Final Undertaking: A Buryin' Barry Mystery (Buryin' Barry Series)

by Mark de Castrique

  “You do have a tube draining your chest,” I pointed out.

  “So, I’ll have to poke a hole in my shirt. What’d you learn in Florida?”

  I turned to Fletcher. “Show him your pictures.”

  Fletcher pulled the most detailed composites from a manila envelope and handed them to Tommy Lee.

  I nodded toward the pictures. “This is what we sent Lieutenant Spring. Then I went with him to talk to the Kowalskis’ daughter and their neighbors.”

  Tommy Lee pointed to the picture of the girl. “Very good,” he told Fletcher. “Maybe you should be in charge of the investigation.”

  Fletcher blushed.

  “We’ll get to that,” I said. “The point is the girl’s likeness is accurate, yet no one in Delray Beach recognized her. We figure she’s got to be from around here.”

  Tommy Lee lifted Lincoln’s composite. “And him?”

  “Worth the flight.” I briefed Tommy Lee and Fletcher on Artie Lincoln’s possible link to Lucy Kowalski’s OxyContin and the debit card we’d found on the girl.

  “What do you think’s the best way to pick up Lincoln’s trail?” Tommy Lee asked.

  “Two ways. First, if Lincoln latched onto Lucy Kowalski through a shuffleboard club, then that crowd might know him up here. Second, we still have to identify the girl, and we know Lincoln’s trail crossed hers.” I nodded to Fletcher. “You’re looking at your newest undercover agent.”

  Tommy Lee shook his head. “Getting you involved is one thing, Barry. But if this is some kind of organized drug ring, Fletcher’s got no business getting anywhere near it.”

  Fletcher took a step closer to the bed. “I’ll only be trying to find out the dead girl’s name. Who else can melt into Asheville’s underground?”

  Tommy Lee looked at me. I knew he was running through his options and coming up empty. Finally he asked, “What’s the cover story?”

  I glanced at Fletcher. “We haven’t talked that through. I wanted to see you first.”

  “That’s one smart thing you’ve done.” Tommy Lee shifted on his pillow and couldn’t suppress a groan. “So, any ideas?”

  “Maybe Fletcher’s an old friend trying to find her,” I said. “A friend told him she was in Asheville.”

  “Then why doesn’t he know her name?” Tommy Lee asked. “Why’s he carrying a picture?”

  Fletcher took the composites from Tommy Lee and briefly stared at the unknown girl. “I wasn’t going to show any pictures. I wasn’t going to ask directly about the girl. I was going to be looking for Lincoln because he owes me money. I got stiffed by the ‘man.’ Anybody I ask doesn’t need to know why. The right people will assume drugs. I’ll say the last lead I had put him with a girl and bring in her description that way.”

  The story sounded credible. I could see Fletcher getting sympathy for being ripped off by someone like Lincoln.

  Tommy Lee rubbed his forefinger across his lips and considered the idea. “If anyone sees the guy you describe, how are they going to reach you?”

  Fletcher smiled. “My cell phone. That’s the only contact info I’ll give them. And I’ve got a Detroit area code. Resurrect my accent a little and the story should fly.”

  “But your goal is only the name of the girl,” Tommy Lee emphasized. “I don’t want you tangling with Lincoln.”

  “Understood,” Fletcher agreed.

  I still wasn’t comfortable. “I wish we had more information so Fletcher can be more specific. Maybe Lieutenant Spring’s pulled up a vehicle registration. Be nice if Fletcher could describe Lincoln’s car.”

  I checked the time. Ten after eight. I doubted Spring would be at his office yet, and I needed to be at the funeral home by nine to meet Uncle Wayne and get ready for the Cosgroves. I sat down at the computer. “Spring gave me his email address. I’ll tell him what we’re doing and ask him to call me with any new information on Lincoln as soon as possible.”

  “All right, let’s do it.” Tommy Lee looked at Fletcher. “God knows I’ve wasted enough breath telling Barry, but maybe you’ll listen to me. Be careful. At the slightest hint of trouble, you get your butt back here.”

  I found Uncle Wayne in the store room checking our embalming supplies.

  “Sorry I’m late,” I said. “I stopped by the hospital.”

