Funeral Hotdish (5 page)

“Have you settled on the pallbearers?” K.C. offered that the Class of 2000 all wanted to walk Amber’s casket down the long, central aisle of St. Vincent’s. Nettie closed her eyes as she nodded yes.

Nettie named an old friend she wanted to be the soloist and Father assured her the church choir would be on hand and reminded her that the Judith Circle was in charge of the funeral dinner.

“That’s Aunt Gertie’s circle,” Nettie said, and everyone assumed their elderly aunt would pass on this one so she could sit in the front rows with the rest of the family. Not a soul in town would expect Gertie Bach to do her circle duties for the funeral of her great-niece. But Nettie knew there were others who would step up.

“Visitation.” Father had only to say that one word to bring new tears around the table. The first thing they’d face in the ritual of saying goodbye was the visitation the night before the funeral. Visitation. Such a friendly, caring word of courtesy. Yet one that brought with it so much pain. This would be the first time any of them would see Amber—the family’s private “viewing” was scheduled for two hours before the doors opened to everyone else. Then they’d sit there, as their friends and neighbors filed pass the casket, and take the words of solace that were offered. Again and again, they’d say the same “thank you” to the same words of sorrow, because how many words are there to express this kind of grief?

“We could do it here, but K.C. can only seat two hundred twenty in his chapel,” Father continued. “I would expect far more.” He paused, to let everyone think a second. Father started to say, “We could do it at the church, of course…” when the youngest cousin offered, “Amber would want it at the school. In the gym. Where she played. She’d want her friends to see what can happen.”

You could hear Nettie’s breath suck in. Everyone looked at the girl—Dennis at his oldest daughter—as she lowered her eyes like she’d just said something awful.

“Yes. Yes. Yes,” Nettie repeated, her head thrown back to look beyond the ceiling. “Let them see what happens when they do stupid things. Let them see! You agree, Richard, don’t you? It’s a wonderful idea. These children think they’re going to live forever and they can do anything and it will be okay, and they’ve got to learn. This will help teach them, Richard, won’t it?”

Dennis, K.C., and Father Singer stared at Nettie like she was a loon, speaking out loud to her late husband. The women and girls in the room looked at the floor.

“I failed her,” Nettie proclaimed, as sure as a revival tent preacher. “I failed our daughter. Please forgive me, oh Richard, please forgive me. I should have never let her go out with that goddamned Johnny Roth. I tried to stop her but I should have forbidden it. I should have put my foot down. You would have. You must hate me for failing our girl. I’m sorry, Richard. I’m so sorry. I failed you so badly. And now I won’t join you. We won’t get our everlasting life together in heaven. I’ll burn in hell when my time comes.”

Arlene jumped up and enveloped her sister in her arms and soothed, “Don’t Nettie, don’t.”

Mary Ann put her hand in front of her mouth and whispered to her brother, “She does this all the time. She’s always talking to him—her dead husband. Sometimes she acts like he’s talking back.”

Dennis was bug-eyed, his face a mixture of fear and embarrassment.

Father Singer saw a woman outside her mind—the kind the church purged—but he knew it wasn’t the devil that had hold of his parishioner. It was grief. Unbearable, intolerable grief.

In all his years, K.C. had never witnessed anything this creepy.

Then it was over. Nettie lowered her gaze and hugged her sister back and calmly said, “Where were we?” Around the room people cleared their throats and resettled themselves in their chairs and pretended nothing had happened.

“Do I smell cinnamon? I swear I smell cinnamon.”

Mary Ann gave Dennis a look of, “Yeah, that too.”

K.C. got his composure back and moved on. He laid on the table a variety of memorial cards that would be custom-ordered for Amber and handed out at the visitation and the funeral. Nettie turned to her nieces, looking for their guidance, and they chose one with the picture of a pink rose entwined in a rosary over the words “In Loving Memory.”

“Amber loved pink roses,” the cousins said, as Nettie ran her hand over the picture.

“Yes, she did. They were her favorite.” Nettie already knew the funeral spray with “Beloved Daughter” on the white sash would be pink roses.

Nettie chose a consoling poem entitled “Safely Home” to go with a picture of Amber. She read it out loud. “I am home in heaven, dear ones; Oh, so happy and so bright! There is perfect joy and beauty in this everlasting light.”

Nettie wanted the obituary to appear in the local paper, the Wahpeton paper, and the
Fargo Forum
. K.C. said he’d take care of that.

Father had all he needed and got up to leave. He didn’t have to ask the touchy question about cremation—the church was finally allowing it—because he knew Nettie didn’t approve of it. He was grateful for that, because he didn’t either. But he allowed funeral masses for the cremated, even if his predecessor hadn’t. He gave everyone a blessing.

