8
Stan led me into a small, pretty room that was decorated in chintz and famished with country antiques. There were chintz draperies, two armchairs, a loveseat, a coffee table, two large cardboard boxes, and a wall of tastefully displayed urns.
“For cremation,” Stan said with a casual glance over his shoulder. He tapped one of the cardboard boxes with the toe of his highly polished left shoe. “This is it, Jenny, these are the archives. I wanted to give Miss Grant one of our old file cabinets, but my dad said, ‘You think file cabinets grow on trees?’ “
I smiled. “The old wooden ones did.”
“I should have told the old buzzard that.” He gently kicked the cardboard box. “Well, if you have any questions, you’d probably better ask Miss Grant, she’s the expert on this stuff.”
“I have a question, but not about that, Stan.”
He stuck his hands in his pants pockets. “Shoot.”
The pretty little room had given me a feeling of warmth and safety—except for the urns, of course, which only increased the feeling of warmth, but not of security—and the exchange with Stan’s dad had lifted my mood, as well. But now the cold, wet fear of the morning came sliding back over me. “I’m sorry to tell you this, but one of your gravediggers—that young one. Jack—played some sort of a weird, unpleasant game with me today. What do you know about him anyway?”
“Jack?” Stan looked over at the urns as if they had called his name. “He’s okay, I mean, he’s a damn good worker, I wouldn’t want to .. .”
“I’m not asking you to do anything yet.” I was puzzled by his reaction, and annoyed. “But what do you know about him?”
“Nothing.” He was still looking at the urns. “I mean, I’m sorry if he, if whatever he did, if . . .” Stan glanced at me, flushed, began to back toward the door. “I’ve got to get back to work, I’m sorry, Jenny, I . . .”
Suddenly I was alone with the urns and the archives.
He hadn’t even asked what happened to me.
But I couldn’t see going over his head to talk to his father.
There was a phone beside me. I picked it up and asked the switchboard to put me through to Francie Daniel. Did I have the gall to ask her to risk getting fired on her first day on the job?
When she answered, I said, “Francie, this is Jenny. Please humor me and answer the following questions with a simple yes or no, and don’t say anything else. First, will you do a favor for me?”
“Yes,” she said immediately.
“Can you get to the personnel files?”
“Yes, they’re part of the job.”
“Please, just yes or no,” I said quickly. “I would appreciate it if you would locate the file for one of the gravediggers, I don’t know his last name, but his first name is Jack. Will you?”
“Yes.”
“You don’t have to whisper, Francie.” God only knew what somebody overhearing her might think. “When you find the file, would you please bring it into the cremation-urn display room and give it to me? And please don’t let anybody see what you’re doing, all right?”
“Yes,” she said, sounding conspiratorial. “10-4.”
I sighed, and hung up.
In a very few minutes, Francie appeared in the doorway. She looked over her shoulder before sidling into the room like a spy. “Here’s what you want, Jenny. Can you get it back to me tonight? The personnel manager in this joint strikes me as a man who always knows where all his files are all the time.”
“I promise.” I took the folder from her. “Did you have any trouble locating the file?”
She shook her head. “It’s not as if they employ thousands of people, although heaven knows they own half the town, between this place and the other funeral homes and the casket factory and the florist’s and the prearrangement company, and the limousine service, and the . . .” Francie lowered her voice to a near-whisper again. “You know, they say it pays to live a good life. Seems to me a good death pays a darn sight better. What’s this for, Jenny, the police investigation?”
Because I live with a cop, people sometimes have an inexplicable tendency to invest me with police powers. I smiled at her, as though to say, what do you think? She put a finger to her lips. Then, her secret mission accomplished, Francie waved a silent good-bye to me, and fled. I assuaged my conscience by telling it that if I discovered anything incriminating about the Jackal, I would, indeed, turn the evidence over to the police.
I looked down at the folder in my lap and saw that the tab on its side said, “John L. Smith, Gen. Main.”
John Smith—a name so ordinary as to go part way toward explaining his eccentricities, but certainly not all the way. It isn’t everybody named John Smith who ends up with a skull and crossbones in one ear, just to be different. I slid my thumb inside the folder.
