Sleeping With the Crawfish

by D. J. Donaldson

  She pulled into the oyster-shell drive and followed it to the funeral home, which was housed in a striking two-story brick house with Gothic arches topping the front door and all the windows. There were three gables on the front, each trimmed in white Victorian gingerbread. The Gothic arch theme was repeated on more white gingerbread trimming the columned porch, the roof of which was enclosed by a white picket fence.

  She parked in a lot on the right of the house, hoping the absence of other vehicles didn’t mean the place was closed. She checked her watch: 4:35. But who knows what hours they keep out here? she thought.

  Despite her eagerness to get on with her business, the wonderful silence that greeted her when she left her car made her pause. For the next minute, the only sound she heard was a sharp creak as her car’s engine cooled. Then a single frog began calling out in a small reedy voice. From a nearby tree, an unseen bird added its chatter, earnestly enjoying its own sweet counsel. A distant crow vocalized its displeasure at something, the sound bittersweet, like being stabbed in the heart with a long-stemmed rose. Struck by the thought that Courville would be a far better place to live than the French Quarter, she headed across the lot toward the house. There was a big mat on the porch and a small sign that asked visitors to wipe their feet, which she did. She tried the front door and found it unlocked.

  The foyer floor was covered with an Oriental rug of muted colors and the walls were lined with dark oak paneling the same color as the oak beams on the coffered ceiling.

  Coffered . . . Kit let the word roll around in her brain, finding its resemblance to coffin so appropriate.

  There were four doors off the foyer, one on each side and two straight ahead, with no signs identifying anything. “Hello . . . is anyone here?”

  She listened for an answer but heard none.

  She crossed the room and tried a door. It opened into a small chapel with several rows of pews.

  “Hello . . .”

  She went to another door and found another chapel that was also still and empty.

  The door on the left side of the foyer was locked, which left her only one more choice.

  That door led to a room with a cement floor and lots of metal cabinets. Over by a metal bench hugging the wall to her left were two stainless-steel gurneys and something called a Porti-Boy, with tubes coming out of it.

  She saw a set of double metal doors standing wide open in the far-right corner. The room beyond emitted a whirring sound like the one made by the mechanical mime who’d offered her the flower. She closed the door hard, hoping the sound would announce her presence. The head and shoulders of a red-haired man with pale skin appeared from behind one of the open doors.

  “You must be Dr. Franklyn,” he said.

  Kit crossed the room and entered a thin cloud of drifting ash. When she reached him, he offered his hand. “I’m Trip Guillory. George said to expect you.”

  He was standing turned to the side, and as Kit shook his hand, her eyes went past him to the large green metal oven behind him and the ash and bone inside it.

  Noticing her attention was on the oven, Guillory said, “That doesn’t bother you, does it? Since you’re from the medical examiner’s office, I assumed . . .”

  “No, it’s fine,” Kit lied, looking him in the eye. “George is . . .”

  “My brother . . . the warden at Angola.”

  Beyond hair color and complexion, there wasn’t much resemblance between the two men. Whereas George wore his hair long, Trip’s was short. Trip was also about fifteen years younger and thin, with a long face and apparently real teeth.

  “George said you’re interested in the cremains of the fellow who came in this morning.”

  Cremains . . . another appropriate word, Kit thought. “Are we talking about Ronald Cicero?”

  “Right, Cicero. Say, I’m running a little late. Do you mind if I keep working while we talk?”

  “Not at all.”

  Guillory turned to the wall and reached for something that looked like one of those rakes croupiers use to move chips around a roulette table—only this one had a handle about eight feet long.

  “We made a big mistake when we designed this area,” Guillory said, carefully running the handle past her. “If we’d realized how long this cleaning tool is, we’d have laid it out so the retort could be emptied without having these doors open.”

  He slid the business end of the cleaning tool into the retort and began pulling the ash and bone into a narrow trough that ran down the center of the retort’s floor. Many of the bones were still intact, but the skull had separated so that its individual elements lay in a disarticulated pile. As the cleaning tool gathered the cremains, the bones broke into smaller fragments.

  “Not much left, is there?” Kit said.

  “Usually not more than a couple of pounds.” As Guillory worked, the amount of ash in the air increased, settling on Kit’s clothing. The thought that particles derived from a human liver or tongue or toe were settling on her like dandruff was bad enough, but the likelihood she was also inhaling them was just about more than she could take. But she had a job to do, so she held her ground and tried not to breathe so deeply.

  “Is that him in there?” she asked.

  “Cicero? No, I did him this morning.” Guillory pulled the cleaning tool down the center of the trough, scraping the cremains forward, where they disappeared down a hole.

  “What exactly did you hope to accomplish here?” he said, reaching into the ashes and plucking out a metal strap with three screws attached. He tossed it into a nearby trash can.

  “What was that?” Kit asked.

  “A mending plate. Orthopedic surgeons use them to stabilize fractures. You’d be surprised how much metal comes out of here in a month. Take a look.”

  Kit stepped over and peered into the trash can, which contained, in addition to an impressive number of mending plates, a couple of much larger metal replicas of the upper end of a thighbone.

