Importance of Being Urnest

by Sandra Balzo

  Christy was shaking her head. ‘Oh, no, I think trying times make couples stronger. Look at Ronny and me.’

  Brrr. Nope, not going there. ‘Well, I’m glad Hannah has Mort to lean on and help her through.’

  ‘Even if she didn’t, we have trained counselors on our staff.’ Christy had her business hat on again. It was black and somber. ‘Both for the emotional and business sides of death.’

  ‘Business?’ I repeated, handing her the change from her coffee.

  ‘Of course,’ Christy said solemnly. ‘It’s bad enough to lose somebody, but then there are all the notifications that have to be made. Not just to friends and family but to government agencies, utilities, charge card companies, credit agencies and the like. And then there’s the estate and trusts and taxes. We provide checklists for the bereaved, detailing each step from death notices to estate settlement, complete with a directory of professionals who can help.’

  And likely are paid for the privilege of being listed in that directory. Funeral homes were businesses, too, despite what Christy might like to think. And I was willing to bet that a mortuary business had a whole lot healthier profit margin than a coffeehouse did.

  Though we arguably had more repeat business.

  ‘Oh, dear,’ Christy said, glancing up at the clock. ‘I’ve been jabbering here and now I’m going to be late for our ten o’clock.’

  ‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘If I’d known that was when you were meeting Hannah, I’d have reminded you. Please tell her how sorry I am for her loss.’

  Christy was dropping loose coins into her purse. ‘Hannah won’t be there until later this afternoon to meet with Mort.’

  It’s like the woman’s driving force was to keep me in a constant state of confusion. ‘But you said—’

  ‘That I wanted to be there with Celeste when she’s prepared and cremated.’ She snapped her purse closed. ‘I’m hoping that if I’m a quick study Mort will give me the honor.’

  ‘Of cremating her? You want to cremate somebody you know?’ I think I nearly shouted it.

  ‘Not necessarily, at least not yet.’ Christy looked hurt. ‘But I never even really met Celeste – not that I wouldn’t be honored to perform this last service for her. But more importantly, I’m not qualified to handle the cremator. It takes far more experience than I have to do it right.’

  Before I could inquire about the wrong way of doing ‘it,’ Sophie Daystrom trudged in from the side door.

  ‘You’re getting here late today,’ I said, taking a mug from the rack. ‘Did you sleep in?’

  ‘I wish, but I was up all night. A stand-off, of all things, at the manor.’

  ‘The dead versus the undead?’ Sarah emerged from the back, arms held straight out in front of her like a zombie. ‘Or maybe nearly dead.’ The arms rotated down now, like she was inching ahead with a walker.

  ‘That,’ Sophie flopped into a chair, ‘would be funny if it wasn’t so close to the truth.’

  ‘Oh, dear, has there been a death?’ Christy was sounding far too eager for my liking.

  I slid her to-go cup toward her so she could be to-gone, but Christy was busy digging through her pockets.

  ‘No bodies,’ Sophie said, holding up her hand, ‘at least not when I left. So you can keep your cards right where they are.’

  Christy’s own hands dropped to her side.

  ‘What happened?’ I poured the brew of the day for Sophie and signaled for Sarah to deliver it to her table.

  My partner living-dead walked it over. ‘Zee zombie apocalypse, perhaps?’ she lisped. ‘Or maybe somebody looking for their mummy?’

  Argh. ‘Boris Karloff would roll over in his grave.’

  ‘He can’t.’ Christy took the lid off her cup and sniffed the brew. ‘He was cremated.’

  Enough funereal fun facts for one morning. ‘Didn’t you say you’re running late?’

  ‘Oh, yes. With luck, Mort will let me help with something.’ Her nostrils flared. ‘Sweeping, even.’

  Best hurry, then. I took the lid away from her and settled it on the cup so as not to slow the crazy little demon down. ‘Off you go.’

  ‘What can she possibly be that anxious to sweep?’ Sophie was looking out the window as our neighbor rushed down the front porch steps.

  ‘You don’t want to know,’ I said. ‘So, tell me, what was going on at the manor last night?’

  ‘I did tell you. A stand-off.’ Sophie swiped at her forehead and the springy gray curls flew up and then settled right back down where they’d been. ‘With the law, of course. If your boyfriend hadn’t waved us through we’d still be hunkered down.’

