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about peeing in the cemetery when he’s on the job. He’s got a bladder the size of a shot glass. Sam removed Guy Fellows from me. Simple as that. Fellows shook himself free and took a few steps away, holding up his hands as if to show he was unarmed. “Okay, okay, that’s it, I’m fine. I’m cool.”
    “Are you all right, Mr. Sewell?” Sam asked me.
    “I’m fine, Sam. Thank you.” I signaled Sam to escort Mr. Castlebaum to his car. The old man went without a fight. Well, without further fight. Guy Fellows was settling down. He straightened his collar and tie and finger-combed his raffish mop. A long slow grin grew on his face as he looked back up at me.
    “I got you good, didn’t I?” He reached into his jacket pocket and handed me a handkerchief. The corner of it went swiftly red as I dabbed it at my nose.
    “You sucker punched me.”
    Fellows laughed. “Then I guess that makes you the sucker.” He put his fingers to his cheek to see if the old guy had drawn any blood. “Crazy old coot.”
    “He doesn’t seem to like you.”
    Fellows shrugged. “He’s one of those busybody neighbors. Thinks he’s everyone’s father. He’s upset about… you know.”
    “Aren’t you?”
    He looked past me toward the grave. “Well sure.Sure I’m upset. I mean, what the hell? Who knew the damn girl was going to go and kill herself?”
    It was a rhetorical question. But it just so happened that I had an answer. Or part of an answer. I wanted to ask him if he knew anything about the dark-haired woman with legs to her ears, but something called back the question. Instead I asked him if he knew the deceased well. It was a throwaway question.
    “We were friends.”
    “And you have no idea why she killed herself?”
    He shrugged. “I guess she was unhappy.”
    “When I’m unhappy I watch a Marx Brothers movie or I go out and drink too much,” I said. “I don’t go napping in a garage with the engine on.”
    His eyes narrowed. “Maybe she didn’t like the Marx Brothers.”
    Smart aleck. I didn’t like him. He was a slime. A good-looking slime, a handsome clotheshorse slime, but still a slime. He didn’t give a tinker’s ass about his dead “friend,” that was clear. I wondered why he even showed up for her funeral, let alone paid for it. Assuming his check was good. I thought again about asking him about the fake Carolyn James, but something again held me back. For some reason I didn’t want to imagine that she had anything whatsoever to do with this guy, even though I had a strong and uneasy suspicion that she did. Very much did. And in the next twenty seconds, my suspicions were pretty much confirmed.
    “So do you really run this place?” Guy Fellows asked.
    “I run the funeral home.”
    He looked me up and down.
    “You don’t look like an undertaker.”
    “So I’ve been told. So what about you? Do you look like what you do?”
    “What do I look like I do?”
    It was a straight line that ran all the way to the coast, but I ignored it and shrugged. “Surprise me.”
    “I’m a tennis pro,” he said. “Baltimore Country Club. Do you play?”
    “I’ve been known to knock the ball over the fence a few times.”
    He appraised me. “You’ve got a good physique for tennis. Long arms. Good range. If you’re quick, that’s it.”
    I am quick. But I wasn’t at that moment. At that moment I was seeing a pair of tennis shoes and a short white pleated skirt and a pair of long legs slicing back and forth across a clay court while this weasel peppered the ball left and right without even breaking a sweat. I was seeing Lady X toweling off after her lesson, having a few drinks with James Dean here in the clubhouse, then driving down to my funeral home to mess with my head.
    Guy Fellows was saying something to me.
    “Is there much money in it?”
    “In what?”
    He held out his arms and pivoted left and right, taking in the cemetery.
    “Oh. That. Yes,” I said. “The funeral biz. It’s steady. How