Page 4 of Nash Falls

TO HIS CREDIT, THE MANof God finished the rest of the church service in one minute, fifty-three seconds flat. Nash knew this because he was staring dead at his watch the whole time, the blood drained from his face. He was paralyzed by what had just happened, but not just for the verbal abuse he’d endured.

My father called me smart?

His wife rose and pulled him up for the closing hymn. Maggie stood next to him, while again hammering away on her phone.

Later, Rosie Parker accompanied her dead “partner and lover” out to the hearse and then climbed into the sleek ride provided by the funeral home. She was apparently more family than Ty Nash’s actual family.

Nash ledhisfamily to the Range Rover.

At the cemetery they stood under a small, mildewed tent as the rain splattered down. The still-frazzled minister speed-sermonized through his remarks, ending with how inspiring it was that death was surely to be followed by rebirth. When he was done no one else came forward to speak. Shock had apparently said all there was to say, the Harley crew had not bothered to come to this part of the service, and Nash was still in such a muddle that he could not form words.

As they were heading back to their vehicle, a small, wiry man in his seventies and wearing a decades-old three-piece gray suit walked up to Nash.

“Mort Dickey, Mr. Nash. YouareWalter Nash, son of the deceased, Tiberius Nash?”

Nash had not heard anyone refer to his father by his full namesince the man’s retirement party, where it was made good-natured fun of by Shock and the other storm troopers.

“I am,” he replied.

“I was, or rather still am, at least for a little while, your father’s attorney.” He held out a card, which Nash took. “Give me a call when convenient. Terms of the will, estate matters, that sort of thing. Being a businessman, I’m sure you understand.”

Nash shook his head. “No, Idon’tunderstand. I know my father left me nothing. And I’m certain he did not make me his executor.”

“Well, then you would be wrong onbothcounts, wouldn’t you?” He tapped the card. “I’m in the office all week.” Dickey nodded at Judith and Maggie and strode off.

Nash pocketed the card, got into the Rover, and drove on autopilot all the way home.

By midnight the rain was still pouring and Nash had finished more scotch than was good for him. Judith had stayed up as long as she could before he had emphatically—and a bit drunkenly—sent her off to bed. Maggie had gone to her room as soon as they had returned from the cemetery.

Nash took a full bottle of brandy and his favorite cut crystal snifter glass, which he’d gotten in Spain, and walked out to the roofed-in and comfortably furnished back patio. He stood and drank the brandy and watched the rain fall, and Nash wondered if the dead really could come back to life.

Oh, and by the way, Shock,andDad, I am not and never have been a stuck-up prick. And itwasmy decision to play tennis over football that started this nightmare.

He swallowed more brandy and pulled out the lawyer’s card and looked at the address. Not the best side of town, but his father’s side. Nash would have to make sure the man was actually a lawyer. He wouldn’t put it past Shock and the other meatheads to pull a final, stupid prank on him in his father’slovingmemory.

He abruptly turned to the side and threw up first the brandy and then the scotch and then what else he wasn’t sure. Some splashed onhis pantleg, and his first thought was the dry cleaner. He would have to drop them off. And they were relatively new, a nice, lightweight gray summer weave, not pleated or cuffed, but with a subdued taper at the ankle, as was the style now.

And why in the hell are you even thinking about that?

He bent down and put the brandy and snifter on a low table.

As he straightened he nearly toppled back over when the man stepped out of the gloom of shadows and rain with an umbrella shielding him from the downpour.

“Holy shit,” exclaimed Nash, nearly vomiting again. “Who in the hell are you?”

The man stepped next to Nash and out of the rain, reached into his jacket pocket, and produced something that looked like a black leather wallet. When he dexterously opened it and held up one half and then the other, Nash saw by the dimmed overhead light that it was not remotely close to being a wallet.

The impressive badge was shiny, even in the gloom, with the gold bird with wings spread at the top, and something else the woozy Nash couldn’t make out down below. The ID card on the other half read Special Agent Reed Morris.

“I’m with the FBI, Mr. Nash. I’d like to have a chat if that’s okay.”

A white-faced Nash, teetering between more nausea and what he knew to be the coming mother of a hangover, exclaimed, “Now? You want to have a chat now? I just buried my father, for Chrissakes, it’s after midnight, and it’s pouring a shitstorm.”

“I take it you’ve been drinking?” said Morris, who looked to be in his forties, short and compactly built, with salt-and-pepper hair. He looked tough and confident in his off-the-rack suit and sensible rubber-soled wingtips. The FBI agent made a show of glancing at the snifter and the bottle of brandy on the table.

Nash, who had clearly reached the limits of his ability to remain civil, barked, “No shit, Sherlock. And I don’t see how that’s any fucking business of yours.”

“I’m thinking of the cognitive issue, sir, nothing more. We needto be clear on things, you see. Might we go into the house? Where it’ll be private? We’ll stay on the lower level. I would not want anyone else aware of this meeting.”