The Windsor Knot

CHAPTER 8

WESLEY ROUNTREE WAS wedged into the corner of the back room of Lucy’s Country Garden Flower Shop, trying not to bump into the shelf of bud vases situated perilously close to his left shoulder. On the table in front of him was a fax machine, being attended by Lucy herself, who looked as solemn as a death-row chaplain.

“I have to warn you, Wesley,” she whispered. “This machine doesn’t do too good on photographs. It’s mainly for transmitting paperwork, and it keeps you from having to be on the phone all the time. But don’t expect the picture to come out looking all that great.”

The sheriff sighed. “It probably wouldn’t, anyway. With Emmet being dead and all.”

“Well, I just wanted to warn you,” said Lucy, straightening her pink smock with an air of one who has done her duty. “I hope you can tell if it’s him or not.”

Clay Taylor, lounging in the curtained doorway, held up Clarine Mason’s photograph of her late husband. “We can compare it to this,” he said. “It’ll give us something to go on.”

“And please, Lucy,” said Wesley, “don’t go spreading news about this around town. We don’t know that there’s any crime at all connected with this. It’s probably some mistaken-identity business, and I’d hate to get Clarine all upset with rumors.”

Lucy was a picture of injured innocence. “If you don’t trust me, Wesley, you could have gone to the highway patrol at Milton’s Forge and used whatever it is the police are supposed to use.”

“Officer Vega is sending me a copy of the picture and a set of fingerprints, Lucy. Second-day air. I just wanted a general idea of what the fellow looked like.”

Lucy glanced at the photograph in the deputy’s hand. “Well, if Conway Twitty has gone and died on the L.A. Freeway, you will be none the wiser,” she sniffed.

The machine beeped, then clicked into action, commanding their immediate attention.

“I hope it’s not another flower order,” muttered Clay.

The florist glared at him. “Thanks a lot!”

“No,” said Wesley, peering at the edge of the paper emerging from the machine. “It says Los Angeles at the top. We’ll know in a minute here.”

They waited in silence while the machine thermo-printed the message from California. When it had finished, Wesley eased the sheet of paper out of the machine and motioned for Clay to bring the photograph. Officer Vega had sent them a copy of the black-and-white Polaroid photo of the deceased and a photocopy of a California driver’s license identifying the man as Emmet J. Mason.

Wesley squinted at the photo. Since shades of gray do not transmit in fax communications, the image was a stark contrast of black and white, omitting age lines and other details that might have helped in the identification process. He set the picture down beside the framed photo of Emmet Mason. He looked from one to the other.

“It’s hard to say, isn’t it?”

Lucy tossed her head. “I told you about sending pictures!” she sniffed.

“There’s a definite resemblance,” said Clay. “And the ears are the same shape. They always say that’s a big tip-off in identifying people.”

The sheriff nodded. “I’d say the likeness is good enough to justify me asking a few more questions, even before we get the official photo.” He turned to the florist with his most disarming smile. “Lucy, I thank you for your hospitality. And I sure do appreciate your discretion. When I get ready to donate some flowers to the church in honor of my parents’ anniversary, I’ll give you a call.”

When they were outside, Clay asked, “What do you reckon this means?”

Wesley sighed. “I’d say it means that reports of Emmet Mason’s death were a trifle premature. And I reckon I have to drive back out there and tell Clarine that she’s a widow.”

“That won’t be news.”

“No, but it won’t be pleasant, either. Damn that Emmet! I wonder what he was about.”

“That’s not the half of it,” grunted Clay. “I wonder who’s in that urn on your desk.”

Elizabeth MacPherson was curled up on the chintz sofa in the den, reading a hymnbook. “It’s so difficult to decide what music to choose,” she said, running her finger down the list of titles. “I wonder what they play for weddings in Scotland.”

“‘Amazing Grace,’” said Geoffrey. “Though it’s considered bad form to use it if that happens to be the bride’s name.”

“I think ‘Greensleeves’ is a very nice tune,” she mused.

Geoffrey looked up from his playscript of Twelfth Night. “Since the other title of that melody is ‘What Child Is This,’ I implore you not to use it. You know how people jump to conclusions. What else are you considering?”

