If the Coffin Fits

by Lillian Bell

  The Verbena Fire Department would like to remind everyone that just because electricity is invisible doesn’t mean it’s not dangerous. You should never touch electrical appliances with wet hands, climb trees near overhead power lines, chew on power cords, poke your fingers or other objects into outlets or sockets, climb utility poles, or stick metal objects into electrical appliances.

  Services for Ms. Apodaca will be held today at two PM at Turner Family Funeral Home.

  *

  Death is not rational in its timing. It comes when it’s good and ready. It’s arbitrary, but in the end, it is inevitable. I have a distinct memory of asking Dad why everybody had to die. Why couldn’t we all stay here together? He’d given me a hug and told me that people have to move out of the way so new people can be born, that it’s all a big circle like in The Lion King. I’d informed him that The Lion King was a cartoon. It wasn’t real life. It had many breaks in reality. For instance, lions couldn’t talk.

  He’d told me that the concept was still sound even if it was wrapped up in fantasy and that it wasn’t good to be too literal. He’d said that there was a right time to say good-bye, to check out. We might not know it. It might not be our plan, but when it was time that was it. I wondered if he’d thought about telling me that as he’d let us all think he was dead for nearly two years now. If I ever found him, it would be one of the first things I’d ask.

  I was thinking about that idea as I set up for Katherine Apodaca’s funeral. Her death definitely seemed arbitrary. Who’d have thought a toaster could actually kill a person? It was a little unclear what had happened since Katherine had been alone at the time of the incident, but all bets were on her trying to pry a stuck bagel out of her toaster using a knife without unplugging the toaster. Toasters were supposed to come with an auto shutoff feature to avoid exactly this kind of thing, but apparently that malfunctions a lot. A surprising number of people are electrocuted by their toasters every year. Katherine Apodaca was going to be part of that statistic.

  Henrietta Lambert turned to Grace Cohen and said, “I don’t even like my bagel toasted. I like them soft. They’re easier to eat.”

  “Apparently Katherine did not agree with you,” Grace replied.

  “And look where that got her!” Henrietta said, as if the evils of toasting were now self-evident.

  Henrietta Lambert, Grace Cohen, and Olive Wheeler attended nearly every funeral at the Turner Family Funeral Home and had for years. I thought it started when they reached the age when their friends started to die off. Then I think they continued coming because they liked my Dad. Now I was pretty sure it was for the postservice cookies and snacks people generally provided afterwards.

  When they’d first started coming to services, they’d been easy to tell apart. Over the years, however, they’d started to look more and more like each other. Henrietta’s dark skin had faded to more of a khaki tone that matched Grace’s. Olive’s hair had gone gray and she’d started wearing it cut short with bangs like Grace’s. At any rate, they looked up at me like three wizened peas in a somewhat morbid pod.

  They knew pretty much everything about everybody. People tend to not notice little old ladies. It’s like they’re semi-invisible to a good portion of the population. It might have been why they liked my father so much. He had never looked past them, never ignored them, nor acted like they didn’t matter.

  “Did any of you know Frank Fiore?” I asked.

  “Who didn’t know Frank?” Henrietta said. “Why?”

  “Just curious. We’re having his funeral here next week. I met his daughters for the first time. I don’t think I knew them before I left here.” Just wondering if maybe his daughters might be the kind to kill him in his sleep.

  “You wouldn’t have,” Olive said. “They’re enough older than you that you wouldn’t really have crossed paths. They had both probably moved out of town before you were out of diapers.”

  “When did Iris move back?” I asked.

  “Oh, let’s see.” Henrietta squinched up her face as she thought, which was impressive since it was kind of permanently squinched. “It was after Mable Stone died, but before Santiago Mills did.”

  “Are you sure?” Grace asked. “I thought Mable died before Case Davis did, and Iris was definitely here then. I remember Iris bringing her father to the service. She had that sweet daughter of hers with her, too.”

  “Oh, the daughter,” Olive said. “She’s a lovely thing.”

