her ring up and down her finger.
Libby was right, though. It was important to go to Mrs. Vongel’s mother’s funeral, and now they’d missed it. This was all her fault. As usual. If she hadn’t taken so long putting her mascara on, they wouldn’t have been in such a hurry, and they would have noticed what the sign on the door said. She hadn’t even actually read it. She’d just seen the V and sailed right in.
Maybe if she baked Mrs. Vongel a cake. Scratch that. Like Bree Nottingham she was a size 2. She didn’t eat, she grazed. Maybe an expensive bottle of wine? Yes. That might work. Or better yet, a good brandy. Bernie was tapping her fingers against the seat, trying to decide what kind, when she realized Libby was speaking to her.
Bernie’s head went up.
“What?” she asked.
“I was just saying that we’re here.”
“Indeed we are,” Bernie replied as they entered the front gate of the Oaks.
“Remember good old Charlie?” Libby asked her.
“How could I forget him?”
“What you did was really mean.”
“Mean?” Bernie retorted. “I was mean? What about him?”
When she was in high school she’d come up here with Charlie Quincy and they’d made out on the bench next to Elizabeth Engel’s grave. They’d done that three times when she’d heard a moaning noise behind them. Then something that looked like a ghoul had come at her. At which point she’d done what any normal person would have. She’d spun around and clocked the thing over the head with her backpack. He’d screamed and grabbed his nose. Who knew you could break a ghoul’s nose?
The ghoul turned out to be Chris Parker, Charlie’s pal. Charlie had hired him to scare her, figuring that he’d play the big hero and she’d be so grateful that he’d get into her pants later that evening. Ha, ha. Not happening. She’d felt a little bad about Chris’s nose, but she was really pissed at Charlie. And she’d gotten him back.
When she’d walked out of his closet at three in the morning he’d let out the loudest shriek she’d ever heard. Maybe it was because she’d painted herself with phosphorescent paint. She glowed in the dark—except for her face, which she’d blacked out. It had been hell to get off—she’d had to scrub herself with a brush—but it was all worth it.
Bernie smiled as she watched the limo drive up and down the meandering paths. In the spring, the place was lovely, but now it was spooky. Her counter girl, Amber, would love it. Whenever she saw a horror movie—and she saw them all—she insisted on telling everyone else in the kitchen the plot. Nothing like prepping chicken for chicken salad to a detailed description of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
“Where are we going?” Bernie heard Libby ask as they drove by the angel holding the lantern.
“You’ll see,” Clayton said.
As Bernie watched they drove by the mausoleum of the founder of Longely. It was built along the lines of a Roman temple. They passed the monument to the people who died from the flu in 1918. They passed Bernie’s favorite monument, the statue of a cocker spaniel with a young man. The placard read LOVE IS ETERNAL. Then they were through the old part of the cemetery and into the new part. Here the land was much straighter and the graves were arranged in orderly rows. There were fewer statues—no angels, no dogs, no large symbols, and no mausoleums.
“I like the old part better,” Bernie commented to Libby.
“Pain in the ass to dig in, though,” Clayton answered. “Too many tree roots.”
“I thought people used backhoes for that,” Bernie observed.
“I’m talking about in the old days,” Clayton replied.
This time Bernie was relieved to see that he didn’t turn around while he spoke. They kept driving. Now they were at the new part of the cemetery. Bernie wondered where they were going because they were coming to the end. When they got to the groundskeeper’s house, a small yellow cottage, Clayton’s father took a hard right.
“I didn’t even know there was a road here,” Libby said to him.
“Me neither,” Bernie agreed.
Marvin’s father laughed. Snickered really. “I thought you famous detectives knew everything.”
“Almost everything,” Bernie told him.
“She has a photographic memory,” Libby added.
“Semiphotographic,” Bernie corrected.
Clayton grunted and kept driving. Now they were on a narrow unpaved road. As they traveled along, Bernie noticed rows of small crosses on either side. They had a homemade look about them. Despite her vow she tapped Marvin’s father on the shoulder again.
“Who is buried up here?” she asked him.
“People who can’t afford a funeral.”
“So this is a potter’s field.”
Marvin’s father didn’t answer.
Bernie looked around. She’d read about them, but she hadn’t known they actually existed in this day and age.
“Well, is it?” Bernie repeated.
“We don’t use that name,” Clayton said.
“I wonder where the word potter comes from,” Bernie mused. “Of course in old Scottish dialect a pot used to mean a deep hole, and then there’s going to pot, which means going to ruin, in the sense of deteriorating which is what bodies do.”
“Fascinating,” Clayton commented.
Bernie ignored the sarcasm and continued. “Now, the concept itself comes from a verse in the Bible, Matthew, I believe, which states that there’s supposed to be a place of burial for the stranger and the friendless poor.”
“You’re just a mine of useless information, aren’t you?” Marvin’s father noted as he pulled the limo to a stop.
For once Libby was in agreement with him.
“I guess it depends on your point of view,” Bernie told him.
“We’re getting out here,” Clayton said.
“Why?” Bernie asked. “I don’t see anything.”
“There.” He pointed. Bernie followed his finger. “We’re going up there.” And with that he got out of the car and hurried toward what looked like a mound of dirt.
Libby got out of the car as well. Bernie joined her.
“I think that’s a grave site he’s heading to,” she said to her sister.
Libby pulled her jacket around her. “I think it is too. Yuck.”
“What do you think this is about?” Bernie asked her.
