Funeral Hotdish

by Jana Bommersbach

“What’s the matter?” Joya asked.

  Maggie tried to recover. “Oh, nothing. Hey, go to the garden and pick me some green beans.”

  Joya knew a dodge when she saw one. It perplexed her. Her mom’s reaction didn’t make any sense.

  She put the dirty beans in the sink to wash them and walked down the hall to the bathroom to hear her mom on the bedroom phone.

  “I don’t think she knows, but she’s so damn nosy. Okay. Just be careful.”

  Joya dashed back to the kitchen and stood washing the green beans when her mother came in. “These okay?”

  “Just perfect,” her mom sang, giving her daughter a hug.

  A good investigative reporter doesn’t let a lot pass her by. Joya had once helped solve the murder of a woman shot in the back of a pickup truck because she asked the question—how tall is the accused? Only a very tall person could have held the gun at the angle that inflicted the fatal bullets. The accused girl was only five-foot-three and her defense attorney got the case thrown out of court.

  Another time she’d help stop three units of a controversial nuclear power plant outside Phoenix when she asked the simple question. “Do we have enough water in the desert for five nuclear units?” Turns out the answer was a resounding “no”and that’s why the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station only has two units.

  So one mother’s fearful reaction to a simple question about another putting pink roses on her daughter’s grave—that meant something. But what?

  She knew better than to ask her mother or father, and Alice had already signaled that she didn’t want any more discussion on that subject.

  Hey, you’re on vacation, girl. Give it a rest! Come on, you’ve got all those books to read and friends to see and God, this place is so different now. Just have a good time and don’t see boogeymen under every bed.

  But even with lecturing herself, the question kept playing around in her head.

  One of the people she was anxious to visit was Dolan Lowe. She and the attorney had kept in touch by email and a couple phone calls, and it might be fun to have a North Dakota romance for a change. So later that week she drove over to Wahpeton to have dinner with him at the Steakhouse—a place that had been popular since she was a high school student in Northville decades ago.

  They caught up on his latest cases—nothing very exciting, the normal civil stuff. He wanted to hear more about her Sammy scoop. He’d read her story and they’d had a brief discussion, but now he wanted details. And like any reporter, she loved to tell her ‘war stories,’ so she told him how it all began and how it cost her a boyfriend. Sammy’s trial was still months away and she’d be covering that—she didn’t have to tell an attorney how tedious a trial can be. Really, she confided, she needed a new story to get her juices going again.

  He assured her that in a big city, the next big story couldn’t be far away. Good thing, he mused, she wasn’t looking for that kind of excitement around here.

  “The mess in Northville was the biggest thing we’ve seen in these parts in years, and nobody expects a repeat performance of that kind of excitement.”

  They both laughed.

  “You know, it seems to me that your father and Sammy have a lot in common.”

  The words hit like throwing mud on a wedding cake.

  “What? Oh God, where do you come up with that?”

  “Think about it. Both men are used to being in charge. Both were admired in their own circles. Both broke the law—one to help his son, the other to help his town. Both thought they were above the law. Only difference is, Sammy will pay for his crimes.”

  “So you think my father should pay something?” The words came out angry.

  “No, I think your dad made a really dumb decision, but you’ve got to admit, the similarities are there.”

  “I don’t see them,” Joya lied. She’d never fess up that she’d had some of these same thoughts.

  “A daughter’s not supposed to see her father’s sins.”

  “And a good defense attorney’s not supposed to point fingers at his client.”

  “Got me there, kiddo. Hey, I didn’t mean your dad was a Mafioso or anything. You know I like him. Not as much as I like you, so please tell me I haven’t blown this whole evening.”

  “No, and I didn’t mean to sound so snarly. You just caught me off guard.”

  They ordered another drink and made small talk and then Joya remembered something she wanted to tell him.

  “You know, the strangest thing.” She was cutting apart one of the most delicious steaks she’d ever eaten. “The mother of that girl who died of the overdose? She puts two pink roses on her daughter’s grave every Wednesday. And when I asked my mom about it, she looked like the question upset her.”

