by Sara Rosett
During the short drive, she was silent. I glanced at her face before we went inside the funeral home and saw a resolve that hadn’t been there earlier. The desk at the entry area was empty. Aunt Christine stood stiffly, her arms held tightly to her sides and her hands clamped together at her waist. I looked around the desk for a bell or buzzer, but there was nothing there. A long L-shaped corridor branched out behind the desk. A plaque beside a doorway in the longer corridor read SERENITY ROOM. “Let me look along here and see if I can find him,” I said to Aunt Christine. She gave a jerky nod and remained with her feet planted in the entry area.
Instrumental music played softly in the corridor. It was the only noise except for the muted sound of my footsteps on the low cream-colored carpet. Goosebumps rose on my arms as I glanced in door after door, casket after casket. So many dead people. A few rooms had small smatterings of people, talking quietly, but the hallway was long and empty. Sconces glowed with soft light, and oil paintings of landscapes decorated the wallpaper between the doorways. I’d already passed rooms labeled Peaceful Rest, Quiet Interlude, Reflections, Zen Meditation, and Calm Serenity. How many synonyms were there for the word “peaceful”? My stomach clinched as I caught sight of a small white casket through one of the doorways. It was half the size of the ones I’d been seeing. A child’s casket. I hurried on to the next doorway, the last one.
Finally, the Tranquility Room. I turned on my heel and hurried back to the entry area. Aunt Christine was still glued to the floor exactly where I’d left her. “I found the Tranquility Room. Are you ready?”
She gave an almost imperceptible nod, but didn’t move. I put an arm around her shoulders and took a step forward. She moved with me and we progressed down the hall. I’d always thought of Aunt Christine with her squat, chubby figure as solid and robust, but right now she seemed delicate. I kept my gaze on the room at the far end. I didn’t want to think about all those bodies in the other rooms. Intellectually, I knew death was part of life and the process of grieving for and burying the dead shouldn’t be creepy. Everyone died, but somehow the thought of all those bodies lying in caskets in room after room freaked me out.
Get a grip, I ordered myself. It just feels weird because as a culture we push death away and never consider it, never want to even think about it. Well, I certainly couldn’t escape the reality of death here, I thought, as we reached the last room.
“Here we are,” I said, and cringed at the heartiness of my voice. I removed my arm from her shoulders. I noticed she was hunched over slightly as if to ward off a cold breeze. She reached out and gripped one of my hands in both of hers as we stepped into the room.
It was decorated in shades of pale blue and cream with couches, chairs, and tables ranging around the room. There were more glowing sconces and oil paintings of smooth rivers. It would have been a pleasant room to spend time in, except for the fact that it was in a funeral home. A tabletop water fountain burbled in one corner, almost drowning out the muted music.
We both looked around the room and then looked quickly at each other. There was a large gap in the furnishings on one wall. “Where’s the casket?” Aunt Christine asked, looking bewildered.
“I don’t know. I didn’t look in here before, just came back to get you as soon as I saw the room name. Let me check,” I said and led her to one of the chairs where she perched uncertainly. I went back to the door. Below the name of the room was a printed card with the name Franklin Scott Avery on it. “This is the right room,” I said to Aunt Christine. “I’ll go find someone.”
I hurried back down the hall and emerged into the entry area as Rosanna pushed open a white wainscoted door at the end of the shorter corridor that was set at a right angle to the longer one. She was carrying a mug of tea in one hand and a stack of papers in the other. “Oh, hello. You’re with the Avery family, right?”
“Yes. Ellie Avery. My aunt and I are here to see Franklin Avery, but he’s not in the room.”
“Not in the room?” she said, her head rearing back a little as if I’d said something completely absurd. “Maybe you’re not in the right room. He’s in the—”
“Tranquility Room, I know. That’s where we were and there’s no casket in there. My aunt is waiting there.”
Rosanna frowned as she set down the mug and papers on the desk. “Well, let’s just go have a look, why don’t we?” she said in an extra chirpy voice, and I knew she thought we’d just looked in the wrong room.
