“Here we are,” I said as I pulled into the lot of DiGregorio’s Funeral Home and headed round to the back where the body would be waiting. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
“Thanks for letting me come along.”
I nodded to her and went to get Alphonse DiGregorio. The corpse was ready for me to remove. It was covered only by a white sheet, resting on a gurney in a holding area by the service entrance at the back of the building. This was where all bodies came in. Most bodies left by way of DiGregorio’s front entrance on their way to their final resting place. The only bodies that went out this way were the direct disposals: people who were going to be cremated without ceremony, without benefit of family friends.
Wilt Ging, the chief embalmer and restoration man for DiGregorio’s, was with Alphonse’s body. He looked deep in despair, lost in his own sad thoughts, his brown eyes — the left one peering slightly off towards the wall — floating in a watery residue of broken veins and impending cataracts. His nose was the nose of a drinker, pockmarked and swollen, looking more like a fatty red tumor waiting to explode. If this were the first time you were meeting Wilt you would assume that he had been crying for hours, maybe days, and that Alphonse’s death was a profound personal loss.
In reality, Wilt always looked as if he was in mourning and in the midst of an overbearing gloom. In all the years I’d known him, I never saw him smile or heard him laugh. Even the way he walked smacked of sadness. He was an inch or so over six feet, but he had a bent, hunched gait that made him seem much smaller and older than his fifty-four years. He trudged along like a beaten down, old gorilla lost in the jungle, his thick arms, too long for his body, hanging limply at his side.
Wilt was a functioning alcoholic who hid his disappointment in beer. Tyler said he drank a case a day, but that he never missed a day of work, never screwed up while working on a body, always did his drinking in the privacy of his home and never disgraced DiGregorio’s. As Alphonse himself was a steady drinker, he was forgiving and under-standing and Wilt respected him for it. Wilt was also friendly with Nolan, each bailing the other out when either was under the weather or out of town or overwhelmed with bodies. They came and went into each other’s Embalming Rooms borrowing chemicals and supplies as naturally as two neighbors using tools from each other’s garages.
“How you doing, Wilt?” I asked.
He nodded in bewilderment. You got the impression that he was always surprised that someone would actually say hello to him.
“I’m glad you’ll be taking care of him,” he mumbled softly. “It would’ve been hard, Del. I would’ve done it if the boys asked me. Tyler did the right thing.”
“I know. Is he upstairs?”
Wilt nodded yes, adding “They all are.”
I knew that by “all” he meant Mrs. DiGregorio, Tyler, Gordon and their wives.
“Let me say a quick hello and I’ll be back in a minute for the body, okay?”
“I’ll be here with Alphonse,” he said and I headed upstairs to the main residence where three generations of DiGregorios had lived while presiding over their Home.
The door was closed, but I knocked, then opened it, much like I had done as an adolescent when Tyler and I had first become friends, and stepped inside. Mrs. DiGregorio was on the couch, surrounded by her two daughters-in-law Jeanne and Helen. She was barely five feet tall and a hundred pounds, but looked even smaller, almost childlike. Tyler and Gordon stood off in a corner. Gordon noticed me first and acknowledged my arrival with an insincere grin and overly enthusiastic wave. He whispered something to Tyler who turned in my direction. I walked over to them. Tyler hugged me. Gordon shook my hand and patted me on the back, saying, “You’re looking good, Del and I really like your shirt” as if he was about to try and sell me a car. I smelled gin on his breath and cigarette smoke on his clothes.
“Thanks, Gordon.”
“Come say hi to my mother,” said Tyler, pulling me towards Mrs. DiGregorio and away from Gordon for which I was grateful. “Mom, Del’s here.” I bent over, kissed her on the cheek and said how sorry I was. She was a pathologically shy, old fashioned, deeply religious Italian wife and doting mother to her sons. Her shyness prevented us from ever having a meaningful or truly personal conversation, but she’d always made me feel comfortable and welcome. Almost from the day I met her she never failed to ask me the same question whenever she laid eyes on me: “How’s your mother?”
Today was no exception. “How’s your mother, Del?”
“Good.”
“Do you think she’ll ever come back to Dankworth?”