  “Those big things in there are artificial hip joints,” Guillory said. “Watch your head.”

  He pulled the cleaning tool out of the retort, returned it to the wall, and took down an equally long-handled brush, which he used to sweep out the remaining bone and ash.

  “The only kinds of surgical artifacts we have to watch out for are pacemakers—they can explode and damage the lining of the retort—and silicone breast implants—when they melt, they make a helluva mess.”

  Kit hadn’t answered Guillory’s question about what she’d hoped to accomplish by coming, because she hadn’t yet figured that out herself. But now, having learned there can be various kinds of surgical artifacts in cremains, as well as some fairly large pieces of bone, it seemed possible that even if Guillory had culled the bigger pieces of metal, Broussard might learn something useful by examining what came out of the retort.

  With the retort tidied up inside, Guillory went around to its left side and slid out a large metal drawer that obviously contained the cremains he’d just collected. What happened next made Kit’s heart sink.

  Guillory began rummaging through the cremains with a magnet that quickly became bristly with bits of wire and other metal.

  “We usually cremate bodies in a cardboard box,” he said. “This picks up all the staples that held the box together.”

  As well as any metal artifacts that might be used to identify the body, Kit thought glumly. Then things got worse.

  Guillory carried the drawer over to something that looked like a small ice chest and began pouring the cremains through an opening in the top with a plastic scoop. When they were all inside, he shut the door in the chest and flicked a switch that turned on some machinery.

  While pistons and gears meshed and groaned, he put the retort drawer back where it had come from, then returned to the chest, which he let grind away for about half a minute, the noise so loud conversation was impossible. When he turned it off, silence had never sounded so good.

  He removed a drawer at the botto
m of the chest and showed Kit that the machinery had ground and pulverized the bone in the cremains until it all resembled fireplace ash.

  He sat the drawer on top of the chest and looked at her. “Did you ever say what you wanted from me?”

  The process Kit had just witnessed had probably made the cremains of Ronald Cicero totally useless for identification purposes. But she had been with Broussard long enough to know the old pathologist should never be underestimated, which is why she said, “I’d like to take Cicero’s cremains back to New Orleans with me.”

  Up to that point, Guillory’s manner had been open and congenial. Hearing her request, his face hardened. “I don’t know about that. I couldn’t give them to you without George’s permission.”

  “Can you call him now?”

  “I guess. . . . It’ll take a few minutes, though.”

  “I can wait.”

  There was a phone on the wall near the Porti-Boy, but instead of using it, Guillory left the room. Figuring the wall phone was probably just some kind of intercom, Kit thought nothing more about it.

  While waiting, she went over to the retort and idly looked inside. Seeing nothing of interest, she turned her attention to a recording device in a box on the front.

  Some kind of data regarding the retort’s operation were being recorded on a circular piece of paper divided into many concentric circles that she quickly realized represented 50° increments in the retort’s temperature. Lines perpendicular to the concentric circles divided the paper into hours of the day.

  At 12:30 P.M., the temperature had risen steeply to 1,700° F. The smooth line indicating this then turned horizontally, became a tight little zigzag for about thirty minutes, then straightened, continuing along the 1,700° line for another ninety minutes. At this point, it dropped to baseline.

  Following the time of day around the circle, she saw a similar but not identical heating pattern that had begun at 8:30 that morning—the run for Ronald Cicero.

  A few minutes later, the door to the foyer opened and Guillory returned. “George says it’s okay. All you have to do is sign this form.”

  They met in the center of the room and Kit took the clipboard Guillory offered. She read the form and signed it with the pen clipped to the board.

  “Keep it,” Guillory said, referring to the pen. “We write them off as advertising.”

  Even though he’d seen her sign it, Guillory checked her signature as though she might have tried to pull a fast one by signing someone else’s name. Satisfied that everything was in order, he opened a nearby cabinet and removed a circular metal container about a foot long and four inches in diameter and handed it to her.

  “Have a nice trip back. I’ll see you out.”

  When they parted, Guillory remained on the funeral home’s front porch only until Kit stepped off it. Then he went back inside.

  Before getting into her car, Kit brushed the ash off her clothing and checked the metal cylinder to be sure it couldn’t come open during the ride home. Seeing that the screw top was sealed with a bead of solder, she confidently put it on the backseat.

  It was now a little after five, which would get her into New Orleans around eight. Cicero, it appeared, would be spending the night in her apartment.

  After consulting the rearview mirror and brushing some ash from her hair, she buckled up and turned the key in the ignition. The car remained as quiet as one of the chapels she’d seen. She tried again, with the same results. The third try was no charm. Distinctly less thrilled with silence than she had been earlier, she got out and walked back to the funeral home.

  Guillory was in the cremation area, putting the top on a decorative urn.

  “My car won’t start. Is there a mechanic nearby?”

  “What bad luck. Yeah, there’s one a few miles from here.”

  “Will they still be open?”

  “I’m sure someone will be there.” He got an idea. “Right across the street from the garage, there’s a really good restaurant. I could drop you off at the garage. You can give them your car key, then have a nice meal while they’re fixing things.”

