Free A Really Cute Corpse by Joan Hess Page B

it’s always chaos for the first thirty minutes or so, until the bands are positioned and the cars in order. It’s such an amateurish group that no one has the slightest idea what to do. The junior-high bands are completely out of control, if you know what I mean. If there’s a riding club, the horses are all spooked and some kid falls off his pony. It can be just awful.”
    â€œI had a pony once,” Arnie said. “Cutest little pony
in the whole world.” He gave us a beatific smile, then fell across the seat and began to snore.
    Steve shrugged and gave me a helpless look. Cyndi tapped her watch. Arnie snuggled down in the upholstery and snored more loudly. Somewhere on the campus a bell tolled the half-hour. I mentally cursed Sally Fromberger, Luanne Bradshaw, the idiot who’d thought up the Miss Thurberfest pageant, the idiot who’d thought up anything to do with the Thurberfest, and the pedestrians who were beginning to wander along the sidewalk to find the perfect spot from which to watch the parade. I cursed the weatherman for not producing a violent thunderstorm or a tornado. I saved my most colorful curse for dear Arnie, who made a snuffly noise as he sought a more comfortable position in which to conduct his stupor.
    I went around to the driver’s side and shoved Arnie hard enough to bang his head on the door handle. I then settled myself behind the wheel and smiled at my passengers.
    â€œShall we go?” I said.

FIVE
    T he stadium parking lot, known locally as the Passion Pit, was a circus. Junior-high students armed with musical instruments did their best to stampede wild-eyed horses and buckskinned riders. A small child fell off his pony and began to scream. A drill team of miniskirted girls swarmed the convertible to gape at Miss Thurberfest and bat their eyelashes at her companion. Pickup trucks filled with dirty-faced Cub Scouts circled the lot, the drivers apparently unwilling to risk allowing the boys to scramble away. All sorts of people shouted sternly through megaphones. The bands played on. A horse finally bolted, to an acned tuba player’s delight. A Cub Scout leaped over the side of the truck and into the coroner’s convertible. Cyndi chattered with fans and signed autographs on scraps of paper. Steve shook hands and thanked everyone for their community spirit, which proved that communism would never get a toehold in grass-roots America. Arnie snored steadily.
    To my amazement, order triumphed over cacophony. At three o’clock sharp, a police car with flashing lights pulled out of the lot, followed by a marching band abusing Sousa, Shriners on motorized tricycles, a truckload of cheerleaders, and a fleet of antique cars. At some point I was waved into the line of convertibles, each with posters taped on the side doors and dignitaries perched
on the tops of the backseats. We ran the gamut from sanitation supervisor to lieutenant governor; my passengers were slightly above average.
    I fumbled through my purse for sunglasses. Arnie roused himself long enough to tell me to keep my hands to myself, then flopped back down. I remembered I’d left my sunglasses at Luanne’s; therefore I had no hope of disguising myself as we drove past a goodly percentage of Farberville’s twenty thousand citizens. That, coupled with my appearance on the local news, was apt to catapult me right into celebrity status. Maybe next year I’d be invited to ride on the back of a convertible, waving and tossing penny candy to children. I could crown the new Ms. Compromised Feminist Sensibilities, the pageant that proved beauty was both ageless and feckless. Whoopee.
    We crept around the corner and started down Thurber Street ( and my public humiliation) . The crowds grew thicker as we reached the theater, and positively thronged the sidewalks in front of Sally’s cafe. By the time we reached the Book Depot there was hardly an unpopulated inch of concrete. There