Undertaking Irene

by Pamela Burford

  I was proud of myself—I jumped this time but didn’t scream. Chuckling, I turned to Irene and saw that she hadn’t so much as blinked.

  Then I screamed.

  3

  Winner Take All

  “HOW CAN YOU be sure it was a heart attack?” I asked.

  “Let’s take a look at this knee first.” Jonah Diamond turned his breakfast-room chair to face mine and opened his black medical bag, the same one he’d carried down to the basement after my frantic call to him more than an hour before.

  Naturally, my first call had been to 911. Then, almost as a reflex, I’d phoned Jonah on his cell. He happened to be a few blocks away, driving home after attending to one of his patients in the emergency room of Harbor Memorial Hospital. He was more than Irene’s doctor, he was her friend and a longtime member of the infamous Poker Posse, the group of well-heeled players who got together at Irene’s every Thursday evening for a high-stakes game.

  Jonah had arrived first and verified what had become clear once I’d turned off the movie and flipped on the overhead lights in Irene’s home theater. I’d seen plenty of dead people in my line of work, but always after processing, if you know what I mean—lying peacefully in a box with their eyes glued shut. There was no mistaking the absence of life in Irene’s blank stare. Nevertheless, I’d checked her still-warm throat for a pulse, prepared to perform CPR if there was even a chance.

  Once the paramedics and cops had left, I crashed. I felt as if my legs could no longer support me. Sexy Beast was in a similar condition. He dozed on his plush doggie bed in a corner of the breakfast room. Now we were waiting for Ahearn’s Funeral Home to send a hearse. I’d wanted to wait downstairs with Irene. Jonah gently vetoed that idea.

  “Ow!” I gripped my leg above the knee, trying to be a grownup as Jonah swabbed the abraded flesh with battery acid. Sure, he said it was some sort of antiseptic, but all I know is, if battery acid doesn’t feel like that, it shouldn’t be called battery acid.

  “How did this happen?” He produced a pair of tweezers and commenced to plucking gravel out of the raw meat of my knee. I looked away.

  “It’s a long story.” One I was trying to mentally suppress, even as my subconscious insisted on playing connect the dots between what happened at Ahearn’s and Irene’s death. Two striking events are allowed to occur in one evening, aren’t they? There’s no rule that says they have to be connected. Yet my mind had a, well, mind of its own. “So it was definitely a heart attack?” I persisted.

  “All the signs point that way.” Jonah was in his early forties and athletically built, with light brown hair and a short, neatly trimmed beard. That evening he wore a forest green polo shirt and custom-made khakis.

  “It just seems so…” I shook my head. “That woman was as strong as an ox.”

  His mouth twisted in a wry smile as he fished ointment, gauze pads, and tape out of his bag. “That’s the image she projected, but I treated her atrial fibrillation for years. The truth is, she should have gotten a pacemaker long ago but kept putting it off. You know how she felt about hospitals.”

  Did I ever. Irene’s horror of hospitals was simply a more extreme version of how she felt about doctor’s offices. She rarely went to Jonah’s office. More often he came to her, especially for routine matters such as blood-pressure checks.

  Jonah was a concierge physician, catering to a limited number of wealthy patients who could afford his hefty retainer and fees—no insurance accepted. In return, each patient received the kind of time and attention that was almost unheard-of in most medical practices. Dr. Diamond was available twenty-four seven by cell phone and email, and yes, he cheerfully made house calls.

  “But… how could it have happened so suddenly?” My eyes stung. “I spoke with her a couple of hours ago, around eight. She sounded fine.”

  He looked up from my knee. “I know how hard this is for you, Jane. Here.” A crystal cookie jar filled with homemade chocolate-macadamia biscotti sat on the table. I recognized the handiwork of Nina Wallace, another member of Irene’s Poker Posse. Nina loved to bake and always brought a sinfully delicious dessert to their weekly games. He pushed the jar toward me and lifted the lid. “You could use a little sugar.”

  It should have been a dream come true: a man of medicine prescribing cookies. I shook my head miserably.

  “Do it for me.” He handed me a biscotto.

