The Undertaker's Daughter

by Sara Blaedel

  She’s right, Ilka told herself after she shut the door and started down the steps. Through the dormer window she had noticed Sister Eileen’s light was out. Which wasn’t so strange. She’d just gone through a terrible experience. Ilka had bought sandwiches for herself and Artie, and she’d taken one over, but the sister didn’t want it. She lay in bed under a thick blanket, pale, still unable to remember what had happened, even right before the attack.

  She hadn’t seen anything; she hadn’t heard anything; she hadn’t noticed any smells, sounds, voices. Nothing. She didn’t remember if there had been someone in the cold room with her, either. Suddenly the door had slammed behind her. She didn’t answer when they asked if she had gone in there under her own power.

  Something had scared Sister Eileen out of her wits, Ilka sensed, and she either couldn’t or wouldn’t remember what.

  She stuck her hands in her pockets and strode down toward Oh Dennis!. The next day, she decided, she would hand everything over to Artie. Except the things from her father’s room she was taking home with her. And he could do anything he wanted with it. He could get rid of the business and move into the house. He could set up a studio or get together with Dorothy and spin pottery with her and fire it in the crematory oven. Or he could doll up corpses to his heart’s content. Ilka didn’t give a damn.

  She didn’t even notice if there was anyone in the restaurant when she went up to the counter and asked for a hundred dollars’ worth of coins. When the young guy asked if she wanted something to drink, she just shook her head, grabbed the coins, and walked to the one-armed bandit in back. She began stuffing the coins in the machine and soon disappeared into a world where nothing existed except the rush when she won.

  Coin after coin fell in. Ilka didn’t move her left hand from the buttons on the bottom controlling which wheel should spin and which should be held back. She kept the wheels going, following the Native Americans, tents, horses, fruit, and stars when they showed up on the line in the middle of the glass. Most of the time the combinations didn’t pay out, but she was in a frenzy, caught up in surges of adrenaline.

  A dark voice spoke next to her ear. “Would you like a beer?” Someone rubbed against her right arm resting on the machine just beside the coin slot. She smelled fresh air, light aftershave.

  Without looking, Ilka shook her head.

  “Wine, maybe?”

  She shook her head again and noted that he didn’t move. Coins rattled into the cup when she won. He yelled out; then he said something—Ilka didn’t know what. She concentrated on sticking the coins back into the machine, and she shut out every sound, every person, the sense of even being there, and focused on the line behind the glass. Finally, he gave up and walked away.

  Maybe an hour or two went by, maybe only half an hour; Ilka had no idea. She walked up to the counter and laid another hundred-dollar bill in front of the bartender. This time he didn’t ask if she wanted a drink; he brought the coins out to her and shoved them across the counter. They weighed a ton, but she hardly even noticed. Just returned to her machine.

  The restaurant was almost empty now. An elderly couple sat by the window, and at the table in the rear next to the bathrooms sat a small man in a light blue windbreaker much too big for him. There were spareribs on his oval plate, French fries in a dish. Leftovers served by a cook who had taken pity on one of the town’s losers.

  Ilka didn’t pay attention to these things either. She stared straight ahead and disappeared into her own world.

  36

  The next morning, Ilka had just made toast and a cup of coffee when her phone started ringing. Her head felt leaden, her soul numb; she’d given in to the thing that clouded her judgment and left her vulnerable, and she’d spent half the night cursing herself for it. What the hell had she been thinking? Now that she’d decided to throw in the towel and go home after her failed mission.

  She’d put a sign in the front-door window. CLOSED. She hadn’t talked to Artie since he’d driven out to Dorothy Cane’s place the evening before. Maybe he was still out there, for all she knew. She didn’t even know when she’d gotten home herself. The guy behind the bar had followed her, but all she remembered was that it had been a long night. For him. She’d paid him to let her sit glued to the one-armed bandit, and she’d spent her last cent. Had tried to talk him into letting her use her credit card, but he’d refused.

