Lisa Scottoline - Mistaken Identity

Mary filled Bennie in on the dismal results of their neighborhood canvassing. When she finished she added, “And Lou’s still out there, so maybe he’ll find out something.”

“Maybe,” Bennie said, and turned to Judy. “Tell me about this drug thing. I got your message about Valencia. Connolly says she doesn’t know her and denies selling drugs.”

“I’m not surprised,” Judy said, and reiterated the details of what Ronnie Morales had told her. “I can go back to the gym to learn more, if you want. I’d like to try to meet some of the other wives, see what I can find out.”

“No, we’re in high gear now. You have to get the paperwork done. Jury instructions, motions in limine, questions for voir dire. It all has to be done right away, and whatever has to be filed has to get filed.” Bennie grabbed her papers. “I’m going to get my copy of the file and work at home for an hour or two before the viewing.”

“Tonight is the viewing?” Mary asked. “We’d like to go.”

“Thanks, but neither of you can come. We’ve got a defense to stage.”

Judy frowned. “But we’d like to. We can work afterwards.”

“No.” Bennie headed for the door. “If you’re there, you’re fired. Don’t file anything without my seeing it first. Fax it to me at home or send it by messenger. Call if you have any questions or need anything.”

“Sure,” Judy said, mystified, and Mary nodded as Bennie slipped out the door and hustled to her office to pack her briefcase.

Fleur-de-lis of ersatz gilt flocked the wallpaper and the room was long and narrow, almost a coffin itself. Sound from another wake traveled through the thin walls and the cheap nap of the rug betrayed that it was indoor-outdoor carpeting. Covella’s Funeral Home wasn’t the first tier of Italian funeral homes, where the mob wakes were held, but Bennie thought it suited. It was unpretentious and small, like her mother, and if it had bowling trophies displayed on a shelf in the back of the room, so be it. It didn’t matter to Bennie where she mourned her mother. She’d be mourning her the rest of her life.

Bennie sagged in an overstuffed chair in the front row between Hattie and Grady. Her head throbbed dully and her eyes were sore and dry. She was all cried out and hollow inside. The press thronged outside, but they’d been kept at bay by a ring of streetwise morticians. At least it remained quiet inside the funeral home.

Grady squeezed her hand, and Hattie sat on Bennie’s other side. Her yellow hair was the only bright spot on her; the dark skin around her eyes was swollen, and she wore a black pantsuit with short sleeves and a pointed collar that she kept tugging into place. The three of them-Grady, Bennie, and Hattie-constituted the sum total of her mother’s mourners, but Bennie shrugged off any shame about it. She’d been to political wakes, business wakes, and school-reunion wakes, all jam-packed with people who cared little for the body lying amid the flowers. This loss was greater, somehow undiluted, because it was just the three of them huddled together, their heads bent.

Bennie’s thoughts turned to Connolly and she felt pleased that Connolly wasn’t there. Even if Connolly was a blood relative, her presence would have been an insult to her mother’s memory, considering how little the death had affected her. Bennie shifted in the armchair and wondered if she should have tried to notify her father. Winslow wasn’t her mother’s husband, but he might have wanted to be here, if the saved note was any indication. Still, he could read the obituaries as well as anyone. Maybe he’d come, suddenly appear out of nowhere. How many times had Bennie wished that as a child? And how many times did it happen?

She didn’t bother to look for him and realized that she felt about him the way Connolly felt about her mother. He had missed her life, and whether or not it was his decision at the outset, he hadn’t tried to correct it. Hadn’t once tried to contact Bennie, so why should she bend over backward to contact him? How would she feel at his passing? Would she care as little as Connolly did at her mother’s?

Bennie’s feelings were jumbled, her thoughts disoriented. She sank into the chair, with Grady’s arm at her back. She felt so distant from him, from everyone, in willed isolation. She hadn’t invited anyone from the office to the wake or even her oldest friend, Sam Freminet. She didn’t want anyone to see her like this, or know her this way.

“Father Teobaldo is here,” said the funeral director, who materialized from nowhere. Behind him stood a slight Catholic priest, with a damp forehead, a long bony nose, and a face too gaunt for a young man.

“I’m sorry, Ms. Rosato,” he said, extending a slim hand and shaking hers. He eased into the seat beside Hattie, who introduced herself and shook his hand. “Pleased to meet you, too,” he said, and sounded to Bennie like he actually meant it.

“S’nice you took the time to come,” Hattie said, a hoarse lilt to her voice. She grew up in Georgia and like Grady, had an accent that surfaced when she was tired or upset. This evening she was both. “I know you didn’t know Missus Rosato. She wasn’t a well woman. She couldn’t get out to church.”

“That’s all right. I’m not here to judge her. God won’t judge her. He’ll welcome her.”

“I know he will, Father,” Hattie said, her voice sonorous. “Jesus loves all of us.”

Bennie looked away. She never had much use for religion and wasn’t about to start with the thought of her mother’s death being welcome to anyone, even God. Her gaze fell on the front of the room and she realized that she hadn’t once looked at the bier where her mother lay. It had been hard enough to see her, back at the hospital. Bennie made herself look at the front of the room and try to absorb it. An act of will, almost against her will.

It was easier to look first around the casket, rather than at the casket itself. White wrought iron sconces flanked her mother’s coffin, their light insignificant. Tacky flower arrangements ringed the front: pink-sprayed chrysanthemums and paint-covered daisies wrenched into the shape of hearts, banners, and, improbably, a horseshoe. Bennie had ordered dozens of long-stemmed white roses, but elegance and simplicity were apparently unheard of at a South Philly funeral. White satin sashes spanned the flower hearts, one reading Beloved Mother in handscript of Elmer’s glue and glitter, and the other saying Mom in crimson. Bennie decided to let it go. The flowers mattered as little as the bowling trophies. Her mother was gone.

She made herself look at the coffin and the vision wrenched her heart. A rose-colored light had been mounted inside the satin upholstery of the casket, bathing her mother’s face in a pink glow. Brownish foundation had been sponged onto her mother’s skin and her lips sealed in a matching pink lipstick. That bothered Bennie more than anything, the unnatural closing to her mother’s lips, and she wondered uneasily how it had been accomplished. She swallowed hard and bit back her tears. Her gaze traveled down her mother’s side. In one rigid hand had been placed a pair of wire-rimmed reading glasses. Bennie had no idea how the mortician had gotten the glasses; she’d forgotten that her mother had even worn glasses. Her mother had been so ill the past few months, she hadn’t been able to read.

“Excuse me,” said the funeral director, returning and leaning down to Bennie. His moussed hair was by now familiar, though he smelled tonight of lemon-lime Barbasol. “Should we begin, or wait for the other mourners?” he asked.

“Begin, please,” Bennie answered, testy. She had explained it to the man twice. Just the three of us, she had said, but still he’d set up the room with ten rows of folding chairs, as if the lack of mourners was somehow shameful. Coming from a tradition that actually paid mourners, it probably was.