Hour Game

Chapter 49

The day of Robert E. Lee Battle’s funeral started out under a blue sky that soon turned cloudy. By the time the procession reached the cemetery, a warm, gentle rain was falling. The army of black sat around the freshly dug hole under an enormous white tent.

King looked at many faces he knew and many he didn’t. It was said that the regional airports in Charlottesville and Lynchburg were lined wingtip-to-wingtip with private jets belonging to friends of the Battles’ who’d come to pay their last respects. Morbid curiosity had probably enticed more than a few attendees.

Michelle sat next to King. She was actually wearing a dress! King knew better than to make any comment. His arm was still aching from his last wisecrack.

The Battles were in the front row, Eddie and Savannah on either side of their mother. Chip Bailey was next to Eddie. Dorothea sat at the end of the row, arms crossed. Mason stood off to one side, his gaze on the heavily veiled Remmy. Ever the dutiful servant, thought King.

On the other side of King sat Harry Carrick. The man was dressed as dapper as ever, his white hair even more striking against the backdrop of his dark suit. He’d given Michelle a peck on the cheek and King a firm handshake before sitting down.

“Quite a crowd,” King whispered to him. Michelle leaned over to listen.

“Bobby and Remmy had lots of friends and business associates. Throw in the curious and the ones who came merely to gloat, and you have a staggering turnout.”

“So I guess the Junior Deaver case is over,” said King.

“Technically yes. You can’t prosecute a dead man for burglary; what would be the point?”

“Technically, but…,” said King, watching his friend closely.

“But if my assumption is correct and Junior was innocent, I’d still like to catch the thief.”

“You want us to keep investigating?”

“Yes, I do, Sean. I have his wife and children to consider. Why should his little ones grow up thinking their father was a thief if he wasn’t?”

“In fact, we have our own motivation to follow that up.”

“I can see that, considering how Junior was killed.”

“Exactly. What are you doing after the funeral?”

“I’ve been invited to the Battles’,” answered Harry.

“So have we. Maybe we can find a quiet corner and discuss tactics.”

“I look forward to it.” They all sat back and listened as the preacher commenced his talk about the dead man, the resurrection and life eternal. The rain continued to fall, making a somber afternoon even more depressing.

As the lengthy homily finally ended, the preacher went forward to comfort the family. King’s gaze moved beyond the group assembled by the grave, and out in grids to the surrounding area. It was the same technique he’d used when in protection detail at the Secret Service. Then he’d been looking for potential assassins; now he was looking for someone who’d already killed.

King spotted her as she came over the slight rise of ground to the right.

Lulu Oxley was dressed all in black but, unlike Remmy Battle, wore no veil. And then it suddenly occurred to King: Junior’s funeral had been today as well. And there was only one cemetery in the area. Appearing behind Lulu as she marched toward them were Priscilla Oxley and the three Deaver children.

“Oh, shit,” whispered King to Harry and Michelle. Michelle had already seen them coming. Harry hadn’t until King pointed her out.

Harry jerked back and said, “Oh, good Lord.”

Lulu turned and motioned for her mother and children to stay where they were. They instantly obeyed, and then Lulu kept right on coming. King, Michelle and Harry rose as one to head her off. Others in the crowd had seen her too, because the murmuring was growing louder.

When they reached her, about fifty feet from the Battles, King said, “Lulu, you definitely don’t want to do this.”

“Get the hell out of my way!” said Lulu in a voice that told King she’d been drinking.

Harry took her by the arm. “Lulu, listen to me. You listen to me now!”

“Why the hell should I? I listened to you before and Junior’s dead!” To King she looked like she might collapse any moment or else pull a gun and start shooting anything with clothes on.

“No good can come out of your being here,” continued Harry. “No good. Mrs. Battle is grieving too.”

“She should be rotting in hell for what she did!” She tried to jerk her arm away from Harry’s grip, but the old man somehow held on.

His voice was steady and calm. “There isn’t a shred of evidence that she had anything to do with Junior’s death. In fact, everything points to his being killed by the same person who killed all the others, including Bobby Battle. The same person killed both your husbands.”

“Then maybe she had her husband killed, I don’t know. But she threatened Junior and now he’s dead.”

