by Sandra Balzo
‘You’re right. Living together demands more than one dresser drawer and just space enough on the bathroom counter for my toothbrush.’
‘It is a little tight. Ouch!’ I held onto his good shoulder to rub my ankle.
‘Turn it?’ Pavlik asked.
‘Just a little – it’ll be fine. This driveway needs to be paved,’ I said as we started down it again. ‘The house itself looks nice enough but it’s set so far back into the tree line. We could have parked at my place and walked back from there easier.’
‘Not to mention let Frank out.’
‘Yup, thereby averting a possible doggy emergency.’
As we approached Christy again, I said, ‘I’m going to stop and talk to her. Save me a seat?’
‘Sure.’
Pavlik continued on up the hill to the mortuary while I waited for Christy to finish giving instructions to a driver in a blue car.
‘There seems to be more of an equal number of civilian and law enforcement cars at this service,’ I said.
‘I know,’ Christy said. ‘I don’t think Detective Taylor had as many non-police friends or much family. I didn’t stay but I imagine it was terribly sad.’
‘It was. As Pete’s will be.’
‘Such a young family.’ She sighed deeply.
‘Is this getting to you?’ I asked. ‘All the deaths, I mean. Celeste, Pete, Al and now Nancy, all in less than a week.’
‘Five days, actually.’ Christy blew a lock of hair out of her face. ‘Celeste died Sunday and Nancy on Thursday. Today is Saturday.’
I saw my opening. ‘That’s right. It was Monday when I almost made you late getting to the mortuary for Celeste. Were you able to help with the cremation?’
Her face lit up, God help us. ‘I was, in fact. I just observed the body preparation and loading. But the technicians actually let me help sweep.’ She frowned. ‘I told you that, didn’t I?’
She had, but I wanted to clarify what day the cremation was. ‘Sophie was jabbering in my other ear.’
‘Oh, yes, at Celeste’s funeral. It was lovely, wasn’t it?’
‘It was. I haven’t heard what arrangements have been made for Nancy.’
‘The cremation is scheduled for tomorrow so the service will likely be Monday afternoon. I can let you know, if you like. Though I’m sure Hannah will tell you, since you’re friends.’
Why did everybody think Hannah and I were friends? Even Jack Andersen had—
Andersen’s name in connection with Celeste’s funeral rang a bell. Hannah had said, ‘Maggy is an old friend,’ meaning I was an old friend of Bernie’s. Jack Andersen, though, had misunderstood and assumed Hannah and I were old friends.
Neither of us had corrected him at the time, me figuring it was none of his business. But if Jack did think we were longtime friends, he might assume that I knew something about her that I clearly didn’t. Maybe something that dated back to before she came to Brookhills.
‘… Like to do them around one o’clock, but—’
‘Why so long?’ I interrupted.
‘What’s so long?’ Christy asked, not understanding.
Not that I necessarily did. Which is why I was asking. ‘Celeste was cremated the day after she died, but Nancy died on Thursday and isn’t being cremated until Sunday afternoon. Why so long?’
I purposely didn’t mention the forty-eight-hour waiting period Jim had told me about, wanting to see what Christy would say.
‘Excellent question, Maggy. It is an interesting business, isn’t it?’
Fascinating. Answer the question.
‘There was an autopsy on Nancy, but that fell within the forty-eight hours we have to wait before cremating a body anyway. The extra day delay was because the Hartsfield service was being held here.’
Good of them not to smoke out the funeral guests. ‘But what about the forty-eight hours for Celeste? She was cremated the next day.’
Christy’s nose wrinkled. ‘I know there are exceptions for special circumstances, so she must have fallen into that category.’ Her handbag was hung over the fencepost and now she pulled out a paper and pen. ‘You know what? I’m going to ask Mort about what exactly the special circumstances were.’
‘No need to do it on my account,’ I said hastily. If there was something hinky, I didn’t want to tip him off.
‘Oh, no bother,’ Christy said. ‘I need to know these things if I’m going to be in the business.’
She lowered her voice and beckoned me close. ‘Don’t tell anybody, but I think I’m going to go all the way.’