  She recognized the number. Artie. “Yes?”

  “We have to go out and get Mike Gilbert. I’ll take a quick shower and I’ll be there.” He told her to find a roll of plastic and get the stretcher ready. The one they’d used to pick up Ed McKenna. “And we’ll need a body bag.”

  “What happened? Where did they find him?”

  “Up in the fishing cabin where Ashley died.”

  Ilka dropped her phone while pulling a sweater over her head. “Hello!” she yelled, to make sure he was still there. “Does Shelby know?”

  “I don’t know. All the police would say was that we should come get him.”

  Ilka rushed down the stairs and into the garage to look for the roll of plastic they’d taken when they picked Mike Gilbert up in the morgue. It was on a shelf beside boxes of masks and plastic gloves. She grabbed a handful of both, along with two disposable white coats.

  It was almost ten thirty when they drove out of the parking lot. Artie’s hair smelled clean and lay plastered to his head. Ilka had never understood older men with long hair, but she was getting used to it. He hadn’t said much since picking her up. He asked what she’d done last evening but didn’t seem particularly interested when she told him she’d lain around reading. And she didn’t ask about his night.

  She had in fact planned to tell him right off about her decision to hand everything over to him. He could decide whether to continue her father’s funeral home or close it and pursue his dream. The alternative was that she simply lock up and call it quits. She wanted to get it over with, but that moment, in the car, didn’t seem like the right time.

  From a distance, they could see all the police cars parked at the foot of the path leading up to the fishing cabin. The path where Phyllis Oldham had seen her husband when he shouldn’t have been there.

  An ambulance was parked a bit farther on. Artie slowed and stopped when a uniformed officer approached them. “Pull behind the ambulance,” she said. “We’re waiting for the techs to give the okay to remove the bodies.”

  “What’s going on?” Artie asked. He undid his seat belt and leaned farther out the window. The tips of Ilka’s fingers were cold. She wasn’t sure she wanted to hear the answer to his question. She shouldn’t even have come along, she thought. She wasn’t trained to handle dead people, and today, feeling completely defenseless, she just wasn’t up to it.

  “Who’s up there with him?” Artie yelled out when the female officer walked away. Ilka’s stomach lurched.

  The officer didn’t answer, but she unfastened the barrier tape so they could drive the hearse in.

  “Sorry, I can’t tell you anything,” she said as they drove by.

  Artie followed orders and parked behind the ambulance. Officers Thomas and Doonan were coming down the path when they got out of the hearse. The two policemen spotted them and waved them over. “Bring the stretcher,” Thomas said, his voice unusually deep. “You get to carry him down.”

  Closer now, Ilka saw that Doonan’s eyes were red, and there were deep lines around his mouth, as if he had pulled a mask over his face to shield himself.

  Thomas’s emotions were more open; his round cheeks quivered when he shook his head. “This is about as tragic as it gets,” he said, his voice almost a whisper. He looked so miserable that Ilka involuntarily reached out and squeezed his arm. “This is just so sad, so, so sad, and it makes no sense at all. You’d better go on up.”

  “Does Shelby know?” Artie asked again.

  Thomas raised a hand to his forehead, and a few seconds later he began massaging his temple, as if he hoped everything w
ould go away if he rubbed hard enough. “Not yet. This changes everything about what’s happened. I guess I’ll have to show her the letter; otherwise, she’ll never understand.”

  He turned and walked back up. They followed, though Ilka lagged behind. The two men carried the stretcher, while she bore the body bag under her arm.

  Lyme grass grew on both sides of the path; tangled wild roses stood out in windblown bushes. They followed the winding path, and finally Ilka caught sight of the cabin, a wooden shack with small windows. Fish traps and nets hung from the end of the structure; the wind and foam from the lake had weathered the unvarnished boards. The cabin looked like it had been built from driftwood.

  She counted eight police officers before they reached the cabin. A technician squatted, packing up a camera.

