Murphy also had the potential of being a real predicament for her on an entirely different level. Murphy was sexy, and Murphy was sharp, and Murphy was walking the end of the same road she was on, which made him a heck of a conversational partner in a town without many. And while Timmie was into stage four of divorce, she wasn't all that far from three, which meant that her hormones still tended to rampage like juveniles'.

But Timmie knew better than most that hormones weren't enough for anything but a stockpile of batteries or a pile of regrets. Murphy might hold down a job. He might even smile on occasion so that she could see that cute dimple of his, but he still walked with that brittle "I haven't been out long" air Timmie knew much too well and hated far too much. She knew a dead-end street when she saw one, and Murphy was the poster child for dead-end streets, no matter what Timmie wanted.

But that was a problem for another day. Today, her job was to watch and see if anything of interest happened at the funeral.

And to that end, the other difference. Today Timmie was the one driving Cindy, Ellen, and Mattie in her battered old Peugeot as they followed the procession up toward the Eternal Rest Chapel.

"You sure we shouldn't just bury this thing along with Victor?" Cindy demanded from the backseat as the car coughed into a gear change.

"I'll have you know that old Cyrano here got Meghan and me all the way from L.A. to Baltimore in four days to see Cal Ripken break Lou Gehrig's record at Camden Yards," Timmie said proudly as she patted the car's cracked and faded dashboard, which carried not only a statue of the Virgin Mary, but St. Christopher, St. Patrick, and St. Jude, who as patron saint of the impossible was Timmie's most important talisman against automobile decrepitude.

"Cyrano?" Ellen asked.

Timmie grinned. "Ugly but faithful. A heroic car with many good, unnoticed qualities."

"You really drove all the way cross-country just to see some skinny white boy play baseball?" Mattie asked.

Timmie smiled at the memory of hot dogs and fireworks and a lone man trotting all the way around a stadium to say thank you. It had almost restored her faith in the game. In the memories she'd hoarded since childhood of perfect summer days and her father bent way over her so she could smell Old Spice and Lucky Strikes as he taught her to keep score.

"Some things are worth a little extra effort," she said.

"Not baseball," Mattie assured her. "But you might think of putting a little time in on the air filter on this thing."

"I've been busy," Timmie said.

"I drove cross-country once," Cindy offered. "I decided to go surfing and just took off. Had a great weekend in San Diego with a bisexual biker named Jose."

"Did you get your father taken care of?" Ellen asked Timmie.

Timmie just nodded and kept her attention on the cop car in front of her. They'd had a good turnout for Victor. Police had shown up from twenty or so municipalities and the highway patrol to form the procession that snaked through the often-repaired cemetery lanes, and the last thing Timmie needed to do was ram old Cyrano's nose into the ass end of a cop car.

"Alex Raymond really got him into Restcrest?" Cindy asked, leaning forward between the seats.

"This morning."

Timmie had badgered her father to get dressed. She'd lied to him about where they were going. She'd strong-armed him from the car and then walked away from him when he'd pleaded with her to tell him why she was abandoning him to strangers.

He was going to be happy there, the staff had kept assuring her. He was going to be busy and active. They kept patting her hand when they said it the same way she'd patted her father's when she'd promised he could come home again if he'd just stay at Restcrest for now. He'd sobbed as she'd left. Even though she'd done it before, even though she knew this time was really for the best, Timmie had cried all the way home.

But that wasn't something she was going to think about right now, either.

"I think he likes you," Ellen offered.

Timmie looked away from the procession for a split second to check Ellen's passive face in the mirror. "Who?"

"Alex Raymond. Why else would he go out of his way for your father like that?"

Timmie's laugh was abrupt. "Because he's a nice guy?"

"Of course he's a nice guy. But there's a waiting list for every one of those beds."

"And just what would he see in her he doesn't see in me?" Cindy demanded, damn near sitting on the stick shift. "I can tie a cherry stem with my tongue."

"And my girl here can quote Tennyson and Shakespeare," Mattie said, arms across chest where she was shoehorned into the other front seat. "Whatchyou got to top that?"

Cindy's smile was rapacious. "The Kama Sutra."

"'The pleasure is momentary,'" Timmie quoted instinctively, "'the position ridiculous, and the expense damnable.'"

"Tennyson or Shakespeare?" Ellen asked with a grin.

"Lord Chesterton."

"He never dated me." Cindy assured them all.

"He the only one," Mattie retorted.

"You really want the truth, I think it was my contribution got your father in," Cindy offered with another big, secretive smile. "I laid it all out for you, ya know."

"I'm sure you did, Cindy," Timmie agreed.

"You've been known to lay it all out for ice cream and a bad movie," Mattie retorted.

"Not this time," Cindy assured her with a pat to her arm. "This time it's love."

"Uh-huh."

The procession was slowing to a final stop. Taillights flickered like before, doors opened. Men in uniforms spilled from sedans and lifted hats to heads with gloved hands. It was time to watch the crowd and see if anything shook free.

"It reminds me..." Cindy said inevitably.

"We're not going to the chapel again, are we?" Ellen said in a faint voice.

"No," Timmie assured her, pulling to a careful stop behind a Puckett cop car and yanking on the brake. "Up by the green tent."

Just another little irony in life. Billy had ended up ashes, and Victor, who was already ashes, was going to take up ground space with a bronze casket. Go figure.

Billy. Timmie had to ask about Billy, how he might have known Victor. A lot of the same people had showed up at his funeral, but Timmie wasn't sure whether that was because there was a connection or just because this was a small town.

Up by the limo, Timmie saw Barb bending to adjust the coat on her youngest daughter. Barb looked no different than usual, cool, composed, deceptively relaxed. No one who saw her take that fragile little girl into her huge arms and gently guide her other children toward the grave site would have recognized her two nights earlier when the red-headed detective had identified the disaster on their table as Victor.

She'd laughed. Loud. High. Hard. With astonished tears in her eyes, although no one could have said whether she'd been astonished at Victor's appearance or her own reaction. Dr. Chang had taken over from that point and they'd at least managed to get Victor as far as a burn unit in St. Louis before he died.

"I hope this isn't going to become a regularly scheduled event," Timmie announced as they all collected purses and prepared to decamp. "I like cemeteries about as much as I like working the ortho ward in winter."

"'Specially this cemetery," Ellen agreed heartily.