Larkspur (14 page)

Denise's looks were dramatic rather than beautiful and when she opened her mouth she
invariably betrayed herself, but could that woman move.

I discovered I had been holding my breath. I let it out in a long sigh. Every step Denise
took expressed grief, loyalty, pain reined in by dignity, yet it was not possible to analyze how she
created the effect. Watching her, I understood at last that she was a consummate artist.

At her left hand, Dennis, in a dark suit, was red with embarrassment. The usher looked
apprehensive. Denise moved serenely on.

When they reached the front of the church, I thought she was going to demand to be
seated in the family pew. I could even imagine her huge eyes flashing. However, she did nothing
so vulgar. Head bowed, she made an infinitely graceful gesture of resignation and allowed herself
to be seated in the second row. The occupants, lawyers by the look of them, moved aside for her
as if they had been cued. She took her seat. Dennis, ears scarlet, sat beside her on the aisle.

A low murmur from the congregation--audience?--indicated that I was not the only one
impressed. My mother stirred and I bent to hear.

"Magnificent," Mother murmured. On target as usual.

I believe the Joneses, Angharad's mother and father, had chosen the service. The
conventional Episcopal funeral rite had dignity and a certain elegance, but it was also impersonal.
The priest gave a sermon rather than a eulogy. He referred to untimely and violent death in a
sensible way. He offered comfortable ideas about resurrection. He did not allude to Llewellyn's
sexual preference, said nothing of children born out of wedlock, and mentioned poetic pioneering
in only the most general way. I suppose it was a wise decision. Bill Huff must surely have been
disappointed. I think the poets were, too.

Afterwards--when we had watched the Joneses leave, heads high, and seen Denise droop
past on Dennis's arm--we all adjourned to a large reception area. The Joneses received
condolences at one end of the room. At the other, Denise stood receiving the unplanned homage
of anyone with a speck of human curiosity, including several members of the press. Dennis was
there too, large and embarrassed. I wondered if the mourners were congratulating him. I gave him
a kiss.

When Mother had paid her respects, we went looking for poets. Since many of them
were looking for Ma, we did not seek in vain. Soon she was deep in a discussion of the problems
of editing a writer who had revised even his most successful works repeatedly. That had been a
consideration in the definitive editions of other poets--Yeats, Auden, Ransom--so the subject
drew the scholars, too.

Everyone seemed to know that Ma would be looking for an editor. That added urgency
to the debate. Most of the poets favored following the artist's changes. The scholarly solution was
a variorum edition. Some literary historians argued for the best-known versions of the
poems.

I stood at the edge of this swirling controversy and looked for Winton D'Angelo. Finally
I spotted him by the coffee urn in the company of a handsome, squarish woman I took to be
Martha Finn. I had seen her play Gertrude, so I knew she could exude a ripe sexuality when she
wanted to, but she looked anything but flamboyant in person. She and D'Angelo seemed to be
marking time. I detached myself and drifted toward them.

Halfway across the large room I was waylaid by Bill Huff.

"Morning." His eyes looked like poached eggs.

"Hullo, Bill. Where's Lydia?"

He gestured toward the Joneses. Lydia was standing, head bent, beside Angharad's
mother, listening to something the woman was saying. Mrs. Jones was small, with Llewellyn's
elegant bone-structure, and she was dressed with understated elegance. Her husband looked as if
he wished he were playing golf. Lydia cocked her head and said something, patting Ann Jones's
arm.

I returned my attention to Bill. "Nice service."

"Yes." He looked disappointed. "Uh, Lydia said to tell you she'd like to meet your
mother."

"Sure. I'll work it in when the debate cools."

He gave me the poached egg stare.

"A little dispute over the definitive edition of Llewellyn's poems. They're going at it hot
and heavy."

"Oh."

I concluded that the Huff Press poets were entirely Lydia's province. Otherwise he would
have known what I was talking about.

"Never mind, Bill. I'll see to it when I've said hello to D'Angelo and Martha Finn." I
oozed off, leaving him looking as forlorn as an abandoned child.

D'Angelo introduced me to his future wife in neutral tones.

She shook hands. "Awful, wasn't it? Llewellyn may have had his faults but he was a
first-rate poet. He deserved better."

"The service was not without its dramatic moments."