  “Now that you mention it, I am kind of hungry. Sorry to put you out like this.”

  “Forget it. I’m finished here, and it’s right on my way. I’ll lock up and we’ll go out the back.”

  “I need to get the cremains and some other things from my car.”

  “You get them and I’ll come around and pick you up.”

  At her car, Kit retrieved the manila envelope and the metal cylinder, locked her doors, and waited for Guillory, who soon appeared from behind the funeral home in a long black hearse.

  He stopped beside her and rolled his window down. “Hope you don’t mind riding in the wagon.”

  “I never find fault when someone’s doing me a favor.”

  She crossed in front of the hearse, got in, and they were on their way.

  Accustomed to economy transportation, the plush, quiet ostentation of the hearse made it seem like a traveling church.

  “How about some music?” Guillory said.

  “I’m just along for the ride. Whatever you want.”

  Guillory flicked on the tape player and the hearse was filled with circus music. “It’s a calliope tape I got when I was in Amsterdam last year for the IFDA meeting.” Realizing she might not know what that was, he added, “International Funeral Director’s Association. The calliopes just sit on the street cranking away. Great, isn’t it?”

  She didn’t tell him, but even allowing for the New Orleans tradition of jazz funerals, the tape made her uneasy—as if they were committing some kind of blasphemy. The next tune, though, was so infectiously toe-tapping, it would have made even the Pope’s eyes sparkle. So, despite her car troubles and the Cicero situation, she was in good spirits when they arrived at Albert’s Auto Repair.

  She was thankful for its existence, but there was no denying the garage was a candidate for EPA superfund cleanup money, for every inch of the dirt drive and the half acre surrounding the place was saturated with grease and oil. There were at least twenty derelict cars and a scattering of rusty farm machinery littered across the front of the operation, which was housed in an unpainted cement-block building with a corrugated metal roof. The dirt drive continued into the garage, where Kit saw a shower of sparks coming from the undercarriage of an old truck.

  “I guess you could say the town has a love-hate relationship with Albert,” Guillory said. “He and his people are the best mechanics for fifty miles, but you can see what the place looks like. Ah well . . . what is life but compromise?”

  Kit turned her keys over to Albert’s son, Henry, a lanky young man with grease in his hair, under his nails, and probably in his veins, who promised to put a clean cloth over her car seat before he sat in it. Though she doubted there was a clean cloth anywhere in the place, there was little she could do but trust him.

  Guillory wrote his home phone number on his card and told her to call him if she needed anything. He then got back in the hearse and continued on his way, the calliope tape making him sound like a Ringling Brothers advance man. Henry followed him out of the driveway in a tow truck and set out for the funeral home.

  The restaurant Guillory had touted was called Beano’s. Presumably that was Beano’s face on the giant neon crawfish adorning the big sign out front. With the manila envelope tucked under her arm and the metal cylinder in her hand, Kit crossed the road.

  The restaurant, too, was cement block, but it sported a fresh coat of white paint. Its windows were clean and the newly paved and lined parking lot was litter-free. The presence of a dozen vehicles in the lot, mostly pickups, supported Guillory’s opinion of its food.

  Inside, it was as cheerful as red-checked plastic tablecloths and a plastic dahlia on each table can make a place. Kit took a booth at the window so she could keep an eye out for the tow truck’s return.

  “Hi there. I’m Belle. You got car trouble, right?”

  The waitress was a fa
t girl with curly dark hair. Despite the weight she carried in her face, she was pretty. Knock off forty pounds and she’d be gorgeous.

  “I saw you talkin’ to Henry,” she explained. “You break down at the funeral home?”

  “You saw me arrive in the hearse?”

  “Big front window like this, it’s hard not to see what’s goin’ on. What’s in that metal thing? You an artist?”

  Rather than tell her what she was really carrying, Kit thought it best simply to say, “Sort of.”

  “You visitin’ somebody at the prison?”

  “Yes, I was.”

  “Thought so. Never seen you before, so figured it was the prison. Who is it? Husband . . . boyfriend?”

  “It’s kind of a long story.”

  “Tell me about it. Me . . . it’s my husband. He’s comin’ up for parole day after tomorrow.” She glanced back at the kitchen pass-through, then leaned closer and dropped her voice. “He gets it, I’m outta here. So, what ya gonna have? We got red beans and rice so good, it’ll make you cry.”

  “How could I pass that up? And iced tea.”

  “You got it.”

  Her food was brought out in just a few minutes and it was indeed very good. Before she’d finished eating, the tow truck returned with her car. Figuring Henry would need some time to figure out what was wrong, she didn’t hurry her meal.

  Through the window, she saw Henry lower the car to the ground and move the tow truck out of the way. He came back and fiddled around in the engine for a couple of minutes, then pulled his head out and went into the garage. He returned wheeling some kind of machine with a long cord trailing behind it and spent another few minutes under the hood. Finally, leaving the hood up, he hurried toward the restaurant.

  When he came through the door, Kit waved at him, bringing him to her booth.

  “Miss, your battery’s shot. I ain’t got one in stock, but I can fetch one from Retreat. And puttin’ it in is easy.”