I put the flashlight back more or less where I’d found it, then drove to the house to call Bobby.
“Dammit, you moved it,” he said when I finally got through to him.
“Of course I moved it. I picked it up.”
“Well, don’t touch it again. And don’t let anybody near that barn. I’ll be right there.”
He came with another detective and two technicians from the crime lab. By then Quinn had joined me.
“So now we know what Randy used to hit Georgia over the head,” I said.
“We won’t get his prints off that flashlight,” Bobby said. “If that’s what you’re getting at. You can’t lift fingerprints off a ridged surface.”
He pulled a pack of gum out of his pocket and offered it around.
“No, thanks,” I said.
Quinn shook his head. “What about the switch?” he asked.
“A hundred people could have touched the switch, the two of you included,” Bobby said. “Besides, something’s off about this. That flashlight wasn’t there the other day when we searched this place.”
“How can you be sure?” I said. “It was inside a dark stall. I only found it by accident because my cane fell through the space between two warped boards.”
“Place isn’t locked. Somebody could have walked in and planted it.” “After you searched? That doesn’t make sense. Maybe you just overlooked it.”
“I don’t know.” He stuck a piece of gum in his mouth. “Maybe. But I sure as hell don’t like this.”
It rained long and hard enough to dampen attendance at the Memorial Day picnic and our wine tasting. Only eighty of the nearly two hundred people who bought tickets showed up, even though we’d advertised that in case of rain we’d move indoors to the villa. Unfortunately, the hayrides planned for the rest of the afternoon were a complete washout and the grass was still too wet to set blankets or lawn chairs by the pond to get a good viewing spot for the fireworks. So everyone went home after lunch with most folks promising to return that evening. I talked to Hamp about postponing until the next day, but he’d been checking with the National Weather Service all afternoon. He told me the storms were heading southeast toward the Chesapeake Bay, so we’d have a clear evening.
“You gotta have fireworks on Memorial Day, Lucie,” he’d argued. “Unless it’s real bad weather and there’s wind. Having them the next day is kind of a letdown.”
So the fireworks were still on.
“Merde,” Dominique said, “I hope we don’t end upavec trois pelés et deux tondus.”
She, Joe, and I stood on the rain-slicked terrace, watching as heavy cumulonimbus clouds slipped slowly into the distance like freighters leaving port. In their wake, the late-afternoon sky was washed clean and clear.
“Three what and two what?” Joe asked.
“It’s an old French expression. Three peeled ones and two shaved ones. It means nobody’s coming,” I said.
Joe laughed and slipped an arm around Dominique’s waist. He kissed her lightly on the mouth and said, “You people say the weirdest things. I think we’ll be fine. Birds are singing again, so that’s a good sign. I think a lot of people will show up. Peeled, unpeeled, shaved, hairy. Everyone loves fireworks. They’ll come.” Then he added ruefully, “Though I’ve got final exams to grade, so I might not make it.”
“You’ve got to!” I said. “It’s only half an hour. Can’t you leave your papers for later?”
“Graduation’s right around the corner,” he said. “June tenth. The prom is next week and I’m chaperoning. It’s always insane at the end of the school year, plus the kids are so wound up.”
“Please come,” I said. “It’ll be fun.”
He smiled. “I know it will. All right, I have a free period tomorrow. The sheriff’s bringing the sober-up car over to the school parking lot for the next ten days and the kids will be at a special assembly. I guess I could get to those papers then.”
“What is the ‘sober-up car’?” Dominique asked.
“Your worst nightmare,” Joe said. “We do it every year. The cops bring an honest-to-God wreck from an accident and give a talk to the kids about no drinking and driving on prom night or graduation.”
“Does it work?” she asked.
He shrugged. “We hope it does, but I think we really only know for sure when it doesn’t. Some kid goes joyriding after knocking back a bunch of beers, then wraps Daddy’s Lexus around a telephone pole.”
“Mon Dieu.” Dominique sounded grim.
I looked at my watch. “I’m sorry to bring this up considering the conversation, but I’m late to get to the cemetery,” I said. “I’ll see you both tonight.”
“Why are you going to the cemetery?” Dominique asked.
“It’s Memorial Day.”
I had left a note on the kitchen table for Mia and a message on Eli’s answering machine saying I wanted to leave flowers and flags at the graves of our family members who served during the wars. Neither my brother nor my sister was sentimental about things like this, so I didn’t count on them showing up. I retrieved the white roses I’d picked earlier in the day and a box of small American flags and drove over to the cemetery. My foot, once again, ached from standing on it for so long.
Surprisingly, both of them were waiting next to Eli’s Jaguar. Mia, smoking a cigarette, dressed in yet another miniskirt and a cropped top, and Eli, deeply tanned in navy shorts and a new pale yellow “Sea Pines Resort” polo shirt, were talking and laughing as I drove up.
“You’re late,” Eli called as I got out of the Mini. “You were supposed to be here fourteen minutes ago.”
Eli owned an atomic watch that got its signal from someplace in Colorado and the National Institute of Standards and Technology. He lived by its every pulse.
“I was at the villa with Joe and Dominique. Can you take the box of flags while I get the flowers?”
He nodded and reached for them as Mia opened the door to the Jag, stubbing out her cigarette in the ashtray.
“Give me the roses, Lucie,” she said. “I’ll take them.”