“Other than to visit me, I don’t think so.” My mother had remarried eight years ago and moved with her husband, Ken, to Albuquerque.
“Are you calling her regularly?”
“Every Sunday and sometimes during the week.”
“That’s important to a mother,” she said, then without skipping a beat she said, “You take good care of Alphonse. These last few weeks, the cancer took away his looks. Make him look good in the coffin. Alphonse always liked to look good. His hair needs a trim and his color is bad.”
“Don’t you worry, Mrs. DiGregorio,” I said reassuringly.
Tyler and I spent a few minutes going over the funeral arrangements. Though my Home would be providing all the services, they would provide the coffin. They chose a top of the line mahogany that retailed at nearly eight thousand dollars. As for the burial, it would take place in the family plot in Elm Grove cemetery. We would handle the embalming, preparation and visitation. Tyler had an expensive gray suit, white dress shirt, necktie, tie pin, T-shirt, underpants, shoes and socks waiting for me, all folded neatly as if prepared by a professional laundry. He walked me downstairs to Wilt, saying only “I’ve counseled so many people through this phase but I can’t say anything to myself to make me feel better.”
“Well, since I am the Funeral Director of record, I’m available to talk.”
He shrugged, then went back upstairs.
Wilt was standing over Alphonse’s body. He helped me guide the gurney outside. “They’re going against Alphonse’s wishes. This whole elaborate funeral. He wanted to be laid out in a simple pine box and buried in the ground with nothing covering him, not even a plain old sheet. He wanted to be one with nature from the start.”
“Why aren’t they doing what he wanted?”
“His wife. She’s stuck in that old guinea tradition.”
As I opened the rear door I glanced forward and noticed that Quilla wasn’t in the front seat. Wilt and I slid the body inside and I shut the door.
“Alphonse was the executor of my will, Del. Now that he’s gone, I’ll have to change it. I’m thinking of asking Nolan to do it. One way or another though, I want you to know what I want with my remains. Do you mind?”
“Of course not.”
“Once I’m dead, pick me up from where my body’s found and take me straight to the crematorium. Direct disposal.”
“Whatever you want, Wilt.”
“I appreciate it.” He nodded, then looked into the car at Alphonse’s covered corpse.
“You’d think that after all the death I’ve seen, I’d become immune to it.” He shook his head back and forth. “It’s much better being on the business end than what I do.
Good thing you’ve got Nolan there.”
I nodded in agreement because I knew what he meant. Nolan was like a machine when it came to his work. He could embalm anyone without the least bit of emotion. He knew Alphonse DiGregorio, not as well as I and definitely not as well as Wilt, but they were competitors for over thirty years. I knew that once he began to work on the body he would have the emotional distance as if Alphonse had been someone he’d never met in his life.
Wilt and I shook hands and he walked back to the Home. I got in the station wagon only to discover Quilla crouched down in the seat.
“What the hell are you doing?”
“I didn’t want to get you in trouble. You said there’s a law against having a passenger in the car with a body.”
“Thanks for being so considerate.”
I started the ignition and we drove out of the lot.
“So where do we go now?” she asked almost playfully.
“Now I take the body to get it ready for viewing.”
“That’s what that Nolan guy does, right?”
“Yes.”
“Can I watch?”
“No. That’s illegal. I’m taking you home now.”
“Are we gonna go through this again? I can’t handle being alone yet.”
“Why do you want to hang out with me anyway? I thought kids hated adults.”
“I do. But not you.”
“Why not?” I was touched and curious.
“Cuz you’re the only one besides me and Gretch who cares about finding out who killed my Aunt. I figured maybe we could do some more talking about possible crime scenarios.”
“Look, like I said before, until I get the funeral arrangements made for the gentleman in the back of this car, I can’t concentrate on anything else. But because you’ve come this far and I’m tired of hearing you whine, I’ll let you stick around.”
“Thanks.”
Nolan was waiting. He sat on the back steps that led to the rear entrance to the Home. I’d called him and told him I was on my way. I backed the station wagon up to the loading dock where Nolan was now standing.