“I have a list of songs that were used at some of the royal weddings,” she said, picking up another book. “Prince Charles and Princess Diana had ‘I Vow to Thee My Country.’”

“Very appropriate for them, Elizabeth, but in this case it rather implies that you are handing Georgia over to the Redcoats.”

Elizabeth scowled. “That was several wars ago.”

“It would be worse if you were marrying a Yankee,” Geoffrey conceded, “but I advise you to abandon the idea all the same. What are the other choices?”

“‘O Perfect Love.’”

“Not bad. Who used that one?”

“The Duke and Duchess of Windsor.” She sighed. “Oh, dear, I wouldn’t like to identify with her on my wedding day, poor thing. She’d had two husbands before Edward. Her husband’s family hated her. Her mother-in-law Queen Mary never spoke to her.” Elizabeth shuddered. “And everybody blamed her for the King’s abdication.”

“Cameron is not required to give up seals or porpoises on your account, I trust?”

“No. And everybody seems very calm about the prospect of our marriage. Congratulations, but no confetti, if you know what I mean. Not wildly ecstatic.”

“You’re thinking of Princess Diana, I suppose? I’ve always thought that Prince Charles would have been driven to marry her by public and family opinion alone.”

“No. Actually I was thinking of Charles’s grandmother, Elizabeth of York. The Queen Mum. She was old Queen Mary’s other daughter-in-law. There was no way poor divorced American Wallis could compete with her. Of course, she had a better pedigree than Wallis Simpson. When the future George VI proposed to her, she was the daughter of a Scottish earl, living in Glamis Castle in the Highlands.”

“Trust you to admire the Scottish royal,” muttered Geoffrey.

Elizabeth ignored him. “She was very charming and not just a social butterfly, either! During the First World War, her family used their castle as a convalescent home for soldiers. And Elizabeth worked as a nurse, even though she was only fifteen at the time.”

“She does not sound like you in the least,” Geoffrey remarked.

“Anyway, she got to know the King’s younger son, Bertie, and when he asked her to marry him, she turned him down.”

“She seems to have had a clearer view of royal life than you do, dear.”

Elizabeth ignored him. “He kept proposing to her, though, and-get this! His parents-the King and Queen, mind you!-said to him, ‘You’ll be a lucky fellow if she accepts you.’ Imagine being that approved of.”

“And were they right?”

“They were. She was marvelous. They got married in 1923, and when she entered Westminster Abbey for the wedding, she laid her bouquet on the grave of the unknown warrior and walked to the altar without it. And during World War II, she actually practiced with a pistol at Windsor, because, she said, if the Nazis invaded England, she wanted to go down fighting. I would like very much to meet her.”

“And her wedding song was…?”

“‘Lead Us Heavenly Father.’”

“I think you ought to go for that one,” said Geoffrey. “It will have sentimental associations for you. Assuming, of course, that you can find anyone around here who can sing it.”

“Yes, I hope I have better luck with musicians than I did with caterers. Did you hear about Charles’s recommendation?”

“Yes,” murmured Geoffrey, looking troubled. “Charles is behaving oddly these days. And don’t say ‘How perfectly normal,’ because I know that he’s always peculiar, but he’s being strange in a different way.”

“Do you think he’s up to something?”

Geoffrey hesitated. “I think he bears watching.”

The sheriff’s reading glasses were perched on the end of his nose as he examined the blue cloisonné urn on his desk. Cautiously he picked it up and checked to make sure that the lid was on tight before examining the bottom. “Made in China,” he announced with a sigh of disgust. “That’s no help.”

“Yeah, I noticed that. It’s heavy, though, isn’t it?” asked Clay, who had just finished photographing the urn and dusting it for prints.

“There’s something in there, all right. I was hoping for a serial number, or-if we were really lucky-the name of a funeral home inscribed on the bottom.”

The deputy shook his head. “It’s never that easy.”

“It is in real life.” Wesley grinned. “Remember the fool who tried to hold up the bank in Decatur, and wrote his holdup note on his own deposit slip?”

“Well, in this case you’re out of luck. You’ve got no clues as to the origin of the vase; no fingerprints, thanks to five years of Clarine’s diligent housekeeping; and no trace of the packaging that the vase was sent in, also thanks to the widow’s cleaning mania.” He took a long swallow of coffee and made a face. Wesley Rountree could not make coffee worth a damn. “I think you’re going to have to open it.”

