"Did I tell you about the poem?" she asked Stranahan. "It was the night he proposed. We were doing dinner at my apartment. He brought me a love poem that he swore he'd written himself. And me, the classic airhead blonde, I believed him."
Stranahan said, "Let me guess where he stole it. Shelley? Keats?"
"Get serious, Mick."
"Shakespeare would be so obvious."
"Try Neil Diamond," Joey said.
Stranahan froze in mock horror.
"Oh, Chaz was clever," she said. "He knew I was too young to be a fan."
Laughing, Stranahan fell back on the pillow. "Which song? No, let me guess: 'I Am, I Said.' That's pure Chaz."
"No, believe it or not, this one was called 'Deep Inside of You,' " Joey reported ruefully. " 'Let me be the man who'… blah, blah, whatever. God help me, I thought it was sort of sweet at the time. He wrote out the lines on the back of a wine label that he'd saved from our very first date. Unbelievable."
She turned on her side and Mick tucked against her.
"A few months later I was talking to the bookkeeper at my parents' casino," she said, "a great old broad, as they say. She wanted to know all about my new husband, so I told her how romantic he was, how he'd written poetry for the night we got engaged. And Inez-that was her name-says to me, 'Doll baby, I'd love to hear it.' So I took the wine label out of the drawer where I kept all the mushy stuff Chaz gave me, and I read the verses aloud over the phone. And naturally Inez busts out laughing, just like you, and proceeds to give me the scoop on fabulous Neil, whom she'd seen no less than a dozen times in concert. Needless to say, she knew every damn song by heart."
"So, what did Chaz say when you busted him?" Stranahan asked.
"I didn't."
"Aw, Joey."
"I couldn't," she said. "The deed was done, we were already married. So I convinced myself that it showed how much he loved me, going to all the trouble of plagiarizing from some old pop star. I told myself he probably went through a hundred songs before he found just the right one. Hey, it's the thought that counts-just because he ripped off the lyrics doesn't mean he's not sincere. And that's how I rationalized keeping quiet."
Stranahan said, "You were afraid he'd make up a new lie if you braced him about it."
Joey nodded dismally. "Exactly. I didn't want to give him the chance. I wanted to keep on believing it was a fluke."
"And here you are."
"Yeah, here I am."
Stranahan lightly kissed the back of her neck. "For what it's worth, I can't write poetry, either."
"Mick, why won't you let me go to the memorial?"
"Because you're the dearly departed. You're supposed to be dead."
"But I can wear a disguise," she said. "Come on, I want to hear Chaz's eulogy."
"I'll take along a tape recorder. Maybe this time he'll steal something off Sgt. Pepper."
Joey wriggled out of Mick's embrace and relocated to the edge of the bed.
"That phony lying bastard," she muttered. "He'll have everybody in tears."
"Not me," said Stranahan, reaching out for her again.
Twenty-six
Stranahan drove to Boca in the old Cordoba, which he'd ransomed from the impound lot for three hundred bucks. He parked at a Winn-Dixie a few blocks from the church, so that no one would see him arriving with Joey's brother. Stranahan had planned to wear the muskrat-brown hairpiece that Joey had bought for him at the Galleria, but he changed his mind. He wanted Chaz Perrone to recognize him right away from the canoe trip. He wanted to rattle the sonofabitch.
The Catholic folk-guitar trio was called the Act of Contritionists. They were playing "Michael, Row the Boat Ashore" when Stranahan walked into St. Conan's; he feared it was only a matter of time before they tackled "Kumbaya." The church was three-quarters filled with Joey's friends and neighbors, mostly women. Many had attended Joey's wedding, and some might even have sensed she was marrying an incorrigible louse. They wouldn't have said a word to her about it, of course, and she wouldn't have listened if they had.
Rose looked resplendently wanton in the front pew. She wore a tight knit top over a short black skirt, black fishnet hose and stiletto pumps. Her blinding dye job appeared freshly retouched, an onyx choker accented her long pale neck, and her lips were the color of fire coral. By comparison, the other members of Joey's book group looked like spinster aunts. Near the rear of the church sat a medium-built, fair-skinned man in a dark gray suit that was shiny from wear. He had cop written all over him. Stranahan assumed it was Karl Rolvaag, and he chose a seat a dozen rows up, on the other side of the aisle.
"Kumbaya" came and went, in rounds. Still no sign of Chaz Perrone. Stranahan began to worry.
Joey's brother had shed the drover's coat for a three-piece blue pinstripe. He'd made a game effort to tame his beard and wild mane, but he still looked like an outlaw biker who'd been dressed by his attorney for a bail hearing. On the altar stood a velvet-cloaked table, upon which Corbett Wheeler had placed a framed eight-by-ten of his sister, who was sitting cross-legged on the grass next to a palm tree. Her hair was mussed by a breeze, and her laughing face was lit by the sun. The mourners would have been startled to learn that the photograph had been taken by Joey's brother less than twenty-four hours earlier on a private island on Biscayne Bay, and that she'd been giggling at the sight of a prematurely retired middle-aged man baring his well-tanned ass, and that the same sinewy fellow now sat among them at St. Conan's, waiting impatiently to deliver blackmail instructions.
The guitar trio commenced an upbeat Calypso version of "Blowin' in the Wind," which Corbett Wheeler terminated with a brusque slashing motion across his neck. He approached the pulpit and introduced himself.
"We're here to celebrate the life and times of my magnificent baby sister," he began. "Joey Wheeler."
At Joey's insistence, her brother had agreed not to use her married name at the ceremony.
"She was a fighter, a real tiger, but she also had a generous heart. She was always the idealist in our family, the dreamy romantic," he said, "the one who believed in the innate decency and honesty of everyone she met. Sometimes, unfortunately, she was mistaken…"
Corbett Wheeler owlishly scanned the church as he let the sentence hang. Several mourners, evidently aware of Chaz Perrone's serial infidelities, traded knowing glances.
"Still, Joey never lost her belief that most people were basically good and honorable, deep down in their souls."
Her brother went on to tell a couple of stories, which got the crowd sniffling. The first was about their parents' funeral, where four-year-old Joey stood at the grave site and sang "Leavin' on a Jet Plane," revising the lyrics to suit the peculiar circumstances of Hank and Lana Wheeler's demise ("The bear is packed, you're ready to go…").
The second anecdote concerned the tragic fate of Joey's first husband, whose saintly virtues were enumerated at length by Corbett Wheeler, although he'd never met the man. "Benny was the light of my sister's life," Corbett said, generously overselling Benjamin Mid-
denbock's luminosity. "Before saying her final farewell, she placed in the casket his favorite fly rod and a selection of bass poppers that she'd tied and painted herself. She said she was glad, for the sake of the pallbearers, that Benny's hobby wasn't bowling."
It took a beat or two for the mourners to smile.
"So, yes, Joey faced times of profound sadness in her life," her brother continued, "but she never let herself be defeated by it. She never lost her sense of humor, or her optimism-she was the most positive person I ever knew. The most hopeful. And also the most unselfish. She could have lived like a princess but she chose a simple, ordinary life, because she believed that was the secret to true happiness. That, and fine Italian footwear…"