The minister came in and stood beside the open casket. Then the family came in and was seated in an alcove just off to the left of the main section of the chapel. There were Mrs. Ramsey and two men. Rhodes didn’t know the men, but he assumed they were uncles or cousins. The minister had just begun to speak about “the dear departed” when Wyneva Greer came in. She was wearing a pair of tight jeans and a faded blue shirt. She walked down near the front and took a seat.
The minister began talking about how he had searched for a scripture appropriate to the life of a man like Bert Ramsey, someone who’d made his livelihood by helping others. “In the course of my search,” he said, “I came across Chapter 4 of Ephesians, in which Paul says. .”
It was at this point that Mrs. Ramsey looked up and saw Wyneva Greer. “Get that woman out of here,” she said, in a stage whisper.
The preacher stopped abruptly in his talk. “Preach on, preacher,” Mrs. Ramsey said. “Get that woman out of here,” she hissed to one of the men beside her.
The preacher, unable to figure out just exactly what was happening, remained silent. “Preach on, preacher,” Mrs. Ramsey said again.
The minister tried to pick up the thread of his talk. “Ah. . now in Ephesians, Paul speaks of how people have different abilities, and of how some are put here for service. .”
Neither of the men by Mrs. Ramsey had made a move, so she hauled her bulk up and squeezed herself out between the narrow pews, heading for Wyneva. The minister stopped again.
“Preach on,” Mrs. Ramsey said over her shoulder. The minister stood with his mouth open, but nothing came out.
Wyneva sat stolidly, watching Mrs. Ramsey approach. Ivy’s elbow touched Rhodes lightly in the ribs. Rhodes had had a bad experience at the last funeral of a murder victim he’d attended, one which he wasn’t eager to repeat. He got up, and he started for Wyneva Greer.
Mrs. Ramsey got there first and reached for Wyneva’s shoulders with her huge hands. Before she could get a solid grip, Rhodes brushed her arms aside, took Wyneva’s arm and pulled her into the aisle.
“I got a right to be here,” Wyneva said.
“You ain’t got no rights at all, you godless hussy,” Mrs. Ramsey said. “Bert wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for you. Get on out of here, right now!” She turned back to the minister. “And you get on with your preachin’,” she said.
Rhodes noticed the Lindseys, who were sitting with rapt expressions on their faces. He would have bet that they were enjoying this funeral more than any one they’d attended in the past fifteen years. He increased his pull on Wyneva’s arms, and she reluctantly gave ground. By the time Mrs. Ramsey got turned to face them again, Rhodes had backed Wyneva nearly all the way to the rear of the chapel.
Mrs. Ramsey appeared satisfied. Rather than working her way back to the family section, she sat in the nearest pew. “Get on with it, preacher,” she said.
The preacher cleared his throat, and as Rhodes was pulling Wyneva through the back door the message was beginning again.
Clyde Ballinger, who had come around from his spot near the family, was waiting for Rhodes and Wyneva when they left the chapel. “I swear I never saw anything like that,” Ballinger said. “That old woman was on a real tear.”
Wyneva jerked her arm free of Rhodes’s grip. “Crazy old bat,” she said. “I got as much right as the next person to sit in there.”
“You have a right,” Rhodes said, “but I have a feeling that if you go back in there, there won’t be much of a service.”
“You can walk around with me and listen by the family section,” Ballinger said.
Wyneva shook her head. “That’s all right. I guess it was a mistake for me to come here. I’m going outside for some air.” She started for the big double door in the front of the building. Rhodes followed along.
“Mrs. Ramsey really has it in for you,” Rhodes said when they were outside on the long cement porch. “Do you have any idea why?”
“Sure I do,” Wyneva said. “She thought I corrupted her precious boy. Well, she’s sure wrong about that.” She stopped. “Buster said I wasn’t to talk to you, though.”
“Buster doesn’t have anything to do with this, does he?” Rhodes asked.
“I can’t say.” Wyneva stepped off the porch and started down the walk. When Rhodes followed, she began to run. She was faster than he would have thought, and he really didn’t want to leave Ivy alone. He could talk to Wyneva later, so he let her go.
He went back inside the funeral home, but he didn’t enter the chapel. He’d never liked the end of the service, where everyone had to walk down the aisle and take a last long look at the dead. He’d seen enough of death in its natural state, but he thought that the efforts of morticians did little to improve things. If anything, the distortion of life that they produced repelled Rhodes as much or more than the real thing. Not that he’d ever tell Clyde Ballinger that.
While he waited, he decided to go to the graveside service, which was to be held at the little cemetery by the Eller’s Prairie Baptist Church. After the service, he could go have another talk with Wyneva and with Buster Cullens.
Rhodes walked out to his car and got Hack on the radio. “Call Buddy off the funeral traffic detail,” he said. “I’ll work it myself.”
“Roger,” Hack said.
“What?”
“Roger,” Hack repeated.
“Oh,” Rhodes said. “Over and out.” Hack must have been talking to Ruth Grady again. He wondered if she’d brought in another cake.
The first mourners, if that was the proper term, began to leave the funeral home, and Rhodes went back up on the porch to wait for Ivy. “Did the rest go all right?” he asked when she came out the door.
“As right as those things go,” she said. “Who was that poor woman?”
“I thought Mrs. Ramsey was the one you felt sorry for,” Rhodes said.
“Not anymore. Who was that?”
“That was Wyneva Greer, former live-in girlfriend of the late Bert Ramsey.”
“Oh,” Ivy said.
“I’m going on to the graveside,” Rhodes said. “Do you want me to run you by home first?”
“I have the whole day off,” Ivy said. “I don’t mind spending a little more time with you. It’s never dull.”
“It usually is,” Rhodes said. “Just wait till you’re around me all the time.”
Ivy looked at him closely. “I’m actually looking forward to that a lot,” she said.
Rhodes blushed. “Let’s get in the car,” he said.
While the hearse was being loaded from the rear of the chapel, Rhodes and Ivy drove to the only intersection of Clearview that would need traffic control. Rhodes stopped the car and got out, and as the short funeral procession approached he held up a hand to stop the cars on the side street. There were only three, two on one side of the intersection and one on the other, and they would probably have stopped without Rhodes’s being there.
There were only seven cars in the procession, counting the hearse. When they had passed, all with their lights on, Rhodes got back in with Ivy, turned on his own lights, and followed along.
When they were only about a mile out of Clearview, Rhodes heard the motorcycles. There were four, and they came roaring up behind the procession at more than fifty miles an hour. Rhodes could hear the thunder of their pipes even though he had the windows up and the air conditioner on.
There were four bikes, all in a single line. As they zipped by the car, Rhodes had no time to look closely at the riders, but he figured he knew who they were.
The bikes sped by all the cars in the procession, and luckily there was no one coming in the other direction.
When each rider drew even with the long, black hearse, he did a wheelie, gliding past the hearse with the front wheel of the bike in the air. As the front wheel touched the road again, each rider gunned his engine and swung back into the right lane of the road. Rhodes couldn’t see them after that, but the diminishing sound of their exhausts told him that they were rapidly pulling ahead.