Dial M for Mischief

The sky was unusually bright the day his daughters buried Teddy Sunshine, the sun a big yellow ball chasing away all the early-morning clouds, if not the chill temperatures.Jolie Sunshine, when she noticed the sun, wondered whether her father had ordered it up or if it was some sort of sick joke dealt them by fate.In contrast to the brightness of the day, the small crowd around the grave site resembled nothing more than exotic black crows beneath the blue canvas canopy with Fulton Funeral Home stamped on the overhang. The only other colors were those of their pale faces and the blanket of bright red roses draping the bronze casket.When I kick off, I want to go out like a Kentucky Derby winner--draped with roses. Big red ones. Don't you forget!"We remembered, Teddy," Jolie whispered under her breath, earning her quick, inquisitive looks from her sisters, which she ignored.Roses they could do. What his daughters couldn't do was to have their father buried with a full police funeral. Murderers didn't get that kind of honor.Jolie swayed slightly between her sisters as the priest read a final prayer. The three held hands as they stood in their birth order: Jade to Jolie's right, Jessica, the baby, to her left. Teddy's Irish setter, Rockne, reclined stretched out at their feet, wearing his Notre Dame Fightin' Irish kerchief around his neck.They were quite the dazzling trio, Teddy Sunshine's girls; Teddy's Angels, he'd only half-jokingly called them, harking back to the days of that old television show, Charlie's Angels, which Teddy said the movie couldn't really hold a candle to for sheer enjoyment.Jade could almost be typecast in the role Kate Jackson had played in the mid-seventies. Beautiful, refined and all business.Jessica could be a fresher, more lush and wholesome Farrah Fawcett, with brains as well as looks. Although, as Jessica had pointed out more than once, her teeth weren't as big.But Jolie? Jolie didn't fit Jaclyn Smith's role, the one heavy on brains and beauty but also on sex appeal. Jolie was brunette; she was always told she was photogenic, but she had also spent most of her life believing herself to be too tall, too thin, too angular. Her mouth was too wide, her lips too full, her hair too straight, her hands and feet too long.Hell, she'd spent most of her teenage years carrying the nickname Jolly Green Jolie.Whenever she stood between her sisters, taller than either Jade or Jessica, she felt plain beside Jessica's almost too-perfect beauty and stupid when compared to Jade's quick, incisive brain--a living, breathing example of middle-child syndrome.It was only when she was in front of the cameras that Jolie didn't feel awkward, inept, a giraffe in a field full of graceful gazelles. When the lights came on, all her self-doubt disappeared and she could be anyone she dreamed she could be.How she longed to be somebody else today, rather than a grieving daughter. How she longed to talk to Teddy Sunshine just one more time, watch as his big Irish smile lit up a room brighter than any Hollywood klieg lights and made her feel so very special, so very loved.Most of all, she wanted to hear his laugh, a laugh that could fill her world.But now--in the shade beneath the blue canvas tarp, except for the droning voice of Father Sheehan and the sobbing of two maiden aunts from Buffalo Jolie would have been hard-pressed to name correctly--silence, cold and uncomfortable, was all around them.There should be a Philadelphia Police Department honor guard in attendance, at the very least. Taps played. A salute fired. A flag ceremoniously folded and presented to Jade, as the oldest.But the Sunshine daughters had to make do with a priest who had never known Teddy, filling in for Father Muskie, who was on his annual vacation in the Canadian north woods and out of touch, unknowing that his good friend and gin rummy partner had died inMichaels, Kasey is the author of 'Dial M for Mischief', published 2008 under ISBN 9780373772919 and ISBN 0373772912.