Monica Ferris_Needlecraft Mysteries_01 (10 page)

“No, I'm back on first watch. Gotta be up pushing my squad first thing in the morning. Mind if I call you about this later?”

“If you got anything of value to tell me, be my guest.”

The phone started ringing early Thursday, first a reporter wanting details, then Irene Potter offering to open the shop—which offer Betsy curtly refused—then another reporter, then someone named Alice who went on and on about how everyone who did needlework would miss her, each word scalding Betsy's heart. When the woman slowed enough that Betsy could get a word in, Betsy thanked her through clenched teeth and hung up. Before it could ring again, she took the receiver off the hook. And she discovered that no one buzzed at the door more than three times before going away. She spent the entire day watching television, stupid show after stupid show. She didn't turn the lights on at nightfall, but sat up for hours in the darkness. But she did not cry. At three A.M. she put the phone back on the hook and went to bed.

The Hennepin County Medical Examiner's call woke her early Friday. A woman said they had released Margot's body and someone needed to make arrangements for it to be taken away.

Betsy said she would do so, and wandered the apartment in a mild panic for five minutes. Then she recalled Jill saying there was one funeral home she could trust—but what was its name? She picked up the slim phone directory for Excelsior, Shorewood, Deephaven, and Tonka Bay, and saw there was exactly one funeral home in Excelsior, Huber's. That was it. She phoned and got an answering service, and left an urgent message.

She had just finished brushing her teeth when the phone rang. It was Irene Potter, asking if there was anything Betsy wanted done.

“You want to do me a favor?” said Betsy. “Stay off the phone. I'm waiting for an important call and I don't want the phone tied up.”

She was still trying to decipher the coffeemaker's methods when the phone rang again, and it was Paul Huber.

Instead of the oily voice she expected, Huber sounded perfectly ordinary, except he was also brisk, knowledgeable, and efficient. He said he would bring Margot's body to the funeral home; yes, he knew the procedure, it was all routine and she needn't worry. He then made an appointment with her for first thing that afternoon, to discuss the rest of the arrangements.

Betsy sat curled in Margot's chair, sipping coffee and worrying. Didn't funerals cost a great deal of money? Betsy had some money, not much, and most of it was in an IRA, inaccessible.

How was she going to pay for this?

What did other people do?

Betsy knew there were special life-insurance policies people took out to cover final expenses. But Betsy remembered when her father had died; it took weeks for insurance companies to pay off. Betsy needed money by this afternoon.

Maybe funeral homes allowed people to charge funerals.

Betsy had a charge card. She used it sparingly, having learned to fear debt during her first marriage. So it was nowhere near its limit, which on the other hand was a modest five thousand dollars. She had hoped to save it for an emergency—but surely this was an emergency. She couldn't store Margot in the refrigerator until she saved enough money to bury her. Was it bad manners to ask a funeral director if he took Visa?

And was the three thousand seven hundred dollars left in credit enough?

Maybe Margot had cash somewhere. Jill had told her that Margot emptied the cash drawer every night. Where did she put the money? Betsy remembered walking to the bank's night deposit with Margot on Monday evening. But not all the money went into the bank—she needed some to prime the drawer every morning.

Betsy looked toward the little hall that led to Margot's bedroom. Betsy had to go see, go pry. Feeling guilty as a child about to steal a quarter from her mother's purse, she slipped down the short hall to the bedroom door.

Margot's bedroom was beautiful, with designer elements Betsy had not expected. The bed had slim iron pillars and a translucent lace canopy. There was a comforter, all ruffles of ivory lace, a shade lighter than the walls. A thin scent of Margot's perfume lingered on the still air.

The rug on the floor was thick and lush, iron gray with a gold and green fringe. The window had layers of ivory lace curtains pinched and pulled into a complicated pattern. The small, low dresser was wood, stained gray, the low chair in front of it had an iron frame and a plush seat. The mirror over the dresser was round. A pair of badly snagged panty hose draped half out of the otherwise empty wastebasket. The desk in the comer had a modern-looking computer on it, with an ergonomically correct office chair and a two-drawer wooden file cabinet beside it, the bottom drawer not quite shut.

Betsy searched the desk drawers first. She found three checkbooks. One belonged to Crewel World and showed a balance of $2,523.50. The other was a personal checkbook and showed a balance of $372.80. The third was a Piper Jaffray money market account with a balance of close to four thousand dollars. And there was also a savings-account passbook showing a total balance of $3,253.74.

Betsy rubbed her nose, her sign of befuddlement. This was more money than she had expected to find. Why would Margot keep all her money where she could get at it? Didn't she believe in IRAs or certificates of deposit, for heaven's sake? Or was there even more hidden away somewhere? Probably not much—Margot wasn't really wealthy, or she wouldn't be living in a rented apartment.

Not that it mattered in the present emergency. Betsy could not sign Margot's name to anything. What she needed was cash.

The next drawer held sixty dollars in paper and silver, neatly lined up. Is that all it took to prime a cash register?

She could find no more cash, so apparently that was all that was needed. The dresser held perfumes in one drawer, cosmetics in another, and hair curlers, bobby pins, and an electric curling iron in the middle.

