Twenty

Lola’s dress was a wrap number for which Jan had made a three-hour round trip to Great Falls so that Lola could be presentable at her own husband’s funeral.

Knowing too well Lola’s wardrobe, Jan had also picked up a pair of black flats. Which Lola had forgotten to bring to Salt Lake. She stood in front of the hotel room’s mirror in her dress and her hiking boots and tried to tell herself that no one was going to look at her feet. And then reminded herself that on this of all days, she needed to blend in.

Hence, the stop at Payless on the way to the funeral for a cheap pair of pumps that pinched her toes and, despite their reasonably low heels, challenged a balance long accustomed to sturdy Vibram soles. With a nod to the certainty that showing up at a funeral with a bookbag slung over her shoulder would not make her fit in with the nice Mormon ladies, she also picked up a purse, just big enough for her phone and iPad and notebook, a couple of pens, and the wad of Kleenex she’d grabbed from the box in the hotel.

Her hair, its usual disheveled chestnut snarl, was beyond redemption. Knots snagged her fingers when she ran them through it. Lola pulled it back into a ponytail, then folded it over on itself and wrapped the elastic around it once again, hoping it looked like a chignon, knowing it didn’t. She’d smeared on Jan’s makeup, then removed most of it when she tried to blot away the streaks with a tissue. The eyeliner defeated her, and she spent more time washing off the crooked black lines than she did applying them in the first place, scrubbing hard at the dark smudges beneath her eyes until she realized the liner was long gone. She swiped blush across her cheeks, drew the line at lipstick, and called it good.

Charlie would have smiled if he’d seen her in pumps and carrying a purse, grinned at any attempt to tame her hair, and laughed aloud at the makeup. He’d always said he appreciated the extra room in the medicine cabinet that cosmetics would otherwise have occupied. Her heart clenched at the thought, then loosened, a bit of lightness in the memory, the first such sensation since his death. She shut it down fast, her ever-present pain a way of keeping him close.

She scanned her phone as the scowling Payless clerk complied with her request to snip the price tag from the purse and replace the pumps in the box with her worse-for-the-wear boots. Stories about the officer’s assault—he’d held on through the night, kept alive by beeping machines and the magic potions flowing through IV lines—dominated the Salt Lake news sites. Lola swiped through them, searching for any damning mention of witnesses. But each time the word appeared, it was preceded by what on this day were the most beautiful two letters of the alphabet, N and O.

She tried to temper her momentary gratitude with the knowledge that within the half-hour she’d watch two families still dazed from the first smashing blows of bereavement. They didn’t know yet that the pummeling would continue, a hail of near-knockout punches that mercilessly stopped just short of delivering the unconsciousness that would have been infinitely preferable.

She pulled into a parking lot full of shiny SUVs and minivans and sedans, every one of which would have looked out of place back home in Magpie, and edged into the throngs pressing their way into the community center where Sariah Ballard would make her last public appearance.

If there was a hell, Lola told herself about halfway through Sariah’s service, she herself would surely go there because of the murderous thoughts taking aim at the funeral’s officiant.

The notebook squirreled away in her fake-leather purse for some surreptitious jottings during the eulogies stayed blank. Nor was there any need to click her phone’s recording app in hopes of capturing a few words. Lola turned Munro’s condescending words upon herself: if only she’d spent five minutes on Google before going to the service, she’d have realized that the Latter-day Saints saw funerals—which welcomed the unchurched—as ideal opportunities for proselytizing. She heard barely a word about Sariah, and far too much about the wonders that awaited if she joined the church.

At least she didn’t have a daily deadline, with a demand to write a story despite the fact that the funeral yielded exactly zero new information. For whatever reason, Munro hadn’t requested anything for the website. And she wasn’t like the photographers and television journalists who’d been met at the door with a firm “no cameras, no reporters” as Lola slipped past in her respectable black mufti. She didn’t recognize any of them from the pack in front of Sariah’s house or in the courtroom. Many were younger. The B team, she thought, pressed into service as editors and news directors threw their most experienced reporters at the story about the cop.

