Double Whammy

"We all deal with grief in our own way." Decker kept a straight face when he said it.

"You're full of shit." The woman's tone stopped just short of friendly.

Mid-thirties, dark blue eyes, light brown hair curly to the shoulders. Decker was sure he had seen her somewhere before. She had an expensive tan, fresh from Curasao or maybe the Caymans. She wore a black dress cut much too low for your standard funeral. This dress was a night at the symphony.

"My name is Decker."

"Mine's Lanie."

"Elaine?"

"Once upon a time. Now it's Lanie." She shot a look toward Ott Pickney. Or was it Clarisse? "You didn't know Bobby, did you?" she said.

"Nope."

"Then why are you here?"

"I'm a friend of Ott's."

"You sure don't look like a friend of Ott's. And I wish you'd please quit staring at my tits."

Decker reddened. Nothing clever came to mind so he kept quiet and stared at the tops of his shoes.

Lanie said, "So what did you think of the sendoff ?"

"Impressive."

" 'Sick' is the word for it," she said.

An ear-splitting noise came from the gravesite. Bobby Clinch's customized bass-boat casket had slipped off the belts and torn free of the winch as it was being lowered into the ground. Now it stood on end, perpendicular in the hole; it looked like a giant grape Popsicle.

"Oh Jesus," Lanie said, turning away.

Cemetery workers in overalls scrambled to restore decorum. Decker saw Clarisse Clinch shaking her head in disgust. Ott was busy scribbling, his neck bent like a heron's.

"How well did you know him?" Decker asked.

"Better than anybody," Lanie said. She pointed back toward the driveway, where the mourners' cars were parked. "See that tangerine Corvette? That was a present from Bobby, right after he finished second in Atlanta. I've only given two blowjobs in my entire life, Mr. Decker, and that Corvette is one of them."

Decker resisted asking about the other. He tried to remember the polite thing to say when a beautiful stranger struck up a conversation about oral sex. None of the obvious replies seemed appropriate for a funeral.

The woman named Lanie said, "Did you get a look inside the coffin?"

"Yeah, amazing," Decker said.

"That fishing rod was Bobby's favorite. A Bantam Maglite bait-caster on a five-foot Fenwick graphite."

Decker thought: Oh no, not her too.

"I gave him that outfit for Christmas," Lanie said, adding quickly: "It wasn't my idea to bury him with it."

"I wouldn't have thought so," Decker said.

They watched the cemetery workers tip Bobby Clinch's coffin back into the grave, where it landed with an embarrassing thud. Hastily the diggers picked up their shovels and went to work. Lanie slipped on a pair of dark sunglasses and smoothed her hair. Her motions were elegant, well-practiced in the kind of mirrors you'd never find in Harney. The lady was definitely out-of-town.

"It wasn't what you think. Bobby and me, I mean."

"I don't think anything," Decker said. Why did they always have this compulsion to confess? Did he look like Pat O'Brien? Did he look like he cared?

"He really loved me," Lanie volunteered.

"Of course he did," Decker said. The Corvette was proof. A greater love hath no man than an orange sports car with a T-top and mag wheels.

"I hope you find out what really happened," she said. "That's why you're here, isn't it? Well, you're going to earn your fee on this one."

Then she walked away. R. J. Decker found himself concentrating on the way she moved. It was a dazzlingly lascivious walk, with a sway of the hips that suggested maybe a little booze for breakfast. Decker had done worse things than admire a woman's legs at a funeral, but he knew he should have been thinking about something else. Why, for example, the grieving mistress knew more about him than he knew about her. He got up and strolled after her. When he called her name, Lanie turned, smiled, didn't stop walking. By the time Decker caught up she was already in the Corvette, door locked.

She waved once through the tinted windows, then sped off, nearly peeling rubber over his feet.

When Decker got back to the grave, Ott Pickney was finishing his interview.

He nodded good-bye to Clarisse. "A cold woman," he said to Decker. "Something tells me Bobby spent too much time on the lake."

As they walked to the truck, Decker asked about the fishing rod in the coffin.

"Looked like a beauty," Ott agreed.

"Yes, but I was wondering," Decker said. "Guy goes fishing early one morning, flips his boat, falls in the lake ... "

"Yeah?"

"How'd they ever find the rod?"

Ott shrugged. "Hell, R.J., how do I know? Maybe they snagged it off the bottom."

"Thirty feet of brown water? I don't think so."

"Okay, maybe he didn't bring it with him. Maybe he left it at home."

"But it was his favorite rig."

"What are you getting at?"

"I just think it's odd."

"Bass fanatics like Bobby Clinch got a hundred fishing poles, R.J., a new favorite every day. Whatever catches a lunker."

"Maybe you're right."

"You need to relax," Ott said, "you really do."