by Sara Blaedel
The nun was at her desk, leaning over a sheet of paper with no folders or bookmarks in sight. It looked like she was writing a good old-fashioned letter. Ilka recognized the funeral home logo on the paper.
The door was open, and she knocked on the doorframe. “May I have a moment?”
“Of course.” Sister Eileen nodded and slipped the letter in a drawer. She hadn’t talked about what had happened last night, so Ilka decided not to, either.
Ilka walked in and sat down across from the nun. “I need to ask you about something.”
The sister nodded.
“Do you know if my father was against selling the business to the Oldham family? What I heard is that they tried to talk him into it many times, but he always refused.”
If anyone had been on her father’s side, Ilka felt, it would be Sister Eileen. They seemed to have been close, so surely she would have known what he’d wanted.
The nun folded her hands on the desk and leaned forward. “It would be wise to stick with Artie when it comes to business. He knows what he’s doing, and he wants the best for us all.” Then she leaned back, as if the final word had been spoken.
Ilka stood up and left. Frustrated, tired, and about to call home to ask her mother for advice, she grabbed Artie’s cigarettes as she walked through the kitchen and out to the parking lot.
The police had finished in the garage; their car was gone. She lit a cigarette, and again she noticed the woman sitting on the bench. She strode over and joined her.
They sat for a while in silence while Ilka smoked. She finished off that cigarette and lit another; then she sank back. “I think you knew my father,” she said, without looking at the woman. A few moments later, she added, “Do you think he wanted to sell his funeral home to Golden Slumbers?”
The woman didn’t react at first, and Ilka thought the woman might not have understood what she was asking about. Then she slowly shook her head. “Never.” Her voice was barely above a whisper. “He would never sell to them.”
Then she stood up abruptly and left before Ilka could ask any more questions.
Ilka smoked one more cigarette while looking the building over. A gigantic house filled with life and death, and suddenly it was all hers. She stood and went back inside.
15
Ilka returned to the conference room, where Phyllis Oldham was standing by the window, speaking in a low voice with Artie. She heard them mention something about the harbor and charity, but they stopped talking when they saw her.
“I’m sorry,” she said to them. Mrs. Oldham’s forehead twitched; Artie slowly turned away from the window. “The deal is off. I appreciate the work you two have put into this, but I can’t sign something my father opposed.”
A voice in her head yelled at her: You didn’t even know him; what the hell are you doing? They both looked at her in disapproval.
“I’m going up to pack and return to Denmark. The estate will be…how do you say, finished by an official. Then whatever happens will happen.” She asked Artie to tell Sister Eileen to pack her things, thinking that if the IRS showed up and closed the funeral home, they might as well be prepared.
Before they could say a word, she left the room, ran up the steps, and slammed the door behind her. Her first thought was to call her lawyer.
For a moment, she closed her eyes and rested her head against the doorframe. She didn’t even know if there were executors to administer estates in the US, but she didn’t want anything more to do with this. The moment she’d found out what was going on, she should have refused to get involved, should have said she knew nothing about the funeral home business. Or her father, for that matter. Her mother had, of course, been right; she shouldn’t even have come here. But she’d never been much for doing the smart thing, she reminded herself. She’d tried. And now she was giving up. It was simply too much for her, inheriting a funeral home in Racine. And even more too much to manage it and make decisions that ran against her father’s wishes.
She fished her phone out of her bag and called her mother.
“Hi,” she said, trying to sound calm and composed. “It’s going fine. I’m coming home now. I just need to find out if I can catch a plane today, or if I have to wait until tomorrow. I’ll finish packing; then I’ll leave for the airport. No, nothing’s wrong. But you were right—I’m not going to get bogged down in all this. I’m having an executor take over. Yes! I’m sure. Everything is fine. And I’ll take care of the photo shoots starting Monday; don’t worry about finding someone else.”
Ilka heard the relief in her mother’s voice, now that she was coming home without anything catastrophic happening. Knowing that Ilka hadn’t ended up in an American prison undoubtedly kept her mother from asking more questions. Ilka promised to call again when she knew her arrival time in Copenhagen. It felt great to hear her mother say she and Hanne would pick her up at the airport.
She sat on the bed and glanced around the room. Less than two hours remained until the IRS deadline, and she hadn’t even begun looking through her father’s closets and all the boxes pushed up against the wall. Someone showing up and putting big locks on all the doors sounded like an exaggeration, but you never knew. When her hairdresser went bankrupt several years ago, all the employees in the chain’s other shops had been ordered to close and leave without taking so much as a hairpin with them.
She had to get her father’s things out of the house, but all she had to pack with was her small suitcase. At first Ilka considered dragging all the boxes downstairs, but where would she put them? They would still be on the funeral home property out in the parking lot. She would have to sort things out lightning quick and do the best she could.
The clock was ticking, and she felt a bit desperate, but finally she pulled herself together and went downstairs to look for boxes or something to pack with. She hated the thought of running into Artie. That asshole had known all along that her father didn’t want to sell to the Oldhams, and yet he worked his tail off to do just that. Presumably he’d thought he could push the transfer agreement through before she found out how her father had felt.
