The Hearse You Came in On by Tim Cockey

Author:Tim Cockey [Cockey, Tim]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Mystery
ISBN: 9780786889624
Publisher: Hyperion
Published: 2000-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 25

Jeff Simons was in serious but stable condition. As rumored, he had suffered a heart attack. The story on the airwaves was that the beloved newsman had been washing his car in the driveway when he keeled over. His heart condition had been diagnosed several months earlier but had been kept from the general public. Simons was under doctor’s instructions not to indulge in strenuous activity. It’s a fair crapshoot as to whether or not washing one’s car should be considered strenuous activity. I suppose one could do it nice and slowly, making an entire day of it.

But it’s a fatuous debate anyway. Helen Simons told Billie the real truth. The veteran newsman’s heart had seized up while he was driving home a point to his young protégée out of Cleveland, Mimi Wigg. As it happened, Simons had been driving home that point in Mimi Wigg’s bed at the time. She was the one who called 911. The car-washing scenario had been quickly fluffed together by station management and rushed out onto the airwaves. Check the tape of Ms. Wigg’s special bulletin and you’ll note the missing earring and the uncharacteristically not-perfect hair, not to mention the misbuttoned blouse. Neither Simons nor Mimi Wigg were married, so on that count, the libidinous activity of two single adults ain’t nobody’s business but their own. But it would look bad. To those critical of the fast-rising Mimi Wigg, it might even look calculating. Or if Simons were to die … criminal.

It was Sunday, and I had an afternoon rehearsal to attend. I tried reaching Kate several times by phone and several times I failed. I headed off to the theater.

Since granting me my pith helmet and funny mustache and Michael Goldfarb and Libby Maslin their mother and son yarmulkes, Gil was now swamped with special requests from other members of the cast. The guy playing Howie Newsome, Our Town’s milkman, had brought his pit bull to rehearsal and wanted to incorporate it into the show. The waitress portraying Lady in the Box was anxious to juggle fruit downstage during scene changes. The guy Gil had picked to play Emily’s father—a pompous locksmith from Lutherville—was lobbying for a silent part for his twelve-year-old daughter, a bob-haired girl of about two hundred pounds. “Why can’t my character have a second daughter? Just set her at the kitchen table and give her something to eat. She doesn’t have to have any lines.” I was fearful that Gil would point out that poor creature was larger than the table itself. But Gil’s razor had been dulled by the onslaught of suggestions and demands. He said nothing.

The part of Mrs. Gibbs was being essayed by Frances Lamm, formerly of Long Island, New York, and formerly a meat eater. Ms. Lamm had suddenly developed a powerful problem with the section of the play where she is tossing seed to the chickens. She told Gil that maybe this would be a good time to advocate the growing of vegetables for our nutritional needs as opposed to the slaughter of innocent chickens.

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