Cat on a Hyacinth Hunt

by Carole Nelson Douglas

  "At least we can just cremate the body after this charade is over. Do you really believe it will lead to anything?"

  "Somebody bothered to give Effinger a very public and outlandish death. Maybe they can't resist attending a good funeral. Maybe somebody hates him even more than you do. I wouldn't rule out that Elvis suit, if I were you."

  *******************

  Sam's Funeral Home was a typical Las Vegas operation. Its pillared white facade echoed the grandeur of Tara, the O'Hara plantation house. Inside, acres of plush pastel carpeting were discreetly marked by the shuffles of respectful feet, or at least of pallbearers weighed down by the usual sloughed-off mortal coils.

  The hush, though, was deeper than that in the exclusive baccarat enclaves of the finest hotels. Death was in permanent residence here, and was more exacting of tribute than money.

  Sam himself saw them in an office furnished tastefully in mahogany Queen Anne pieces with chorus-girl-curvy legs.

  "So nice to meet friends of Electra's. My deepest condolences at this time of loss," he added in a voice that would pomade barbed wire.

  His own hair had ebbed from the Gibralter of his pate, reduced to a silky fringe from ear to ear that ended in a fluster of pewter-colored curls, which gave his shiny pink-granite skull and face a jolly look.

  "Who is the bereaved?" he asked gently.

  "I suppose I am," Matt said.

  Sam's eyebrows, a riot of overgrown gray curls alternated like weather fronts in extremes of high and low. Matt's waffling answer had plunged them to the depths of polite concern.

  "Then the deceased has no close relatives."

  "Not that we know of," Temple put in. "If one, or more, should turn up, we would be most interested in knowing."

  "I understand. Now ... Mr. Devine. What about clothes for the deceased? Did you bring any to select from?"

  "It's difficult." Matt exchanged a glance with Temple.

  He was thinking of the Elvis jumpsuit and trying not to laugh. Laughing would not be taken lightly at a funeral parlor. And the rooms eerily recalled parlors from another era, reminding him that "in my Father's house there are many mansions." Funeral-home operators appeared to have taken that to heart, and to have spent much effort in preparing anterooms for mansions.

  "We don't know his last place of residence," Matt explained. "So we don't know where his clothes might be, and I suppose the police kept what he was wearing when he died, as evidence."

  "Oh, that kind of death, was it? Well, we have a fine selection of garments made specifically for such occasions. Well made, in excellent taste and yet reasonably priced."

  "Where do you get this funeral-wear-to-go?" Temple wondered.

  "There are businesses that solely supply clothes for such purposes."

  Dressing the dead seemed an odd business, like making costumes for life-size dolls.

  "These clothes," Sam added, "are designed for easy application and to be seen inside caskets."

  The notion of clothes being "applied" was truly creepy.

  "Now," Sam asked, sounding like a used car salesman. "May I show you a few models of our excellent casket line?"

  The showroom reminded Temple of the Liberace museum not far distant.

  Bulky caskets on pedestals stood around the showroom like a pod of marooned whales, or open grand pianos whose interior harps had been replaced by pleated satin fabric.

  The satin-lined maws waited to received the dear departed on upholstered waves--of coral or pink, or palest blue or ecru-- that reminded Temple of said whale's yawning soft palate.

  Then the casket's open upper Dutch door would snap shut out of sight and sink all those lost Jonahs deep in the belly of the earth.

  Matt must have been more familiar with funeral rituals than she, but he sleepwalked through this macabre duty. Temple sup-posed that as a put-upon child he had wished Cliff Effinger dead. To be an adult in charge of postmortem arrangements for this man would try the integrity of a saint. Did he secretly rejoice? Or despair, to see the bane of his life consigned to the rituals of burial?

  Temple had never had to participate in a burying before. She saw how bereaved relatives could escalate costs in the name of respect. The low-cost caskets, wooden or metal, were so obviously cheesy that only a merciless person would consign anyone they knew to such ignominy.

  "Remember," she whispered to Matt as they solemnly snaked single file through the marooned caskets. "Max has lots of money."

  "I'm not going to spend the money of one man I dislike to bury another man I despised."

  "You don't like Max?" Temple was genuinely surprised that her charmer had failed, even with a rival. "You don't know him."

  "We've talked."

  "This isn't a simple burial; it's a trap. You have to bait it properly. I say, get a middle-of-the-road casket."

  Sam, keeping a decent distance that precluded eavesdropping, paused to smooth his silk-blend suit jacket, a pleasant smile sending his eyebrows heavenward.