  “How was everybody?”

  “Tommy Lee wanted to break out and Cindy was sleeping.”

  “That’s good. Sounds like they’re both mending.” Wayne walked to the work sink and washed his hands. “I haven’t seen Fletcher yet.”

  “I gave him the day off.”

  “The day off?” My uncle stopped scrubbing and turned to me with water dripping from his fingertips. “But the Cosgroves—”

  “Fletcher wanted to come in when he learned we had a funeral, but he’d already mentioned a plan to aid the investigation. I thought he should follow through with it.”

  “Plan?” Wayne cocked his head. “What plan?”

  “To go undercover in Asheville. Mix with the kids that might have known the dead girl.”

  “He’s not a policeman.”

  “No. But me and everybody else in the Sheriff’s Department are too old to fool that crowd.”

  “Damn hippies.” Wayne cut the spigot off. “But, Fletcher doesn’t look like one of them sex-crazed addicts.”

  Arguing with my uncle was an art form unto itself and I’d honed my techniques throughout my life. I wisely sidestepped the fact that “hippies” existed forty years in the past. “And that’s why he needed the day off. Looking sex-crazed takes practice for a normal person like Fletcher.”

  Uncle Wayne mulled that over. “I guess it does. Did this plan come out of your trip to Florida?”

  I gave him a condensed version of the previous day’s discoveries, including Artie Lincoln and the illegal OxyContin supply.

  “So the Kowalskis met this Lincoln fellow playing shuffleboard?”

  I shrugged. “Possibly. I’ll be checking that part out.”

  Uncle Wayne stared off into space. “Shuffleboard players. They’re even older than I am. One foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel. They’re at the age where none of them should be buying a green banana either, that’s for sure.”

  “And they sure shouldn’t be buying pain killers from Artie Lincoln. I can understand how Mr. Kowalski blamed Lincoln for his wife’s death. And I blame Lincoln for the death of the girl. That’s why we’ve got to find him.”

  Uncle Wayne wiped his hands on a paper towel and then crushed it into a tiny ball. “Yep. We’ve got to. No two ways about it.”

  Before Wayne could enlighten me with his plan of attack, Mom called that the Cosgroves had arrived.

  Mildred Cosgrove had been my first grade teacher. She’d seemed ancient at that time and I’d thought of her as my teacher ever since, even years later when she’d been long retired. If I ran into her at the curb market or drug store, the very way she called my name sent me back to my desk, holding a giant pencil and trying to print between the lines. Pleasing Mrs. Cosgrove had been the first aspiration I could remember. That was probably true for nearly everyone in town who had passed through her classroom.

  Mildred’s son, Julius, and his daughter, Dot Cramer, waited in the parlor. Uncle Wayne and I greeted them with our condolences and shared some memories of what a wonderful woman Mildred had been.

  “You were one of her prize students.” Julius sat on the sofa in an ill-fitting seersucker suit. He had to be in his sixties and kept looking at his daughter for reassurance. “Many’s the time she told me, ‘that Barry Clayton could have gone anywhere, but he came back.’” A sob caught in his throat. “Seems fitting you’ll be the one to bury her.”

  Dot dabbed at her eyes with a lace handkerchief. “Gran Marmie knew she could count on you, Barry. We’d talked about it just a week ago when she got to feeling poorly.”

  Dot had been about five years behind me in school. I didn’t know her very well, other than seeing her at
Julius’ tire store. I heard her husband had run off with the Avon lady. Quite the scandal since he’d been the Fuller Brush man. They’d been making sales calls on each other.

  “Wayne and I are here to help any way we can. Did Mrs. Cosgrove leave any special requests for the funeral?”

  The grieving son and granddaughter exchanged glances. Julius cleared his throat. “Just one. Momma wanted to be buried with her fluffy.”

  Being buried with a doll or special keepsake wasn’t that unusual. The most touching occasions involved the death of a child. Those scenes were heart wrenching as the parents laid some cherished toy in the small casket. Occasionally, an adult would have the same attachment, maybe for a book or special pillow.

  “Is her fluffy a quilt or a comforter?” I asked.

  Julius took a deep breath. “No. Fluffy’s her cat.”

