Dead Dogs and Englishmen (21 page)

Tuesday morning, the day
of Lila's funeral, was one of those cool summer days when the air is fresh, the sunshine pure gold, and the north country turns back to brilliant green. Except in my woods, where the trees were struggling to put out a single leaf and I still picked little green cocoons from my log pile and my house and my garden bench.

Dolly called first thing. She wanted to go with me to the funeral but wasn't sure she was up to it.

“Puking all morning. Hate to get out there and be running behind some tree,” she said.

“Then stay home.”

“Can't. This being pregnant thing is getting in my way. I'm a cop first.”

“Not anymore.”

“I need to be there. What if this Toomey guy shows up? Maybe somebody else. We got a couple of murders on our hands. I need to see what's going on.”

“I'll keep my eyes open.”

“Yeah, like you're a trained police officer,” she scoffed.

“What in heck did you think having a baby was going to be like?”

“Wasn't my idea.”

“Then whose was it?”

“Nobody's. Just happened.” She cleared her throat. “From what you said, women drop kids all the time and keep right on going. Hardly notice a thing's changed.”

“Women weren't cops back then, Dolly.”

“Yeah, well, there's got to be a way to get through this. After it's born I'll bet I can take it right along with me.”

“On shoot-outs?”

“You know what I mean. Hell, how many shoot-outs I been in? Kid can stay in the car …”

“Oh, no you don't.”

“Anyway, I'm feelin' a little better now that you made me mad again. Might as well come by and get me.”

I let Sorrow out, then called Jeffrey to see if he was going to be at the funeral. I didn't really see Toomey showing up if he was involved in Lila's murder but I'd feel better, just knowing Jeffrey was there somewhere. Behind a tree. In his car. Just there.

He was coming, he said. “Don't want to get in too close and scare off anybody.” He paused. “But I'll have your back, Emily. You can count on me.”

Good enough. It was a funeral, after all. Not the place most killers would pick to knock off a witness—which I supposed I was. Of a sort.

We agreed to meet for coffee in Leetsville after the funeral. There were still some things to get going on.

“You heard the bullet they took out of Lila was the same caliber as the bullet that killed the dog in the Maria Santos murder? We need that gun.”

“How much of this can I put in the paper?”

“Nothing right now. Lieutenant Brent said the lab found stippling around the wound, and scorch marks. You know what that means?”

I thought so, but let him talk.

“That's from where the flame exits the barrel. It burns the hair and tissues around the site. Found gunpowder residue, too. That's expected. From the wound track it's clear the woman was kneeling when she was shot. Looks like, from that wound track, and the place the bullet entered, that the shooter was pretty tall. Seems to fit. If it's this Toomey guy.”

“But nothing in the paper.”

“Let's keep it simple, okay? We've got little enough going for us. I don't want to send up any signals, like what we've got. I'm going out to that sheep ranch. It doesn't matter what the guy says, this is a murder.” I could hear the frustration in his voice. “Hawke's got lawyers fighting—unnecessary invasion of privacy, harassment, interfering with his ability to conduct his business—everything you can think of to obstruct our investigation but I'm going in there anyway. Christ, you'd think the guy would want to find who killed his wife.” He sighed. “Doesn't much matter how rich the guy is. The law's the law.”

_____

Lila's casket was white with bright gold handles. The top was carved, a smiling angel incised about where Lila's head must be. Dolly and I parked behind the hearse, a limousine, and a couple of other cars drawn up off the road. I saw Jeffrey's car parked farther ahead and thought I saw him standing in a copse of trees across from where the green funeral tent stood. There was a blue state police car up around a bend in the road. Two men in overalls sat on the back of a red pickup, leaning on their shovels. They waited to close the grave after the service. That was everyone who came to see Lila Montrose-Hawke out of this world.

Walking up to the gravesite, I put my arms out to a grieving Cecil Hawke dressed in a dark summer suit, the blond toupee firmly on his head, diamond winking at his ear, and a large white handkerchief raised to wipe his eyes.

“Oh, my dear,” he said to me. “I'm so happy you've come.” He gestured around us. “As you see, there's no one here to grieve for Lila. Poor Lila …”

A group of men who, from their blue shirts and unpressed pants and heavy shoes, must have been workers from the sheep ranch, stood off to one side, not moving to occupy the rows of folding chairs set up for mourners. No tall, dark man.

Henry Watson, Leetsville's new funeral director, came over to lead Cecil to a seat in the front row, nodded me and Dolly to chairs beside him, and went to stand at one end of the coffin, open Bible in his hands.

