Sing It to Her Bones

7

When I purchased my little black dress at Hechts in Annapolis Mall, the label said it was crush-resistant and wrinkle-free. It also fitted as if it were made for me, or so I had been assured by the plump sixtyish saleswoman, the one who always managed to tap on my dressing room door-“How are we doing, hon?”-just as I had my head caught in the lining of some garment or was struggling, half naked, to zip up a pair of pants one size too small. The perfect travel outfit, she declared when I emerged from the dressing room to check the fit in front of a three-way mirror. If so, the manufacturer had never tested it out on a consumer like me. When I extracted it from the overnight bag at Connie’s, that perfect little black dress was a mass of wrinkles, as if I’d spent a restless night sleeping in it or on it. Connie doesn’t own an iron, so I hung the dress in the bathroom while I took my shower, marginally improving the situation. A colorful gypsy scarf with an elaborate fringe borrowed from Connie’s extensive collection completed the transformation. With luck, everyone would notice the gold, purple, and turquoise flowers and not the remaining wrinkles.

But I didn’t think anything could be done about the middle-aged face and puffy eyelids I was seeing in Connie’s bathroom mirror. I looked as if I’d been stung by bees. I hadn’t given my eyes much of a chance to recover, either, having spent every night since Saturday crying myself to sleep.

On the vanity, Connie had a flat wicker basket of cosmetics to choose from, many I recognized as the free-gift-when-you-buy-fifteen-dollars’-worth-of-our-products variety. I selected a beige foundation and smoothed it on, stroked my cheeks with blusher, then began working on my eyes with a bluish liner. Because of my unsteady hand, I only made matters worse. In addition to puffy, my lower lids were now rimmed with blue and smudged, like bruises. It looked hopeless.

I sat down on the toilet seat and fought back fresh tears of anger and frustration. Connie had reassured me, about twenty times since breakfast, that everything would be all right with Paul. But what did she know, really? As close as we had become, I knew that she was biased in favor of her brother, and who could blame her? Earlier I had overheard her on the phone with him, reporting in some detail on my current condition and reassuring him that everything would be all right with me: “Just give her time.”

Time! Why was there never enough time? I checked my watch, made sure my wig was on straight and appeared before Connie in the kitchen, as presentable as I would ever get under the circumstances. I caught her leaning against the sink, drinking coffee, her head tipped way back to get the last few drops, which I knew would be thick with sugar. Over a long-sleeved black cotton dress she wore a stunning vest elaborately embroidered with gold and silver threads.

“You look like the proper mourner,” she said, placing her empty cup in the sink. “Love the scarf!” She examined my makeup. “You should let me work on your eyes. You look like a raccoon.”

“Too late now. Have you seen my sunglasses?”

Connie pointed to the kitchen table.

I slipped the glasses on. “I just can’t stop crying, Connie! People at the funeral are bound to think I’m overreacting. I’m not a member of the family, and I didn’t even know Katie.”

“If anyone is so rude as to ask, I’ll tell them you’re menopausal.”

“Thanks heaps!” I found myself chuckling in spite of my otherwise grim mood.

Connie picked up her key ring from the kitchen table. I followed behind and waited patiently as she locked the house and backed her Honda out of the barn. Ten minutes later we arrived at St. Philip’s Episcopal Church, but even though the funeral wasn’t scheduled to start until ten, the parking lot was already full. A young man wearing an international orange slip-on vest with “parking attendant” stenciled on it in black directed us across the street.

Exasperated, Connie backed out of the church driveway, turned, and continued through the light at High. She pulled into the lot behind the Hillcrest Nursing Home, shut off the engine, and set the parking brake with a grinding, upward jerk. As we got out of the car, I noticed three old codgers sitting in plastic lawn chairs on the front porch of the nursing home, deep in conversation, soaking up the early-morning sun. They were dressed in shapeless sweaters in spite of the balmy weather. A male attendant in a green uniform loitered nearby, his eyes on scan.

Connie waved to one of the patients, a silver-haired gentleman wearing a red cardigan. “That’s old Mr. Schneider, Dennis Rutherford’s father-in-law. He’s got Parkinson’s, poor thing.” Connie shook her head. “I know Dennis would rather be caring for him at home, but it’s just too much. Maggie can’t cope.” She glanced back at the line of old men, sitting quietly in the sun, nodding at the mourners as they passed by the porch on their way to St. Philip’s.