K.C. knew the hardest part was about to begin. He softly said, “Nettie, let me show you the caskets.” She looked at him like he had two heads, as though she wasn’t here planning a funeral at all, but maybe just stopped in, and then the reality of the day came back to her and the tears poured out of her eyes again.

It took a few moments for her to compose herself. Her brother even suggested that he and their sisters could do this part, but Nettie said she was going to pick it out herself. The cousins decided they’d already seen enough, heard enough, and they begged off going back into the casket showroom.

“I think I have the perfect thing,” K.C. offered, as he led Nettie past his top-of-the-line solid bronze casket—$7,425—and stopped at the lavender casket with silver hardware from Batesville that went for $1,860. It was lined with a light-pink crepe velvet.

Nettie almost collapsed as she looked at the casket that would hold her daughter. Dennis rushed forward to hold her up, as she covered her eyes with her hands and sobbed. Her sisters weren’t doing any better, and if he wasn’t using both hands to hold up his sister, Dennis would have been wiping away his own tears.

Sister Arlene had a strange thought as she stood there, looking at the steel box gussied up to look elegant. She and her sisters loved to go shopping and would look at every single thing before making their selection—money was always dear and not to be squandered on the wrong choice. But here they were, about to spend more than they’d ever spent on anything except a refrigerator, and comparison shopping was the farthest thing from their minds.

“It’s perfect,” Nettie finally said. “The pink lining…” And she could say no more.

“Yes, perfect,” Mary Ann said. Arlene repeated, “Perfect.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll take care of everything.” Everyone was so grateful for K.C. Nettie and her sisters rushed to leave, anxious to get out of the showroom.

Dennis lingered, whispering to himself, “This shouldn’t be happening. This isn’t right.”

K.C. was the only one who noticed Dennis’ face, his eyes glued to the lavender casket.

They weren’t the eyes of a man who agreed with his sisters that this was the perfect casket.

They weren’t the eyes of a man who was relieved this day was finally coming to an end.

They weren’t the eyes of an uncle grieving his niece.

They were the eyes of a man who wanted to kill somebody.

K.C. recognized those eyes. They were the eyes he saw when he looked in a mirror.

Chapter Four

Saturday, October 16—Sunday, October 17, 1999

Joya Bonner always loved Saturday mornings.

Unhurried, wake-up snuggles—sometimes sex—and intimate conversation possible only between a couple lying together. She loved these moments with Rob. They’d tell each other stories and share embarrassing moments. They’d laugh at themselves. They’d brag a little. They’d coo at one another. She was sure these mornings were the mortar of their relationship.

Today was different.

Rehashing last night’s revelations, they talked of strategies. How she’d tell her hard-nosed editor and keep him in check. How he’d tell his whip-cracking chief and make him agree. Both knew they were walking a thin line with their bosses, but there was no turning back.

Rob’s arm around her shoulders got tighter and he pulled her closer.

“You’ve got to be very careful, Joya.” Rob sounded so serious—his cop/cop voice, like when he announced “you have the right to remain silent…” It was a voice of power and certainty, like a cloak of safety for her to wear around her shoulders.

“Really. Because it’s not a game when you mess with the Mafia. They’re dangerous. Those boys have their own rules—you’ve already had one reporter blown up in this town. What does that tell you about how they look at you guys? Sometimes I think they’d rather go after you than us. So promise me you’ll be careful.”

Joya wrapped herself in her boyfriend’s concern and promised to be careful. Not wanting to sound too girly, she added for the sake of her ego, “But don’t worry, honey. I’ve faced bad guys before.”

“Not like this, Joya. Not like this.”

He hugged her tight and kissed her hairline and whispered, “Please, please take this seriously and be careful.” That wasn’t a cop’s voice at all. That was the voice of a man truly worried that a woman he loved was in danger.

“I will, darling, I will.” She wasn’t fooling.

It was time for them both to get on with the day. He was taking his kids to breakfast and then the zoo, where an elephant painted pictures holding a brush in her trunk. Joya never asked about the rest of the weekend, knowing there would be times when Rob and his ex would be doing something with the kids and she didn’t want to know about that.

She got ready for her morning walk, pulling on her University of Michigan sweatshirt this time of year—a tee-shirt with the same logo in warmer months—and was out the door with her homemade cassette tapes. Her walk took her through the historic neighborhoods of downtown Phoenix, the only part of this sprawling metropolis that resembled old Arizona.

Today she was listening to the driving blues of her friend, Hans Olson, a legend in these parts and a superstar in Europe, even if he hadn’t gotten the kind of nationwide success he deserved.

His guitar and harmonica and infectious lyrics kept her moving, which was the whole point. Besides Tina Turner and Michael Jackson, nobody could get her ass down the sidewalk like Hans Olson.

