A Grave Situation

by Libby Howard

  “It’s been a long time for all of us,” I muttered, picking up the wine bottles again.

  Daisy laughed. “Well, you need to get laid, too. And when I get back, I’m seriously sitting you down for a talk about your future.”

  “When you get back, I’d rather hear about your amazing vacation and how you’re falling in love with J.T.,” I told her. “Now get going. He’s picking you up in another fifteen minutes. And don’t be calling me unless you need bail money.”

  Daisy gave me a quick hug and skipped down the porch stairs. “I’d hardly be calling you for bail money when I’m on vacation with a bondsman.”

  I watched her go, then headed inside, a smile still on my face. Anxiousness aside, this was the happiest I’d seen Daisy in a long time. I hoped things worked out between her and J.T. I hoped she came back from this vacation head-over-heels in love. I wanted all that for my best friend, all that and more.

  Chapter 2

  “I’ll admit that it’s intriguing from a legal standpoint, this thing about Olive’s family feud over a gravesite,” Judge Beck commented as we cleaned up after our hamburger-and-potato-chip-dinner—him washing and me drying. The dishwasher had been on the fritz, and with the kids over at Heather’s house this week, it fell to the pair of us to clean the dishes. Let’s just say there had been a lot of paper plates for the last few days.

  “And it’s intriguing from a golf standpoint as well,” the judge added.

  I whacked him with the dish towel. “Stop. The poor woman lost her uncle, and this family drama isn’t making that loss any easier to deal with.”

  “I know, I know. Believe me, I’m sorry for her loss, and I truly feel for what she’s going through. But a horrible part of me secretly hopes she’s off her game tomorrow.”

  “Yes, that’s pretty horrible,” I scolded, taking a plate from the drying rack. “I know there’s nothing we can do, but I’m curious about that legal standpoint you’d mentioned. If this came up before you as a judge, hypothetically of course, how would you rule?”

  “First, I’d never see this because thankfully I’m a Circuit Court Judge and not a District Court one. This kind of civil suit is a nightmare. You couldn’t pay me enough to rule on this.”

  “What if you had to, though? Or what if you were back in private practice and needed to think about precedent and all that other stuff?”

  He sighed. “First thing would be to look at the great-grandparents’ wills. Burial plots are part of the estate, and if the will didn’t specify, then the records from the executor of the estate should have noted what the final distribution of assets was.”

  I blinked in surprise. “Huh. I hadn’t thought of that.”

  “You probably didn’t have to open an estate and go through probate when your husband died, because everything is considered marital property, and in the absence of a will to the contrary, all assets and debts automatically go to the spouse.”

  I paused, dried plate in my hand as I contemplated his statement. A lawyer had handled things when my father had passed, and I remembered one handling the estate when Eli’s mother had died as well. Neither of us had been all that involved other than signing by the “x’s.” But then again, we’d both been only children with no family to fight over who got the silver and the loveseats.

  Eli hadn’t had a will. I’d recently been thinking about putting together one of my own, but I wasn’t in any particular hurry to do so. If Eli and I had children, I probably would have just assumed they would have worked things out between them. Maybe I would have had a generic will stipulating they divide the estate equally between them. But what if there had been a coveted item, or something that didn’t divide evenly?

  As if summoned by the memory, I saw a shadow out of the corner of my eye, floating near the kitchen island. The ghost I was convinced was that of my late husband tended to appear in the evenings, a comforting presence that followed me from room to room and often remained near my bed as I slept. In the few months after his death, I’d seen his ghost during the day, but lately he only seemed to appear at night.

  I dreaded the day he didn’t appear at all. How would I feel to have him gone forever? The thought tightened my chest and brought a sting of tears to my eyes.

  I cleared my throat, trying not to think about when that day might come.

  “I’m assuming Olive’s great-grandparents didn’t have a will, or if they did, it was fairly vague,” I told the judge as I put the plate in the cabinet. “Would the estate records have all the details, such as who got the grave plot?”

