by Sara Blaedel
“All of our marketing material is upstairs,” Mrs. Oldham said. “We send representatives to all the senior citizen fairs, and we visit nursing homes to speak with the elderly. Carlotta has begun arranging home parties; they’ve been an enormous success. It’s like Tupperware parties, where female friends and families get together and hear about all our offers. Jewelry for ashes has become incredibly popular.”
Ilka gawked, though she said nothing.
“We have to protect our interests. Paul would have said the same. Now that people can order coffins on the Internet, we have to emphasize service and extras.”
“Time to go,” Artie said when they returned to the arrangement room, where Ilka had laid her jacket. The kringle box was empty, and it appeared he’d had the pleasure of the snobbish daughter’s company the entire time Ilka had been gone.
“You’re welcome to walk through the garage,” Mrs. Oldham suggested after they said their good-byes and thanked her for the pastry.
Artie nodded, but instead he led her out the way they had come. “She just wants you to see their two new hearses and the escort cars to lead them.” He held the door for her.
10
Ilka had just sat down in her father’s office chair to take a look at his will and the legal papers on the transfer of activities when her phone beeped: an e-mail from her lawyer in Denmark. The attorney was furious that right off the bat, Ilka had signed papers confirming she was Paul Jensen’s daughter. Now Ilka was stuck with the consequences. This wasn’t good. On the other hand, it was unavoidable, because, quite likely, their relationship would have been confirmed anyway. And presumably Ilka had a way out of the hopeless situation she’d put herself in.
“Just don’t count on any financial windfall. You’ll be lucky to get out of this without losing anything. If you enter into a transfer agreement with Golden Slumbers Funeral Home, it looks like they can take over your debt. Both to the IRS and the other creditors. But it’s important to pay the sixty thousand dollars tomorrow, to prevent the governmental wheels from starting to turn. Otherwise you risk them making a claim on your assets in Denmark.”
Ilka was about to write back that she had just visited the Oldhams, that everything was ready to be signed, when Sister Eileen appeared in the doorway and asked her to come.
“Can it wait a moment?” Ilka glanced at her father’s will with a mixture of fear, excitement, and anxiety; she had decided to put off looking at it until last.
The nun shook her head. “No, unfortunately. You should come right now. There’s someone you need to talk to.”
“Can’t Artie handle it?”
Sister Eileen shook her head again and began walking back to the reception area. Ilka followed her. She noticed the woman from a distance, sitting on one of the high-backed chairs along the wall. Her hair was in a loose ponytail, and she wore an oversized cardigan, a white blouse, and a pair of dark pants. It was her shoes, however, that revealed she’d left home in a hurry. Red Crocs with splotches of paint and blades of grass clinging to them.
Ilka looked in puzzlement at Sister Eileen, who said, “The police sent her here.”
The woman walked over to them. “I want to see him.” She took both of Ilka’s hands in her own and looked pleadingly at her. “I have to see him.”
Her face was pale, her lips pressed together to keep from sobbing, but tears appeared anyway when she began talking and slowly shaking her head. “It can’t be true,” she murmured.
“Go get Artie,” Ilka said, sending Sister Eileen off with a gentle but firm shove.
“Let’s go in here, into the arrangement room, shall we?” she said to the woman—Mike Gilbert’s mother, Ilka was sure. They had just sat down when Artie walked in, but she stood and walked to him.
“Oh, Shelby!” He put his arm around her.
“You never met Mike, but I’ve got to know if it’s my son they found,” she said. Artie murmured something soothing; Ilka couldn’t hear what. Obviously, they knew each other well. “The police say they’re sure. Fingerprints and dental records match.”
She looked exhausted, but she settled down as Artie spoke to her. Her head and shoulders sank, and suddenly her clothes looked much too big, as if she had shrunk. Tears dripped onto the floor, and Artie held her. Ilka left the room, but she heard him say the woman couldn’t see her son.
