The Undertaker's Daughter

by Sara Blaedel

  As she lay in bed and gazed around the small room, Ilka couldn’t understand why her father had traded owning a Brønshøj funeral home in the red with owning a Racine funeral home in the red. Racine, a town with less life on a weekday than Brønshøj Square on a Sunday morning.

  And yet she knew he must have had a reason. But had he just been looking for adventure? Or did he run away from something? She knew everything had been going downhill for him—her mother had told her that much—yet Ilka had always looked at it as him leaving the two of them. It was telling, though, that he’d started up a new funeral home. And he’d fled suddenly, without making any arrangements. Maybe his reason for leaving did have to do with the business he’d taken over from his own father. But then there were the horses, of course. Her mother thought he’d accumulated a debt he’d never be able to pay, so he took off.

  She’d loved it when he took her out to the horses. Except for that one time they’d never told her mother about.

  It had been a sunny day. She’d been standing behind the living room door while he spoke on the phone, too low for her to hear. But when he noticed her, he told her to go out to the car and wait for him. Ilka looked down at the red toes of her shoes, uneasy and a bit scared. Her father usually didn’t sound like that.

  She’d been looking forward to spending that day with him, but now she wished her mother was there too. He was acting strangely. As if he didn’t want her to be there. She grabbed the car keys on the dresser and picked her sweater up off the floor.

  She was hoping they’d go to the racetrack or out to Mogens’s. They’d been there before. He had a lot of horses, and last time they were there he’d let her curry one.

  “Where are we going?” Luckily he hadn’t spoken on the phone very long. He was wearing his brown suede jacket. He lit a cigarette, but he remembered to roll the window down a bit so she wouldn’t get carsick. For a few seconds, he sat as if he’d forgotten where they were going; then he flipped his cigarette out the window and into the hedge.

  “We’re headed out to run and shout.” He laughed, and she laughed with him, though there was still something wrong.

  They drove a long time before turning down a gravel road with tall old trees on both sides. They had counted the number of yellow cars on the way. She sat up to see if there were any horses, but the corrals were empty.

  “Who lives here?” she asked, as they drove in and stopped at a courtyard. She didn’t like visiting people she didn’t know, and she felt a small knot in her stomach when a dog came running up to the car.

  “I’ll only be a minute. Just stay out here.” He reached into the backseat and grabbed a Donald Duck comic book for her.

  Her father wasn’t afraid of dogs. Ilka watched him walk over to a barn door; no one had come out to greet him. Maybe no one had heard them coming? She didn’t like this. What should she say if someone came while he was gone? Before going inside the barn, he turned and waved at her.

  The dog was gone. Ilka sat for a while; then she opened the car door and hopped down onto the courtyard’s cobblestones. The air smelled sour, like it did when manure had been spread out on fields—she knew about that from summer vacations when they drove out into the country.

  She walked over to the horse barn and opened the door a crack. Riding gear hung all around. She heard voices, and she slowly opened the door and walked inside. The barn smelled of oil, hay, and leather, odors she knew and liked from the racetrack barn. She called out for her father, but the barn was quiet. For a minute, she stood gathering up the courage to walk down the long row of stalls, which were empty. Someone was cleaning them, though; a wheelbarrow full of straw and horseshit was parked there. They must be out back. She called out again, louder this time.

  “Daddy!” She froze at the sight of a man she’d never seen before. He was gripping her father, as if he were trying to lift him up, and speaking angrily to him, hissing in his face. She screamed, and the stranger whirled around. But she couldn’t move. Not even when her father yelled at her, told her to go back to the car. He walked over and took her hand.

  The stranger was still angry. “You’ll hear from me!”

  It was light outside when Ilka woke up. She must have fallen asleep again. It was a few minutes past eight, and when she walked downstairs, feeling a hundred years old, she heard Artie rummaging around in back. The preparation room had no windows, but the door stood open and the ventilation fan roared like a range hood set on high. She found him in the kitchenette, pouring Red Bull in his coffee. His eyes were tiny, and he’d tied his longish hair in a small bun on top of his head. Something the under-thirty generation would usually do, she’d thought.

  He nodded good morning to her and pointed to a plate of doughnuts. “Have one,” he said, his voice low; instinctively she understood he preferred a quiet morning. But today he was out of luck.

  She grabbed the powdered milk for coffee and started in. “Have you seen the refrigerator?” She followed him out under the carport, where he sat down on the steps with his coffee, doughnut, and cigarette. He shook his head silently and began eating; a small fleck of icing stuck on his mustache. “No,” he finally answered, after he’d finished chewing. “But I’ll do Mike first. I don’t have time to work miracles before Shelby comes, but I can do a cover-up, so she won’t see what bad shape he’s in.”

  Ilka sat down beside him. She felt responsible for someone getting into the garage while she was there. And she should have looked for an alarm to turn on. But Artie should have told her; it wasn’t all her fault.

  “Someone has been inside the garage,” she said.

  Artie listened without interrupting while she explained she had found Mike on the floor last night and had to wake Sister Eileen up to help get him back in the refrigerator. Cigarette smoke curled around his fingers as he ate the rest of his jelly doughnut and sipped his Red Bull coffee without reacting.

