by Sara Blaedel
He spoke directly into her ear, asked if Danish girls usually took whatever they needed, whenever they felt like it.
She leaned over and pulled her jeans off as she assured him that it was completely normal, that there was nothing more to it than that.
He could have thrown her out. He could have invited her for a drink afterward. Or asked why the hell she hadn’t at least called before showing up. But Artie Sorvino simply followed her out onto the front porch after they’d taken a quick shower and wrapped themselves up in thick blankets he pulled out of a reed basket in the hallway. Ilka handed him a can of beer and opened one of her root beers; he tossed a few cushions on the porch chairs and grabbed the lighter in the kitchen.
The sun had set; the darkness hid Lake Michigan. The only part of the lake that reached them was the roar of the waves rolling in over the rocky shore. And the smell.
She sensed him looking at her. Sensed that he was unsure what she expected from him. If it was affection she wanted.
Ilka pointed to a chair on the other side of the table, hoping it was enough to make him understand that this wasn’t anything more than what they’d already done.
“What is it about that family?” she asked, after they sat down. “It’s like they don’t want to have anything to do with my father. Has it always been like that?”
She pulled the blanket tighter around her, though she enjoyed being outside this late.
Artie lit a cigarette and pushed the pack over to her, but she let it lie. He shook his head. “That’s not how I see them, but you’re right that Paul kept his private life and the business separate. Very separate. It wasn’t something I thought about so much. That’s just how it was.”
He hesitated a moment. “A lot of people have problems with this business. Several very nice female acquaintances jumped ship on me when I told them what I did for a living. It’s almost like people think that death disappears if you ignore it. Or that you can keep it at a distance by not talking about it.”
“But the business must have been a big part of his life.”
He nodded. “I think they had an agreement. He wouldn’t bring the dead home into his private life. And he kept his private life away from the dead. That’s how I always saw it. And it probably wasn’t a bad way to do it. A business like ours can dominate your life.”
Ilka set her bottle down and pulled her legs up.
“You might not want to hear this, but your dad was very caring toward Mary Ann and the girls. I thought he overprotected them, but I never told him that. If anyone so much as mentioned something like that, he’d turn around and walk off.”
She stared into the flame of the small square electric candle in the lantern. It flickered mechanically, as if an invisible wind blew inside the glass and shook the wick. She didn’t want to hear any more. It might have been naïve of her to expect them to greet her with open arms. If they’d felt that way, they would already have visited her. She thought about Amber, who clearly hadn’t told the others she had sat for hours on the bench in front of her father’s business. Maybe she had hoped Ilka would invite her in or take her up to her father’s room, which still held so much of him.
Artie interrupted her thoughts. “That name of yours—is that a usual name in Denmark?” He opened another beer.
Ilka shook her head. “I’d be surprised if there is one other person so unlucky. My father named me for the horse that won the Derby in 1947. Ilka Nichols only won once. It was the year my grandfather took my father to the track for the first time. He talked my mother into giving me this idiotic name because he said it was the symbol of a winner and…how do you say, someone not like other people. Someone who fought and did okay against the odds. But the name has been more like a curse, when I think about what the racetrack meant for my father’s life.”
She had the feeling Artie was about to protest but then changed his mind. They sat for a while in silence.
“He couldn’t have been more wrong.” Ilka spoke quietly as she pulled the blanket around her legs. “I’ve never really fought for anything. I can’t remember ever deciding to point myself in one direction. My life has been all these coincidences. My high school grades were good enough to get me whatever education I wanted. I took a year off after high school, and then I started law school, but after six months I found out I had cancer; they took out my womb and ovaries. The tumor was…bad; I didn’t have a choice.
“I was sick for a long time; then when they finally said I was okay I celebrated by putting on my backpack and traveling. First stop Argentina. I worked with cattle; then I went to Australia. I was gone for a year and a half, and when I got home my mother had moved in with another woman. That surprised me, but it was good for her. Then I met Erik, so instead of going back to law school I started working for him. As a school photographer, can you believe that!”
Ilka took a drink of root beer. She’d been aware for a while that she was running off at the mouth, but she didn’t care. She needed to talk, and he was a good listener. He opened another beer.
“Maybe it’s true that everyone has a soul mate. Erik was mine. After losing my father, it felt like I finally came home. He was fifteen years older than me, and I thought we’d be together forever. I took over his business when he died. I never took any photography courses, but he taught me what I needed to know. And I’m happy.”
She folded her hands. That last sentence sounded forced to her, but she meant it. She would never have chosen to be a school photographer, but now there wasn’t anything else she would rather do.
“And now it’s happened again,” Artie said. “Now circumstances have made you a funeral home director.”
Again, Ilka felt his eyes on her. She shook her head, though she wasn’t sure he could see. “No. I could have chosen to stay home; I could have let my lawyer handle everything. I told my mother I had to be here personally, though it wasn’t true. I’d needed to meet my father. Even though he wasn’t around anymore, this was my last chance to get closer to him. Missing him has been way too big a part of my life. Maybe I didn’t even know how much. And really, it’s not that he wasn’t around when I grew up; it’s more that I never understood why he left.”
