Meadowlark (18 page)

"And Bianca married Keith?"

"Yes. I always thought I got the better deal."

An early tourist passed me going eighty. Muddy spray
blanked the windshield. I squirted detergent and increased the
speed of the wipers. "I understand that Keith still, uh, plays the field.
Why does Bianca put up with it?"

Trish didn't answer.

I added, "He came on to me. That's why I ask."

"You didn't like it."

"He's not my type," I said, a bit defensive. "And I didn't like
the circumstances."

Trish gave a sigh. "I told you Keith has never changed. Time
passed him by. Hugo kept growing and changing. So did Bianca. So
did I. I guess Keith didn't see any reason to change." As I pulled off
and we passed below the Meadowlark Farm sign, she added, "He can
be very charming. There are the kids to consider, too. And of course,
Bianca has a thing about divorce because of her father."

That made sense. I drove around behind the house and
parked by the stairs to the mudroom.

Bianca and Marianne came out to greet Trish, and Marianne
took her in for a cup of tea. Bianca invited me to join them.

I stayed firmly behind the wheel. "I need to get home. I'll see
you later."

She said she had called the workshop speakers and
explained about the murder investigation. Both had agreed to come
anyway. I wondered what she had really told them.

When I got home, Jay was marinating a flank steak. Potatoes
were baking in the oven. He had rinsed greens for a salad.

I gave him a large kiss. "Wow, a major production."

He returned the kiss with interest. "If I'm going to have to
listen to Keith McDonald sing, I want to be fortified."

"Will he do that?"

"Do you doubt it? They're holding the service at the farm,
and Bianca is in charge. She's sentimental about the commune.
McDonald was the official minstrel."

"Horrors," I said, but I was curious. I hadn't heard Keith sing.
Jay's favorite singer is Leadbelly. I told Jay about my conversation
with Carol, but he wasn't surprised. Dale had phoned him.

At half past six we turned off onto the drive to Bianca's huge
house. It was lit like the QE II, lights twinkling through what had
turned into a steady rain. We were not the first arrivals.

"Looks like a stock car rally," Jay muttered. Half a dozen
extra vehicles already jammed the asphalt lot beside the car barn. Jay
let me out. "I'm going to turn the car and park it so we can get away
from here. Tell Bianca she ought to send somebody to direct
traffic."

"Okay." I held my purse over my head and dashed for the
side entrance. I could feel my hair frizzing.

Marianne and Trish were sitting in the kitchen. I think I
startled them, but Marianne nodded, and Trish gave me a
constrained smile. I explained about the jumbled cars. Marianne
went off to find Mike.

"Where's Bianca?"

Trish toyed with her cup. "With the priest."

I sat in one of the kitchen chairs. "Priest? Will there be a
religious ceremony?"

Trish said, "Not if I have anything to say about it. Hugo was
very bitter about Cardinal McIntyre."

I stared.

"The good cardinal saw Vietnam as a holy war. Hugo didn't
desert the Church, the Church deserted him."

"Oh."

"I'm afraid I disgraced myself." She didn't look repentant.
"The priest said something gooey about Hugo's child, so I told him
Hugo and I weren't living together."

I controlled the urge to smile.

Trish said through her teeth, "I told him to say whatever he
says about lapsed Catholics, that he must have some words for them
because there are so many of them."

"Wow."

"Bianca is mending fences."

"Is she Catholic?"

"Lapsed."

I didn't envy the priest. In the distance a door chime
sounded.

Trish cocked her head. "More people?"

"Gardeners," I said. "I called a bunch of them myself."

She relaxed a little. "Well, that's all right."

At that point Jay entered, and I introduced him to Trish.
Then I excused myself and went in search of Bianca. It sounded as if
she needed propping up. The first person I ran into was Del
Wallace.

I went in through the dining room where we had eaten with
the staff on our first visit to Meadowlark Farm. Del was standing by
the sideboard, wearing a gray suit and looking lost.

He blinked at me. "Where's my wife?"

"Marianne went to get Mike." I explained about the
cars.

