Long Drive Home by Will Allison Read Free Book Online

up.”
    It didn’t, though, and soon I was coming back from the basement with a tarp. Sara stood at the door while I jogged across the street, propped up the wreath, and covered as much of the memorial as I could. When the wind blew the tarp off, I came back for rocks from our flowerbed and used them to weigh down the corners. Liz and Sara were waiting at the door with a towel when I was done. Sara hugged me before I even had a chance to dry off, then Liz sent her back to breakfast. As I was taking off my boots, she said maybe the funeral wasn’t such a bad idea.
    “We’re strangers, Liz. Why would we go to his funeral? Anyway, Sara’s too young.”
    “How do you know?”
    “Because I was her age when I went to my grandmother’s funeral, and it scared the crap out of me.”
    “I don’t think that ever changes,” she said. “No matter how old you are.”
    * * *
    An hour later, water was pooling in the basement, coming right through the wall in brownish trickles. Liz was still stuck on the funeral.
    “I think you’re being overprotective,” she said, fashioning a makeshift dam of old rags around some moving boxes we’d never unpacked.
    “She doesn’t even know what she’s asking for.” I wanted to say, Now you’re giving me the creeps. First the vigil, now the funeral—it was as if she knew I hadn’t told her the whole truth about the accident and was messing with me, trying to torture it out of me.
    “Can I help?” Sara said, coming down the stairs.
    I found a mop for her to push around and was bringing in the shop vac when the doorbell rang. Sara ran back upstairs.
    “It’s the detective!”
    Liz shot me a look of confusion. I tried to seem unconcerned, but my first thought was that he’d come to arrest me. Why else show up unannounced at ten o’clock on a Saturday morning? I started for the door, panic rising in my throat. Rizzo was cupping his eyes to the glass. He straightened up as I came into the vestibule. He had on the same suit as before, as if he hadn’t stopped working since Thursday.
    “Detective,” I said, opening the door, relieved to see he was alone. “I’d like to report a Peeping Tom.”
    He thought that was funny, or pretended to at least. Then he apologized for disturbing us. “Just had a few follow-up questions and didn’t want to drag you down to the station again.”
    As I was taking his umbrella, Sara came downstairs wearing her badge. She told him she’d decided to be a policeman when she grew up. “A girl can be a policeman, right? Like Carla.”
    “You bet,” Rizzo said. “Police officer. ”
    Then she asked to see his gun.
    “Why don’t you go play in your room?” Liz said. She sounded like she didn’t appreciate Rizzo’s being there. She brought him a cup of coffee but didn’t offer to leave, taking a seat between us at the dining room table. Rizzo didn’t seem to mind. He made small talk, complimenting the house and asking how long we’d been there. He said he lived in the village too, not five minutes away.
    “I guess this whole thing has you working overtime,” Liz said.
    He shrugged. “It’s not every day I get a red ball in my own back yard.”
    I asked if the driver had been drinking. He said they wouldn’t know for sure until the autopsy report, which could take three to six months.
    “Months?” Liz said.
    The labs were slow, he explained, and the medical examiner’s office was understaffed and overworked. “It’s Newark,” he said. “Homicides. What are you going to do?” He blew on his coffee and took a sip. “Meanwhile, I’m just trying to rule out everything else besides alcohol. Not jump toconclusions. I mean, at this point, for all we know, it could have been a bee sting. Seriously. One time we had this poor guy, rear-ends a squad car in the rotary down by the train station. Of all the luck, right? Claimed a bee stung him. We’re thinking, yeah, sure, buddy. But damned if the guy didn’t have a stinger right between his