“You’re right,” sighed Wesley. “I reckon it could just be filled with sand. Before we go any farther in looking into this matter, we have to know.”

He wiped his hands against his trouser legs and took a flat-footed stance facing the desk. Cradling the urn in the crook of his arm, Wesley gripped the lid and turned. After a moment’s hesitation, it turned easily, and within seconds he had set it back on the desktop and lifted the lid.

“It isn’t sand,” he said, peering at the contents of the urn. “It isn’t fine ash, either.”

The deputy ambled over to Wesley’s desk to take a look. “There’s chunks of stuff in there,” he said. “What is that? Bone?”

“Looks like it,” the sheriff agreed. “So we have somebody in this urn, even if it isn’t Emmet Mason.”

“Yeah, but who?”

“Let me think about this,” said Wesley, running a hand across his bristly hair. “I need to talk it out and see what occurs to me. Five years ago Emmet leaves for California on a business trip…”

“Did he?”

“Good question. We know he’s dead there now, but we don’t know that he went there then. What we do know is that five years ago Clarine Mason got a phone call, purporting to come from California, telling her that her husband was dead.”

“But you can make a phone call from anywhere,” Clay pointed out.

“True. And then she got a package, containing this blue urn, supposedly filled with the ashes of her cremated husband.”

“But since we don’t have the wrapping and since she never looked at it, we don’t know that the package actually came from California.” The deputy shook his head. “I don’t think that narrows it down a whole lot, Wesley.”

The sheriff leaned back in his swivel chair and closed his eyes. “I am trying to remember Emmet Mason,” he said. “Friendly fellow, kind of beefy. Ran the hardware store, but wasn’t too interested in tools himself, as far as I could tell. He was big in little theatre, though. He’d lived here all his life. The Masons have been here for a good hundred years. They built that homestead where Clarine lives now before the Civil War.”

“So?”

“I’ve got to call Clarine. Why don’t you get on the other line and call around to all the funeral homes in the area.”

“What for?”

“Ask if any of them do cremations.”

Charles Chandler figured that it was a long shot, at best, considering the amount of time he had at his disposal-ten days, at the most-but he felt that he owed it to himself and his potential as a scientist to make an effort.

With that in mind, he had dressed in his most conventional outfit: khaki slacks, a navy blue blazer, and an ugly yellow tie borrowed from Geoffrey, who evidently prized it. Now, clean-shaven and smelling like Old Spice, he was ready to make a Serious Effort in the matrimonial sweepstakes. He needed the million dollars.

The problem was that he had no idea how to go about locating a suitable young woman. Like Geoffrey, Charles had gone to prep school away from Chandler Grove. After that had come college and the colony of scientists, as Charles liked to call them. He hardly knew anyone in Chandler Grove anymore, a fact that until recently was a source of comfort to him, since he found idle socializing both frightening and time-consuming.

The sudden need of a marriage partner had shed rather a different light on his freedom from social obligation. Now he felt like an outcast, marooned in a strange land whose language he did not speak. Even the most casual encounter made him feel like an alien. What did one reply to the man in a camouflage hunting outfit and a University of Georgia cap who ambled up to him at the gas station and said, “How ’bout them Dawgs?” Charles said that he didn’t own one, which, judging from the man’s reaction, was not the correct response.

Charles was afraid that he might find the female residents of Chandler Grove equally impossible to communicate with. He tried to think of places that he could locate someone who was more of a kindred spirit. He had still received no reply to the letter he had sent to the Georgian Highlander box number. Surely the responses to such a local magazine couldn’t be that numerous; perhaps his literary skills were even worse than he feared. Should he try again? There were Atlanta newspapers and magazines with personals columns for lonely yuppies, but they also required a written reply to a post office box, and there wasn’t time for that. He needed somebody around here that he could relate to. Some other group of outsiders, perhaps, who were in Chandler Grove but not of it.

Earthling!

Charles remembered the group of Earth Shoe people described by Tommy Simmons. Charles had recommended them as caterers for Elizabeth’s wedding partly out of mischief and partly because as a vegetarian himself, he hoped that his cousin would hire them to cater the wedding so that he could enjoy the food. Now he thought of an even better use for Earthling: as a source of suitable women.

