“Flat as a pancake.”
“You shouldn’t be looking at a woman’s midriff, Charlie Moore.”
“She wears those skimpy tops. What’s a man supposed to do?”
Esther shook her head. “That nursery of theirs isn’t coming along too well either. Last time I went over to visit Ashley, I noticed an electric saw sitting smack-dab in the middle of their living room. There’s a lot of construction mess lying around in the yard too. Brad should pick up the wood he bought before the termites get it. Did you notice that the house for sale next to the Haneses’ hasn’t had any lookers in a while?”
“Oh, that house had a looker all right. I saw Miranda over there the other day. She was peeking in the windows, trying the doorknobs, and tromping around on the porch testing the floorboards.”
“Really! Now that’s interesting news. I wonder if she’s thinking of buying it.” Suddenly Esther let out a groan of frustration. “Are we doing orange or red, sugar bear? I can’t keep it straight.”
“Red. With polka dots.”
“Who would wear a necklace with red polka-dot beads anyhow?”
“Some lady in St. Louis.”
They worked awhile in silence.
“I think we’ve about got the Labor Day barbecue in order,” Esther said. “Nobody liked my parade idea.”
“You told me.”
“Did I? Anyhow, the reaction of the TLC sure surprised me; I can tell you that. I always wanted to be in a parade. But no one in the neighborhood would give my idea the time of day. Jennifer Hansen would have made a lovely Deepwater Cove queen; don’t you think?”
“I don’t reckon missionaries can be beauty queens, sweet pea. How about if you dress up in that old formal of yours, and I’ll wheel you around the cove in my golf cart a couple of times?”
Esther laughed—the tinkling, airy sound that Charlie had fallen in love with so many years ago. She looked at him and smiled. “I couldn’t fit into that formal with a shoehorn. But it’s sure pretty—all that orchid organza. I know I ought to give it to some lovely younger lady, but for the life of me, I just can’t part with it.”
As Charlie recalled, the gown had so much prickly netting and stiff lace that he’d barely been able to get close to Esther on the night of their high school prom—a situation that had frustrated him no end. In fact, he didn’t think he’d even managed to win himself a kiss. Too many petticoats. The dress was up in the attic somewhere, probably eaten up by moths, but in Esther’s mind it was still a confection worthy of a queen.
“Are we doing orange beads, honey?” Esther asked. “Or pink? I can’t keep it straight.”
“Red,” he said, watching Miranda Finley finish her exercises, slip a robe over her white bathing suit, and leave the deck for the evening. “With polka dots.”
“Oh, good gravy, of course,” Esther said. “How could I forget that?”
K
im was so ready to go home for the Labor Day weekend that she could hardly bear to wait another minute. With her husband and mother-in-law joining her in a supreme effort to be cooperative and friendly, the Finley household was happier than it had been in months. In anticipation of the neighborhood barbecue, Derek had bought enough hot dogs to feed two armies, and Miranda was making her special macaroni-and-tofu confetti salad. The whole family had ordered Kim not to do a single thing except relax, rest, and enjoy the time off. Derek had been right that his wife expressed her love best by serving those she cared about most deeply. Still, Kim couldn’t deny that the idea of putting her feet up for an entire weekend seemed positively magical.
But the last week in August wasn’t over yet, and Kim pulled on her gloves in preparation for the final patient of the day.
“You’re givin’ me gas, Miz Kim. Ain’t that right?”
A tooth extraction on a mouth like Abe Fugal’s wouldn’t be fun on a Friday afternoon, but there was no way around it. It would really go more easily with the patient unconscious, but Mr. Fugal had come alone to his appointment and didn’t have anyone to drive him home.
“Are you sure you want gas, Mr. Fugal?” Kim asked, laying a hand on his shoulder. “Dr. Groene can numb the area without it, but if you’d prefer—”
“I don’t want no needles comin’ my direction! Not in my mouth nor anywhere near it. I know the doc means well, but the thought of him lungin’ at me with one of them syringes gives me the heebie-jeebies.”
“We can administer some gas to help you relax, but I’m afraid Dr. Groene is going to have to deaden that nerve before he pulls the tooth.”
“Aw, rats. That just burns my toast. I’m sixty-two years old and never been to a doctor once in my whole life. I was born at home, and I never set foot in a hospital except for the time my wife took sick. Cancer, you know. She had to have something for the pain, right until the end. But me, I’m healthy as a horse. I never took no drugs. Not even an aspirin. And here you go wanting to let the doc put a needle in my gums.”
