by Lillian Bell
“Hi, Lizette. My name is Desiree Turner. I’m with Turner Family Funeral Home. I’m calling to make arrangements for your cousin, Violet Daugherty.” I straightened the forms in front of me, ready to fill them out.
“Oh, that.” She sighed. “Uh, sure. What do I need to do?”
“I can walk you through it step-by-step.” That was kind of my job after all.
“Great. Oh. Wait a second. Clayton, get down from there this minute. Clayton, I’m counting to three.” A dog barked in the background.
“Is this a bad time?” I asked. “I can call back later.”
A heavy sigh traveled down the line. “There is no good time.”
“Have you thought about what you want to do with her remains?” I asked. “Any idea what she would have wanted?”
“I didn’t even know her. I think I met her once at somebody’s wedding.” Pause. “How much does it cost to cremate someone?”
We went over pricing. Lizette decided to cremate Violet and we would store the cremains until arrangements could be made. It wasn’t the most personal of arrangements to be made. In fact, it wasn’t personal at all. I felt more like I was taking an order at a drive-thru window than deciding how to handle someone’s earthly remains. Still, the cousin didn’t really know her and it really sounded like the woman had her hands full. Sometimes I have to remind myself that these situations weren’t mine to judge. Okay. A lot of times I have to remind myself that these situations weren’t mine to judge.
“Okay, then. We’ll be in touch,” I said.
“Thank you. You’ve been so nice.” Her relief was almost palpable.
I smiled. It felt good to help people. That was the part of the job that I liked the most. “No problem.”
“Could I ask another favor?” Her voice had gone up close to an octave. It had taken on a wheedling tone.
“Sure.” It didn’t hurt to ask, although something about that tone made me uneasy.
“She has like a house, right? Do you have the keys or anything like that?”
I was pretty certain she did have a house. I picked up her purse that they’d given us along with her personal effects. There was a key ring with one of those little Italian horns on it. “Yes.”
“Would you maybe go by it and see what I need to do about that? I’ll pay you.” The words came out in a rush.
“Oh.” That wasn’t exactly in our usual set of services, but this seemed like an extenuating circumstance. Besides, what would it hurt to drive by a place and take a look?
“Please. I don’t know when I’ll make it out there and I don’t know anything about this woman or what she has or, well, anything.” The barking got louder. “Clayton, let go of the dog!”
“Sure. I’ll check it out.”
“Do you know any realtors in the area?” she asked. “Clayton!”
I did. “Yes.”
“Maybe you could have one of them contact me?”
“Sure.”
“Thanks. Gotta go.” And she did. Like right then. No good-bye or anything.
I actually did one of those old-fashioned double takes and stared at the phone receiver for a moment before I hung it up. I glanced up at the clock. I didn’t have time to mull over what had just happened. I poked my head into the living room where Donna was working while keeping her feet up on the couch. “I’m going downstairs to let Nate in. He’s signing off on Violet Daugherty’s death certificate.”
Donna snorted. “So that’s what the kids are calling it these days.”
“Don’t work blue,” I said. “It’s beneath you.”
She patted her stomach where my niece or nephew was gestating. “You don’t get this kind of belly from not working blue.”
She had a point.
I skipped down the steps into the basement. Nate Johar had been my high school boyfriend. We’d broken up before we’d figured out how to work the coin-up laundry machines at the two different colleges we’d attended, but now we were both home. While I wouldn’t say we’d picked up where we’d left off, there was definitely something going on. Something good. Maybe. I hoped.
Nate arrived at the back entrance about five minutes later. “Hey,” he said, his voice husky. His hair was a little too long, but it looked good that way. He was tall, a little lanky, and had big brown eyes that looked like melted chocolate.
I reached up to brush the hair off his forehead. “Hey back.” I grinned, then backed away. Getting to see each other during the course of our work was good, but making out in the embalming area of a funeral home was a bit too morbid for me. “I’ll go get Ms. Daugherty for you.”
“Thanks. I’ll set up.” He disappeared into the embalming room while I retrieved Ms. Daugherty from our refrigerated area. “I’ll be right out here if you need anything.”
“Should I whistle?” he asked.
I blew him a kiss and left him to do his work. He came out a little more than an hour later, a funny look on his face.
“All done?” I asked.
He nodded his head as if it might fall off if he went too fast. “I think so.”
“What took so long?” I pushed back from the desk and turned in my chair. Generally signing off on a death certificate was a formality, especially when the cause of death was so obvious.
He sighed. “Something’s not right.”
“I thought it was a car accident,” I said. Car accidents were pretty straightforward. They were accidental deaths and had to be investigated, but it was generally clear what had gone wrong.
“It was. It was definitely injuries from the accident that killed her.” He nodded emphatically this time, less like his head might fall off and go rolling under a desk.
I wasn’t following. “So what’s wrong?”
He pulled a chair out from the desk and sat down. “She didn’t have any bruises on her palms.”
I still wasn’t following. “So?”
“So most of the time when people lose control of their vehicles, they grip that steering wheel really tightly. They’re trying to wrestle the car back under control.” He mimed gripping onto a steering wheel with his hands at ten and two. “It’s a reflex. The insides of their hands get bruised. It shows up postmortem all the time.”