  “Smart, too,” Grace chimed in. “Or so I’ve heard. Went all the way to Regionals with her science project.”

  “Why did Iris move back?” I asked.

  Henrietta leaned in as if she was going to tell me a secret. “I heard that husband of hers was no good. Gambled away all their money and had some chippie on the side.”

  “A chippie?” I echoed. I didn’t think I’d heard that word used in conversation ever.

  Henrietta nodded. “Anyway, Frank had his first stroke about the time she found all that out. She moved back home to help him and just stayed.”

  “It’s a good town to raise a child in,” Grace said.

  “It is.” I’d grown up here, been nurtured here, and been educated here. I’d wanted to leave as soon as I graduated from high school, but in retrospect, it was a pretty all right place. So many of us had moved back after living away for a few years that Tappiano’s, our local wine bar, had started a special Hometown Happy Hour. I hadn’t moved back to raise kids or take care of a parent the way most of my classmates had. I’d come back because I’d humiliated myself on live television and hadn’t had much choice.

  I could probably have survived my personal hot mic gaffe if I’d sworn a little or even thrown a minor temper tantrum. I’d been sent on that particular assignment as punishment for uncovering some unsavory practices at a local nursing home. Unfortunately, our station manager was related by marriage to the owner of that nursing home. I had been demoted from doing actual investigative work to standing in the rain to show it was raining, and hanging out on cliffs when it was windy so people could see exactly how windy it was.

  Unfortunately, I didn’t swear and I didn’t throw a temper tantrum. Instead, I did an imitation of our station manager talking about how he didn’t care about old people and how he thought old people smelled funny.

  It went out live.

  The tape went viral and I was let go after everyone from local senior citizens’ groups to nursing associations complained. I hadn’t known what else to do, so at the urging of family and friends, I’d come home.

  It hadn’t been too bad so far, though. In fact, I was getting to like it.

  “So Iris likes it here?” I asked.

  Henrietta snorted. “Hard to know. She always looks like she’s just bitten into a lemon.”

  “You think she might want to leave?” I asked, wondering if being tethered to a dying parent in a town she didn’t like could have finally become too much for her. That would give her reason to hurry her father off this mortal coil.

  “Not until that daughter of hers graduates from high school,” Grace said. “I heard she’s on track to be valedictorian.”

  “She wouldn’t do anything to get in the way of that girl,” Henrietta agreed. “She’s devoted to her. That’s all she does. Takes care of her father and takes care of her daughter.”

  Maybe Iris wanted her daughter to go to a more prestigious high school. Maybe that would be why she would want to get away. I was getting ahead of myself, though. I was looking for reasons for a murder I wasn’t even sure had taken place yet.

  “Is that Katherine’s sister over there?” Olive pointed one slightly crooked finger.

  I looked where she was pointing at a small woman with glossy black hair and really artful eyeliner. “Yes. Her name is Ellie. Did you want to send your condolences?”

  “Doesn’t look anything like Katherine.” She sniffed. Katherine had had lighter hair with a lot of curl in it and had been quite a bit taller, too.

&
nbsp; “I don’t look like Donna,” I pointed out. I didn’t either. Donna took after Dad’s Nordic side of the family. I, on the other hand, barely made it to five feet four when I pulled myself up as tall as I could, and I had our mother’s dark hair, dark eyes, and olive skin.

  “You sure you’re sisters?” Olive cackled.

  “Behave.” Henrietta rapped her knee with a rolled up funeral program. “Your coloring is different than Donna’s, but you both have the same shaped eyes and there’s something about your ears, too, something that reminds me of your father.”

  I patted her shoulder and went over to check on Katherine’s family to see if they needed anything. The last thing I wanted to discuss with Olive, Henrietta, and Grace was my dad.

  Nineteen months ago, my father had vanished. It sounded melodramatic, but it was pretty much what happened. We all thought he’d gone surfing, but he hadn’t come home. We’d found his car, with his clothes folded neatly inside, parked near one of his favorite spots. We just hadn’t found him. We’d searched for months, checking out John Does that had been found up and down the coast.

