I digest this bit of info and see Phase I of my payback plan falling into place. If Hurley is that competitive, then the task before me is obvious. I need to beat him at his own game by solving Karen’s murder before he can. And I’m highly motivated. Not only do I have a professional interest and a personal stake in the case, I figure besting Hurley will definitely make him sit up and take notice of me.
I thank Arnie for all his tidbits and head back down to the library, where I read up on serial killers and criminal profiling. Izzy comes to get me sometime after one.
“Hungry?” he asks.
“Have you ever known me not to be?”
“Point taken. Anything in particular you want to eat?”
“Not really. Though I think I’ve had my quota of garlic for the week.”
“But that’s one of the perks of this job. The clientele aren’t particularly bothered by garlic breath. How does Chinese sound?”
It sounds great and ten minutes later we are seated across from one another in a cracked red leather booth at the Peking House. After perusing menus that are encrusted with dried samples of nearly every item, we order: pork chow mein and a side of fried dumplings for Izzy, sweet and sour chicken and an egg roll for me.
After the waitress leaves our table, I say, “I’m kind of weirded out by this whole Karen Owenby thing. I mean, I worked with her for over six years and never once suspected her of being anything other than what she said she was.” This isn’t altogether true since Karen never said she was a slut, but I figure now is no time to be nitpicky.
“The hospital can’t be too pleased,” Izzy surmises. “It opens them up to all sorts of liability issues. It’s very possible the woman wasn’t even a nurse.”
I think about that. “But her skills were excellent,” I tell him. “I find it hard to believe she could’ve been that good if she wasn’t a nurse.”
“Hard to believe, perhaps,” Izzy says. “But not impossible. There are a number of documented cases where impostors with some sort of minimal medical training have successfully posed as nurses, or even doctors. In fact, in one case I remember, everyone was upset when it was discovered that an ICU nurse was an impostor. And they weren’t upset because he was a fake, but rather because he was the best nurse in the ICU and they didn’t want to lose him.”
“That must have made the rest of the nurses feel good.”
“Speaking of which, did any of the nurses at the hospital have problems with Karen? Other than you, I mean.”
I shoot him a look. “Not that I’m aware of. She could be a bit short at times, but that’s true of anyone, especially when the stress starts to mount. As far as I know, she got along with everyone pretty well.” I let out a little laugh. “She got along with some a little too well.”
Izzy smiles, but it’s a smile of sympathy and understanding, not humor. “Think David was the only one?” he asks me.
The question throws me. The idea that Karen might have slept with some of the other surgeons is one I hadn’t considered before, though given what I know about a few of them, it wouldn’t surprise me.
“I don’t know, Izzy. She was a bit cozier with some docs than others, but it seemed like friendly cozy, not intimate cozy.”
“Did you ever see her act intimate cozy with David?”
“Point taken,” I say with a grimace. “Damn, I almost wish I still worked there so I could poke around a bit among the docs and see what shakes out.”
Izzy stares at me a second, a thoughtful expression on his face. “Well, there is an alternative,” he says. “The hospital is having a public dedication ceremony tomorrow evening to mark the opening of their new wing. They have this big reception planned and afterward they’re having a special invitation-only dinner for the hoity-toity crowd.” He pauses and gives me a “get-it?” smile.
“Yeah? So?”
“So,” he says, rolling his eyes, “it just so happens that I’m considered one of the hoity-toities. I have an invitation.”
“That’s nice. I don’t.”
“Ah, but I can bring a guest. And Dom can’t come. Won’t come, I should say. So why don’t you come with me?”
“I don’t know,” I say, shaking my head. “David will probably be there. And so will everyone else who knows what happened: Molinaro and all the other surgeons and…”
“Okay,” Izzy says with a shrug. “If you don’t think you can hack it, then stay home. I just thought it might be a good opportunity for you to renew some old acquaintances and fish around a little to see what you can find out about Karen.”