We hurried down the longer hall. The whisper of her fluttering pink skirt was the only sound besides the muted music. “Here we are. This is the Tranquility Room.” Her voiced died away as she took in the empty space and Aunt Christine, looking puzzled and distraught. “Well, let me . . . um . . . check.” She recovered her composure and said, “He must have stepped out. I’ll be right back.”
Stepped out? He stepped out? I stifled a giggle. Where had he gone? For coffee?
“Oh, Ellie. This isn’t good. Where is he?”
I fought off the giggles because Aunt Christine looked so upset. I said, “I’m sure it’s just a little mix-up. They probably told us the wrong room.”
I walked over to the water feature that bubbled in the corner, then paced back to the door. I looked out and saw Rosanna and a man in a dark suit popping in and out of the rooms along the corridor. They met at the end and conferred, then glanced back my way. The man disappeared down the shorter corridor and she walked back down the hall toward me.
“I am so sorry. There’s been a little . . . ,” she looked for a moment like she didn’t know what to say, then seemed to decide, as she continued in a slightly firmer tone of voice, “. . . a little delay.” She shot me a quick glance from behind her thick-framed rectangular glasses and then smiled. “So sorry about this. Why don’t you come with me? We have a nice room, a lounge for families. You can wait there while we sort this out.”
We trooped back down the long corridor again, and by this time I wasn’t feeling quite so uncomfortable about being in the building and seeing all the caskets. There’s nothing like familiarity to drive away the creepiness factor. Once we were back at her desk, Rosanna turned to the left and led us a few feet down the shorter corridor to a room that was more utilitarian than the viewing rooms. “Here you go,” she said as she pulled out a chair from a round wooden table so Aunt Christine could take a seat. “Help yourself to any of the refreshments. I’ll be right back.”
While the viewing room had felt almost like a living room with its upholstered couches and chairs and fine paintings, this room felt more like a kitchen. It had the same black-and-white checked tile floor I’d seen in the entryway. Cabinets with Formica countertops ringed the walls and a refrigerator hummed quietly in one corner. There was a television mounted in one corner with a set of instructions posted beside it so people could watch the funeral services in the chapel on closed-circuit TV. Thankfully, the television was turned off right now.
“This is dreadful,” Aunt Christine declared, and I was glad to see some of the spark coming back into her eyes. “I’m calling Caroline. She’s the one who insisted on using Grisholm’s, although we used Besley’s when Cousin Maureen passed and they did a perfectly good job.”
A flash of pink whipped by the doorway and I drifted in that direction as Aunt Christine powered on her cell phone. I leaned out the door slightly and saw Rosanna and the man in the dark suit whispering. The man, who had extremely curly dark hair, was talking quickly. They were standing in front of the white door at the end of the short hallway that I’d seen Rosanna emerge from earlier.
The man’s voice rose slightly and I caught a few words. “. . . told you . . . not there.”
Rosanna shook her head. I could see the impatience on her face as she said, “That’s impossible.”
I missed the man’s next words, but he seemed to be arguing with her.
“Fine,” Rosanna said, “you do that. I’ll double-check,” and pushed the white door open.
The man turned
and hurried toward me. I slipped back into the room as he strode by. Aunt Christine was dialing as I looked out the doorway again. The white door hadn’t closed completely. “I’ll be right back,” I said. She waved her hand distractedly as she punched numbers on the keypad. I wasn’t about to wander all over the funeral home on my own, but I had the distinct impression that Rosanna and the dark-suited man were scrambling to cover something up and they weren’t going to be straight with us.
