33

Roger and I went to Jessica’s place.

He begged to go in with me. I doubted he could control himself in her presence, so I told him nothing doing.

It turned out to be a moot point. Jessica wasn’t home. Her housekeeper told me she had gone to a funeral. And then she told me whose.

“She’s not home,” I told the rabbit, as I got back into the car with him.

“Where is she?” he asked.

I had the sports news on the car radio. At some local West Coast track meet a Toon kangaroo had shattered the record for the long jump, and a Toon seal took every swimming medal. I wondered how far Wheaties would get in passing them off as all-American boys. “How should I know where she went?” I said. “What am I, her social secretary?”

Roger caught the concern in my voice but misinterpreted its cause. He grabbed my arm. “Something’s happened to Jessica. My Jessica’s in trouble.”

I shook him loose and stared out the window, so I wouldn’t have to look him in the eye. “No, she’s not in trouble. Do yourself a favor and drop it, all right?”

Roger refused to buy. “You know where she is, don’t you? Yet you won’t tell me. Why? What’s wrong? She is in trouble, isn’t she?”

I try and save this dopey rabbit some grief, and I take gas for it. OK. If he wanted honesty, I’d give it to him and hope he choked on it. I gripped his ears and held them out straight to either side of his head so he got my blast in full, undistorted, stereophonic sound. “Jessica went to a funeral. And I didn’t want to tell you about it, because it just happens to be yours. Your funeral. The late Roger Rabbit.”

“My funeral? She went to my funeral?”

I pulled forward on his ears and nodded his head for him. “Right. Your funeral. She went to your funeral.”

“Eddie,” he said in a balloon so somber you could have used it as an aerial hearse for a hummingbird. “I want to go there, too.”

“Are you kidding? She went to your funeral. You can’t go to your own funeral. Somebody’s bound to recognize you.”

“Not necessarily.” He squashed his ears down flat against either side of his face to show me what he’d look like in long tresses. “I’ll masquerade as my own aunt. I don’t have any family, so there’ll be nobody there to question me. Oh, please, Eddie, please.”

I held tough for a while but finally gave in. To tell you the truth, I was as intrigued by the prospect as Roger was. I mean how often does anybody get the chance to go to his own funeral?

“Nice turnout,” said Roger, surveying the crowd. He peered down at himself as we filed past his traditional cardboard casket. “And I look so natural.” He pulled out a handkerchief and wiped away a tear.

He headed for a seat down front beside Jessica, but I guided him to a rear row instead. I must admit in his black cotton hose, clunky shoes, woolen skirt and jacket, and pillbox hat he brought off the maiden aunt bit pretty well, but why press our luck?

The funeral director got up and rattled off a bunch of stuff about what a great rabbit Roger had been.

Next Baby Herman crawled out and delivered a eulogy that was actually pretty moving, until the very end when he wet his pants.

From there we went to the cemetery.

Roger’s headstone was engraved with the words, “Hi, I’m Roger Rabbit,” inside a carved word balloon with stem ascending from between two bullet-shaped ears cut into the stone just above ground level.

“Nice, don’t you think?” he whispered. “I designed it myself.”

“I never would have guessed,” I said.

After the rabbit had been planted, and everybody was heading for home, I approached Jessica, but Roger got there first.

“Oh, dearie, you look so lovely,” said Roger, taking his wife’s hand. “I don’t know if Roger ever spoke of me or not. I’m his beloved Aunt Rhonda. I know he mentioned you to me quite often. He loved you very, very much, and always knew that you did not leave him of your own free will, but rather were forced into it by that ne’er-do-well Rocco DeGreasy.”

“We don’t want to overexcite ourselves, do we, Auntie?” I said, pushing the rabbit down the path toward my car. “I think you’d better go back to your hotel and take a nap.”

“Oh, my, that’s so considerate of you,” said Roger, more to Jessica than to me, “but I feel I can be of better use providing spiritual comfort to my charming and beautiful niece-in-law.”

I grabbed him by the elbow and lock-stepped him out to the road. “I really think you need the rest, Auntie.” I tossed him into my car and didn’t take my eyes off him until he started the car, drove away, and disappeared from view.

“A strange woman,” said Jessica when I rejoined her. “Amazing resemblance to her nephew. They could almost pass for twins.”

“No,” I said, “the old lady’s got longer ears.”

Jessica slipped her arm through mine. She had a flower in her hand, which she’d taken from one of Roger’s wreaths. “What did you think of the funeral?”

I shrugged. “Funerals, weddings, they’re all the same to me. The only difference is whether you walk or ride down the aisle. Either way you wind up six feet deep in misery.” We reached her car, one of those sporty two-seaters with a name like something off an Italian menu. “How about you and me, we go for a ride?” I said. “Someplace quiet where we can talk.”