  “Was he covered with urine when we picked him up at the morgue?” she asked.

  Now he looked surprised. “What do you mean?”

  “Did he smell like piss?”

  He shook his head. “Not that I noticed. Does he now?”

  Ilka nodded. “I think someone peed all over him while he was on the floor.”

  He knocked another cigarette out of the pack and offered one to her, but she waved the pack away. “That sounds bizarre,” was all he said.

  “You forgot to tell me if there’s an alarm,” she said, not the least bit bashful to give him some of the blame. But he didn’t seem to hear her. He smoked a while without speaking; then he flipped the butt away and stood up.

  “There was so much hate simmering in town after what happened. Everybody had an opinion, but most people seemed to think Mike was guilty. And the talk picked up when he left town. There was even a rumor that Ashley was doing it for money; then other people said no, she was doing it for free. The gossip turned vicious, and I know this sounds bad, but it was almost like people enjoyed it. It was like this smear campaign against Mike Gilbert energized the town; people started making up stories and juicing up the ones they’d heard. And now you tell me this. I can’t say I’m surprised the hate’s flared up again, if someone found out Mike was back.”

  He opened the door into the garage and walked over to the refrigerator. Ilka followed him. “But Shelby is convinced her son didn’t kill the girl.”

  “Don’t you suppose most mothers would feel that way, without conclusive evidence?” He opened the refrigerator to pull the steel tray out. “We’ll have to call the police.”

  He’d already whipped his phone out.

  “But his own mother didn’t even know he was back.”

  “Someone must’ve seen him,” Artie said, while waiting for someone to answer.

  “Then the same ‘someone’ must know he’s dead. Otherwise they wouldn’t have come here.”

  Artie nodded and turned away after being transferred.

  Ilka was sitting out on the steps when the police car
turned in and parked. Artie had agreed that someone had soiled Mike Gilbert with urine during the night, but he thought it probably had been poured over him; there was far too much for a single urination.

  She hadn’t understood what difference it made, but Artie thought pissing on the body could be a spur-of-the-moment act, whereas dousing it with urine meant it was planned. An insult, sick. More emotional.

  When she saw the two officers from the day before, she walked over to meet them. Officers Thomas and Doonan nodded to her and asked if there were surveillance cameras in the garage.

  She hadn’t even thought of that. Artie would have mentioned it if there were, surely, she thought. Then she remembered about the alarm, and she asked them to follow her.

  “Do we have surveillance cameras out here?” she asked Artie. Odd, she thought, how natural it was to say “we” after only three days here. A few weeks ago, she hadn’t even known the funeral home existed.

  “We have some installed, yeah, but it’s been a long time since they’ve been working. Paul had a contract with a security company, but I have the feeling he didn’t renew it. So they’re just hanging there now.”

  “What time did you come down here?” Officer Thomas asked Ilka. The two of them had walked outside the garage.

  “The first or the second time?”

  “When you heard the noise the first time. And you’re sure there was nobody here?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t think so. But I’m not totally sure anymore. I checked the room with the coffins; there was nobody there. Unless someone was hiding in one of the two coffins. I didn’t think about that. I didn’t check if the preparation room was locked, either, but I know the door was closed.”

  “It’s always locked,” Artie said, walking outside.

  “The first time I came down, I was thinking mostly about maybe there was an open door banging; I thought that was what woke me up. But it was only the small window I’d left open for the cat. That was at three thirty.” She added that the door out to the carport had also been locked.

  Artie had pulled Mike out of the refrigerator; his body lay on a stretcher, covered by a sheet.

  “Don’t touch anything,” Officer Thomas said as the two policemen squeezed past the hearse.

  They leaned over the body. She heard them mention the stink from the urine. “If there was any doubt before, it’s pretty clear now it wasn’t a random assault that cost him his life,” Officer Doonan said. “Someone knows he came back.”

  Ilka heard the cat purr before it started rubbing her legs. She squatted down and petted it. Long, soothing strokes, as if she were trying to calm her own nerves.

  “We didn’t really believe it was random, either,” the young officer continued. “Something like this seldom is.” He explained that they were looking at the case again, rereading the witness statements. “But we’re not so far along yet.”

  Ilka stood up. The policemen asked Artie again about the surveillance cameras and alarms. And how many garage entrances there were. She herded the cat into the house and was about to lure it out into the kitchen, when Sister Eileen appeared in the doorway and said there was a telephone call for her. “We usually don’t allow pets inside the funeral home,” she said as Ilka walked into her father’s office.

  14

  A small click made Ilka think the call was from a foreign country, and instinctively she thought of her mother. But then a dark voice introduced himself in a broad American accent. She didn’t catch his name, only that he was associated with another funeral home.

  The largest funeral home chain in the country, she learned, after listening for a few moments to the words flowing into her ears like melted chocolate, warm and creamy. It took her a while, though, to get what had actually been said.

  “Yes,” she said, “I’m Paul Jensen’s daughter, and I’m the owner of the business.”

  The stream of words continued, and she grew impatient; she felt she should get back to the policemen in the garage. And they might need her fingerprints. After all, she’d touched the stretcher.