“They’re a Gilbert and Sullivan chorus,” Connie said with a wistful smile. “Always nodding and agreeing with each other, no matter what. In the afternoon when the sun gets too hot, they move around into the shade on the south side of Hillcrest and watch the animals come and go from the vet’s instead of paying attention to what’s going on along High.”

I followed Connie as she headed up the sidewalk. “Hello, Mr. Schneider!” she called.

Mr. Schneider turned in our direction. “Why, hello, Ms. Connie! Say, whose funeral is it today? Not one of us, I know. I checked it out-no empty beds!” He snorted with laughter.

“It’s Katie Dunbar, Mr. Schneider. The girl who disappeared a while back.”

“Katie Dunbar.” He grasped his knee to steady his trembling hand. “I remember Katie Dunbar. Taught her in American history. Not a scholar, by any means, but turned in a fairly decent paper on the triangle trade first semester. Second semester, though, her grades went into the toilet. Squeaked by with a D, as I recall.” He shook his head. “Frieda and Carl must be devastated. Devastated.”

“I’m sure they are, Mr. Schneider.” She patted his other hand where it rested on the head of his cane.

“Send them my condolences, will you?”

“I certainly will.”

While we waited for the light at the intersection to change, Connie mentioned that Mr. Schneider had taught at the high school well into his late sixties. “Pity he’s now so frail.”

“Yes, but there doesn’t seem to be anything wrong with his mind or his sense of humor.”

As we crossed High Street, Connie explained that St. Philip’s Parish was one of the oldest in Maryland, founded in 1697 when a chapel was built by a group of Anglicans on that very spot. The present building dated from 1923 after a fire had destroyed the original structure. The “new” church was of sturdy red brick with an elegant white wooden steeple that seemed to scrape the sky. Stubby transepts hinted at the cruciform shape of the building. From the louvered panels in the bell tower, the somber tolling of a tenor bell rolled out across the town and deep into the countryside, drawing us in. It seemed to resonate on the same frequency as my body, sending chills racing down the back of my neck and skittering along my spine.

Among the last to arrive, Connie and I accepted a printed bulletin from a solemn usher stationed in the nave and made our way as silently as possible to vacant seats he indicated in the back of the sanctuary. The door to our pew groaned alarmingly, and two old dears with stiffly permed hair and hats like fat headbands turned disapproving frowns on us as we eased past an elderly couple rigidly determined to remain seated next to the aisle. I stumbled over a kneeler and, with a mind to the old dears, suppressed an “ouch” as my hand hit the hymnal rack.

Near the front of the church and to the left, an organist with more enthusiasm than talent, her back to the congregation, was halfway through “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring,” her body swaying from side to side as she played. When the chorale melody kicked in, she leaned back so far I feared she might topple off the organ bench.

To the right, opposite the organ, stood the pulpit, rising gracefully from a stone floor with a circular staircase leading up to it. Directly over the pulpit hung an acorn-shaped cap of carved stone. Fine stained glass windows lined the sanctuary. I peeked over the tops of my sunglasses at the one nearest me, a colorful depiction of Christ calming the sea. The early-morning sun blazed through the windows, scattering a patchwork of dazzling jewels over the heads, shoulders, and backs of the congregation, shapes that buckled and bent as they moved; distorted triangles that slid along an arm, down a leg, to fall into bright, geometric puddles on the floor. I was thinking of a kaleidoscope Emily had played with as a child when I suddenly became aware that the organ music had stopped. A rustling from the front made me turn my attention again to the altar, where a young African-American girl, her hair an elegant sculptured cap, had stepped out from the choir stalls to stand near the organ. Within seconds the haunting, unaccompanied strains of “Amazing Grace” filled the sanctuary, her sweet soprano voice soaring into the rafters.

Behind us the west doors opened, and through them glided Katie’s casket, drenched in flowers, three pallbearers in dark suits on each side, guiding it, towering over it. The shortest of the six pallbearers must have been at least six feet. The only one I recognized was Bill from Ellie’s Country Store.

Connie inclined her head toward mine until our temples touched, her voice a husky whisper. “It’s the Jonas Green basketball team from the time Katie was in school. That’s Chip in the front on the side nearest us. I’m amazed they were able to get them all together.”