“I’ll wait here,” said Quilla as she slid down onto the seat, stretching out like she had done at DiGregorio’s. I closed my door and met Nolan as he approached the car with a gurney. Just as we had done hundreds of times before, Nolan and I removed the body from the station wagon.
“Ole Alphonse,” he said as we headed into the Home. “If there’s one person in this town I never thought I’d be working on, it’s him.”
“Do an extra special good job on him.”
“Goes without saying, Del,” said Nolan, nodding affirmatively. “I have a soft spot for Alphonse. He got me into the trade.”
“I didn’t know that. I thought you always worked for Lew.”
He shook his head back and forth almost childishly. “Lew gave me my first job, but Alphonse put the idea in my head about going to embalming school. I owe my career to him. Actually, he tried to lead me into your end of the trade, but Funeral Directing was never interesting for me.”
We arrived at the embalming room. Nolan pushed open the door which we kept locked during viewing hours primarily so people who were here to pay respects wouldn’t accidentally walk inside if they got lost. The Home was large enough and had enough winding hallways to confuse someone and walking into an embalming room, especially if one is in the grieving process, could be unsettling.
“Only thing I ever held against ole Alphonse was the fact that he introduced me to my ex-wife.” Nolan smiled sheepishly and shook his head. “I don’t mean that the way it sounds. It wasn’t like he planned on introducing me to her. It just happened. Patricia’s Uncle had died that morning and they came to make arrangements. Alphonse insisted I sit there. He introduced me as his Assistant. While the Aunt and Alphonse went to the Selection Room to pick out a coffin, I stayed in the office with Patricia. That’s how it started.”
As we slid Alphonse’s body off the gurney and onto the embalming table it dawned on me that I had never heard Nolan bring up his wife. It was almost as if he were telling a story about how another guy met his spouse.
“You’ve never talked to me about your wife before.”
“Never had a reason to,” said Nolan as he began to organize the tools he would use for the embalming. “She was long gone by the time I met you.”
“It’s kind of ironic hearing you bring up a wife. I have a hard time thinking of you as being married.”
He smirked. “I never think of me as being married either. Didn’t even last two years. Actually, it lasted exactly one year and six months to the day, almost to the minute. Things like that happen to me.”
“Like what?”
“Remembering dumb details, like the exact dates of things. I remember things that most people forget. Like I know what I ate for breakfast on my eleventh birthday. Rice Crispies with fresh strawberries with three heeping spoonfuls of sugar. My mother yelled at me. Told me my teeth would fall out because I ate so much sugar. She was right.” He grinned exaggeratedly, baring his teeth, clicking them. “Lost them all. Had false teeth before I was thirty. I remember insignificant things about other people’s lives. I remember how Clint’s breath smelled the day I met him. Like he’d been gargling with Listerine for an hour. He wore a light brown tie with a spot on the lower right hand corner. Hell, Del, I remember the exact time of day you first set foot in here, what you were wearing and the first words you said to me.” He laughed and said, “Is it weird being around dead people all day long?”
“I said that?”
“Yep. And I told you that dead people are more interesting than most living people.”
“I remember you saying that.”
“And I told you that to survive in this game you need to know which side you’re on. Doing what I do or being the people person. You were like ole Alphonse. He liked to schmooze with the bereaved. That was rewarding for him. He always seemed to get a lot out of helping people. That’s how you are too.” He shrugged his shoulders as he reached for a gallon container of what I knew was his personal blend of embalming fluid. “To be honest, being around sad, crying people is the hard part as far as I’m concerned.”
“It’s funny,” said Nolan as he put on his white apron which reminded me of something a butcher would wear. “I’m wondering what my life would’ve been like if I’d never met Alphonse. Thirty odd years ago I was thinking about being either a truck driver or a mailman.” He chuckled. “There goes that memory of mine. I remember taking the civil service test. Got a ninety-two on it.”
I was about to ask him when the body would be ready for viewing when there was a soft knock on the embalming room door. Nolan and I looked curiously at each other. I walked to the door and opened it a couple of inches. Standing there was Clint and beside him was Quilla.
“She was wandering around upstairs,” said Clint. “Claims she was looking for you.”
“I decided that I want to meet Nolan.”
“Everything alright, Del?” asked Clint.
“Fine. I’ll handle it.”