She threw back her head and laughed. "My God, what a wonderful woman. Has she ever
considered theater? I mean acting in plays, as opposed to what we saw today. I suppose her voice
is untrained."

"You could ask." If Denise took up acting maybe she'd ease off Dennis and Ginger.

We talked for a while about voices that didn't fit the speakers' personalities. With Denise
the problem was not so much her voice as what she said. D'Angelo listened and sipped coffee.
Finally he murmured, into a pause, "I'm supposed to join your mother at the townhouse in about
an hour. It would be less harrowing if I'd met her."

I looked at the eddying poets. "Let's go get it over with, then. She's predisposed to like
you, you know."

"Oh?"

"Llewellyn told her you were willing to do the shitwork."

After a startled pause, Martha Finn laughed her throaty laugh, and D'Angelo's tension
seemed to ease.

As we made our way through the thronged lawyers, I saw that Lydia had crashed the
party. She was standing at Ma's right hand and saying something so hearty it shook the fringes of
her hand-loomed shawl. Ma wore the blank look she puts on when she's about to say something
awful like, "Do I know you?"

I picked up my pace. "Mother..."

Ma raised an eyebrow at me.

"I see you've met Lydia. Huff Press," I added, with a warning grimace.

Ma's blankness gave way to comprehension. She said a flattering word about a chapbook
the press had printed that spring.

Lydia's gray eyes lit, and she was off on a technical discussion of the problem of
woodcuts in computerized publishing. I let her talk for awhile then interrupted her as ruthlessly
as she had interrupted Ma's conversation with the poets who were now drifting Denise's
direction. Someone had found Denise a chair. She was surrounded by admirers.

"Ma, this is your partner in crime, Winton D'Angelo."

Mother brightened and shook hands with D'Angelo and Martha. Lydia watched the
introductions with a proprietary air, shawl adroop, but she made no further attempt to
monopolize the conversation. By the time we went out to hail a taxi I could see that Ma had
warmed to her. It's hard to resist eager admiration.

We were running late. I would have liked to have had time to savor Llewellyn's
townhouse--decor and view. Llewellyn's taste had been cheerfully eclectic--a jade horse here, a
French seascape there--but the whole had a lived-in charm that expressed the happier side of the
poet's personality. I waited in a little brick-walled garden, a glass of wine in my hand, while the
lawyers gave Ma and D'Angelo Llewellyn's papers. There were legal formalities. Finally we
called another cab, whipped by the St. Francis for Mother's bag, and made it to the airport in time
to board the small propjet.

D'Angelo and Martha had left before we did with the papers. Neither of the Joneses had
come to the townhouse. It would belong to Dennis. It was hard to imagine him in a setting so
essentially urban. Denise, however, would be in her element.

The flight was bumpy and noisy. Ma dozed. I stared down at the dun-colored valleys and
earthquake-scarred hills below. North of Red Bluff the air turned calmer. We flew by the west
face of Mt. Shasta. It was short of snow, thanks to the drought, but Ma was impressed. We
landed at Weed at five thirty. Jay didn't meet us.

That was not a problem, though Ma seemed disappointed.
I
was disappointed. I
wondered if there had been some development in the investigation. Had Miguel surfaced? We
declined rides with D'Angelo and the Huffs, climbed into Ma's rented car, and headed north.

The drive to Monte takes about an hour. I was at the wheel. At first we talked family.
Then Mother commented on the service and reception. She seemed fascinated with Denise,
whom she had seen dance thirty years before. She talked about her friends among the poets. She
didn't mention D'Angelo. Of Lydia she said merely, "That is an ambitious woman."

We wound slowly up the wooded slope of the Siskiyous where almost every turn
produces a spectacular view. Ma was drinking in the scenery. After awhile she said, "Tell me
about the investigation. I gather the young chauffeur did it."

I hesitated. There had been little talk of the murder at the reception, probably because
everyone was making the assumption Ma had made. "He's still missing," I said neutrally.

Ma sighed. "I suppose Dai used him. Dai was a good poet, but being a good poet doesn't
necessarily translate into being a good person. Sometimes the opposite. Frost was a difficult man,
Thomas an alcoholic."

"I liked Llewellyn."

