by Penny Warner
“Oh, we’re not interested in selling the house.” She started out of the doorway to retrieve more groceries, but I stood in her way and didn’t move.
“I’m not a real estate agent. Didn’t anyone call to tell you I was coming?” I opened my notebook. “You are Risa Longo, aren’t you?” If I just kept talking, she wouldn’t have time to think.
The woman frowned, rested her hand on her chest, and backed up slightly. “No one called me about any agency. What agency?”
“Adoptions and Records,” I said, still leafing through my notes on Frog Fricassee. Luckily they were illegible to anyone but myself. “I’m representing a client who was adopted at an early age. She’s been searching for her—” I checked my notes, “—adopted sister for several months now and your name was referred to us as a possible link to the missing sister’s whereabouts.”
I pulled out my phony business card and handed it to her. It read: “Calaveras Consultants. Connor Westphal.” The generic but nonexistent company had come in handy on a number of occasions. The card included a phony number, fax number, E-mail, and snail mail address. As a Roadrunner fan, “Acme” would have been my second choice.
I looked up to read the woman’s face, but it was blank. Not a wince or a twitch or a ripple on the whole canvas. Was I not convincing as an adoption counselor or did she have a hearing problem, too?
“I realize this is a delicate matter and that you may have obligations to shelter someone’s privacy, but I have to ask, for the sake of my client. She’s quite anxious to discover more about her heritage. She’s … hoping to become pregnant and … needs a medical history.”
“I don’t know anything about any adoptions. Who is this person you’re representing?” Her eyebrows formed a kind of check mark across her forehead—one sloping down, the other up. Luckily her red-outlined lips were easy to read, even if her face wasn’t so clear.
“I’m not at liberty to say. I’m sorry. The truth is—and I hope this doesn’t come as a great shock to you—my client indicated that you might be her biological sister.”
“What!” The woman slapped her chest again, making a red mark above the low-cut V. “Me? Adopted? You’ve got to be kidding!” She laughed as she spoke, thoroughly entertained by the bizarre suggestion. “I used to hope I was adopted every time I had a fight with my parents. But I haven’t fantasized about being an orphan since adolescence. I’m sorry, your client is mistaken.”
I pretended to check my notebook for my next question. It gave me a moment to think.
“Would it be possible that you were adopted at such a young age you weren’t aware of it, and your parents never told you?”
“No, it’s not.” The laughter faded. She was beginning to show a little irritation in her face—pinched lips, increasing frown, tight neck.
“But how can you be so sure?”
“Because I am.”
“But—”
“Listen. My father had cancer. I was one of the few people who matched for a bone marrow transplant. We were about as close as two people could be for the compatibility test. He’s definitely my father. And if you think my mother isn’t really my mother, well, come here. I’ll show you.”
Risa Longo swept open the door and led me to a sunken living room filled with an eclectic collection of memorabilia from what must have been a well-traveled life. Money can’t buy you happiness but it can buy you a lot of trinkets. She pointed to an ornately carved ivory table where a number of photographs were mixed in with some Asian, African, and South American art objects.
“Look here,” she said, holding up a picture of herself several years younger. Next she picked up a picture of another woman who could have passed for her twin sister. Neither resembled Lacy Penzance.
“This one’s me, taken ten years ago with my first husband. He died last year. That’s my mother there, about the same age as I was then. Now tell me I’m adopted.”
She was right. I couldn’t. They had the same drooping eyes, the same sculptured nose, the same puffy lips, the same romance novel cleavage.
I set the pictures down carefully. Lacy Penzance said she wanted to track down her adopted sister. But Risa Longo was obviously not related. Had she been a link to Lacy’s real sister? Or could Lacy have been adopted out of Risa’s family?
“Did you have any brothers or sisters, Ms. Longo? Could it be that my client was put up for adoption by your parents before or soon after you were born?”