Having forgotten exactly where the lawyer had said they were, Charles had to drive about in search of their health-food store. Fortunately, in Chandler Grove, such a quest was not difficult. After ten minutes of driving, he crossed the steel span bridge over the river, having covered the one-block business district of downtown Chandler Grove without finding any new establishments. Once over the river he discovered what he was looking for. The old gristmill, set in a grove of ancient oaks, had been repainted barn red and displayed a sign over its porch-EARTHLING-with a logo: a rainbow over an oak tree.

He parked the family station wagon in the gravel lot next to the riverbank and went in, hoping that a maiden with the soul of Madame Curie and the looks of Joan Baez was waiting for her prince to come. He straightened his borrowed tie.

Perhaps he had overdressed for the part, he thought, looking over the Earthling premises. A sawdust-covered floor was littered with packing crates and barrels of grain, each labeled with a sign hand-lettered in Magic Marker. A homemade cloth banner on one wall proclaimed the back room as the national headquarters for the Central American Prayer and Protest Group. Charles edged his way past plastic tubs of spices to examine the notices on the bulletin board. He had worked his way through Goat’s Milk for Sale; Custom-made Crystal Jewelry; and Advanced Yoga Classes when a gaunt, bearded man emerged from the back room and hailed him with “Yo! How can I help?”

Charles took a deep breath. “I-uh-” Inspiration! “I notice you have a sign up about Central America and I wondered if I could help.”

The man stared at Charles in his suit jacket and tie. “Well, we have a beans-and-rice dinner coming up on Friday night.”

“No. That wasn’t what I had in mind. Look, are you part of the underground?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“You know, the underground! That group that smuggles political refugees out of Costa Rica!”

A woman with braids and rimless glasses stuck her head out from behind the curtained doorway. “There aren’t any refugees from Costa Rica.”

“Puerto Rico, then,” said Charles impatiently. He wished he had taken a look at Newsweek before he left home. “You know, Central American illegal aliens.”

The Earthlings looked at each other and shrugged. This guy was too dumb to work for immigration, they figured, and it didn’t seem worth the trouble to enlighten him in regard to Puerto Rico.

“I thought I might marry one,” Charles said wildly. “Keep her from being deported.”

The woman’s lips twitched in amusement, but she said nothing.

Finally the man said gently, “We don’t do aliens. Look, can I help you?”

Charles looked at them, trying to decide whether or not to tell the truth. Better not, he decided. They didn’t appear to be people who would do desperate things for a large sum of money. They would for a cause, of course, but he couldn’t come up with one on short notice.

The woman came out from behind the curtain now, looking concerned. Her lips were pale and her eyelids red with a well-scrubbed look. Charles thought that she looked sympathetic and her figure was all right.

“Look,” he said, “I’m a physicist, and I don’t know anybody in town. Would you go out to dinner with me and tell me all about your work here?”

The woman regarded him as if he were a weevil in the whole-wheat flour. “No way,” she said.

While he waited for his deputy to get off the phone, Wesley stared up at the picture of the cowgirl on the palomino. The girl and the horse graced the calendar above his desk. Every year Wesley would sift through the collection of complimentary calendars sent out by local businesses-in search of a new palomino and cowgirl to adorn his workspace. Usually it was the feed store or the local hardware that issued such an offering, but this year they had opted for collie puppies and waterfalls, respectively, so Wesley had had to go as far as the Milton’s Forge Tack and Saddle Store. This year’s cowgirl, a skinny blonde in a white buckskin jacket, looked as if the palomino she was holding by the reins was the first of its species she had encountered. Wesley would be glad when the year was over. There weren’t any trees in the background, either. Any place without trees made him nervous.

His conversation with Clarine Mason had been brief. He had told her as gently as possible that the photograph from California did resemble Emmet, as far as he could tell, and that being the case, he had a few more questions to ask. He wanted to know if Emmet had ever been to college or if he had lived anywhere but Chandler Grove. Clarine said that apparently he had, if he was presently residing on a slab in a Los Angeles morgue, but Wesley assured her that he meant before that, to the best of her knowledge.