  “They’re supposed to. But from what I know about probate law and my having the occasional lunch with Judge Crawford, estate records sometimes only show the transfer of major items such as real estate, stocks, and cash. The rest ends up a line item as household goods with either a cash equivalency or a write-off as donated. And there’s a lot that doesn’t get reported. People don’t like the government to know that they got a bunch of diamond jewelry from their mother, and they’re worried they’ll be taxed for those things, even though the bar for taxation on inheritance is so high that few estates reach that level.”

  I grimaced, thinking that I didn’t have enough in my name to interest the IRS in my estate. The sale of the house would barely cover the mortgages at this point. There was a tiny life insurance policy I’d taken out when Eli had passed away to ensure there was enough money to bury me. Truly the only important thing was that the people I loved could get an item or two to cherish and hopefully remember me by.

  “Well, I’m assuming there wasn’t anything detailing who got what grave plot, or one of Olive’s relatives would have been waving that in everyone’s faces,” I told Judge Beck. “Is there anything else that might hint at who should get what? Some sort of eldest-gets-the-most clause in the law?”

  “No. They’d duke it out in court, and if neither side could present proof of the original owner’s intent or proof of inheritance rights, then the judge would most likely assign a cash equivalence and basically toss a coin. One side gets the grave plot. The other pays the cash equivalence. And they both spend more on lawyers than what two dozen gravesites would have cost them.”

  “Seriously?” I picked up a handful of silverware and began drying it.

  “Seriously.”

  “Toss a coin?”

  He shot me a sideways glance. “Yeah, but don’t tell anyone about that. Sometimes you just need to make a call and get everyone out of your courtroom. After hours of arguing and a convoluted presentation of exhibits without any one side doing more than spinning the same thing over and over, you just want it to end. When it’s someone’s life on the line, or their freedom, that’s something you take seriously. But six hours of testimony on a family squabble over a grave plot? Where there’s no definitive way to verify what the owner’s intent was? Coin toss.”

  “Can’t say I’m approving of this side of you, Judge Beck,” I huffed.

  “That’s why I’m in Circuit Court and not in District Court. Let the other judges deal with this stuff in between people fighting their speeding tickets and red-light camera citations. There are juries in my court room. My job is to make sure the lawyers play by the rules and the juries do their jobs, not to make the call on which of six cousins gets their great-grandmother’s turkey platter. Or the extra gravesite.”

  I understood, but I still wished there had been some sort of cut-and-dry legal ruling for this sort of thing. “Poor Olive.”

  “You know, she might want to check with the cemetery,” Judge Beck added, shooting me a sympathetic glance. “Sometimes they keep records of that sort of thing.”

  “I’ll say something, but I’m sure they’ve already checked.” I couldn’t imagine the cemetery would have had anything beyond the original purchase contract for the plots, and a record of who was buried where. Unless someone had presented them with a will or something from the estate, I doubt they would have noted who owned what plot beyond the original buyers.


  When Eli had died, we hadn’t made prior arrangements. I’d scraped together our savings and paid for the funeral, opting for a modest casket, a viewing, and purchasing a plot at the cemetery. I’d been so stricken with grief and guilt that I’d not done enough, not seen the signs of his stroke in enough time to get him help, that I’d poured nearly every last dime into his service and interment. Seven months later, I thought back on that with regret. Eli would have been furious with me for putting money into a casket and grave plot that could have gone to help with the mortgage and household expenses, but emotions seemed to take the wheel during those moments in our lives.

  I made a mental note to not only get my will finalized, but to try to pre-pay as much of my funeral arrangements as possible. Cremation. Burial at the foot of Eli’s grave. An addition on his headstone. Maybe a few thousand for a memorial service. With enough planning on my part, whoever got saddled with handling these things should have as little work and expense as possible.

  “Why don’t they just buy more plots?” Judge Beck asked, rinsing the final dish and putting it in the drainer.