Risa Longo shook her head. Her chest danced. “My mother had three miscarriages before I was born. She was desperate to have a child. It took them ten years to finally have me. My mother died six months after having me. Who is this client you’re representing? Maybe if you’d tell me her name I could help you in some way.”
What did I have to lose? There really wasn’t an issue of client confidentiality any more.
“Her name was Lacy Penzance. Did you—?”
I didn’t need a course in reading face language to comprehend her immediate reaction. Before I could finish my sentence the woman had visibly paled, her mouth pulled back into a grimace, and her eyes narrowed. Her hands began to tremble. She grasped her elbows as if to calm and protect herself at the same time.
“Who are you? What do you want? I don’t know anything about this Lacy Penzance, but I’d like to know what’s going on. Are you from the police?”
“No, Ms. Longo. I’m not from the police. And I really don’t have much to tell you. I’m just trying to locate Lacy Penzance’s sister. That’s what I was sort of hired to do. Did you know Lacy’s dead?”
“Yes,” she mouthed gently. She glanced away and shook her head as if to clear her mind.
“They were calling it a questionable suicide at first. But the sheriff suspects …” I didn’t finish the sentence. Instead I said, “Have the police contacted you?”
She shook her head again, still not looking at me.
“If you have any connection to her at all, they may want to talk to you. She … may have been murdered.”
“What?” The woman grew considerably more shaken. She sank down into a silk-covered ottoman. I sat in the chair opposite her. “She was just here.… I—”
Risa Longo turned her head away and I didn’t catch the rest of her statement.
“What did you say?” I moved so I could read her lips.
“She was here, the day before yesterday, in the evening. I didn’t know who she was when she came to the door. She wouldn’t give her name. Just said she needed to ask me some questions. She was really agitated and making these wild accusations.”
“About being your sister?”
“No! Nothing like that! She asked about my husband.”
I blinked. “Your husband? What did she want? Was she—”
“She asked to see a picture of him. I didn’t know what she was talking about, but she seemed frantic. A little incoherent really. She started pleading with me to show her a photograph of Larry.”
“Did you show it to her?”
“I wasn’t going to. She was starting to scare me a little. My husband’s gone a lot and I’m out here by myself most of the time. When I started to close the door on her, she pushed me aside and ran in. She kind of looked around as if searching for something, then made a beeline for my photographs here. She grabbed the only picture I have of him, taken in Las Vegas at our wedding last year.”
“She actually took the picture?” I asked, surprised at Lacy’s odd behavior.
Risa Longo nodded. “Yes! Just stuffed it into her bag and ran out the door crying and muttering things I couldn’t understand. I called the sheriff right after she left, but I didn’t know who she was—she never said her name—so they couldn’t do much. Then I saw her face on the TV and recognized her as the woman who had taken off with my wedding picture. And she was dead!”
“Did you call the sheriff?”
“No. What for? I didn’t think—”
“Ms. Longo, what does your husband say about all this? Does—did he know L
acy?”
The suddenly tired-looking face drooped even more. “To be honest, I haven’t talked to my husband for a few days. I haven’t been able to reach him. He’s an archeologist, so he’s away for long periods of time. Maybe she had something to do with his work. Sometimes they make remarkable finds, you know, valuable. Worth a great deal of money …” she drifted off for a moment. “I wish he’d call. I’m a little worried about him. I’ve been wanting to ask him about her, but now, well, now I’d just like an explanation.”
I stood up and walked back over to the photo gallery, trying to make some sense out of Lacy Penzance’s activities.
“You don’t have any other pictures of your husband?” It seemed odd to me that there was only one photograph.
“No. We’ve only been married for six months. And he’s gone so often. It’s hard enough getting him to take the garbage out, let alone take a picture of him.”
I picked up a picture of Risa Longo with another man, fiftyish. It was one of those photos where you put on old-fashioned clothing so the picture looks ancient. I held it up for her but she was looking at me inquisitively.
“Did you say something?” I asked. I recognized that look.
“I just said I wish I knew what this was all about.”
“Who’s this?” I held up the picture again.