  “Yes, Doctor.” I let out a soggy chuckle and bit into it. At that particular moment, it tasted like cardboard.

  After Jonah had pronounced Irene and things had quieted down, I’d made one phone call, to her longtime lawyer and poker pal, Sten Jakobsen, who was also the executor of her estate. Irene had never discussed her blood relatives, but I assumed she had some somewhere. Sten would get in touch with them, as well as her estranged stepsons. Irene never had kids of her own. I told him I’d notify her closest friends, but those calls could wait until the morning.

  “I guess I just want to make sure.” I set my half-eaten cookie on the table.

  “Make sure of what?” He tore off a strip of first-aid tape.

  “You know. That that’s what it was. Natural causes.” I looked at Jonah, willing him to understand my misgivings. Hell, I didn’t understand my misgivings. It just didn’t seem right, this diagnosis of death by cardiac infarction in a woman who’d always seemed so full of life.

  “What else do you think it could have been?” he asked.

  “I don’t know, but…” I shrugged. “Well, isn’t it possible… I mean not likely but possible that someone, you know, did something to her?”

  He frowned. “You think someone murdered Irene?”

  “Not really, I just…” I scrubbed my hands over my face. “Okay, I just think it’s something that should be considered, that’s all. Irene rubbed a lot of people the wrong way. Maybe one of them just, I don’t know, snapped. And anyway, aren’t they supposed to do an autopsy? Why is she going straight to Ahearn’s?”

  “Because you had the good sense to call me, and as her personal physician, I was able to ascertain cause of death, based on my examination and her medical history.”

  I hoped I only imagined the impatience underlying his words.

  “If I hadn’t been here,” he added, “they would have had to call the coroner and an autopsy would have been required. Believe me, it’s better this way. More respectful to Irene.”

  “I don’t know…. She was acting different the past few days, Jonah.”

  “Different how?”

  “Irritable. Cranky.”

  That elicited a bark of laughter. “I’m sorry,” he said, “but that differs from Irene’s usual state how?”

  “More irritable,” I said. “A different kind of irritable. Like something was bothering her.”

  “Like she wasn’t feeling well?” His knowing look spoke volumes. “Like her heart condition was getting worse and she didn’t want to admit it to anyone else or even herself?”

  I found it hard to meet his eyes. “You think I’m being immature. Self-delusional. Something.”

  “I think you’ve had a shock tonight and you’re not seeing things in the clearest light. I think a good night’s sleep will help.” He patted my bandaged knee and started repacking his medical bag, offering the usual instructions: rest and elevation, ice then heat, yadda yadda.

  “When’s the last time you spoke with Irene?” I asked.

  A pause while he fastened his bag and considered the question. “Not since last week’s game.”

  “Did she tell you then that she was feeling poorly? Did she make an appointment or anything?”

  His calm hazel eyes locked on to mine. “No. As far as I knew, she felt no better or worse than usual. These things happen, Jane. She was seventy-seven.”

  I shook my head. “Irene just turned seventy-two.”

  His eyes crinkled at the corners.

  “Really?” I said. “She lied about her age?”

  “What a shock.” He rose and walke
d around the large kitchen island toward the fridge.

  “But to me? I can see her fibbing about her age to other people, but…” I trailed off, realizing how pathetic I sounded. Okay, so maybe I didn’t know every last thing about my longtime client, friend, and surrogate grandma. Like that her health was deteriorating and she hid how sick she was even from her doctor.

  I sighed. “There’s something else. Something happened earlier tonight.”

  Jonah rooted around in the freezer. “What?”

  “Well, it was at the funeral home. At Colette’s wake.”

  “I was there last night.” Colette had been his patient too. He returned with a bag of frozen mixed berries, which he wrapped in a clean dish towel and placed on my knee.

  “Yeah, well, you should have been there tonight,” I said. “That’s when all the cool kids showed up.” I told him about my aborted attempt to retrieve the brooch for Irene and how the pilfering padre had swooped in and made off with the prize. “That’s how I got this.” I indicated my knee. “Running after the guy.”