"Yes, darling, but you didn't have to put up with him day in and day out. He had the
arrogance of wealth as well as an artistic ego, a double load. I've seen him deliver crushing
snubs."

"Are you saying he was asking for it?"

"Heavens. No, I'm just trying to understand. If Hal had killed Dai I wouldn't have been
surprised. They provoked each other deliberately sometimes."

I supposed Llewellyn's affair with D'Angelo could be classified as provocation. I didn't
say anything to Ma about it. She'd find out, sooner or later. "There's the money, too."

"But surely Dai didn't leave the boy much." She was still thinking of Miguel as the
murderer.

When I didn't reply she went on, "Doesn't your...Jay tell you what's happening?"

"In a general way. He's been digging for motives, since everyone at the lodge had means
and opportunity. Miguel will get $25,000 when the estate's settled."

Ma snorted.

"Junkies have killed people for a couple of dollars. $25,000 would go a long way in
Baja."

We contemplated Yankee dollars in a depressed economy. I took the first Monte exit,
drove to the mall, and showed Ma the bookstore. I think she found the setting disappointing. She
patronized Ginger but not grossly. We left. I was hungry, and the Eagle Cap Lodge lay fifteen
miles out of town.

I drove to my apartment and handed Ma the keys to the rental. "I'll lead you out there in
the Toyota. Do you want to see my apartment now or tomorrow?"

"I think I need a shower and dinner. Let's go on to the lodge."

There was no sign of Jay's Blazer in the lot, so I hopped in my car and led the way. The
manager escorted us to Ma's suite upstairs in the main lodge. Dad had rented a cabin the year
before. The man bowed us in the door and promised to reserve us a table in the dining room.

"Oh, Lark, look!"

I shut the door and turned. Ma was standing at a low table by the French door that led to
a little balcony. "Nice view?"

"I mean the flowers! I wonder who sent them?"

My eyes adjusted to the indoor light. An exuberant bouquet of daisies in a tall vase
graced the table--white daisies, lilac daisies, black-eyed Susans, the Shasta daisy.

"Maybe Dad..."

Ma found a card, read it, and began to laugh.

"What is it?"

She handed me the card, still chortling.

"Welcome to Monte! Goats and monkeys! Sorry I couldn't make it." It was signed
"Jay."

I was pleased but a bit jealous. He had sent me a bouquet of roses when he couldn't
make the playoff game and a formal arrangement for the opening of the bookstore, to which he
did come, but this posy showed imagination. "Uh, goats and monkeys?"

"Othello welcoming the doge to Cyprus." Ma plumped onto the couch and tossed her
funereal gloves at the table. "Is Jay in the throes of jealousy?"

"More likely in the throes of investigation. You wanted a shower?" I was hungry.

Ma went off to get ready. I leaned back and stared out the window. The room overlooked
a formal garden and a croquet lawn. Handsome people in fashionable resort wear were strolling
among the flowers.

While Ma was dressing, Martha Finn called to invite her to D'Angelo's apartment for
cocktails Sunday. I said I'd relay the message.

Dinner was worth waiting for. It was nearly ten before I reached Monte. A light showed
in my living room.

I trudged upstairs and unlocked the door. "Ma liked the flowers."

"Good."

"And she got the joke." I set my handbag on the coffee table. Then I took a good look at
Jay. I suppose I shrieked. "What happened?"

"I had an encounter," he said around a split lip, "with a bear."

"Oh, shit. Ted Peltz." I wanted to touch him and was afraid to, so I stood in the middle
of my heirloom Turkish carpet and gaped. Besides the split lip, he had a purpling contusion on
his right cheekbone, and he was sitting in that careful way that indicates taped ribs. His right
hand was swollen.

He eased his shoulders against the sofa back. "I went out to interrogate the Peltzes and
stepped--excuse me, dived--into a little domestic disturbance. Fortunately I had...backup." His
speech was the slightest bit slurred.

I sat, very gingerly, on the edge of the couch and touched his face. The unbruised part.
"They must have given you something."

"Pain pill. How was the trip?"

I let my hand drop to my lap. "Of all the irrelevant questions."

"Hey, don't cry. He looks worse."

At that moment I hoped Ted Peltz was dead. Being a civilized person I repressed the
thought, but it was there. I sniffed. "Tell me."