Henry began to speak, thanking all of the mourners for coming—as he nodded to the three of us. He read a passage from the Bible before closing the book and speaking of death in general and unexpected deaths in particular.

I listened with half an ear. It was embarrassing to sit there, with the grave diggers waiting, the workers standing off a ways. A funeral without friends and close family, without real tears and
real regret, is depressing. Almost as if Lila hadn't lived, she was being
ushered out by strangers—and a husband who couldn't have really
loved her.

As Henry Watson moved on to a woman's life, the meaning of the word “wife,” and a few extraneous things, I thought about the way I was living. Not even the word ‘wife' could apply to me. No kids. Few friends. If they threw my funeral tomorrow, who would come? Jackson. Dolly. A few people from Ann Arbor. A few people from Leetsville. Maybe Bill Corcoran from the newspaper. Not enough to fill the rows of chairs behind me. And not enough flowers to add color to what I hoped would be a dreary occasion.

Henry was up to “Poor Mr. Hawke. My condolences …”

I planned my funeral and then axed it all in favor of cremation and a quick sail on the wind, probably out over Willow Lake. Oh, but what about poor Sorrow? Dolly would just have to get over her aversion to animals and take him …

Back to the current funeral. Henry gestured for us to stand, then make our slow procession past the coffin.

I took the rose Henry Watson held out and was laying it across the white coffin as a black Ford Fusion made its slow way down the narrow cemetery road to stop and park behind my yellow Jeep. I couldn't see who was in the car. Maybe a relative, after all, I thought. They could have seen the notice in the newspaper, or maybe Cecil had called someone.

I stepped back from the coffin, tripping slightly over Dolly, who had her rose in hand but was staring hard toward that black car too.

The door opened and a woman got out from behind the wheel. She stood in the open door, put a hand over her eyes, and looked hard toward where we were gathered by the grave.

The door closed and the woman, in a staid black dress and black hat with a veil pulled over her eyes, walked slowly toward us. Cecil didn't notice her. His face was buried in one hand. The other hand lay open against the closed casket. His back heaved with awful sobs.

As the woman got close to us, I left our little coffin-side group and walked toward her. I wanted to make sure she was in the right place and not about to blunder into the wrong funeral. I moved quietly, so as not to intrude on Cecil's grief.

She was very young, much younger than she'd seemed at first. It was the prim black dress, and that squashed-down black hat
with a veil hiding her eyes, that gave her the look of an older woman,
or a woman dressed in a costume. No kid her age—maybe twenty-one or twenty-two—went around in that outfit. Not on purpose. Or not unless there was a good reason for it.

Since I was standing in her way, she looked up at me through the veil. Bright eyes. Almost no make-up. She gave me a tentative, half-frightened smile.

“This is the funeral of Lila Hawke,” I whispered toward the woman. She nodded. “I know,” she said, face stiff, voice small.

She began to tremble in her short-sleeved dress and bare legs. “I'm here to see my stepfather.”

The accent was definitely British. The face, when she lifted her veil, was one of those fresh English faces with pink cheeks and perfect skin.

Cecil's head snapped up at the sound of the girl's voice. He turned toward where we stood, eyes and mouth popping open, then took a clumsy step backward, away from her. His pale face turned a wine red, blood climbing into his cheeks then disappearing up under the blond wig.

“What are you doing here?” he demanded, his voice as much a snake hiss as real words.

“Hello, Father.” The young woman stiffened her back. “You must
have known I'd come. Aren't I always with you when one of your wives dies?”

Cecil Hawke looked from
one to the other of those who had gathered around him. He was a man caught in a trap, searching for a way out. When he looked back to the young woman standing firmly in front of him, he was more in control. His face relaxed, but not completely. He began to nod his head slowly, then clasp his hands and shake them a few times, as if in despair.

“This isn't the place, Courtney. Nor the time. I'm very sorry you lost your mother, but that had nothing to do with me. It never did …”

The young woman smiled. “Aren't you happy to see me? I've been hunting for you …”

“Oh, I'm certain you have. But you don't belong here, my dear. I've begun a new life …” He cleared his throat and glanced at those of us gathered close by.

“With a new wife.” She nodded toward the coffin.

“… a new life far from England. Tragedy follows me …”

“Oh, yes, I'm certain something follows you, Father.” The girl smiled an almost angelic smile as she put a long stress on the word ‘Father.'

“You can't continue to stalk me.” He made a slight motion of his hand toward the men from the ranch, signaling for them to move closer.

“Is that what you call it? Stalking? I only want to know. That's all. What have you done with all of our money? I need to hear you say it aloud.”

