I gave Quilla about five minutes alone to work through her tears before I made my way back to the hearse. I slid in and said, “You okay?” and she muttered a soft, choked up “Yeah,” that told me she wasn’t.
I turned the key in the ignition and drove back to Mel’s office. Again, I left Quilla in the car while I ran inside and had Mel work up the paperwork for the purchase, opening and closing of Brandy Parker’s grave. Within five minutes I was back in the hearse and Quilla and I were heading to Dankworth. I decided that she probably needed silence and that there would be no conversation unless she started it.
She didn’t say a word for about five minutes. All she did was fiddle with the knob on the glove compartment. I concentrated on driving, then suddenly, Quilla asked me a question that caught me totally off guard. “Do you know any private detectives?”
I hesitated for a moment. “No. Why?”
“I want to hire one to find the guy who killed my Aunt.”
“I changed my mind. Understand something… nobody cares who killed my Aunt except me. My mother could care less. When the call came about finding the body her only reaction was that it couldn’t have come at a worse time. Know why? She and her husband were going on vacation this week.”
I was curious that she didn’t refer to Suzanne’s husband as her father. “You mean your father?”
“My father lives in California. He’s a jerk. I hate him. Alan is my stepfather. He’s only half-a-jerk and I hate him too. I can’t wait for them to leave. I’ll be alone for fourteen days and have some peace and quiet.” She bit her lower lip. “My mother didn’t even cry. And when Cobb called her she didn’t even ask him about what he’s gonna do to find out who did it. That’s why I’ll be the only one who does anything about finding out who killed my aunt.”
“What will you do?” I was fascinated by her tenacity and not for one second did I find her passion false.
“I haven’t figured that out yet.”
“Look. I have a professional relationship with Perry. I can find out if he’s doing anything.”
“I can find out too,” she almost barked. “I have a relationship with Greg.”
“Greg’s not somebody Perry would tell crucial facts to.”
“And like he’d tell things to you — a mortician?” she snapped.
“Perry and I go way back. I’ll set up a meeting between you two. You can tell him everything you know about your aunt, starting with the fact that you have her things and that she has notebooks.”
“He’ll want to read them. I don’t like the idea of him knowing her thoughts.”
“You can’t think like that. Whatever piece of her that you possess, no matter how personal and intimate, if it’ll provide a clue to her killer, you have to turn it over.”
She paused for a few more seconds. “Why are you being so nice to me? I mean, it’s almost like you really give a damn.” She arched her eyebrows. “Or is this all part of the Funeral Director act?”
“You’re not the typical grieving person I deal with.”
“There’s something more going on, isn’t there? You don’t come off like some perv child molester who’s acting like you feel sorry for me so you can get in my pants. It’s just… your motivation confuses me.”
“I’m touched by your love for your Aunt. It makes me want to help you.”
“But why? I keep getting vibes from you that, like, this is somehow personal to you.”
I averted her eyes. Her perception was alarming. At fifteen she had the ability to pinpoint truth or the lack thereof. It made me uncomfortable.
“I understand loss,” I said. “And the importance of closure. I never got it with Alyssa.”
“I know all about closure. I’ve been waiting for it nine years. I got it yesterday.”
“Not completely. You won’t have full closure until you find out who killed your Aunt.”
Quilla was silent for a moment. “Do I have to wear a dress when I come to the Funeral Home tonight? And does it have to be black?”
“Wear what you think your aunt would have worn.”
Quilla shot me a smile. “Cool.”
After dropping Quilla off, my next destination was the Coroner’s to pick up Brandy Parker’s remains. I didn’t tell Quilla where I was going.
From my iPhone I called the Home to let Clint and Nolan know that we had another body coming in. If it hadn’t been such a hectic week I would’ve had Clint come with me to pick up the remains. He only accompanied me, or I him, on removals when the corpse was inordinately heavy and difficult for one person to manage alone.
Nolan took the call. The words weren’t even out of my mouth before he asked if it would be a full service.
“No,” I said. “Closed coffin. It’s the corpse found in the mausoleum. There’s not much.”
I heard Nolan sigh in disappointment. Just like me, he gets restless when he’s not busy. Even though he’d been occupied the last few days, he was again at loose ends.
Ray, the same pathologist on duty when I dropped off Brandy Parker’s remains, was there to release the body. “Tough one,” he said as he wheeled a gurney out of the lab along the corridor to the loading dock.
“How do you mean?”
“Simple blow to the head. Could’ve been done with anything. What with all the moisture inside that mausoleum, insects doing their thing and the desiccation of the body, especially around the wound, it was impossible to get a handle on the weapon or anything else. About the only thing that could be established is that she probably died fast. Perry’s gonna have his hands full.”
Ray’s comment haunted me for the entire drive back to the Home. I wanted Perry to solve this case, if for no other reason than Quilla’s peace of mind.
It was my nature not to get even remotely involved in situations where the stakes were high. It was part apathy, part not wanting to be bothered and partly being petrified of getting too close to people. I was very good at watching life go by. If it didn’t touch me in any way I was thankful. Let it ram into everyone else. Had it been anyone other than Quilla, I would’ve steered far and wide from this mess, but there was something about her that sucked me into it with a ferocity that scared the hell out of me.
