The Cove

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. 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."

    It was a feast, better than Thanksgiving, Corey Harper said. Martha brought in a huge platter with a pot roast in the center, carrots, potatoes, and onions placed artistically around it. There was a huge Caesar salad with tart dressing, garlic bread that indeed made your teeth snap, and for dessert, an apple crisp. And there was eggplant par-migiana on the side. Thelma hadn't waited. She'd wanted her eggplant at four-thirty.

    Martha appeared at just the right times to refill their wineglasses with the nicest Cabernet Sauvignon anyone had tasted in a long time.

    She clucked primarily around the men, encouraging them to eat, until finally Quinlan dropped his fork, sat back in his chair, and groaned. "Martha, any more and God will strike me down for gluttony. Just look at David-his shirt buttons are about to pop off. Even Thomas, who's skinny, would fill out in no time here with you. Since I'm polite, I won't refer to how much the women poked down their gullets."

    Sally threw the rest of her garlic bread at him. She turned to a beaming Martha. "You said apple crisp, Martha?"

    “Oh, yes, Sally, with lots of French Vanilla ice cream from the World's Greatest Ice Cream Shop."

    They had coffee with amaretto, a treat from Thelma- who was eating in her room since Quinlan had worn her out earlier with all her talk, or so she claimed according to Martha. Actually, Thelma had to sleep off all that eggplant parmigiana she'd eaten.

    After Martha returned to the kitchen, Sally told Thomas Shredder, Corey Harper, and David Mountebank, who had easily been persuaded to return for dinner and another conference, about the cemetery.

    Quinlan said, "I called Dillon. Knowing how fast he is, I'll probably hear back from