“No,” said Clarine Mason, without a moment’s hesitation. “He went to the community college for a business course, but he’d lived at home then. Of course, there’s the army. He was stationed in Germany about 1960. Does that count?”

“It may count,” said Wesley. “But I doubt if it matters.” He told her that he would be in touch when he learned anything and hung up.

Clay, on the other hand, seemed to get trapped by every person he talked to. He always wound up saying very little during these phone conversations, except for an occasional “I understand” and “That’s not really why I called” or “How interesting.” The calls always started out the same way. Clay would inquire whether the funeral homes supervised cremations, and then he wouldn’t get a word in edgewise for a good three minutes. Wesley was afraid that if this kept up, his deputy would become a real-estate baron in cemetery plots.

Finally, on the last call, he managed to avoid having one of the firm’s representatives sent around to discuss their special prepayment burial plan (Because in your line of work, sir, you never know) and he hung up the phone with the air of one who has had to wrest himself from its clutches.

“Okay,” he said, turning to Wesley. “I have some information for you. And, listen, if anybody with a voice like Vincent Price calls up and asks for me, tell ’em I’m out, all right?”

“Persistent, were they?” Wesley chuckled. “What did you find out?”

“They didn’t want to discuss cremation, you understand. I gather it must not be a profitable enterprise for them. It does them out of embalming charges, expensive vaults, satin-lined caskets, and all that other good stuff that contributes to the high cost of dying.” Clay shook his head. “When I go, just wrap me in a blanket and throw me in the ground.”

“That’s probably illegal,” Wesley pointed out.

“Yeah, they got lobbyists in the legislature, too, don’t they?” He turned to the page of scribbled notes he had taken during the phone calls. “All right, most of the local ones say that they don’t offer the service because there’s no demand for cremations in rural areas. Especially not back East. Now, in places like California, Hawaii, and Oregon, about forty percent of the deceased are cremated, but in, say, Kentucky and Tennessee, the figure is less than one percent.”

“Land is cheaper here,” Wesley remarked. “Also, we’re conservative here in the Bible Belt. In Sunday school they taught us that resurrection of the body would take place on Judgment Day, and by God it’s hard to agree to have your remains incinerated if there’s even a tiny chance you’d be missing out on a chance to come back.”

“Oh, Wesley, that makes no sense. Why, decomposition of human remains-”

“I didn’t say it made sense,” the sheriff retorted. “But I’ll bet you it accounts for the ninety-nine percent who want an old-fashioned burial.”

“It’s not environmentally sound,” said Clay with the conviction of the newly converted. “One guy-Clarence Calloway, over at Shady Pines in Reedsville-allows as how cremation is a pretty good idea, even though they don’t offer it. He says that in the United States, a person dies every fifteen seconds, making a grand total of fifty-seven hundred bodies a day to be disposed of. That’s a lot of land going into cemetery plots. And every new cemetery means less forest, less farmland, and less living space for those that are living.”

“That’s a pretty convincing argument,” Wesley conceded. “So how come he’s not offering this service if it’s such a good idea?”

“He can’t afford to,” said Clay. “First of all, like I said, there’s not so much profit margin in cremation as there is in regular burial, and secondly, in order to do it, you have to have a lot of expensive equipment. Now if there’s such a small demand for cremation in this area, you’d never recoup your investment.”

“Well, suppose Mr. Calloway’s funeral home does get that rare ecological patriot who doesn’t want to take up space in the ground. What do they do about him?”

“They farm it out,” said Clay, consulting his notes again. “I have it written down here. It seems that there is one place in this area that has a crematorium, and what few families request it are sent over there.”

Wesley picked up his pen. “Now we’re getting somewhere. Who is it?”

“It’s called Elijah’s Chariot, Inc., and it’s over in Roan County.” Clay shook his head in bewilderment over the name. “You reckon they named the business that because of the association? Chariot of fire, I mean. Kind of a poetic term for cremation.”

“Could be,” said Wesley, “but if I remember my Sunday-school classes right, it means something a whole lot more interesting.”

“Want to go over and talk to them tomorrow?”

“I have to be in court tomorrow, but if I get out in time, I will. Before then, though, I want to know who’s in that urn.”

“Who’s going to tell you that?”

