The Undertaker's Daughter

by Sara Blaedel

  “Yes,” Shelby said. “And look where that got him.”

  Emma slumped in her chair. The film of old memories had stopped abruptly; reality had returned.

  Shelby looked at her daughter, then turned to Ilka. “Phyllis Oldham came up to us at the hospital today.” Her expression changed, and again it looked as if her sorrow had lightened, but there was anger, too, in the furrows around her mouth.

  “She offered to pay for the rest of Emma’s treatments. No matter how long it took, how many treatments were necessary. And if the doctors at some point think it’s no longer too risky to operate, she’ll pay for that too. She’s even offered to have Emma moved to another hospital, if we can find one with better specialists.”

  Again, her daughter stared down at her hands, intertwined in her lap.

  “I accepted her offer. Maybe I shouldn’t have; she shouldn’t be allowed to buy her way out of responsibility for what she did to Mike. Of course she shouldn’t. But I said yes and thank you.”

  Mostly Ilka sensed some sort of embarrassment. As if she was ashamed of having to accept the offer, though she surely wanted nothing to do with the Oldhams after what they had done to her son. “Of course you should let her pay. It’s so wonderful for the both of you.”

  Shelby simply nodded, as if she was relieved to have said it. “We’ll give him ten more minutes. This is so like him. He could just have said he didn’t want to drive all the way over.”

  “You can’t know; he might be parking outside right now,” Emma said, looking at her mother.

  The doorbell rang, and Ilka smiled.

  “You stay right here; I’ll go out and bring him in.”

  Ilka put on a professional smile as she walked through the foyer to greet Mike Gilbert’s father, but she stopped at the sight of a woman with short blond hair holding the hands of two small children. She’d been sobbing, and she seemed utterly crushed and exhausted.

  “Hello,” Ilka said, feeling a bit awkward as she approached her. How was she going to deal with this right now, when Shelby and her daughter were about to enter the chapel?

  She might want to talk to Artie about the woman he’d brought in, Ilka thought. She could be a relative who had changed her mind and wanted to view her anyway.

  “May I help you?” It annoyed her that Sister Eileen wasn’t there, even though it was totally unfair.

  “We’re here to see Mike Gilbert,” the woman said. The two children looked as if they had just woken up. Shy and a bit frightened, they glanced around in confusion. The haggard woman’s lips trembled. “We first heard what happened this morning, and we’ve been driving all day. Tommy called and told us you’re holding a funeral service for him.”

  “Tommy?” Ilka tried to gather her thoughts.

  “My father-in-law. I’m Mike’s wife.”

  “Of course,” Ilka said hurriedly, though she didn’t know what was going on. “Come inside. Do you need anything?”

  She looked down at the boy and girl. Two or three years old, she guessed. “The bathroom is right over there.” She pointed it out. “Mike’s mother and sister are here. Actually, we thought you were Tommy arriving.” Ilka hoped that explained some of her confusion.

  “It would be nice to use the bathroom.” She began herding the children over.

  “I’m hungry,” the girl said, her voice thin and tired.

  “So you didn’t come with your father-in-law?” Ilka said. The boy whined about wanting to sleep.

  “He’s not coming,” the woman said.

  After the door closed behind them, Ilka thought about what to do. Shelby hadn’t mentioned anything about grandchildren; Ilka doubted very much that she knew about her son’s family.

  She returned to the arrangement room, where the two women were whispering. They stopped and looked up when she walked in.

  “It wasn’t Tommy. It’s three people who were very close to Mike. They only heard what happened to him this morning, and they’re very shaken up. They’ve been driving all day, and I think you should all have a little time together before we go into the chapel.”

  A child yelled out in the foyer, “Thirsty, too!” It sounded as if she was about to cry.

  Shelby sat up. Emma looked uneasy as she lifted her hand to her scarf. The woman appeared in the doorway carrying one child and holding the hand of the other.

  No one spoke for a moment as the three mourners looked at each other. Then the woman stepped inside uncertainly, set the girl down, and ignored the small whimpers, which quieted when Ilka offered the children crackers in a bowl.

