Free A Shroud for Aquarius by Max Allan Collins Page B

Both wore glasses, but Roger’s were thick and black-rimmed where his mother’s were delicate and wire. Mother and son weighed about the same and were of a similar height and, despite the twenty years between them, could have been older sister and younger brother but for her white hair and his black, sitting there like a plump pair of salt and pepper shakers.
    “Mrs. Mullens,” I said, standing before her.
    She stood and hugged me and looked up at me with a brave smile and red eyes; a whisper of liquor on her breath. “Mal. Oh, Mal, I’m so glad you’re here….”
    The coffin was nearby; closed. Plenty of flowers, though there had been few visitors. A few relatives—uncles, aunts—were walking around looking at the cards on the flowers, seeing who’d sent what.
    “You just missed Jill Forest,” she said, sitting down. “She was in you kids’ class, wasn’t she?”
    I nodded, took the chair on the other side of her; Roger looked over at me blankly, like the Pillsbury Doughboy.
    Roger was two years older than Ginnie, and had always been something of a brain. As smart as Ginnie was, her brother was said to be smarter. Twenty years later, and he hadn’t set the world on fire, yet. Last time I talked to him, perhaps ten years ago, he’d been a computer programmer at Maxwell Consultants, an engineering firm.
    “Hello, Roger.”
    “Hello.”
    “I’m sorry about your loss.”
    Roger shrugged. “I’m not worried.”
    “Pardon?”
    “I didn’t need that job anyway. I was too good for them.”
    “What are you talking about, Roger?”
    Mrs. Mullens, gravely, said, “Maxwell’s laid Roger off last month.”
    Roger said, “What did you think I was talking about?”
    I didn’t know what to say to that.
    Mrs. Mullens smiled like a fairy godmother and patted Roger’s arm. “Roger will find something soon, I’m sure.”
    Something like a smile curled in his pudgy face. “I may go into business for myself. I can write programs with the best of them.”
    “I’m, uh, sure you can, Roger.”
    Silence.
    Roger stood. “I’m going to catch a smoke, Mom. Be right back.”
    “That’s fine, Roger.”
    She watched him go, with rheumy eyes. “I wish he wouldn’t smoke.”
    “Is Roger still living at home?”
    She smiled just a little, sighed pleasantly. “Yes, and he’s a godsend.”
    “Helps you around the house, you mean.”
    “Well—he doesn’t really have
time
for that. He has to work with his computer. But having his company—just to have him there at mealtime—it means so much. And now with Ginnie gone… I… I treasure his company even more.” She turned a very serious gaze on me; her eyes were Ginnie’s—nothing else about her was Ginnie, just her eyes. “You know, it occurred to me this morning… thinking about losing Ginnie… I just take that boy for granted sometimes. I just don’t appreciate him like I should.”
    I tried to think of something polite to say about the fat little bastard and instead said, “I saw Ginnie at the class reunion last month.”
    “Was that the last time you saw her, Mal?”
    “Yes.”
    No. Last night I’d seen her put into the back of an ambulance. Under a sheet.
    “Mal, how were her spirits?”
    “Good. I’d say, good. She said she was happy.”
    “How could she have…” She let out a confused sigh.
    “I don’t know. Ginnie didn’t seem the sort of person who would take her life.”
    She looked off somewhere, nowhere, nodding to no one. “Sometimes we don’t know people as well as we think we do. As close as Ginnie and I were, I… I would never have guessed this of her.”
    I took her hand and squeezed it a little; we smiled tightly at each other. Blinked our individual tears away.
    But Mrs. Mullens was lying. Not to me.
    Herself.
    She and Ginnie had been anything but close. Ginnie had always treated her mom rather callously when we were kids in junior high and high school. Back then I’d found it amusing, being a teenager myself and getting