“The Jag is a smoke-free zone, kiddo.” Eli sounded annoyed. “No cigarettes or butts allowed. Hopie will end up playing with them or putting them in her mouth.”
Mia rolled her eyes. “I’ll clean it as soon as we get back to the house. Jeez, Eli. That’s what ashtrays are for. Why are we doing this grave-site thing, anyway? We never did it when Mom was alive.”
“I know,” I said, “but I’ve been thinking about it for a while. It’s the first Memorial Day since Leland died. And it’s just the three of us now. I think it’s nice to pay tribute to everyone in the family who served the country. Especially since there was a Montgomery who fought in every war since the Revolution.”
“‘A martial race, bold, soldier featured and undismay’d,’” Eli quoted in a rich, thick Scottish brogue. “Aye, lassies, that be the fierce Montgomery clan, in the words of the immortal poet Rabbie Burns.”
Mia and I smiled. The three of us walked up the hill and Eli opened the wrought-iron gate. At the edge of the horizon, beyond the weather-etched tombstones and the brick wall that enclosed the cemetery, swollen rain clouds still hovered, obscuring the undulating horizon line of the Blue Ridge.
Eli sneezed three times and pulled out a handkerchief. “Oh, God, my allergies,” he complained. “There’s some plant here that always bothers me. I was fine in Hilton Head. I didn’t have any problems at Sea Pines.”
“We won’t be long,” I said. “Thank you both for doing this.”
“Some of these markers are falling over,” Mia said, threading her way between the oldest graves. “And the grass is still really wet. I’m taking off my sandals. They’ll get ruined.”
“It’s because whoever is buried there is…well, ashes to ashes,” Eli said cheerfully. “They didn’t always have coffins back in the day. And if it was just the body wrapped in a sheet or something and no embalming…two hundred years will do that to you. So it’s a sinkhole now.” He blew his nose again.
“Eli!” I said as Mia said, “That is disgusting.”
“But true,” he said.
“Okay,” I said. “Let’s try to show a little respect while we do this.”
“I’d like to take care of Pop’s grave,” Mia said quietly. “If that’s okay with you guys.”
“Sure, Mimi,” I said.
“No problem.”
By the time we were done, the cemetery was dotted with flags and a single white rose at more than a dozen headstones.
“Who put the flowers on Mom’s grave? They must have really been nice,” Eli said. “You, Luce?”
“Yes.”
“Aw, jeez. It was her anniversary, wasn’t it?” he said. “May second. I don’t know how I forgot. Probably crashing on some project.”
Eli knew what he did every minute of his life. He hadn’t forgotten and we both knew it. No point saying anything, though. He was here now. It was good enough.
“I didn’t forget,” Mia said quietly. “I came by that day to talk to her and saw the flowers. They were pretty.”
“They were from all of us,” I said. “She knows that.”
Eli put an arm around my shoulder. “Thanks, babe. I’m glad you did that. And this was nice, too.”
I smiled. “I’m glad we were all together. Either of you two sticking around for the fireworks?”
“Hope’s too young,” Eli said. “They’d scare the daylights out of her. Maybe in a few more years.”
“I’m going out,” Mia said. “Eli, drive me back to the house, will you? My car is there.” She ran down the hill, barefoot, toward the Jaguar.
“Do not even think about getting in my car with those muddy feet,” Eli called after her.
“Oh, for God’s sake, will you relax? I’m putting my sandals on. Your precious Jag will still be pristine.” Mia turned around and stuck out her tongue at him.
“She’s probably going out with Abby Lang,” I said under my breath. “They’ve been drinking over at the old temperance grounds. She got fined for public drunkenness the other day. It was in the police blotter.”
“Yeah, she told me. Said it was no big deal,” Eli said in a low voice as we reached the Jaguar.
Mia, impatient in the passenger seat, twisted and untwisted a long strand of golden hair around a finger. “You two take forever,” she complained. “Let’s get out of here, Eli. I’m going to be late.”
“Coming home tonight?” I asked.
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
“She’s fine, Luce. She’s a big girl,” Eli said soothingly.
Mia made an I-told-you-so face at me as Eli, driving show-off fast, blasted down the road to the house.
The fireworks went off without a hitch shortly after nine. About a hundred and fifty people came along to the vineyard to watch, so it was a good turnout after all. Quinn arrived with Bonita and there was something about the way they acted around each other that made me feel three would be a crowd if I sat with them. Then Kit and Bobby showed up, so I joined them and we listened to the oohs and aahs each time the sky exploded with colors.
I have to say Hamp outdid himself, especially with the finale, which was a deluge of red, white, and blue chrysanthemum fireworks, interspersed with rockets zooming straight up before breaking apart and sending multitiered cascades of filaments showering down on us.
I walked Kit and Bobby back to his car when it was over.
“That was fun,” Kit said. “Thanks for the invite. I’m glad we came.”
“Yeah, thanks,” Bobby said. “Nice change to be here when it’s not about business.”
“Did your lab find out anything more about the flashlight?” I asked.
“Not on a holiday,” he said. “And we’re still waiting for the ME’s ruling about Randy’s death.”
“What do you mean? I thought it was suicide.”
“Not until he makes the final call,” Bobby said. “One of three choices.”
“Three?”
“Homicide. Suicide. Or the one I’d go for right now if it was me.”
“What’s that?” I asked.
“Pending,” he said. “I still think we got some loose ends here.”