King looked back and saw that Remmy Battle had raised her veil and was now staring at them. And then King’s worst fears were realized. Remmy went over to Mason, said something to him as she pointed at them, and then she started walking over holding an umbrella against the rain.

“Oh, this just gets better and better,” muttered King under his breath. All others in the crowd sat watching, waiting for a catastrophic collision of widows.

With long, methodical strides Remmy reached them quickly. King immediately blocked her path to Lulu.

“Get the hell out of my way, Sean. This is not your business.” Her southern drawl had never been more prominent, at least in his experience. Her look and tone brooked no opposition, and King reluctantly did as he was told.

Harry was the next barrier, but it only took a fierce expression from Remmy to move him aside as well. Probably sensing the futility of it, Michelle didn’t even try.

Remmy was now face-to-face with Lulu, who stared back at her on tottering legs, the tears running down her face, which was twisted into an expression of hatred.

Without looking back at them Remmy said, “I want to talk privately with Ms. Oxley. We have some things to discuss that are just between us.”

Lulu began, “I got nothing to say to—”

Remmy held up her hand, but King, who couldn’t see her features, concluded it was probably the look on the older woman’s face that had halted the usually indomitable Lulu from launching into her tirade.

“Please let us talk,” said Remmy in a calmer tone.

The three of them slowly moved away. King remained nearby, tensed to leap if the women started throttling each other.

Remmy immediately took Lulu’s arm in a firm grip. At first the other woman resisted, but Remmy leaned toward her and began to talk quickly, though none trying to eavesdrop could hear what was said. Long moments passed, and King looked on in amazement as Lulu’s features calmed. Even more miraculously, after a few minutes of conversation Lulu reached out and gripped Remmy’s arm for support. The two women finished their conversation and started to walk toward King.

Remmy said, “The Oxleys will be joining us at the house. But first I’m going to pay my respects to Junior.”

As they walked off, King saw that Mason had collected Priscilla and the children and was leading them down to the Battles’ limousine.

“In my seventy-plus years I’ve never seen anything as strange and inexplicable as that,” said Harry, stunned.

As the two women disappeared over the slight rise in the ground, King said to his two companions, “Stay here.” He started off at a jog, following the two women.

Junior’s grave site had no tent and was far humbler than Bobby Battle’s funeral in every other respect. It was Saks versus Kmart, which overlooked the indisputable fact that both men were equally dead.

The only people around were the two men whose task it was to lower the simple wooden casket into the ground and cover it with six feet of fill. King watched from behind a large ornate sculpture of a mother and child that marked a nearby grave as Remmy spoke to the workers, who nodded respectfully and stepped away. The two women knelt on the fake green grass carpet in front of the casket and clasped their hands together in prayer. They remained there for several minutes. When they rose, Remmy went over to the coffin and placed a single red rose on it. Lulu nodded at the men, who came forward once more as the women walked off arm in arm.

King drew farther back as they passed by his hiding place, and watched as they disappeared over the rise. King turned back to Junior’s grave. The cemetery workers had headed back to their nearby truck probably to get their shovels. King thought about going over to pay Junior his own last respects. King hadn’t known the man very well, but his wife and children obviously loved him very much; every man should leave behind such a legacy. King hadn’t seen too many tears at Bobby Battle’s interment, costly though it had been.

As he was about to head back, he stopped and ducked farther behind the statue. Someone had flitted out of a nearby patch of trees. This person walked quickly toward the grave, looking nervously all around. There seemed an abundance of guilt in the figure’s furtive movements. King couldn’t make out who it was or whether it was a man or a woman, since the person’s outfit consisted of pants, a coat and a cowboy hat pulled low.

As the person knelt in front of the grave, King crept forward for a better look. And then the hat came off as the person’s head bowed in prayer. It looked to be a woman, given the length of the piled-up hair. However, from this angle King couldn’t make out the face. Should he walk up and confront the person? But that would give him away as well. He thought some more and then ducked behind the large statue of mother and child once more, picked up a pebble, aimed and sent it sailing toward another large marker about twenty feet to his right and close to Junior’s grave. The result was as he’d hoped.

The woman looked up quickly at the sound of the rock hitting the marker, giving King a clear look at her face. She put her hat back on and ran for the cover of the trees.

King had no reason to give chase. He knew who it was.

Yet why would Sally Wainwright, the Battles’ horseperson, be praying in front of Junior Deaver’s grave?