“My first husband. He died over a year ago.”
I replaced the picture on the ornate shelf, thanked Risa Longo for her time, and promised to get back to her if I learned anything of interest or found her wedding picture. I walked back to my car more than a little confused.
Lacy Penzance must have made up the adoption story as a way of finding the Longo woman. A woman after my own heart. And she had apparently succeeded—except that Risa wasn’t her sister. So what was the real reason behind her search?
Lacy had paid Risa Longo a visit the night before she died. Something about Risa’s husband had upset her enough to cause her to become hysterical, push her way into the house, and steal the photograph.
What was it? A tie to some kind of archeological work he was doing? Did it have anything to do with Risa Longo herself? And why had Lacy requested secrecy concerning her search for Risa?
Whatever it was, I was certain it had something to do with her death. But what? I didn’t have a whole helluva lot of options.
Except one.
“Business is business,” some businessman once said. I guess it’s the conservative version of “All’s fair in love and war.” And death, I might add.
At least, that seemed to be the way French McClusky saw things. He owned Memory Kingdom, a chain of mortuaries in the California Mother Lode. “The next generation of the final frontier,” he once called his investment when he stopped by to proof a series of ads for the Eureka! A Trekkie, too, no doubt.
French had chosen the fastest-growing retirement area in the state—the gold country—for his thriving funeral business. Shrewd and visionary, this was no Ichabod Crane look-alike in a black suit from an old Vincent Price horror film. French, who is half Asian, half Irish, was a descendant of one of the many hardworking Chinese who dug in the gold mines for a new life in the West.
His Chinese maternal grandfather had run a gambling den in the back parlors of the Chinese settlement, while his Irish father had managed the Pioneer Cemetery for years, until the owners put it on the market fifteen years ago. That’s when French bought the first in a series of permanent rest stops, turning untended dirt into a gold mine.
French spared no expense in creating the latest in terminal services for the dear departed. Four years ago he introduced the first twenty-four-hour drive-up window service, allowing visitors to view the loved one on a widescreen TV. He offered tours of the mortuary to groups, by appointment. And I understood Halloween around the place was quite a thrill.
The Memory Kingdom funeral homes resembled cottages from a Disney film. Actually, French hired an ex-Disney architect to design the blueprints for all his buildings. I felt like I needed a Magic Kingdom Adventure Pass to enter the place.
My first stop was the Whiskey Slide branch of the Memory Kingdom chain to check out the source of the business card with Risa Longo’s name on it. Business was slow—there was only one saleperson available and he couldn’t tell me anything about Risa Longo, Lacy Penzance, or the mysterious business card. If I wanted to know more, I’d have to talk with French McClusky or Celeste Camborne at the Flat Skunk location. I hopped in my like-new Chevy and headed back down Highway 49.
The front door of the Flat Skunk funeral home opened to a spacious room filled with overstuffed antique furniture and elegant decorator pieces. Air-conditioned, with just the right amount of indirect lighting, the room featured four large walls painted to look like a full sky—all billowing clouds with silvery streams of sunbeams breaking through.
Along one side were two small offices with windows that looked out, not at the real sky, but at the fake one inside. French occupied the first office. The blinds covering his window were drawn shut. I could see Celeste in the second office through the open slits of her blinds. She was talking on the phone. Alerted somehow by my presence, she turned, peeked through the blinds and waved, then continued her conversation.
She appeared agitated and upset, frowning and gesticulating at the invisible caller on the other end of the line. When she saw me her face flashed a momentary grin, but she quickly resumed her irritated expression. I filled the next few moments scanning the various works of art on the walls and looking over some brochures on the table near a brocade couch, then I sat down and watched Celeste.
She was facing the window now; I could see her lips moving between the slits in the blinds. She twisted a ring on her finger as she spoke, the phone receiver resting on her shoulder.
I couldn’t keep myself from trying to read her lips, in spite of the additional challenge. With the distance, bad lighting, and obstructions, all I could make out were a few words.