OK, it was an old-fashioned way of putting it. But then, like Amy said, Christy was retro. ‘All the way with Ronny?’
‘What?’ She giggled as she got what I meant. ‘Oh, Maggy, don’t be silly. Ronny’s in prison. No, I meant I’m really going to commit to this new career.’
‘And that means?’
‘I’m going to become – wait for it – a mortician!’
A booming organ signaled the start of the second funeral of the day.
TWENTY-FIVE
‘No Jack Andersen at this service,’ I said to Pavlik as I drove us home.
‘Hopefully he’s busy burying the body.’ He checked his cell phone. ‘No messages to that effect, though.’
‘I assumed he’d be a little stealthier. Like do it in the dead of night, perhaps?’
Pavlik was texting.
‘I’m glad Jack wasn’t at Pete’s service,’ I continued, ‘but I was hoping maybe Vickie would be there alone.’
‘She sounded like she wanted nothing to do with either funeral.’
‘I’m sure she’ll be at Nancy’s. But that won’t be until Monday from what Christy said. Oh!’
Pavlik looked up from his text. ‘What?’
‘Both she and Father Jim told me that there’s a forty-eight-hour waiting period before a body can be cremated. Nancy’s cremation is tomorrow.’
‘OK.’ He was back to texting.
‘But Christy also said that Celeste’s body was cremated on Monday morning – less than twenty-four hours after she died. That apparently there are exceptions to the rule. Is that true?’
‘I can check.’
Switching from texting to Googling, he punched it up. ‘Here it is. The Wisconsin statute on cremation. No person may cremate the corpse of a deceased person within forty-eight hours after the death, or the discovery of the death, of the deceased person unless the death was caused by a contagious or infectious disease.’
I frowned. ‘I don’t think Celeste had an infectious disease. Or at least I hope not, or we were all exposed to it on Sunday.’
A chill went up my spine as I thought about Sarah getting sick, too. ‘Could that be what also killed Nancy? A disease from Celeste?’
‘Only if that disease causes pillowcases to disappear.’ Pavlik was still studying his phone. ‘It says that cremation requires a permit signed by the coroner or medical examiner, so the mortuary would have had to obtain that before proceeding.’
‘No autopsy was done on Celeste,’ I said.
‘Not unusual if the death isn’t suspicious. A doctor could pronounce death, too, and provide that information for the permit and the death certificate.’
‘I don’t know who might have done that in Celeste’s case. Hannah said that both she and Nancy hated doctors and refused to see them. Though she did,’ I drummed my fingers on the steering wheel, ‘have your doctor—’
‘Doctor Goode?’
‘That’s the one. Mort said Nancy was under her care, which seemed a stretch since Hannah said all she’d done was prescribe a sedative.’
Turning the car into my driveway, I turned off the engine. ‘Doctor Goode is a friend of Mort’s and part of the Goddard Gang.’
‘My family practice doc is in a gang?’
‘You know what I mean. It’s what the group of people who used to meet at Goddard’s for coffee – and now Uncommon Grounds – call themselves. They’re pretty tight.’
‘Not insinuating. Just suggesting that Mort might have asked her to sign off on Celeste’s death to save Hannah the heartache of having to have an autopsy. Celeste was old and apparently ill. It’s not all that different than her calling the ER doc for us and having him sign you out of the hospital.’
‘For one thing, I wasn’t dead. For another, I was in my rights to sign myself out.’
‘I know,’ I said, patting his hand. ‘But I didn’t really want the liability of bringing you home like that. What if you’d bit the big one overnight?’
‘What?’ Pavlik put down his phone. ‘You were afraid—’
‘Water over the bridge,’ I said, waving him off with a grin. ‘But my point is that people bend the rules for friends. And maybe Doctor Goode bent the rules for Mort and Mort bent them for Hannah.’
‘What about the permit required for the cremation? Mort certainly would have to have that.’
‘True, but what’s to stop him getting the permit for the cremation and then not waiting the forty-eight hours?’
‘But what’s to be gained by cremating a body a day early? Destroying evidence? Of what?’