  “I’m Kathy. I lived with Mike.” She held her hand out to Shelby. “This is Ellen and Don. They’re three years old.”

  Mike’s mother shook her hand mechanically, but otherwise she looked completely paralyzed at the sight of the twins. Finally, she tore her eyes off them and turned to the woman, but Emma was already standing with tears running down her cheeks and arms spread, reaching toward Kathy.

  Shelby stood up uncertainly, as if everything was going too fast, but then she hugged her daughter-in-law and squatted down in front of her grandchildren.

  “There’s soda and juice in the refrigerator,” Ilka said. “And there’s bread and stuff for sandwiches. And more crackers. You’re welcome to it all, and please take your time. Just say when you’re ready.”

  Ilka caught her breath for a moment before going in to Artie and telling him who’d just walked in instead of the father. “It’s not okay at all that she drove this far with two small kids, right after hearing about her husband’s death,” she said. “The father-in-law surely could have driven them. Or she could have called. We could have waited until tomorrow.”

  Artie shrugged. “I’m guessing she wouldn’t have waited until tomorrow anyway. It’s normal for people to not believe a relative has suddenly died. They have to see with their own eyes.”

  “Of course. But his father apparently didn’t need to see his son. Or his daughter, for that matter. That’s so damn tragic,” she muttered. She nodded when Artie asked if she would give him a hand with Mike’s coffin.

  The candles were still flickering slightly when they opened the chapel door. Music streamed out from speakers on the wall.

  Artie had covered the catafalque bearing the coffin with a black sheet. “You want it all the way up to the podium, or should we just roll it over to the wall so the room doesn’t look so big? Seeing as there’s only a few people here.”

  “Let’s put it over against the wall. It’ll be a bit cozier. And I’ll move the candles over there. Leave some space between the coffin and the wall so they can stand around it.”

  Ilka had just moved the last floor candelabra when Shelby appeared and said they were ready.

  “Lift the lid of the coffin,” Artie said. “There’s an arm that holds it in place when it’s up.” While Shelby and the family walked over to the coffin, he told her he was driving out to Dorothy’s to cremate Mrs. Norton. “Just close it again when you’re finished. I’ll roll it back into the cold room when I get back.”

  “Can’t I do that?” Then she remembered what had happened to Sister Eileen, and she gestured that she would leave it there until he returned. “Okay, we can do it then.”

  Shelby’s arm was around Emma when they walked in. Kathy followed. The children must be right outside, Ilka noted. Shelby hesitated at her son’s coffin; then she turned and reached for her daughter-in-law’s hand. They waited while Ilka walked around to lift the coffin lid.

  She moved a few feet to the side, the family stepped forward, and all four of them looked down—at an empty coffin.

  For a moment, they all stared, as if they expected Mike to appear. Then the three women looked at Ilka.

  “Oh my God!” Ilka apologized profusely, said it had to be a mistake. She rushed out of the room in a rage and found Artie outside walking toward the hearse, his back to her.

  “What the hell were you thinking?” she yelled at him, striding over as if she were about to g
rab him by the collar and drag him back. “You put an empty coffin in there! How could you? How hard could it be? There were only three coffins, and he was the only one in a wooden coffin!”

  Suddenly she realized what she’d just said. Mike Gilbert lay in the only wooden coffin they had. Artie hadn’t made a mistake after all.

  She stopped. “Shit,” she muttered. Her legs were about to give out from under her. Quickly she explained what had happened, and they went back inside. Artie’s hand rested on her back, as if he were nudging her along.

  Ilka felt herself walking like a mechanical doll as she followed him into the cold room. Irene’s blue coffin was just inside the door. Her hands were folded over a blanket, and a small flower stuck up from between her fingers. Artie must have plucked it out from among the bouquets in the foyer.

  At the far wall stood the zinc coffin with Ed McKenna and his dog, to be flown to Albany. Ilka waited just inside the room while Artie unscrewed the coffin lid, which took some time. Even from a distance, she could make out the elderly man.