  Joya put the tasty piece of meat in her mouth, closed her eyes and yummed at its fabulous flavor. When she opened them, Dolan Lowe was staring at her with his mouth half open.

  “Really?” he gulped. She knew she’d hit some nerve.

  “Oh, my God.” He let the words hang there and took a long sip of his martini. He looked off, like he was seeing something else and considering the secrets of the world. “Oh. My. God.”

  He put down his drink and tented his hands in front of his face, resting his elbows on the table. “That’s it. My God, that’s it.”

  Joya was getting very nervous—or was it excited? A tingling of anticipation was, perversely, one of her favorite feelings.

  “Dolan, what is it?”

  “You know, before the prosecutor got wise, I went down to the Coroner’s Office to see if they had anything else on the autopsy,” he began. “They don’t put everything in those reports, you know. Sometimes stuff that seems relevant is just left out.”

  Joya looked at him in horror and he laughed. “Hey, this is North Dakota. We’re not as obsessive as you guys out in Arizona. It’s not malicious or anything, but a couple cases I’ve had, I’ve found out more stuff going right to the office. So I went over and chatted with Mary—I think she’s the girl you met? She thought you were really nice. Anyway, I chatted with Mary and she mentioned pink roses.”

  Joya stopped breathing.

  “What about pink roses?”

  “Well, there was plant material embedded in that guy’s chest that they couldn’t identify. Everybody else passed it off as grain, since he was in a silo. But Mary told me she thought it looked like tiny pieces of pink rose. We laughed about it. It made no sense that somebody put pink roses on his chest when he was shot to death during a freezing winter storm. The next day the prosecutor declared the killer was that kid who hanged himself, so the case was over. And I just forgot about it.”

  Joya’s mind was reeling. It couldn’t be… but she immediately knew it was.

  She remembered the simple sentence in the autopsy report now—it meant nothing then. A silo has lots of plant material. She never thought to ask “what kind?” Something else jumped out at her now. Who’s the only person Gertie Bach would give a pass to? Who’s the only one she’d allow to sully the name of a boy she knew Amber loved—a boy she knew was innocent?

  And if this two plus two equals four, what was she going to do about it?

  Dolan could see the wheels turning in her eyes. “You know, if anybody needs a good defense attorney, you’ve got my number.”

  “Yes, I do.”

  They kissed goodnight in the parking lot after she turned down Dolan’s suggestion they have a drink at his place. “Another time,” she promised, but wasn’t sure that would ever happen. He was nice and smart and the kiss was okay, but she hadn’t felt a spark. Not like when Rob kissed her. But that spark was long gone and she had no idea she’d ever have another one.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Wednesday, July 12, 2000

  Joya’s walk the following Wednesday took her out to the cemetery. There was Amber’s
grave, two roses now wilted, waiting for their replacements.

  “Oh God, I hope it’s not true.” But she knew she was whistling in the graveyard.

  She surveyed the grounds to find a big stone on the row above Amber’s grave. She could hide there, eavesdrop there, pray for a different ending. That’s where she was when Nettie made her weekly visit to Amber’s grave.

  “Hi, darling,” she sang out, as she picked up the dead roses and gently laid down the beautiful new ones. “Here’s your roses, honey. All pretty and pink. Just like you like them.”

  She laid down next to the grave and stroked the grass growing over Amber’s casket. She told her daughter about her cousins and news from town. She spent twenty minutes talking about her new diet that had already taken off ten pounds.

  Joya felt guilty, snooping on such an intimate conversation by a grieving mother, but she had no choice now but to stay hidden. As the visit continued, she became more and more convinced that there was nothing here. Nothing to worry about. Nothing to discover. She had to admit, she was greatly relieved.

  And then Nettie started talking about Johnny and Crabapple.