Clint looked at me awkwardly, shrugged his shoulders and walked to the stairs that led to the main floor.
“You’re sure you want to do this?” Quilla nodded yes, then uttered a confident, “Yeah.”
“Hold on,” I said, closing the door. I turned to Nolan. “How can I put this? The body we just had — the girl in the mausoleum? Her niece wants to meet you.”
“Why?” said Nolan, looking quite baffled.
“It’s complicated. Too complicated to explain now. She’s been very attached to her Aunt, actually to her Aunt’s memory. She and I have become friends since the body was ID’d. Because you’re the last person to see the remains…to touch them…in her mind, you had a closeness to her Aunt that no one else had. It’s a spiritual thing. That’s what she says. So she wants to meet you.”
Nolan seemed confused. “Should I do it? Doesn’t make a difference to me, but is it a good thing for her? A healthy thing?”
“I think it might help to give her a sense of closure.”
Nolan shrugged his shoulders, then said, “What am I supposed to say?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think she knows what she’ll say to you. C’mon, let’s go outside.”
Nolan nodded and started towards me, removing the white apron in the process. He cleared his throat, looked at me, raised his eyebrows as if to say, “Let’s get this over with,” gestured for me to open the door and said, “After you.”
I didn’t want Quilla to get even the slightest glimpse into the embalming room, so I opened the door only wide enough for Nolan and myself to step into the hall. When Nolan was out I shut the door. Quilla focused on Nolan from the instant he came through the door. Her green eyes beamed with an aliveness I hadn’t seen in the short time I knew her. Instead of looking at Nolan as the last human being to touch what was left of the physical remains of her beloved Aunt, it struck me that Quilla gazed upon him with a sense of wonder, almost as if she were staring at the person who had saved Brandy Parker’s life, not prepared her body for burial.
“Quilla, this is Mister Fowler,” I said.
In a surprisingly sweet tone, Nolan said, “I’m sorry to make your acquaintance under such sad circumstances. And your name is?” He extended his right hand.
“Quilla.” She shook Nolan’s hand. As she did so she gazed mysteriously at Nolan’s hand saying, “Did you touch my Aunt’s body?”
Nolan glanced quickly at me, then back at Quilla. “Yes.”
“With both hands?”
“Yes.”
“With your bare hands?”
“I wear gloves.”
“Could I hold your other hand?”
Again, Nolan shot me a fast glance, then looked back at Quilla. “I, uh, guess so.” He extended his left hand. Quilla took it into her own left hand, then she closed her eyes, almost as if she were in a trance.
Again, Nolan looked at me, arching his eyebrows and looking bemused. I shrugged my shoulders, equally perplexed. I watched Quilla hold Nolan’s hands. She seemed to be alternately squeezing and tugging at his fingers, as if she were trying to pull some kind of vibe or life from them. Quilla opened her eyes after about fifteen seconds. She was trying to hold back tears.
“I can feel her presence,” she said happily, smiling broadly. Then she abruptly released Nolan’s hands and grabbed him around the waist, hugging him.
Nolan again looked at me, his eyes bulging, mouth open. He raised his arms from his sides, unsure of what he was supposed to do, not that I blame him. Quilla’s sudden outburst of physicality would have thrown me too. As she continued to hold him Nolan held his arms aloft, not sure if he should hug her back or of what she would do next. After another fifteen or twenty seconds, Quilla let go of him and stepped back, now noticeably crying, but smiling with equal passion. “Despite all the time she was in that mausoleum, could you still see how pretty my Aunt was?”
Without missing a beat, Nolan said, “It’s amazing you ask that because when I got my first look at your dear Aunt I was taken by how beautiful she was.”
“Really?” squealed Quilla as if she were five years old.
“After all the years there was a certain amount of… disturbance to the body…which is natural, but it was easy to tell that she must have been a stunning young woman.”
I was touched by Nolan’s decision to shield Quilla from the truth about her Aunt’s remains. After nine years in the unprotected environment of a twelve-foot square mausoleum they were largely skeletal, with little flesh remaining.
Nolan looked at his watch, then said, “Meanwhile, young lady, I’d better be getting back to my work.”