  Without a word, Artie screwed the lid back on. Ilka pulled herself together, returned to the chapel, and asked Shelby to follow her into her father’s office. They sat down across from each other.

  “Something absolutely terrible has happened, and I can’t explain it.” Ilka told her about finding the sister in the cold room earlier that day. “But I didn’t think it could have anything to do with Mike.”

  Shelby listened silently; she looked as if she expected Ilka to make some sense out of all this, to help her understand why it had happened to her. She leaned forward. “Is Sister Eileen all right? Is she hurt?”

  “She’s okay. We found her in time. She was lying on the floor, with a weak pulse. She wasn’t breathing well. Her voice was…blurry, and she wasn’t making much sense. But at least she was conscious.”

  Artie appeared in the doorway. “The police are coming, but the dispatcher couldn’t say exactly when they’ll be here. There’s a big accident outside town. They’re still cleaning up.”

  Shelby asked if they could go home. “The children need to go to bed, and Kathy looks like she’s about to collapse, the poor girl. I don’t know what she knows about Mike’s background, either, and what happened back then. She deserves to hear about that.”

  “Of course,” Ilka said at once. “I’ll call you as soon as we find something out.”

  She nodded, but before she stood up, she said, “Did you see how much they look like him? Both of them. It’s like looking at Mike when he was three. And Kathy seems very nice, don’t you think?”

  Ilka nodded.

  “They’ve known each other five years, but they weren’t married. Her parents live in Oregon. I’ll never forgive Tommy for not telling me about them. He knew, but he never visited them, even though he had their address. And he didn’t come here to say good-bye, either. He’s always been an asshole.”

  Ilka followed them outside. Shelby and Kathy each carried a child, while Emma opened the car doors for them. Her head felt frozen as she watched them drive away. Frozen, or emptied out and stuffed with cotton. Artie came over and stood behind her.

  The red taillights disappeared in the dark, and she turned and accepted the cigarette he held out to her.

  34

  “No,” Ilka repeated, “we have no idea who broke in and locked Sister Eileen in our cold room. No sane person would do such a thing. She could have died if we hadn’t found her.”

  “Can she describe the assailant?”

  Artie shook his head. “Sister Eileen didn’t see anything. Someone pulled a shroud over her head.”

  Ilka stopped listening. She sank into a funk; she’d given up trying to make sense of it all.

  “But we know that Sister Eileen was locked in the room,” Artie persisted. “And we know we didn’t shut and lock the door from the outside, because we weren’t here.”

  “Where were you?” Officer Thomas said. He pulled a notepad out of his pocket.

  “At the crematorium.”

  “Which crematorium?”

  The policeman looked up when Artie hesitated a beat. “Oldhams’,” Artie said. “And then we drove to Kenosha to see if they could do it quicker, but it was closed. I’d forgotten about that. And then we came back.”

  “So you delivered a body to the Oldhams to be cremated?”

  “Look, do you really think we locked Sister Eileen in? Shouldn’t we be focusing a little bit on Mike Gilbert disappearing from his coffin? Christ, don’t you think he and his family have suffered enough? If nothing else, take it seriously for Shelby’s sake.”

  Officer Thomas grunted; then he straightened up, still holding his notepad. “What about the surveillance cameras? They must cover the back too; you should be able to see who comes in.”

  Ilka glanced over at Artie. He looked tired. “They still haven’t been activated. But Sister Eileen was here. It was the middle of the day.”

  The officer leaned over the table, his stomach rolling over the edge. He also looked tired—exhausted, in fact. And sad. “I understand if you’re thinking Howard Oldham might be on the warpath again. But it’s not him. Right now, he’s being operated on; the doctors are trying to save his life. He was involved in a serious traffic accident earlier today. For some reason, he lost control of his car out on the highway. He hit a truck head on. He’d been in Chicago, meeting with the family’s lawyers. I don’t know if you’ve heard, but he and Phyllis recently decided to sell their funeral home to the American Funeral Group, the big chain.”