Artie wouldn’t let it go. “But now you are a director.”
“Like hell I am. I’m just a daughter trying to sell her father’s business so his reputation won’t be damaged too much.” She snorted. “All right, that’s not exactly true. It’s probably more that I’m trying to pick up the pieces of a life I never really understood.”
Her phone rang several times before Artie suggested she answer.
“Aren’t you asleep?” Ilka said when she heard her mother’s voice. “Is something wrong?”
“What’s going on over there? I have a bad feeling about this. I can’t sleep. I’m worried.”
“That’s so nice of you, Mom.” Instead of being annoyed, she suddenly felt warm inside. Her mother had been through a hell of a lot, too, when it came to Paul Jensen. “Everything’s fine. I just need to take care of the last details before I can come home. And I would be very grateful if you’ll do the jobs for me. Of course I’ll pay you.”
“Come on! Money doesn’t matter; you know that, dear. I just don’t like you being over there. I can feel it in my bones, all this worry, and I don’t like it.”
“Mom, really, there’s nothing wrong. Everything’s just taking longer than I expected. That happens a lot with estates.” Ilka didn’t mention that she was the one who’d messed up a transfer agreement at the last moment. “I have to know what’s going on with the business before I can put it up for sale. By the way, I met my half sisters today,” she added, hoping the abrupt change of subject would distract her mother. “It doesn’t look like we’re going to be great friends, but both Leslie and Amber have inherited Dad’s height, and the youngest one has the same stringy Jensen hair. But honestly, it doesn’t look all that good on her.” As if it looked good on anyone! Ilka laughed to lighten the mood.
“Were they nice to you? What did they say?”
“Mom, I have to run—there’s someone at the door. I’ll call you tomorrow.” She hung up, hoping her mother didn’t hear her voice starting to thicken. She closed her eyes and sat for a moment, tried to swallow the lump in her throat.
“Are you okay?” Artie asked as she stuffed her phone back into her pocket.
“I’d better get back. Are you coming in tomorrow? McKenna’s daughter is coming to view her father.”
Ilka didn’t know what Sundays were like in the funeral home business. Many people were protective of their days off, but she had the feeling Artie wasn’t that way.
“See you tomorrow,” he said, sitting expectantly as she stood up and grabbed her sweater off the chair. He had another think coming if he thought she was going to kiss him! She nodded shortly before walking to the car.
The drive home was strange. She felt loose after sleeping with Artie, sad after talking to her mother, and tense after meeting her father’s new family. But most of all unsure of how things would turn out.
She drove into the parking lot and noticed a light in one of Sister Eileen’s windows, while the rest of the funeral home was dark. She parked and got out. Stood for a moment, enjoying the mild late summer evening, though she still felt bad about being so short with her mother.
Why the hell did you even come here? she thought, scolding herself as she walked up the steps. She decided to spend Sunday going through the last drawers and boxes in her father’s room. She would send the whole mess to Denmark by FedEx, so her mother could see what he had left behind.
On the way up, the thought struck Ilka that it might help her mother stifle some of her anger if she knew what had happened back then. Even though she had found Hanne and had gotten on with her life, it was obvious to everyone that being abandoned still plagued her.
She walked in, threw her bag on the floor, and turned the desk lamp on. Suddenly she heard breathing and something moving on the bed, and she whirled around.
Amber sat cross-legged on the bed; she hadn’t even bothered to take her boots off. She leaned lazily up against the wall. Nothing about her hinted at how long she’d been waiting for Ilka to come back.
“Hi,” Ilka said. She held on to the back of her father’s chair, which she had grabbed in shock a moment before. Now she tried to act nonchalant, though her heart was in her throat.
“Don’t come by the house again,” her half sister said. Slowly she leaned forward and slid her legs off the side of the bed. “It’s not good for Mom. It’s not good for anything.”
“How did you get in?” Ilka tried to calm her heartbeat; her temples were pounding like shutters in a hurricane.
“Dad gave me a key several years ago.”
Ilka heard the provocation in her voice; she wanted to show she could come and go as she pleased. Apparently without Artie and Sister Eileen noticing. But why had she sat out on the bench when she could come inside?
Ilka walked over to the bed. She was so frightened, so angry, that she had to fold her arms to keep from hitting her youngest half sister. “What is it I’ve done to all of you? If it’s about this”—she held her arms out—“you can have it; I didn’t ask for it, this business. Really, I’d rather go back to Denmark. You’re more than welcome to take over, right now. In fact, I think it’s totally unfair that I’m the one who has to put things right, to get out of this horrible situation our father put his employees in. And none of you even come by and offer to help. What’s wrong with all of you? Don’t you know how much money this place owes? What kind of daughters are you?”
Amber was standing now, and for a moment they stood face-to-face. But she shrugged. “I’m sorry it has to be this way.”
Ilka listened to her footsteps fade down the stairs; then she threw herself on the bed.
What was it with these people? It was one thing if they didn’t care for her, didn’t accept their father having had a family before them. That she could handle. But not caring about what had been his daily life—that simply wasn’t normal. It was almost as if they were afraid of something.