She hurried past the office and arrangement room without seeing anyone. Phyllis Oldham had left, but her heavy perfume—cinnamon and something that nauseated Ilka—still hung in the air. The door into the preparation room was closed, but she could hear the fan running. Quickly she punched in the code to the garage, and for a moment she stood and looked around. A low shelf filled with black file boxes ran along the entire wall behind the hearse. For a second she thought about emptying and using them, but they wouldn’t be able to hold much. She checked the high shelf on the other wall. Coffin liners, blankets. Farther down the shelf stood boxes of masks and plastic gloves. On one of the lower shelves, she found a large box with body bags. Ilka grabbed two of them and ran back upstairs.
At ten thirty, she started pulling drawers out of her father’s desk. She scooped up all the letters; the most important thing was to rescue his personal papers. Of course, there could be other things with sentimental value, but they would have to wait. She had to get hold of everything that might explain why he had abandoned her and her mother.
She ignored a stack of old order books in one of the drawers. There were also calendars marked with birthdays of people she’d never heard of. The next drawer: opened envelopes containing letters. All addressed to him, some with a feminine cursive script, others with heavy block letters. She stuck them in a body bag, to be read when she got home. Underneath was a folder with children’s drawings by Leslie and Amber. She laid them aside. Her half sisters would probably be happy to have them, or at least to know their father had saved them. She would drive by and drop them off before flying back to Denmark.
The bottom drawer was filled with scattered bundles of old bills and receipts. Something for the IRS to play around with. Leave them, she told herself.
It didn’t take her long to decide about the few clothes that hadn’t been given to the sister’s parish. While so
rting through them, it had felt wrong to empty out the whole closet. She left the few suits and shirts there.
Someone knocked, and she turned around. “Yes!”
Artie carefully opened the door. “May I come in?”
Should she tell him to leave, or what? Finally, Ilka nodded.
He glanced around the room before stepping inside and sitting on the bed, next to a pile of her clothes.
“I want to apologize,” he said, his tone signaling unconditional surrender. “I totally understand why you got angry. It did come out sounding all wrong. It’s true, Paul had several run-ins with the Oldhams over the years, and of course I should have let you in on that. I just didn’t feel we had time to go over what happened so long ago. Like I already told you, I didn’t know the business was in such bad shape before your dad’s lawyer contacted me. I didn’t know he owed the IRS so much, and I didn’t know we were so close to bankruptcy. You can take this however you want, but I think I panicked. I’ve always had a good working relationship with the people at Golden Slumbers, and Paul could be stubborn as a mule. So when I contacted them, I felt I was trying to move things along, not acting against his wishes.”
He leaned forward with his hands folded. “Of course you’re the one who decides what will happen, now that you’ve inherited the business. But if that money isn’t paid before the deadline, I’m out of work and the sister has no place to live. Shouldn’t we try to work together and see what we can come up with? And you know what? It wouldn’t be like Paul to throw Sister Eileen out with two hours’ warning.”
“Just like it wouldn’t be like my father to sell the business, and you knew that. But you let me believe it was something he started.”
The slow anger building inside her was about to explode again, and she did nothing to hold it back. She glared at him. “I’ve had enough of being a naïve fool. You could have fucking explained how things were. We could have talked about it, but instead I’m running around picking up dead people and talking to other people who just lost a relative. What the hell are you two thinking? You didn’t tell me anything, to make me feel we could solve everything together. Honestly, I think you’d rather have done it all without me. And that’s okay, but then don’t fucking get me involved.”
Sweat ran down her back, a stream of rage. “Everything just roars along over my head. And I won’t be part of it. When I’m packed, I’m going to call my father’s lawyer. He’ll have to take over from now on.”
“I have the sixty thousand dollars we need,” Artie said, without a word about the shelling he’d just taken. “You can have the money as a down payment on the house.”
Ilka shook her head. “Stick that money right up your ass. I’m going home to Denmark.”
Artie stood up. “So what do you plan on doing with Mike Gilbert, Ed McKenna, Mrs. Norton? You want to cancel the old lady’s funeral service tomorrow? Who’s going to take care of Mike and Ed? What about all the relatives counting on us? And all the people we have deals with? Do we just say the hell with them? This doesn’t just affect you, us. But if that’s how you want it, great.”
He walked out and slammed the door.
Ilka stared at the door, speechless. She hadn’t given a single thought to the 150 people who had cared about old Mrs. Norton and were coming tomorrow to say good-bye to her. She recalled the grandchild crying as he stood up and accused them of being cold and unfeeling.
She felt dizzy when she closed her eyes for a moment. It was as if she’d been ambushed, as if the ground beneath her kept shifting; she couldn’t find her feet. She looked all around at the terrible mess she’d made of the small room; then she decided to go down and find Artie.
He was sitting on the steps near the carport with a cigarette and a Red Bull. He didn’t even look up when she sat down beside him.
“What do we need for the funeral service tomorrow?” She took the cigarette he shook out of his pack.
“So you want the money after all?”
She nodded. “I don’t think Sister Eileen can pack in such a short time.” It was a quarter past eleven.
