Stranger in the Room: A Novel (23 page)

“How about sales figures?” I asked. “Volume or whatever they call it in the cremation biz.”

“Joe Ray Junior is doing about the same volume as his father did.”

“Maybe he upgraded to a more efficient system.”

Neil shook his head. “Thought of that. No big expenses. I remembered the name and model number on that crematory and checked it out. It’s almost thirty years old. Shit should be breaking. And replacement parts are expensive. The new ones are modular, state-of-the-art, but the old ones are slower, overheat, have to be cooled down in between customers or you have visible emissions.”

“Vapors,” I said, and Neil nodded. A pair of golfers selected a club from their cart down on the green, shaded their eyes, sized up the course. “Did you happen to find a bank account?”

“Sure did. Joe Ray pays himself seven hundred a week. Automatic deposit. No other deposits. Mrs. Kirkpatrick gets fifteen hundred.”

“So Joe Ray Senior dies a couple of years ago, business stays about the same but overhead drops significantly?” I picked up a knife, spread blackberry butter over a pancake, held it like a piece of toast, and took a bite.

“Yep. Overhead’s way down. Prices are higher too. The business is definitely more profitable now. Doesn’t sound good, does it?”

“Sounds like maybe the equipment isn’t being used a lot.” I wished again I’d had time to test the oven.

“But the bodies are still rolling in.”

“And the Wades and the Huckabys have urns full of cement mix.”

We worked on breakfast in silence. The potatoes were white and
cubed, seasoned with rosemary and fresh lemony thyme, cooked with red and green bell peppers with a little crisp on the skin.

“This is really getting weird,” Neil said.

“No shit. You get any sleep?”

“I had trouble. All that creepy stuff. This is my fourth cup.”

“I want to see what’s in that barn. You think you can make Mary Kate behave?”

“Sure,” Neil said. “I think she has a little crush on me.”

“Or vice versa.”

“Well, the old broad does have an ass kinda like a sixteen-year-old shotputter.”

“That’s disgusting.”

“You started it.”

W
e pulled into Mrs. Stargell’s gravel driveway a little after twelve and parked behind the house. I didn’t want to leave my Impala in plain sight. The Kirkpatricks would be jumpy after last night. The green barge Mary Kate called a car was parked in a freestanding carport. Ridged vertical panels were held up by metal poles attached to a frame. It was just wide enough for her huge Fleetwood and a bit of an eyesore here in beautiful Blue Ridge Mountain Valley.

“There she is,” Neil said. “The old hottie.”

I followed his gaze up stone steps to a back porch where Mary Kate Stargell gripped the railing with one hand and waved with the other like the Queen Mother about to set sail, a royal wave punctuated by perfect bridgework on full display. A knee-length yellow cotton dress was belted at the waist. Blue veins snaked down bony shins into slippers. I smiled. I couldn’t help myself.

She held the back door open and showed us to a kitchen that smelled of garlic and herbs and baking chicken, then buzzed around us like a woman who’d spent her life cooking for others and had relished it. I wondered how often that opportunity arose. Perhaps Mary Kate Stargell had a rich social life, but somehow I doubted it. She was a bit crusty round the edges, after all, and she had glommed on to us the way lonely people do.

Neil and I were seated on pine chairs with yellow tie-on cushions. I had absolutely no appetite after the enormous hotel breakfast. But Neil was ready. Neil is always ready to eat.

Mrs. Stargell placed a loaf of homemade bread in the center of the white-tiled tabletop. I smelled the yeast and saw flecks of rosemary. Fresh bread. It doesn’t matter if you’re hungry when there’s fresh bread.

A bony hand rested on Neil’s shoulder. She asked if he wanted anything else as she set his plate in front of him. I eyed it—chicken, skin on, browned, roasted asparagus with sprigs of thyme that had caramelized in the oven, potatoes whipped smooth with a little pat of butter melting down the stack. We had both been making a halfhearted effort to eat in a more humane and thoughtful way, local and free-range products mostly, and less meat in general. But let’s face it, Neil and I are the poster children for the flesh being weak. One piece of crispy chicken and our ethics cave like Anna Nicole Smith at a Vicodin lab. I placed my napkin in my lap and waited. After all, I didn’t want to be impolite.