“Carlotta thought she must have fallen asleep,” I pointed out. “Sleep is pretty much the same as unconscious, right?”
“I know. Usually, though, the people wake up at the last second. The motion of the car swerving wakes them up. Then they grab wheel.” He rubbed his chin.
“Maybe she didn’t bruise easily.” Not everyone did. If you poked Donna she’d turn black and blue. You had to hit me with a baseball bat to raise a mark.
He looked up. “That’s the thing. There were bruises on her hands. Just not on the palms. The bruises were on the backs of her hands.”
“What would that mean?”
“If she was unconscious, her hands would have dropped and then bounced up and hit the bottom of the steering wheel as she crashed.” He mimed hands jerking up quickly.
“Maybe her hands fell in a different way. Down by her side or something,” I suggested.
“Maybe. It still doesn’t feel right. I feel like I’m missing something.” He rubbed at his jaw. “It just seems more like she was unconscious than asleep or possibly even having a seizure and I can’t find any reason for her to be unconscious or have a seizure.”
I was starting to get it. “Drunk?”
“Nope. No drugs either.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “No underlying health problems that I could find. She didn’t have a heart attack or a stroke.”
“Could she have tried to dodge something in the road and then overcorrected and, I don’t know, hit her head on the window and lost consciousness?” There were a lot of ways to have a car accident.
He shook his head again. “None of the witnesses saw anything like that and there were a handful of them.”
“Wouldn’t the car have slowed down if she lost consciousness?” The body relax
ed when the mind went down. “If the car was going slowly, her injuries wouldn’t have been so bad.”
“Maybe. Unless she passed out and then had a seizure. Then it’s quite likely that her foot would have rammed down on the gas pedal.”
“So you think she passed out and then seized.” I drummed my fingers on the desk. “What would have caused that?”
“I’m not sure. I’m not seeing anything obvious, though.” He ran his hands through his hair, shoving it back off his forehead.
“I’ll have Uncle Joey keep an eye out for anything that seems wrong as he works on her. I’m going over to her house tomorrow. I’ll see if there’s anything there that could explain it.” Uncle Joey wouldn’t need to do much, but he had an eye for things and who knows what I’d find at Violet’s.
“Thanks. I feel like I’ve missed something. I’m just not sure what.” He frowned.
I knew exactly how he felt. “How about a return favor?” I still felt uneasy about what I’d overheard passing between the Fiore sisters. This might be my best opportunity to put all that unease to rest. “Did you sign off on Frank Fiore’s death certificate?”
He gave me a quizzical look. “Who?”
“Frank Fiore. Older gentleman. Died at home,” I prompted making a rolling gesture with my hands as if that would get him up to speed faster.
He frowned for a moment and then his eyebrows went up. “Oh. Yeah. Frank Fiore. Yeah. Why?”
“Was there anything funny about his death?” I asked.
“Not that I remember, no,” Nate said. “He’d been sick for a long time. Wasn’t he on hospice care?”
I nodded. “So you, like, didn’t do an autopsy or anything, right?”
“There really wasn’t a need to. His doctor signed off on everything. Why?” he asked as if he wasn’t certain he wanted to hear the answer.
I jiggled my foot. “Just something I overheard his daughters saying when they thought I was out of the room. It struck me wrong. How about you take a look at Mr. Fiore and see if anyone missed anything on him?” I smiled. “Then we’ll all be even.”
He smiled at me. “Sure. You show me your corpse and I’ll show you mine.”
I went to the refrigeration unit and pulled Mr. Fiore out. I wheeled him into the embalming room and gestured for Nate to come over. “This is Mr. Fiore. Is there … anything strange here?”
Nate snapped on some plastic gloves. “Let me take a look.”
I left him to it.
After what seemed like forever but was actually only about twenty minutes, Nate came out. “There’s nothing mysterious about this man’s death. Nothing. He was on hospice. He had congestive heart failure, diabetes, and kidney disease. You understand what that means, right?”
I did. Our bodies aren’t meant to go on forever. After a certain amount of time, stuff wears out. “Could someone have hurried him along?” I asked.
Nate sat down in the chair across from me. “How do you think they did it?”
I shook my head. “No idea. Pillow over the face?”
He shook his head. “There’d be petechial hemorrhaging if someone had done that.”
“Strangulation?”
“He’d have a broken hyoid.”
“Drug overdose?”
He made a face. “That’s a little trickier. He had an awful lot of drugs on board. Hospice is pretty careful monitoring morphine, though. They’d have noted it if there was too much missing.”
I was out of ideas on how to murder an old man without leaving some kind of mark.
“Why did you think they did it?” He cocked his head to one side. “What exactly did you hear them say?”
“I heard Daisy ask Iris what she had done and it didn’t sound like it was anything good, more like she was shocked. Then Iris asked why Daisy always thought the worst of her.” It sounded a little thin as a reason to think someone was murdered now that I was explaining it.
“That’s it?” he asked.
“Yep.”
He shook his head. “They could have been talking about anything. Clothes. Food. Relationships. Whatever.”