  “We don’t suspect Howard Oldham,” Artie said, none too politely. “We’re just asking you to help us find Mike Gilbert’s body. It’s been stolen, and we’re just trying to file a report about it.”

  Officer Thomas looked away and nodded. “Agreed. Let’s keep our focus here.” He wiped his forehead and straightened up again. “When was the last time you saw him in the coffin?”

  “Right before we drove to the crematorium. Just before noon. And we were back around two.”

  “So it’s within that time frame?”

  “Yes. At the same time that Sister Eileen was locked in the cold room.”

  “But that’s where the coffin was, too. Is that correct?”

  Artie and Ilka both nodded. Ilka knew it was going to be a long evening if everything had to be spelled out. Artie seemed to realize that, too, along with the policeman, who stuck the notepad back in his pocket and stared blankly for a moment before wiping his forehead again.

  “Two people died in that accident.” He sounded distant. “They’d been at the swimming pool. They rammed into the back of the truck that collided with Oldham.”

  Ilka shifted in her chair. She wasn’t sure he’d even been listening closely to them; he might have been too much in his own world. She slumped when he started in again.

  “Howard drove into the opposite lane on purpose. I’m sure of that. It was a straight stretch of road, no dangerous curves. Nothing blocking his sight. Witnesses said he’d been driving at a steady speed, and nobody noticed him swerving, or anything that might have meant he was feeling bad. Suddenly he just pulled into the other lane, and that was that.”

  No one said anything for a moment. Then Officer Thomas pushed his chair back. “It was my neighbor in the car behind the truck. A father and his five-year-old son. I’m sorry. It’s just that some days on this job are better than others. How’s Shelby taking it? Was her daughter there when you discovered Mike’s body was missing?”

  Suddenly the mood was personal, close. As if it had helped him to get that off his chest.

  Ilka nodded. “And the daughter-in-law and Mike’s two children. The only person not there was his father.”

  The policeman looked puzzled. “What? Mike had a family?”

  “Yes, and I think it will help Shelby get through this. And, of course, knowing that Phyllis Oldham is going to pay all the bills for Emma’s treatments.”

  Now it was Artie’s turn to be startled. The
re simply hadn’t been time to tell him before now.

  “I’ll get some men together and we’ll get a search started immediately,” he said, adding that he would keep them informed.

  35

  Artie left for Dorothy’s old crematorium. Ilka hadn’t noticed if he had brought a bottle of wine, but she didn’t really care. She was up to her neck in shit, as she had put it earlier that evening, when she called home for moral support.

  “Come home, then,” her mother had said. She brushed aside what Ilka had told her about having to sell off the business first. “Why do you feel it’s your responsibility? You’d be better off coming back and focusing on your own business before it goes down the drain. Honestly, these school secretaries aren’t all that easy to please.” Several times she had emphasized that Ilka didn’t owe anything to anyone. Not to Artie or Sister Eileen or, especially, her father.

  “If this Artie Sorvino guy is interested in the house, sell it to him. Let the business go. It sounds like that town has plenty of funeral homes. Surely people will find another place to go to.”

  She was right, of course. They would; no doubt about that.

  “And then it’s Sorvino who decides if the nun will stay or not. You don’t have to get involved in that. And under no circumstances should you let anyone threaten you into doing anything.”

  This was Karin Jensen in a nutshell. Black or white. Ilka didn’t care to explain that her staying to fight for her father’s business had nothing to do with the American Funeral Group. Or with the business, not really. It was him, her father. She still had almost no idea of why he had abandoned them. Walking around the funeral home, she sometimes imagined she could feel his presence, but no more than that. She hadn’t found out more about the life he’d led in Racine. Occasionally small fragments of his working life came out, but there was so very much she didn’t know. All the things still in darkness, things that appeared only in short, unpleasant glimpses. The unpaid bills, what people talked about indirectly. They knew things about her father that Ilka didn’t. Things he had done or messes he had gotten himself into. As if he had a shady side to him. Things they hinted at but never elaborated on.