“What do you mean?” she sobbed. “You don’t have the right to stop me.”
Artie spoke calmly. “I can’t show him to you the way he is now. That wouldn’t be good for anyone, least of all you. Give me a little time, and I’ll get him ready. Come in tomorrow afternoon; then you can see him.”
She pulled herself together and nodded. For a moment, she stared straight ahead; then she lifted her shoulders. Artie offered her a chair.
Ilka went out into the tiny kitchen, found some cups, and filled a carafe. She dumped some small wrapped chocolates into a bowl, then brought it all in and set it on the table and went back for a few bottles of water. She wasn’t used to serving in this sort of situation, but she used what they had. Quickly she moved everything around on the table to make it look appealing, but it wasn’t her strong suit; she realized that. Finally, she gave up and left everything alone.
Shelby Gilbert sat down. Pale, stone-faced, weeping. And so small and alone in her sorrow, Ilka thought.
“Do you have a photo of Mike?” Artie asked. He pulled a chair over and sat beside her.
Shelby didn’t react, so he repeated his question and added, “I’ll do everything I possibly can to make your son look like himself. But I need to see how he looked before he disappeared.”
“But I can’t afford it,” she sobbed, gasping for breath. “First I thought I’d have to sell the house, now that Emma is sick, so I could pay for her treatment. Then Mike wrote that he was coming home to help us. But now he’s dead, and I can’t afford to pay for his funeral.”
That surprised Artie. “You’ve been in contact with him?”
Ilka offered her a cup of coffee in the pause that followed. Shelby nodded, then lifted a Kleenex out of the box and dried her cheeks. “I knew all the time he was out there. And I knew he would get in touch when he was ready. And he did; three years ago, he sent me a post office box address I could write to. We were careful; we only wrote a few letters a year. We were scared the police would come for him if they knew where he was. It’s hard when you’ve been made the scapegoat. But then I wrote to him when his sister got the diagnosis. I just thought he should have the opportunity to say good-bye to her, if it came to that.”
She began crying again, and Ilka felt her eyes growing damp as well at the thought of Shelby Gilbert’s son lying in there. No one had been given the chance to say good-bye to him.
“We’ll find a way,” Artie said. “Don’t be thinking about the money. But help me with the photo, so I can re-create his face. Unfortunately, there’s been a lot of damage.”
“Is it that bad? How bad?” Shelby looked straight into Artie’s eyes. “What did they do to him?”
Artie ignored her question. “I won’t be finished this weekend, but tomorrow I’ll let you see him. And next week he’ll be ready so you can say your good-byes. Do you want a funeral service?”
Shelby shook her head. “We just want to say good-bye, real quiet. It’ll only be Emma and me, and of course I’ll let their father know. He can come if he wants.”
Artie nodded and suggested that Ilka and Shelby talk some more about the interment. Or the inurnment, if she chose to have him cremated. He motioned for Ilka to follow him outside; then he closed the door behind them. “This is going to be on us, but try to keep the expenses down.” He left, and shortly after she heard the fan start and the garage door open.
Keep the expenses down. Great idea, but how? How could she save money in this crazy undertaking business? She shook her head and walked back inside.
A pale Shelby Gilbert sat in the arrangement room, staring off into space. She’d stopped crying, but the c
orners of her mouth were quivering. Ilka handed her a cup of coffee. She set it down without drinking.
“She was no good,” she said, her voice low now. “I warned him, told him she was a devilish girl; you can just tell, the kind of girl she was. She had him wrapped around her little finger, talked him into skipping school. And he admitted to smoking pot; he’d never done anything like that before. But he wouldn’t listen; he was in love. And now they’re both dead. So young.”
Ilka sat down beside her in the chair Artie had pulled out. “But he came back,” she said. She asked if he had seen his sister after he had returned.
“No. I didn’t know he was back in town. The plan was that he would go to Milwaukee and I would meet him there. He wanted to visit Emma; she’s in All Saints Hospital here in Racine, but I was scared that people would recognize him if he showed up here.”
