Mr. Mercedes (Bill Hodges Trilogy, #1)(93)

No risk, no reward, honeyboy, his mother murmurs. It’s true. Also, he judges that the risk is minimal. If Hodges is pronging the blond bitch (or hoping to), he won’t leave her side.

Brady does an about-face at the far corner, strolls back, and turns in to the funeral home drive without hesitation. He can hear faint music, some kind of classical shit. He spots Hodges’s Toyota parked against the rear fence, nose-out for a quick getaway once the festivities are over. The old Det-Ret’s last ride, Brady thinks. It’s going to be a short one, pal.

He walks behind the larger of the two hearses, and once it blocks him from the view of anyone looking out the rear windows of the funeral parlor, he takes Thing Two out of the shopping bag and pulls up the antenna. His heart is driving harder than ever. There were times—only a few—when his gadget didn’t work. The green light would flash, but the car’s locks wouldn’t pop. Some random glitch in the program or the microchip.

If it doesn’t work, just slide the shoebox under the car, his mother advises him.

Of course. That would work just as well, or almost as well, but it wouldn’t be so elegant.

He pushes the toggle. The green light flashes. So do the Toyota’s headlights. Success!

He goes to the fat ex-cop’s car as if he has every right to be there. He opens the rear door, takes the shoebox out of the carry-bag, turns on the phone, and puts the box on the floor behind the driver’s seat. He closes the door and starts for the street, forcing himself to walk slowly and steadily.

As he’s rounding the corner of the building, Deborah Ann Hartsfield speaks again. Didn’t you forget something, honeyboy?

He stops. Thinks it over. Then goes back to the corner of the building and points Thing Two’s stub of an antenna at Hodges’s car.

The lights flash as the locks re-engage.





18


After the remembrances and a moment of silent reflection (“to use as you wish”), the clergyman asks the Lord to bless them and keep them and give them peace. Clothes rustle; programs are stowed in purses and jacket pockets. Holly seems fine until she’s halfway up the aisle, but then her knees buckle. Hodges darts forward with surprising speed for a big man and catches her beneath her arms before she can go down. Her eyes roll up and for a moment she’s on the verge of a full-fledged swoon. Then they come back into place and into focus. She sees Hodges and smiles weakly.

“Holly, stop that!” her mother says sternly, as if her daughter has uttered some jocose and inappropriate profanity instead of almost fainting. Hodges thinks what a pleasure it would be to backhand Auntie C right across her thickly powdered chops. Might wake her up, he thinks.

“I’m okay, Mother,” Holly says. Then, to Hodges: “Thank you.”

He says, “Did you eat any breakfast, Holly?”

“She had oatmeal,” Aunt Charlotte announces. “With butter and brown sugar. I made it myself. You’re quite the attention-getter sometimes, aren’t you, Holly?” She turns to Janey. “Please don’t linger, dear. Henry’s useless at things like this, and I can’t hostess all these people on my own.”

Janey takes Hodges’s arm. “I’d never expect you to.”

Aunt Charlotte gives her a pinched smile. Janey’s smile in return is brilliant, and Hodges decides that her decision to turn over half of her inherited loot is equally brilliant. Once that happens, she will never have to see this unpleasant woman again. She won’t even have to take her calls.

The mourners emerge into the sunshine. On the front walk there’s chatter of the wasn’t-it-a-lovely-service sort, and then people begin walking around to the parking lot in back. Uncle Henry and Aunt Charlotte do so with Holly between them. Hodges and Janey follow along. As they reach the back of the mortuary, Holly suddenly slips free of her minders and wheels around to Hodges and Janey.

“Let me ride with you. I want to ride with you.”

Aunt Charlotte, lips thinned almost to nothing, looms up behind her daughter. “I’ve had just about enough of your gasps and vapors for one day, miss.”

Holly ignores her. She seizes one of Hodges’s hands in a grip that’s icy. “Please. Please.”

“It’s fine with me,” Hodges says, “if Janey doesn’t m—”

Aunt Charlotte begins to sob. The sound is unlovely, the hoarse cries of a crow in a cornfield. Hodges remembers her bending over Mrs. Wharton, kissing her cold lips, and a sudden unpleasant possibility comes to him. He misjudged Olivia; he may have misjudged Charlotte Gibney as well. There’s more to people than their surfaces, after all.

“Holly, you don’t even know this man!”

Janey puts a much warmer hand on Hodges’s wrist. “Why don’t you go with Charlotte and Henry, Bill? There’s plenty of room. You can ride in back with Holly.” She shifts her attention to her cousin. “Would that be all right?”

“Yes!” Holly is still gripping Hodges’s hand. “That would be good!”

Janey turns to her uncle. “Okay with you?”

“Sure.” He gives Holly a jovial pat on the shoulder. “The more the merrier.”

“That’s right, give her plenty of attention,” Aunt Charlotte says. “It’s what she likes. Isn’t it, Holly?” She starts for the parking lot without waiting for a reply, heels clacking a Morse code message of outrage.