Merry Jones - Elle Harrison 01 - The Trouble With Charlie (17 page)

Snickers rippled softly across the chapel. Emma scolded Florence, “Mother, keep your voice down,” and stood to eulogize her brother.

As Emma began talking about her childhood and brother, Charlie got up and went across the aisle to his mother. I saw him kiss her cheek. Then he stood behind her and rubbed her shoulders until Florence relaxed and, smiling, nodded off.

I didn’t see Charlie again during the service. He wasn’t with his mother after Emma spoke. Wasn’t around when the pastor led the final prayers, when pallbearers carried his coffin to the hearse, or when Edward escorted the bereaved family to a limousine. Charlie wasn’t there, but others were.

Like the ever-present Detectives Stiles and Swenson. Standing in the corner, as they had been at the viewing. Watching. Conferring. Even as the limousine drove off.

We followed the hearse, led the parade of cars going to the
cemetery. I watched Emma’s children, felt regret that I hadn’t seen them in recent years. Doubted they remembered me. I wondered if this was their first encounter with death, if they remembered the living Uncle Charlie. They seemed subdued, stared in moody silence out the window. The youngest wriggled a bit, annoying his sister, but they didn’t squabble. Just grunted.

Frank and Emma sat stonily, Emma no longer weepy. Stoic, now. Long-suffering. I considered telling her that she’d given a touching eulogy, but couldn’t, and not just because I hadn’t listened to it. After her rampage to me on the phone, blaming me for her estrangement from Charlie, all but accusing me of killing him, I wasn’t going to say anything to Emma. Not about her speech or anything else. Ever, if I had my way.

Florence was the only relative of Charlie’s for whom I had true affection, and she was snoring, sound asleep. So I kept to myself as the limo moved out of Center City onto the Schuylkill Expressway, heading toward Bala Cynwyd and West Laurel Hill Cemetery. And then, through the gates, into the burial grounds.

A perfect funeral day. Crisp, cool air. Cumulus clouds dotting the sky. The leaves turning orange. An ominous hint of a chill, a reminder of coming winter. Of inevitable death.

The parade of cars snaked along to the gravesite. And from there, my memories are snapshots. A tent beside the open grave. A large machine, some kind of device to lower Charlie into the hole. People gathering around the hole in the ground, making statements, reading poems.

I clearly remember Susan reciting one. “I Did Not Die,” by Mary E Faye. She cleared her throat. “Do not stand at my grave and forever weep. I am not there; I do not sleep.”

What an appropriate poem, I’d thought. Given that Charlie had not slept much since his death, popping up even at his funeral service.

“I am a thousand winds that blow. I am the diamond glints on snow. I am the sunlight on ripened grain.”

Suddenly, Emma wailed as if in pain. Herb comforted her. Florence didn’t stir.

I remember Becky and Jen, side by side, reading the Twenty-third Psalm. Herb reciting the Lord’s Prayer. And later, the coffin being cranked lower and lower into the ground.

I stood graveside, noticed muddy water puddling at the bottom of the hole. Was glad I’d bought the most expensive vault, so Charlie would stay dry.

And then, people were leaving, returning to their cars. Cemetery workers began dumping earth into the hole. Covering Charlie.

I remember Emma hurrying her children. They had a plane to catch, after all. And Florence waking up, confused about the commotion, thinking once again that Emma was her dead sister, Dorothy. Still hungry for lunch.

As I climbed back into the limousine, I remember stopping to look back one more time, half expecting to see Charlie climbing out of the ground.

Instead, I saw someone else. Sherry McBride. Her dyed hair blowing in the breeze, she was standing beside the grave. And she was watching me.

Finally, everyone was gone. I had the house to myself. People had come back after the burial, drinking, eating, talking, congregating to erase the proximity, the awareness of death. I’d been amazed at how many people cared about Charlie. And, despite the suspicions and rumors, how many people had come out to support me. From school. From the gym. From the neighborhood. From the past.

For two solid days, I’d been surrounded by good intentions. People had hovered around me, touching and consoling. Blanketing me with good wishes. The truth was I felt smothered. Needed air. And solitude.

The last to leave, of course, were Becky, Jen, and Susan.
They’d wrapped leftover cold cuts in plastic. They’d run the dishwasher. They’d sprawled out on my red leather sofa and matching easy chair, helping me put away the better part of a bottle of Scotch.

Becky, once again, had offered to stay the night.

“You shouldn’t be alone,” she’d insisted.

“It’s okay. I need to be.”

“Not yet. You’ll have plenty of time to be alone.”

I hugged her. “You’ve done enough for me, Becky. You’ve been here for me nonstop. Go home. Pamper yourself a little. All of this has been hard on you, too.”