  Then a few months ago, funny things started to happen. Someone was leaving little gifts for Donna and me in strange places. It was almost like we’d gotten a Boo Radley. I’d set up a camera in one of the spots where those gifts had been left and we’d seen exactly who it was. Both Donna and I had looked at the tape and said “Dad” when we saw who it was.

  It’s possible that I might have made a bit of a fuss. I might have stormed the police station and ranted at Luke Butler—my nemesis since grade school who was now a police officer—who had investigated my Dad’s disappearance and turned up a big nothing burger. I might have run some ads in local newspapers asking if anyone had seen my Dad. I might have tried to get a social media campaign going. It’s harder to go viral when you’re trying to, rather than when you just don’t notice that your mic is hot. That had spread across the Internet before I’d even made it back to the television station. I’d been fired before I’d set foot inside. The social media campaign about Dad, however, went pretty much nowhere.

  Actually, none of it had gone anywhere. None of it had turned up anything and now the gifts had stopped. Not everyone who looked at the tape saw what I saw. Even Uncle Joey, my dad’s own brother, was skeptical, and the weight of everyone else’s doubt was making Donna waver.

  “Why would your father disappear?” Uncle Joey had asked.

  It was a good question. Why would a grown man with a successful business and two grown daughters suddenly vanish? It wasn’t as if he owed money to the Mafia or had seen some crime go down and had to go into Witness Protection. At the time he disappeared, Donna could have taken over for him if he had wanted to stop being a funeral director and try doing something else. I had been out on my own. There had been nothing tying him down. He could have just left.

  Since then, things have taken a bit of a turn for the worse. My sister’d lost her first pregnancy. I’d imploded at my job and had to resign, but back before he disappeared we’d all been flying high.

  I was pretty convinced that my father loved my sister and me. A lot. We’d always been a team, especially after Mom died. It had been us three against the world. Athos, Porthos, and Aramis. Why would he have left us? And if he had left us, why would he suddenly start coming back, leaving little gifts and a note stuck to our back door that simply said “Sorry” in Dad’s way too distinctive handwriting?

  None of it made sense. Yet. I was pretty sure that at some point, I’d be able to piece it all together. I wouldn’t stop digging until I did. Dad must have known that was how I’d react, which meant, in my opinion, that he wanted me to find him. He wanted me to know. Otherwise, he would have stayed vanished.

  *

  By the time I had the Apodacas taken care of, the day was nearly gone. I decided I’d put off checking out Violet’s house until the next morning. It’s not like there was a rush. I was pretty sure if Violet had some plants that died and no one brought in her mail, her cousin wasn’t going to care. Violet was definitely past caring. According to the hospital, there wasn’t anybody else to worry about.

  I went back to the office in the basement and called Michelle Swanson. We’d gone to high school together, although it wasn’t like we’d been friends. She ran in more of the cheerleader crowd. It wasn’t a mean girl thing. It was just a different interests kind of thing. She’d done the college, marriage, baby thing and now had moved on to the realtor thing. I had done the college, career, fail publicly, and return home to work at the family business thing.

  “Desiree, what can I do for you?” she asked. “Have any new murders I can help you solve?”

  Michelle had provided the information that had broken open the investigation into the death of Alan Brewer last July. I explained the situation with Violet Daugherty and her overstressed cousin. “She asked me if I knew a realtor that would be interested in selling the house. I’m going over there tomorrow. Want to meet me there and take a look? See if you’re interested?”

  “It’s a date.”

  My phone buzzed again as I hung up. It was Nate. “I think I found something.”

  “What kind of something?”

  “Something on Violet Daugherty.” He sounded excited.

  “Do you know why she passed out?”

  “Not yet, but I think I might know how whatever it was that was administered to her. I found a spot on her back when I went over the autopsy photos.” I could hear him rifling through papers on the other end.