Her mouth began quivering again; her voice sounded brittle. “He didn’t do it. You know that, right?” she asked, even though she had to be aware that Ilka couldn’t know what had happened back then. “He wasn’t the one who killed her. They used him as a scapegoat and ran him out of town. The town he was born and raised in. Jesus!”
She hid her face in her hands for a moment; then she straightened up and reached for Ilka’s hand. “I can’t pay for a big expensive funeral. I can’t even pay the bills for my daughter’s treatments. Our health insurance has turned us down because she has a brain tumor; they don’t cover it when there’s too big a risk to operate. But when I get the house sold, I hope there’ll be enough money to cover your expenses with Mike.”
She looked down at her hands. “I’ve already taken out a bank loan to cover Emma’s first round of chemotherapy, so I’m not sure I can borrow any more. But the house should be easy to sell if I price it low enough.”
Her tears began falling again. “I just want to see him one last time, so much,” she murmured.
Ilka stroked her hand. “It sounds like you and Artie have already made a deal, and if you don’t mind a plain coffin, I know we can work something out.” She thought of the unvarnished wooden coffin they had decided to give to the homeless man, who as it turned out wasn’t actually homeless.
“We’ll need some clothes for him,” Ilka said, and she asked if there was anything special Shelby wanted him to wear.
“I don’t know if he can fit into anything he left behind. I haven’t seen how much he’s grown.”
Ilka smiled at her. “Go home and have a look. Otherwise we’ll find something. It was just if there was something you preferred.”
They were standing up now, and Ilka noticed that the coffee had been left untouched again. Maybe she was doing something wrong during these conversations?
11
After her meeting with Shelby Gilbert, Ilka had gone up to her room and stuffed most of her father’s clothes in some large grocery bags she’d found in the kitchen. Sister Eileen could send them to her parish. She’d placed a note on the nun’s desk in the reception area, informing her that she could have the sacks of clothes in the hall. Later she dropped by the taco shop two blocks from the funeral home and grabbed a bite to eat. Then she shopped at the supermarket and picked up water, crackers, and a bag of chips. And some bread she could toast the next morning. She surveyed the refrigerator; the bread Artie had mentioned was more cardboard than bread. On the way to the checkout, Ilka had dropped two cream sodas in her cart.
Now everything was lined up on the desk, and she was reading the will from the very beginning.
“I bequeath everything I own except my funeral home business to my wife, Mary Ann Jensen, and my two daughters, Leslie Ann Jensen and Amber Ann Jensen. That includes the money deposited in my private accounts and the contents of the bank box in Mid-America Bank, 21075 Swenson Dr., Suite 100, Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Everything is to be divided equally among the three, as my wife is wealthy. In addition, the house is in her name, and she has purchased most of the contents of the house. I bequeath Jensen Funeral Home to my daughter from my first marriage, Ilka Nichols Jensen. The business is to be transferred directly to her, and she is to be the sole owner of the business. If, however, she wishes to sell the funeral home business, Artie Sorvino and Sister Eileen O’Connor are to have first right of refusal before it is put on the market, at a price set by a person knowledgeable of the funeral home business.”
Ilka was interrupted by her phone. Most likely not her mother, she thought; it was the middle of the night back home in Denmark, and hopefully she was sound asleep.
“Can you do a pickup?” Artie asked. Music was playing in the background.
“Not just now. I’m about to eat,” she muttered. “And I’m reading through my father’s papers.” Also, she had an offer on Tinder. Some guy a few blocks away had invited her to meet him at a bar. “You’ll have to take it yourself.”
“You can be here in fifteen minutes; I’ll be ready,” he said, ignoring her objections. “Bring along plastic and the light stretcher. It’s up on the second floor.”
He hung up. A moment later, he’d messaged her his address.
It’s a quick pickup. You’ll be back in an hour.