It was hard to tell from where I was sitting, but Katie’s former boyfriend appeared to be six feet five or six if he was an inch. His hair was straight, the color of strong tea, parted on the left and combed neatly to the side, where a single lock had escaped and hung, quivering, over his eyebrow. I’d never seen anyone who looked less like a murderer. Except maybe Ted Bundy.

Several rows up a too-tall toddler-she was probably standing on the kneeler-peered over the wooden pew, pointed a chubby finger, and shrilled, “Daddy!” None of the pallbearers appeared to notice. A woman who must have been her mother put an arm around the child and whispered something to her, her lips close to the little girl’s ear. The child sat down abruptly. Two older children, a boy and a girl, sat in the pew to the woman’s left, busily occupied with pencil stubs taken from the pew racks, using them to scribble on their bulletins and, when space on the bulletins gave out, on the backs of offering envelopes. “That’s Chip’s wife, Sandra, and their kids,” Connie explained.

The service continued with a congregational hymn, “All Things Bright and Beautiful,” which, according to the program, had been Katie’s favorite. In the front pew I could see the back of Mrs. Dunbar’s head, bowed while we sang. Next to her Mr. Dunbar stared stoically ahead. When Reverend Lattimore stepped up to deliver the eulogy, Mrs. Dunbar gazed at the rose-colored casket where it rested in the center aisle near the steps leading up to the choir. Bands of colored light streamed in from one of the windows, spilled over the casket, and reflected off the white of Mrs. Dunbar’s hair, which had been coaxed into an old-fashioned French twist. She kept reaching up to touch it, perhaps to check for escaping strands or wayward hairpins. Or maybe the hairdo was simply unfamiliar. When we sang “I Sing a Song of the Saints of God,” a white gardenia pinned to her left shoulder trembled as she sobbed.

Connie and I waited until almost everyone had left the church before following the crowd outside. We exited through the west door and proceeded around the north transept, weaving through ancient headstones, some dating back to the eighteenth century, where the carving and inscriptions had been etched away by weather and the years. Ashes to ashes, I thought. Dust to dust.

The sun, high in the sky by now, slanted through elm and maple branches, casting dappled shadows on the tombstones. This was a day to live, not a day to die! Would anybody care as deeply for me when I died? Would Paul? Would Emily? My daughter and I had come a long way toward mending our relationship after she’d more or less gotten herself straightened out in college, but the fact that much as I tried, I could never mask my disapproval of the men in her life kept her at a distance.

Emily was attracted to the wounded birds and lame puppies of this world. I kept waiting for her to bring home a boyfriend who didn’t need rehabilitation, but despite our objections, last year she’d moved to Colorado Springs with a Haverford dropout named Daniel Shemanski, who pierced his body in places I didn’t even want to think about and made a living massaging the slope-sore bodies of the almost rich and famous. He was asking everyone to call him Dante these days. Just Dante. One name, like Pavarotti or Cher or Madonna.

During the short interment service I stood at the edge of the crowd with Connie, keeping well back, while my heels sank into the soft, grassy earth. I counted my blessings: I still had a living daughter to worry about. And if I should die, at least it would be the right way around. No parent should every have to go through the anguish of burying a child.

Afterward we followed a long train of mourners as they turned right out of the parking lot and strolled in silent groups up Church Street toward the Dunbars’, where the family, the bulletin had announced, would be receiving condolences.

At the Dunbar house rectangular tables covered with white damask tablecloths were placed on the front porch at either side of the door. On one sat a punch bowl surrounded by dozens of crystal cups, neatly stacked. On the other, someone had arranged glass tumblers and a selection of sodas in two-liter bottles around a huge bowl of ice. I was about to ask Connie how on earth the Dunbars had managed the time to put all this together when I noticed the familiar purple of a van from Washington, D.C.’s premier caterer in the driveway. I had amended my question to How can they afford…? when it was answered for me. The sister.

“Welcome.” Elizabeth Dunbar, prominent attorney, held out a well-manicured hand. “Thank you for coming. My parents appreciate it so.” Connie introduced me as her sister-in-law, and Liz favored me with half a smile, but her eyes were already looking ahead to the next guest.

I checked out the sodas and the punch (fruit base, no additives) and found myself hoping they’d have some adult beverages inside. In the living room I snagged a glass of white wine from the tray of a passing waiter and checked out the crowd over the rims of my Foster Grants. I didn’t see anybody I knew. Except for Connie, of course, who had wandered away and was busily chatting with Reverend Lattimore. I figured that somebody I’d recognize would walk through the front door eventually, so I leaned against the fireplace and watched it, sipping slowly on what turned out to be a crisp dry chablis.

