CHAPTER 25

I have cracked many hollow nuts … they fouled my mouth, and filled it with dust.

Martin Luther

The first of Rosie’s great-aunts was not what Homer expected. Dr. Emmeline Ferris was not a dear old lady with a lace collar and a cameo pin. She was a tough cookie, a psychiatrist in charge of highly disturbed patients at the state hospital in Danvers.

“No,” she said firmly, “I never heard Rosie say she wanted to be cremated. I doubt the thought ever entered her head.” Dr. Ferris snatched up a file folder and flipped it open, as though willing Homer Kelly to go away.

Homer opened his mouth to ask another question, but there was a disturbance in the hall. Someone shrieked. Dr. Ferris leaped up, threw open the door and bellowed, “Give him what he wants.”

“But he’s been through a whole pack since yesterday,” gasped a young man in a white coat. He was wrestling with a tall kid in a T-shirt. The kid shrieked again.

“Who the hell cares?” cried Rosie’s great-aunt. She slammed the door, returned to her desk and sat down with a thump. “Anything else?” she said crisply, dumping the contents of the file folder on her desk.

Homer was dismissed. But as he got up to go, he asked an embarrassing question. “Oh, Dr. Ferris, do you have any suggestions about what to do with Rosie’s child? It will be put up for adoption if none of her relatives take it.”

“Don’t look at me,” said Dr. Ferris. “The girl was a fool to marry that feckless young man. I told her so at the time. What kind of care would a baby get from me? Responsible adoptive parents, that’s the best thing for a baby girl.”

“Baby boy,” said Homer dryly.

“Well, whatever.”

The second great-aunt was altogether different. Her name was Roberta Birdee.

Mrs. Birdee lived in a big chateau-like house on a broad tree-lined street in Newton. Homer was ushered in by a maid in uniform. She was the only uniformed maid he had ever seen outside a movie theater, except for his mother’s sister, who had been in service in the household of Mayor Curley.

The maid led the way to a large living room in which Roberta Birdee lay on a puffy sofa, eating chocolates from a heart-shaped box. Homer was charmed.

Mrs. Birdee offered the box to Homer, and he took a round morsel containing a syrupy cherry. “Mmmm, deelishush,” he said, sitting down.

“My hubby gave them to me for Valentine’s Day.” Mrs. Birdee, a chubby woman with dimpled cheeks, wore a frilly bedjacket and lay under a fluffy comforter. Everything about her was chubby and fluffy too. Even the word hubby, shaped by her tiny mouth, sounded cozy and plump.

Homer admired the way her mouth went around in circles as she worked her way through the box of chocolates. She offered it to him again. “Here, dear, try the square ones.”

“Don’t mind if I do,” murmured Homer greedily, thinking of the snacks usually provided by his wife, healthy vegetables like carrot sticks and slices of green pepper. “Mmm, caramel, my favorite.”

“You’ve come about poor dear Rosie,” said Mrs. Birdee. “Oh, of course, we couldn’t take the baby. The social worker, Mrs. Barker, asked us, but we couldn’t possibly. I’ve been ill, you see.” She put a pudgy hand to her breast, to indicate fragility somewhere inside. “Of course, if there’s anything else we can do, we would be absolutely—” She paused while her little mouth went around and around, rotating clockwise, crushing and absorbing a piece of fudge. “Here, dear, have another.”

Homer helped himself. “What I really want to know, Mrs. Birdee, is whether or not Rosie ever told you that after her death she wished to be cremated?”

“Cremated! Goodness! It’s not the sort of thing you talk about, is it? So disagreeable. No, I’m sure we never discussed any such thing. Do try these, Mr. Kelly. Chocolate-covered almonds.”

Homer’s stomach was beginning to turn. Politely he waved away the heart-shaped box. “What about you?” he said evilly, probing in the soft flesh just for the hell of it. “Would you rather be buried in a coffin and just sort of slowly deteriorate over the years, or be burned up and have your ashes scattered somewhere? Although I gather you don’t just burn down into ashes. I mean there are still big chunks of blackened bone, that’s what they tell me.”

Mrs. Birdee’s little mouth stopped working. She stared at him. Then she took another chocolate-covered cherry and murmured around the edges, “Oh, deary me.” This time her tiny mouth went counterclockwise, going around and around the other way.

“We’ve got to find him. We’ve just got to find him. I don’t care what happens to me. They’ll give him to me. I’m his mother.”

“Look, what good would it do to find him if you’re incarcerated for the rest of your life? They’ve got four charges against you—two or three cases of arson, one manslaughter, one first-degree murder. Now, listen, I’ve got something to tell you.”

“Charley, he’s all that matters. We’ve got to find Charley.”

“Listen to me. You can’t come forward and say who you are. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. You don’t exist any longer. So they’re not looking for you any more. You’re safe, but you’ve got to leave the country.”

“Safe! Why am I safe?”

“Because, my dear, they think you’re dead.”

“Dead!”

“Dead.”

“But why? Why do they think—?”

“Never mind. They do, and you can thank me for it.”

“But, oh, God, dead!”

“All you’ve got to do is leave the country and be somebody else from now on. You can go to Germany, the way we planned it before.”

“But I can’t, I won’t—not without Charley! We’ve got to find Charley! I won’t go without Charley!”

“Oh, Christ!”