“What about?”

“Fairytale stuff. Sailing ships and sealing wax. Cabbages and kings.”

She unlocked her side of the car, climbed in, and started the engine. “You came to the wrong person. Catch a ride home with Tweedle-De-Dum.”

“How about teakettles, then? That more your kind of fable?”

She opened the passenger door. “I do believe you’re going my way.” She pointed toward the glove box. “There’s a bottle inside.”

I swigged down enough courage to climb aboard the sailing ship on her bottle’s label and head out after the nearest white whale. “Call me Ishmael,” I said.

“I beg your pardon,” said Jessica. “I said, I’ve got the teakettle.”

She immediately killed her engine. “Where is it?” she said with a voice so silky it could magnetize a rubber wand. “And when can I get it?”

“After we work our deal,” I said. “As I remember it, you promised me a pretty rich reward.”

“Of course.” She reached for the ignition. “My place, or yours?”

“Neither. I want something else, instead.”

“What?” From the puzzled way she said it, I could tell she couldn’t conceive of anything more valuable than the treasure she had just offered me.

“Some information. For starters, suppose you tell me about Little Rock DeGreasy’s scheme to sell forged copies of the works he and Carol Masters stole from Rocco’s art gallery.”

“I had nothing to do with that.”

“Not directly, no. But you knew about it, didn’t you? Little Rock told you about it.”

My guess panned out. “Yes, he told me about it. The boy loves me. He saw his scheme as a means of earning enough money so we could run away together. Just because I knew about it doesn’t make me guilty of a crime.”

“I think different. I could bring you up for concealing evidence, but I’m inclined to hold out for something bigger.”

She picked her wreath flower off the console between us. One by one she plucked out its petals. When she got to the last one, it turned out she loved somebody not. “Such as?”

“How about murder one?”

She laughed. “You’ll have a fine time proving that one.”

“I don’t think so. You tie in too well. Somebody told Sid Sleaze that the law was getting ready to close down Carol and Little Rock’s forgery racket. I think that somebody was you. You told Sleaze, knowing full well he’d squeeze one last dollar out of the scam by going to Rocco with the full story. You knew how Rocco would react when he heard it. He would call Carol Masters and Little Rock onto the carpet. You counted on one or the other of them getting panicky enough to do Rocco in.”

“Why would I possibly want them to do that? I loved Rocco.”

“I think you loved his money more, and I think it’s going to be you who gets most of it when they read his will. That’s motive enough in my book.”

She brushed her single-petaled flower first across her lips and then across mine. “What if I did construct a situation designed to goad either Carol or Little Rock into killing Rocco? Dear Roger beat them both to it, and I had nothing to do with that.”

“I’m not so sure.” I leaned back against her fine leather seat, really enjoying myself for the first time since this whole miserable affair began. “When Sleaze came over to tell Rocco about the forgery scheme, he also brought duplicate negatives of your infamous comic book. I’d guess Rocco didn’t take kindly to the revelation that his sweetheart was a tart. He called you on the carpet, too. Threatened to kick you out of his will. Maybe even out of his house. So you asked Roger to come over. Before he got there, you killed Rocco yourself. You gave Roger the gun. Begged him to hide it for you at his place. The rabbit was just nuts enough about you to do it. You then followed him home and shot him, too. Bingo. Instant solution to all your problems. You inherit, and Roger, who isn’t around to defend himself, takes the fall.”

“Great imagination,” she said. “You should write for the strips.”

“Maybe I will. Maybe I’ll do an Arabian adventure series about a magic lantern. I understand that’s one of your specialties, magic lanterns. Wouldn’t have anything to do with the teakettle, would it?”

Her mouth and her eyes formed three perfect circles within the soft oval of her face. “The teakettle? Certainly not. Are you insinuating it’s a magic lantern? That’s ridiculous. There are no such things. They’re myths. I study about them in my mythology class. Get the connection? A mythology class. Because they’re myths. No, the teakettle is valuable because of its composition.”

“Gold and jewels, I know. The Templar Knights.”

“Correct. The Templar Knights. Now, when can I have it?” she asked with altogether too much pleading in her voice.

Even though it was a good half-mile walk to the nearest bus stop, I decided I’d rather hoof it than spend another minute in that car with that woman. I got out and slammed the door. “When can I have the teakettle?” she repeated as I walked through the gravestones and away.

“How about just before the next reunion of the Veterans of Foreign Crusades?” I called back.

Her reply probably set a few of the stiffs below me spinning around in their graves. They suffered it in silence though, and so did I.