It wasn’t as though they’d missed anything by being banned from the service. The very few words spoken about Sariah were the sort of generic pap—“faithful wife, loving mother, devoted to the Lord”—that told Lola nothing at all about the woman.

She shifted in her seat, trying to peer through the gaps in the crowd toward the front rows, noting that family members sat behind church leaders. It was a repeat of the courtroom scene, with Galon Ballard flanked by Tynslee and Kwesi, and the lineup of Shumways across the aisle. As in the courtroom, Tynslee appeared near-catatonic, sitting motionless, eyes at half-mast. Kwesi turned this way and that, his gaze scanning the congregation. Statistically, most murder victims died at the hands of someone they knew. It wasn’t unreasonable to think—if Frank indeed were innocent—that Sariah’s killer sat among the mourners, which explained the presence along the room’s back walls of several broad-shouldered men sweeping the room with hard stares. Only the most naive would fail to recognize them as cops. Exhaustion shrouded their faces, skin gray, eyes hollow. They’d have been up all night, either on bedside vigil with their colleague or trying to find his assailant. The funeral detail must have felt an insult. Under the circumstances.

Their eyes flicked toward the Shumways, who stared holes in the floor, Melena bending almost double in her effort to make herself invisible. Lola wondered what it felt like to have the gaze of the entire congregation upon you, trying to figure out what you’d done to produce a murderer.

Lola guessed the Shumways wouldn’t attend the reception afterward, and she was right.

They were nowhere to be seen among the procession of casserole-bearing mourners marching into the church building’s multipurpose room. This time, Lola had thought ahead, stopping at a supermarket for a tray of crudités from the deli section. She fetched it from the car and joined the crowd, looking enough like everyone else that even the cop who’d encountered her with Melena that first morning took no note as she hurried inside, gaze averted.

Just inside, Galon Ballard stood but two feet away, surrounded by mourners. Lola wanted to take his arm, pull him from the crowd, and get him someplace quiet where she could pepper him with questions, probably the same ones the cops had already asked him ad nauseam, along with some tactful enquiries about Sariah’s friendship with the Shumways, especially with Bryce Shumway.

He turned to her. “And you are?”

She felt the press of new arrivals behind her, the curious glances that must have mirrored the look on Galon’s face. A scent teased her nostrils, a niggling memory, something unpleasant, even though it was in itself inoffensive.

“Just looking for a place to put this down. Don’t worry, I’ll find it. Oh, and I’m so sorry for your loss. Sariah was a lovely woman.”

She glided away, to the long tables stretching along the walls of the room. The tray Lola held looked pitifully inadequate compared to the rows of robust casseroles there. At least half featured the gleaming gold of melted cheese atop sliced potatoes, crushed potato chips floating like sailboats atop the cheese, a dish so loaded with starches and fat and salt it might have tempted Lola on any other day. The sheer volume, though, left her slightly nauseated.

The only variation in color, besides her sad offering of carrots and broccoli and cherry tomatoes, was at the other end of the counter, where Technicolor Jell-O molds shimmered and shook each time another casserole made its ponderous landing. Lola set her tray down beside them, briefly relieved to be freed from her prop before realizing it had served as protection of sorts. Now, with her hands free, she had nothing else to do other than mingle with people she didn’t know, which might force her to explain herself, something she didn’t dare do truthfully for fear of a fast escort to the door.

She craved coffee, but there’d be none here. Pitchers of juice and punch presented themselves. Lola poured some of the latter and wandered into the crowd, holding her cup to her lips like a shield, hoping no one would try to talk with her. She saw Kwesi across the room, at the center of a knot of scrubbed and combed teenagers. No sign of Tynslee. Bits of conversation eddied about her, most of it of the “so sad” variety. Occasionally, though, something stood out.