Kim patted her patient on the shoulder.
“All right, start up the gas, honey,” Abe said. “Hit me good before the doc gets in here with his needle. I don’t want no part of that thing!”
Kim smiled as she prepared the small mask that would cover Abe’s nostrils. “Breathe through your nose, and you’ll start to calm down. When Dr. Groene comes in, I’ll tell you to shut your eyes. I bet you won’t even know what he’s doing.”
“Okay, I believe you, but only because you’re so purty. Put it on me now, and crank up the knob as far as you can. Get me through this, Miz Kim, and I’ll love you till the end of time.”
“Please tell me if you start to feel the least bit dizzy,” Kim urged him gently as he began to inhale the gas. “We don’t want you getting nauseous, Mr. Fugal. If the room starts to spin, squeeze my hand.” She slipped her palm over the gnarled fingers.
Abe tightened his hand around hers. Closing his eyes, he breathed in deeply. “I think you’re the sweetest young thing I ever saw,” he murmured.
“Thank you, Mr. Fugal.” Kim was accustomed to the slightly silly, sometimes emotional expressions the dental gas unleashed. She had dealt with giggly patients, groggy patients, weeping patients, and those who professed their undying and eternal love for Ben Groene even as he drilled straight into a cavity.
“How are you feeling now, Mr. Fugal?” she asked after Abe had been lying in silence for a few moments. “Are you dizzy at all?”
“Naw, I’m just a-layin’ here thinkin’ about my gal. My darlin’. Her and me sure had some good times together.”
“I bet you did.” As Kim adjusted the dial on the gas, she pictured Abe’s darling as the wife who had passed away from cancer some years before. As Dr. Groene’s assistant, she had often listened to patients who wanted to share their memories.
“I can’t believe she’s gone,” Abe told her mournfully. “Gone, just like that. Without even a word of farewell. She hollered, ‘Hep! … Hep me, Abe,’ and that was it. I tried. I done all I could to fetch her back onto the dock, but no sooner did I reach out for her, and she was gone.”
“The dock?” Kim asked. A prickle ran up her spine and lifted the hair on the back of her neck. “Your wife fell off a dock? When was this?”
A tear trickled down Abe’s cheek. “Not my wife. My darlin’ June bug. Weren’t but a couple months ago. We was havin’ ourselves a little party, you know. Just a beer or two. Catchin’ some fish off the dock by our trailer. And then I went back inside to fetch us another twelve-pack. It was a party, like I said. My little June bug and me used to party thataway nearly ever night.”
Kim swallowed as Dr. Groene stepped into the cubicle. Against all she had been taught about keeping the patient comfortable, moving ahead with procedures, warding off unforeseen problems, she held her index finger to her lip. Pointing at Abe Fugal, she shook her head fervently at Dr. Groene.
He frowned and took a step closer.
“Abe, how did June fall off the dock?” Kim asked, making frantic, senseless gestures at Dr. Groene.
“Awww … she was leanin’ over to pull our basket of fish out of the water, and in she went. Headfirst. She come up a-hollerin’. She yelled out that she’d got herself tangled up in fishin’ line and couldn’t move her arms. The line must’ve been driftin’ around underwater—you know how it does when you hook your lure onto a snag that snaps it right off the rod? All that flailin’ around probably knotted June up, and she wasn’t able to get free. I could hear her yellin’, but I couldn’t hardly see her no more. It was dark by that time, you know. The lake was nothin’ but a big black hole. And it just swallowed up my darlin’ June bug quick as a wink. She never was a strong swimmer, and with the fishin’ line … aw, rats, I hate to think about that. I can’t hardly bear it.”
“Kim?” Dr. Groene asked, his brow furrowed. “What’s going on here?”
Without thinking twice, Kim began to turn down the gas. “Mr. Fugal,” she said, “I’m bringing you back.”
“Are we done?” His rheumy eyes blinked. “Hey, you was right, Miz Kim! I didn’t feel a thing. ’Cept my tooth sure does hurt. Oops, Doc, I think you missed your target. I can still feel that tooth right there where it always was.”
“We haven’t done the extraction yet, Mr. Fugal,” Kim explained as she leaned in to where he could see her face. “I need to talk to Dr. Groene for a minute. You were telling me about June, and I don’t want you to keep talking until I’m sure how to proceed.”
“Aw, shucks.” Abe shook his head. “You turned off that gas, didn’t you?”
“Yes. You should be able to think more clearly now.”