Liz wasn’t at all as I expected. A handsome woman, she stood straight and solid as a pillar, a role model for the good-posture people. Her hair was neatly cut in a stylish wedge and of a color so seriously black that I thought it must be dyed. She wore a long-sleeved black dress that stopped at mid-calf, partially covering sturdy legs firmly planted in proper black Ferragamo shoes. Diamond studs glittered in her ears, and a matching necklace was fastened around her neck. I calculated a total of two carats, one at her neck and a half on each ear.

Liz shook hands. She smiled. I got the feeling she didn’t know many of the guests either.

Eventually I wandered into the dining room looking for Connie and got involved in a conversation with Mindy, a former cheerleader. Mindy breathlessly explained, emphasizing every third word, how privileged and lucky she had been when they invited her to try out for Katie’s vacant spot on the Wildcats’ cheerleading squad. Relentlessly cheerful in spite of the occasion, I expected her to pull out the pom-poms at any minute. As Mindy launched into a dissertation on the joys of the 1990 winning basketball season-clearly a defining moment in her life-it was with some relief that I spotted Angie and Ellie occupying chairs in the corner, small plates of food balanced on their chubby knees. I excused myself and joined them.

Angie showed me her plate. “Have a mushroom cap? I’m not very hungry.” She looked almost as tired as I felt.

Ordinarily I love mushroom caps, but today, in spite of the elaborate spread, nothing looked good. “Neither am I.”

“So, how long are you planning to stay in Pearson’s Corner?” Ellie asked.

“A week or two, I should think. While I’m looking for a new job, I’m helping Connie with her bookkeeping.”

“What kind of work do you do?” Angie wanted to know.

“My experience is as a librarian and legal records specialist, but at this point I’d probably take anything, short of flipping burgers at McDonald’s.”

“Flipping burgers isn’t so bad.” This must have reminded Angie of something because her eyes filled with tears. “Excuse me,” she said, handed her plate to her mother, and bolted through the crowd toward the powder room I had noticed earlier, built into a triangle under the stairs leading to the second floor.

“I’m sorry,” I said to Ellie. “I didn’t mean to be insensitive.”

“Oh, it’s nothing you said, dear. She goes off like that at the drop of a hat. She’ll get over it. Excuse me for a moment while I find a place to put these plates down, will you?”

Ellie wound through the crowd grazing around the dining room table, a plate held high in each hand. She disappeared into the kitchen. Feeling abandoned for the second time, I decided to check out the food. I was picking halfheartedly at what was left of the fruit plate when someone tapped me on the shoulder.

“Well, hello!”

I must have jumped a mile. “Oh, hi, Hal.” I brushed droplets of wine from the front of my dress, thinking thank goodness I’d chosen the chablis. “You startled me!”

“Sorry.” He offered me his napkin, a small cloth square more suitable for a doll’s tea party than for a grown-up do.

“Thanks. No damage done.” I nibbled on a chunk of cheese and pineapple skewered together on a toothpick. “I suppose you know nearly everybody here.”

“Just about.” He pointed with a carrot stick to a bulky man in a dark polyester suit. “That’s the high school principal over there. Most of the rest are teachers and former students. You can probably figure out which is which.”

“Actually it’s one of the students I’m looking for. I’d thought I’d like to meet Katie’s old boyfriend.”

“I saw Chip earlier out back, talking to Mr. Dunbar.”

“Thanks, Hal. Catch you later.” I dropped my used toothpick into a silver bowl that I hoped had been put there for that purpose and headed toward the living room.

A familiar figure appeared in the dining room door, then made a beeline for the stuffed ham. Dr. Chase, whom I had first seen at the crime scene, acknowledged me as I passed with a slight nod and a quizzical expression that indicated that he was trying to remember where he knew me from.

I wandered in what I hoped was a nonchalant and casual way toward the back of the house, passing from the living room through a comfortable family room that had apparently been converted from a screened porch. It was decorated in Early American style. A six-lamp chandelier like a stagecoach wheel cast a bit of modest light over furniture which looked to have been bought in a matched set, circa 1975, from the Ethan Allen showroom. Framed certificates and diplomas covered the paneled walls. I studied them curiously. Liz’s high school diploma and her college degree from Brown hung on the wall over a table lamp, and occupying a place of honor in an elegant black frame was her Harvard Law School degree. Harvard! Even if Emily had wanted to, how could we afford to send her to Harvard Law or anyplace else if Paul lost his job? I crossed to the opposite wall, where framed and laminated magazine and newspaper articles followed the meteoric rise of Liz’s career.

