“Don’t want to see it.” Her obstinacy was returning, which meant she felt better.
“If you change your mind, I’d be happy to take you down. Be fun to find some fall clothes,” Sybil suggested.
Ken smiled.“Sybil, we need to build a new wing on the house for all your clothes.”
“She always looks so nice,” Alice said. “Thank you, Sybil, but I think I’ll pass on Richmond.”
Ken walked over, took both of Alice’s hands in his, leaned down, and kissed her on the cheek. Sybil also leaned over to kiss her good-bye. Alice hadn’t been kissed since Paul died in 1986. She craved human touch but didn’t realize it.
“You take care now. And you call me if you need anything,” Ken said warmly.
After Sybil and Ken left, the four contemporaries remained quiet for a few minutes.
“You’ve kept the place up,” Edward complimented her.
“Full-time job. Wouldn’t be so much work if it weren’t for the chickens. I change their water every day. I scrub out their coop every day, too. Doesn’t stink like chickens can, you know.”
“That’s wonderful.” Edward nodded pleasantly.
“Edward, Tedi, were you afraid Nola would run off with Guy?”
“Yes,” Tedi forthrightly answered for both herself and her husband.
“I was, too. I always assumed you didn’t think my boy was good enough for her.” An edge sharpened Alice’s voice, not the most melodious in any circumstances.
“No, Alice, that wasn’t it.” Edward approached this with his usual tact. “A fire that flames that blazingly hot can turn to ashes in a heartbeat.”
Tedi’s eyes searched out her husband’s. She had underrated him. Like most women she felt she understood emotions far better than men. Edward might not choose to talk about emotions, but he understood them, a real victory.
“I thought of that, too.” Alice glanced down at her crepe-soled shoes, then up again at Edward. “It scared me. For him, I mean. I don’t think Guy had ever truly been in love until Nola.”
“For what it’s worth, I think she loved him,” Sister said. She moved to sit opposite Alice.
“Did you?” Tedi genuinely inquired.
“I did. I didn’t know what would come of it. They both had a history of being carefree, if you will, but there is something to be said about the changes that happen to you when you meet the right one. One does settle down eventually.”
“I thought she’d throw him away.” Alice didn’t sound rancorous. If anything, she was grateful to finally be able to speak about this.
“I did, too,” Tedi said. “It wasn’t Guy. Don’t get me wrong. It was money. Nola loved money. She might have married him, but it would have fizzled. And regardless of what you might think, we did not spoil either of our girls. Yes, they both went to the best schools, but they didn’tget cars handed to them on their sixteenth birthdays. They had to earn the money. And every summer each one took a job. Oh, it might have been something fun like working on a ranch in Wyoming, but still, it was the beginning of responsibility. And, well, it’s as clear as the nose on our faces, Sybil was by far the more prudent, the more sensible. Nola worked, but she spent it as fast as she made it. Then she’d run out and come begging. I certainly never made up her debts, but I think”—Tedi nodded at Edward—“her father may have.”
“Once or twice, my dear, I didn’t make it a habit.”
“Oh, Edward.” Tedi didn’t believe a word of it.
“She wouldn’t have had money with Guy,” Alice argued. “Burned a hole in his pocket. He could have made money. He had the brains for it, but not the discipline. But he was only twentyfive when he died. Almost twenty-six. I’d like to think he would have found something to gainfully occupy him.”
“I’m sure he would have,” Sister said. She had seen Ralph, Ken, Ronnie, and Xavier each settle down and prosper. She thought Guy would have come ’round, too.
“Perhaps the fates are kind,” Tedi said, smoothing her skirt. “Nola and Guy were killed at the height of love, the first blush. They never knew disillusionment.”
“I told you I don’t believe in fate,” Alice stubbornly insisted. “And I don’t see how dying at twentyfive can be considered kind. So they would have fought. Guy would have gotten drunk or picked up sticks and left for a while. He would have recovered. She would have, too. It’s all stuff and nonsense, this love business.”
“Not when you’re young and maybe not when you’re old. I might be seventy-one, but I tell you, let another woman go after Edward and I’ll knock her sideways.”
“You flatter me.” Edward smiled. “I’m the one on guard here. I have a wife who looks thirty years younger than myself. It can be quite nerve-racking. Why, one of Ken’s friends tried to woo her at a company gathering over the Fourth of July.”
“Now who’s the flatterer?” Tedi shook her head.
“Well, I’m the cynic. Year in and year out Paul Ramy brought me flowers on my birthday, chocolates on Valentine’s Day, and usually a charm for my charm bracelet at Christmas. That was it. No variety and no spontaneity. I think Guy became romantic just because his father wasn’t. Now, my son always brought me little presents, even as a child.” She stopped herself and swallowed. “When Ben Sidell came here I thought it was more questions. I didn’t think I’d find out what happened to Guy.”
CHAPTER 20
Diminutive, intense, levelheaded, Gaston B. Marshall became a pathologist by default and county coroner by fiat. When Vee Jansen, the coroner since 1949, died of a heart attack in 1995, Gaston inherited the job.
In other counties, especially above the Mason-Dixon line, county commissioners might have grumbled at having such an ancient coroner as Vee Jansen performing autopsies. This would have been superseded by a new wave of grumbling as a much younger man assumed the duties. But in central Virginia, in this county, where everyone claimed everyone else as shirttail cousins, Gaston was readily accepted when he became coroner. He was a homeboy. Gaston B. Marshall, a professor of medicine at the university, now had two jobs. The extra stipend from the county was useful. Gaston was the father of three grade-school children. The university, for all its grandeur, paid poorly.
The other good thing about this job was Gaston was left to his own devices. If he wanted students to assist him, no one quibbled. If he wanted to utilize his findings in his lectures, names of the deceased changed, he could do it. Being county coroner proved a rich source of teaching material. His students could see things they might not see at the university hospital. During one autopsy of a drunken gentleman, well born but bone idle, when he attempted to lift out the liver it literally disintegrated in his hands. If nothing else, those students witnessing the diseased liver would think twice before drinking too much.
On the Sunday the body was recovered from the river, he had but one assistant, a female intern utterly enraptured by pathology, Mandy Collatos. Perhaps the appeal was you were always right but one day late. In the case of Guy Ramy their findings were twenty-one years late almost to the day.
Walter Lungrun stood in scrubs over the stainless-steel table, the channels on the side sloping downward for drainage.
Ben Sidell, a by-the-book man most times, wanted Gaston to see the drum, so he delivered that as well. It sat near the table. A large double sink, also stainless steel, ran along the wall.
All three physicians wore thin rubber gloves.
“You know if there hadn’t been punctures in the drum I believe he would have been mummified.” Mandy was proud that they had extracted the skeleton doing precious little damage to it, no easy task.
“Yes.” Gaston finished placing the bones in their proper position. The major joint areas had come apart when the skeleton was removed, much as a joint pulls out of a chicken leg. Plus the anvil in the bottom of the drum had broken bones probably on the drop into the river. The drum had settled after that.