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I heard the low murmur of voices, then a peal of laughter-Miranda’s laugh, floating above the song of the bugs-and then a lower, deeper laugh. The laughter seemed to be coming from the side of the house, and I edged down the driveway, alongside the Pathfinder, toward the lighted windows. As I got closer, I found myself looking into the kitchen. Miranda sat at the table, chatting between bites of food. Eddie Garcia sat catty-corner from her, on her right, smiling and nodding. Then Garcia turned his head away from Miranda and spoke. I heard another voice-another female voice-and a dark-haired woman appeared behind him, holding a dark-haired baby on her hip. Garcia beamed and reached up, taking the baby from her. He nuzzled its cheek, then nibbled at its ear, and I heard the pure melody of baby laughter. Miranda spoke softly, and Garcia handed the baby to her. She sat the child on the edge of the kitchen table, her hands encircling its chest and tucked beneath its arms, and leaned her face close. I caught snatches of her voice, the gentle singsong of baby talk. Miranda looked radiant, and the baby grinned, and Garcia and his wife beamed proudly, and I felt a wave of sadness and loneliness and shame crash over me.
CHAPTER 13
I STILL FELT CAUGHT IN THE SAME UNDERTOW OF feelings the next morning when I walked into the bone lab and saw Miranda poring over brochures extolling the virtues of metal knees and ceramic hips. She glanced up, but only briefly. “I think you should have one of each kind implanted,” she said. “Metal bearings on the left side, ceramic on the right. Make a personal investment in your research.”
I pointed to a flyer from Smith amp; Nephew, one of the titans of the artificial-joint industry, and tapped on the word “Oxinium,” the company’s trademarked name for oxidized zirconium. The term sounded high-tech and exotic-not hokey, the way “cremains” did. Smith amp; Nephew had probably paid millions for focus-group research on various names for the material, which the brochure said combined the toughness of metal with the hardness and smoothness of ceramics. “I’d rather have Oxinium everywhere.”
“Can’t,” she said. “It’s not in the budget.”
“Darn. I suppose as Phase Two of the research project you’ll be wanting to cremate me?”
“Of course,” she said. “It’s essential.” She paused ever so briefly. “Oh, I had Dr. Garcia and his family over for dinner last night,” she said casually.
“That was nice of you.” I kept my eyes on the photos of gleaming Oxinium joint surfaces.
“Carmen, his wife, is really funny-she’s like this over-the-top, self-mocking version of the fiery Latina. She acts out the stereotype, and then she steps back from it and laughs at herself. She’s like a surfer, zipping up and down the face of a giant wave.” She smiled. “And their baby-that has got to be the world’s cutest baby.”
“Make you want to have one?”
She looked at me sharply. “Good God, no,” she said. “Made me want to babble for an hour or two a week, though. I made them promise to let me baby-sit every Thursday night.” She straightened the stack of brochures. “You weren’t over in North Hills last night by any chance, were you?”
“Me? What would I be doing in North Hills?” My question wasn’t a lie, exactly, but it sure wasn’t the truth.
“I don’t know. I just wondered.” Did Miranda have ESP? Was she that attuned to me? “I went out to pick some mint for the tea, and I heard a car start up. Then a truck like yours did a U-turn and drove past.”
“Huh,” I said as casually as I could. “Lot of trucks like mine in Knoxville.”
“Guess so. I called your name-I was going to invite you to come in and join us. You’d have enjoyed it.”
“Maybe we can all get together sometime,” I told her. Serves you right, I told myself. “Listen,” I said, retreating to a safer ground, “I could use your computer-research skills on something.”
&nbs
p; “Shoot.”
“I’m trying to get in touch with the Trinity Crematorium, which is somewhere near Rock Spring, in northwest Georgia. It’s the place where Burt DeVriess’s aunt was sent to be cremated.”
“Did you call 411?”
“I did. There’s no listing for them.”
“Hmm. That seems odd, unless they’re trying to run themselves out of business.”
“It gets odder. Guy who runs it is named Littlejohn.” I’d gotten the name from Helen Taylor, who’d all but spit when she said it.
“Little John? Like Robin Hood’s sidekick?”
“That’s his last name, not two names. First name is Delbert.”
“Delbert-that’s odd, all right.”
“Let me finish,” I said, relieved that she was back in bantering mode. “Delbert Littlejohn has an unlisted number.”
“Ooh, I like this,” she said. “It smacks of skullduggery.”
“What is skullduggery anyhow? I’ve heard the word tossed around,” I said, “but I’ve never been sure what it means. Something to do with digging up skulls, I reckon, but what? And how come it’s ‘duggery,’ not ‘diggery,’ or even ‘digging’?”
“What do I look like,” she said, “The Oxford English Dictionary?” She swiveled her chair around to face the desk, and her fingers played a fast sonata on the computer’s keyboard. “Hmm,” she said. “Bizarrely, it has nothing to do with either skulls or digging. According to Dictionary.com, the word comes from an obscure Scottish obscenity meaning ‘fornication,’ and it means ‘trickery’ or ‘deception.’ Both of which, I suppose, are often involved in fornication.”
“So young, and yet so cynical,” I said.
“I’ve always been precocious.”
“Anyway,” I said, “back to the question at hand. You reckon you could bang around on those keys some more and find out how I could reach this mysterious Mr. Littlejohn, so I can ask him a few questions about Aunt Jean?”