“Jennifer Cain.” Suddenly, I heard the voice of my sixth grade teacher, speaking inside my head in her most no-nonsense tone. “Young lady, you have a previous assignment to complete. You will kindly finish your history lesson first.”
It was not entirely with regret that I dropped the Jackal’s file onto the carpet beneath the coffee table. “Yes, Miss Grant,” I murmured. I got up and dragged over the heavy boxes of research. Obediently, willingly, I abandoned the threatening twentieth century for the comparative safety of the nineteenth century.
I quickly learned that life back then had its own unique hazards: men were kicked in the head by mules, women died of “tedious labor,” infants succumbed to something called “summer complaint.” while folks of sixty-five were said to have died of old age. Oh, there were plenty of “heart troubles,” “kidney troubles,” “female troubles,” and even “brain troubles” to account for the passing in those days of the population of Port Frederick. But there were also cholera, typhoid, and other killers whose deadly powers have since diminished. There were cancers, which somehow surprised me, as if I had thought it was only a modern disease. And a few soldiers and civilians from the town suffered Civil War deaths, of course. But nobody in the middle of the nineteenth century died in an automobile accident. Nobody expired in an airplane crash. And not one person was listed as having been electrocuted when his hair dryer fell into his hot tub.
I learned all that from the “Funeral Record of Union Hill Cemetery,” which Miss Grant had compiled, according to her written introduction, from tombstones, death notices, conversations with survivors, her own memories, and the city clerk’s office. The modest appearance and size of her book—it was merely sheets of typing paper bound in a plastic cover—belied the scope of her effort. From the looks of it, she had researched every grave on Union Hill, and painstakingly included in her record the dates of birth and death, the places of birth and death, the cause of death, name(s) of spouse(s), children, and even the names of the parents of every citizen who was buried there, if the information was available.
I leafed through the pages, feeling unexpected pangs of sympathy for people I had never known but whose names I recognized. There was Ashley Leland—surely an ancestor of one of my trustees, Roy Leland—dead at the age of thirty-seven in the winter of 1853, of “lagrippe.” Under “Remarks,” Miss Grant had included a quote from the newspaper death notice: “A Baptist for thirty years.”
And here was a death notice for a Pittman: “In this city, the twenty-first instant, Mrs. Sarah Clark, wife of Mr. Benjamin Clark, the proprietor of the local sawmill, in the twenty-fifth year of her age, in childbirth, infant not surviving. She was a dutiful wife, an affectionate daughter to Mr. Erasmus Pittman and his wife of this town, and a devout Methodist. May she rest in peace.”
Feeling strangely nervous, I looked for evidence of the passing of my own relations and found three on my mother’s side of the family. I touched their names, was sentimentally glad to see they had all lived into relatively old age and had died under circumstances that didn’t seem to indicate any more than the usual amount of suffering to be expected from any disease that terminates in dea
th. They had been Swedish Lutherans all, no doubt revolving in their graves every time I slept late on Sundays.
“Oh.” I recalled. “No.”
They couldn’t roll over in their graves, although now there would be plenty of room for it, because their graves were empty. I returned to my studies with renewed vigor.
Here was a spate of Ottilinis, the name of another of my trustees, but wasn’t the middle of the nineteenth century a bit early for the Italian migration? I shrugged away the temptation to meander down fascinating tangential paths and pursued my search for I didn’t know what. Or whom. Or when. Or how, or why, or what.
Finally, I put aside the funeral record and turned to the other materials that Miss Grant had placed inside the card-board file cabinets.
For one thing, she had put together a scrapbook of advertising for products relating to the undertaking business: “Lilac Soap is highly recommended for removing blood stains and unpleasant odors from the hands.” “Dr. Holmes’ Innominata Embalming Fluid, $3 a gallon. Dr. Holmes’ Great Root Beer, $1 a gallon.” “Smith Burial Shoes, With Laces, All Patent Leather.” I needed all my willpower to stop reading after the first few pages and to move on to the other items in the boxes.