She stood her ground, all five-feet-maybe-two-inches of her. Head high. Feet apart. Hands on hips. “What about that woman, the stalker? You said she was there, graveside. What if she comes after you?”

“She won’t. Not tonight.”

“You don’t know that.”

True. I didn’t. “If she comes, I’ll call the police.”

Becky stood up straight, trying to get in my face. Coming up to my chin. “This is serious, Elle. For all you know, she’s who killed Charlie. Which means she might have Charlie’s keys. The police still haven’t found them, have they?”

No, I didn’t think they had.

“And you still haven’t changed the locks?”

No, I hadn’t.

“So she can come in while you’re sleeping—”

“And, if you’re here? What’ll you do to stop her?” Becky wasn’t terribly imposing.

“At least we’d outnumber her.”

We’d argued. But I had to stop depending on my friends. Becky looked exhausted, pale. She needed to stop worrying about me and rest in her own bed. Finally, I’d promised to double bolt the doors. And keep a hammer under my pillow. And
have my phone ready on the nightstand. Even then, Becky had been reluctant to go home.

But she did. I closed the door after almost forcing her down the front steps, and leaned back, embracing the stillness of my empty house.

For a while, I stood in the entranceway, listening to the quiet. Letting go. And then, slightly tipsy from the Scotch, I wandered from room to room, reclaiming my house, my privacy. Feeling the air settling, the scents fading. Turning the light out in the kitchen, letting it sleep. Making my way down the hall, passing the powder room, stopping at the door to the study. Drawing a breath.

Maybe I wouldn’t go in. Maybe I’d wait until the next day. But why was I so hesitant? Charlie was not, would not, be in there. He’d been buried. He was gone.

I probably shouldn’t have been drinking with so recent a head wound. But a drink was exactly what I wanted. Not Scotch. Wine, this time. Just one glass to help me sleep. Shiraz, finally, was what convinced me to go into the study. The bottles were in there, on the rack above the bar. So, I ignored the fine hairs on my arms and the nape of my neck, the ones that stood up and danced out warnings. I paid no mind to the shiver of air that chilled me as I stepped into the room. I was determined. Despite what had happened there, I marched in, straight to the bar, where visitors had left an open but not empty bottle. And poured.

Something moved in the periphery of my vision. But I didn’t react, knew that whatever I’d seen wasn’t really there. Couldn’t be.

The wine splashed around in the glass as my hand trembled. But slowly, I turned around, lifted the glass, silently toasted Charlie, and drank.

Okay. I’d done it. Gone into the study again. Not seen a ghost or had any hallucinations. Reclaimed it. Now I could leave.

I drained the wine. Rinsed out my empty glass. Recorked the bottle, tossed an old cork into the jar where we—where I collected them.

And noticed that one of the corks looked odd.

Because it wasn’t a cork.

It was a flash drive.

And it had no business being in my cork jar. Actually, it was Charlie’s cork jar. After he’d left, I’d just kept filling it.

“Why do you save corks?” I’d asked him way back in the beginning.

“Well, you can’t just throw them out.”

I couldn’t?

“Wine isn’t like soda pop.” Charlie had been impassioned about wine. “It’s alive—it’s living and breathing right up until we consume it. Wine dies for our pleasure, and the cork? Well, the cork is a reminder. A marker of the life sacrificed to our enjoyment.”

I’d found his concept macabre. But we’d been drinking and he’d probably been half in the bag when he’d said that. Not entirely serious. Even so, we’d kept the corks. A row of full jars lined a shelf beneath the bar. And a not quite full one sat on the bar’s end. Holding not just corks, but a flash drive.

I heard Derek, pressing me. “Have you seen anything out of the ordinary? Maybe a flash drive?” And after the funeral, he’d come back to the house, wandering around, looking into vases and behind books. He’d gone into the kitchen, ostensibly for ice cubes, but ice had just been an excuse. He’d been snooping. Probably opening drawers and cabinets, checking canisters. Looking for the client information he claimed Charlie had taken.

And now, there it was, in the best hiding place of all: right out in the open. I had no doubt I’d found what Derek had been searching for, what Charlie had been hiding when he’d died.

I looked at the jar, but didn’t reach inside. Something held me back, though I didn’t know what. After all, the flash drive was nothing to me. Whatever was on it concerned some rich client of Derek’s whom I didn’t even know.

So why was I wary? The flash drive was small. Innocuous. The size of a car key or a lipstick.

Maybe I’d just leave it there. Pretend I hadn’t seen it.

In fact, that was probably the best idea. I had enough problems without Derek’s flash drive. The thing didn’t affect me, wasn’t my business. Whatever was on it was between him and Charlie and some client. I wanted no part of it.

I was still telling myself that as, up in my bedroom, I opened my laptop and plugged the thing in.