“There you go, honey,” Mrs. Stargell said to me. “I hope you enjoy that.”

She had placed a single bowl of sticky white rice in front of me. I looked at it. I looked at Neil. I looked at her deceptively cute little face, the short white hair that hugged her tiny head, the overapplied blush to her fragile skim-milk cheeks. But her brown eyes were hard and mean and held mine easily. She smiled. I zoomed in on the row of fake teeth that I knew would outlive her.

“What’s wrong, Eggroll? Isn’t that what your people eat?”

Neil nearly blew an asparagus spear through his nose.

“Mrs. Stargell, I grew up right here in Georgia just like you did. Christ. How far up your own ass is your head, anyway?”

Mary Kate snatched a gravy boat from the table and tilted it over my bowl. About half a cup of light brown, gelatinous liquid rolled slowly out and plopped on top of my rice. I looked down at the mush. “That southern enough, Miss Potty Mouth?”

Indignant, I pushed away from the table.

“Oh, no,” Mrs. Stargell said, fanning herself theatrically with a veiny hand. “She’s gonna leave hungry. Hide the house cats.”

Neil’s hand came down against the tabletop and shocked the shit out of all of us. My little rice bowl jumped about an inch. Gravy slushed down the side. “Mrs. Stargell, you’ve got to stop being so ornery. And nobody’s going to cower to your blackmail anymore. You’re nice, you’re in. You’re mean, you’re
out
. And Keye, Mrs. Stargell is twice your age. You owe her a little respect.”

“She’s more than twice my age. I’m just sayin’.”

“
Please
, both of you shut the hell up and let me eat my delicious goddamn lunch.”

Mrs. Stargell sank into a chair. Her pale skin had blushed to match the color of her overbrushed cheekbones. She was swooning over his outburst, I realized. I couldn’t believe my eyes. “Sorry about the house-cat remark, honey,” she said demurely.

I slid my chair back to the table, tasted the rice, and shuddered. They were both staring at me. “What?” I brought the napkin to my mouth. “Oh right. I’m sorry too.” Neil’s eyes narrowed. “Okay, okay.” I looked at Mary Kate. “I’m sorry I said you had your head up your ass.”

Mary Kate gazed at Neil while he shoveled food in in a way that made me uncomfortable. I entertained a vivid fantasy of her in a pointy witch’s hat, cackling over a steaming pot of children. A couple of minutes crawled by.

I stood up. “I need to see what’s in that barn.”

“I figured that’s why you dressed for maneuvers,” Mrs. Stargell commented. I was wearing army-green cargos and lace-up boots, appropriate, I thought, for an investigation that included chickens and barns. “Women didn’t dress like that in my day.”

“Did they have pants back then, or did y’all just throw a bison skin over your shoulders?”

Her little eyes narrowed. She pointed a bony finger at me. A smile played on her lips. “Good one, Eggroll.”

  
20

W
e left the dishes on the table and went out the back door. I stretched out across the backseat of the Cadillac. It was hot in the car. I lowered the rear windows. In the front seat: Neil, Mary Kate, and a nine-by-thirteen baking dish that had been used so often it was dotted with amber flecks. It belonged to Mrs. Kirkpatrick. Mary Kate planned to use returning it as an excuse to barge in and introduce Neil as her nephew from Atlanta.

“Keep her busy for a few minutes and text me if something happens,” I said to the back of their heads. “Like if Joe Ray comes home early.”

“Sure,” Neil said. “I’ll text you. That won’t look suspicious at all.”

“She won’t think twice about it,” Mrs. Stargell said, easing the spotless Cadillac up the dirt lane. “All y’all come up here from the city with your heads down and one of those things in your hands. We wouldn’t be able to pick one of you out of a lineup. And Joe Ray almost never comes home before four. I think he’s seeing a married woman in town. He has to leave before her kids and the husband come home.”

I watched them for a second, smiled to myself. “Hey, maybe when we’re done the two of you can go out for a drink or something. Hook up.”