There were old catalogs from casket manufacturing companies, dating back to the late 1800s; books written about English and American funeral customs; books on genealogy; books on cemetery development through the ages; books on the Civil War; and a fair amount of material relating to the various Pittman business enterprises, including old ledgers detailing “Receipts” and “Accounts” for all the years of Union Hill Cemetery’s existence. There were old newspaper advertisements that urged potential customers to “come to the Sign of the Cradle & the Coffin, opposite the Tavern, for the Finest Carpentry and Cabinet Work. Upholstery Done. Horses to Let. Custom Coffins Made.” This was evidently before coffins became caskets, I thought, recalling Stan’s wry words about his own business.
There was even an old black-and-white photograph—a real one—of men working in the Pittman Undertaking Parlour, taken at the turn of the century. I looked among them for twinkly old Erasmus but didn’t find his blond head or that huge mustache; he must have been dead by then.
On impulse, I thumbed back through Miss Grant’s funeral records.
There he was, by God, old Erasmus. And it looked as if he was the last person to be buried in his own cemetery, dead in 1886 at the age of seventy-six of “kidney troubles.” Hmm. Did the old boy drink? Could that have been the source of his good humor, and the cause of his death? There was quite a long death notice extolling the virtues—and enterprises—of this “former church sexton, successful businessman, and leading citizen of Port Frederick.” He was survived by “his grieving widow, a sister, three sons, three daughters, and twelve dear grandchildren, having sadly lost his first wife and one daughter in the blossom of her age.” Erasmus was also survived, I read, by one undertaking parlour, one cabinetry shop, one forge, one upholstery shop, one cemetery, one livery stable, and a print shop. I wondered when the print shop had come into the picture . . . did one of his granddaughters marry a printer?
“This is all very interesting,” I said aloud, “but where are those damn bodies?”
Feeling frustrated and weary, I picked up a volume entitled The History of American Funerals, and I began to read the chapter dealing with the Civil War.
“The War meant a bonanza for the businesses related to the funeral industry,” the book claimed. “Not only were there hundreds of bodies to transport by train at great expense from battlefields to home, but there were also rich opportunities for tremendous growth in the new ‘profession’ of embalming. New embalming fluids popped up everywhere, with their makers ecstatically extolling their virtues of turning ‘flesh to stone instantly’ in order to preserve corpses from the ravages of the grave. When Abraham Lincoln’s body was embalmed, the trend was launched in earnest.”
My eyelids were drooping over the dry, academic phrases. I skipped a few paragraphs.
“Although the word undertaker had long been in common usage,” I read, “it was not until the War that the word undertaking was coined to describe an actual and separate profession, which was appropriate since this was certainly the period in which undertaking came into its own as a lucrative and expanding business.”
I continued to read until a phone rang somewhere down the hall.
It jerked me back into the twentieth century, a trip I was not entirely sorry to make. I became aware of the sounds of employees who were heading home for the evening. Feeling stiff and sleepy, I carefully returned the books and other artifacts to the cardboard boxes. Then I walked back down the corridor to Stan’s office, musing that I was now smarter, which is not the same as wiser.
9
I leaned against Stan’s door jamb and waited for him to notice me. After a moment, he did. The clock on the credenza behind his desk said 5:15.
“Did you know,” I said, “that Port Frederick was ahead of its time in having a rural cemetery like Union Hill?”
“You still here, Jenny?”
“At this rate, I may be here until you bury me.”
He nodded knowingly, his face giving no hint of the awkwardness between us earlier. “It is a bunch of stuff, isn’t it? Well, just leave it, and come on back anytime you want to, Jenny. You’re not in our way. That’s only our display room for cremation urns, and nobody wants to get cremated anyway.”
“Why not?”
“Beats me.” He shrugged. “It’s practical as hell . . . dust to dust, ashes to ashes, couldn’t be more literal than that. It’s been popular in Europe for ages, and it’s catching fire in other parts of this country, but . . .” He noticed my smile, and he slapped his hand against his cheek. “Oops. Terrible puns are an occupational hazard around here. Sorry.”
