Free Rest In Pieces by Rita Mae Brown

losses until only Fitz’s immediate family remained. A fateful airplane crash carried away the New York Hamiltons the summer after Fitz’s junior year in high school. At sixteen Fitz-Gilbert was an orphan.
    Fitz appeared to withstand the shock and fight back. He spent the summer working in a brokerage house as a messenger, just as his father had planned. Despite his blue-blood connections, his only real friend in those days was another boy at the brokerage house, a bright kid from Brooklyn, Tommy Norton. They escaped Wall Street on weekends, usually to the Hamptons or Cape Cod.
    Fitz’s stoicism impressed everyone, but Cabell Hall, his guardian and trust officer at Chase Manhattan, was troubled. Cracks had begun to show in Fitz’s facade. He totaled a car but escaped unharmed. Cabell didn’t blow up. He agreed that “boys will be boys.” But then Fitz got a girl pregnant, and Cabell found a reputable doctor to take care of that. Finally, the second summer of Fitz’s Wall Street apprenticeship, he and Tommy Norton were in a car accident on Cape Cod. Both boys were so drunk that, luckily for them, they sustained only facial lacerations and bruises when they went through the windshield. Fitz, since he was driving, paid all the medical bills, which meant they got the very best care. But Fitz’s recovery was only physical. He had tempted fate and nearly killed not only himself but his best friend. The result was a nervous breakdown. Cabel checked him into an expensive, quiet clinic in Connecticut.
    Fitz had related this history to Little Marilyn before they got married, but he hadn’t mentioned it since.
    She looked at him now and wondered what he was talking about. Fitz was high-born, rich, and so much fun. She didn’t remember anywhere in her books being instructed that men need reassurance of their worth. The books concentrated on sexual pleasure and helping a husband through a business crisis and then dreaded male menopause, but, oh, they were years and years away from that. Probably he was playing a game. Fitz was inventive.
    “I would love you if you were”—she thought for something déclassé, off the board—“Iraqi.”
    He laughed. “That is a stretch. Ah, yes, the Middle East, that lavatory of the human race.”
    “Wonder what they call us?”
    “The Devil’s seed.” His voice became more menacing and he spoke with what he imagined was an Iraqi accent.
    One of the fourteen phones in the overlarge house twittered. The harsh ring of the telephone was too cacophonous for Little Marilyn, who believed she had perfect pitch. So she paid bundles of money for phones that rang in bird calls. Consequently her house sounded like a metallic aviary.
    Tiffany appeared. “I think it’s your mother, Miz Mim, but I can’t understand a word she’s saying.”
    A flash of irritation crossed Marilyn Sanburne Hamilton’s smooth white forehead. She reached over and picked up the phone, and her voice betrayed not a hint of it. “Mother, darling.”
    Mother darling ranted, raved, and emitted such strange noises that Fitz put down his napkin and rose to stand behind his wife, hands resting on her slender shoulders. She looked up at her husband and indicated that she also couldn’t understand a word. Then her face changed; the voice through the earpiece had risen to raw hysteria.
    “Mother, we’ll be right over.” The dutiful daughter hung up the receiver.
    “What is it?”
    “I don’t know. She just screamed and hollered. Oh, Fitz, we’d better hurry.”
    “Where’s your father?”
    “In Richmond today, at a mayors’ conference.”
    “Oh, Lord.” If Mim’s husband wasn’t there it meant the burden of comfort and solution rested upon him. Small wonder that Jim Sanburne found so many opportunities to travel.
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    13
    Those townspeople who weren’t gathered in the post office were at Market Shiflett’s. Harry frantically tried to sort the mail. She even called Susan Tucker to come down and help. Mrs.