I have to admit the idea is appealing, particularly if there is a chance of digging up something that can give me a jump on Hurley. But it also means showing my face to a group of people who have probably been laughing behind my back for the better part of two months.
Izzy must have sensed my hesitation because he leans over, takes my hand, and launches into one of his pep talks. “Mattie, it’s not as if you have anything to be ashamed of. You weren’t the one playing dock the submarine in the OR after hours. Remember, living well is the best revenge. So buy a killer dress, get yourself all dolled up, and show those idiots what you’re really made of.”
He makes me smile. But reality kicks in fast. “I can’t afford a new dress. Money is a bit…tight right now.”
“I can solve that easily enough. I’ll give you an advance on your paycheck. Enough for a dress and to get something done with your hair.”
“What’s wrong with my hair?”
“For one thing, it’s shaggy looking. You need a trim at the very least, although a whole new do wouldn’t hurt. And you need color, too. Your roots are showing. Really showing.”
That’s one of the things I love about gay men. Ask them for an honest opinion about your appearance and they’ll give it to you. With both barrels. And then they’ll reload in case you’re still standing after the initial barrage.
“It’s not my fault,” I whine. “My regular hairdresser moved a year ago and I haven’t found a new one I like yet. The last one I went to tried to talk me into a pink rinse and corn rows.”
“I know someone who would be perfect.”
I eye his balding head with skepticism.
“Really. She’s very good. And very reasonably priced.”
“Fine. Give me her number.”
“I’ll do better than that. I’ll drop you there after lunch. Things are quiet in the office. Take the afternoon off.”
“I can’t take the afternoon off, Izzy. It’s not right and I need the money. Besides, won’t I need an appointment? It’s never good to just drop in on these hair salons.”
“First off,” Izzy says, “you’re a salaried employee so you’ll be paid for the whole day. Trust me, it will all work out in the end. There will be plenty of days when you put in way more than eight hours without getting a cent of overtime.
“Secondly, don’t worry about needing an appointment. Barbara loves drop-ins. In fact, all of her customers are drop-ins of a sort. Let me make a quick phone call.”
Two minutes later he’s back. “You’re all set. Barbara is expecting you around two-thirty. Which should give us just enough time to finish eating. I’ll drop you off on the way.”
“Wow. I’m impressed.”
“I have connections,” Izzy says cryptically, wiggling those wooly caterpillars.
Chapter 13
Forty minutes later I am stuffed with Chinese food and wedged into the front seat of Izzy’s car on my way to Barbara. Despite being in the perfect position for floating in amniotic fluid, I’m feeling pretty chipper. The prospect of both a new dress and a new hairdo has me jazzed until Izzy pulls up in front of the Keller Funeral Home.
“You’ll find Barbara inside,” he says. “Probably in the basement. That’s where she does most of her work.”
“Izzy, this is a funeral home.”
“I know.”
I swivel my chin on my knees and look at him. “Barbara works in a funeral ho
me?”
“Yeah, she does hair and makeup. I’ve seen her work. It’s very good. She’s really quite talented.”
“But this is a funeral home,” I persist. I feel like I’m in one of those episodes of The Twilight Zone where I’m the only person who gets it.
“Well, yeah. Didn’t I mention that?”
I give him a dirty look. “You know damn well you didn’t.”
“That’s why there’s no waiting. Her regular clients aren’t in any hurry.”
“Very funny. Dead humor.” I roll my eyes and want to kick him. But I can’t move my legs. “You expect me to get my hair done by a woman who’s a beautician for corpses?”
“Give her a try. I’m telling you, she’s good. She went to beauty school and all that, although she had to drop out before she finished. That’s why she’s working here. But she didn’t drop out because of a lack of talent. Trust me, Mattie. Give it a shot.” He eyes my hair and shudders. “I mean, what have you got to lose?”