  “Because when someone buys a block of burial plots seventy or eighty years ago, the ones surrounding that group get sold. Olive’s family could buy more plots, but they’d be off in a different section of the cemetery from the rest of the family. Her father doesn’t seem to care, and I don’t think Olive cares either, but clearly her aunt and this cousin want to be buried with their parents, grandparents, and siblings, and not halfway across the cemetery.”

  “Halfway across the cemetery.” The judge shook his head. “You make it sound like their kids would need to drive to a different state to visit their graves. That’s what? A hundred yards at most?”

  “I guess it’s the same thing as with family heirlooms and stuff,” I told him. “Suzette inherited her family home and that means a lot to her with all the memories and such. I can see where being buried alongside generations of family would be important. It kind of harkens back to the old family graveyards of old, you know?”

  “Plus, I’m sure there’s a strong sense of ‘these are mine and I shouldn’t have to pay for additional plots’ as well.” Judge Beck dried his hands and leaned against the counter. “But you’re right. There’s usually more to these issues than money. I’ll bet there’s an old issue between the two sides of the family adding to the disagreement. But I’m not a therapist, so I’m not going to weigh in on that one.”

  “All I know is Olive’s uncle is supposed to be buried next Saturday, and this fight over a grave plot is a very unwelcome distraction at a time when people should be remembering a loved one and trying to gain closure about his illness and death.”

  “You’re right. And I’m sorry I made light of it with my insensitive golf-game comment.” The judge pushed away from the counter and took a few steps closer. “I’m sure this hits a raw nerve with you, Kay, having just lost your husband this year.”

  I nodded, thinking that maybe a lot of my sympathy for Olive’s Aunt Sarah was because she was in the same position I’d been this spring—recently widowed and trying to both grieve and pick up the pieces of her life. I would have thought a family feud over a grave plot would be the last thing I’d want to stir up at this time, but who knows? Maybe part of her solace over losing her husband was wanting him to be in the family section of the cemetery. And maybe his loss uncovered other wounds that had never really healed.

  I eyed Judge Beck. “So, early night for you? You’ve got a big day tomorrow. You’ll want to be well rested. Unless you’re thinking you should stay up and maybe practice your putting,” I teased.

  “Oh, not you too!” He pretended to look hurt. “One bad game, and suddenly everyone thinks I can’t putt. If I didn’t know better, I’d think you and Matt were trying to give me a complex, to psych me out. If I’m cursed, I’m blaming it on the two of you.”

  I held up my hands. “Hey, I’ve never seen you play. Just repeating what I heard on the porch tonight.”

  He smiled and followed me out of the kitchen toward the parlor. “Speaking of which, it’s starting to get chilly out in the evenings. When do you usually call it quits on the happy hour ritual for the season?”

  I gathered up my knitting and plopped down in a chair while Judge Beck took the couch.

  “Honestly, I don’t know. After Eli’s accident, we didn’t entertain, so this year’s porch happy hour is a new thing for me. It is getting kind of chilly, though. You’re right.”

  He sprawled back against the couch cushions, his brow furrowed in thought. “Maybe we could get one of those outdoor propane heater things for the porch. The tall ones that look like lamp posts, although I guess they couldn’t be too tall or they’d set the porch roof on fire.”

  I grimaced at the thought of my porch in flames. “Do you think one of those would put out enough heat? I’m envisioning all of us huddled around it, shivering and trying to drink wine with mittens on.”

  “I could look into it,” he mused. “I think they would suffice. Maybe get two of them?”

  “I’m not sure it would be worth it. If it’s thirty degrees out, I can’t imagine people wanting to hang out for hours on a porch even with a heater. Besides…” I wrinkled my nose. “I think I’d rather spend the money on getting the dishwasher fixed.”

  “Can I admit that I’m finding the manual dish cleaning to be a bit fun?”

  I laughed. “Well, I doubt Madison and Henry are finding it fun.”

  “No, Madison and Henry are most definitely not finding it fun. I think we’re about to encounter a union drive and possibly a labor strike if we don’t get it fixed soon. When are the parts supposed to be in, anyway?”