I was finding Liz’s presence in this room overwhelming and beginning to wonder what role poor Katie had played in the family when I turned and saw it. On a polished table to the left of the door, someone had arranged dozens of photographs of Katie, lovingly displayed in a variety of frames, their corners draped with swatches of sheer black silk. There was Katie as an infant in a hospital nursery, squinting, one tiny fist jammed into her left cheek. Katie dressed for Halloween as Shirley Temple, an enormous pink ribbon fastened to a halo of golden curls, an oversize lollipop to her lips. Katie as a cheerleader, balancing in top position on the Wildcat pyramid, pom-poms aloft. Katie in a slim electric blue dress and Chip in a charcoal gray suit standing under an arch of haystalks and pumpkins, a picture that I figured must have been taken at the homecoming dance only hours before she disappeared.

I picked up an eight-by-ten of Katie at about four, her blue eyes at the same time both mischievous and direct as if challenging the camera, a ghost of a smile lighting her lips. An angel child. So like my Emily at that age.

Hal found me sitting on the sofa, the photograph pressed to my chest, tears pooling on my cheeks, where they were trapped against them by my sunglasses. “Hey. Hey.” He sat down and circled me with his arm. “I think I’m doomed to offer you napkins all day.”

I accepted the napkin that dangled from his extended fingers, lifted my sunglasses, and dabbed at my eyes. I didn’t start out to tell him about Emily. I seldom mention that sad chapter in our lives to anyone.

“It’s just…” I turned the photograph in his direction. Sun glanced off the silver frame and flashed across the ceiling. “Katie looks-looked-so much like our daughter, Emily, at that age.” I started to cloud up again. “When I think about how many times we nearly lost her…”

Before I knew it, I was telling Hal about the miserable weeks we spent worrying while Emily hitchhiked around the country following Phish, sleeping with God knows who and ingesting God knows what substances. “And just when we’d given up hope of ever seeing her again, she breezed back home, acting as if nothing had happened!”

“I followed the Dead around California once, eating incredibly bad food and sleeping in cars.” He smiled as if recalling something amusing. “It really wasn’t as dangerous as most parents imagined. Pretty harmless, actually. Fifty years ago she’d have been running away to join the circus.”

I did a quick calculation. “But you were an adult then, not a headstrong fifteen-year-old without the good sense God gave a goose.”

Hal gave my shoulders a squeeze, then draped his arm casually along the top of the sofa. There was something about the way he sat there, rock solid and steady, that made me want to confide in him. “We didn’t ask for much, Hal. Passing grades, calling home if she was going to be late.” I massaged my temple, where a dull throb signaled an oncoming headache. “Then she got mixed up with this boy who was into computer games and fantasy role playing, and suddenly her father and I had turned into ogres. How did she put it?” I mustered my best Valley Girl accent: “Like, you’re squashing my creativity, Mother. You’re interfering with my life concept just when my creative juices are at their most fertile!”

Hal threw back his head and roared with laughter. “I wish you could hear yourself!”

“I suppose it did have its funny moments, but I certainly didn’t think so at the time.” I set the photograph down on the coffee table, angling it so I could still see Katie’s face.

Hal leaned forward, took the photo in his work-worn hands, and studied it in silence. I expected the silence. What was there to say after all? The usual BS: “I know how you feel” or the ultimate in New Age sympathy-speak, “I feel your pain.”

Hal turned the frame facedown on the sofa cushion. “I imagine the grieving never stops. A parent never gets over the loss of a child.”

I stared at him while dabbing at my nose with his napkin, surprised by his sensitivity. “No, you never do. That’s why all this has hit me so hard. As if finding Katie’s body obligates me somehow to find out who killed her.”

“I suspect they’ll discover it was an accident.”

“I don’t think so, Hal. Lieutenant Rutherford told Connie that Katie had been shot with some sort of small-caliber pistol.”

Hal sat silently for a moment, then swiveled his body in my direction. “Sure you’re all right?”

I blew my nose and crumpled the napkin in my fist. I offered it to him on an open palm. “I don’t suppose you want this back?”