There ya go. Both barrels. With my ego blown to bits, I pry myself out of the car and stand on the sidewalk shifting from one foot to the other in a futile effort to get some feeling back in my legs. I know that if I try to walk now I’ll have that Herman Munster gait again, something the funeral home folks may think a bit rude.
I open my mouth to protest one last time, but Izzy says, “I’ll be back in about an hour and a half. Have fun!” And with that he guns the gas and peels off down the street, leaving me standing there alone in front of Keller’s. I turn and eye the building a moment before figuring what the hell and heading inside.
The main entrance leads into a large open foyer with several doors lining either side. It is eerily quiet, the thick carpet and acoustic walls absorbing every sound. I suppose that is so the wails and sobs of the bereaved won’t travel too far, but that doesn’t make it any less creepy. I’ve never liked funeral homes. There’s something so tiptoey awkward about them, as if the dead might be offended if someone were to stomp their feet, or yell, or laugh.
No way am I heading to the basement by myself so, instead, I head for a door marked OFFICE, where I find an elderly woman sitting behind a desk. Her face looks like one of those dried-apple dolls: all wrinkled and shriveled and brown. She has tissue-paper skin covered with liver spots and bruises, and her knuckles are gnarled and deformed from arthritis. Her shoulders are rounded by a dowager’s hump, making it difficult for her to look straight ahead.
Upon seeing me, she flashes a sympathetic smile, and then pushes herself out of the chair. I hear a loud creak and wonder if it’s coming from her joints or the furniture. Once on her feet, she stands a second, wavering like a reed in the wind before beginning a slow shuffle around the desk. Somehow she manages to shift a box of tissues closer to me as she moves.
“Hello,” she says softly. “Can I help you?”
Her help me? She looks to be at least a hundred and, if my nursing eye still works, she’s about one pill away from multi-system failure.
“It’s okay,” I say, holding up a hand to stop her. Her slow progression is too painful to watch. “I’m not here for a funeral or anything.” Although, the more I look at her…
She stops, frowns, and then glances up at my hair. “Oh, yes,” she says, flashing me a smile of relief. “You’re here for Barbara, aren’t you? And not a second too soon either, I might add.” She studies me a moment longer, then shakes her head, though I’m not sure if the movement is a judgment or a palsy of some sort. “That color is all wrong for your skin. You’re so pale. It makes you look washed-out,” she says.
This from a woman who looks like she is made out of onionskin paper.
“I’m fair, not pale,” I protest. “My hair got darker as I got older. This”—I finger the dyed ends of my hair—“happens to be the color I was born with.”
She scoffs at that. “You were also born with creases in your thighs and a misshapen head. Do you want those back, too?”
I glare at her and ask, “Is Barbara here?”
“She’s downstairs. Go back out to the foyer and through the door all the way in the back on the right. Down the stairs and ring the buzzer. We keep it locked, you know. Wouldn’t do to have families wandering around down there and coming across all the bodies.”
She seems rather glib for a woman who is frighteningly close to being a body herself. I thank her and hurry back out to the foyer, wanting to escape before she starts her journey back to the chair.
As I move toward the door she indicated, I glance into the rooms on either side of me. In one of them an open coffin is set up on a stand at the front of the room. There are several rows of chairs lined up, but except for the resident of the coffin, the room is empty. I look around, see no one, and venture inside.
Despite the fact that I’ve seen plenty of dead bodies in my work at the hospital and am likely to see plenty more now that I work with Izzy, I’ve never been to a funeral with an open casket. I’ve heard comments from others about how “life-like” the bodies look and always figured some kind of miracle occurred between the time when I saw them freshly dead and the bereaved saw them at a funeral. But this is the first prepared dead body I’ve ever seen with my own eyes and it’s one I’ve seen before.
Laid out before me is Ingrid Swenson, the woman with the bashed-in head, my first official autopsy. The difference in her appearance between then and now is nothing short of startling, so much so that I almost don’t recognize her. I mean she is dead—that is obvious—there is a certain lifeless quality to her that no makeup or hair style can hide. But her skin looks soft and dewy, her eyes are perfectly shaded, and her cheeks bear an ironically rosy glow. There is nary a hint of the discoloration, swelling, and bruising I saw in her face when Izzy and I autopsied her.