26
“Wake up! You’ve got to come downstairs,” Artie said as he banged on the door.
Ilka lay still for a moment with her eyes closed. Fragments of his face close-up, the sense of freedom she had felt after their quickie, kept his voice and the sunlight through the curtains at a distance. She thought about Amber, about her father, everything she didn’t know about him. She had sat up half the night, going through the storage boxes piled up against the wall. Racetrack results and old programs, with notes written in ornate script in the margins. Winning tickets and receipts from losses that had been added to expenses. There were lots of those.
She had found several pictures in the bottom of one of the boxes. Photos of her father with his parents, her grandparents. She had seen them only sporadically after he left, and finally not at all. Both had died before she was twenty. In several of the old photos, her father was with boys Ilka didn’t recognize. Cousins, maybe? One box held old clippings from newspapers, again mostly having to do with racing. Which driver had switched stables. Who had new sponsors; trainers moving around. Some of them in a plastic folder were about a Danish trotter manager brought in to Maywood Park racetrack, Melrose Park, Illinois, in 1982. In the article, the manager was proclaimed to be one of Scandinavia’s most promising, with extensive experience and several Derby victories by drivers he represented under his belt. Ilka wondered about that. Her father had certainly not understated his accomplishments.
Her father. She had recognized him immediately from the grainy photo. Farther down in the article, she read that Paul Jensen was co-owner of the all-star team, that he had chipped in three hundred thousand dollars, the same as the other investors, but he was the only one involved in managing the stable. He looked exactly the way she remembered him: tall, with a tweed cap pulled down over his forehead. He smiled for the camera. A man of the world.
So. Her father had gotten a job over here. But three hundred thousand dollars! She couldn’t imagine where he’d gotten hold of that kind of money, with the funeral home in the red when he left Denmark. He did have his winnings, but they didn’t even come close to that amount. Her stomach sank.
Artie knocked again. “Shelby’s here. It sounds like all hell is about to break loose. You’ve got to come down and talk to her.”
Ilka reached for her watch; it was almost eleven. Quickly she swung her legs over the edge of the bed. “What’s breaking loose?” She wrapped her father’s striped robe around her and stumbled over to open the door.
“It’s best to let her tell about it,” he said, his voice serious. “She’s just come from the police station.”
Not a word about what had happened yesterday. Nothing in his expression, either. That was fine with her. “Give me two minutes.”
She shut the door and pulled her clothes on. Before rushing down, she hurriedly gathered up the clippings spread out over the floor and tossed them back in the box. She was getting used to people invading the room whenever they felt like it, but she didn’t want anyone to see she’d been delving into her father’s life.
Coffee! The smell hit her as she stepped into the arrangement room, and her stomach cramped from hunger. Shelby stood at the window, her back to the door, gazing out at the parking lot. She looked so tense that Ilka hesitated a moment before walking over and putting her arm around the woman’s shoulder. “What’s the matter?”
She turned to Ilka. She’d been sobbing, and her face was pale, on the edge of collapse. “It was Phyllis Oldham who paid my son,” she whispered. “She gave him twenty thousand dollars to leave town, even though she knew he didn’t kill Ashley Simpson.”
The words came out of her mouth, but it was as if someone else were speaking them. Her expression was frozen.
Ilka held her close before leading her carefully over to an easy chair and pouring her a cup of coffee.
“The police
came this morning and asked me to follow them to the station. They felt I had the right to know after everything we went through back then. The young officer asked if I had someone who could take me down there, but I don’t. I thought about you and Artie, but it’s Sunday, and I didn’t want to bother you.”
“You can call us, anytime,” Ilka said. “But what happened?”
She sat as stiff as a board, her eyes unfocused as she spoke. “Last night Phyllis Oldham came to the police station after most of the policemen had gone home. She admitted she’d pressured Mike to take the blame, but he wouldn’t do it. So instead she offered him money to leave town, to make it look like he did. I knew it wasn’t him.”
Her hands were clenched. “There wasn’t any evidence, either. She’s a witch, and this is only happening because both her sons have been arrested. If it hadn’t been for them, she’d never have confessed.”
Ilka poured herself a cup of coffee and grabbed a few small cookies from the bowl before leaning back in her chair. She was determined to let Shelby talk, even though she couldn’t make sense of the woman’s story.
“It’s terrible you can get away with something like that, just because you have money,” she wailed, her voice firmer now that she was worked up. “They destroyed my son’s life. Our lives. And then when he comes home after so many years because his sister is dying, they kill him!”
Her pale cheeks reddened; tears streaked from her eyes.
Ilka reached across the table and held her arm, her fingers gently stroking the sleeve of her green blouse, buttoned at the wrist. “Who was Mike supposed to take the blame for?” she asked, her voice low. “Why did Phyllis Oldham try to make it look like it was your son?”
After a moment, Shelby looked up. “Because her husband killed Ashley.” Her voice was so cold that Ilka pulled her hand back. “Phyllis told the police she saw him walking down from the fisherman’s cabin when Ashley was killed.”