  “We’ve been waiting on that tech, but now it looks like he’s finished,” Thomas said, gesturing at the man. “The dogs found them a little past eight this morning. And nothing has been moved; they’re lying just like they were when we came.”

  Again Artie asked what had happened as they walked to the door, which hung crookedly on two hinges. The police stood off to the side now, speaking quietly among themselves. None of them looked at the cabin when Thomas led them in.

  Ilka couldn’t stop from crying out when she saw the two men on the floor. Mike Gilbert had on the same clothes as when he’d been in the coffin. He looked like a wax figure as he lay with his head in Jesse Oldham’s lap, his hands folded across his chest. The undertaker’s son sat slumped in a corner, his hair hanging over his closed eyes, hands resting on Mike’s shoulders.

  “The letter was on the floor beside them,” Thomas said, his voice breaking. He cleared his throat.

  The policeman must have known the two men on the floor since they were in school, Ilka thought. His face was gray, and it was obviously difficult for him to look over there.

  The cabin was otherwise completely empty; no furniture, nothing indicating it was used by some of the many sport fishermen along Lake Michigan. Jesse Oldham had placed himself and Mike so they faced the crooked door that opened to a magnificent view of the lake.

  “The door was open when the dogs found them,” the policeman said. “Must have been hard for Jesse to drag Mike up here, though he was a strong guy.”

  “But why?” Ilka asked, after they’d all stepped out of the cabin. The wind whipped her hair around in front of her face; all she could see was the image of the two men on the floor.

  The stocky officer crossed his arms as if he were freezing, even though the sun bore down on them. He cleared his throat again and said that in the letter, Jesse Oldham admitted killing Ashley.

  “But the way he tells it, it was a mistake; he didn’t mean to kill her. He was jealous, and he snuck along behind when Mike came up here to meet her. He waited outside and saw them together. Then when Mike left to go to work, Jesse knocked and went in. They argued, he got mad, got upset, and he yelled at her, told her to stay away from Mike. He wrote that Ashley made fun of him, taunted him about falling in love with Mike. She told him, ‘Do you really think he wants anything to do with a fag like you?’ And he pushed her. And she fell.”

  “Oh God,” Artie said.

  “He wrote that he had been in love with Mike already back in school. At first he thought Mike was interested, too, but then Mike met Ashley. Jesse was the odd man out.”

  Before continuing, Thomas gestured for two broad-shouldered men with MEDICAL EXAMINER printed on the back of their coats to go on in.

  “Forensics is finished. They’re taking Jesse to the morgue. They’ll do an autopsy today or tomorrow. Though I’m sure the cause of death is the pills he says he took from his mother’s medicine cabinet. When they bring him out, you can go in and pick up Mike.”

  Suddenly Ilka was so dizzy that she wavered a bit before plopping down on the ground. Artie pulled out his cigarettes and looked at the officer, who simply nodded and held out his hand. They lit the cigarettes and sat down beside her.

  “Jesse also wrote that he hadn’t heard from Mike for almost eight years; then all of a sudden he shows up and wants to meet him. Jesse thought he’d come back to see him, but it turned out he was only interested in money. He wanted help to pay for his sister’s treatment. That hurt Jesse.”

  Thomas snubbed out his cigarette. Then he explained that Jesse had also felt threatened. Not that Mike would reveal what happened back then, because he didn’t know. But he did know the Oldhams had something to hide. And he was putting Jesse under pressure to help get the money. It wasn’t until Mike told him about Kathy and the twins, though, that Jesse lost control and started beating him.

  “The letter is pretty mushy,” Thomas said. He didn’t try to hide that he couldn’t care less how a decent, sensible young guy could end up so bizarrely deranged.

  Artie had been quiet, but now he said, “It’s not really so strange for young kids to experiment with their sexuality. But in a little place like Racine, you don’t do it in public.”

  Ilka could imagine that two schoolboys in love was something people whispered about here. Twelve years ago, people had probably not even talked about it.