  “Her cat!” I looked at Wayne, but he simply closed his eyes, wishing himself to God only knew where. “Mr. Cosgrove, I can’t put a dead cat in your mother’s casket.”

  Dot blew her nose and sniffled. “That’s the other thing. Fluffy ain’t dead. Yet.”

  Chapter Nine

  Uncle Wayne’s eyes popped open. “Not dead? You mean you want us to put a live cat in Mildred’s casket?”

  Dot’s face flushed and she looked to her father for support.

  Julius stiffened, tugging at the narrow lapels of his oversized suit coat like a tortoise pulling himself deeper inside his seersucker shell. “Of course not. We’d take care of making sure Fluffy was properly prepared. And we’d expect to pay extra.”

  I shook my head. “It’s out of the question. I can’t condone your killing a cat because the owner died.”

  Dot’s lower lip trembled. “Gran Marmie said we could count on you. You were a good student. You always did what she told you.”

  “I was a first grader.”

  “She made us promise.” Dot buried her face in her handkerchief and sobbed.

  Uncle Wayne got to his feet and stood beside my chair. His tall, lanky frame towered over the rest of us. He pointed his finger at Julius. “Did your mother force her students to break the law?”

  “No. She was god-fearing and law abiding till her dying day.”

  Wayne nodded. “I know she was. And now that she’s in heaven, she probably understands rule 6513.”

  Julius blinked in confusion, and then stared at me. I sure as hell wasn’t in heaven and had no idea what Uncle Wayne was talking about. But I tried to look like rule 6513 would have been the first thing Saint Peter proclaimed at the Pearly Gates.

  Wayne brought the palms of his hands together as if preparing to lead us in prayer. “Your mother knew it’s not against the law to bury a cat, but there’s no reason she’d have known about embalming laws. Barry and I are licensed embalmers. We’ve taken that hypocritic oath just like doctors.” Wayne rotated his hands face up like a faith healer ready to touch somebody. “Our embalming skills are to be used only on people. That’s rule 6513. As much as we may want to help you, we’re prohibited from embalming Fluffy. And we can’t mix the embalmed with the unembalmed. It’s just not done. You do want your mother properly prepared, don’t you?”

  Dot peered over the handkerchief. “We’ve got to have her ready for the viewing. She wanted Doris to do her hair. Now that Gran Marmie knows the embalming rules, I’m sure it’s all right.”

  I sat stunned at my uncle’s preposterous explanation and the fact that Dot actually believed it.

  Julius frowned at his daughter. He didn’t seem to be buying rule 6513. “Then you’re going to take care of that damn cat. I want nothing to do with it.”

  I got the feeling Julius’ real impetus for carrying out Mildred Cosgrove’s wish was to get poor Fluffy out of the way. He might have put the burial idea in his mother’s head.

  “We’ll talk about it later, Daddy.” Dot laid the handkerchief in her lap. “Let’s get the funeral planned first.”

  Uncle Wayne took a deep breath and returned to his chair. I could tell he was proud of his solution to the problem.

  We finished meeting with Julius and Dot around eleven. The funeral was scheduled for Thursday and I enlisted Freddy Mott to assist in transporting Mildred’s body from the hospital later that afternoon. I’d help Freddy load and Wayne would meet him at the funeral home. That way I could work on the case from Tommy Lee’s hospital room for a couple of hours.

  My mother came out on the screened back porch. “Will you stay for lunch?”

  I was sitting in a wicker rocker, stealing a few minutes to read Monday morning’s Gainesboro Vista. “No. I’d better run by the Sheriff’s Department for some things. Then I’m heading back to the hospital.”

  Mom walked across the gray plank floor and stopped close to the screen wall. She watched two cardinals vying for position on our backyard bird feeder. Their squabble knocked more black sunflower seeds to the ground than either could eat. The victors were the little wrens who enjoyed the spoils of someone else’s battle.

  “Your father wouldn’t get up this morning.” She spoke the words as much to the birds as to me.

  I set the newspaper aside. “Is he sick?”

  Mom turned around. I saw the tears come quickly.

  “Sick? Barry, he’s been sick. We’re losing him.”

