Ella Barrick - Dead Man Waltzing

I recognized many, many of the other mourners, dancers I’d competed against, or ballroom dance legends I’d revered-Corinne’s contemporaries. My pew was filling up, and I looked up in semiannoyance when a newcomer squeezed in beside me. My annoyance turned to pleasure when I recognized Tav.

“I didn’t think you were going to make it,” I whispered. I’d mentioned the funeral to him a couple days earlier, but he’d been unsure about getting away from his business long enough to attend.

He scanned the church with slightly lifted brows. “Judging from the crowd, I wouldn’t have been missed.”

“I’d have missed you.” Oops . I hadn’t meant to say that.

He gave me a warm smile that elicited all sorts of feelings not appropriate for a funeral. I resolutely faced forward as the service began, but I was conscious of his muscled thigh pressed against mine and his every movement as he flipped a page in the program or stood for a hymn. A photographer-not Sarah Lewis-took pictures discreetly, and if people had been wearing brighter colors and the music had been a bit more up-tempo, I’d have thought I’d stumbled into a wedding rather than a funeral.

We were spared any eulogies, and the service itself was mercifully brief and tasteful. The interment was in the cemetery attached to the church, and we all filed outside while the organist played a dirge-y piece I didn’t recognize. I was grateful for my sleeveless dress as we emerged into the swampy heat. Tav stayed beside me as we angled toward the grave site, his arm lightly draped over my shoulders. Something black moved under the awning set up to shade the mourners, and I took a closer look as Tav asked, “Is that-”

“Black swans,” I said, suppressing a giggle. Six of the large birds were corralled in a roped-off area to the left of the grave opening. A scrawny man in black jeans and a black T-shirt with SWAN WRANGLER stenciled across the back cast seed for them and headed off an aggressive bird that pecked at the patent-leather shoes of a woman who walked too close.

“Now I have seen everything,” Tav said in a wondering voice. “I have seen doves at weddings a couple of times, but this is my first experience of swans at a funeral.”

“Something to keep in mind for when your own time comes,” I said with an impish smile.

“Absolutely not.”

He said it forcefully, and a couple in front of us turned to glare. I buried my head in his shoulder to stifle my giggles and felt him shaking with laughter, too. “This is a solemn occasion,” I managed to squeak after a moment, straightening up. The minister was saying something, but we were too far back, and a breeze was blowing her words away, so I couldn’t hear. What we did hear was a sharp yap-yap . I looked around, thinking a stray dog might have wandered into the graveyard, but didn’t see one until Tav poked me gently and directed my attention to a furry mop of a dog sticking his head out of a woman’s purse to tell the swans what he thought of water fowl at a funeral.

The dog’s owner tried to silence her pet with a hand around his muzzle, but the dog continued to mrrf and growl. People nearby began to smile or frown, and a wave of muffled laughter and comments spread through the crowd. The lowering of the casket caught the dog owner’s attention, and the pooch seized the opportunity to leap to the ground. Threading his way through people’s legs, he beelined for the swans. Despite the fact that they were three or four times his size, he dashed under the rope and stood barking at them. The minister spoke louder to compensate. A couple of the swans waddled away uneasily, more disturbed by the shrill yapping, I was convinced, than by any threat the tiny dog represented, but another swan moved toward the pup, hissing.

Before the swan wrangler could shoo the dog out of the enclosure, the aggressive swan fanned his wings wide and snaked his head toward the dog. With startled yips, the mop dog turned tail and ran, the swan chasing him. People backed away as the angry swan sailed over the rope and the wrangler cried, “Not yet, Ebony, dang it!”

The other swans, apparently taking Ebony’s departure as their cue, beat their wings heavily and took to the sky, a dark phalanx rising over the cemetery. It was stirring in its way, I had to admit, but slightly undermined by the first swan still chasing the hapless pup. I had to think this wasn’t quite what Corinne had in mind when she requested swans at her funeral. The dog’s owner had entered the chase as well, wailing, “Gumdrop!” as she trailed the pair, staggering on her high heels. The dog had reached the lip of the grave, and I was afraid that the farce was going to turn really ugly, but Corinne’s son, Randolph Blakely, leaned forward and scooped up Gumdrop before he could barrel into the gaping hole. With a smile, he restored the dog to her grateful owner. A blond woman about Randolph’s age laid her hand on his arm and smiled. My investigative antennae pricked up, and I wondered whether she was the “girlfriend” Randolph’s neighbor had told us about. She carried a few extra pounds and had a long face, but she was attractive in a comfortable, middle-aged sort of way.

Randolph looked more alert today, and his expression was lighter, in marked contrast to his son, who scowled at Gumdrop as if wanting to drop-kick him into the next county. “That was well done of Randolph,” I whispered to Tav.

Ebony, deprived of his prey, flapped his great wings and followed his buddies into the sky.

“I wonder how the swan wrangler catches them again,” Tav said, his gaze following the elegant bird.

With a determined look on her face, the minister began a rousing chorus of “Nearer My God to Thee” and we all chimed in.

As the service ended and people began wandering off, I excused myself to Tav and angled toward where Randolph was accepting condolences, the blond woman still by his side. I made it to the front of the line and offered my hand to Randolph, saying sincerely, “Your mother meant a lot to all of us in the ballroom dancing world. I’m so sorry for your loss.”

He nodded his acceptance of my condolences and turned to the older gentleman behind me. I stuck out my hand to the blond woman. “I’m Stacy Graysin. I don’t think we’ve met.”

“Alanna Vincent,” she said with the gratitude that spouses and girlfriends frequently betray when someone pays attention to them at their husbands’ or boyfriends’ events.

“How did you know Corinne?” I asked.

“I didn’t, really,” she admitted with a small smile that crinkled the skin at the corners of her eyes. “Randolph and I met at Hopeful Morning. I’m an alcoholic, and we overlapped there for several months.” She said it with no trace of self-consciousness. “When I left this past February, we stayed in touch. Things are progressing.” She gave me a sweetly mischievous smile and squeezed Randolph’s arm. Still conversing with the elderly gentleman, who seemed to have an inexhaustible flow of reminiscences about Corinne, Randolph patted her hand where it lay on his arm.

“That’s lovely,” I said. “I hope things work out for both of you. It was very nice meeting you.”

“You, too, Stacy.” Alanna smiled.

A bit bemused by this evidence of Randolph’s romantic life, I went in search of Maurice to see how he was holding up. He stood near the grave with the other ex-husbands. Lyle was apparently demonstrating a golf swing, and the Reverend Hamish was bawling, while the fifth husband, the African-American whose name I couldn’t remember, patted his back. I assumed the short, dumpy man I hadn’t seen before was Baron von Whatever, and I studied him curiously. I was somewhat disappointed to see that he was ordinary in every respect, except for a gray mustache waxed and twirled into points that looped up against his pudgy cheeks.