A group of people were filing by Rosanna’s desk and leaving the building as I crossed the hall and peered into the crack of the open door. No black-and-white tile, or wallpaper back here, just plain white industrial tile and drywall painted white. There was a bulletin board with notices pinned to it and a poster about proper hand washing technique. I edged the door open and saw a smaller office with an array of papers stacked on a desk and farther down the corridor, more offices. This area had a utilitarian feel to it. This was the behind-the-scenes area of the funeral home that customers—clients?—family members?—didn’t see. I noticed a floor plan with fire escape instructions tacked to the bulletin board. If there was a fire, I was supposed to walk down the hall directly in front of me, past another office, a prep room, and an anteroom, then exit into the garage. I could guess what the prep room and anteroom were for and there was no way I was going down that hall, even if there was a fire at my back.
Rosanna came out of one of the offices as a male voice inside called out, “Of course he’s not back here. We sent him out at nine forty-five. We don’t have anyone else—check for yourself, if you’d like.”
She froze when she saw me, then walked forward quickly, a fixed smile on her face. “Mrs. Avery, if you’ll step back into the lounge—”
“Where is he?” I asked, not budging.
“There seems to have been a small mix-up,” Rosanna said. “Now, if you’ll just go back to the lounge—”
At that moment, a man came barreling through the doorway and crashed into my back. I lunged forward and my shoulder banged into the wall. It was the curly headed man. “Oh, excuse me. So sorry,” he said. Up close, I could tell he was much younger than I’d realized. He was probably either in his late teens or early twenties. His face was flushed and I supposed he normally had ruddy features. But his rushing around and the anxiety that clearly showed on his face had heightened his normal coloring. He grabbed my elbow and helped me stand back up before turning to Rosanna. “I don’t know where he is.” Rosanna looked at him sharply, but the man continued, his voice urgent. “He’s gone. Franklin Avery’s gone.”
Chapter Seven
“How can he be gone?” Mitch asked. I pressed my cell phone closer to my ear so I could hear over the raised voices. “I don’t know. But they can’t find his body anywhere. They’ve . . . lost him.”
The white door was open and when Aunt Christine heard our voices, she’d come into the hallway to see what all the fuss was about. Rosanna got a panicked look on her face and had herded everyone back into the lounge and shut the door. She was now standing with her back to the door, guarding it as if her life depended on keeping us inside. I suppose, more accurately, it was her job that depended on keeping the disturbance we were making away from other quietly grieving families. “That’s impossible. You can’t just lose a body,” Mitch said.
“You wouldn’t think so, would you? Apparently, they’ve looked everywhere and he’s not in the funeral home. I think you should come down here. If you have any pull at all with the Grisholm family, it might help us figure out exactly what’s going on.”
“Okay. Who’s there now?”
“A young woman named Rosanna, who earlier in the day was very serene—” Rosanna’s voice screeched, “Police? No, you cannot call the police,” as she tried to maintain her blocking strategy at the door and push the cell phone away from Aunt Christine’s ear, as I said, “—and a young guy in a suit with really curly dark hair.”
“That’s got to be Jake, Dermont’s younger brother. They’re actually letting him work there? I can’t believe it. I’m on my way.”
I pulled the phone away from my ear and stared at it for a second. I’d never known Mitch to hang up on me and he usually didn’t leap into action. Thoughtful contemplation mixed with a big dollop of patience was usually more his style. Now I was really worried.
Rosanna had left her post by the door and pried Aunt Christine’s phone from her hand. “We’ll sort this out. I’m sure it’s just a mix-up,” she said.
The man with the curly hair—Jake—was sitting at one of the chairs at the table with his head in his hands. I could hear him saying, “Pick up. Pick up the phone. I swear, if you’ve gotten me in trouble, you crazy b—”
I must have registered in his peripheral vision, because he twisted toward me and I saw that he was on his cell phone. He yanked it away from his ear, then ended the call. He stuffed the phone in a pocket, then stood quickly.
“Jake? You are Jake, aren’t you?”
He ran his hands over the suit coat and adjusted his tie. “Yes, ma’am,” he said, his smile falsely automatic.
“Would you happen to know something about where Franklin Avery is?” I glanced down at the pocket where he’d stashed his phone.
“No, ma’am,” he said, but his expression looked exactly like Nathan’s when I’ve caught him lying to me about brushing his teeth, evasive and guilty at the same time.