  Jonah gave a little shake of the head, as if struggling to make sense of my story.

  “I know,” I said. “I can’t figure it out either. It’s not as if the piece of junk were worth anything. Colette’s son didn’t even bother reporting the theft.”

  “The mermaid brooch?” He leaned back against the kitchen island, arms crossed. “You’re kidding, right?”

  A crawly feeling tickled my scalp. “What do you mean?”

  “That brooch is a McAuliffe family heirloom. It’s worth over a hundred grand.”

  His words stunned me into silence.

  “I saw it on Colette at the wake,” he said. “I just assumed it would be returned to the family. It never occurred to me it was going into the ground with her.”

  Belatedly I realized my mouth was hinged open. “No,” I said. “No, it’s a costume piece. That’s what Irene told me. She bought it for Colette when they were kids. For a few bucks.”

  “Well, I’m not sure why she told you that, unless she thought you might run off with it.”

  “I would never!”

  Jonah held up a hand. “I know that. I’m sure Irene knew it too. So probably she said it to keep you from balking at the assignment. If you knew it was worth a fortune, would you have agreed to steal it?”

  I hesitated.

  He nodded. “She knew you, Jane. She wanted that brooch and she knew how to get you to steal it for her.”

  “I wish you’d quit saying ‘steal’ like that. It wasn’t stealing, it… it belonged to her. I mean, not, um, legally maybe, but…” I dropped my head into my hands and cursed my dumb, trusting self. “Wait a minute.” I raised my head. “You said it was a McAuliffe family heirloom. Colette wasn’t a McAuliffe. Irene was.”

  “Well, Irene’s late husband was. Arthur. I never met him. He died about twenty-five years ago.” He reached for my partially gnawed biscotto and popped it into his mouth.

  “Twenty-two years ago,” I said. “Right before I started dog-sitting for Irene. So the thing is, the brooch probably did belong to Irene. Originally anyway.” But not as far back as the fifties, as she’d claimed. It had to have come to her decades later through her marriage into the McAuliffe family. “How did Colette get ahold of it?” I asked.

  “She won the brooch from Irene in a poker game.”

  My mouth dropped open again—such a good look for me. “You can’t be serious.”

  “Serious as a heart atta—” He winced. “Sorry. I was there, Jane. It was the regular Thursday night poker game, right in there.” Jonah pointed toward the sunken game room, visible over the half wall separating it from the breakfast room where we sat. The centerpiece of the game room was a custom-made professional poker table with six matching chairs.

  “When was this game?” I asked.

  “Ten years ago?” He frowned, thinking back. “It wasn’t long after Rachel and I moved to Crystal Harbor and I started my practice. No, closer to nine years, I guess. Right before Christmas. I remember Irene had the tree up. Colette and Irene got into it that night over the minimum bet. Colette wanted it lowered, wanted Irene to dial back on the whole high-stakes thing. That’s when The Harbor Room was starting to lose serious money.”

  “I remember.” The Harbor Room was a waterfront restaurant owned by Colette’s husband, Burt O’Rourke. The place had been a local landmark since the1840s and boasted a colorful history. During Prohibition, rumrunners steered their boats between the stilts supporting the restaurant and passed crates of smuggled booze through a secret trapdoor behind the bar.

  Burt had died almost a year ago. Rumor had it that Colette was never the same afterward, that her husband had been her emotional rock, keeping her grounded during all their years together. She’d become impulsive and unpredictable since his death. Quitting the church choir. Redecorating the house in Crayola colors. Signing up for senior Zumba classes. I didn’t pay much attention to the gossip. New widows tended to find themselves under a magnifying glass. So what if Colette let loose a little after her stuffy hubby was in the ground? You only live once.

  Okay, to be fair, Colette’s selling the ailing Harbor Room too soon and for too little, practically before Burt was cold, could legitimately be called impulsive. Not that anyone expected her to turn it over to their son, Patrick, who would no doubt have run the restaurant into the ground. But that’s one decision that probably should have waited until she was in a clearer frame of mind.

