The Undertaker

“Look, Ace,” he finally said. “I usually don't give free advice and I never give it twice, so you listen up, and listen good. Go back to Boston. I know I kinda lured you here with those two obituaries, but when you showed up they didn't panic or do nuthin’. In fact, they haven't done a damned thing, but blow you off, so that's it. Finito! Go back to Boston, because you're messing in some very serious shit here. Keep poking around and you're gonna end up in a box next to that other Peter Talbott up in Oak Hill. Us or them, you're gonna get your ticket punched.”

He turned and opened the driver's side door of the Lincoln.

“Wait a minute,” I called out to him. “Who's we?”

“You don't want to know,” he sighed.

“Then who are you?” I dared to ask.

He paused and thought it over before he answered. “My name's Parini, Gino Parini. Some people say I kill people for a living. I'm sure that's a major exaggeration, but you don't ever want me to see your sorry ass again. You got that?” He gave me one last long, hard look, then added, “By the way, it's good you got rid of that Rolling Stones shit. You ain't no freakin’ college kid no more.”

“You're right, but I needed something more formal for my funeral.”

“Still the smart ass, huh? Well, you keep doin’ what you've been doin’ and it still could be.” Then he got in the Lincoln, slammed the door, and drove away.

Me? I stood there, glad I hadn't wet my pants.

CHAPTER FIVE

Marion, madam librarian…

In the morning, after a hot shower, I saw one of those homey, red-sided Bob Evans restaurants at the interstate interchange. Back home in Los Angeles, Terri would have insisted on our usual morning fare of yogurt, granola, bean curd, and green tea. I'd be hungry again an hour later, but it would have been a healthy hungry. Bob's menu had yogurt, granola, and some whole wheat, but I guess Ohio had never heard of bean curd or green tea, because there was none to be found. My baser instincts took over and I forced myself to down four cups of high-test coffee and a really big plate of country biscuits and gravy. Nope, you just can't beat that fine mid-western cuisine. The cholesterol took at least three months off my life, but that Ohio stuff would stick around all day; probably well into the next one, too.

Over my last cup of coffee, I realized I had a ton of questions, but not very many answers. What about those obituaries? The identical names? The private funerals no one attended? Common graves at the cheap end of a country cemetery? A surly sheriff, a greasy mortician, and a lawyer? The empty house and office? Like any good engineer, the vacuum of an unanswered question, much less a whole flock of them, drove me nuts. If I couldn't compute something, measure it, or put a wrench on it, I couldn't ignore it no matter how hard I tried. Questions? Questions, but no answers. And when you have questions you can't answer, the best person to go see, is your friendly, neighborhood librarian.

The phone book at Bob's counter showed that the main public library was downtown. It opened its doors at 9:30 A. M., and I was there. It was one of those big, neo-classic white marble affairs that had been surrounded by taller and more modern steel and glass buildings. I parked in the rear lot and went in the back door only to find the recently renovated interior was as modern and trendy as the exterior was classic. It was filled with primary colors, florescent lights, computer terminals, plastic chairs, and formica tables. From the directory on the entry wall, I saw the building contained a senior center, playrooms for kids, video tapes, audio tapes, CDs, an auditorium, meeting rooms, big civic displays, and a coffee bar. Somewhere in there, I figured they had to stock a few books.

The Reference Room was on the third floor. I trudged up the open staircase to the reference desk wearing my most helpless smile and asked for directions to the newspapers. The lady librarian gave me the kind of look she usually reserved for slow third graders. She jabbed her yellow #2 pencil behind her ear, slipped off her tall stool, and escorted me back through the brightly colored techno-maze to the periodical shelves that lined the back wall, the last refuge of the reader. She explained they kept paper copies of the local dailies for the past three months, piled in neat stacks on the shelves. After three months they were recorded on microfilm, going all the way back to 1896, and were filed in a row of file cabinets near the bank of microfilm readers that ran down the center of the room. Looking at the stacks of newspapers and the storage cabinets, I figured the last three months would more than do for starters.