  ‘Pavlik?’ I asked.

  ‘You have more than one?’

  She had a point. But speaking of ‘boyfriends’ … ‘Where’s Henry?’

  ‘Barber shop. Nearly missed his appointment and, if he had, that guy next door would have been the reason.’

  I frowned. ‘The ex-convict?’

  ‘Bingo. Couldn’t wait until Tuesday.’

  But I wasn’t thinking of Sophie’s death pool. Pavlik had said somebody they’d been looking for had showed at his brother’s place. Could that be the senior home? The sheriff hadn’t come back, so Sophie’s stand-off might be the explanation. Or at least the explanation that was the most flattering to me.

  But also the most risky for him.

  ‘Is this stand-off still going on?’ I asked. And then, without waiting for an answer, ‘And is this guy – the brother – dangerous?’

  ‘Brother?’ Sophie asked.

  I probably flushed. At least, it felt like I flushed. I try hard not to repeat what Pavlik tells me, even if he doesn’t preface it with a ‘Don’t tell anybody this!’

  And yet, I did. ‘When Pavlik left, he said some guy that they were looking for had shown up at his brother’s place. I had no idea – have no idea – whether he was talking about Brookhills Manor.’

  ‘Well, now you do,’ Sophie said dryly. ‘And if Pavlik’s “guy” came out of the same womb as our neighbor, I’d say he’s a very bad man.’

  Before I could ask for more details, the door flew open, sending the sleigh bells rappelling hard against the glass. I opened my mouth to scold some kid but then recognized one of Pavlik’s deputies. Specifically, Detective Mike Hallonquist.

  Hallonquist was Violent Crimes and, the last time I saw him, he was paired with Al Taylor of Homicide, not one of my favorite guys. In fact, it was Al’s sarcastic ribbing that was partially responsible for Pavlik breaking up with me in the first place.

  Now, though, Hallonquist was alone, his face pale as he swept the brimmed cap off his head. ‘Maggy, the sheriff has been shot. You need to come with me.’

  SEVEN

  ‘Officially, we notify the next of kin and emergency contact,’ Mike Hallonquist said as we sped to the hospital. ‘When I saw that you were down as neither, I thought I should get hold of you.’ Hallonquist glanced sideways at me. ‘I’m sorry.’

  Sorry that Pavlik had been shot? Sorry his partner had been a jerk to me? Or sorry that I wasn’t Pavlik’s next of kin or emergency contact?

  Whatever. ‘Thank you.’

  I thought to wonder who was Pavlik’s emergency contact. I assumed his next of kin was his daughter, Tracey. She was just barely twelve, though, so it was unlikely she was his emergency contact. His ex-wife? Parents? It occurred to me that I didn’t know a whole lot about Pavlik prior to his moving to Brookhills. For some reason that mattered a lot right now.

  ‘How did this happen?’ I mean, Pavlik was the sheriff, for God’s sake. Shouldn’t it be his deputies out there taking the bullets? I didn’t have the grace to feel guilty about the thought. ‘Pavlik said this guy you were hunting showed up at his brother’s place?’

  ‘Brookhills Manor. We’ve been sitting on the unit for a week.’ Hallonquist signaled a lane change and checked his mirror before moving over. ‘Not as easy as you’d think. Nothing gets by those old folks.’

  I could imagine. �
��Weren’t you afraid somebody would tip off the brother?’

  ‘At first, but it turned out to be just the opposite. Our guy posted at the front desk said folks kept wandering by, asking when we going to get rid of Andersen.’

  If I was using our chat to do anything but distract myself, I’d have asked if Sophie had been one of them. ‘Andersen is the brother?’

  ‘Both brothers. Jack Andersen has lived at the manor for about a year – since he got out of prison.’

  Just as Sophie had said. ‘What was he sent away for?’

  ‘Jack? Fraud. But it’s his brother, Pauly, that we were waiting to nab.’

  ‘And what did he do?’ To my ears, my question sounded casual and almost disinterested. The kind of thing you’d ask about somebody at a cocktail party rather than the guy who just shot your … well, the man you loved.

  ‘Convicted of bank robbery. He escaped while being transferred upstate to serve his sentence.’