  “What sort of spot?”

  “I think it might be an injection site.”

  “Injection of what? You said there weren’t any drugs in her system.”

  There was a pause. “I know. I know. It has to mean something, though, doesn’t it?”

  “Could it be a spot where the EMTs or someone at the hospital injected her with something?”

  “It would be a weird spot for that. It’s right in the middle of her back.”

  That started me thinking. “I don’t suppose there were any weird injection sites on Frank Fiore, were there?”

  “On who?”

  “Frank Fiore. The old man you looked at for me yesterday.” I rolled my eyes.

  Nate sighed. “I told you, Desiree. There was nothing strange about his death. And, for the record, no, there weren’t any weird injection sites on his body. Everything was completely as expected and accounted for.”

  “Fine.” Something still bothered me about the whole thing, but apparently I was the only one.

  *

  Upstairs, my sister Donna and her husband Greg were at the kitchen table eating dinner. Downstairs, we have a big kitchen for caterers to use when setting up for services. Upstairs, we have our own cozy little kitchen with a round oak table and glass-paned cabinets. I don’t think the house had changed in all the time I remembered except for getting the occasional new coat of paint. I pulled up a chair and sat down. “Did you get hold of Violet Daugherty’s next of kin?” Donna asked. She had her long hair pulled back in a braid and no makeup on. She still looked radiant. Pregnancy suited her, although to be honest, she’d always had a bit of a glow.

  “Violet Daugherty? We’re burying her?” Greg asked. Greg had always been a great match for Donna. A couple of inches taller than her so she never had to think about wearing heels, his hair was a few shades darker than hers, although pictures of him as a kid showed him to be a total towhead. They were a matched set, like salt and pepper shakers.

  I didn’t poke at him about the “we.” Technically, Greg wasn’t doing anything of the kind. He worked at an insurance agency in downtown Verbena. “Yes. I talked to her next of kin yesterday. She lives all the way in Maine. I’m not sure you could get farther away and still be in the continental United States. She asked me if I’d check out the house. Maybe help her find a realtor.”

  Donna furrowed her brow. “You’re doing what? That is not a service we offer.”

  I drummed my foot
against the rung of my chair. “I know. You should have heard her on the phone, though. She sounded so frantic and she asked so nicely.”

  Donna shook her head. “Pushover.”

  “Did Violet have any health problems?” I asked Greg. It was possible Greg might know something from seeing Violet every day that wouldn’t have shown up in the autopsy. Maybe there’d be a simple explanation to put Nate’s mind to rest.

  “Not that I know of,” he said. “At least not physical health problems.”

  “What does that mean?” I helped myself to a slice of meatloaf.

  Greg shook his head. “She’s gone now. There’s no reason to discuss it.”

  “Why do you want to know?” Donna asked, her eyes narrowed.

  I shrugged. “Something Nate said.”

  “About Violet? About how she died?” Greg asked. “I thought it was pretty straight forward. She had a car accident.”

  “Yeah, but she was the only one involved in the accident. According to the witness reports, it looked like she’d fallen asleep or passed out behind the wheel.” I scooped some baby carrots onto my plate.

  “And?” Donna asked.

  “And Nate couldn’t find a reason she would have done that. He didn’t see anything that would have made her pass out.” The carrots would be a lot better with some Ranch dressing. I went to the refrigerator to rummage around for some. Everything in there looked fearfully healthy. It had ever since Donna got pregnant. It was going to be a long nine months.

  Donna picked up her fork and waved it at me. “Do not go pushing your nose into this, Desiree.”

  I clutched my hand to my chest. “Me? Why would you say that?”

  “Because I know you. You see something that doesn’t strike you as quite right and you won’t let it go. Look what happened with the whole Alan thing,” Donna said.

  “You mean how I cleared the name of one of our dearest family friends and found the real culprit?” It all depended on how you framed the information. I, apparently, was framing it in a much more positive manner than Donna was. Or that Iris Fiore was, for that matter.