Summer Of Joanna. Janice Carter

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СКАЧАТЬ talk to Joanna now, and here wasn’t the place. She started to turn away when four undertakers from the funeral home filed through a side door.

      “Are you finished, ma’am?” one of them asked quietly.

      Kate could only nod. The tears she’d tried to hold back welled up. She dabbed at her eyes with a tissue. The men bent to release the wheel brakes of the stand the casket rested on and lifted up the cloth that skirted it.

      “Where…where will she be buried?” Kate asked.

      “Mrs. Marchant is going to be cremated. We’ll be taking her back to the funeral home from here.”

      “I see. Thank you,” Kate murmured, and averted her face, unable to watch Joanna Barnes wheeled out of her life forever. She closed her eyes, listening to the muted rumble of the casket as it rolled along the carpeted aisle. There was the sound of a door opening and, seconds later, thudding shut. Silence roared through the empty church.

      Kate clutched the back of a pew to steady herself.

      “Can I get you something?” a voice asked from behind.

      She turned and looked up, making eye contact with a man who seemed to tower over her. He wasn’t smiling and his eyes were serious.

      “Something?” she echoed. “Like what?”

      A single eyebrow on his pale face rose at her question. “Uh, well, since this is a church…say, a glass of water?”

      “Thanks, but I’m not sure you could even get a glass of water here. Everyone’s gone.”

      He shook his head. “They’re all outside, being social the way people have to behave at a funeral. Maybe even talking to reporters.”

      “Reporters? Here?”

      “A couple, anyway. Too bad Joanna can’t talk to them herself—she’d be in her element, wouldn’t she?”

      Kate stiffened at the edge in his remark. “I wouldn’t really know,” she said, and began to walk down the aisle toward the open front doors of the church. She heard him follow.

      “Sorry,” he said. “That didn’t come out the way I intended. Just that, you know how Joanna loved the limelight.”

      He caught up with her. “Are you a relative of hers?”

      “No.” Kate kept walking.

      “Then…a close friend?”

      “Not really.”

      As she reached the entryway, he reached out his hand to stop her. She swung around, staring down first at the hand on her forearm and then up into his face. A nice face. Nice enough to be in some of the fashion articles Joanna used to write. Maybe he had been, she thought. There was curiosity in the face, too. But the eyes—gray, she decided—were intense.

      “Not really?” He repeated. Then he frowned. “You’re not a reporter, then?”

      “No, for heaven’s sake. I met Joanna a long time ago. End of story.” She turned her back on him and headed for the door.

      “Sorry again,” he called after her. “I’ve been trying to find someone she was close to.”

      “I can’t help you there, but her husband is probably right outside.”

      “He’s the last person I’d talk to.”

      That stopped her. Kate pivoted around. “You’re not a relative?”

      “No.”

      “Friend? Colleague?”

      “Hardly.” The edge returned to his voice.

      The emotional fatigue of the past few days suddenly overwhelmed Kate. She was tired of this little game and only wanted to leave the church and go home. “Then I suppose neither of us has any relevant information to exchange.” Kate swung around and stepped out the church door into the glare of a July afternoon.

      Lance Marchant was holding court at the foot of the steps leading up to the church. He craned his neck as Kate exited, frowning momentarily before turning his attention back to the small group of reporters interviewing him. As Kate passed, she became aware of a brief flurry of interest from the reporters, but it quickly evaporated when Joanna’s husband failed to acknowledge her.

      Kate had to smile. So much for her fifteen seconds of fame, she thought. Then she remembered why she was there—and why the reporters were there. Walking briskly through the knots of people milling on the church lawn, she headed with grim determination to the rental car parked in the lot beside the church.

      The day was already gearing up for more record heat. Kate was grateful for the air-conditioning that had made the drive to Westchester more tolerable. When she’d read that Joanna’s funeral would be held outside New York City, she’d decided to rent a car rather than travel by public transit. She hesitated at the entrance to the lot, scanning it for the small white Escort.

      “Lost your car?”

      She turned, thinking the man from the church had followed her to the parking lot. But the man a few feet to her right was another stranger. He was short, balding and red-faced from the heat. His baggy tan slacks dipped beneath a bulging stomach, and the rumpled sports jacket looked as though it had been acquired at a secondhand clothing store. His white shirt, straining at its row of buttons, clung to him in unsightly patches. He threw the cigarette he’d been smoking onto the pavement, ground it under his heel and huffed his way toward her.

      Watching him made Kate feel cool. “When I got here, there weren’t so many vehicles,” she said.

      He glanced behind her at the lot. “Uh-huh. And most of them limos.”

      Kate suddenly noticed a sleek black limo angled in front of the Escort, blocking any quick exit she might have made. “Great,” she muttered. She pulled the material of her navy blue sleeveless dress away from her damp skin. Five more minutes in this lot, she figured, and she’d look like the man standing beside her.

      “Problem?” he asked.

      Kate sighed, tugging at the dress again. “My car—it’s behind that black limo in the second row.”

      “Uh-oh. Hopefully the owner won’t be long. Unless he—or she—is attending the postfuneral reception in the church manse.”

      Kate fanned herself with the rolled-up funeral service program. “How long will that be?”

      “You’re not going?”

      “No. I’m not family and…well, it wouldn’t be appropriate.” In fact, she was thinking, it would be downright awful to have to mingle with a bunch of strangers, picking up snippets of talk about Joanna.

      “Not family, eh? You in the fashion trade, too, then?”

      His eyes, small and deep-set in his fleshy face, swept over her.

      “No, I’m a teacher,” she replied, wishing he’d go away. What was it СКАЧАТЬ