“… careful … shit … Sluice … fuck you … tonight … goddammit Wolf … funeral …”
At that point, catching my intense gaze, she waved again and closed the slits.
After a few more minutes she opened the door to her office and entered the foyer.
Celeste Camborne looked like a thirty-year-old fairy godmother in her silky pink dress and bouffant curls. She welcomed me with open arms, a big smile, and a coy tilt of her head.
“Connor Westphal!” Celeste said, clapping her hands together and moving her lips like Mick Jagger. Her demeanor had completely changed. She spoke mostly in exclamation points. “How wonderful to see you!”
“Hi, Celeste.”
She clasped my hand warmly between both of hers, while giving me one of those you-poor-dear looks. I’ve seen the look many times on the faces of certain hearing people, whose reactions to my deafness range from horror to pity. Celeste seemed to think of it as some terrible disease. But deafness is not a problem until someone like Celeste makes it one.
“Oh, Connor! It’s so good to see you. How are you doing, dear? Is everything all right?”
I didn’t know whether this kind of gooey, condescending sympathy came naturally to Celeste or if she had been trained that way when she became a grief counselor. Even though I sort of liked Celeste, her patronizing attitude drove me batty. If she stuck that bottom lip out at me one more time I just might have to push it back in for her.
“I’m fine, Celeste.” I wanted to add, “There’s no cure yet but we’re still waiting for that ear transplant.” Instead I did what lately I found I did best. I began to lie.
“Uh, my great-aunt … Lulu, uh, well—I may be needing something in the way of, you know, this …” I swept my arm around and realized I was indicating furniture, not funeral accoutrements. “I thought I’d stop by and take a look at what you have to offer. God, this place reminds me of Fantasyland.”
Celeste nodded and her head of big hair shifted slightly. “Yes, it has a tremendously calming effect on most
people. Death sometimes seems like a dream, don’t you think?”
A nightmare, I wanted to say. I smiled instead. She was already working her magic here in the kingdom.
As part of French’s ever-expanding plans for utopian death care, Celeste counseled bereaved loved ones into dissipating their grief, no doubt by buying outrageously expensive coffinware. She traveled from funeral home to funeral home as needed, to assist those who would benefit from her spiritual, psychological, and financial guidance.
“Well, I’m glad you caught me,” she said. “I’ve been preparing for Lacy’s funeral this afternoon. Would you like me to get you a Memorial Counselor? He can show you some of the special new products we’re carrying.”
I had to think fast. “Actually, I was hoping for a quick tour, if you have time. I was planning to do an article on Memory Kingdom for my newspaper. It’s such an institution.”
Celeste checked her watch. “French isn’t here. But I think I’ve got time for a quick one. We can kill two birds with one stone, so to speak. Maybe you’ll see something for your aunt Lulu while Memory Kingdom gets some publicity.”
Taking my arm, Celeste led me through a heavy drape where, tastefully arranged and decorated with dry floral arrangements, Laura Ashley pillows, and “Apple Pie” potpourri scents, were nearly a dozen coffins. They formed a large circle of raised, downy-soft beds in a variety of styles, fabrics, colors, and prices. Each sported a bronze name tag attached to puffy lining.
I pulled out my tape recorder and switched it on, then held it up to catch Celeste’s speech. “So this is the coffin room?” I said, trying not to get too close to a patriotic number in teak. The bronze plaque read: “The Presidential Suite.”
“It’s the Selection Room, hon. We call these caskets, not coffins,” she said, tilting her head as she spoke. “Terminology has changed quite a lot since the pine box days. We’re always striving to be politically correct—or rather, ‘death sensitive.’ ”
“Really,” I said, reflecting on the terminology for deafness, which has also changed over the years. What was once “deaf and dumb” and “deaf mute” became “aurally handicapped,” then “hearing impaired,” finally settling on “deaf.” Some even prefer Deaf. I expect “sound deficient” or “listening deprived” may be next.