He crushed his cigarette with the heel of his shoe. “If we do this, it’ll be a new situation. Do we need to sit down and talk this through before we decide if it’s the right thing to do?” Ilka didn’t hear even the faintest hint of sarcasm in his voice. She shook her head.
“I need a time-out to get a good picture of the situation and to find out how much money my father owes.”
She told him about the call from the funeral home chain. “Golden Slumbers isn’t the only one interested.”
Artie set his beer down. “When did they call?”
“This morning.”
“Did you promise them anything? Did you set up a meeting?”
Ilka shook her head. “I told them we already had a deal. But we could contact them and hear their offer. I don’t know who it was, but surely we can find them.”
She could tell he wasn’t happy about that, but he let it go. “I’d better get to the bank so we don’t miss the deadline.” He started over to his car.
“Okay, and I’ll let the sister know she doesn’t need to pack anyway.”
Ilka watched him go. His reaction to the call from the funeral home chain puzzled her. Again, she had the feeling he was trying to steer things to his advantage instead of following the path her father had laid out. Or at least selling the business the way her father would have.
Ilka had just stood up when a police car turned in and parked. She glanced at her watch; Artie had left for the bank no more than ten minutes ago; they still had time, so it couldn’t be someone telling her to leave. Then she recognized the two officers, Thomas and Doonan. She walked over to them.
“We need to talk,” Officer Thomas said.
Ilka nodded and asked them to follow her, but he pointed across the street and explained that the school had a surveillance camera. “We’ve just checked the recording.”
Ilka looked over at the school, right across from the entrance to the funeral home parking lot. The bench on which the mysterious woman had sat was beside the entrance. She spoke hesitantly, unsure of where they were going with this. “Okay.”
“Last night at three twenty-two, Howard Oldham walked across the street to the back of your house,” Officer Doonan said, as if he were reading from a report. “The recording doesn’t show him leaving the property.”
He paused for a moment, giving her time to grasp the situation. He smelled of aftershave, and she looked directly at him so long that he finally lowered his eyes. “We’ve tried to contact him, so far without any luck.” He looked up at her again with a glint in his eye that she couldn’t read. “So that’s why we have to ask if you can tell us what Howard Oldham was doing here last night.”
Ilka gave him a puzzled look before shaking her head. “If you think he was with me, you’re wrong; he wasn’t. I haven’t seen him either.”
Officer Thomas’s hands were in the side pockets of his jacket, as if that helped him rest his sizable body. “You’re sure about that?” He looked at her expectantly.
She stared back at him as if he was joking. True, she had a healthy and natural appetite for men, but Howard Oldham wasn’t on her to-do list.
“If that’s the case, it’s going to be interesting to find out why he was on your property last night.”
Once again she felt like she was on shaky ground, and she wished Artie was there. She simply nodded when he said they would know more when they had Howard Oldham’s DNA and compared it to what was found in the garage.
“Do you think he might have killed Mike Gilbert?” she asked. In her mind’s eye, she saw the well-dressed undertaker. The nice suit, tie, the folded handkerchief in his breast pocket.
“No comment on that,” Doonan said, a bit sharply. “We’re interested only in his possible connection to what happened in the garage.”
Ilka nodded wearily. She couldn’t imagine what could make that gentlemanly man break in and haul a d
ead man out of the refrigerator.
“I’ll have to ask you not to tell anyone who we’ve seen on the recording,” Officer Thomas said, his voice leaving no doubt that this was an order.
She nodded again, and soon the two policemen were driving away for the second time that morning. She watched them disappear, then went over to Sister Eileen’s door.
“I don’t have the strength to carry the furniture out,” the pale, red-eyed woman said after letting Ilka inside. “That little bureau was my mother’s; I would be terribly unhappy if I can’t get it out before the deadline.”
“You don’t need to pack; we’re staying. Artie and I have found a solution. The IRS is being paid now, and as soon as he comes back I want all three of us to meet in my father’s office.”
A large suitcase was standing in the living room, and two travel bags were almost full. A stack of newspapers lay on the table; the sister had been packing her porcelain. Ilka recognized two pairs of shoes on the floor, identical to the practical ones she wore, and a pair of Adidas, which was so far from the nun’s usual style that Ilka thought she must have borrowed them.
“So shall I unpack?” She sounded confused. She looked over at the full suitcase.
Ilka nodded and tried to smile.
16
Ilka had set out the cups and filled a bowl with chocolates. The coffee was almost finished brewing out in the kitchen when Sister Eileen and Artie walked in.
“I paid, and I just got a receipt from the IRS that confirms it,” he said. He collapsed onto a chair on the other side of the desk. “So this is when we breathe a sigh of relief.”
Was it really so easy? Ilka wondered. Throw a little money at them and everyone was happy. For the moment, maybe.
She poured the coffee ceremoniously and pushed the chocolates over to them. She’d taken a notebook from the shelf, and now she pulled her father’s oversize office chair closer to the desk. “I think it’s time to review the situation.” She considered thanking Artie officially, but honestly, she thought, she had done just as much to save the day by letting him pay the sixty thousand dollars. She concentrated on what they needed to discuss.
