by Joan Boswell
Sanjit sighed and stared at his notebook. “That’s what everyone said. What now?” He flipped to a fresh page in his notebook and smoothed it.
His first year on the force, first month in Maudlyn Mills, and he was already known as a cop who went by the book. No reduced speeding fines if Sanjit caught you on his radar. He was the only rookie on my bench. Why did the police sergeant think it was okay to abscond on a moose hunt and leave the new guy in charge? Because Sanjit was a vegetarian? Or because, having grown up in Mississauga, he didn’t know a moose from a UPS truck?
“It’s not our place to say, but you and I have both seen dead people before. Normally the coroner calls the tune, but he’s gone hunting.” I said. “Doc Payne is on call. I know he’s retired, but he’s still got a licence to practice. He’ll probably have a pronouncement for you by the time you get to the hospital.”
Sanjit scribbled that down.
My interview over, I trudged home to call up the rest of the bench.
Margaret’s family would call me soon enough. We were the only game in town. With an ice pack on my lips, I hauled out the vacuum cleaner and did a quick pass around the viewing rooms while I ran through a mental list. Half the town would show up, partly because John was a twenty-year fixture, and partly because Connie would be spreading the word about the circumstances and the salsa. I’d need to suggest the Level Three package, the local caterer in the Blue Room. I didn’t think Elizabeth would open her perfect home to the masses, and she wouldn’t want the church basement either, with its pervasive aroma of mould and competent women dishing out egg salad on white, boiler coffee and slab cake. Elizabeth would choose Menu A, the tiny perfect pinwheel sandwiches, the exotic olive tray, crudités and petits fours. None of this would be Margaret’s choice, but funerals are for the living.
Someone pounded on the door. Florid-faced Connie, with one of her numerous children in hand, pushed her way into the lobby. “I know you’re short-staffed. This is Ashley. She’s fifteen. She needs some part-time work. She’ll be good. Honest. Ashley, say hello. Ashley? Ashley!”
Ashley pulled a little bud from one ear. “Hello,” she said, pushing the bud back.
“I know she’ll be a great help to you,” her mother said. “She’s smart and quick and will do as she’s told. Smile, Ashley, you’re at a job interview. I told you to smile.” She jabbed her daughter in the ribs. Ashley pulled her lips back in a weak replica of a smile, black lip liner over tiny teeth.
I looked at Ashley, from the long hair in layers of black, white and red, past the multiple piercings to the bare navel and tiny jean skirt over black leggings on stick legs.
“Well, I’ll leave you to it, then,” Connie said. “How does your face feel now? Mine feels like I was run over by a bulldozer.”
She pushed Ashley one step further into my hall, dodged through the door, and slammed it.
Ashley stood like a statue of a slender half-naked goddess. I motioned to her to follow me upstairs into the kitchen of our apartment above the shop. She sat at the table and adjusted the volume on her iPod.
I called Samara. “What’s wrong with my face? It’s all red and puffy.”
“I don’t know. I mixed the blend myself. Something went wrong.”
“What can I do about it?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know what caused it. One person, maybe an allergic reaction. All of you, well, no.”
“I’m going to need you to help with the funeral,” I said. “I don’t have dates, but you know the drill. Probably Wednesday for visitation and Thursday for the service.”
“I can’t. No. I can’t. I got such bad vibrations from Margaret’s living room. From her. I can’t take any part of her funeral. I can’t touch the terry robes, can’t collect my kit. It’s all tainted. Drenched in bad spirits.”
“Hey, relax. Give it a few hours. Do some yoga. Call me tomorrow, and we’ll go through the arrangements.”
“No. Are you listening to me?” Her voice was rising. I could almost feel her blood pressure going with it. “I’m telling you the vibrations around that woman are pure evil. I think she was murdered.”
Murder. If Samara thought it was murder, she wouldn’t come to my place until Margaret had been carried away and she had done a cleansing ritual around the building. I was short another member of my first string.
I looked at Ashley, sitting with skinny legs crossed and feet tapping. I was so deep on the bench, I didn’t have uniforms to fit the players.
