"Oh, yes. Can I try the banana walnut?"
"It's yummy. We've sold more of this flavor in a week than any other in the history of the store. We have so many repeat customers now-coming in regularly from a good fifty-mile radius-that we might have to hire on some of those lazy old codgers out there playing cards around their barrel."
Velma Eisner came in from the back room, which was curtained off from the shop by a lovely blue floral drape. She snorted. "Yeah, Sherry, I can just see those old coots selling ice cream. They'd eat it all and belch at us and try to look pathetic."
She turned to Sally and smiled. “We discussed having the men involved. Of course, they'd grouse and complain and say it was women's work. But we decided to keep them out of it just so we'd be the ones bringing in all the profits."
"You're probably right," Sally said and accepted her ice cream cone. She took a bite and thought her taste buds had gone to heaven. She took another bite and sighed, "This is wonderful. I wonder if Helen would marry me."
The women laughed. Sherry said, "We've come a long way since we used to store ice cream in Ralph Keaton's caskets, haven't we, Velma?"
Velma just smiled as she took $2.60 from Sally. Sally took another bite. "I went to Amabel's cottage, but nobody's home."
Helen came in from the back room. "Hi, Sally. Amabel went down to Portland."
"For art supplies and shopping," Velma said. "She'll be back in a couple of days, she said. Probably by Friday." "Oh."
She licked at the ice cream, felt the taste explode in her mouth, and closed her eyes. "This has to be more sinful than eating three eggs a day."
"Well," Helen said, "if you eat just one ice cream cone a week, what does it matter?'' She turned to say to Velma, "I saw Sherry eat three cones last Tuesday." "I did not!"
"I saw you. They were all double dip chocolate." "I didn't!"
The three women started sniping at each other. It was obvious they'd been doing this for years. They knew each other's red buttons and were pushing them with abandon. Sally just watched, eating her banana walnut ice cream cone. Velma had the last word. Before Sherry or Helen could pipe up, she turned to Sally. "No, we won't let the men get behind the counter. They'd eat everything."
Sally laughed. "I'd be as bad as the men. I'd eat the entire stock in one morning." She finished her cone and patted her stomach. "I don't feel quite so skinny now." "Stay here, Sally, and you'll look all pillowy and comfortable like us in no time," Sherry Vorhees said.
"I was admiring the town," Sally said. "It's so beautiful, so utterly perfect. And all those flowers, every spring flower that will bloom is out and planted and wonderfully tended. Even the cemetery. The grass is mowed, the head-stones are well cared for. I was wondering if you ever forgot anything at all that would make the town look even more perfect?"
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"We try to think of everything," Helen said. "We have a town meeting once a week and discuss improvements or things that should be repaired or brought up-to-date."
"Whatever were you doing in the cemetery?" Velma asked, as she wiped her wet hands on her apron, the same cute blue floral pattern as the drape.
“Oh, just wandering around after I realized that Amabel wasn't at home. I noticed something kind of unusual."
"What was that?" Helen asked.
For a moment, Sally wondered if she shouldn't just keep her mouth shut. But no, these women were sniping at each other about ice cream, for God's sake. They knew who had died and when. They'd tell her. Why not? There was nothing frightening going on here. “Well, there were about thirty graves on the perimeter of the cemetery. All those people died in the eighties. All of them were men. There was nothing special on the headstones, just a name and dates of birth and death. The other headstones have personal stuff. There was one in particular, just said BILLY. I just thought it was strange. Maybe everyone got tired of being personal. So many men died, not a single woman. You must have been surprised at that."
Sherry Vorhees sighed deeply and shook her head. "A terrible thing it was," she said. "Hal was so depressed that we lost so many of the flock in those years. And you're right, Sally, it was all men who died. All different reasons for their deaths, but it still hurt all of us."
Helen Keaton said quickly, "Don't forget that quite a few of those deaths came from folk living in the subdivision. Their relatives thought our cemetery was romantic, set near the cliff as it is, with the sea breezes blowing through. We let them bury their dead here."
"Did that poor woman Mr. Quinlan and I found at the base of the cliffs get buried here?"
"No," Velma Eisner said. "Her husband was a rude young man. He was yelling around that we were somehow responsible. I told him to look at our muscles and do some thinking. As if we could have had something to do with his wife's death. He stormed out of here."
"He didn't even buy an ice cream cone," Helen said. "We had vanilla with fresh blueberries that week.
He's never been back."
"Well, that wasn't very nice of him," Sally said. "I've got to go now. Thank you for the ice cream." She turned at the door. "I didn't see Doc Spiver's grave."
"He isn't there," Velma said. "He wanted to be cremated and sent back to Ohio. He said there was no way in hell he was going to let Ralph Keaton lay him out."
Helen Keaton laughed. "Ralph was put out, I can tell you."
"No, Helen," Sherry said. "Ralph was pissed. Put out is something you are when Ralph doesn't throw his shorts in the hamper."
The women laughed, Sally along with them. She walked straight across the street to Thelma's Bed and Breakfast.
Sherry Vorhees flipped the curtain back down on the windows of the World's Greatest Ice Cream Shop.
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She said to the two other women, "There are three FBI agents in town and Sheriff David Mountebank."
"Those big shots should keep everyone safe," Velma said.
"Oh, yes," Helen said, taking a swipe of ice cream on her fingers and slowly licking it off. "Safe as bugs in a miner's winter blanket."
Quinlan finally hung up the phone. "It took a while to read out all those names and dates. Dillon's right on it. Finding out the stats on all those guys will be a piece of cake for him. He'll get back to us soon."
Sally said slowly, "I told the women at the World's Greatest Ice Cream Shop that I hadn't seen Doc Spiver's grave. They told me he'd been cremated and sent back to Ohio."
"Interesting," Quinlan said and picked up the phone again. "Dillon? It's Quinlan again. Find out if a Doc Spiver was cremated and sent back to Ohio, okay? No, it isn't as important as the other names, just of interest to Sally and me. Supposedly Doc had no relatives alive. So why would they cremate him and not bury him here in their own cemetery?
"Now, don't say that. It isn't polite. I bet Sally heard that. Yes, she did, and she's shaking her head at your language."
He was grinning, still listening. "Anything else? No? All right, call us as soon as you've got something.
We're staying here for dinner and the evening." When he hung up, he was still grinning. He said to Sally,
"I love to hear Dillon curse. He doesn't do it well, just keeps repeating the same thing over and over. I tried to teach him more vocabulary-you know, some phrases that connected a good number of really bad words, animal parts, metaphysical parts, whatever-but he just couldn't get the hang of it." He gave her some examples, adopting a different pose for each example. "Here's the one that Bram-mer does best, but only when he's really pissed at one of the agents."
She rocked back on the bed, she was laughing so hard. Then she sobered. Laughing?
"Stop it, Sally. It's fine to forget. It's great to hear you laugh. Keep doing it. Now that I've taken care of all of your lewd instincts, let's go have Martha's cooking."