  “No, unfortunately,” she answered, in an overly polite tone of voice, which she was getting sick and tired of using to keep things civilized. “I already have a plan for the future.”

  She listened again. “No, I’m not planning to keep it. I’m about to sell to another funeral home in town.”

  Now there was an unpleasant insistence to his voice, like when a telephone salesperson won’t accept you’re in the middle of a meal. Erik had come up with a way of ending a call from a telephone company or someone else who had gotten hold of his number. “I’m screwing someone right now,” he would say, and usually that worked. But it was way too late now for that trick.

  “Fine,” she said, breaking him off. “Thank you very much. I understand you are quite interested in buying my father’s business. But like I said, the deal is almost done, so unfortunately I’m not interested. But thank you for calling.”

  She said good-bye and hung up before his next gusher of words erupted.

  She held the phone for a moment. She hadn’t caught the name of the funeral home chain. Or maybe it was an organization of funeral home businesses? She wasn’t sure. But they were big and they were national, the man had emphasized several times.

  She went out to join the others in the garage. The cat was gone, the door to the garage was open, and the two policemen were walking around the refrigerator. The stretcher she had used the previous night lay in the middle of the floor, and the big garage door was also open. Ilka noticed the woman on the bench by the parking lot entrance again, looking down at her hands. Ilka couldn’t see her face, but her hair was unmistakable.

  Ilka studied her for a moment; then she heard Artie’s voice. “Could you come inside?” He stepped out from the house; he must have gone in while she was in the office with the door closed. “Phyllis Oldham is here with the papers. They’re ready for your signature.”

  Ilka nodded and followed him. She thought about telling him about the phone call, but then Artie might think she’d begun calling around, putting feelers out. The truth was, she didn’t know if she could get an offer from another funeral home better than the one she had.

  “Dear!” Mrs. Oldham chirped, when Ilka stepped into the arrangement room. Papers had been spread out in front of an empty chair, and beside them lay a large fountain pen with the Golden Slumbers logo. “Howard and I thought it would be appropriate to celebrate by inviting you out this evening. We have a fine Italian restaurant here in town. What do you say?”

  Ilka smiled at the irresistible cheerfulness radiating from the well-tailored suit. Being back in Denmark before Monday had just come a step closer.

  “Thank you, that sounds wonderful.” She sat down in front of the papers.

  “I would suggest we begin with champagne and hors d’oeuvres at our home,” the woman said. “And then we’ll drive from there.”

  Ilka grabbed the pen and began scanning the pages in front of her. It was the same as what she’d read before. What her lawyer had approved.

  She was about to sign, when Mrs. Oldham said, “It’s so nice we can do business with you. It was more difficult with your father; he couldn’t see this is to everyone’s advantage.”

  Ilka looked up.

  “Or perhaps he didn’t want to see,” she continued.

  Suddenly Ilka felt cold, all over. She stared at the woman without seeing her. What is she saying? Ilka wondered. He didn’t want to sell?

  She noticed Artie looking away deliberately, though he tried to be casual about it. He didn’t say a word.

  “Please excuse me,” Ilka said. She laid the pen down slowly. “Take a cup of coffee. I’m sure we have some out in the kitchen; otherwise, Sister Eileen can quickly make some. This will only take a moment.”

  She stood and turned to Artie. “Would you please come with me?” She practically spoke through her teeth.

  He looked annoyed as he reluctantly stood up and followed her
. Out in the hallway, she noticed the police still walking around in the garage, so she pulled him into the office and closed the door. “Can you tell me what the hell she meant by that? He didn’t want to sell? You told me this deal was being worked on before he died, but she says he was difficult. Will you explain that?”

  Artie was sitting on the desk now. “This is a real good offer they’re giving us. Golden Slumbers Funeral Home is the most distinguished funeral home in town, and like you’ve already seen, they run a big business, do a good job. Their financial situation is excellent, and they’re willing to take over right now.”

  “But he didn’t want to sell to them,” Ilka said. “This is going a little too fast now. Did my father even really want to sell his business?”

  Artie nodded. “We talked about it. Yes! We discussed it several times.”

  “It sounds to me like the Oldhams tried to talk him into it several times, but he refused.”

  “If we lose this deal, I can’t help you,” Artie said, serious now. “I’ve been down on my knees to get this offer done, and you’re not going to get a better deal than what they’re bringing to the table.”

  Oh, really! she was about to say, but then she remembered she didn’t know who had called. Before she threw that in his face, she had to find them.

  “So what are you planning on doing, huh?” Artie was starting to sound angry. “Are you thinking about sticking around? Keep this sinking ship afloat long enough for us all to drown? Or do you have the money to pay your dad’s debt? Because I can guarantee you’re not going to sweet-talk the IRS into anything. That money must be paid tomorrow, or else they will show up and throw us out and put big locks on all the doors. Really, I don’t think you understand how serious the situation is.”

  Ilka caught herself holding her breath. She was enraged, close to exploding right in his face; an angry heat spread out on her cheeks and throat. “I’ll be back in five minutes,” she said, and walked out to find Sister Eileen.