Read Online Here Comes the Corpse by Mark Richard Zubro - Free Book Online Page A

I unblocked the elevator. As I passed Donny’s room, I glanced in. He seemed to be sound asleep.
    I let the six of them in. If we had slept little, they had obviously slept less. Mr. and Mrs. Gahain’s eyes were red-rimmed with dark circles around them. They were still in the clothes they’d worn to the reception. We sat in the kitchen. I switched on the automatic coffeemaker and set it to brew. Several years ago we’d gotten the properly exotic brewer with the properly exotic packets filled with properly exotic and annoyingly perky coffee. I got out regular cream for my mom, the fake cream my dad likes, sugar, blue and pink diet-sugar packets (my mother likes to use one of each), and honey for Scott. I placed the tray in the middle of the breakfast nook. As we all filled our coffee cups, Scott entered the room.
    My mother said, “We’ve been up with the Gahains all night. We’ve been trying to make sense out of Ethan’s death. Of course, we can’t. The police talked to Rachel and Perry, but either the police didn’t know anything or wouldn’t tell them anything.”
    Mrs. Gahain said, “We need to understand why.”
    “Ethan insisted he had to come to the wedding to talk to you,” Mr. Gahain said. “What did he say?”
    “In the receiving line, he said we needed to talk, but we never did.”
    My mother said, “Rachel called me yesterday morning. I told her it was okay to bring Ethan along even though he wasn’t on the guest list. I told the security guards to admit him. I didn’t think you’d mind.”
    Mrs. Gahain said, “Thank you, Dolores, I know you were always close to Ethan. He didn’t say anything to anyone?”
    Everyone shook their heads no. I said, “Not to me. I’m sorry.”
    Mr. Gahain said, “Ethan arrived late Friday night. We knew something was wrong, but he wouldn’t talk to us. If there was anyone he could always talk to, it was you, Tom. He always trusted you.”
    At this moment I was not about to say their kid and I hadn’t exchanged more than a few words in years and hadn’t confided in each other in far longer. Quite obviously they assumed their son and I were still close. Whether this misperception was due to Ethan’s lies or their lack of insight, I couldn’t be sure.
    Mrs. Gahain said, “We weren’t as close as we should have been. Many people don’t confide in their own families, certainly not after they’re grown and out of the house.”
    “That’s very true,” my mother said. “That happens in all families.”
    Mr. Gahain said, “We want to know who killed him. We want the son of a bitch who did this caught, tried, and executed.”
    Mrs. Gahain said, “What’s important is that we want to know what was wrong. We want to know what was in his mind. We can’t ask his ex-wives. We were never close to any of them. Some we met only a few times. We never got more than a week’s notice of when the ceremonies would be. It was almost as if he wasn’t really serious about them. We didn’t usually find out about the divorces until after they were finalized. Tom, you’d be the one, of all the people we can think of, who would know or be able to find out what was going on. You were best friends.”
    I wasn’t so sure their knowing what was wrong was a good thing. A lot of the time I think it’s better for parents not to know what their kids are doing. Certainly I’d done things as a kid I’m not prepared to confess to my parents. What’s the point? Total honesty is a myth.
    “I don’t think I can help you there,” I said. “We haven’t really talked in the last couple years.” I was not about to say I’d been rejected twice in particularly odious ways. How could I say that kind of thing to a parent who had just lost a child?
    She continued, “He told us he was planning to move up here, but first he had to talk to you. He said it was important.”
    My mother said, “If Tom knew, he’d tell you.” This was accompanied by the look I remembered from childhood