“Thank you, Mister Fowler,” she said firmly.
“You’re welcome.” He stepped back and was about to return to the embalming room when Quilla said to me, “Is Nolan the person Viper will be talking to?”
“As a matter of fact, yes.” I said. Nolan stopped and looked at me, another look of bemused curiosity on his face. “But I haven’t brought the subject up yet to him.”
“What subject?” asked Nolan.
“Quilla has a friend who’s interested in getting into the trade,” I said. “Could he stop by and talk to you?”
“I don’t know,” said Nolan uncomfortably. “I’m not sure how much help I’d be.” He flashed me a quick look, his eyes asking me, “Should I do this?”
I arched my eyebrows and tilted my head a bit, as if to say, “It’s your call, man.”
“You’d be a great help,” said Quilla. “He doesn’t know anything about what you do except what he’s seen in dumb horror movies.” She looked at Nolan with great expectancy.
“Well, have him give me a call and I’ll sit him down.”
“Cool-cool,” said Quilla.
“What’d you say his name was?”
“Viper. I mean Lester. Lester Petrovich.”
Nolan eased up, almost relaxed. “I know a Petrovich. Harry Petrovich. Owns Petrovich Heating and Cooling. He installed central heating and air conditioning in my house.”
“That’s Viper’s uncle. Viper works part-time for him.”
Nolan smiled. “Small world.”
I reached into my pocket and gave Quilla my business card. “Give this to Viper. It has our number on it.” As Quilla took the card Nolan used the opportunity to wave good-bye and move the few steps to the embalming room.
“Bye Nolan,” said Quilla, smiling at him warmly.
“Bye-bye,” he said and disappeared into his work space.
I looked at Quilla. “Did meeting Nolan accomplish what you wanted?”
“I didn’t know what I wanted to accomplish. I just knew that I wanted to touch the last person who touched Aunt Brandy.” She smiled. I guess I’ll go now.”
“I’ll drop you somewhere.”
“No. I want to walk. I feel like being alone now. Besides, Viper’s therapist isn’t that far from here.”
I walked her upstairs and out the rear entrance to the Home. She brought up the meeting with Perry. Again, I told her I would try to set something up as soon as possible and that I’d call her. We said good-bye. I went back to the embalming room to ask Nolan a question. He was in the process of getting ready to wash Alphonse’s body.
“That was nice of you to be so gentle with her,” I said.
“Give people what they want to hear,” he said matter-of-factly, shrugging his shoulders. “The kid was hurting. What would’ve been the point of telling her that what was left of her Aunt bore no resemblance to anything human?” I nodded in agreement.
“About her friend who wants to talk to me? Harry Petrovich’s nephew? If he calls should I tell him how things really are or should I sugarcoat what I do?”
“Play it by ear. If you sense he’s serious, give him the truth. Tell him what it’s like to take a maimed or disease-ridden body and attempt to make it look presentable for the viewing public.”
“I hear ya,” said Nolan, nodding his head affirmatively.
“Guess I’ll leave you to work on Alphonse,” I said, heading to the door. As I opened it Nolan had turned on the water and sprinkled a goodly amount onto the head of the body. In a few seconds he would apply a dab of Pert Plus shampoo to the full head of silver hair on Alphonse’s head.
I stepped into the hall.
As I headed up to my office I heard Nolan say, “You always had great hair, Alphonse.”
I went upstairs for a quick meeting on logistics with Clint. We still had two bodies on view, both scheduled for burial the next morning, one at 9:30 for interment at Elm Cross, the other at 11:30 for interment at a cemetery in Youngstown. As I would be occupied with the arrangements for Alphonse, I assigned Clint the Youngstown burial, primarily because it was further away and would demand more traveling time. Because I anticipated a massive turnout for Alphonse, by having the other two bodies gone we wouldn’t have to worry about even more people showing up to pay respects and there would be ample parking space.
After Clint and I finished my first inclination was to call Perry and fill him in on the theory Quilla and I had come up with about Alyssa and Virginia Thistle, but I decided to wait until we could talk face to face.
Instead, I called Mel Abernathy at Elm Grove cemetery to tell him to open a grave for Alphonse DiGregorio.