Doc Payne went through the paperwork in record time, probably because the golf season was winding down, and a day spent on an autopsy was a day not spent on the greens. Margaret was delivered to my basement.
Deeper and deeper I reached onto the bench. There was no avoiding it. I had to call Stockton Heath. Stockton had an embalming licence, and he also had an assistant, the divine Thelma. Apparently on their wedding day in 1962, he had told her she was the most beautiful girl in the world, and she resolved to remain such.
They arrived two hours later. Stockton always came to work in a suit, white shirt and pencil-thin tie. Thelma glowed in pink shirtwaist with shawl collar and crinoline. Her hair stood high in a bouffant with flipped up ends. Today she wore a pink daisy on her hair band, marking the line between her smooth bangs and upper pouf.
With a familiar sinking feeling, I followed them downstairs and paused at the door to The Room while they went in and took up their stations. He did the dirty work, and she did the cosmetics.
Stockton flipped back the sheet. Margaret lay bundled in her terrycloth robe, hair towel askew, and bits of green flaking around her face. Doc Payne had done his usual thorough job. “What’s this green stuff?” Stockton asked, picking clods off with two fingers and rolling them around on his palm. “Looks like she was allergic to it. She’s red.” He turned and looked at me, as if he hadn’t noticed before. “So are you.”
“It’s a face mask,” I said. “We were having a beauty makeover when she died. It’s supposed to make you look younger. Twenty minutes to a new you.”
“It’s been on way too long. Not that it matters, seeing as she’s dead.”
Thelma smoothed her bouffant, an entirely unnecessary move as it was shellacked to withstand a Force Ten Cyclone. “Gonna cost extra to cosmetize all that redness and swelling. You know that, don’t you?”
I nodded. “Understood. We can’t leave her like that. Open casket.”
Stockton hung up his suit jacket and donned a rubber apron. I shrank back from the doorway.
“And, um, Margaret was proud of her curly hair. I hope you can recreate her style.” It was faint hope, but I had to try.
Thelma gave me a withering look. “I’ll make her the most beautiful girl in the world.”
I was afraid of that. Margaret was in her early forties. She was born after the Beatles. She was a teen during the Heavy Metal years. She set her own style in the Lilith Fair days. Hair spray was a dim memory. She had long, luscious, naturally curly hair. “Do your best with those curls,” I said, with fainter hope. “She liked them cascading down her left shoulder.”
Thelma opened the new box of gloves and snapped a pair on. “You got any clothes? I’m gonna need some clothes.”
Ashley lounged at my kitchen table nursing a coke and staring into space, her toes tapping to her private music. Once the phone had stopped ringing and the arrangements had started falling into place, I pulled the buds from her ears.
“Okay, Ashley, here’s the deal. You’re here to work, not amuse yourself with music. You’ll put that thing away. We need to arrange the chairs for the visitation and set up the coffee room and the Blue Room. I’ll need you on the door during visitation. You’ll be greeting people, pointing out the washrooms, and the office for donations. You will not smile at people. This is a funeral home, and people don’t expect smiling. You can look pleasant without smiling. You will not look bored. You will lose the body jewellery. I require a certain standard of dress, dark pants or a skirt that comes
to your knees or lower, and a dark top. There are some jackets in the staff closet. I hope one of them fits you. Those are the rules. I didn’t make them up. That’s the job. Take it or leave it.”
Ashley blinked. “Do I have to touch the body?”
“No, you don’t go anywhere near the body.”
“Will there be kids, like my screaming little sisters?”
“Not likely. People don’t usually bring small children to funerals.”
Her eyes did a tour of the room like she was sizing up a jail cell. “It’s quiet here,” she said. “How long can I stay?”
I hadn’t expected to find Constable Dharwarkar at Margaret’s house. He was taking pictures of the living room from every conceivable angle. I paused outside his range until he lowered the camera and frowned at the coffee table.
“What’s up, Sanjit?” I asked. “I thought Doc Payne had ruled heart attack.”
