Her Father's Secret

by Sara Blaedel

  “I used the money to pay bills. As you told me to.”

  “All of it?”

  “There’s about two thousand dollars left, but that’s for the last funeral.”

  Ilka hardly noticed when Sister Eileen said good night and closed the door. For several moments she stared into the darkness surrounding the house before walking back.

  The night sky looked like it did in Copenhagen, yet it seemed different. Everything did. Also, this feeling of being alone was different from the loneliness she’d felt since Flemming’s death.

  I’d like to see the documents from the Frank Conaway case,” Ilka said when Jack Doonan finally arrived at his desk, a cup of coffee in one hand and a bagel wrapped in a napkin in the other. She’d been waiting at his cubicle by the wall for twenty minutes while the department held their morning briefing.

  Last night she’d thought long and hard about going to the police, after the episode with Jeff and losing her alibi. Was it a stupid thing to do? But she knew she hadn’t killed anyone; she had nothing to fear, she told herself. She’d tossed and turned, thinking about a million things, and when she did sleep her dreams were a chaos of broken fragments. Now her head felt like an unmade bed, and the sight of the officer eating the bagel, the cream cheese hanging on his lip, nauseated her.

  Doonan was visibly annoyed at being bothered so early in the morning. And it was even more obvious he had no idea what she was talking about. He scowled and sat down.

  Ilka explained that Conaway had been arrested in March, and she gave him the name of the lawyer her father had hired. For some reason he let her speak, but when he finished eating he crumpled up the napkin and told her to talk to the crimes against property unit. “I don’t know anything about the case, but I’ll tell you one thing for sure—they won’t give you anything before the trial is over. If the accused is in custody, no one will talk to you. And probably not later either.”

  “But what if the man’s innocent? My father was certain that Frank Conaway is a scapegoat.”

  Doonan lifted his hand to stop her. “Since we’re on your father. I was up until one last night going over Margaret Graham’s bank account. And guess what, it turns out that fifteen hundred dollars was deposited in her account every three months, for the past eleven years. Interesting, I thought, so I looked at the bank account the money was transferred from.”

  Ilka breathed in short, shallow bursts.

  “Eleven years, the same amount. Every three months. From an account in the name of the Paul Jensen Funeral Home.”

  He leaned forward, and for a moment they stared at each other.

  Doonan finally broke eye contact. Maybe he was looking for signs of her knowing about this, Ilka thought. He pushed a small stack of papers across the desk.

  She hardly knew what to say. “But why for eleven years?”

  “That’s when Mrs. Graham opened the account. Maybe it’s been going on even longer. Her old bank closed that year, so now I’m waiting for a court order to grant me access to your account. I’m assuming I’ll be able to see when the transfers from the funeral home began.”

  He handed her a sheet with the latest deposits and withdrawals. A red circle had been drawn around the amount, and the account number had been underlined. “The last transfer was made in June this year. An automatic transfer.”

  Ilka laid the sheet aside and absentmindedly began putting her coat on. In a few days the third quarter would be over, but now both Maggie and her father were dead.

  “Are you absolutely sure my father died of natural causes?” Ilka had to yell to be heard over the noise from the ventilation.

  After returning from the police station, she’d headed straight for Artie’s preparation room, where he stood in a lab coat and mask, leaning over Maggie’s body, working to cover up the bullet hole in her forehead.

  She slammed the door behind her and strode over to him. He was wearing in-ear headphones, and when she ripped them out he ducked his head and whirled around; some of the wax he was using to cover the bullet hole landed on her arms. He retreated a step. “What are you doing?”

  Ilka handed him the tiny headphones spouting out surfer music. The Beach Boys. “Are you sure my father died of natural causes?” she repeated. “Did you see him?”

  A shadow swept across his face. He looked away and spoke quietly. “He died in his sleep in his room.”

  Ilka took a moment to settle herself down. “How was he found?”

  The ventilation roared as she shivered from the damp cold in the room. Artie studied her a moment before turning and swinging the large vent over Maggie’s naked body. He walked over to the sink beside the door, pulled off his mask and lab coat, washed his hands, and opened the door. “Come on.”

  Ilka followed him to the kitchenette. He poured himself a half cup of coffee and grabbed a Red Bull from the fridge, popped it open, and filled his cup. With his other hand he fished a pack of cigarettes from his Hawaiian shirt pocket and headed for the back door.

  His goddamn Hawaiian shirts! It’s all he wore. Red, green, yellow, blue. All those palm trees and parrots made her want to throw up. And Red Bull in his coffee! Sick!

  He held the door for her and pulled out his lighter, then sat down on the top step. “What’s this all about?”

  It was cool outside, and some fallen leaves from the big copper beech swirled around in the parking lot. He blew out a cloud of smoke and waited. Finally she sat down and covered her face with her hands a moment.

  “I guess this link between Maggie and my father bothers me, and now they’re both dead. And it was so cold-blooded, the way she was killed. I want to know what happened to him.”