I knew Pavlik had to be exhausted after the funerals of two of his men, so I just shrugged. ‘I don’t know. What’s say we go in, build a fire and have a glass of wine?’
‘Sounds good,’ Pavlik said, swinging open the car door. ‘But first we’d better let Frank out before he goes firehose on us.’
Excellent idea.
Storms woke us up that night. Or first woke Frank, who then stepped on me to launch himself over Pavlik and off the bed.
‘Ouch!’
I used to be a side sleeper, but since I’d let Frank on the bed I’d become a pretty-much-any-position-that-gives-me-a-few-inches-of-mattress-and-a-shred-of-blanket sleeper. My legs got more sleep than I did, since they were usually trapped under one of Frank’s furry body parts and needed resuscitation in the morning. Add Pavlik to the equation – and the bed – and …
‘Oooh, cramp, cramp.’ I was frantically grabbing at my leg.
‘What, what?’ Pavlik was blinking.
‘Charley-horse in my calf. Frank was laying on it. And it went to sleep.’
Pavlik sat up and gave it a rub. ‘Was that thunder I heard?’
‘Yes. That’s what woke Frank up and set off this chain of events.’
‘I didn’t hear him.’ He was working his thumb into my calf muscle.
‘Mmmmm. That’s because he sailed over you when he used me as a springboard to jump off the bed.’ A flash of lightning followed by … one one-thousand, two one-thousand, three one-thousand, four one-thousand, five one … a crash of thunder. ‘Five seconds, so the storm is five miles away. I love a good thunderstorm.’
‘Actually, that’s not true.’
‘I don’t love thunderstorms?’
‘No, I’m sure that you do. But it’s not true that each second between the lightning and thunder means the storm is one mile away. Since it takes roughly five seconds for the sound to travel one mile, you need to divide the seconds you count by five.’
The theory behind it was beyond me at that time of night, but I could do the math. ‘Five divided by five – so just one mile away, not five.’
‘You got it.’
‘A lifetime of storm-counting, shattered in an instant.’ Stretching, I pointed my toe and the cramp seized again. ‘Oww, oww, oww.’
‘Who knew you were such a baby,’ Pavlik threw a sideways glance my way, ‘about leg cramps. You’re so … stoic about other things.’
‘Good attempt at bailing yourself out,’ I said, giving him a pat on the cheek. ‘But I’m not stoic about anything.’
He grinned. ‘As I recall, you don’t scream too much when facing down a python. Or an alligator.’
‘Paralyzed with fear is a real concept. That’s good,’ I said as the cramp let up. ‘Thank you.’
‘You’re welcome.’ He lay back down. ‘Can we go back to sleep now?’
‘Not quite yet,’ I said.
‘Ohhh?’ His eyes darkened playfully. ‘What do you have in mind?’
Not that. At least, not right that second. But I needed Pavlik to find out something for me without tipping him off that I had the pillowcase. ‘I was wondering do they remove makeup during an autopsy? It seems like they would in case it was concealing bruises or something, right?’
Pavlik groaned. ‘I probably deserve this.’
‘Deserve what?’ I asked apprehensively.
‘Your being fixated on something like that in the middle of the night. I probably did it often enough to Susan.’
Way to bring up the ex-wife.
He sighed and sat up. ‘But in answer to your question, in my experience they would take photos and then make a careful examination, which I believe would include removing makeup. Why? Do you think Nancy was being abused?’
Since that was exactly what I hoped he’d think I was getting at, I said, ‘Maybe. Do you think you could ask tomorrow?’
‘About signs of abuse on the body? It would have been in the autopsy report.’
‘Also the makeup itself. You know, whether she still had on foundation or eyeliner or lipstick.’ Nancy had been wearing none of those things in Bernie’s office, something that Pavlik couldn’t know since he wasn’t there. ‘It might give us an idea how long she was home after she died. You know, did she have time to take off her makeup?’
I thought it was a masterful sleight of hand on my part, especially at 1:10 in the morning. But Pavlik’s eyes narrowed. ‘If I know you, you’re after something else.’
He did know me. But I also knew him. ‘Me?’ I said innocently, slipping back down onto my pillow. ‘Well, maybe a little something else.’