  “I’m sorry the town thinks Johnny killed him,” Nettie told her daughter’s grave. “I know you wouldn’t like that. But it’s for the best. He would have, you know. If he found him first, he would have killed him. The whole town knew that. I know that’s why they kidnapped him. So Johnny couldn’t find him and kill him. Isn’t that something, Amber? Those men trying to protect Johnny? Doesn’t that make you feel good? I know those men and they couldn’t have killed him. They just wanted him to confess, so they could hand him over to the sheriff. That wasn’t good enough. Not for my Amber.”

  Joya thought her heart stopped.

  Nettie kept talking and Joya kept listening. With every word she heard, her compassion struggled with her conscience.

  “Alice knew when they snatched him. They were playing cards that Thursday and she heard enough to know that was the day. She was so worried, and she let a little slip when I came in for coffee. I acted like I wasn’t interested. But the next day I took the day off and watched Ralph Bonner’s house all day. He met up with the others in the Legion parking lot. It wasn’t hard to follow them. But then we had that storm. I couldn’t get there until Sunday.

  “You would have been proud of me, Amber. I know, I know, you’re not a violent type, but you have to admit, he was dangerous. He had to be stopped. Well, I stopped him. Your mother took care of it for you.

  “It was almost funny—he thought I had come to save him. It was so cold and he’d been left there in the storm and when I got there, he thought I was there to free him. I gave him the roses. He took them and had this perplexed look, and I said, ‘These are from Amber.’ And then I pulled the trigger on your dad’s old shotgun and made certain he’d never hurt anyone else again. You would have been proud of me.”

  Joya clapped her hands over her mouth so she wouldn’t scream.

  “I confessed to Father John. He told me I had to turn myself in. But then, I could never come here to see you. What good does it do for me to go to prison and leave you here all alone? Nobody’s looking for me. I think some of the women suspect, but they won’t say anything. No, we just have to let everyone think Johnny killed him.”

  Joya stood up then, revealing herself. Nettie looked at her in shock, jumping to her feet.

  “What…what…who…what…?”

  “Nettie, it’s Joya, Ralph and Maggie’s daughter.”

  The two women looked bewildered at one another, like they were playing a game and didn’t know the rules.

  Finally Joya found her tongue. “I’m so sorry about all this. You’ve had such a terrible loss. Amber was such a sweet girl.”

  Nettie took her words as condolences and lied to herself that Joya couldn’t have heard everything.

  “Thank you for your kind words. Yes, she was such a sweet girl. She had so much to live for. She held such promise. We were expecting a basketball scholarship….”

  Joya realized Nettie would go on for an hour if she let her. “Nettie, please. I’m not here to mourn with you.”

  Nettie scrunched up her brow in wonder. Of course Joya was here to mourn. She refused to see any other reason.

  Joya could see the shield she’d erected and took a deep breath to plunge ahead. “Nettie, honey, it’s time. You can’t ignore what’s happened. You can’t forget what you did. Please. You have to turn yourself in.”

  Emotions flashed across Nettie’s face. Fear. Anger. Sorrow. Defiance.

  “No, I don’t. I do not. Nobody knows it’s me. If you don’t tell anybody, they’ll keep thinking it’s Johnny. And he’s dead. He’s buried over there.” Nettie pointed to the back of the cemetery, but Joya wouldn’t take her eyes off the woman. She fully expected her to bolt any minute.

  “What good would it do?” Nettie was pleading now. “I’ll never hurt another person in my entire life. I wouldn’t have hurt him if he hadn’t killed my Amber. I’m not a criminal. I’m a mother avenging her daughter’s needless death. Can’t you see that? Just walk away and forget you ever heard anything. Nobody has to know. Nobody.”

  Joya knew the easy thing was to buy that logic. She stood on one foot and then the other, fighting with herself. Maybe she should just turn around and continue her hike and let this grieving woman cope with her loss in her own way. Maybe someday, Nettie’s conscience would get to her and she’d do the honorable thing. What did Alice say, don’t stir things up? What did Gertie say, let sleeping dogs lie? She should, she should just walk away and keep her nose out of this.