  She watched the leaves dance around as she explained about the bank transfers. She couldn’t meet his eye. “Do you know anything about it? You might as well tell me, I’m going to find out anyway. Either my father set up the automatic transfer of funds from our account, or else one of you two did. You were both here eleven years ago. What is it you’re not telling me?”

  Ilka heard him set his cup down. Smoke drifted over to her, and she breathed it in.

  “He was in bed,” Artie said. “Sister Eileen thought something was wrong—the hearse was still in the garage when she came over that morning. The evening before they’d talked about him leaving early, around six, to beat the morning rush hour. He was supposed to take a body to Iowa. The man’s family wanted him home, they were going to arrange the funeral themselves. When Sister Eileen went upstairs and knocked, Paul didn’t answer. She said he was lying in bed and had died quietly in his sleep.”

  Artie folded his hands around his knees.

  “I’d like to see the death certificate,” Ilka said.

  “Mary Ann has it.”

  “But don’t we have a copy?”

  He took a deep breath. “What difference does it make? Ilka, listen. He died in his sleep.”

  “Right now, it’s important. To me.”

  Artie explained that the physical certificate had been delivered to the crematorium. “It’s the law. It’s used as identification before the body can be cremated. And then they gave it to the family, along with the urn.”

  “But surely we have a copy?”

  He nodded. “Digital. On our computer.”

  “Did you see him up there in bed?”

  Artie studied his hands on his knees; a small fleck of tobacco was stuck in the corner of his mouth, and she was about to lean forward and brush it off when he shook his head.

  “No. I was off a few days, fishing up in Canada. The morning Sister Eileen found him, I was gone before sunrise. She tried to get ahold of me several times that day, but I didn’t hear her messages until I got back that evening.”

  Now Ilka understood why he’d acted so aloof. He hadn’t been there when her father died, only Sister Eileen.

  His eyes were glued to his hands again. It seemed difficult for him to talk about this, and Ilka had to remind herself that unlike her, Sister Eileen and Artie had b
een close to her father. She waited.

  “It was hot the night your father died. His body was already swelling when Sister Eileen found him. He’d probably been dead twelve hours, and there’s no AC up there—well, you know that. He didn’t really look like himself. Sister Eileen told Mary Ann the swelling would disappear when he was embalmed. She offered to arrange the services, but Mary Ann wanted him cremated immediately and asked to have the urn delivered to her. So Sister Eileen got another undertaker to drive him to the crematorium that same day.”

  “No service was held?” Ilka was surprised. It seemed odd that no one wanted to say goodbye to an undertaker.

  “There was, but not here. Mary Ann wanted it at her home, family and friends only. Nobody with business connections to your father was invited, except for Sister Eileen and me.”

  After a few moments Ilka stood up and offered to take his empty cup inside. She went into her father’s office and shut the door, then she sat down in her father’s chair, turned on the aging computer, and waited for it to come to life. Strange, she thought; she’d been thinking so much about her father recently, yet she didn’t know what he’d looked like the last several years he was alive. She remembered him only as someone who made her feel safe. All the insecurity he’d left her with had somehow been pushed out by how much she’d missed him while growing up.

  She typed his name and waited for his death certificate to show up. August 16. He’d died exactly ten days after her fortieth birthday. But she hadn’t been contacted until Artie called her two weeks after that, asking her to come to Racine. The doctor had determined the cause of death to be cardiac arrest. Artie had told her that in the hearse, the day he picked her up at the airport. She’d also been told that her father had died in his sleep, but she hadn’t needed to know the decomposition process had already begun because of the heat.

  The death certificate had been scanned and saved in the computer two days after his death. She turned on the printer.

  Most of the information was hard for her to understand, but it didn’t matter; after skimming through the last page, she stopped abruptly. She pulled the paper out of the printer and turned on the desk lamp.

  The death certificate had been signed by Margaret Graham.

  Ilka shot up from her chair and banged her knee hard against the desk. It hurt like hell, but she humped over to the door, eager to find Sister Eileen and shake an explanation out of her. She was the one who’d found her father in bed, the one who had saved a copy of his death certificate in the computer, and yet she’d said nothing when Ilka showed her the letters together with the burial testament.

  She stopped at the doorway, and after thinking a few moments, she tossed down the death certificate and limped over to the cabinet where the funeral home’s books were kept in ring binders on the lower shelves. She’d spent considerable time going over the finances for the past five years to get a picture of their financial situation, but now she was looking for a specific expense from this year.

  Fifteen hundred dollars had been transferred on March 28, as a decorations expense. She checked the end of June; the same amount had been entered the same way. Then she went back to March 2010, and there it was again.

  Expense: decorations.

  Nothing about whether it was for flowers, candles, table decorations.

  She went through the books from other years; the same entries had been made, of course. Finally, she slumped forward, her palms cupping her forehead. For the past eleven years the money had been transferred to the account Doonan had showed her at the station. And before that, starting in 1998, the same amount had been transferred to a different account. Always as a decorations expense. Glancing through the other expenses, she’d recognized a coffin supplier who had shut her off recently, as well as a crematorium. Then there were the usual expenses. Electricity, water, the chemicals Artie used to prepare the bodies.