“Are you sure?”
“Oh, yes, ma’am. Most unusual thing I’ve ever seen. Nothing like this has ever happened.”
“Young lady,” Aunt Christine’s imperious voice, which had corralled and cowed generations of unruly students, rang out. “Give me back my phone. I do not care that you don’t want me to call the police. If you cannot find my father’s body, it must be reported. Now, give it back,” she said, and held out her hand.
Rosanna looked queasy as she reluctantly handed the phone back. “Please, let us check again. I’m sure it’s just an error. He’ll turn up,” she finished weakly.
“This is a very serious situation. Instead of trying to cover it up, I suggest you call your boss,” Aunt Christine said sharply before turning back to her phone. Jake slipped out of the unguarded door.
Rosanna closed her eyes briefly, then said, “Yes, of course. You’re right. I’ll call Mr. Grisholm,” and left the room.
“I’d like to report a missing body. At Grisholm’s Funeral Home.... Yes, it’s an emergency. No, we don’t need an ambulance. Didn’t you hear me? A body is missing.” Aunt Christine listened for a moment, then rolled her eyes and said in an undertone to me, “This may take some time.” She spoke into the phone again and said, “Christine Avery. C–h–r–i–s–t–i–n–e . . .”
I remembered Detective Kalra’s business card. I’d tucked it into my purse this morning after I’d returned to the house. I dug it out to use my cell phone to call her office. Aunt Christine had spelled her last name and was saying that she didn’t know the funeral home address, but that they didn’t need an exact address because it was on Waverly and anyone would be able to see it from the road. I could see that it was going to take a long time before Aunt Christine got through to anyone who could help her. I had a feeling Detective Kalra could make things happen and she was familiar with Grandpa Franklin’s death. Of course, she already thought there was something off about his death, and I hoped I wasn’t putting anyone in the family in a bad position by calling the detective, but finding Grandpa Franklin seemed to be the most important thing right now. I dialed the number.
“Rickets.”
“Oh, sorry,” I said. The voice was gruff and definitely masculine. “I must have the wrong number. I was trying to reach Detective Kalra.”
“She’s out,” he said.
“I talked to her this morning about Franklin Avery—”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa. Let me stop you right there. I know she had some bee in her bonnet about that case, but it’s closed. You want to leave a message?”
“Yes . . .
well, when will she be back?”
There was a heavy sigh. “Look, lady, I don’t have time for this. I don’t have her exact ETA, so you want to leave your name and number or what?”
Irritated at his tone, I said, “Well, no, I don’t want to unless she’ll be back in the next few minutes, because there’s a dead body that’s missing.”
After a pause, he said, “Dead body? Missing, you say?” His choppy, irritated tone had vanished.
“Yes. Franklin Avery’s body is missing from Grisholm’s Funeral Home.”
“Oh, boy,” he said, sounding resigned. “I’ll be right out.”
Mitch arrived before the police. He was alone when he walked into the lounge area. “Where is everyone else?” I asked.
“Who else?”
“The rest of the Avery family. I figured you’d arrive as part of the Avery family motorcade.”
“No, I didn’t tell anyone else, just came straight here. Hello, Aunt Christine,” he said, pausing to give her a peck on the cheek. “How are you doing?”
“Good, now that Ellie’s got the police on the way. Never in my life have I seen such incompetence. And I worked in the public school system, mind you.”
“Incompetence. Right. That brings us to Jake. Where is he?” Mitch asked.
“I don’t know. He was in here with us for a few minutes. He made a phone call. He was saying something about someone getting him in trouble and then he left.”
“Typical. All right, let me see if I can find him. Have you already looked around, Ellie?”
“Are you kidding? This is a funeral home. I’m not looking around.”
Mitch frowned at me. “Really? You? You’re afraid you might see a dead body?”
I ignored that comment and said, “They’ve looked in all the viewing rooms, the chapel, the . . . prep room, and even in the, what did she call it, Aunt Christine?”
