Free In Plain Sight by Barbara Block Page A

was even pastier than I remembered it being. He’d gotten fatter, too, and his jacket couldn’t hide his bulging paunch. He was accompanied by a woman who looked as if she was his sister. There didn’t seem to be anyone who came from Marsha’s side of the family, but then I remembered her obituary had said she was an only child and that her father was deceased and her mother was ill. A moment later the Rabbi entered and the service began.
    As he started reciting the prayers I found myself thinking back to Murphy’s funeral, but all I could conjure up was a scene here and a face there. I couldn’t remember most of the people who had attended or what they had said. My sharpest memory was of shaking a seemingly endless succession of hands. It had been warm in the building. Too warm. And there had been flowers everywhere, banks of them. Their smell had sucked the air out of the room. I’d thought I was going to faint. I rubbed my forehead and made myself listen to the Rabbi. By now he was halfway through his eulogy. He was talking about how much Marsha’s husband would miss her and what a wonderful marriage they’d had. I was busy watching Merlin’s face when Eddison snorted. I turned toward him.
    â€œObviously,” he whispered, “the Rabbi didn’t know them very well.”
    â€œObviously,” I agreed, wondering how well Eddison did.
    A couple of minutes later the service ended and we trooped outside and got into our cars. From there we followed the hearse to Hillcrest Cemetery. It was a flat, utilitarian place full of squared-off rows of tombstones and young trees struggling to provide a little shade. The service was brief. Merlin stood at the foot of the grave with his hands folded while he listened to the Rabbi recite the prayer for the dead. Again his face betrayed nothing. It probably wouldn’t either, I decided as I studied the flowering crab on the other side of the macadam path. The tree’s limbs were gravid with unopened pink blossoms.
    A moment later I noticed a white Caddy Eldorado with tinted windows pulling up beneath it. The driver rolled down the window and looked at us. Merlin glanced up. The two men’s eyes locked. The color drained out of Merlin’s face leaving him as pale as his dead wife. The man behind the wheel curved his thin lips into a scimitar of a smile and wiggled his fingers in a parody of a wave. Then he rolled up the window and drove off.
    Merlin’s color returned, but he kept plucking at the edges of his shirt cuffs and shifting his weight from one foot to another as if he couldn’t wait to get away. I spent the rest of the service watching Merlin, and the drive over to the house wondering who the man in the Eldorado was and why Merlin was so scared of him. I was still wondering as I parked the car on the corner of Reynolds Avenue and walked down the block to Marsha’s house.
    It was one of those standard, nondescript colonials, the kind builders had put up en masse in the fifties when it looked as if America would grow forever. A couple of low-growing yews served as foundation plantings. A line of white and yellow crocuses stood in front of them. The grass was full of last winter’s debris and needed to be raked—as did mine, I reflected as I walked up the path to the house. The door was ajar and I pushed it open and went inside.
    The living room and the entrance hall were packed with people. I shouldered my way through them and went looking for Merlin. But I couldn’t find him. He wasn’t in the dining room or the kitchen. I walked down the hall. The door on the left was open. I took two steps inside.
    Then I stopped.
    My stomach lurched.
    I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Or maybe it was just that I didn’t want to.

Chapter 8
    P o and Pooh were sitting on the mantel of the fireplace facing each other. Two bizarre bookends with nothing but air in between them. Someone, and I was