Betsy found Margot's plain black purse in the closet and opened it. Inside the wallet were forty-six dollars and ninety-six cents.

That was more than Betsy's wallet, but hardly enough to pay for a funeral.

Now wait, now wait, surely these Huber people were used to this. Unexpected deaths happened all the time; not everyone had access to the cash to pay for a funeral. Doubtless the people at Huber's would know what to do.

Which is exactly the attitude funeral directors enjoy encountering, thought Betsy in a sudden flash: customers coming in all confused and scared. That's how some of those really expensive funerals happen. You go in and hold out all your assets and hope they won't hurt you too badly. But they do, they do.

So it was with her chin firmly set and both hands on the closed top of her purse that Betsy walked up past the post office in the cool morning sunshine, rounded the corner, and crossed Second Street to Huber's, a whited sepulchre with bloodred geraniums in a planter by the entrance.

The lights were dim inside, the carpet soft underfoot. A dark young man with a thick mustache and a Mona Lisa smile stood waiting. Betsy had a vague feeling she'd seen him before.

“Mr. Huber?” said Betsy.

“Ms. Devonshire,” said Mr. Huber. “Come with me.”

He led her to a small office with dark wood paneling, soft lighting, and samples of ground-level grave markers in the comer. He seated her and went behind the desk.

“I am very saddened by Margot's death,” he said.

“You knew her personally?”

“Yes, of course,” he replied, by his voice a little puzzled at her tone. “We're both members of Lafayette Country Club, and we worked together on a Habitat for Humanity house in Minneapolis this summer.”

That hadn't occurred to Betsy, though it should have. Margot had said that in Excelsior everyone knew everyone else. But Betsy hadn't known her sister was a member of a country club. Of course, that probably didn't mean out here in the wilderness what it did in, say, Rancho Santa Fe.

Still, better tell the bad news up front. “I haven't much money,” she said. “What I do have is tied up in an IRA, and of course I don't have any way to access what assets Margot had, so this is going to have to be a ... an inexpensive funeral. I hope you understand.”

Mr. Huber was frowning now, though more in puzzlement than anger. “You haven't spoken with Margot's attorney yet?”

“I haven't talked to anyone, much less Margot's attorney, whose name I don't know. I'm practically a stranger here in town. But there's no time now for that. I know this has to be taken care of promptly, so I want to tell you right now that it can't cost a whole lot.”

“What do you consider ‘a whole lot'?”

“Why don't you tell me what the very least is I can spend, and we'll see if I can meet even that amount?”

Mr. Huber lifted his hands in a gesture of surrender. “Very well.” He helped Betsy fill out a death certificate and write an obituary. He said he'd take care of sending it to the local papers. He was kind and patient through all of this, but then they were back to the big question of the funeral.

“I want her cremated,” said Betsy, “so we don't have to do all that chemical stuff, do we? Can you do that right here in your place?”

“No, we don't the facilities. There are two choices in the area. There's Fairview Cemetery in Minneapolis. They can make it part of a service—”

“No, I want a funeral service in a church.”

“Margot was a member of Trinity Episcopal.”

Betsy nodded. “Yes. I'm going to call the rector today.”

“You'll find Reverend John a pleasure to work with.”

He led Betsy upstairs to look at the urns. And here she weakened. She picked a very nice Chinese-vase style in a pearl color with cranberry-colored lotus blossoms on it. Three hundred and forty-nine dollars was the price, which she thought outrageous, but what could she do? The polished wooden box wasn't much less, and it looked like something you keep recipes in.

They went back downstairs to the little office and Mr. Huber got out his calculator. “Two thousand four hundred dollars,” he announced with a little sigh.

By now Betsy had a fierce headache. She'd cut every comer she could think of, and it still seemed an enormous sum. She wanted to weep and change her mind about the lotus urn, but she hadn't the strength.

“Do you take Visa?” she asked.

They did.

7

Paul Huber sat at his desk for a while after Betsy Devonshire left. It was not uncommon for survivors dealing with unexpected death to look for someone to be angry at. Often they settled on the funeral director. After all, he was doing unknowable ... things to the body, and charging for it besides, which put him right out of the category of friend.

While Betsy Devonshire was not the worst example of this phenomenon, she was one of the saddest he had seen in a very long time.

He wondered if he should have been more persistent in telling her that there really should be a wake of some sort, where all her friends and the many people Margot had touched in her life could get together informally and talk, and pay their last respects.

And that there was no need to be parsimonious about the funeral service.

But Ms. Devonshire was in no mood whatsoever to listen to advice from a funeral director, who, so far as she was concerned, was interested only in lining his pockets.

He shook his head and blew his nose and went to deal with the body of a friend he had long admired.

“Oh, my dear, I tried to call you yesterday, but couldn't get through,” said the pleasant voice on the phone. It was Reverend John Rettger. “I'm so sorry about Margot.”

“Thank you, Reverend. I'm calling about the funeral.”

“Yes, of course. Do you want to come here, or shall I come over there? As it happens, I'm free right now.”