  Upstate to state prison. ‘Transferred from Brookhills County Jail?’ If so, the escape would have been on Pavlik’s watch and the county sheriff would have taken it very personally. But Pavlik hadn’t even mentioned it.

  ‘Yeah.’ Hallonquist was looking straight ahead, his expression tight. ‘Got hold of Al Taylor’s service revolver.’

  Dear God. ‘Is Taylor OK?’

  ‘Physically, but … well, you’ve met him.’

  Taylor played bad cop to Hallonquist’s good one with gleeful swagger, but I thought I’d caught a brief glimmer of compassion in the man. Once. ‘I imagine he’s devastated.’

  ‘Devastated, humiliated, angry, depressed – take your pick. I wasn’t sure Al would come back from it at the time and now there’s’ – a swallow – ‘this.’

  Pavlik had been shot trying to recover the prisoner that Taylor had lost. The prisoner who’d taken the detective’s sidearm. ‘It wasn’t Taylor’s gun that—’

  A single nod.

  So Pavlik had been shot by his own detective’s gun. I closed my eyes as the reality of the situation washed over me. Then I opened them. ‘How did it go down?’

  I imagined Pavlik rolling his own eyes at my ‘TV cop-speak’ and the fact that Hallonquist didn’t do likewise gave me a twinge. ‘Pauly must have managed entry by waiting in the woods by Poplar Creek and then leaving cover to blend in with a group that had just come back from a bus tour.’

  The trip to the Mitchell Park Domes Sophie had mentioned. And the door Hallonquist was talking about would be the entrance Sophie had said was shared by the residential and rehab wings and faced the woods. It would have been a good plan. ‘You didn’t have anybody at the door?’

  ‘We did, but by the time he picked Andersen out of the crowd he was already in and on the move to his brother’s apartment.’

  ‘And you couldn’t stop him without endangering the other residents.’

  A nod. ‘Andersen barricaded himself in, using his brother as hostage.’

  Now there’s a sibling you’d want to share Thanksgiving dinner with. Yet, ‘I thought Jack is a bad guy, too.’

  A reluctant nod. ‘But one who served his time and was now supposedly being held against his will.’

  So they hadn’t been sure of that and still apparently weren’t. ‘You had to treat it as a hostage situation, then, rather than two criminals in cahoots.’

  This time ‘cahoots’ did earn me a trace of a smile. ‘Exactly.’

  ‘Sophie, the customer I was talking to when you came in, lives in the apartment next to Andersen.’

  ‘I thought I recognized her. We were moving in when the perp fired shots through the walls into the corridor.’

  The walls being none too thick, from what Sophie had said. ‘One of them hit Pavlik?’

  ‘Not then. But Pete Hartsfield took one to the chest and we all scattered for cover. Pavlik – Sheriff Pavlik – went in to pull Hartsfield out of the line of fire.’

  ‘Did he?’ To my ears the question sounded like polite conversation. Like, ‘Oh, did he really? How nice.’ When what I really meant was, Did Pavlik have to take a bullet?

  Hallonquist answered the question I didn’t ask. ‘The sheriff dragged Pete around the corner so the EMTs could attend to him.’

  ‘You said he was shot in the chest, too?’ Pavlik, I meant.

  Again, Hallonquist got it. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Was he conscious when he was transported?’

  ‘Yes.’

  I didn’t ask if Pavlik had asked for me. Knowing he had would make me sad that I hadn’t been there for him. Knowing he hadn’t would make me sadder. ‘Do we know … I mean, is there any word …’

  ‘They took him in for surgery to remove the bullet is all I know.’ Hallonquist turned the car into the hospital parking lot. I noticed the squads – not just Brookhills County Sheriff’s Department but city police. Not just our city, but surrounding cities. And not just our county, but seemingly all of southeastern Wisconsin.

  Hallonquist pulled into the physician parking by the emergency entrance. Leaving the flashing lights on, he came around and opened the door for me. ‘We’ll find out more inside.’

  I climbed out of the squad and made for the sliding glass doors as Hallonquist closed the car door. I practically ran into the first automatic door and once that opened had to wait for the next.

  It was as if the doors couldn’t detect my presence – like the restroom faucet that you wave your hand under and get no water, the soap that won’t dispense until you’ve removed your hand – but I couldn’t blame the doors. I couldn’t quite believe I was there either.

