’re running for office, Dad.”
Mike put a hand to his chest. “Heaven forbid!”
“Well, I think we’re ready to go. I take it that Will intends to join us there?”
Sunny nodded.
“Then there’s just one thing.” Mrs. Martinson reached into her handbag and came out with a set of car keys, which she gave to Sunny. “Would you mind driving the Buick tonight? It will be dark by the time we’re coming home, and I’d feel more comfortable.”
You might feel downright cozy, sitting in the backseat with Dad, that irrepressible voice in the back of Sunny’s head suggested.
“We should have thought of that.” Mike looked annoyed with himself. “Your car is the obvious choice.”
Sunny nodded. Not only did Helena’s sedan have more comfortable seating than Dad’s truck or Sunny’s SUV, the sedan would fit in better for a Piney Brook funeral.
*
The Brookside district was the most exclusive section of an already exclusive area. As Sunny drove along, she passed estates which kept to themselves behind iron gates or heavy shrubbery, and houses whose architecture screamed, “We’ve arrived!”
Some of the houses had probably started as summer places. Sunny was particularly taken by one with a cupola. What would it be like to have a round bedroom up there? She didn’t much like the place that had turned itself into a McMansion by adding a cream-colored concrete tower to the middle of a classic white-painted spruce building. And the rambling stone buildings, especially the ones that used two-tone fieldstone, seemed a little much to her. Some reminded her of Bridgewater Hall.
When they got to the Scatterwell place, she found a three-story brick structure built along vaguely Georgian lines, although some Scatterwell ancestor had added a shaded wooden porch to the side of one wing. The brick had mellowed into its surroundings, but Maine winters had not been kind to the porch. Although it gleamed with a coat of white paint, it seemed to be sagging with age.
Mike peered out the window as Sunny parked the car along a curving drive. “Y’know, I never thought about it before,” he said, “but this place looks like a funeral parlor.”
“A rather large, successful one,” Helena Martinson added drily.
They got out of the car and walked to the front door, passing a collection of Cadillacs, Lincolns, BMWs, and Mercedes. The door stood open, and a funeral flunkey in a black polyester suit stood in front of a grand staircase padded with Oriental carpeting. “Please go on through to the Grand Parlor,” he murmured, gesturing to his right.
The Grand Parlor was indeed pretty grand, an enormous cream-colored room with windows along three sides.
This must be the section that leads out to the porch, Sunny thought, glancing around. The room had been cleared of furniture, and rows of folding chairs laid out. Up at the front of the room was a lectern and a table with a ceramic urn—something more in keeping with the surroundings than the waxy cardboard box Sunny had seen in Alfred’s place. She also noticed the discreet bar at the rear of the room.
Mike had a wry smile when he spotted that. “I think Gardner would approve,” he said. “He always called booze a social lubricant.”
The other thing Sunny noticed about the room was how warm it was. Although all the windows were open, the more people who joined the growing crowd, the higher the indoor temperature went. And there was something else in the air. Helena gave a discreet sniff. “Fresh paint, which I suppose we should have expected.” She pitched her voice quietly. “From what you’ve said about him, Alfred would value appearances. But there’s something else . . .”
Sunny nodded, detecting a faint, acrid smell that seemed to linger in the back of her throat.
“Rot.” Mike pronounced the word very quietly. “Let’s hope it’s only the porch outside. If it’s in the house, Alfred will end up sinking his inheritance into repairs.”
Sunny in the meantime had been busily scanning faces. “There’s Will,” she said, “and Luke.” They made their way through the crowd. Will looked pretty snappy in a navy suit that made the most of his lean form. Luke didn’t clean up quite so well—he seemed about as far out of water as a fish could be, wearing a rather ratty brown corduroy jacket over a pair of black dress pants. He greeted them the way a drowning sailor might welcome a lifeline.
After introducing Mrs. Martinson, Sunny said, “You must be roasting in that jacket, Luke.”
He only shrugged uncomfortably. “It’s the only one I’ve got. When you move around a lot, you travel light.”
And I bet he wishes he’d traveled with a lighter jacket, Sunny couldn’t help thinking.
In spite of his misgivings, Mike quickly spotted a familiar face, too. “Chappie!” He ushered over a tall man with silver hair and a squarish face, handsome in a stodgy sort of way. “Helena, this is Chapman Manning—”
“Leave off the roman numerals at the end,” the man boomed, “for heaven’s sake.”
“Chappie may look respectable, but he’s been known to pull some political skullduggery when it has to be done.” Mike grinned.