  She sat up and thought about her father entering the same amount every quarter for eighteen years as an expense, for decorations. Money that had ended up with the woman who had signed his death certificate.

  Ilka closed the ring binders and stood up. All she felt now was exhaustion as she opened his most recent calendar. The last meeting he’d scheduled had been at Margaret Graham’s address.

  “Can I borrow your pickup?” Ilka said, when she ran into Artie in the hallway. Her father’s Chevrolet had an empty tank.

  At first the look he gave her made her think she’d have to walk to Michael Graham’s home, but then she realized he wasn’t angry. He was about to say something, but he changed his mind and stepped aside.

  She headed out the door. “Take the hearse,” he said. By the time she turned around, he was already in the preparation room. She stared at the closed door. Clearly, she’d hit a very sore spot when she pressured him to explain he’d been fishing in Canada when her father died. After all, Artie had known him since moving to Racine in 1998.

  Nineteen ninety-eight.

  Ilka burst through the door. “Exactly when in 1998 did you come back to Racine? When did you meet my father? Was it spring, summer, fall?”

  Artie was about to pull a mask on, but he stopped. His hair was hidden in a net, and he looked a bit sad and tired. “It was September 1998. My father died just before Christmas, and I inherited his house. And when your father offered me a job, I decided it was time to move back.”

  When Ilka arrived in Racine, Artie had explained that he and Paul had met at Oh Dennis!, the pub, while he was still taking care of his own father. Artie had lived in Key West since finishing at the California School of the Arts in San Francisco. He’d run a small gallery down there, Artie the Artist. Ilka had made fun of the name, laughed at it. She wasn’t laughing now, though. “Were you here earlier that summer, to check up on your father?”

  Artie looked fed up. He took a step toward her. “What’s going on, what is it you want to know?”

  “I want to know what you know about the transfers of money made to Maggie. Four times a year for eighteen years, beginning the year you came back to town.”

  His eyebrows shot up. “Nothing. I don’t know anything about that, and I’ve never transferred money to Margaret Graham either, if that’s what you’re asking. I have zero access to the funeral home’s bank account. That’s been Sister Eileen’s territory the past few years, after your dad left all the book work to her.”

  They stared at each other long enough for it to feel awkward in the cold, damp room. Ilka realized they’d been arguing only a few feet from Maggie’s dead body.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. She’d gone too far, and she knew it. He was pale and obviously hurt, but she also felt let down, confused. It didn’t matter who knew what. If they had cheated or bribed somebody, well, that was in the past. Look to the future, she’d told herself years ago when she’d been widowed. And now she needed to get back to that mantra.

  “Really, I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to hurt you. Or accuse you of anything. Listen, I’m not used to people being murdered or put into prison for nearly the rest of their life. The longest sentence back home is sixteen years for first-degree murder. No one sits in prison for thirty years, unless they’re insane and a threat to everyone, then it’s an open sentence. If Frank Conaway is found guilty, he won’t be celebrating Christmas with his younger daughter before her own children are out of high school. And Maggie blackmailed my father, and now she’s been shot.”

  “But that doesn’t mean the two things are linked.” He put his hands on her shoulders, which cheered her a bit. Even though she was at least half a head taller than Artie.

  “If Margaret Graham really was blackmailing your dad, it says more about her than about Paul. And I’ll bet the police will investigate. He might not be the only one being blackmailed.”

  Ilka nodded; she’d had the same thought.

  Of course, Artie was right, she should leave all of this to the police. Yet she knew she couldn’t let it go.

  Low ranch-s
tyle houses lined both sides of the street. Identical houses, laid out as mirror images of each other, with small front lawns, low fences, and driveways on both sides of each house. When Ilka turned onto the street, she felt she was entering some sort of model town, an exhibition carefully displayed and tidied up every day. No clutter, no contrasts. She kept an eye on house numbers and slowed down at number forty-two to look it over before driving to the end of the cul-de-sac and turning around.

  She’d taken ten dollars from the coffee can in the kitchen to gas up her father’s car. Arriving in a hearse would be too much, she’d decided. As she’d told the police, she’d never been in this part of Racine; it amazed her that there were so many large residential areas, yet the town seemed nearly deserted. The same went for the marina, where the boats were packed like sardines without a boat owner in sight.

  Ilka parked four houses down from number forty-two, and when she got out she looked around. Several times she’d had the feeling someone was watching her, but she was alone on the street. Except for the woman who glanced up from a flower bed she was weeding. Ilka nodded politely when she passed by, but the woman was already back to her work.

  When she reached the steps to Michael Graham’s front door, she noticed traces of the police investigation. They’d stuck several small pieces of tape on the windowsill and around the lock on the door, which gave her a certain sense of relief; her alibi may have been ruined, but apparently there were fingerprints. Though surely Stan Thomas didn’t really believe she’d shot Maggie. Why should she? Presumably he was simply looking into every possibility.

  The house had no doorbell or knocker, so she rapped firmly and stepped back so Graham could see her through the spy hole. A moment later he unlocked the door and opened it, but before he could speak, Ilka apologized for not calling in advance.