  “Jack drove over to inform Phyllis and the rest of the family. We finally managed to contact them right before we called you. They were at the hospital all morning. Howard Oldham died, about the time our dogs found these two.”

  Thomas shook his head and began rubbing his temples again. Artie was smoking another cigarette, sitting and staring out over the lake. The wind blew hard enough to flatten the small, stiff bushes, but they ignored it.

  Ilka had seen Jesse Oldham only twice. During their first meeting with Golden Slumbers and then yesterday afternoon, when he was gazing at the river. She shivered when she remembered what he’d said about the lake. He had been handsome, not very tall, but muscular and friendly-looking. From now on, though, when she thought about him, no matter how hard she tried not to, she would see him sitting on the floor in the fishing cabin with Mike Gilbert’s head resting on his lap.

  “So it wasn’t Douglas Oldham who killed the young girl,” Artie said, stubbing out his cigarette. “Wonder if he’d still be alive if Phyllis had known he didn’t have anything to do with it.”

  Officer Thomas struggled to stand up. “Yeah, like I said,” he muttered. “This job, some days are just better than others.”

  37

  Leaning against the back wall during Mike Gilbert’s funeral service, Ilka realized why her father had stayed with the funeral home business all his life. And why working with the dead was more meaningful to Artie than what he had been doing in Key West.

  She barely remembered carrying Mike’s body down from the fishing cabin. She had been in shock from the sight of the two young men. When they got back, Artie immediately began reconstructing the parts of Mike’s face damaged on the way up to the cabin. At one point, she opened the preparation room door and watched him leaning over Mike’s face, fully focused. When she closed the door carefully, not wanting to disturb him, she heard what was missing—noise, specifically music. Not so much as one note of the Beach Boys was going to distract him.

  The Racine Police Department had permitted the Gilbert family to hold the services already planned for the day after the tragedy. Ilka had the feeling that the quick release of the body was connected with Officer Thomas wanting to see the whole agonizing case put to rest; everyone, including local TV news journalists who were on the love tragedy like dogs on a bone, pointed out that the Racine Police Department hadn’t investigated Ashley’s death thoroughly enough back then.

  Candles were lit in the tall candelabras up by the coffin. She didn’t notice the music in the background, but it filled the room with an air of serenity. She’d asked Artie to lay Mike in the showy coffin taking up space in the garage. The coffin with the large golden handles and the shiny white satin liner looked like something for a head of state. It had been delivered by mistake, and someone might come to pick it up, but that wa
sn’t her problem now. After all Mike Gilbert had been put through, he wasn’t going to be sent out of her house in some shabby wooden coffin.

  Artie had dressed him in a suit Kathy brought in. He threw the old clothes away.

  Officer Thomas had stopped by Ilka’s office earlier that day to tell her and Artie that the police considered the case closed. They had ransacked Jesse Oldham’s apartment and found several letters Mike had written him after he left town. Jesse had placed the letters on his desk in his small office. They had also confiscated his laptop and cell phone.

  “What about his mother?” Ilka had asked. She was surprised to hear that Phyllis had known about everything. The morning before he committed suicide, Jesse had told her he was the one who pushed Ashley and killed her. He had panicked and called his father, who then came to the fishing cabin. Douglas sent Jesse home and got rid of every trace of Jesse’s presence. And Phyllis had seen him after he’d finished, when he was on the way down. By keeping silent all those years, she’d thought she was protecting her unfaithful husband, when in truth, he’d saved their son.

  “I think she realized she’d been living a lie all these years,” Thomas had said. “After Jesse confessed, she called in her son David and told him. Then they contacted the American Funeral Group and initiated the sale. It’s like she’s given up. She’s home. Staring off into space.”

  Ilka thought about Douglas’s suicide and the accusations Phyllis had made against him. But in a way, Howard Oldham’s story was even more heartbreaking to her, his suicide on the highway after discussing with his lawyer the sale of the funeral home that had been in the family for several generations. An era was definitively over.