I knew the request for a favor would be coming. He knew that I would have to do what he asked if I wanted him to continue throwing business my way.
There were only two Funeral Homes left in Dankworth and we were both hurting for business. More and more people were opting for cremation, which held low profits for Funeral Homes.
The drive to Elm Grove cemetery took twenty minutes. Had I not made the trip so many hundreds of times it might’ve been pleasant, almost scenic. A nice Sunday drive to watch the leaves change in the Fall or buy fresh fruit and vegetables from roadside stands in the Summer. But after seventeen years it had only a numbing effect on me.
Dankworth isn’t quite country or suburb. The town had long promoted itself with a simple motto:
Although it sounded like a hokey public relations blurb, in a sense it was true. Roughly thirty-five miles outside of Youngstown, Dankworth was a sprawling mixture of open space, dense forest, farmland and a hodgepodge of Pre- and Post-War housing mixed in with nineteenth century barns, mills and stone houses. The closer you were to the center of town where the Home was located, houses had good-sized frontage and back yards with shade trees. The newer homes were mainly ranch with attached double garages while the older houses were converted barns, Cape Cod bungalows, traditional A-frames and Colonials.
Less than fifteen minutes out of downtown Dankworth there were horse breeders, dairy farms, small working farms, a wildlife preserve and commercial greenhouses. In warm weather farmers sold fruit, vegetables and cider along Aberdeen Road, the tree-lined two-lane highway that ran through Dankworth and connected it to the neighboring towns and villages.
Residents perceived the area as a good place to live, close to nature and far enough from the city to feel safe.
But whatever fantasy of a tranquil existence one might feel could be tarnished upon approaching the twelve foot high wrought iron gates of Elm Cross cemetery. Any momentary yearning to live around this bucolic setting was replaced with thoughts of the dead. And to most people, living too close to a cemetery, especially a cemetery where a loved one is buried, was too much to handle.
From the cemetery entrance it took another minute or so to drive through the winding lanes into Section Nine, which was located in the oldest part of Elm Grove.
Section Nine is especially gloomy, not so much because of the imposing mausoleums, above ground crypts and ornate statues of apogees of angels or soulful-looking religious figures, but because of the gnarled, twisted oaks that looked like creepy versions of the heads on Easter Island. Weeping willows loom overhead like giant witches shrouded in green, their drooping branches and brittle leaves creating an overbearing sadness as they cast eerie shadows over everything on the ground.
As I approached the crime scene I saw three police cruisers parked, one in front of the other, which meant that the entire three-man police force of Dankworth was here.
One of them I got along with just fine: Wendell Eckert. He was in his late Thirties, easy going, professional and far more capable and qualified to be Chief of Police than Perry. Perry got the job because his father had been Chief. Wendell been a cop in Cincinnati for eleven years and had been wounded in a car chase. His wife threatened to divorce him if he didn’t leave big city law enforcement. The compromise was to live in a small town where Wendell could still be a police officer, but without the stress and danger of high-risk crime.
The remaining Dankworth cop, the one I had trouble with, was Greg Hoxey. He was standing by what I assumed was the mausoleum in which the body was found. Wendell I didn’t see yet. Perry was leaning against a five-foot high obelisk talking with Mel Abernathy, Manager of the cemetery, Alton Held, Head Groundskeeper and Vaughn Larkin.
None of them even noticed my arrival except Vaughn, who winked at me. I nodded back to him and arched my eyebrows. He rolled his eyes and smirked. The gestures were a silent line of communication indicative of nearly seventeen years of friendship. He was eighty-seven and had started working at the cemetery as a gravedigger as a teenager. By the time he was thirty he was Head Groundskeeper, a post he maintained until he had to take mandatory retirement at seventy-five. Mel Abernathy kept him on as night watchman, primarily because Vaughn had come to view the cemetery as his own property and genuinely cared about its upkeep.
Vaughn was my friend, father figure and mentor since I came to Dankworth. Our initial bond was built around death. I had lost a father; he had lost a son in Vietnam. He never got a last look at his boy because his remains were never found. Vaughn still smarted over the irony that the son of a gravedigger didn’t get a grave. It was another link. Although my father had a grave, I never got to see him after his death. He died in a plane crash. The coffin was closed. His remains cremated. Vaughn and I filled voids in each other’s lives. We considered each other family.
As I approached Mel, Alton, Perry and Vaughn, I picked up on part of what was being discussed.
“I don’t want this getting out in the wrong way,” Mel bantered as he wiped the perspiration from his forehead, his slight lisp creeping in-between his words making him sound like Elmer Fudd. “I can’t have people thinking they’re going to be dug up if they’re buried in my cemetery.”
“Calm yourself down now, Mel,” said Alton, his backwoods Louisiana accent making him sound like a Cajun crawfish trapper. He was fifty-two and had appeared out of nowhere to apply for a grave-digging job twenty-five years before. The position had been open for six weeks and, as always, was difficult to fill. Cemetery work was at the bottom end of the manual labor food chain, historically attracting drifters, drinkers and the chronically unemployable. Over the years Vaughn had learned to read an applicant quickly, making his decisions on gut instinct and the person’s eyes.
Vaughn hired Alton on the spot.
“How the hell is it not gonna get out, Mel?” Perry said. “A body was found in one of your mausoleums. What are we supposed to do, pretend it didn’t happen?”
“Can’t you play it down?” Mel asked.
“How do I play down a murder?”
“Y’all got to look at it from our point of view,” said Alton. “This here’s sacred ground. Y’all can’t have the folks believin’ it’s anything less. Right, Vaughn?”
Vaughn nodded a solemn yes.
“If it’s profits you guys are worried about,” said Perry. “This is the only cemetery within a thirty mile radius. You’re not ever gonna run out of customers.”
“That’s not the point,” Mel stammered. “It’s bad enough that I have grave robbers running loose, but to have a body found in someone else’s grave is such a… violation!”
“Mel’s right,” said Vaughn, his crisp voice belying his age. “People are sensitive about their dead.”
“I know that, Vaughn,” said Perry respectfully. Vaughn and Perry’s father were friends. Around Vaughn, Perry always behaved like an altar boy talking with an Archbishop.
“That’s why this has to be handled with the utmost of discretion,” said Mel.
“Alright,” Perry said. “Fine! But let’s get the body out of here, then we’ll figure out how to break the news.”
“Thank you,” Mel said, then, as if he noticed me for the first time, said, “Hello, Del.”
I nodded to Mel. Alton pointed at me with his right index finger and thumb as if he were shooting a gun, which was his customary greeting. Then, with great pomposity, Perry stated, “I want to get this over with quick.” He rudely turned away from the others and came towards me. “The only thing I hate more than a dead body is being in a graveyard.”