“ … knew when Melena adopted that boy. What was she thinking?” “I suppose the wedding is off.” “What wedding?” “Oh, you didn’t know?”

Lola sidled closer. She slid her phone from her purse and pretended to check it. As if on cue, Tynslee materialized beside her. Damn. Lola wanted to talk with the girl, but she also wanted to continue eavesdropping. She cast a regretful look at the group of women beside her, all of whom looked completely at ease in their dresses and pumps and nylons (an indignity that, even for the sake of a funeral, Lola had refused), real leather bags dangling from their shoulders.

Tynslee tugged her away. A familiar scent caught Lola’s attention as they made their way through the room. She breathed deep but it was gone, replaced by a mix of warring perfumes and warm potatoes.

“Is this really the best place to talk?” she asked. Tynslee had positioned them at the back of the room next to the Jell-O molds, their innards spangled with bright bits of canned fruit and snowflakes of marshmallow. One, green, contained shrimp, curled within like pink fetuses. If Charlie had lived, would they have had another baby? Lola looked away.

“I haven’t asked my dad about the game yet.”

“Of course not. This isn’t the time. Will Kwesi be there, too?” Lola held her breath. A two-fer was probably too much to hope for.

“Maybe. Probably. He went to all of Frank’s games. Some of the guys on the team are talking about wearing armbands with Frank’s number in support.”

Lola figured that idea wouldn’t fly once adults got wind of it. The team’s loyalty was admirable, as was the concept of innocent before proven guilty. But the coaches would look down the road, realizing how badly it would reflect on the team if Frank turned out to be Sariah’s killer.

She gave a noncommittal nod, the staple response in all difficult conversations.

“You said we could talk outside the rink,” Tynslee said. “Is that still all right? No one will see us there. They’ll all be inside watching the game.”

“And you can’t just talk with me now? We could take a walk outside. Or you could call me later—”

The air around them changed, taking on weight and substance. Heads turned. Mouths fell open. Beneath the weight of its makeshift chignon, the back of Lola’s neck prickled.

A path through the throng opened as Melena Shumway, the mother of the youth accused of murdering her best friend, entered the room with yet another batch of potatoes in her hand.

Melena stopped before Tynslee. Woman and teenager; guilty party—at least by association—and bereaved.

Lola stepped back. Utter silence reigned.

“I won’t stay.”

Lola, standing so close, strained to hear Melena’s next words.

“I just wanted to do … something. To bring this.” The casserole joined the others. Relieved of their burden, Melena’s arms fell to her side. Tynslee raised hers. Extended them. Melena fell into the girl’s embrace.

A sibilance in the room, the mingled hisses of caught breath, of whispered disbelief. People pressed toward the kitchen, wanting to see for themselves the scene whose description had zinged among them like the shock of too many feet rubbing against a wool carpet, almost pleasurable in its unexpectedness. A panting avidity permeated the room. The Jell-O molds shivered atop their chilly beds of iceberg lettuce.

Time to go, Lola thought. There’d be no talking with Tynslee now. As soon as Melena left, the girl would be mobbed, unseemly curiosity masked as concern. Best to slip out, wait for Melena, try to talk with her again.

Lola murmured her way toward the door. “Excuse me. Excuse me.” A final time, that scent. She dared a few quick glances as she made for the door but saw nothing that explained it. The crowd was too thick.

Only when she was free of the church did it hit her. Aftershave. The same bay rum that her father had worn. As had her assailant in the park.

Lots of men wore bay rum. Lola forced herself to walk slowly toward her car, listening for Melena’s steps behind her. Even though she knew that bay rum had gone out of style years if not decades earlier, this was a conservative crowd. It wasn’t inconceivable that men all over Salt Lake doused themselves in it before setting out to do whatever it was they did each day.

Still, she couldn’t shake the feeling that she’d just been in the same room with the man who’d attacked her not twenty-four hours earlier.