The Carbon Murder(25)

How adolescent was she that she’d been impressed by that display? The other guys and girls had encouraged him also, and it ended up with the manager politely asking them all to leave. MC left with Jake. And stayed with him that night.

A few months later, after she’d been the target of his displays more than once, she’d finally called it quits.

Buzzzzzzzz!

The doorbell.

She screwed up her nose. Who could that be? No one just dropped in anymore, and who’s going to climb two flights of stairs inside a mortuary building to take an advertising poll? She was glad Aunt G wasn’t very tall, either; the peephole was in just the right place.

She closed her left eye, the weaker one, and put her right eye to the lens. Her breath caught. She stepped back, nearly tripping over the runner.

Jake.

“Come on, MC, open up. I know you’re in there. I saw you at the window. I haven’t bugged you, like you asked. Just let me in for ten minutes.” Jake’s voice was pleading, almost sweet, and maybe sober. “Okay, nine minutes.” A laugh. The charming side of Jake Powers. She knew if she looked out the peephole again, she’d see a bouquet of flowers in his hand.

MC blinked, turned away, as if her thoughts of him in Hawaii, in Houston, in bed, had caused him to appear on her landing. If she could just stop thinking of him, he would go away. She shut her eyes against the images.

Thump. Thump. Buzzzzzzzz!

“What’s going on here?” Her brother Robert’s voice, from the other side of the door. He must have a Sunday client downstairs.

MC breathed deeply. She heard Jake’s voice.

“Hi, I’m Jake Powers, a friend of MC’s. I … uh … I guess she can’t hear the buzzer.” Robert, at five eight or nine, was the tallest in the family, and the most muscular. MC figured Jake, nearly jockey-size, heard the slightly intimidating tone in her brother’s voice. “Maybe I should come back later.”

MC went back to the door, and opened it. She saw the two men, one carrying flowers for her, the other ready to protect her. Robert was in a suit and tie, indicating he’d just come from claiming a client. Robert’s thick neck strained against his dark blue shirt. It would not be out of the question to mistake him for a professional bodyguard. Jake, on the other hand, was dressed as if he’d just come down from the back of a horse.

Jake glanced over at her, tucked the flowers at his waist, and bowed slightly. His most charming posture, that always won her heart. She could let him in just for minute, she thought.

“It’s okay, Robert,” MC said. She made very brief introductions, her eyes turned away from Robert. “Come on in, Jake.”

“I’ll be downstairs,” Robert said, knocking his knuckles together.

“I have the number,” MC said.





CHAPTER ELEVEN

Matt came through the door, generating a smile for my benefit. The attempt made his face look contorted. I buried my head in his shoulder, not wanting him to see my own unhappy expression.

“Hi, honey,” he said. I looked up in time to see his tipping an imaginary hat. Our little domestic joke.

I’d gotten home before Matt and put on a pot of coffee, for something to do. I’d looked around the house at what seemed important only a few days ago. A bag of Christmas wrapping paper and tags waiting in the corner, a tattered kitchen curtain that needed to be replaced, a pile of newspapers ready for recycling, a to-do list, a to-call list. Call Daniel Endicott at Revere High for the lecture schedule; call cousin Mary Ann in Worcester for a holiday date. None of it was real.

“Tell me,” I said, still in his arms.

“My cancer is a five,” he said.

This is no time to be funny, I thought, but I smiled anyway. Matt often teased me about my need for quantizing everything. Give me a number from one to ten, I’d ask him, if I wanted to know his reaction to a concert, or a book, or even a tie I’d bought him.

We walked to the couch, still holding on to each other. “No, really, they give these things a number. It’s called grading the cancer.”

“A grade? They give cancers a grade?”

“Yeah, they call it the Gleason system. You know, like Jackie?” Matt tried a va-va-voom, so comical I had to laugh, as much as I wanted to cry.

I let Matt explain. “It goes from one to five, based on how much the arrangement of cells in the cancerous tissue looks like normal tissue. I’m only repeating what they told me, not that I understand it completely. But one is good, five is not.”

I gasped, held my breath. “Five is the worst?”

“No, no. Sorry. I’m a three in one area, and a two in another, so they add them and get a five, which is my total Gleason score. But the five in the total is not bad; it’s average.” He paused, resting his fingers from the demonstration, and put on another smile. “I thought you’d like all this math, Gloria.”