The Hearse You Came in On Read Online Free PDF

shopping and her across-the-hall neighbor, an elderly cuss named Mr. Castlebaum. This left only two people conspicuous by their absence. One was the cocky bastard son of a bitch Grade-A prick. The other was the woman who had borrowed Carolyn James’s name long enough to tell me—in her own peculiar way—that the not-terribly-popular caterer’s assistant would soon be Parlor Two’s unhappy guest of honor.
    This was Baltimore, not Denmark. But something here still stank.
    The buzz coming from Parlor One made it sound like bingo night at the local fire hall compared to what we had going in Two. We had us a small somber wake for a friendless young lady who had decided to click off the program early. The whole thing got me sad and it got me angry. Aunt Billie could see it in my face later when she pulled herself away from her Mardi Gras and found me sitting in my office with my chin on my fists.
    “Bad one?” she asked.
    “A low show.”
    “Oh, that’s too bad. And such a young girl. Maybe it’ll pick up tomorrow at the funeral. You know how that can sometimes happen.”
    I looked over at her standing there at the door. Betty Crocker’s sweet old mother.
    “Your teacher went well?”
    “Lovely,” she said. “They laughed, they cried.”
    I do love my little auntie.
    The fake Carolyn James did not show at the funeral the next day. I didn’t really expect that she would. Whatever bizarre reason the woman had for impersonating the caterer’s assistant and putting in an early request for burial would have to remain a mystery. I sifted and resifted my ten minutes with her but came up with nothing. She was, as Julia had said, a Mystery Woman. Bona fide Sister Cipher. A Face Without a Name.
    Lady X.
    I did however have the pleasure of meeting the son of a bitch bastard Grade-A prick. I knew his name already from the paperwork that Billie had handed me when I had come back from my tryst with my ex-wife. His name was Guy Fellows. I kid you not. Some parents simply have no regard. Mr. Fellows had apparently handled the funeral arrangements in record time, over the phone. He bought Carolyn James the least expensive coffin the law would allow (the Pauper’s Pillbox, we call it in the trade), and he had left it to Billie to suggest the cemetery and to arrange for the plot. His attentiveness was touching, to say the least.
    Guy Fellows showed up at the cemetery wearing khaki slacks, a navy blue sport coat and a faded maroon club tie. He was—as advertised—a good-looking fellow. Tanned and trim, his hand-combed sandy hair featured a jaunty cowlick in the front which lent an unmistakable devil-may-care sexiness to his surfer-boy looks. And as with a certain breed of pretty boys, this guy wore his arrogance on his sleeve. He arrived at the grave site with his hands in his pockets, like he was posing for a fashion shoot. I watched him closely as he looked down at the coffin. It wasn’t sadness in those sharp blue eyes. It was irritation. If Carolyn James’s suicide ruffled him at all, it was largely because the funeral was interrupting his busy busy day. Even his one show of tenderness went sour. After staring at the coffin for some ten seconds he reached out and placed a hand on it. He drummed his fingers a few times then withdrew the hand, bumping the flower arrangement and knocking it down into the grave. “Shit,” he muttered, and thenstepped back under the canopy. Lovely bloke all around.
    The service was brief. Like Carolyn James’s life. When it was over, Guy Fellows turned and walked away. The priest looked a little lost, having no one to console. I shook his hand. He shook his head.
    “We could have phoned this one in, couldn’t we’ve? That was the saddest funeral I’ve done all year, Hitch. What? Did she have the plague?”
    But before I could answer we were interrupted by a ruckus over by the cars. Guy Fellows and Carolyn James’s across-the-hall neighbor, the elderly Mr. Castlebaum, were engaged in a