Free Husbands And Lap Dogs Breathe Their Last by David Steven Rappoport Page A

with acanthus medallions. The house had been tastefully updated with modern technologies, but it was architecturally intact down to its still-functional beehive oven and a hidden room to hide slaves escaping on the Underground Railroad. Ernestine kept it painted it a historically incorrect gray (instead of white) with lavender shutters (rather than black). Cummings wondered if the house reflected both Ernestine’s attachment to, and rebellion against, her lineage.
    Ernestine was of medium height and always had her white hair pulled back in a simple bun. Though her choice of words often seemed anachronistic, and her expansive, eighteenth-century home could have been a museum, her dress was modern and casual. She dressed simply and comfortably, usually in a flannel shirt, jeans and boots from L.L. Bean.
    Ernestine’s housekeeper, Rebecca — a pleasant, stout older woman who spoke in a Downeast accent even more pronounced than Ernestine’s — helped Cummings put his suitcases into one of Ernestine’s guest rooms. Then she made a pot of tea, and Ernestine and Cummings sat down to talk.
    “She’s such a dear,” Ernestine said, referring to Rebecca. “I didn’t know what I’d do when Becky left last year to live with her sons in Tallahassee. You remember Becky?”
    Cummings nodded. He’d been fond of Ernestine’s former housekeeper.
    “It was good of you to come,” Ernestine said, changing the subject to the reason for Cummings’s trip.
    “I liked Chess. He was very eccentric, but so many people in Maine are.”
    “Is Maine so different from other places?” Ernestine countered. “Life makes many folks half mad in one way or another, sometimes three-quarters.”
    “That’s true,” Cummings conceded. “Anyway, the trip gives me a chance to see you.”
    Ernestine dismissed the implied affection with a half-smile and a slight shake of her head. “But mostly to investigate,” she said.
    “Was there anything of note you didn’t tell me on the phone? Anything you might have observed when you saw the body?”
    “No, I don’t believe so.”
    “What about Chess’s life? Anything notable there?”
    “You do know his business rose like a rocket a few years back?”
    “What business? Do you mean the orgone boxes?”
    “Yes, indeed. You remember that his previous business ventures failed? For instance, there was the time he came back from a trip to the South Seas and started manufacturing Polynesian clothes. It was a disaster. As one local wag said, ‘puce sarongs do not make a right.’ Anyway, Chess put those orgone boxes on the computer, and orders began coming from all over, not just the United States but Europe, Asia, South America. He had to move the manufacturing out of his garage and into that old building by the river that nobody’s used since Sally Fishmeyer made Ho Chi Minh T-shirts during the Vietnam War. Fixing up that building and paying rent to the Village, as well as creating a bunch of new jobs, made him wicked popular. I cannot imagine anybody would want to kill him. I cannot imagine it.”
     
     
    The next day, Cummings, in a dark suit and tie, and Ernestine, in her grandmother’s wedding dress which she’d had dyed black many years earlier for just such occasions, drove the ten miles to the First Congregational Church in Samaria. There, a properly somber service was held, followed by an interment in the churchyard and a reception in the church basement.
    Like most Congregational churches in Maine — indeed, like Maine itself — the building was Federal and stolid. Its weathered clapboards reminded one that Maine existed in a long trajectory of time. Everything had been seen before.
    First Congregational was the oldest church in the area. The sanctuary was built in 1793 and subsequently renovated and enlarged several times. There were presently three buildings: the church proper, the parish hall and the rectory.
    At the reception Cummings saw almost everyone he knew in Horeb. This