Once home, I hovered around the telephone. Finally, I decided not to call Claude. It seemed too much like tattling on the kids to Dad, somehow; a whiney appeal.
Just as I withdrew my fingers from the receiver, the phone rang.
Calla Prader said, "Well, he's dead." She sounded oddly surprised.
"I heard."
"You're not going to believe this, but I'll miss him."
Joe C would've cackled with delight to hear that. "When is the funeral?" I asked after a short pause.
"He's already in Little Rock having his autopsy done," Calla said chattily, as if Joe C had been clever to get there that fast. "Somehow things are slow up there, so they'll get him back tomorrow, they say. The autopsy has to be done to determine exact cause of death in case we catch whoever set the fire. They could be charged with murder if Joe C died as a result of the fire."
"That might be hard to determine."
"All I know is what I read in Patricia Cornwell's books," Calk said. "I bet she could figure it out."
"Is there anything I can do for you?" I asked, to get Calla to come to the point.
"Oh, yes, forgot why I called you."
For the first time, I realized that Calla had had a few drinks.
"Listen, Lily, we're planning on having the funeral Thursday at eleven."
I wasn't going. I knew that.
"We wondered if you could help us out afterward. We're expecting the great-grandchildren from out of town, and lots of other family members, so we're having a light luncheon at the Winthrops' house after the service. They've got the biggest place of us all."
Little touch of bitterness, there. "What would you like me to do?"
"We're having Mrs. Bladen make the food, and she'll get her nephew to deliver it to the house on Thursday morning. We'll need you to arrange the food on Beanie's silver trays, keep replenishing them, wash the dishes as they come into the kitchen, things like that."
"I'd have to rearrange my Thursday appointments." The Drinkwaters came first on Thursday; Helen Drinkwater was not flexible. She'd be the only problem, I figured as I quickly ran down my Thursday list in my head. "What kind of pay are we talking about?" Before I put myself out, it was best to know.
Calla was ready for the question. The figure was enough to compensate me for the amount of trouble I'd have to go to. And I needed the money. But I had one last question.
"The Winthrops are okay with this?" I asked, my voice carefully neutral. I hadn't set foot in the Winthrop house for five months, maybe longer.
"You working there? Honey, it was Beanie who suggested it."
I'd been the means of sending Beanie's father-in-law to jail, and she'd taken it harder than her husband, Howell Winthrop's only son. Now, it seemed, Beanie was going to sweep the whole incident under her mental rug.
For a dazzling moment, I visualized Beanie hiring me again, her friends picking me back up, the much easier financial state I'd enjoyed when she'd been my best client.
I hated needing anything that much, anything I had to depend on another person to supply.
Ruthlessly, I clamped the cord of that happiness off and told Calla that I'd call her back when I'd seen if I could arrange my Thursday schedule.
I'd be needed from around eight o'clock (receive the food, arrange the trays, wash the breakfast dishes, maybe set up the table in the Winthrop dining room) to at least three in the afternoon, I estimated. Service at eleven, out to the cemetery, back to town... the mourners should arrive at the Winthrop house around twelve-fifteen. They'd finish eating about—oh, one-thirty. Then I'd have dishes to do, sweeping and vacuuming...
When Helen Drinkwater found that by releasing me from Thursday morning, she'd be obliging the Winthrops, she agreed to my doing her house on Wednesday morning instead of Thursday. "Just this once," she reminded me sharply. The travel agent I usually got to late on Thursday I should be able to do with no change, and the widower for whom I did the deep work—kitchen and bathroom, dusting and vacuuming—said Wednesday would be fine with him, maybe even better than Thursday.
I called Calla back and told her I accepted.
The prospect of money coming in made me feel so much more optimistic that I didn't think again about my problem with Jump Farraclough. When Jack called, just as I was getting ready for bed, I was able to sound positive, and he picked up some of that glow from me. He told me he was looking into getting a smaller apartment, maybe just a room in someone's house, in Little Rock, giving up his two-bedroom apartment. "If you're still sure," he said carefully.
"Yes." I thought that might not be enough, so I tried again. "It's what I really want," I told him.
As I was falling asleep that night I had the odd thought that Joe C had already given me more happy moments in his death than he had ever given me in his life.
As if in punishment for that pleasure, that night I dreamed.
I didn't have my usual bad dreams, which are about the knife drawing designs in my flesh, about the sound of men grunting like pigs.
I dreamed about Deedra Dean.
In my dream, I was next door, in the apartment building. It was dark. I was standing in the hall downstairs, looking up. There was a glow on the landing, and I knew somehow that it came from the open door of Deedra's apartment.
I didn't want to go up those stairs, but I knew I must. In my dream, I was light on my feet, moving soundlessly and without effort. I was up those stairs almost before I knew I was moving. There was no one in the building except whatever lay before me.
I was standing in the doorway of Deedra's apartment, looking in. She was sitting on the couch, and she was lit up with blue light from the flickering television screen. She was dressed, she was intact, she could move and talk. But she was not alive.
She made sure I was meeting her eyes. Then she held out the remote control, the one I'd seen her hold many, many times, a big one that operated both television and VCR. While I looked at her fingers on the remote control, she pressed the play button. I turned my head to the screen, but from where I stood I could only see an indistinct moving radiance. I looked back to Deedra. She patted the couch beside her with her free hand.
As I moved toward her, I knew that Deedra was dead and I should not get any closer to her. I knew that looking at the screen would cause something horrible to happen to me. Only dead people could watch this movie, in my dream. Live people would not be able to stand the viewing. And yet, such is the way of the subconscious; I had to walk around the coffee table and sit by Deedra. When I was close to her, I was not aware of any smell; but her skin was colorless and her eyes had no irises. She pointed again at the screen of the television. Knowing I couldn't, and yet having to, I looked at the screen.
It was so awful I woke up.
Gasping and straining for breath, I knew what I'd seen in a deathly X-ray vision. I'd seen Deedra's view. I'd seen the lid of a coffin, from the inside, and above that, the dirt of my grave.
Chapter Thirteen
I felt sullen and angry the next morning. I tried to trace the source of these unjustifiable feelings and discovered I was angry with Deedra. I didn't want to dream about her, didn't want to see her body again in any manifestation, dead visionary or live victim. Why was she bothering me so much?
Instead of going in to Body Time, I kicked and punched my own bag, hanging from its sturdy chain in the small room that was meant to be a second bedroom. The chain creaked and groaned as I worked out my own fears.