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the edge yelled
back. He looked at Auntie Lil with admiration.
    Auntie Lil took her triumph with characteristic
modesty. “I told you so,” she announced to the assembled mourners.
“There's another body at the bottom of the grave. And the widow
insists that it's someone named Davy.”

CHAPTER THREE
     
    Pandemonium erupted following the announcement that
there was a bonus body in the grave. Reaction was swift. A third of
the crowd headed immediately for their cars, ignoring the
distracted protests of the plainclothes detectives standing guard
in the parking lot. Clearly, a good number of the mourners had
prior experience with law enforcement and were not eager to stick
around to chat. These early departers were met at the edge of the
grounds by two well-dressed men flashing federal badges, but not
even this show of government muscle was enough to stem the
tide.
    The remaining crowd members erupted in a verbal
volcano of overlapping exclamations, revealing dozens of opinions
on Davy and his relationship with Max.
    “He would do something like this,” one woman shouted,
as if Davy had committed suicide using the novel method of
suffocating himself in graveyard mud.
    “Wait until Abe finds out,” someone said. “It'll give
him another stroke.” Several people murmured their uneasy
assent.
    “Max spoiled the crap out of the kid. He let Davy get
away with murder. It's fitting that the kid should steal the
spotlight at the old man's funeral.” More tactful mourners quickly
shushed this speaker into silence.
    “My God,” an overdressed female declared at the top
of her lungs from a spot not two feet from the stunned family. “Did
you hear her shriek when she saw it was Davy? I told you there was
something going on between them.” A trio of voices chorused
agreement.
    T.S. and Auntie Lil joined a small huddle of guests
in staring at Abby, Max's sister-in-law—and, T.S. suspected, the
now dead Davy’s mother. Abby’s rubbery complexion had faded to an
alarming beige. She tottered as if faint, and was helped to her
chair by the tall executive with the boyish face who had stood
close to T.S. Abby sat, staring blankly at the grave as if
expecting Davy to rise from the dead. The bald middle-aged man with
the cold stood gazing down at the ruddy clay opening, his open
mouth forming a small, dark oval against his deeply flushed face.
His hands trembled at his sides. His female companion had slipped
her hand into his raincoat pocket and was clutching a Kleenex to
her own open mouth. It did not entirely conceal a small, uncertain
smile.
    The young man and blond woman in their mid-twenties
stood together at one end of the grave, arms around each other's
waist. They stared down at the muddy scene in silence, tears
glistening on their cheeks. They seemed to be among the very few
mourners genuinely saddened at the declaration that Davy was dead.
Everyone else was acting as if they were at a particularly exciting
cocktail party. Whoever Davy was, he had few friends among this
crowd.
    “Who's Davy?” Auntie Lil demanded impatiently,
grabbing a bald man by the elbow and pulling him toward her. He
slipped on a patch of mud and crashed into T.S. but did not
apologize.
    “You've got a grip like a plumber,” the bald man
protested, rubbing his elbow and glaring at Auntie Lil.
    “Who's Davy?” Auntie Lil demanded again. “I found the
body. I deserve to know.”
    The man's eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Seems like you
would already know if you were a friend of Max's,” he said. “Davy
was his favorite nephew. The kid was going to inherit every buck
Max had, or so some people said.”
    One of the detectives had hurried back to his
unmarked car and radioed in for help. In the meantime, the
remaining officers had commandeered lengths of rope from the sullen
cemetery workers and gone fishing for the widow and rabbi. The pair
was pulled from the open grave with the enthusiastic assistance of
several volunteers. They emerged looking