  Of course Dad was sick. Alzheimer’s was an insidious disease. Insidious because the family had to accommodate it, hell, even accept it. “That’s just Dad,” I’d said to myself a thousand times. I tried to get beyond the point where every time I looked at him, I saw what was no longer there. I tried to deal with the person he’d become and not dwell upon the person I was losing.

  But Mom was losing so much. She and Dad had been married for over fifty years. And every single day having to watch the erosion of a person she loved was taking a terrible toll.

  I got up and hugged her. “I know, Mom. I’ll check on him.”

  I released the baby gate at the top of the stairs and leaned it against the wall. We kept the gate wedged in place so Dad wouldn’t wander downstairs without my mother’s knowledge.

  The door to my parents’ room was open and I could see the sheets had been kicked to the foot of the bed. The bathroom door in the hall was closed and before I could knock, I heard the commode flush.

  My father didn’t like being in a closed room, but the bathroom was an exception. I figured years of automatically closing that door had become so engrained the habit would always stay with him.

  I waited in the hall. He coughed a few times, trying to clear phlegm from his throat. I waited a few minutes longer, but he didn’t come out. “Dad?” I knocked softly on the door. “You all right?”

  No answer.

  “Dad?” I turned the knob. It was unlocked. The hinges squeaked as I pushed the door in slowly, not wanting to hit him.

  Dad stepped away from the basin as the door nudged him. He held out one hand wrapped tightly around his toothbrush. He looked at me and then down at the brush. He was holding the bristles upside down. He obviously had no idea what they were for.

  Patsy Wadkins was sitting beside Tommy Lee’s bed. She folded the magazine she’d been reading and laid it across her lap when I entered the room. “He’s finally fallen asleep,” she whispered.

  The color in Tommy Lee’s face looked better than when I’d seen him earlier and I understood Patsy’s unspoken message not to wake him. “I’ll be quiet. I’ve got a few things to do on the computer.”

  “Will you be here at least thirty minutes?”

  “I don’t have to be anywhere until three.”

  Patsy glanced at the wall clock. Ten after two. “I haven’t had lunch and now that he’s sleeping—”

  “Go on. I’ll be here.”

  She started for the door. “And if Susan or O’Malley makes rounds?”

  “I’ll grill them for all the information they can give me.” I saluted her. “Don’t forget I’m a deputy.”

  Patsy laughed. “Barney Fife better watch
his back.”

  After she left, I logged onto the computer and accessed my personal email. Lieutenant Spring had sent me the vehicle registration data for Artie Lincoln. His full name was Arthur Collier Lincoln and he had a Delray Beach address. His car was a 2005 Lincoln. The man liked his name.

  I noticed that Spring had sent the email only five minutes earlier. I forwarded the information to Reece Hutchins so he could issue a BOLO—short for “be on the lookout”—throughout the department and to the surrounding law enforcement agencies. Then I telephoned to make sure someone gave the BOLO top priority.

  The dispatcher routed me to Deputy Wakefield, a competent officer who’d been at the street dance when the shooting occurred. He jotted down Lincoln’s license and registration numbers and promised to print out Spring’s email for the file.

  “I just got off the phone with the regional ATM manager for Wachovia,” Wakefield said.

  I cradled the receiver against my neck and flipped open my notepad. “What’s the word?”

  “No one’s actually screened the security video yet. They don’t have playback capabilities at the Gainesboro branch.”

  “But they have the tape?”

  “Tape or hard drive. The woman referred to it as the media.”

  I didn’t care what they called it. “When can we see it?”

  “They’re driving it over to Asheville now. If we want, they can burn us a DVD by Wednesday. They have to do that at their corporate headquarters in Charlotte.”

  “Wednesday? Did you tell her this is a murder investigation?”

  “You bet. She said our other option was to screen the video at their main office in Asheville. Here’s the address.”

  I wrote down the information. “Call her back and tell her I want to come to the main office.”

  “I already did. They’re expecting you at four.”

  I flipped my pad closed. “Wakefield, you’re a good man.”

  If Freddy brought the hearse right at three, I could take care of Mildred Cosgrove and be in Asheville by four. I looked at Tommy Lee. Keep sleeping, old pal. With Lincoln’s car now on everybody’s radar screen, maybe we’ll get a break before you wake up.