“He did and signed off on the need for an autopsy. But Ms Samara has been pestering me about bad vibes. I have to agree, it doesn’t feel right to me either. So I thought I’d take enough pictures and notes about the scene that the sergeant would not be able to criticize my work when he gets back.” He snapped the lens cap back on the camera. “Can I help you?”
“I came to get some clothes for her.”
“Shouldn’t the next of kin be doing that?”
Always by the book. “Yes, but Elizabeth has withdrawn to the fainting room, and I know she’d select a cashmere sweater and simple strand of pearls. That isn’t how Margaret would want to make her entrance through the Pearly Gates.”
“Did you find out what’s wrong with your face?”
“A reaction to the green stuff, I think, although I don’t have any allergies.”
True to his quest to provide the sergeant with every possible piece of evidence, Sanjit rearmed his camera and took a photo of my face. I imagined it pinned on the memory board at my own funeral, we knew her when.
I excused myself and wandered into Margaret’s bedroom. Navy and purple walls, like sleeping inside a grape. Huge walk-in closet, possibly formerly a small bedroom, commandeered by a single childless woman to serve her needs.
The closet was packed. One small section contained kilts and cashmere sweaters in muted tones of heather, with strands of pearls looped on the hangers. I swear I saw cobwebs on them, and one sweater had a scrap of wrapping paper stuck to it scrawled To Margaret from Elizabeth, Merry Christmas. Conservative Elizabeth seemed to think her sister ought to be her clone.
Free spirit Margaret had not bought into this way of thinking. The remainder of her wardrobe ran a riot of rich colour and exotic fabric. I thumbed through some wild and wonderful outfits, and settled on a red and gold one-shouldered sheath in silk chiffon. I picked a pair of sequined sling backs, not that Thelma would bother jamming shoes on Margaret’s feet, but it felt like the right thing to do.
With my selection folded over my arm, I strolled back into the living room.
Sanjit still sat there, brooding. He glanced up. “You were here. What’s wrong with this picture?”
I sat down beside him. “I dunno. What did you have in mind?”
“Where was everyone?”
“Samara was in charge, helping everyone, so she was everywhere. I was in that easy chair. Connie sprawled on the couch. Lois had the rocking chair, and she got up twice and went to the bathroom. The chair squeaked. Elizabeth and Margaret had the love seat. They were up and down. Margaret, as hostess, kept running to the kitchen for punch and pretzels. Samara mixed the green stuff in the kitchen and put on the music while Margaret delivered the pots.”
“Did you hear anything?”
“Samara rustled around. I think she went down the hall to the bathroom; I heard the tap running. She helped Lois, so she probably got green stuff on her hands. Someone else moved, too, but I don’t know who. I just heard a softness of bare feet on carpet.”
I stared at the coffee table while he wrote notes to himself. Individual pots of green concoction sat beside green-streaked facecloths, stained by us wiping our fingers after application. The whole lot had been pushed to one side of the table by the paramedics, who had left their latex gloves scattered around in the drippings of salsa. The green stuff in the bowls had hardened like concrete. “I guess I should clean this up. Samara won’t come in here, and Elizabeth is a basket case.”
Sanjit nodded. “Yeah, sure. I’m done taking photos.”
I dragged Samara’s kit out from its hiding place behind the couch and gathered the detritus. I bunched the facecloths into a plastic bag and tossed the stir sticks. I paused at the little green pots. “You know what’s wrong with this picture? There were five of us getting facials.” I pointed at the table. “There are only four pots.”
Sanjit searched the house. He didn’t find the missing pot. I left him talking on his cell phone, requisitioning fingerprint tests for the remaining pots, to see who had used each one, and thus discover which pot was missing.
Visitation Day at my command post, one hour until show-time, and my next player from the bench had arrived. The spiritual leader from the Holiness and Grace Congregation sat in the coffee room swilling down his fourth cup while he communed with a Higher Power and munched his way through a tray of cookies. I caught him reviewing crib notes to remember the name of the deceased.
Ashley had done a commendable job on her grooming. She had toned down her makeup and tuned up her fashion sense. The house jacket wasn’t too huge on her, and she managed to carry it off with a surprising level of dignity. Perhaps it was the no-smile requirement. She stood by the door with a stoic demeanour, directing traffic as if she had been doing this for years. She only faltered once, when Sanjit arrived, resplendent in full dress uniform, and she quivered like an aspen leaf in a breeze.