  On the other hand—there was that ‘other hand’ again—this woman was a murderer and you can’t let that slide. As much as she wanted to leave it alone, her moral compass wouldn’t let her.

  “I can’t walk away, Nettie. I know why you did it. People might say you were justified. But you murdered that boy.” Joya had to stop talking because she was crying and her voice was headed toward that high shriek.

  She took a deep breath and got herself under control.

  “It wasn’t your place. You didn’t have the right.”

  Nettie’s shoulders slumped. Her face took on its final emotion. Resignation.

  “I know.” She whispered.

  She patted her daughter’s headstone, and kissed it. She hugged her arms around the marble shrine, washing it with her tears. Joya didn’t rush her. She at least could give the woman these last moments.

  “I won’t take you to the sheriff,” she said. “I know a really good defense attorney in Wahpeton and he’ll help you.”

  Maybe Dolan could save her. Maybe he could make a judge see she was insane with grief. Maybe a jury wouldn’t convict a woman with such pain and loss. Maybe poor Nettie would be back in a few months, visiting the daughter she wouldn’t let go. Maybe…maybe…maybe.

  Joya clung to the maybes to salve her regrets that compassion lost out to conscience.

  Nettie stood up and reached her hand out to Joya. “We’ll go together?”

  “Yes.”

  “I have to do this?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Yes.”

  “You couldn’t just walk away?”

  “No.”

  “No, I know.” Nettie took one look back at Amber’s grave.

  “Goodbye, honey. I love you.”

  Joya took her hand and they walked away.

  Both women were crying.

  Author’s Note

  I’ve had the title of this book rolling around in my head for almost twenty years. Ever since I read the recipe as my mother’s circle was preparing a funeral dinner in the basement of St. Phillip’s Catholic Church in Hankinson, North Dakota.

  “Funeral Hotdish,” I yelled. “What a great name for a book.”

  Finding th
e story that went with the title was harder. I knew it would be set in my home state of North Dakota, and I knew it had to be a funeral of anguish, and so the book of fiction inside these covers developed over the years.

  I made up the North Dakota portion of this book from whole cloth. I’ve tried to fairly and honestly represent the type of people I know to be fair and honest—asking how the salt-of-the-earth types I grew up with might react if their beloved town was thrown into intolerable turmoil.

  The Arizona portion is based on stories I wrote for Phoenix publications.

  So many people helped me with this book, most prominently, my mother and sister, Willie and Judy Bommersbach. They created a beautiful place for me to write in the sunroom of their home in Hankinson during my summer visits in 2014 and 2015. My brothers, Duane and Gary Bommersbach, offered expertise I needed.

  North Dakota classmates, neighbors, and friends were great help, including Maxine Beckstrom Atkins; Steve and Carolyn Jacobson; Alton, Mary and Corey Theede; Brandon and Nancy Hentz; Fred Beeson; Keven Frank; Barb Pankow; and Joleen Anderson.

  In Arizona, thanks to Sam Lowe, my fellow writer and North Dakotan, Rich Robertson, and Henry Escobar.

  The crew at Poisoned Pen Press couldn’t be more delightful to work with. Barbara Peters and Robert Rosenwald run a great house that really nurtures writers. Diane DiBiase and Tiffany White are always helpful. Beth Deveny gives my books the same care she’d give her own. And Annette Rogers is simply the best editor any writer could ever want. Thank you all.

  Endnotes

  These notes review the real-life incidents and situations I borrowed for this book.

  Chapter One

  On an Ecstasy high: Ecstasy is a street name for a drug also known as MDMA or Molly. The description of its effects is taken from the National Drug Intelligence Center and the National Institute on Drug Abuse, as well as “The Pursuit of Ecstasy” by Matthew Klam, published in the New York Times Magazine, January 21, 2001. It is a popular “party drug” that is still a problem. In February of 2015, as this book is being finished, twelve young adults—ten Wesleyan University students and two visitors—were hospitalized in an apparent overdose of Molly in Middletown, Connecticut. Four other students were arrested, accused of supplying the drug.