Wesley grinned. “An expert witness.”

Clarine Mason was on her second straight glass of Southern Comfort. No ice, for once; she wanted it neat. In case anyone should drop by she had put a dish of mints beside her chair. She wouldn’t want her neighbors to smell liquor on her breath. Clarine had fixed her hair in a French twist, and she’d put on her navy blue church dress-just in case. She had asked the sheriff not to tell anyone the news about Emmet, and he’d said he wouldn’t, but she got dressed up anyway. It occurred to her that she might like to talk about this strange new feeling of bereavement, but it was too embarrassing to be shared.

The first grief had been a clean wound. Five years ago, she had felt anger at Emmet for his foolishness-and the pain at losing him and her security and her identity as Mrs. Somebody, so important in a small community. But she had everyone’s sympathy, and no one could say it was her fault back then. She had told Emmet not to go.

This time, though, there was a comic element to her dilemma that undermined her dignity as a widow. People would naturally be wondering what Emmet had been up to for five years. And now, instead of being a tragic widow, Clarine would be regarded as just another discarded middle-aged woman whose husband had gone off to greener pastures.

She stared up at the empty spot on the mantelpiece where Emmet’s picture had resided. It was strange that she should feel a new surge of grief, when in her mind Emmet had already been dead for five years. It was as if the phone call from California had brought her husband back to life for a few moments, only to let him die all over again.

And if she had been able to speak to him between one death and the other, what would she have said? That she missed him? That she wanted him back? Or would she have spent it in recriminations for his cruelty and his cowardice? Clarine took another swig of her drink, knowing the answer and not liking it.

She wondered if she would be expected to go to California now to clean up whatever mess Emmet had left in his five extra years of existence. Was there a young wife out there left with bills to pay? A new insurance policy to be contested? New possessions to be disposed of? Clarine decided that she didn’t care. The Emmet Mason whose wife she had been had died five years ago. What came after that would have to be someone else’s problem.

In a sliding metal tray in a Los Angeles morgue, the body of a man in late middle age lay in peaceful repose. The end had not been peaceful, and there had been a good deal of pain reflected in his heavy-featured face during the first moments of death, but that had been smoothed away now, and within the cold confines of the metal drawer, the body was flaccid and younger looking than it had been in some years.

There was some irony in this, because during the last years of his life the man had gone to some trouble to attain a more youthful appearance. He had exercised regularly in a somewhat ungainly manner, in baggy sweatpants that elicited smiles from his fellow joggers. He had tanned his body and dieted on wheat germ and yogurt-in an attempt to banish cholesterol and flab from his well-padded frame.

His efforts had not achieved the desired effect. He looked not younger, as he had imagined, but rather pathetic, like a man trying desperately to be what he wasn’t: young, good-looking, virile. No one at any distance, no matter how dim the light, had ever mistaken him for any of those things, during those last five years.

He did not look successful, because he wasn’t. He was a down-at-heels salesclerk who went to auditions on his days off and he lived in a shabby single room that cost more than he would have thought possible. The new life didn’t come to much. In the end, the only youth restorative for a man his age is the tonic of wealth and power. Lacking those qualities, he was invisible to the golden young women who jogged past him on the beach. He was as sexless as their fathers. He was faintly ridiculous.

It was this fear of a ridicule already felt that kept him where he was. Each time he lifted a telephone and got as far as the 404 area code of Georgia, a dread of the derision that would await him back home froze him into retreat. He never made the call to see if he could be forgiven, to ask to go home. Really, though, he didn’t want to go home. He only wanted them to respect him from a distance, after he had achieved his long-sought success.

He could only hope that someday one of the auditions would pay off and that an acting part-no matter how small-would establish his worth and the rightness of his decision. But it never happened. Instead, on one such quest of a ticket to Equity, he daydreamed too long on a boring stretch of freeway and found himself in the wrong lane for his exit. To pass it by would be unthinkable; it would cost him half an hour and make him late for the audition. So he swerved, trying to force his way into the relentless stream of traffic, but the engine on his Concord-an automotive version of himself-was not equal to the maneuver, and he found himself broadsided by a new and shiny Mercedes. His last thought as he crashed through the guardrail was that Sam Peckinpah had been right: you really did die in slow motion.