  I squirmed, bending my head to seem as if I was focusing on my knitting. There were no hard-to-get parts on order. The repair man had charged me sixty dollars for the service call, then informed me that I needed to replace the appliance, that the cost of the parts and labor to install them was almost as much as a new unit, and there were issues with the current dishwasher that made it unwise to throw more money into it.

  I’d lied, hoping to drag the mythical parts ordering process out for a few weeks until I could manage to pull the money together to get a new one. Six hundred dollars. Plus, the plumber’s fee to install it. We were going on two weeks without a dishwasher and I didn’t even have half that saved up.

  “It’s an old unit,” I told Judge Beck. “They’re having a hard time finding a place that has the parts.”

  The judge shook his head. “Seems like no one plans on fixing anything beyond five years anymore. Too bad that guy across the street passed away, because I’m sure he probably had five of the exact same dishwasher in his garage and backyard that you could have cannibalized for parts.”

  Mr. Peter had been a hoarder, but he’d also been an appliance repair technician before his retirement, and a lot of the junk in and around his house were projects he’d always intended to get to but never found the time. He’d probably had a few duplicates of my dishwasher somewhere over there, but in the last five months, his nephew had made great strides toward cleaning all the junk from the house. Originally, he’d begun with the house itself, finally resorting to a huge dumpster that sat in the driveway with an increasing number of boxes, papers, and broken items in it. He’d told me a few months ago that he was worried about winter and being unable to tackle the stuff in the yard if he waited, so that became his priority.

  One day two Junk Jocks trucks pulled up in front of the house, and a host of strapping young men began loading them up with mowers, appliances, and broken lawn furniture. Will Lars had been so thrilled to see the clean-up efforts that he’d come over to lend a hand. By the end of September, the only sign of Harry Peter’s hoarding was a bedraggled overgrown lawn dotted with geometric spots of mud and browned grass. It looked horrible, but compared to how the yard had looked for the last twenty years, it was an improvement.

  But even if the dishwashers had still been there, I wouldn�
�t have asked Mr. Peter’s nephew for salvage parts. There was no sense in trying to resurrect my most definitely deceased dishwasher.

  “Kay?” Judge Beck’s voice was soft and tentative. “I don’t mind waiting for the repair, truly I don’t. It makes no difference to me whether I’m hand-washing coffee cups or not, and honestly, it’s good for the kids to do a little bit of chore work. I really don’t mind, but if it’s bothering you, I’d be happy to buy a new dishwasher.”

  I shook my head and gave him a quick smile. “Let’s see if the parts arrive in the next two weeks. If they don’t, then I’ll think about maybe buying a new one.”

  He was silent for a moment. “I don’t want to insult you. I could lend you the money if you need, though. Put it on my credit card, and you could pay me back next month. It really would be no bother. I just don’t want you worrying over this.”

  “Oh, I’m not worrying,” I lied. “I hate to throw away a perfectly good major appliance if they can fix it, though. It just seems like such a waste. If the parts aren’t here in two weeks, I’ll go ahead and get a new one.”

  Two weeks. I wasn’t sure I could get the money together in two weeks, and in spite of Judge Beck’s very genuine offer, I didn’t want to start down the road of borrowing money from him, or letting him pay for things like this. It was my house, my responsibility. He was the tenant here. He shouldn’t have to front me the money for an appliance or loan me his credit card. I needed to be able to take care of these things myself. I needed to be more careful with my money, make sure I had adequate savings to cover things like this. Maybe if I stopped eating the occasional lunch out, cut back on groceries a bit, and….

  There was nowhere else to cut back. I hadn’t bought clothing in years. Daisy had treated me to having my hair and nails done last month, but I had no intention on continuing that myself. I didn’t have a gym membership, or anything else to cut out of my budget. I thought of the hot-tub repair I’d been able to pay off by selling that hideous vase, how a car repair last month had taken a huge bite out of my emergency fund. And now this dishwasher.