He chuckled, a rich, warm sound. “I don’t think so.” He stood and offered me his hand. I took it, surprised at the firmness of the grip and the roughness of the skin. He pulled me to my feet. “Better?”

I nodded and tucked the napkin into my sleeve. “Well, if I’m going to play at Jessica Fletcher, Ubiquitous Small-Town Snoop, I think I’d better start outside with the boyfriend.”

Hal pushed aside the sliding glass door to the patio, motioned me through ahead of him, then followed me out onto a low wooden deck with three steps leading down to the lawn and to a garden just beyond. Near a wall where espaliered spring roses climbed, heavy with white, honey-scented blossoms, the pallbearers clustered. They drank beer from tall glasses and looked as if they would be much more comfortable had someone given them permission to loosen their ties, unbutton their shirt collars, and drink straight out of the can.

“Hey, fellas!”

The pallbearers turned their heads in our direction. Chip and his friends wore a variety of hairstyles but were uniform in age, height, and present facial expression, which was something akin to annoyance at being interrupted.

“I’d like you to meet Hannah Ives. You might remember her husband, Paul. He grew up on the farm between the old Nichols and Baxter places.” Two of the former players rudely wandered away at this point, so I was introduced to someone named Spike, to Bill Taylor, whom I already knew from Ellie’s store, and to David Wilson, a handsome man in a Leif Ericson sort of way, sporting the most distracting pair of stark white eyebrows. Hal left to fetch me another glass of wine from a bartender at a table set out under a wistaria arbor while the Wildcats and I stood around, awkwardly staring at one another.

I was trying to think of a clever way to break the ice when Chip stepped forward. “I wanted to thank you. I understand you found Katie’s body.” Of all the things I’d imagined he’d say, I certainly hadn’t expected a thank-you. He set his beer glass, half full, on a small, round table that held a tray with six or seven empty ones. “You can’t imagine how relieved I was to know what happened to her after all these years of wondering.”

“I’m so sorry,” I said, meeting his steady gaze.

“It was a long time ago,” he said. “I’m married now, with three kids.”

“I think I saw them today at St. Philip’s.”

“You did. They’ve gone on home to Baltimore with Sandra. I’ve been criticized for bringing them so young, but I don’t pay much attention to narrow-minded people like that. Funerals are a part of life, a celebration of having lived. I don’t believe we should shield our children from life, do you, Mrs. Ives?”

I didn’t know what to say to such an earnest declaration, so I changed the subject, picking my words carefully, particularly since the wine was beginning to make significant inroads caused by my sending it down into a stomach empty of all but a large Kalamata olive and a few pitiful bits of fruit and cheese. “I was talking to Angie at her mother’s the other day, and she told me that you and Katie used to date.”

“That’s true. We’d been going out since that summer. I used to stop by the Royal Farms, where she worked, for a cold Coke after practice. I’ll tell you the truth, I was sweet on Katie. She was a fun kid, but she was interested in a more serious relationship. I started dating Katie when David here broke up with her.” David, an inch or two taller than Chip, looked like an ex-marine with his hair worn in a short, closely cropped crew cut that a midshipman would have described as “high and tight.”

David shifted his weight from one foot to the other, fists firmly stuffed into the pockets of his trousers. “Katie dated most of us at one time or another, but the only one she was serious about was Chip.”

“Katie was an atheist,” Chip said, as if that explained everything. Seeing my look of confusion, he added, “I accepted Jesus Christ as my personal Savior when I turned sixteen, Mrs. Ives. It never would have worked out with Katie and me.” He ran long, slim fingers through his hair.

“Chip didn’t have anything to do with her death. None of us did.” Up until then Bill had been so quiet that I had almost forgotten about him. His mouth opened to elaborate, or so I thought, but nothing came out. I noticed he was looking over my left shoulder, a curious expression on his face. I turned and attempted to follow his gaze but could see only Connie and Dennis and Hal’s broad back as he strode over to greet them, a wineglass in each hand. I wondered if it was the unexpected presence of a police officer that had made Bill clam up.

“No, I don’t suppose you did.” A door had slammed shut. I could see it in the rigid set of his jaw. I tried to come up with a graceful exit line. I glanced at my watch. “Well, I’d better go pay my respects to the Dunbars. Sorry to be meeting you all under such circumstances.” As I walked away, I kicked myself for such stunning originality.

“Mrs. Ives?”

