“You never understand these things. You really don’t. I suppose I ought to let you get on with getting the locks changed. Maybe we should hire a security guard until this thing blows over. If the police can’t have somebody there even when the place is a crime scene—”
“Hire a security guard, then,” Caroline said.
“Oh,” Cordelia said. “I meant you should. You should hire a security guard.”
“Yes, I know that’s what you meant,” Caroline said.
She snapped the phone closed. She tried to concentrate on her driving. She stopped at another traffic light and saw Gregor Demarkian in the backseat of a car. He didn’t notice her, and she didn’t make herself known.
One block up, the car with Demarkian in it went on and Caroline turned left, going the short way out to the start of Beach Drive. The houses got bigger and bigger. The haze in the air that was high humidity and evaporated seawater got heavier.
Beach Drive looked deserted, as always. Caroline pulled into the driveway of the house and cut her engine. There was no sign of the locksmith’s van. She started to gather up her things, and then the phone went off again.
This time it was the song “Cruella de Vil,” along with a picture of Glenn Close in a fright wig. Caroline put her forehead on the steering wheel and counted to ten.
The phone did not stop ringing. Caroline picked it up and said, “What do you want? I’ve already had Cordelia. I really can’t take much more.”
“Do you know you’re always like this these days?” Charlotte said. “It’s not healthy for you.”
“I’m sitting in the driveway of the house on Beach Drive, waiting for a locksmith for the second time in two weeks. I’ve got a lot to do, and I’ve got no patience with any of this. Don’t start.”
“I’m not starting anything,” Charlotte said. “I’m just very worried about what’s going on out there. You never call me. You never tell me anything. Do you know a reporter ambushed me right after I got out of work yesterday?”
“Reporters ambush me all the time,” Caroline said. “Honest to God, Charlotte, there’s nothing I can do about any of this. Cordelia wants to hire a security guard for the house. I don’t think it’s a bad idea, but if somebody’s going to do it, it’s not going to be me—”
“But you’re right there.”
“I may be right here, but that is absolutely no justification for landing all this crap on me. And I do mean crap, Charlotte. First-rate, unrelieved crap.”
“I don’t understand why you don’t live in the place,” Charlotte said.
Caroline hit the steering wheel so hard, the horn blasted. It sounded like the muffled screech of somebody else dying.
“I don’t want to talk about this now,” she said. “We’ve talked about everything a hundred times over. I’m not going to move into this house. I never liked this house. I don’t want to live on Beach Drive. I don’t even want to live in Alwych. I thought, apparently futilely, that if I just lived my own life and minded my own business, I could just get on with—with being normal, for God’s sake. What’s wrong with the two of you?”
“We weren’t the ones who stayed in Alwych,” Charlotte said. “If you didn’t want to live in Alwych, you should have gotten out.”
“If I’d gotten out, you wouldn’t have had anybody to run your errands on the house for you. What would you have done then?”
“Listen,” Charlotte said. “Cor just called me. You got her so upset, she forgot to tell you what she wanted to tell you, and you were so grumpy, she didn’t want to call back. You affect her energy charge. She doesn’t want to be negative first thing in the morning.”
“I don’t see why not,” Caroline said. “She’s negative enough the rest of the time.”
“It’s about the funeral,” Charlotte said.
“I’m not staging any funeral,” Caroline said. “I told you that already.”
“Yes, I know you did,” Charlotte said, “but Cor and I didn’t take it seriously. How could we? You can’t just say you’re not going to stage a funeral. You have to do something. If you don’t—well, what’s going to happen to the body?”
“I have no idea what’s going to happen to the body,” Caroline said. “And I don’t care.”
Charlotte let out a long stream of aggravatedly aggrieved air. “You have to care what’s going to happen to the body,” she said, “because something is going to have to happen to it. It’s ready to be released. It’s sitting there in the morgue, ready to be released.”