Oh, yes. I still had it. But good.
"It is out of the question, Susannah," Father Dominic said. "So put the idea from your head. Wherever he is now, Jesse is in a better place than he was. Let him rest there."
"Fine," I said. We pulled up in front of a low building, heavily shaded by pine trees. The offices of the local rag.
"Fine," Father Dominic said, putting his car into park. "I'll wait out here for you. It would probably be better if I didn't come in, I suppose."
"Probably," I said. "And there's no need to wait. I'll find my own way home." I undid my seat belt.
"Susannah," Father Dominic said.
I lifted my sunglasses and peered at him. "Yes?"
"I'll wait here for you," he said. "We still have a good deal of work to do, you and I."
I screwed up my face. "We do?"
"Maria and Diego," Father D reminded me gently. "You are protected from them at home now, but they are still at large, and will, I think be excessively angry when they realize you are not dead - " I had finally broken down and explained to him what had happened to my head. "We need to make preparations, you and I, to deal with them."
"Oh," I said. "That."
I had, of course, forgotten all about it. Not because I did not feel Maria and her husband needed to be dealt with, but because I knew my idea of dealing with them and Father D's idea were not exactly going to gel. I mean, priests aren't really big on beating adversaries into bloody pulps. They're more into gentle reasoning.
"Sure," I said. "Yeah. We should get right on that."
"And of course - " Father D looked really odd. I realized why when the next words that came out of his mouth were, "We've got to decide what's to be done with Jesse's remains."
Jesse's remains. The words hit me like twin punches. Jesse's remains. Oh God.
"I was thinking," Father Dominic said, still choosing his words with elaborate care, "of putting in a formal request with the coroner's office to have the remains transferred to the church for burial in the Mission cemetery. Do you agree with me that that would be appropriate?"
Something hard grew in my throat. I hied to swallow it down.
"Yes," I said. It came out sounding funny, though. "What about a headstone?"
Father Dominic said, "Well, that might be difficult, seeing as how I highly doubt the coroner will be able to make a positive identification."
Right. They didn't have dental X-rays back when Jesse'd been alive.
"Maybe," Father Dominic said, "a simple cross . . ."
"No," I said. "A headstone. I have three thousand dollars." More if I took back all those Jimmy Choos. Good thing I'd saved the receipts. Who needed a fall wardrobe, anyway? "Do you think that would cover it?"
"Oh," Father Dominic said, looking taken aback. "Susannah, I - "
"You can let me know," I said. Suddenly, I didn't think I could sit there on the street anymore, discussing this with him. I opened the passenger door. "I better go. See you in a few."
And I started to get out of the car.
But not soon enough. Father D called my name again.
"Father D," I began impatiently, but he held up a hand.
"Just hear me out, Susannah," he said. "It isn't that I don't wish there was something we could do to bring Jesse back. I, too, wish that he could, as you said, have found his own way to wherever it was he was supposed to have gone after death. I do. I truly do. I just don't think that going to the extreme you're suggesting is ... well, necessary. And I certainly don't think it's what he would have wanted, your risking your life for his sake."
I thought about that. I really did. Father D was absolutely right, of course. Jesse would not have wanted me to risk my life for him, not ever. Especially considering the fact that he doesn't even have one anymore. A life, I mean.
But let's face it, Jesse's from a slightly different era. Back when he was born, girls spent all their time at quilting bees. They didn't exactly go around routinely kicking butt the way we do now.
And even though Jesse's seen me kick butt a million times, it still makes him nervous, you can totally tell. You would think he'd be used to it by now, but no. I mean, he was even surprised when he heard about Maria and her knife. I guess that's kind of understandable. Come on, little Miss Hoop Skirt, poppin' a blade?
Still, even after a century and a half of knowing she was the one who had ordered the hit on him, that completely blew his mind. I mean, that sexism thing, they drive that stuff down deep. It hasn't been easy, curing him of it.
Anyway, all I'm saying is, Father D's right: Jesse definitely would not want me to risk my life for him.
But we don't always get what we want, do we?
"Fine," I said again. You would have thought that Father D would notice how accommodating I'd become all of a sudden. I mean, didn't he realize that he wasn't the only person in town who could help me? I had an ace up my sleeve, and he didn't even know it.
"Be back in a flash," I said with a full-on, hundred-watt smile.
Then I turned and went into the offices of the Carmel Pine Cone like I was just going in there to place a personal ad or something.
What I was doing, of course, was something way more insidious.
"Is Cee Cee Wells here?" I asked the pimply kid at the reception desk.
He looked up, startled. I don't know what freaked him out more, my slip dress or the fact that I'd asked to see Cee Cee.
"Over there," he said, pointing. His voice wobbled all over the place.
"Thanks," I said, and started down a long and quite messy corridor, passing a lot of industrious journalists who were eagerly tapping out their stories on the recent spate of wind chime thefts off people's front porches, and the more alarming problem of parking in front of the post office.
Cee Cee was in a cubicle in the back. It appeared to be the photocopier cubicle, because that was what she was doing: photocopying.
"Oh my God," she said, when she saw me. "What are you doing here?"
She didn't say it in an unhappy way, though.
"Slumming," I said, and settled myself into an office chair beside the fax machine.
"I can see that," Cee Cee said. She was taking her role as girl reporter very seriously. Her long, stick-straight white hair was coiled up on top of her hair with a Number 2 pencil, and there was a smudge of toner on one pink cheek. "Why aren't you at the resort?"
"Mental health day," I said. "On account of the dead body they found in our backyard yesterday."
Cee Cee dropped a ream of paper.
"Oh my God!" she gushed. "That was you? I mean, there's a mention of a coroner's call up to the hills in the Police Beat section, but somebody said it must have been a Native American burial site or something...."
"Oh, no," I said. "Not unless the Native Americans around here wore spurs."
"Spurs?" Cee Cee reached for a notepad that was resting on top of the copier, then pulled the pencil from the knot on top of her head, causing her long hair to fall down around her shoulders. Because she is an albino, Cee Cee keeps the vast majority of her skin protected from the sun at all times, even when she's working inside an office. Today was no exception. In spite of the heat outside, she was wearing jeans and a brown button-up sweater.
On the other hand, the air-conditioning in the place had to be on high. It was like an icebox in there.
"Spill," Cee Cee said, perching on the edge of the table that supported the fax machine.
I did. I spilled it all. Everything, from the letters Dopey had found to my trip to Clive's office to his untimely death the day before. I mentioned Clive's grandfather's book and Jesse and the historically significant role my house had played in his murder. I told her about Maria and Diego and their no-account kids, the fact that Jesse's portrait was now missing from the historical society, and my suspicions that the skeleton found in my backyard belonged to him.