I halted in mid-stride and turned to see Chip leaving his friends, hurrying to catch up with me. David Wilson stared after Chip, his face set in a scowl, his eyes almost supernaturally blue in contrast with his white eyebrows. He gave me the creeps. It was a relief when Chip’s handsome face blocked my view of David.

Chip hadn’t changed much since that homecoming picture was taken. His broad brow, prominent nose, and high cheekbones were a photographer’s dream, evidence of German blood somewhere in his family tree. I wanted to trust him but was wary. Emily’s boyfriends had never been particularly trustworthy, despite their well-brushed hair and clean-scrubbed faces.

I smiled. “Yes, Chip?”

“I really mean what I said back there. The thank-you, that is.”

“You’re welcome,” I said, although it seemed singularly inappropriate under the circumstances.

“I hope I didn’t give you the wrong impression, is all. Katie and I were still going together the night she disappeared. But it was kind of an up-and-down thing with Katie and me. Three weeks before the dance she was barely speaking to me. When I called, Liz said she’d gone away for the weekend. To tell you the truth, I suspected she was seeing somebody else. A college guy, maybe.”

I couldn’t imagine any girl dumping a hunk like Chip. “So what happened to get you back together?”

“It’s a mystery to me. The week before the dance she was all lovey-dovey again.” He shrugged. “Women! Begging your pardon, ma’am, but today they’d probably chalk it all up to PMS.”

When I finally rejoined the group surrounding Connie, puzzling over Katie’s odd behavior in the months before her death, Hal handed me a fresh glass of wine.

Dennis raised his wineglass in my direction, as if offering a toast. “Hello, Hannah.” His smile was dazzling, like a light turned on in a dark room. “Even though it’s officially my day off, I’ve got to stick around here for an hour or two, check out the guests, but after that, Connie and Hal have cooked up a sail for us. Connie tells us you’ve had a rough week and could use a break.”

I glared at Connie and didn’t care if anyone noticed. “I don’t really feel much like sailing, Dennis.”

“What else is there to do? Sit around the house? Watch TV? Or”-he smiled at Connie-“I understand you’ve been helping Connie with her books.” Dennis was being exasperatingly reasonable.

I looked down at my open-toed shoes. Before Memorial Day. Mother would have had a fit. “I’m not exactly dressed for sailing, either.”

Connie looked at Dennis. “We’ll have to go home and change first.”

I was half listening, still wondering what was eating Bill and David and their close-mouthed Wildcat pals. “I think those guys know more about Chip and Katie than they’re saying, don’t you, Dennis?”

Dennis ignored this remark and turned his persuasive moss-green eyes on me. “Meet you at the marina around two?”

I couldn’t think of a single good reason to refuse so, with the hope of coaxing more information out of him, I caved in. “Okay, around two.”

Connie and I eventually found the Dunbars receiving condolences in the kitchen. I suspect Mrs. Dunbar had wandered in there to escape the crowd, only to become trapped in a corner next to the stove by a chain of sympathizers. When we finally worked our way to the front of the line, Mrs. Dunbar still wore the haunted look I had seen on her face at the Nichols farm, as if nobody were home behind the eyes.

“We thank you so much for coming.” Mrs. Dunbar had said exactly the same thing to the last twelve people. Mr. Dunbar simply shook our hands and said nothing. I was relieved that they didn’t recognize my name.

We had nearly escaped out the front door when Liz, appearing suddenly from the dining room, chirped, “Don’t forget to sign the book!” She scooped up a guest book from where it lay on the table in the hallway and thrust it and a ballpoint pen into Connie’s hands. Connie signed for both of us while I stood there tongue-tied, smiling stiffly at Katie’s older sister. Liz was acting more like a funeral consultant than a grieving sister, I thought.

As we walked back to Connie’s car, I noticed the 1990 championship Wildcats heading off together in the opposite direction, sauntering up High Street toward the high school. Maybe they were planning to shoot a few baskets. As I watched, a car sped by close to the shoulder, and to avoid it, one of the men was forced to step sideways out of the friendly huddle. Suddenly I could see they were not alone. Angie was in front, between Chip and David, almost running in her struggle to keep up with her long-legged companions. I saw Angie grab Chip by the arm, as if to attract his full attention. He shook loose from her grip and kept walking. She followed, clearly angry. I could see her mouth working overtime. Not basketball then. Something very different must be on their agenda, and I couldn’t wait to get my hands on Angie and find out what.