My makeup was too thick, but I looked the right colour, if not the right facial proportions. I drifted into the crowd, waiting for the roof to fall in.
John and Elizabeth arrived half an hour late. Elizabeth wore her hair in her usual tight French roll, and her grey tailored suit was exquisitely correct for the occasion of losing your sister, if it was a smidgen tight on all fronts, especially the front. Not this year’s model, apparently. The shoes were a little odd for Elizabeth, though. A touch too pink.
Her face was a disaster, bloated and blotchy like mine, but her concealer was not doing an adequate job. Her mascara had smeared under one eye so it made her look like a Kiss fan. I hardly recognized her.
John cupped his wife’s elbow with a great deal of solicitation and led her to the head of the receiving line. Elizabeth patted her hair again and again, a new nervous tic, and who could blame her. When they reached the casket, both looked down.
Elizabeth fell apart. She burst forth in a torrent of hysterical laughter. John hugged her shoulder and led her away to the Quiet Room to recover herself.
The guests snickered behind their hands. I mean, you just had to laugh. You didn’t expect a dead person to look really good, especially not one whose face had suffered irreparable swelling. But Margaret had prided herself on her voluptuous hair, and Thelma had turned her into a clone of herself. Thelma did that to everyone, which is why she was on the bench. Thelma only knew one hairstyle, a bouffant with bangs and a shoulder-length flip.
Margaret’s hair was teased into a stiff pouf. The bangs were neatly cut at her eyebrow level. The hair-sprayed flip narrowly missed her shoulders. In the one-shouldered sheath, she looked like a 1962 pin-up girl.
A pox on the moose hunt. I hoped they came home empty-handed. No, worse, I hoped they bagged a 1300-pound bull moose with a colossal set of antlers, about a mile away from camp, and they had to carry it back through a swamp.
Connie stopped beside me and scratched her face. “How long do you figure until this redness goes away? Elizabeth’s a wreck, doesn’t hardly look like herself. John’s holding up well, don’t you think?”
“John?”
“Yeah, John. He used to d
ate Margaret, you know. Before he went off to pharmacy school. When he came back, he went to pick up with her again, and she was off at art college. Elizabeth sunk her artificial nails into him right fast. I always thought he’d be better off with Margaret. So did he, I reckon.”
“How’s that?”
She lowered her voice. “John and Margaret were, you know...”
I remembered my social position and merely raised an eyebrow.
“Oh yes, for a few years now. Whenever he’s at a conference, she’s out of town on some job. That’s the rumour, anyway.” She stepped away and joined the line that was shaking hands with the family.
I looked at John, speaking to someone, holding Elizabeth’s waist. Elizabeth patted her French roll with one hand and dabbed a lace hanky at her nose with the other.
Lois finished making the circuit of relatives and waved at me. I joined her in the office. She wrote out a cheque for the charity of choice and shook her head. “Poor Margaret, she had so much going for her. She looks wonderful in that dress. But that hair, she doesn’t even look like herself. Promise me you won’t let that happen to me, when I end up here.”
I promised. Although I wanted to remind her not to die during moose hunting season.
The main room filled up and a line formed, trickling down the steps and along the sidewalk. As I predicted, half the town had come out. The Blue Room was set up with enough chips, dip, sausage rolls and donuts to keep them all happy. As the line snaked around the room, Elizabeth patted her hair and fumbled a stray wisp into the big toothy clip. She kept her hanky near her swollen nose. She barely said three words.
I closed the office door behind me and sat down for a moment, fingering my lumpy face. Samara had mixed up this concoction which had disfigured us all. Margaret had delivered the pots to us. Margaret had died.
Samara was the last person I could imagine who would take another’s life on purpose. She was a card-carrying holistic, entrenched in the sanctity of life and natural order. If Sanjit suspected her, and he would once he studied his notes, she’d state unequivocally that she alone had mixed the green solution.