Murder in the Hearse Degree (9 page)

I squinted at the woman’s electric citrus wardrobe. Say it ain’t so.

Stella lifted her bulbous nose into the air. “All the girl needed was a little guidance. I don’t know how long she’d been living under a rock, but I’ll tell you two this much, I dragged her out into the sun and I’m plenty proud of it. She looked good enough to eat by the time I was through with her. You could see it in her face, too. She felt a whole lot better about herself. You boys probably wouldn’t understand. Men can go three days without shaving and girls’ll still crawl over you, isn’t that right?”

Neither Pete nor I responded quickly enough. Stella elbowed Pete in the ribs.

“Isn’t that right?”

“If you say,” Pete said. He was sounding pretty helpless.

“I do. And I’m just saying in this world it’s the woman who’s got to do all the prettying up. That’s just how it is. Now myself I’ve never had a problem with that personally. But I told Sophie. I said girl, you’ve got to blossom. You’ve got to make it happen. There’s too many other pretty flowers out there.” Stella wagged her head. “I just cannot believe she’s dead. Poor girl didn’t get much out of this life then, did she?”

“We understand from Sophie’s last employer that Sophie was working for a caterer when she was living here,” Pete said. “Do you know anything about that?”

“That’s right. She got a job helping serve food. She didn’t cook it, she just walked around and handed it out. I’m not sure the girl could cook water. One time she brought home a whole bag of chicken on a stick. There was some sort of peanut goop all over them, but they weren’t half bad after you washed them off. The chicken was fine.”

I asked, “Would you know the name of the caterer?”

“The name? Nope. No idea. Food something something. Sophie wasn’t exactly the world’s biggest talker, you know. I had to hold up both ends when I’d get her to sit down for a talk. Practically had to crawl into the little girl’s mouth sometimes just to grab a word out of her.”

She cackled again. Deep within my soul, glass shattered.

“Poor little thing, though. She was foreign, you know. It’s very sad. Her father dying like that. You know about that?”

“We do,” Pete said.

Stella clucked. “Little girl comes all the way over here to the New World and ends up serving sticks of chicken to total strangers. What kind of life is that? I remember the first time she put on that little white catering dress of hers, though. It was right after Elsbeth and I got her all spruced up. She was as pretty as a lollipop. I told her in that dress of hers she looked just like one of the cadets at the academy. In fact, some of the parties Sophie worked were at the academy. I’d tell her to watch out, they might think she’s an enlisted girl. I’d tell her feel free to bring home one of those enlisted men sometime and I’ll take a look at him for her. Oh the girl could blush.” She shook her head. “But all she ever did bring home were those goopy chicken pieces.”

Just then a phone rang from elsewhere in the house. Stella excused herself—slapping her hand down on Pete’s knee as she struggled to extract herself from the couch—and went off to answer the phone. The woman’s absence critically darkened the already drab room.

“Hey, she’s cute,” I said to Pete.

Pete was looking around the room. “This is depressing.”

I shrugged. “Nothing a new coat of paint and a hurricane couldn’t fix.”

I conjured the picture of Sophie and tried to imagine her with the bob cut Stella had described. It seemed her head would be three times smaller.

Stella came back into the room a minute later.

“That was one of the witches,” she announced. “Her power went out last night and the ninny only just now noticed. All the mint juleps have thawed. I could spit.”

Before she could flounce back down on the couch, Pete and I rose. We thanked Stella for her time. She looked at Pete like he was a great big cookie.

“No need to rush off,” she said.

Pete seemed to feel differently. He was angling toward the front door as if drawn there by a magnet. Stella stood out on the front steps and posed for us in the doorway as we headed back to the car.

“Now wave,” I said to Pete as he fired up the engine. Stella was wagging her large paw. Pete lifted his hand to the window. He pulled away from the curb and we were several blocks away when I reminded Pete that he hadn’t given the woman his card.

“We could go back,” I said.

“We could also shoot ourselves in the heads.”

As we drove back through town I tried to convince Pete that we should stick around for dinner then catch Lee’s early show at the George Washington Inn.