As introductions flew around her, Sunny lost the last names of the two women who accompanied Chappie. They seemed to be called Tavvie and Phoebe. Frankly, Sunny had trouble telling one from the other. Both had graying blond hair cut short, and both wore dark dresses with pearls.
Tavvie nodded toward the urn in the place of honor. “It was rather a surprise, Alfred doing that to his uncle.”
“Just a taste of where the old boy was going to,” Chappie joked.
“Perhaps it’s better than an open casket,” Phoebe said. “I’d spent the night half afraid that Gardner would suddenly jump up and shout, ‘Surprise!’�
�
Tavvie’s pale eyebrows rose on a face from where wrinkles had apparently been banished. “He could still come leaping in through the window. Gardner always had such a lamentable sense of humor.”
“He must have,” Phoebe murmured. “I understand he went out with you for a while.”
Tavvie’s pale blue eyes glinted with malice. “Before he ran around with you—and well before your divorce.”
Sunny noticed Helena following the byplay with interest. Luke just looked uncomfortable. Will had a faraway look, as if he appeared to be ignoring it all, but Sunny suspected he was paying more attention than it seemed.
Chappie continued to chat with Mike. “How did you come to know Gardner? He doesn’t seem like one of your sort—I mean, I don’t think Gardner ever voted in his life.”
“Would you believe music?” Mike told the story of the Cosmic Blade, omitting how the band broke up. “Gardner still had an interest in music, though. That’s how he met Luke here. He’s a music therapist at Bridgewater Hall.”
“Music therapist?” Chappie echoed.
“But he’s a real musician,” Mike went on enthusiastically. “I saw him play last night. You should have seen how he faced down the crowd at O’Dowd’s.”
“O’Dowd’s? Really?” Sunny could see that Chappie was trying to be polite, but it was also obvious that there was no point where his life and Luke’s even intersected.
Tavvie touched Chappie on the arm. “They’re about to start. I think we should find some seats.”
She was right on the mark. No sooner had the crowd started sitting down than the funereal flunkey led an elderly man in clerical clothing up to the lectern and introduced him.
“They got Bishop Sawyer,” Phoebe murmured. “Very impressive.” Perhaps, but from the flow of platitudes, Sunny quickly surmised that the churchman had probably never even met Gardner.
Next came Dr. Henry Reese, introduced as Gardner’s best friend. He was a bit more personal, telling some funny stories. But Reese mainly dwelt on the boyhood he and Gardner had shared. “Perhaps that’s what I think of when it comes to Gardner because to me he never aged. That might sound like a strange admission for a doctor who runs an old-age home, where all too often we bid farewell to an aged resident.” He looked over at the urn. “But with Gardner, somehow I never expected that to happen.”
The final speaker, representing the family, was Alfred Scatterwell, who came up to the lectern in a sober black suit . . . and with a glass in his hand. Apparently, he’d been fortifying himself at the bar.
“This could be interesting,” Chappie murmured.
Sunny silently agreed. That’s the problem with social lubricants—they can get very slippery.
Alfred looked over the assembled mourners, a sardonic smile on his face. “I suppose a good number of you came this evening to see if the old place had fallen down. Well, you can easily spot that we had to paint in here. Does that make this a whited sepulcher, Bishop?”
He turned to Dr. Reese. “And thank you, Hank, for the wonderful memories you shared. Personally, I wish you’d have talked about the road trip you and Uncle Gardner took after Yale. He always said it made a man of you.” Alfred smiled as he spoke, but Dr. Reese stiffened.
Alfred turned back to his audience. “And now it falls to me to say a few words about my uncle. Gardner Scatterwell was well traveled and well liked by all his acquaintances. As for his family, we knew him all too well. You’ve all heard stories. I, of all people, shouldn’t have to go into them. Instead, I’ll go back to something that Hank said, about how it seemed that Uncle Gardner never aged. Perhaps that’s because we saw him so rarely. He was always going, and now he’s gone.”
Alfred turned to the urn and raised his glass. “And so, we’ll drink your liquor and use your house, and I think you’d probably like that.” He shrugged. “And if you don’t, it’s too late now.”
He stepped away from the lectern as the crowd burst into muttering, and then he came back, gesturing toward the bar. “Feel free to accept some Scatterwell hospitality. After all, it’s what Uncle would have done.”
“Hmmmmm, quite an interesting performance,” Chappie said as the crowd began murmuring again.
Mike turned to the back of the room. “I notice it’s not stopping some people.”
Sunny glanced over her shoulder. The bar now had people lining up to wet their whistles.
“What did you expect, after what Gardner did with Alfred’s fiancée?” Phoebe sniffed.
“They found them right upstairs, in the guest bedroom,” Tavvie said. “She had to leave town.” She gave a low laugh. “And, of course, so did Gardner.”