  As I hesitated at the sight of a waiting room and corridor of uniformed officers, I felt a hand on my shoulder.

  I turned, expecting to see Hallonquist, but it was Sarah. ‘What are you doing here?’

  For once, she didn’t snap back as my terse question probably deserved. Truth was I was practically faint with relief at seeing my partner.

  ‘I was in the back seat the whole way here. The deputy had to let me out. Those doors don’t open from the inside, you know.’

  I had no memory of her following me out of Uncommon Grounds or getting into the back of the squad. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘You’re welcome. Now let’s see who we can talk to find out Pavlik’s condition.’

  Some of the officers in the waiting room I knew, though it’d be hard for me to dredge up their names at that moment. As Sarah pulled me across the room, the uniforms seemed to part on both sides of us and I saw a blonde man in scrubs and a cap. He was standing with a tall brunette and a girl of maybe twelve who seemed to be doing most of the talking.

  I stopped dead. ‘That’s Tracey and that must be Susan.’

  ‘Pavlik’s kid and ex-wife?’

  ‘Yes. I’ve met Tracey but only seen a picture of Susan.’

  ‘Well, you’re meeting her now,’ Sarah said, pulling me forward.

  I was holding back, feeling awkward. ‘I don’t have any standing here. I’m just the girlfriend.’

  As Sarah turned, likely to scold me or give me a pep talk, the girl broke away and ran up to me. ‘Maggy, I’m so glad you’re here.’

  She gave me a hug and turned to her mother. ‘Mom, this is Maggy. She and Dad are getting married.’

  I didn’t say anything but Sarah elbowed me anyway. And if her elbow could have spoken, it would have said, ‘Go with it.’

  So, I did. ‘I’m sorry to meet this way. How’s Pavlik?’

  The doctor took it from there. ‘I was just saying that he came through well.’

  ‘The surgery.’ Duh.

  ‘Yes.’ The surgeon pushed his blue cap up off his forehead. ‘You can see him in recovery. Family only, of course, and just two people at a time.’

  Pavlik’s ex and I looked at each other. Not exactly a mirror image. I was wearing jeans, sneakers and an Uncommon Grounds T-shirt with a latte smooge on it. I smelled like coffee. Susan’s jeans were designer, her boots high-heeled and her shirt was silk. No smooge. Oh, and
she smelled like Joy. And no, not the dish detergent.

  Given Susan had come here on short notice, too, I had to assume she always looked like this. Shopped like this. Worked in the garden like this. Hell, maybe she even slept like this. And if not, she probably wore something lacy with a matching robe, not something a hundred per cent cotton with a matching nothing.

  But much as I wanted to engage in hate-envy, Susan had been married to Pavlik for almost ten years and was the mother of his child. And that child shouldn’t have to walk into her dad’s hospital room without her mom. ‘You should go in with Tracey.’

  But Susan shook her head. ‘Jake will want to see you.’

  ‘I—’

  But Tracey was already pulling me toward the doctor, who was waiting for us at the end of the corridor. ‘C’mon, Maggy.’

  She apparently didn’t think she needed her mother’s support, so who was I to judge? And if I was not going to dissuade anybody from the idea that Pavlik and I were engaged, I might as well take advantage of it so I could see him.

  I let Tracey zoom ahead into Pavlik’s room and hung back to talk to the surgeon. ‘Could you update Detective Hallonquist and the other officers in the waiting room?’

  ‘Of course.’ As he started past me back to the lounge, I put a hand on his arm. ‘Pavlik is going to be OK?’

  He smiled. ‘The bullet broke a rib and did some tissue damage but no organ damage. The sheriff is going to be fine.’

  I was glad I asked, because the sight of Pavlik lying in a hospital bed almost made my heart stop.

  Tracey was already perched on the side of the bed. ‘… Going to bring Muffin in to see you.’

  ‘I’m not sure how the docs would feel about that.’ Pavlik flashed me a smile.

  ‘Then I guess Frank wouldn’t make the grade either,’ I said. ‘Though I can bring in a slimy tennis ball if you’d like.’

  Tracey lit up. ‘I’m dying to meet Frank. Daddy has told me all about him.’

  I glanced over at Pavlik, who lifted a hand. I took it. ‘He did, did he?’