“I mean, since we happen to be in Annapolis anyway.”

Pete refused.

“I’m sure she’d like to see you,” I said.

“Don’t do this, okay?”

“It was just a suggestion,” I said.

Pete’s jaw worked hard. “Well here’s a suggestion. I’m screwing my life up just fine without any extra help from you.”

“That’s not a suggestion,” I pointed out. “That’s an observation.”

I couldn’t tell if it was the engine of Pete’s car in need of a tune-up or whether Munger himself was responsible for the low growling sound. We continued up Main Street, right past the George Washington Inn. Pete didn’t so much as glance at the building.

“Tough guy,” I said.

“I don’t even hear you.” He grabbed a pack of cigarettes off the dashboard and shook it, then pulled one of the cigarettes out of the pack with his lips. He tossed the pack back onto the dashboard and pushed in his cigarette lighter with his thumb. “You’re not even in this car.”

 

 

The accoutrements provided by
Clifford for Oliver Engelhart’s wake included an ivory walking stick, a shiny antique gold pocket watch, a pair of white bifocals on a chain, a Meerschaum pipe, a purple velvet throw, a standing Tiffany lamp, a leather-bound omnibus volume of Kipling and a small Nepalese carpet. All he needed was a stuffed mongoose and a pith helmet. Sam and I brought Mr. Engelhart up from the basement and got him set up in Parlor One.

I slipped the bifocal chain around Mr. Engelhart’s neck and rested the glasses on his chest, then wedged the Kipling into his right hand, tucking his index finger into the pages as if he were keeping his place. Clifford had set the gold pocket watch to 11:15, the time of Oliver Engelhart’s arrival on the planet, according to the gentleman’s birth certificate. I placed the watch in the dead man’s left hand, the lid flipped open, then worked a white carnation into his buttonhole. Enough insouciance to choke a horse.

It was five o’clock by the time I had finished and I dragged Billie in to show off my work. She applauded like a guest at the opera. Clifford arrived in advance of the mourners and spent a few minutes arranging the purple throw along the open lid of the casket. We arranged the Nepalese carpet just so, then set up the Tiffany lamp off to the side of the casket and lowered the parlor lights. Clifford leaned the ivory walking stick up against the casket, then began to cry quietly.

“Your friend is looking very jaunty,” I said, handing him a handkerchief.

For the most part, Mr. Engelhart’s mourners were a chatty and joke-telling bunch. They were terrifically supportive of Clifford, who continued going in and out of sniffles all evening. They were all quite caught up in posing with their departed friend, both in single shots as well as several group shots. I was asked to take the group shots, and of course I obliged. Everyone gathered around the tableau and posed. I took several shots of the gang all looking appropriately hangdog and morose, as well as a few hammy shots, fake fainting spells and all the rest.

I went home and changed into my civvies then swung by the Oyster for a late dinner. Frank was on duty, so overall the atmosphere was about as hopping as my embalming room. I ordered a lousy hamburger from Frank and he obliged. It tasted nominally better with a Murphy’s stout, more so with a Maker’s chaser. I stared into the mirror behind the bar a good long time until I was able to conjure a reflection seated next to me. Sophie Potts. The girl didn’t even look old enough for a legal drink, so I bought one for her. I drank it for her, too. Gentleman Hitch. I held the glass up under my chin.
What happened to you, kid? You look like a nice quiet girl. Why would someone have it in for you?

Ether will not answer. And that’s all she was.