She didn’t hear Hans’ words so much now as the words Rob had whispered in their bed. How she was supposed to “be careful?” Besides the obvious fact of not walking up to the guy and saying, “Hi, Sammy.”

The words kept swirling. “Be careful…Dangerous.…Please.”

She was approaching the Burton Barr Public Library on Central Avenue, named in honor of the late Republican lawmaker even Democrats loved, when she heard the gunshot. Joya hit the sidewalk so hard, she bounced. The palms of both hands stung from the impact. Her left knee was gashed and bleeding. Her right knee wore a long scrape, like someone had tried to sandpaper off the skin. Joya realized she was crying, but didn’t know if it was from pain or panic.

A twenty-something on a bike came to a quick stop, letting his bike drop as he ran to her.

“Ma’am, are you okay?”

Did she really look old enough to be called ma’am?

“I think they’re shooting at me,” Joya hysterically blurted out before she had time to think. It startled not only her, but her Samaritan. His eyes darted around to see if he was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

“Didn’t you hear that shot?” She regained at least some composure.

The young man shook his head like he was clearing cobwebs. “No. That wasn’t a shot. It was a car backfiring. I saw it. Black smoke pouring out the tailpipe. Cars like that shouldn’t be allowed on our streets. Here, let me help you up.”

Joya, coming back to her senses, felt foolish—a car backfired! Not an assassination attempt! Jeez, drama queen, let a little helpful suggestion from your boyfriend set you off.

A security guard from the library rushed up the sidewalk—he’d seen her hit the ground and unlocked the twenty-foot glass door to come to her aid.

“Are you okay? Oh, my, that’s some nasty bruises. Oh, aren’t you Joya Bonner? Miss Bonner, here, let me help you.”

The twenty-something looked at her with new respect—she was
somebody,
but he had no idea who. Somebody who had reason to believe she was a target. He didn’t want to know who she was. He wanted very much to be on his way.

He gratefully turned the somebody woman over to the library guard, picked up his bike, and rode off. Later, much later, when he realized who she was, he’d understand why she was worried.

The guard held Joya’s arm as she steadied herself. “Come in—let’s get that blood washed off. You’ve got dirt in that gash.”

The guard served as a human crutch while she limped into the library that wouldn’t be open to the public for hours. She eased down on a bench in the entryway. The wall was etched with private donors’ names—hers among them. She waited for the guard to return from the restroom with wet paper towels.

She felt so stupid. So embarrassed. She better buck up like this was nothing. She took the paper towel and swabbed her knee, thanking the guard profusely.

“I’m such a clumsy cluck,” she told him, hoping he’d been out of earshot for her hysteria. “Trip over my own feet! You’re so kind to help me.”

“Of course, Miss Bonner. Of course.”

“You know, I’m coming back here tonight for Dinner in the Stacks.” She tried to sound normal. “I’ve got a new dress. Sure glad it’s long so nobody will see this mess.” She laughed out loud and he chuckled with her.

Her right knee was already turning blue. The gash stopped bleeding. Her palms still stung.

The guard could feel her unease and tried to help: “I hear they’re expecting six hundred people tonight. Best ever!”

“I know. We should raise a lot of money. Lord knows the library needs it.”

They chatted a couple minutes. Joya stood up and tried out her legs, testing if she could make it home on her own.

“I could get someone to drive you home in a little while—I can’t leave, I’m the only one here, but someone else is scheduled to work in about a half hour.”

“I don’t live far. I’m going to be okay. See, I can walk just fine. You’ve been so helpful. I thank you so much.”

She walked as straight as she could while she knew he was still watching, then limped the rest of the way home—wiping away angry tears at her overreaction, her idiocy, and the realization that she was more scared than she knew.

She wouldn’t mention any of this to Rob—or anyone else. This wasn’t what “be careful” meant.

Normally after her walk she’d shower, mix up a banana-orange smoothie, drink a pot of French-pressed coffee, do the Saturday Sudoku puzzle in the
Republic
and then grab her African shopping basket for the Phoenix Farmer’s Market downtown. Today she skipped the market to rest her legs, and steadied her nerves with a shot of Patron tequila. Cactus liquor was medicinal and she needed it today.

In her recliner, she pushed the remote control to bring up her taped shows:
The Young and the Restless
,
Sex and the City
,
The Sopranos
. Today she’d skip
The Sopranos
. But if she’d been quizzed on the shows before her eyes, she couldn’t have recited a single plot line. She was busy thinking about Sammy, and Rob’s revelations, and her need to get under control. She felt both thrilled and disturbed.

Here she was on the verge of a mega story. But to get to it, she had to trust a cop. Personal feelings or not, it was still tough to overcome her natural aversion to trusting a cop.