As I pulled Pavlik down to me, Frank resignedly settled on the rug next to the bed.
TWENTY-SIX
Sunday was my day off, so Pavlik and I had breakfast together.
Which meant I made coffee and he made toast from the last of the white bread. ‘Do you have butter?’
‘Of course. Who doesn’t have butter?’ I swung open the refrigerator door. ‘Well, maybe not.’
I was saved from his expression, since he was working on getting the heel of the bread out of the toaster.
‘I have some wooden tongs,’ I started to say and then realized they were at the shop. Or, more specifically, under the shop, along with the garbage bag containing the pillowcase. ‘Or I had. Whatever did I do with those?’
‘Probably hiding with the butter,’ Pavlik said, unplugging the toaster and turning it upside down to shake. ‘We need to do some grocery shopping. Or easier, just raid the fridge and cabinets at my place.’
Why did I get the feeling he had no plan to return to ‘his place’ any time soon? At least to live.
‘You’re getting crumbs all over,’ I pointed out.
‘But the crust came out.’ He held it up. ‘Which is good, because it and this,’ he indicated a full piece of toast on a plate, ‘are the only things we have to eat.’
Sure, if you discounted green sludge dog food and spray cheese.
‘Tell you what,’ I said, slipping my arms around him, ‘I want to go by Brookhills Manor and talk to Vickie, so I’ll run out to your place first for food and then stop at the manor on my way home.’
‘Is it going to take long with Vickie?’ he asked. ‘’Cause there’s some really good ice cream in my freezer you could snag, assuming you don’t plan on grilling the witness so long it melts.’
‘I’ll make it quick.’ I let go of him and swung open the cabinet door. ‘Voila! Grape jelly.’
‘It’ll do,’ he said, taking it. ‘But why don’t you grab my lingonberry while you’re at my place.’
Lingonberry. Really? Next he’d be wanting cheese that didn’t come in an aerosol can.
Pavlik’s cabinets and refrigerator were admittedly a treasure trove of treats. And cheaper tha
n a grocery store. First, I snagged the lingonberry jam and a loaf of bread – cracked wheat, naturally. Or unnaturally, as far as I was concerned. Also, a pound of butter, a jar of Jif and, much as it pained me, a twelve-pack of caffeine-free Diet Pepsi. Sensing that somebody who craved cracked wheat bread might also eat vegetables, I checked out the crisper. The bag of lettuce I found there was wilted so I tossed it. But the broccoli and carrots looked fine and Frank would eat the carrots if nobody else did. I also grabbed some Fuji apples, a Frank favorite.
Standing in the middle of the kitchen, I felt like I was missing something. The ice cream.
Sliding out the freezer drawer, I found two. Madagascar Vanilla and Bittersweet Chocolate. Yum.
And no need to decide. I’d take both. And hope I could catch Vickie at her home and be back at mine before the ice cream melted.
I found a brown bag from Schultz’s market under the sink and loaded everything into it, ice cream on top.
Driving to the manor, I thought about how I should approach Vickie. And where.
‘Call Sophie,’ I told my cell phone, which was lying on the center console.
It beeped and that’s it. Stopping at the signal on the corner of Brookhills Road and the manor, I scrolled to Sophie’s number.
‘Do you know if Vickie is home?’ I asked when she answered.
‘How would I know that?’ she demanded. ‘I’m at your shop.’
Well, that was good, if not helpful. The light turned green.
‘Why don’t you call her?’ Sophie continued.
‘I wanted to drop in unannounced. And when Jack Andersen is not around.’
‘That’ll be tough. From what I’ve been hearing next door, she’s living with him.’
Damn. ‘You don’t think I can catch her at her own apartment?’
‘You can try. Do you know the number? Eleven, which is the other side of Andersen’s from us. Henry, I told you—’
The line went dead. Turning left into the Brookhills Manor parking lot, I pulled around back to the section closest to Poplar Creek. Getting out, I scanned the tree line. No sign of Andersen dragging a body, of course. Nor sheriff’s deputies combing the area for that body, either. I was happy, though, to see Vickie’s white Kia parked in the last line of cars, closest to the woods.