They rose from their seats, and stood in a small group with Mike, Helena, Will, and Luke. “Do you want to go?” Sunny asked.
“It’s a terrible thing to admit”—Helena at least had the grace to look embarrassed—“but I’d like to hear some more stories.”
So they circulated through the crowd, getting an earful of Scatterwell scandals, all of them starring Gardner.
And then they found themselves facing Alfred.
“What are you doing here?” he asked loudly with a slight slur to his voice. The conversations around them grew quiet as people turned.
Mike wasn’t about to take that comment lying down. “I knew your uncle before you were born.”
“Oh, yes, the townie boy playing in that half-assed band,” Alfred said. “Did practicing in Piney Brook get you a better class of groupie?”
He peered at Helena. “Now, back in the day, Uncle might have been interested in you.” He rounded on Sunny and Will. “And the gallant investigators. Have you found out the obvious yet? Besides being dead, my uncle is gone.” He laughed. “In a puff of smoke.”
And you’re stinking drunk, Sunny thought. Not that you’ll regret anything when you’re sober.
Alfred then looked Luke up and down with such scorn that the guitarist’s face, already flushed from the heat, went a bright red. “And what are you doing in my uncle’s house?”
But in spite of the heat, the shaggy hair, the mismatched clothes, Luke had a certain dignity as he said, “Gardner was my friend.”
But Alfred wouldn’t have any of that. He gestured with his drink, sloshing some on the carpet. “My uncle could be pleasant, genial, what you might call friendly. Why wouldn’t he be? You were giving him what he wanted for free. But most of the people in this family—in this room—knew how he could get if he wanted something you didn’t want to give. And I’ll tell you this. He was no friend, no uncle . . . not much of a human being.”
15
For a second, Sunny thought that Luke Daconto was going to grab Alfred Scatterwell and break his storklike, potbellied body over his knee. Instead, Luke turned on his heel and strode off.
Without missing a beat, Mike followed him. He hadn’t gone two steps before Helena caught up with him, taking his arm.
Shrugging, Will offered his elbow to Sunny. “Might as well make this unanimous.”
By the time they got outside, Luke was gone. The only sign of him was the fading sound of a car engine.
“Maybe it’s just as well.” Helena Martinson peered into the distance, but the car was long gone now. “What could we say to him after suffering through a performance like that?” She shook her head. “Telling him his friendship was just a figment of his imagination.”
“Even if it was true,” Sunny said. “Walking around in that crowd, we heard enough stories to Gardner’s discredit. By the time Alfred started mouthing off, Luke had to be developing some doubts about his friend’s sincerity.”
“Alfred was close enough to the truth with me,” Mike admitted. “I was the townie kid getting into Piney Brook. It was pretty amazing. I’d never seen a house like this.” His face got grim. “But it’s not as though I was sponging off Gardner. We were making music, we ha
d some good times together. I found out stuff I didn’t like about him, but the guy is dead now. I guess it’s true what they say, the good times are buried with people.”
“‘The evil that men do lives after them / The good is oft interred with their bones,’” Mrs. Martinson quoted. “Shakespeare.”
Sunny nodded. “Julius Caesar.”
“Much as I hate to admit it, Alfred told the truth about me, too.” Helena’s lips twitched. “Gardner was interested in me, and showed it in the most disgusting way.”
“What was it with that guy!” Mike burst out.
“He was good-looking, had a little charm, and a lot of money.” Helena did not make them sound like assets, but Will shrugged.
“With a start like that, I guess he figured he’d take every chance he could—the law of averages says he’d score often enough.”
“It seems to have worked with Alfred’s fiancée,” Sunny had to admit.
“Maybe she was lucky,” Helena said. “Looks like Alfred turned out to be a nasty drunk.”
That shocked a laugh out of them all.
“Nasty or not, he had us pegged. We’ve got maybe two days left before the deadline, and our investigation has got nothing.” Will turned to Sunny. “We have to map out what we want to do tomorrow.”
Sunny noticed a whispered conversation between Helena and Mike. “Sunny,” Mrs. Martinson said in her most guileless voice, “would you mind dropping me and your father off at my place for a while? You and Will are welcome, too,” she hurried on. “We could all have some coffee cake.”
“Thanks,” Sunny replied, biting back a grin, “but maybe it’s just as well if Dad visits with you alone for a while.”
“Yeah,” Mike put in. “You’ll have the house to yourself, except for the mange-ball.”
“Right,” Sunny teased back. “And you and Mrs. M. will have some privacy—except for Toby.”
That took some of the wind out of his sails.
Last Licks Page 20