It’s Christine Lemonopolous.
She’s sobbing.
“Christine?” I say. “What’s wrong?”
“He’s dead, Danny. Dr. Rosen. He died this morning.”
Ceepak and I head over to the Rosen house on Beach Lane.
“They want Christine out of the house,” I say, relaying the rest of our conversation. “Today. Like right now.”
“Sad,” Ceepak says.
“Yeah. Where’s she gonna go?”
“Actually, Danny, I was thinking about the late Arnold Rosen.”
Oh. Right. The dead guy. Guess he’s worse off than even Christine.
And then neither of us says anything else on the fifteen-minute drive down Beach Lane from the boardwalk. Death will do that to you, get you thinking. About Ceepak’s baby brother, Bill. My only real girlfriend, Katie Landry. My buddy Mook. Dominic Santucci.
And the two men I’ve personally sent to their graves.
When the Grim Reaper is riding with you, he always hogs the mental radio.
We park and climb out of my Jeep just as two gentlemen in black suits carry a rubberized body bag out the front door.
Ceepak stops walking and bows his head.
I do the same.
And then I hear Ceepak start muttering a prayer: “God full of mercy who dwells on high, grant perfect rest to the soul of Arnold Rosen.”
When Ceepak was over in Iraq, he saw a lot of guys die. Christians. Jews. Muslims. I’m guessing he memorized the right things to say for every religion when nothing you can say seems right.
We wait for the funeral home attendants to do their job and drive away in their black vehicle with the black-tinted windows. I make a sign of the cross. Sorry. It’s a nun-inflicted reflex.
Making our way toward the front porch, I notice that brand-new dune buggy wheelchair still sitting in the driveway. Guess Dr. Rosen never got to try it. Guess Monae never hid it in the garage like she was supposed to.
Inside the house, we see three mourners clustered around Dr. Rosen’s empty hospital bed: two men, one woman.
The woman has long, white-blonde hair and is dressed in a canary yellow tennis outfit that’s a little too short and hugs her body a little too tightly-especially since she has a whole lot of body to hug. I’m guessing this blonde is Shona Oppenheimer’s sister, Judith, even though Shona has jet-black hair.