"Oh, yeah, okay." He drifted past me to the kitchen. I smelled
whiskey, but Del didn't sound drunk, just confused.

I could hear conversation from the living room and Keith's
voice in the front hall. I headed for the living room.

Bianca and crew had transformed it. They had removed all
the furniture from the center of the room, and replaced it with
padded folding chairs of the sort that can be rented for wedding
receptions. Thirty chairs, five deep, were arranged to focus on the
fireplace with its raised hearth. A fire crackled. Soft music played on
the sound system. Perhaps a dozen people, scattered in twos and
threes, were talking in subdued voices. When I stepped down into
the room, they looked at me. I nodded and smiled.

I didn't see Bianca at first. Then I spotted her with a fifty-ish
man I took to be the priest, though he wasn't wearing a dog collar. He
sat in an alcove near the French doors, and Bianca, in solemn brown,
stood facing him. They were talking. She glanced around, caught my
eye, and gave a half-hearted wave. I decided not to intrude.

Keith ushered an elderly couple in and seated them near the
front. The woman was wearing the stereotype of all Garden Club
President costumes--a pink lace dress of a kind I didn't think was
sold outside the Midwest. She looked to be in her seventies. The man,
bent over a cane, was older.

When he got the couple settled, Keith beckoned to me. I
followed him out into the hall.

"Will you take over the front door? Angie's supposed to, but
she hasn't showed up yet. I need to tune my guitar." Keith was
wearing dress slacks and a sweater over an actual necktie. The tie
picked up the blue of his eyes. He looked somber.

I said, "Of course. What do I do?"

"Welcome people, take their coats, show them where to
sit."

"Does it matter where?"

"No, though the Dean should sit in the front row. He's going
to speak."

I must have winced because he flashed me a grin.
"Briefly."

"Thank God."

He nodded and went off in the direction of the family
apartment.

Over the next quarter hour, I ushered in half a dozen elderly
gardeners and the Dean. He had come without his wife, which meant
the service was second level priority. When the governor spoke at
Shoalwater C.C., the Dean's wife tore herself away from her
tax-consulting firm and made an appearance. Hugo didn't rate that, at
least not at the end of March.

I smiled at the Dean, and he smiled at me. I thought he might
balk at the first row, but he came meekly enough. The door chimed.
As I went back into the hall, I saw Bianca, the priest trailing her,
surge across the Berber carpet to greet the Dean.

More elderly gardeners. The Peninsula is rapidly turning
into a retirement community, and retired people have time for
gardens. I tried to visualize Hugo lecturing to them in a group. I
failed. He had to have met them individually.

I seated them, and noticed that the Carlsens and Carol had
slipped in the back. Jason and Bill were missing. And Mary, of course.
It was interesting that there were no farmers--"real" farmers, Del
would have said--and no politicians. Bianca was not trying to use the
occasion to make points. These were people Hugo had met face to
face.

The chairs were almost all taken. The room buzzed with
low-voiced conversation. I spotted the new editor of the local paper,
which featured a gardening column, and wondered if any other
media people had sneaked in. I doubted Bianca had invited
reporters.

I was back at my post by the door, waiting, when Angie came
up behind me.

"I'll take over now."

I turned. She was wearing a silver-gray jumpsuit in washed
silk. She greeted me without warmth. "I hear Carol talked to
you."

"You were a fool not to tell the police you were with
her."

She shrugged. "I knew I could if I had to. I was hoping I
wouldn't have to."

"Any word on Mary?"

Her mouth tightened. "No. And I wish this farce was
over."

"You and Trish."

Her eyes widened but she didn't say anything. The doorbell
chimed again. I left her to answer it and went in search of Jay.

The service was scheduled to start at seven. At seven fifteen,
Bianca walked across the room and stood on the raised hearth.
When the buzz of conversation had ceased, she made a nice little
speech about Hugo, omitting any reference to murder or missing
students, and asked the priest to say a few words. His name was
Kramer, and he obliged. Considering the encounter with Trish, I
thought he comported himself with dignity.