“Clear as I ever could,” he said with a wry chuckle. “Which weren’t much.”
“Do you remember what you told me about June?”
His expression sobered. “Yeah, I do. I didn’t come in here aimin’ to talk about it, but you’re so purty and sweet that I decided I might as well ’fess up.”
“’Fess up to what?” Dr. Groene asked. “Abe, what have you been telling Mrs. Finley?”
“Well, I went ahead and told her about my sweet lil’ June bug fallin’ into the lake that night after we’d been partyin’.”
“Are you talking about the woman who used to come with you to your appointments? I met her once or twice.”
“Yep, you did. June done most of our drivin’, bein’ as I’d lost my license a while back on account of too many DWI tickets. I was in so much pain with that tooth that June convinced me to let you have a look at my chompers.”
“I didn’t realize she had passed away.”
Kim spoke up. “Dr. Groene or I might have wanted to go to the funeral, Mr. Fugal. When was it?”
The corners of Abe’s mouth turned down. “It weren’t.”
“You had a memorial service for her?” Dr. Groene asked.
“Naw. I decided not to spill the beans. Didn’t tell nobody June was gone, because … well, if you want to know the truth, I didn’t have the guts. See, we’d been drinkin’ and maybe doin’ a few other things we shouldn’t of that night—if you catch my drift. I didn’t want to get neither of us into trouble. Besides, she don’t have no family other than me, and
we
wasn’t even married.”
“So … she drowned?” Dr. Groene asked.
“Didn’t you hear about it on the TV? It was on the news for a while after they found her. They couldn’t figure out who she was, but I knew. I knew it was poor June.”
“I think it would have been better if you’d reported this to the authorities, Abe,” Dr. Groene told him.
“Maybe so, but my daddy used to say, ‘Dead is dead.’ I figured that’s the way it was with my darlin’ June bug, and not a thing I could do about it. Like I told you, I was flat-out scared to own up to what had happened that night, because of the drinkin’ and so forth. June used to watch them detective shows on TV, and these days they can pretty much tell whatever you’ve been doin’ or even might have did a long time ago. Not to mention that I been in the clink a time or two already, and there’s somewhat of a record on my name over to the police station.”
“I need to call my husband,” Kim said quietly.
“Use my office,” Dr. Groene said. “Abe, since you’ve told Mrs. Finley and me about June already, I guess you’re willing to tell the police what happened now, aren’t you?”
“I know I should. Yeah, I’ll do it. They’ll probably lock me up and throw away the key for the rest of my life. I reckon I deserve it too.”
“I doubt they’ll be that harsh under the circumstances.”
“Well, like I said—I’ve done time before, so I know I can bear it. In fact, I’m glad I told you the truth. The grief was about to kill me.”
Walking toward the dentist’s private office, Kim could hear the two men continue to talk as she keyed in Derek’s number. He would still be out on the water, but she knew it wouldn’t take him long to get to Dr. Groene’s office.
“Hey, beautiful,” Derek said when he answered. “Is Dr. Groene letting you off early today? I was hoping—”
“Derek,” Kim cut in, almost breathless with excitement. “I’m still at work. You have to get here right away.”
“What’s wrong, honey? Is this is an emergency?”
“No, but it’s urgent. Derek, I need your help. I don’t know what to do. One of our patients is here—Abe Fugal—and he confessed something to me while he was being sedated. I turned off the gas as quickly as I could, and I think he’s still willing to talk about it.”
“What did he tell you, Kim?”
“He was with a woman the night she fell off a dock. He knows she died, because he saw reports about it on the news. But he never told anyone what had happened, and there was no funeral or memorial service. Derek, I don’t think anyone else knows about this woman’s death.”
“Are you telling me the man didn’t report a possible drowning?”
“That’s right. They had been drinking all evening. He said she was reaching off the dock for a basket of fish when she tumbled into the water. He told me that she wasn’t a good swimmer, and she yelled out that she had gotten tangled in fishing line. He tried to reach out for her, but he couldn’t find her in the dark. Then he lost sight of her. He thinks she drowned.”
“I’m on my way,” he said. “I’ll be there in fifteen minutes. Calling the police to put a stop-and-hold until I can get to you. Stay with me, Kim.”
A moment later, Derek’s voice became muffled as he spoke by radio first to municipal authorities and then to the Water Patrol dispatcher in Jefferson City. Kim heard him give his badge number and then say, “Jeff, I’ll be off the water … 10-6 at the dental office of Dr. Ben Groene on Highway 5, Camdenton.”