 

I wound up playing some darts with a woman named Darlene Darling. I thought she was slurring her words when she first told me her name. Darlene
was
a darling, but halfway through our third game she told me her boyfriend was a stevedore. I have a strict rule against getting on the wrong side of stevedores so I let her win the game and then retired to the bar. Darlene Darling came over a few minutes later and pulled up a stool next to me. Right where Sophie had been sitting. I thought she’d look cute if she giggled so I told her what I did for a living. I was right. I ordered up a round and discovered soon after that my tongue had gotten loose. I found myself telling Darlene all about Sophie and the bridge and the speculation about whether Sophie had jumped to her death. Darlene had a sympathetic ear. She also had a funny laugh. And of course she also had the stevedore boyfriend, so I kept to my best behavior. At some point I heard myself telling Darlene about the beer truck that ran over my family. I wasn’t sure how it was I had gotten around to that sprightly conversation, but I must have done a good job of telling the story, for Darlene was in tears before I finished. That was when her stevedore boyfriend showed up. Luckily, he turned out to be an easygoing character and he took Darlene under his wing and let me buy him a drink. Darlene blurted out to him that I was an undertaker and a gentleman. She also tried to tell him the story of Sophie and the bridge, but she didn’t do a terribly good job of it.

I excused myself at that point and slipped off the stool. I swam over to the pay phone in the rear of the bar. It seemed an awfully long way away. I made a call. It was a short call. Maybe a little belligerent. The call was to Mike Gellman. I told him I was too tired for niceties and asked could we get together the next day.

“Why?” Mike said.

“Three guesses,” I said. “And the first two don’t count.” At least I remembered something from grade school. I had a pistols-at-dawn tone to my voice. . . but we settled for lunch at one. Weapons unspecified.

Darlene was drinking coffee when I got back. Her boyfriend was nibbling on a pickled egg. Darlene looked up at me over the rim of her mug. Her eyes were tired and sad. Her boyfriend slapped me on the back and offered to buy me a drink. I slapped him back and said, “No, thanks.” He fell into a pretend boxing crouch so we had to go through that. I joined him for a pickled egg, then I knocked back a cup of coffee of my own. It didn’t really take. Back home I dropped into bed. At least I assume that’s what happened, as that’s where I woke up in the morning. I must have been asleep before I hit the mattress. I dreamed I was falling from a bridge. Slow motion. In the dream I was falling on my back, facing upward. I could see somebody up on the bridge. Whoever it was they were turning away. The last part of the dream I can remember was sensing that I was about to hit the water. I recall taking a very large breath, one that I knew would have to last me an eternity. I also remember my feeling about it all.

I was furious.

 

 

My head was humming
a Verdi tune when I woke up.
Il Travatore
. The so-called anvil chorus. Gotta be those sinister pickled eggs.

My reflection in the bathroom mirror mocked me, shadowboxing like a happy clown as I just stood there and took it. Dressing for death didn’t exactly perk me up either. My tie slithered in my fingers like a well-oiled snake; it took me nearly ten passes to get the job done right. My shiny shoes took me out the door before I was really ready. As Sam and I rolled the Engelhart casket out of Parlor One he put an amused eyeball on me. He kept shifting it back and forth between me and the Engelhart casket.

“Which one of you are we burying?”

Aunt Billie was shuffling down the steps in a bathrobe she’d picked up a few centuries back. A cigarette was dangling out of her mouth. Her hair was a silver dust mop.

“You look like an old madam,” I said to her as she approached me with an English muffin.

“Say ah.”

I did and she poked the English muffin into my mouth.

“That’ll have to keep you.”

Sam and I got Oliver Engelhart loaded into the hearse, topped him off with a selection of flowers, and hit the road. I made Sam stop singing, then I made him stop tapping his hand against the steering wheel.

“What am I supposed to do,” he asked. “I’ve got the music in me.”

We delivered Oliver Engelhart into the cold cold ground without any catastrophes. At the grave site, Mr. Engelhart’s cronies were a bit more somber than they had been at the wake. A tenor with the Lyric Opera Company chorus sang something Italian. Not the anvil chorus; it was quite beautiful, in fact. Oliver Engelhart’s corgi—named Porgy—had been brought along. The dog was in a shoulder harness, with a little black band fitted onto his front left leg. Porgy was a bewildered-looking pup, one ear up, one ear down. He was suffering from a cold and kept sneezing in violent disproportion to his small body mass. Unfortunately, Porgy was a humper; he was all over Clifford’s shin during the singing of the aria. But Clifford was in such a free flow of tears at that point that he didn’t seem to notice.