I saw the skin crinkle just a little at the corner of Neil’s eye. “Jealousy is an ugly emotion, Keye.” We were easing nearer to the house.
Neil looked at Mary Kate. “I do have a little magic weed, though. You ever tried weed, Mrs. Stargell?”

Mrs. Stargell stopped, put the car in park. “You know, I have always wanted to try that, but my husband, God rest his soul, wouldn’t do it.”

“Well, then we’re on,” Neil promised her. They got out of the car. Neil grinned down at me in the backseat, made a goofy face, crossed his eyes.

I waited there, still in the midday heat. The sun cracked through the clouds and roasted me. I could hear them knocking, Mary Kate’s raggedy little voice calling out for Mrs. Kirkpatrick. Finally, muffled introductions. I peeked out and saw her invite them inside. Not that she had a choice. Mary Kate was clutching the baking dish and squeezing in sideways. I slipped out the opposite door as soon as they disappeared inside, and hurried to the barn, pulled open one of the double doors just enough to get inside.

A small tractor was parked in the barn. It was cool inside. The half hayloft was good insulation. And it let in just enough light from its open doors upstairs so I could navigate. There was an empty space for Joe Ray’s truck. It smelled like hay and machinery and earth, exactly the way you’d expect it to smell. I had feared finding something else. I had a feeling they’d carried bodies back here last night. But why? I had no idea except that from the accounts Neil and I had spent the morning looking at—suppliers and utility companies—the crematory wasn’t using enough of anything to keep it operational. Utilities were low, no spikes in usage. Expense accounts that would normally be full of maintenance items for the business were almost nonexistent. Even office supplies, copies, postage was way off what would be normal numbers for most businesses. I wondered if the refrigeration unit even worked. Maybe that’s why the bodies had been improperly stored. I wished I’d been able to spend more time inside the crematorium, and then was struck by the sheer bizarreness of that thought. Another question nagged at me: If he wasn’t cremating those bodies, where were they?

My phone vibrated. A text from Neil. Had Joe Ray returned early?

O dear God, this woman’s wearing a muumuu and toe socks
.

I typed back.
Way to stay focused
.

I saw a light switch at the door and outlets for tools, but I couldn’t risk turning on a light. There was a length of yarn hanging on a screw-in hook. A small gold key dangled from the center, the kind that fits a padlock. I remembered seeing the padlock hanging off the room attached to the chicken coop. I took the key and put it around my neck.

My phone again. Neil:
J.R. meeting alarm company about break-in. Mrs. S. milking story about hearing wild kids last night
.

The clever old snoop was a natural. She was buying me time, carefully reinforcing Joe Ray’s theory about kids breaking in.

I looked around the barn. One of the walls was covered in Peg-Board from a long countertop up. Tools were hung neatly, organized. Nothing like the messy office at the crematory or the undone records or the uncremated bodies. Urns were lined up neatly.
Urns in the barn
. I peered inside one. Empty. Turned it upside down and realized it had a handwritten label on the bottom, the type used on file folders. It had the name
Trite
. The next one was labeled
Wagner
. The next,
Milner
. The same names I’d seen on the receiving-room log. A bench was pulled up to some oily bolts and engine parts. A chain saw was in some phase of reconstruction—the blade was off, the carburetor was out. I looked at the chain lying on the counter. It was flecked with something deep brown. I zoomed in with my camera phone and snapped a picture, then studied it. The bright flash had illuminated what I couldn’t see in the dim light—dried blood and tissue matter. Or a very close facsimile. I scanned the tools hanging off the Peg-Board. Teeth on a hacksaw were tipped with brick-colored stains.

What kind of slaughterhouse was this? I didn’t see any spatter on the Peg-Board, on the counters. No smell. What had they been sawing and where? My brain searched for explanations. Kirkpatrick was a hunter. He probably did his slaughtering outside. I remembered the rifle in his hands. It made sense. Backing up to the crematorium receiving room in the night did not. What if he was delivering something rather than picking something up? I hadn’t thought of that. But what? I looked around the barn for cement mix. He had urns lined up. Maybe this was his filling station. The light wasn’t strong enough to detect concrete dust.