For most of America, the police were always the good guys. It was bred as respect for authority, twined with the belief that being on the side of the law was the only place to be. Of course, a steady diet of cop shows on TV showed they were always right, always catching bad guys and always forgiven any transgression because they were the good guys.

Joya knew there were lots of good cops—Rob was one of them—but she also knew the other side of that story, and it wasn’t pretty.

Deceit, disrespect for the law, the ends justifying any means, protecting their own no matter what, destroying evidence, choking prisoners, inventing evidence, lying on the stand—these were not the sins most saw when they looked at a cop, but Joya could cite chapter and verse to prove that they were also part of some cops’ DNA.

Sheriff Arpaio’s publicity stunt over the fake bomb was just the latest evidence. She’d known for a long time that you couldn’t always trust a cop—since she studied what really happened inside the Phoenix Police Department when the
Republic
crack investigative reporter Don Bolles was assassinated at noon on June 2, 1976.

Joya was still in high school when he was murdered, but when she moved to Arizona, she attended journalism workshops on his techniques and reporting tips. He’d loved taking new reporters under his wing, and telling his war stories about covering the Mafia and public corruption. He’d once written a series of articles detailing how the mob was moving into Arizona, taking over legitimate businesses, laundering money, killing people who got in their way. He was particularly distrustful of Emprise, the company that ran the dog tracks in Arizona.

He knew his investigations were dangerous, but that never stopped him. Couldn’t have stopped him. He seemed to revel in the peril—it was the mark of a fearless reporter. But he also felt confident that the unwritten code would keep him out of harm’s way—the mob code that said you never killed a cop or a reporter, because the repercussions were too severe. Scare them, beat them up, okay, but never kill them. At least that’s what everyone thought until they killed Bolles.

Joya always wished she’d known Bolles, that she could have been one of his students. He was one of her idols—right up there with the first “muckraker,” Ida Tarbell. As she nursed her bruised knee and bruised ego this Saturday morning, she thought of how he’d have handled this Sammy story. She smiled, thinking he’d be jumping with glee, much like she was.

Then she remembered something else they’d taught at those workshops. Don Bolles knew what “be careful” meant, and he took precautions so nobody could ambush him. Joya so clearly remembered that he stuck scotch tape on the hood of his car, always checking to be sure it wasn’t broken by someone tampering with the engine. The tape was still on his white Datsun when it blew up at a hotel in downtown Phoenix. The precaution had been worthless because nobody tampered with his engine. They put the bomb under his car—right under his legs.

Joya let her mind page through that horrible day, which had been chronicled in newspapers across the nation. Bolles got a call from a dog breeder and small-time hood named John Adamson—he claimed to have information on a new Mafia scheme in Arizona. Bolles should have ignored it. He’d walked away from investigative work when he found his own newspaper wouldn’t push for the reforms that were needed.

Instead, he was covering the Arizona Legislature—he joked that he’d gone from the sublime to the ridiculous—and, by all rights, should have told this Adamson guy he wasn’t interested.

But even old dogs still like to hunt, and seasoned investigative reporters are like old dogs. He couldn’t help himself. If there were something new he didn’t know about, he wanted to know. Bolles agreed to the meet, demanding—yet another of his precautions—that it be in a public place. Adamson suggested a downtown hotel, and that sounded fine to Bolles. They’d meet at 11:30. Bolles hung around the hotel for a half hour before he gave up and left to find himself some lunch. That night—his wedding anniversary—he was going to a nice dinner with his wife before they took in the hottest new movie,
All the President’s Men
. He got into his car and turned the key.

Bolles lived for eleven days after the bombing, as they amputated one limb after another. By the time he died on June 13, they’d taken both legs and an arm. The entire nation was reeling in disbelief. All the time, the police chief of Phoenix was swearing his men and women officers would find the killers and bring them to justice. The chief had personally made that pledge to the packed
Republic
newsroom.

Every story Joya ever read about Don Bolles included the awe that he named his killers as he lay dying.

“They finally got me. The Mafia. Emprise. Find John [Adamson].”

It was years before anyone knew that while Bolles lay dying, the police department’s Organized Crime Bureau was purging files on some of these very people, as well as the leading politicians of Arizona. They shredded some files; threw others away; renumbered their file system trying to cover up the deletions. Nobody ever explained why they were protecting the very people Bolles had named in his last cogent breath, but protecting them they were.

Joya always regretted that she hadn’t discovered the deceit. Her paper’s competition, the
Phoenix New Times
, broke that story. Besides her own alternative weekly, nobody much cared why there was a purge or what was lost or why the investigative unit had gone to such trouble to cover it all up. The
Republic
ignored the story—their own guy had been murdered, and they ignored the story! Television stations took their cues on what was news from the
Republic
, so they were mute, too. Besides, TV reporters in those days were hired for their good looks and stay-in-place hair, not their investigative skills.