I beeped the horn as I pulled up to the rear entrance of the Home. Within thirty seconds Nolan appeared, a warm smile on his pink face. He was wearing a T-shirt — black with the following words in Gothic lettering:
Nolan enjoyed going to industry conventions to learn of new advances and exchange embalming tricks. Three or four times a year he would take off for two or three days. A couple of years back he’d gone to a Seminar in Chicago on the latest tricks on restoring mangled bodies and come back with four T-shirts. One for me, Lew, Clint and himself. He’d done it as a gag, but one morning I saw him walking along Dankworth’s main business district wearing it.
I’d given him permission to wear the T-shirt only at the Home and only when the public wasn’t around. Most people are fairly ignorant about what goes on behind the closed doors of a Funeral Home. Embalmers engender mystery. Many people are aware of their existence and that he, or she, does something to the bodies once they’ve been brought to the Funeral Home, but they’re not sure what.
Other than friends and families, a good-sized number of embalmers go through life without revealing the truth of how they earn a living. I’d say with great certainty that most people in Dankworth under forty who pass Nolan on the street, sit near him in church or stand behind him in line at the supermarket don’t know that he embalmed the bulk of the bodies buried from Henderson’s Funeral Home for the last thirty-plus years.
If they did, it might be extremely unsettling. Not because of any monstrous physical appearance. Nolan was actually quite nice-looking or could have been if he stopped wearing his hair long like an aging rock star. Plus he had a goofy-looking goatee that gave him an almost satanic aura. Not like the classical interpretation of the devil, but more like a cartoon caricature.
Nolan was cranky because his trocar wasn’t working properly. The trocar, one of the most important tools for an embalmer, is a long, hollow needle attached to a tube that comes into play near the conclusion of the embalming process. What most people don’t know is that embalming consists simply of draining blood from the veins and replacing it with fluid pumped in through the arteries. Between three to six gallons of a dyed and perfumed solution of formaldehyde, glycerin, borax, phenol, alcohol and water is injected into the body, primarily for disinfecting and preservative purposes.
The next step involves the trocar, which is jabbed into the abdomen and poked around the entrails and chest cavity, the contents of which are pumped out and replaced with cavity fluid. Once this is done, the hole in the stomach made by the trocar is sewn up, the body’s face is heavily creamed to protect the skin from burns which may be caused by leakage of the chemicals and the corpse is ready for restoration.
If a lip or lips, a nose or an ear is missing, the embalmer possesses a variety of restorative waxes with which to model replacements. Pores and skin texture are simulated by speckling with a little brush, and over this cosmetics are applied. If the mouth is swollen the embalmer cuts out tissue as needed from inside the lips. If too much is removed the surface contour is restored by padding with cotton. Swollen necks and cheeks are reduced by removing tissue through vertical incision made down each side of the neck. In instances of emaciation, a hypodermic syringe loaded with massage cream is injected into the hollowed and sunken areas.
Once the body has been properly restored, it’s washed, dressed and shaved if it’s a male. Cream-based cosmetics available in pink, flesh, suntan, brunette and blond are applied to the hands and face. Hair is shampooed, combed and, if necessary, set and the fingernails are manicured. Then the body is placed in the coffin and wheeled to the Viewing Room.
I’d known Nolan since the first day I began working at Henderson’s Funeral Home, and I liked him. He was kind to me, but I couldn’t stand to hear him talk. His voice was the most grating sound I’d ever heard. A tad high pitched with a slight scratchiness to it, almost as if he were talking through the speaker in a drive-thru restaurant. And he loved to talk.
He spent so much time alone with bodies that he cried out for human contact. Because I was always around, I was usually it. And before I came along, Lew was his primary target. Or Lew’s wife. Since I’d hired Clint two-and-a-half years ago, he took on a large chunk of Nolan’s yakking as well. I’d learned long ago that the best way to avoid spending too much time with Nolan was to act as if I were in a rush or very pre-occupied.
“Good to have all this business, eh, Del?” He opened the back door of the hearse and waited for me to join him. “You just missed Clint. He took the silver hearse for a lube job.”
We each grabbed an end of the body bag containing Brandy Parker and, as we made our way to the Embalming Room, Nolan tried to get at least five conversations going about different topics. Each time I interrupted him or pretended not to hear or feigned ignorance of the subject. After all these years I still felt guilty about not being friendlier with Nolan. In the beginning, though, it was much harder. Nolan was forty-three. I was a Senior in high school. I didn’t view him as a father figure, but I viewed him as an older man and therefore felt I owed him enough respect to listen to his non-stop rambling.
He sent me a Christmas card every year, gave me a present, always something nice. He never missed my birthday. Always sent me postcards from his travels to trade conventions. When I was in the hospital having my appendix removed he came to visit me. Because I spent so much time avoiding him, I never got to learn much about him. And I never gave him the benefit of finding out much about me.
We shared no secrets. I knew more about Perry Cobb’s personal life than Nolan’s. I’d never been invited to his home. I knew that he was married once, when he was in his Twenties, and that his wife had walked out on him, and that he had never remarried. Lew told me that in all the years he’d known Nolan since his wife left, he’d never gotten serious with another woman. I got the implication from Lew that Nolan’s wife had broken his heart.
For that reason alone I felt an odd kinship with Nolan. The woman he loved had walked out on him. And my first love had pretty much walked out on me.
Glancing at Nolan, I could see he was anxious to get to work so I started for the door and mumbled a “Good-bye.”
Nolan said, “See ya, Del,” then, as I closed the door, I heard him unzip the body bag and immediately start talking to what was left of Brandy Parker.