“Well, I suppose cremation is awkward if you believe in a material resurrection.” I raised my voice to a professorial tone. “Why, do you know that the Christian belief in bodily resurrection contributed in part to the rapid growth of the art of embalming in the nineteenth century?” I descended from my imaginary lectern and smiled at him. “Anyway, you know this town, Stan . . . ever the optimists. I suppose we hope that God or technology will reassemble us one day.”
“Or maybe it has something to do with the price of caskets as compared to the price of urns.” Stan propped his chin in his hand. He smiled at the ceiling, as if in contemplation of his profit sheet, but then frowned. “God knows I try to sell cremation, especially if I see a customer is hard up, but it gives people the creeps for some reason. Makes you wonder what they think happens to a body in the grave, doesn’t it?”
“In this town, it disappears,” I said dryly. “I have to disappear, too. But I’ll be back tomorrow.”
Stan picked up a brochure from his desk and held it out to me. “Ah, but one never knows, Ms. Cain, if one will truly ‘be back tomorrow’! Why take the risk of burdening one’s family with difficult decisions at a time of grief? Make your decisions about your funeral now, today. I’m sorry to say we don’t take MasterCard, but I will gladly accept your cash or a check. Would you prefer to make a down payment today, Ms. Cain, or would you like to pay the entire amount at one time? Perhaps you just happen to have the money stashed away in a sock, under your mattress, as some of our elderly customers do. Just give us the cash, and keep the sock for a rainy day. Why, if you will just sign here, we will arrange for your bank to deduct your payments automatically each month, at no extra trouble or expense to you. Remember, one never knows how soon the future may arrive!”
“Is that a threat?” I laughed, and crossed over to take the brochure from his outstretched hand. Its cover said, “Harbor Security: the practical and loving approach to funeral arrangements.” There was a name, Russell Bissell, and two phone numbers at the bottom. I folded it in half and stuffed it in my suit coat pocket. Stan was right. One never knew how soon the future might arrive. In my mother’s case, it was taking it
s time, ambling along the sidewalk, kicking stones, delaying the inevitable. I was the one who would be making the arrangements one day; God knew my charming, irresponsible father wouldn’t do it; he had already abandoned her anyway, for a second marriage. And my beautiful, not-so-charming sister wouldn’t wish to be bothered with the details. Maybe I should think about doing it now while the final, wrenching emotions were still out there in the distance somewhere.
Stan was looking at me oddly.
“Good night, Stan.”
“See you tomorrow?”
I grinned at him. “Who knows?”
I headed for the foyer and the front door.
“Oh.” I stopped abruptly, embarrassed. Ahead of me, a man and a woman stood in the center of the foyer, embracing. I thought I had stumbled onto a moment of private grief, until I remembered this was the management, not the public, wing. The couple raised their heads.
The woman with the tear-stained face was Beryl Kamiski, the elegant middle-aged woman who had been introduced to me as the manager of Harbor Security, the prearrangement company. The man with his arms wrapped loosely around her shoulders was her salesman, the blond and beautiful Russell Bissell. I had, after all, disturbed some private sadness.
I smiled in embarrassed recognition. “Excuse me.”
“No, please.” Beryl tried to return my smile, failed, put a trembling hand to her mouth. In her other hand, she was holding some photographs. “I’m so sorry.”
Russell Bissell nodded to me. Then quickly, tactfully, he led Beryl out of the foyer, away from my view. On their way out, she let the pictures fall from her hand onto the antique side table under the bulletin board.
I waited until they were out of sight before I crossed over to take a look.
First I looked at the photographs that had been tacked up on the bulletin board. They were pictures of what appeared to be a Harbor Lights office party. I noticed an interesting variety of smiles: some drunken, some disapproving, but most just wearing that self-conscious, oh-God-I-wish-I-were-some place-else look that sensible people wear at office parties. There was one of Stan, staring at something out of camera range, with his pretty wife beside him looking as annoyed as most spouses do at office parties. Beryl Kamiski was in a photo where she was chatting animatedly with Spitt and with a thin, dark young man I recognized from the graveside, the personnel director, Aaron Friedman. A short, pretty blond woman stood beside Friedman. I stared for some time, admiringly, at a photo of Russell Bissell. Not surprisingly, he stood at the center of a circle of women whose faces were raised adoringly to his.
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