  “I mean, we all knew about their financial troubles,” Jonah continued. “Irene knew it better than anyone. And Christmas was coming. Colette’s grandkids were little. I’m sure she wanted to buy them some nice presents.”

  I thought about Colette’s grandkids, whom I’d seen earlier at the wake: Fuzzy Slippers and her brother. A couple of self-absorbed teens too preoccupied with their gadgets and their TV shows to give their grandmother the respectful send-off that was her due.

  I sighed. “Irene could be stubborn.”

  “Colette loved that weekly poker game. She was part of the very first Poker Posse, going back, what, almost twenty years at that point. But it was Irene’s game and her decision to make, and she wasn’t budging. Anyone who couldn’t stomach the action was free to leave and not come back.”

  But Colette was her oldest friend, and she was experiencing hardship. I cringed inwardly at Irene’s insensitivity, her skewed priorities. I was embarrassed for her.

  “Colette did leave the Posse,” I said. “Because of that very fight, from what I was told.”

  He nodded. “But not until she’d gotten back at Irene.”

  “By winning the brooch, you mean. How on earth did that end up for grabs?” Absently I reached into the cookie jar for another biscotto, my lack of appetite forgotten.

  “I thought Colette would take a hike after Irene’s ultimatum,” Jonah said, “but she pulled up a chair and anted up. I don’t know whether it was plain dumb luck or that their argument had sharpened her wits or what, but it was like she couldn’t lose. The rest of us folded one by one and then it was just Colette and Irene, your basic Texas Hold ’Em one-on-one death match. Colette cleaned her out and we all thought that was that, it’s going to be a good Christmas at the O’Rourke homestead, and then Irene says don’t anybody move and she runs upstairs. Comes back with the mermaid brooch and slaps it down.” He smacked a palm on the table in demonstration.

  “How did you guys know it was valuable?” I asked. “I didn’t.” Which meant precisely zip. What did I know about real jewelry? Dom had been too poor to buy me a diamond when we got hitched eighteen years ago. Of course, now he was rolling in it and could afford to put a garish four-karat boulder on fiancée Bonnie’s finger to commemorate her ranking in the ever-growing pantheon of Dominic Faso’s Wives.

  Me? Bitter? Just because my poor but adorable high school sweetheart, whom I’d loved to distraction and regretfully divorced after seven months of marriage because he was dead-set agains
t having kids and I wanted them real bad, is now the proud father of three and is filthy stinking rich?

  Guess how many kids I have at age thirty-nine with my biological clock pounding a frantic but increasingly faint jungle drumbeat every twenty-eight days. Here’s a hint. None.

  Did I mention he’s rich now?

  “Irene had this appraiser’s certificate,” Jonah continued, “and she shoved it under Colette’s nose. Diamonds, rubies, et cetera, it says. Platinum. The thing was made at the turn of the twentieth century by some famous Scottish jewelry designer. Worth a hundred four thousand and change. Colette’s pot is worth maybe eighteen, twenty grand. You and I go all in, Irene says. Five-card stud. Winner take all.”

  I found myself sitting wide-eyed, my hand over my mouth.

  “Well, you could just see the wheels turning in Colette’s head,” he said. “She’s eyeing that mermaid and thinking how sweet it would be to win that thing from Irene, after the humiliation Irene just put her through.”

  “I can’t believe Colette didn’t just walk away,” I said. “Keep her winnings and call it a good night’s work.”

  “You’re assuming she was thinking the way you and I do. If she’d been playing against anyone else, she probably would’ve done just that. But these two had…” He shook his head. “They had a really warped way of dealing with each other. It infected all their interactions.”

  “Do you think Colette considered herself unbeatable that night?”

  He shrugged. “Irene didn’t, that’s for sure. She never thought for an instant she was going to lose the brooch. You could see it in her eyes, that cocksure attitude of hers.”

  I knew that look well.

  “We all held our breath.” Jonah’s eyes got a glassy, inward-gazing look, as if the clock had turned back nine years. “Judge Ivie dealt. It was over in less than a minute. Irene had a full house.”

  “And Colette?” My voice was strained.

  “Four of a kind. Sixes.”

  I blew out a breath. “God.”