One of the men, a thick-bodied guy with almost no neck, inserted his body between Cecil and the woman. He put a hand up as if to push her back.

I looked at Dolly, raising my eyebrows. We couldn't let this girl leave. I searched the trees for Jeffrey Lo. I could just make him out, moving through swaying blue spruce branches.

I nodded to him, then to Dolly, hoping he got what was happening.

The thick man took the girl by one elbow and roughly pulled her back from the grave and away from Cecil. She resisted at first, elbow sticking out at an uncomfortable, even painful-looking angle. She stumbled over a tree root, then stood straight, and followed where the man pulled. She looked back hard at Cecil Hawke, digging her heels into the soft earth and pulling against the big man's grasp. At the road, she stopped just a second to stare at Cecil. She got into her car, started the motor, and drove off.

I looked around for Jeffrey. He wasn't where I'd last seen him, among the trees, but as the woman drove slowly off, I spotted his green Element as it fell in behind hers. I figured he'd be in touch later, or meet us at EATS with the woman in tow.

When I turned to Cecil he raised his eyes heavenward as if pleading for strength. He looked around, at those of us still gathered, and shrugged expressively “The price of being wealthy,” he said, sighing. “The insane are always with us.”

Henry Watson hurriedly motioned for Dolly to place her rose, and then for the workmen behind her to hurry right along. Poor Henry was flustered. His perfectly planned funeral for the first rich guy who'd come his way was in shambles. He urged everyone
to walk faster past the coffin and spoke a couple of hurried words—
as eager as we were to have it done with and be out of there. He shook hands, indicated the way down to the street, and murmured a few last unintelligible words.

Cecil was off to the limousine as Dolly and I scurried down the wide slope to my car.

“What're you thinking?” she asked in a stage whisper while opening the door on her side.

“I'm thinking we should head for EATS. That's where we're supposed to meet Jeffrey. Let's hope he didn't lose that girl.”

“Could be some nut, like your friend said.” Dolly slammed the door behind her as I started the car. “I guess rich people get 'em all the time. The funeral was in the paper. No knowing …”

“From that accent, she's not from around Leetsville.”

“Yeah, well, we got all kinds here. Have to admit, though, she sounds like Hawke.”

“Not quite. I've always thought he sounded more Australian than English. But what do I know … ?”

I drove off slowly behind the limo though it didn't take long for it to pick up speed and get out to the main road, where it turned not toward Leetsville, not even toward Torch Lake, but south, toward Traverse City.

“Think Jeffrey'll bring her to EATS?”

Dolly shrugged. “We gotta go see.”

“What if he can't get her to stop her car?”

“Possible. I wouldn't stop for some guy waving me over, would you?”

“Wish we could call Agent Lo,” I said. “Maybe he needs help.”

She pushed her gun around to a better angle, settled far down in her seat, then up again to pull her handcuffs out of her backside. “If you had a cell phone like normal people, we'd be okay.”

“I'll be happy to get one if you pay the bill.” I looked over at her.

“Yeah, like I've got money to throw away.”

“Me either,” I said.

_____

We drove into EATS's unpaved parking lot and checked out the cars. No Elements. Jeffrey wasn't there yet. Maybe he hadn't been able to stop the woman. Maybe he was still following her. We figured we'd go in and hang around until he got there but we didn't have to wait. Inside, Eugenia, behind her glass-topped counter, waved a slip of white paper at us.

We nodded to the farmers and women shoppers in for a late morning piece of apple pie and coffee, said ‘Mornin' to most of them, then turned our backs as we approached Eugenia, dipping her fluffy blond head toward us. “Your friend, that Asian guy, called and left a message. Says to come on over to the station. He's got somebody there he wants you to talk to. See …”

She held on tight to the scrap of paper she waved toward us, then frowned myopically and read it.

“Says: Please tell Deputy Dolly Wakowski or Emily Kincaid to come over to the station. We have the woman they should talk to here.”

Eugenia read slowly from her paper as if trying hard to get every word right. When she put the paper down on the cracked counter top and looked up, she was quick to ask, “What's he mean? What's going on? Is it about that rich guy over by Torch Lake? I read his wife got murdered at some party he was throwing. Sounds like quite the party. Still, if somebody got murdered …”

Dolly gave her a look, lifted her hand to the brim of her hat in a kind of salute, and we were on our way out the door as Eugenia called after me, “Hey, Emily. You got something going with this guy? This agent? Kinda looked like it the other day. Good luck to ya …”

At the car Dolly gave me a sour face. “All I can say is, he's sure better than your last one.”