course I’m up to this,” her grandmother now answered, shortly. “I’m the one who made all the arrangements. It’s not like I can call a time-out and put that minister on hold because I’m having heart flutters.”
Noelle pulled her car up into the small, uneven parking lot that was in front of the cemetery. Turning off the car’s engine, she shifted in her seat to look at her grandmother, searching for any telltale signs that might indicate that Lucy was in any sort of physical distress.
“Are you having heart flutters?” Noelle asked, concerned.
“No, I am not having heart flutters,” Lucinda stated firmly. “Stop looking at me that way, Noely, I’m not some Dresden doll ready to break because you breathed on it. You ought to know that by now.” She pressed the release on her seat belt. “Now come on, let’s get this over with. Henry’s probably looking down right now, annoyed at all the fuss. He never did like making a big deal out of things.”
Lucy wasn’t fooling her. She knew that her grandmother liked putting on a blustery front, but she was a softy underneath all that. “You sure you don’t want to take a minute to take a deep breath or anything?”
“My breathing’s just fine, Noely,” Lucy assured her. “Besides, if we don’t show up soon, the minister’s going to think no one’s coming and he’ll just go and do whatever it is that ministers do when they’re not praying over people they didn’t know.”
Noelle read between the lines. “Are you telling me that no one from the home is going to be coming?”
“That’s what I’m telling you. Those old biddies don’t like to be reminded that they might be next,” Lucy told her loftily.
“How about Henry’s family?” Noelle asked, coming around to the passenger side of her car.
As always, her grandmother had already opened the passenger door and gotten out. Lucy wasn’t looking for any assistance, but Noelle couldn’t help thinking that the woman suddenly appeared rather frail to her right now. But she knew better than to offer her grandmother her arm unless so requested. Lucy was extremely sensitive and proud that way.
She shook her head in response to the question. “Henry didn’t have a family. His wife, Jenny, left him years ago, thinking she deserved better—she didn’t.” Lucy shrugged as if the woman under discussion was of no consequence. “I heard that she died a couple of years back.”
“Children? Grandchildren?” Noelle asked, thinking how sad it had to be to know that you didn’t have anyone to mourn your passing.
“No and no,” Lucy replied, shooting down each question.
Something wasn’t adding up for her. “But didn’t you say that Henry took out an insurance policy?” she asked. Because it was slightly uphill, progress from the parking lot to the cemetery was slow.
“He did.”
Okay, now she was officially confused. “If Henry had no family, just who did he leave his money to?” she asked. And then it dawned on her. Or at least she thought it did. “You?”
Lucy abruptly stopped walking and looked at her incredulously.
“Me?” The woman waved away the very thought. “No. What would I need with Henry’s money? It was his friendship I wanted, not his money. Hell, when I came to pick him up on Thursday I was going to talk him into getting out of that depressing place and coming to live with me.” They resumed walking as Lucy sighed, resigned. “Guess that’s all water under the bridge now, or whatever trite saying fits this occasion. Oh, damn.”
They had just walked through the cemetery gates when Lucy stopped short for a second time.
“What’s the matter?” Noelle asked, glancing around to see what had caused her grandmother to utter the words of distress.
Lucy remained where she was, her eyes narrowing in obvious displeasure. “She’s here.”
“She?” Noelle repeated. “Who is ‘she’?”
“That annoying volunteer from the retirement home,” Lucy said with contempt. “The one who tried to keep me out of his room, acting like she knew Henry better than I did.”
Her grandmother had told her all about that when she had recounted all the details surrounding her discovery of Henry’s lifeless body. It was obvious to her that Lucy had more than just feelings of friendship cloaked in nostalgia when it came to Henry.
Turning toward the person who had aroused Lucy’s anger, she noticed a tall woman, her face all but obscured by the scarf she wore on her head and the dark, oversize sunglasses perched on her nose.
“Want me to arrest her for you, Lucy?” Noelle asked brightly.
Moving forward, Lucy never took her eyes off the woman who’d stirred her ire. “Don’t be ridiculous, Noely.”
“Sorry. Just want to make you feel better,” Noelle told her drily.
Lucy frowned, making no effort to disguise her feelings as she glared across the field at the other woman.
“Besides,” she complained, “you don’t have anything to charge her with.”
Noelle smiled to herself. “You have a point.”
And then it was her turn to stop walking, but for an entirely different reason than her grandmother’s.
Wearing a dark jacket over his customary black turtleneck and jeans, Duncan Cavanaugh was walking toward them.
She knew he’d said that he’d be there, but she’d thought that, as with everything else, he was just talking. She hadn’t really expected the man to actually show up. Especially to a stranger’s funeral.
Before she could say anything to let her grandmother know that their party had just increased by one, Lucy’s keen radar for good-looking men had alerted her to the tall, broad-shouldered young detective’s presence.
Noelle heard her grandmother take in a deep breath, heard the low murmur of appreciation as it fell from her tongue and felt Lucy suddenly straighten up as if an additional twenty to thirty years had just mysteriously melted away. Considering that Lucy already looked a decade younger than she was, that just about made the two of them practically the same age, Noelle judged.
“And whose tasty little morsel is that?” Lucy asked under her breath.
The question was a rhetorical one. Consequently she looked at Noelle in utter surprise when she heard her granddaughter inadvertently say, “Mine.”
Lucy’s eyes widened. And was that a spark of admiration she detected there? Noelle wondered.
“What?”
That had come out all wrong, Noelle thought, upbraiding herself. Why in heaven’s name had she said “mine”?
“I mean, I know him,” Noelle amended. “He works with me.”
At this point, Duncan had seen her and her grandmother and was now striding across the field toward them. He reached them in less than a heartbeat. She’d be the one to know