The crowning glory, however, is her hair. At the autopsy it was stained with blood—dirty, dingy, and as lifeless as the rest of her. But now it is lustrously blonde, gleaming with ironic health and streaked with subtle high-and lowlights. It is straight near her scalp—the incision Izzy made totally invisible—and curled at the ends, the soft curves laying about her face and shoulders in a perfect frame. It strikes me as incredibly sad to waste such a good-hair day on being dead.
“So what do you think?” says a voice behind me. I whirl around, startled, and no doubt looking guilty. Behind me stands a short, thin woman with hugely round, blue eyes. Her skin is deathly pale and contrasts sharply with her black hair, which she wears short and spiked, a look that is surprisingly flattering on her. She is wearing stretch slacks, some sort of open smock, and beneath the smock, a tight-fitting tank top with a low-cut neckline that showcases some very healthy cleavage—she could hide Jimmy Hoffa in there. And just in case that isn’t enough to draw one’s eyes to her chest, she has a tattoo of a horse along the crest of one breast, galloping over those rounded hills.
“You must be Mattie,” she says, eyeing the top of my head with a pitiful expression. Her voice is low, sultry, and slightly hoarse. She comes forward and extends her hand, which is cold. The question of whether she sleeps in a coffin flits through my mind. “I’m Barbara. Nice to meet you.”
“Nice to meet you, too,” I say, wishing I had one of my chopsticks from lunch so I could use it as a wooden stake, just in case.
“What do you think of Ingrid here?” Barbara asks, nodding toward the coffin. “Doesn’t she look great?”
“She does,” I admit. “Your work?”
Barbara nods proudly. “It is.”
“I’m impressed.”
“Thanks. Come on downstairs and let’s see what I can do for you.” Her tone suggests she expects to find me every bit as challenging as any dead woman.
I follow her down to the basement into an area that looks a lot like the autopsy suite at work. Two steel tables with gutters around the edges stand in the middle of the room and a network of tubes and bottles hang overhead. At one end of each table is a sink, at the other, a drain in the floor. Cabinets line the walls and
a faint but noxious chemical odor lingers in the air.
I assume this room is where the embalming is done and I’m relieved when Barbara leads me beyond it to a smaller room where a single, wheeled stretcher stands near a wall-mounted sink. Barbara opens a cupboard and pulls out a rolled up pad, which she proceeds to lay out on the stretcher.
“Hop up,” she says, patting the pad.
“Huh?”
“Climb onto the stretcher and lay down with your head at the end by the sink so I can shampoo your hair.”
“I washed it this morning. You don’t need to do it again.”
She glances at my head. “You use hair spray?”
I nod.
“Then I need to shampoo to get the hair spray out. Otherwise your hair won’t work right.”
“Don’t you have a chair or something I can sit in?”
“Nope, just the stretcher. Most of my clients don’t sit too well.”
I chew my lip as she turns away and starts sorting through the cupboard, removing several bottles that contain God knows what. “So you put dead people on that stretcher when you work on them?”
“Yep.”
I contemplate the stretcher again, my mind scrambling. “How about if I just bend over the sink and you wash my hair like that?”
“I need you to lay down.”
“I don’t think I want to lay on a stretcher for dead people,” I say finally. “It’s kind of…creepy.”
She turns and gives me an exasperated look. “Don’t tell me you’re going to be one of those silly squeamish women. I figured you for a strong one, given that you work with Izzy and all.”
“I’m plenty strong, thank you. I just don’t want to use that stretcher.”
She shrugs. “Well, then, I can’t help you.” She turns back to the cabinet and starts putting away the supplies.
“What do you mean, you can’t help me?”
“Just that,” she says over her shoulder.
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