“Why would you be talking about that at the funeral home?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Maybe they were tired of talking about death and dying. Frank was sick a really long time. They’d probably discussed everything there was to discuss about his passing.” He hesitated. “Do you think there are other reasons that you might be focused on Frank Fiore and his daughters?”
“What do you mean?” I didn’t like where this was going.
“Well, they had a good long time with their father and you didn’t.” He didn’t look at me as he spoke. “They got to say good-bye and have everything settled. No unfinished business. No loose ends.”
I definitely didn’t like where this was going. “So?”
He shrugged. “You didn’t. You didn’t get to have any of those things. Your dad was here one day and gone the next.”
I didn’t say anything.
“Do you think you might be, uh, projecting a little?” He lifted his head and looked me in the eye.
I stiffened. “Projecting what? On whom?”
He reached for my hands. “Maybe they’re accepting their father’s death too easily while you’re still having trouble accepting yours?”
I pushed my chair back so hard that I bounced off the desk behind me like a bumper car. “He’s not dead.”
He held up his hand like a traffic cop to stop me. “Forget I said anything. Let’s talk about something else. Why is it that you’re going to be at Violet Daugherty’s tomorrow?”
I was fine with a change in topic. I didn’t feel like fighting. “It’s a long story. Her next of kin is in Maine and can’t get here and I told her I’d check what needed to be done.”
He glanced at his watch. “I’ve got to go.”
We walked up the stairs to the ground floor. The bell rang at the front door as we walked up. I opened it to find Iris Fiore.
“I brought some clothes for Dad like you asked. And some photos.” She pushed a garment bag and a box at me.
“Thanks.” I stepped aside so Nate could go out.
He stopped for a second and put his hand on Iris’s arm. “I’m so sorry for your loss, Iris. Your father certainly suffered a lot these past few years. I’m not sure when I’ve seen someone with more possible causes of death.” He walked down the porch steps to where his car sat in the driveway.
Iris watched him go and then turned to me, her forehead creased. “How did he know what Dad had suffered?”
“What?” I asked, watching Nate walk away.
“Nate Johar,” Iris said. “How did he know how much my father had suffered? That there were multiple reasons he might have died when he did.”
I straightened up. “Well, he’s the medical examiner for the county. It’s kind of his job to know about how people die.”
Iris’s eyes narrowed. “My father died on hospice under the care of a physician. There’s no need for the medical examiner to get involved.”
“Oh, we’re just being thorough.” I heard the nerves in my voice.
“Thorough about what?” Iris took another step toward me.
“You know, just being sure that everything’s on the up and up.” When had my voice gotten that high?
“Why wouldn’t everything be on the up and up?” Her eyes narrowed.
“He just took a look since he was here anyway.” My mouth was suddenly quite dry.
“At whose request?” Iris squared her shoulders.
“Ummm … I guess mine.” Might as well own it, I guessed.
“Under what authority did you have the medical examiner investigate my father’s death?” Her hand went to her hips.
“Well, no authority, I guess. Like I said, I just wanted to be thorough.” My head bowed a little.
“Thorough about what?” she asked.
“About your father’s cause of death.”
“Isn’t my father’s cause of deat
h obvious?” Iris took two noisy breaths through her nostrils. “Unless you’re implying something. Are you? Are you implying that my father’s death was not from natural causes? That he was killed somehow?”
Crud. She was on to me. Although when she put it like that, it did sound absurd. “No! Of course not!”
“Good.” Now her lip began to tremble. “My dad was sick for a long time. A very long time. I have spent the past seven years dedicated to his care. I’ve fed him and bathed him and, yes, changed his diapers, and I did it for longer than I had to do it for my daughter. His death is a release for him and for me. I’m already heartbroken that the picture in my head right now is of a broken old man rather than the strong vital Dad of my youth. Don’t make my heart break any more by dragging his funeral out with crazy allegations.”
“Of course not. I’m so sorry.”
She stared for a moment and then seemed to make a decision. “Fine then. Here are Dad’s things.” She handed me the garment bag and the box and then turned to leave. At the door she stopped and turned. “Didn’t you meddle in Alan Brewer’s death, too?”
I spread my hands. “I wouldn’t call it meddling. That was a murder and someone had been unjustly accused.”
“Well, this isn’t a murder so there’s no need to accuse anyone of anything.” She glared at me.
“I know,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
She left and I fell against the door. That had been a disaster. I felt terrible. But did it seem as if maybe Iris protested too much? Plus, I’d never actually said I thought her father had been murdered, and yet that was where her thoughts had gone instantly. I wasn’t sure what else I should do, though. Nate said Frank Fiore had died of natural causes, and I had nothing more to arouse my suspicion than a snippet of an overheard conversation. Still, something didn’t feel right there. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. Yet.
Chapter Two
The Verbena Free Press
October 5
By Desiree Turner
Shocking News
On October 3, Katherine Apodaca was found on the floor of her kitchen with burn marks on her hands and a burned bagel in a toaster on the counter. A singed knife was found nearby. It is likely that Ms. Apodaca electrocuted herself by accident trying to remove the burnt remnants of her breakfast out of her toaster.