She sighed and gathered the papers, laid them on the desk, and grabbed her fleece jacket from the bed.
She recognized the lighthouse as she drove the twisting road north along Lake Michigan, but the GPS told her to continue past it before turning right. The road down wasn’t quite as steep as when she had picked up Artie and his fish. Houses lined both sides of the small side street. Nothing big; more like summerhouses, with short driveways. At the end of the street, she reached a turnaround and a small path that led to the last house, which faced the lake. The surface of the water looked like quicksilver, an artificial gray metallic sheen.
Ilka was about to shut the engine off when a young, light-haired woman came prancing out of the house; her hair was a mess, and her jacket sat crooked, as if it were a bathrobe. She waved at Ilka energetically, a sign that she was satisfied now, that it was okay with her for Artie to go to work.
Who the hell does he think he is? Ilka slammed the door of the hearse extra hard. He ordered her around to give himself time to finish screwing. Before she reached the path, Artie came walking toward her. He looked like he was about to invite her in for a tour, and she promptly turned on her heel and strode back to the car. “We’d better get going.”
“It’s probably best that you drive,” he said, and headed for the passenger side.
She was about to protest, but then she dropped it. It would be asking too much of him to be on standby 24/7 for pickups. On the other hand, she felt it was tactless of him to get drunk and screw someone while she was going through her father’s will.
“I was in the middle of an important telephone call,” she said, after they were inside the hearse. “You maybe don’t know this, but I have a business to run in Denmark and I can’t just drop everything because you want a night off.”
He ignored her complaint. “Isn’t it nighttime in Denmark? There’s seven hours’ time difference, if I remember right.”
“We have early meetings. I thought you put off the pickup until tomorrow.”
He nodded. “This is a new one. An older man. He’s been dead quite a while, maybe a week, maybe longer. He lived alone with his dog. The police think the dog tried to wake him up; it nearly licked his cheek off. The people in the apartment below found him. The dog’s dead too; we’ll take it along, now that the police are finished.”
The hearse swayed and the shocks creaked when Ilka sped up on the steep gravel road. She liked the personality of the hearse, a bit grouchy but with a strong will. The lake looked like an enormous gray river in the broad side mirror, a river that disappeared when she cautiously turned onto the highway.
“We’re taking a dog along?” she said, suspicious now. “Can’t the people living below bury it?”
“The dog was all he had. It’s part of the deal.” Artie leaned his head against the window while she drove. “
We’ll put it in a coffin before we go to the crematorium; they won’t even know it’s there. It’s only right that the two of them leave this world together.”
She turned to him “Are you drunk, or what?”
He shook his head. “I’m fine, I just need to…”
She shook her head too; then she turned on the radio and twisted the worn, leather-covered button. She found a station playing an old Paul Simon song.
The police car pulled out just as they arrived. A light on the top floor was still on, and from the side window she saw a couple walk out on the front steps as she turned into the driveway. Artie had told her to back into the parking space so they wouldn’t have to carry the deceased so far. Meanwhile he’d dozed off, and she elbowed him after she had parked in front of the main building. “We’re here.” She stared at him in annoyance.
Darkness shielded them, allowing them to work without interference from neighbors and passersby. Ilka was fine with that; she wasn’t sure what she’d see up on the second floor, and she didn’t know how she would react. There was that business about the cheek, too.
The couple standing in the doorway shook their hands. “We’ve been gone all week; that’s why we didn’t notice Ed hadn’t been down with his dog,” the woman explained apologetically as they walked up the steps. Her husband opened the door to the small hallway and told them Ed was in the living room.
The police had been thoughtful enough to leave several windows open, but the stink was nauseating anyway. Ilka discreetly pulled the hood on her jacket around and covered her mouth and nose.
“We’ve always looked out for each other; we’d never have let him lie here like this,” the woman continued. “You hear so much about lonely people dying alone. But we got along really well. And we kept an eye on each other.”