He offered half a dozen platitudes in a pleasant baritone,
concluding, "In the midst of life we are in death. Of course, the
reverse is also plausible. In the midst of death, we are in life, and a
gardener must know the truth of that paradox. By all accounts, Hugo
Groth was a good gardener and a good man. God rest his soul."

Several people murmured "amen." I noticed that the sound
system was still playing. Fortunately, the music was classical and
unemphatic.

The Dean is a sociologist by training and speaks like one. At
Bianca's request, he offered some sad generalizations about the
prevalence of violence in America, and some positives ones about the
utility of hands-on education. He affirmed the college's support of
the sustainable agriculture program.

Jay shifted in his seat, and I suppressed a grin. When one of
the college authorities announces support for a program in public,
the program is in deep trouble. Bianca's internships could continue
without the college's backing, but there was no doubt that academic
credit and the tie-in with an accredited degree were an inducement
to students. I wondered if Bianca understood the Dean's subtext. Her
calm face betrayed nothing.

When the Dean finished his benediction, Bianca returned to
stage center. She reminisced a little about the commune, though she
didn't call it that, introduced Trish, who thanked everyone for
coming in a nearly inaudible voice, and made a smooth transition to
Keith. The sound system fell silent, and Keith brought his guitar up to
the hearth. Jay shifted again. I imagined I could hear his teeth
grinding.

Keith was rather good. It's true his guitar-playing was
rudimentary and his Scots accent, when his used it, was awful. But
his voice, a light tenor, was flexible and pleasant, and most of his
selections made sense. He did "Amazing Grace" and "All Things
Bright and Beautiful" which even pagans tend to know. The audience
warmed to him and joined on the refrains. Next, he sang an English
ballad about ravens and a dead knight. That was fine, if a little odd. It
probably went over a treat in his ballad seminar.

Then he sang a Scottish lament for the departure of Bonnie
Prince Charlie. The verses seemed irrelevant to Hugo's life and
death, but it was clear from the intensity with which Keith sang that
the song had private meaning for him.

"Better loved ye canna be.
Will ye no' come back
again?"

A simple enough refrain, with a good high passage for a
tenor. Keith's voice broke on the chorus after the third verse. I stared
at his handsome, bearded face and wondered what was going
through his head.

He collected himself and finished with "Study War No
More." That was a suitable conclusion for Hugo, who had exchanged
his sword and shield for a ploughshare down by the side of a
particularly beautiful river. It's a rollicking song, despite the
seriousness of the subject matter, and the elderly gardeners really
swung into the last chorus. Trish cried, but everyone else seemed to
find the song cheering.

And that was that. Because of her condition, Trish retired at
once to Hugo's old room. Bianca thanked everybody for coming and
said there were refreshments. Marianne stood in the arch to the
dining room. She served coffee, punch, and cookies to anyone who
wanted to stay and chat. Half the people left immediately, among
them the Dean. The other half included the interns, the president of
the Garden Club, and Lt. Colman, who had been one of the last of the
guests Angie showed in.

Bianca and Keith stood by the fireplace in an informal
receiving line, in case anyone should be so old-fashioned as to expect
one. A number of the gardeners did. They left gradually. Angie was
minding the door. Del and Marianne stayed in the dining room with
the interns and a handful of gardeners. Del was on his best behavior,
but he kept blinking like an owl. He said Mike was out controlling
traffic.

Jay and I drank punch, sampled Marianne's cookies, and
drifted back to the living room. As the last of the gardeners departed,
we began folding and stacking chairs. After a few minutes, Del joined
us. I wondered why he was being so helpful. Keith and Bianca were
deep in conversation with Lisa Colman.

"Where were Jason and Bill?" Jay asked.

Del said, "Bill don't like funerals. Jason didn't like Groth." He
gave a half-hearted bark of laughter.

Jay carried a stack of chairs to the inside wall. Del folded the
remaining row and followed suit. As they returned together, Angie
stalked in from the hallway, hands in the pockets of her
jumpsuit.

"Is that the last of them?" she asked.

I peered into the dining room. "I think so."

"Thank God."

"Thank God," Del said at the same moment.