  They ended up consulting like a couple buying a first car. Wood was obvious. Effinger would be cremated. "Isn't that against your religion?" Temple hissed fretfully when Sam had withdrawn to let them make their decision.

  "Not any more. Besides, I don't think Effinger was any religion. I vote for the oak."

  "Then can I have the tacky sea-green lining? It should make him look sallow."

  "I think death has taken care of that for you."

  When it came to clothes, it was one dark neutral suit or another. Temple voted for the plain black over the navy pinstriped. With a yellow shirt.

  "Why?" Matt asked as they left the showroom following the funeral director, who was no doubt used to intense, hushed consultations.

  "He'll look like an after-dinner mint. You know, those dark chocolate lozenges with pastel fillings, green and yellow. Terrible taste in every respect. Serve him right for making us miserable while he was alive."

  "Dressing a corpse wrong is the best revenge?"

  "Matt, it's the only revenge you can have on a corpse. Unless you want to go in for grave-robbing or desecration or some-such."

  "No. No thanks. Dead and buried is all I ask, and unable to harm anyone else. I'm even getting used to the idea of him getting a decent send-off ceremony."

  Temple threaded her arm through his as they returned to the director's office. Her voice assumed a melancholy Eastern European accent.

  "The road you valk is thorny, my son, but as the sun rises in the east, you vill find a kinder path."

  "I'm not even going to ask where that's from."

  "One of those dreadfully wonderful Wolfman movies from the forties."

  "It almost goes with my new sofa, then."

  "Right. Just get yourself an old TV with a round screen in a blond cabinet and settle back to enjoy yourself."

  "Isn't there one of those in the Ghost Suite at the Crystal Phoenix?" His voice lowered as he bent to her ear. "Maybe we could reserve it someday."

  No. No, they couldn't.

  By the time they had resumed their overstuffed chairs in front of Sam's huge mahogany desk, Matt was mellow and Temple was cast down.

  "Now I understand that the expenses are being assumed by an anonymous donor." Sam smiled like a JP at a pair of newlyweds whose parents had paid for the ceremony. "Fine with me.

  Just okay the items you've approved, folks, and I'll take payment later. Any friends of Electra Lark's are friends of mine."

  Nodding, smiling and stunned by how much even their modest choices added up to, Matt signed on the dotted lines. Then he and Temple escaped the whited sepulcher world of funeral homes and pastel plush carpet.

  "I'm not sure about the piped-in music," Matt said.

  "Irish dirges are always appropriate, believe me."

  "Effinger isn't Irish."

  "But our 'sponsor' is."

  "I see, the piper pays, he gets to name the tune."

  "What would you have chosen?"

  "Perhaps the medieval chants.
"

  "Toney, but a bit much for Effinger."

  Matt nodded. "I'm not looking forward to the visitation Monday morning. At least there'll be no religious service. I couldn't have stood that."

  "I just hope something happens Monday."

  "Like what?"

  "I don't know. Something odd and revealing. Something sinister. Something that points an inescapable clue toward Effinger's murderer, or murderers."

  "Plural?"

  "Now that Molina has 'fessed up that Effinger was bound to the barge and sunk with it, it's obvious it took more than one person to do it. And something else is also obvious."

  "What? I guess I'm too close to him, his odious history. All I see is that someone stamped out the life of a vile bug."

  "Nicely put. No holy moly stuff excusing the poor sod. But. . . you've got the wrong species."

  "Bug?"

  Temple nodded seriously. "The way Effinger died was a broad hint about why he died."

  "Temple, don't hint. I'm tired, I'm hurt, I'm having to treat this creep like a human being now that he's dead, which is probably good for my soul but does nothing for my instincts. Just tell me what you mean."

  She took a deep breath. "He died by water, knowing he would die for at least twenty minutes before it happened. It was a mean, sadistic killing. It was sending a message, to Effinger, and to every-one who ever knew him. It said: this is the end of a dirty rat. A drowned rat. A man who spilled his guts. Who talked to the police."

  "Jesus, Temple."

  When Matt swore, it always struck Temple as a prayer.

  "You're telling me I killed him. I found him, I took him to Molina. I made him a marked man."

  "You couldn't have done him more dirt than that, if you had wanted to."

  "Oh, I wanted to. I just thought, at the time, I wanted justice more."

  "Maybe you got it. Maybe this was the only way you were going to get it."

  "Through killers, instead of the law?"

  "The law kills legally. What's the difference?"

  Matt couldn't answer her.

  ****************

  The visitation Monday afternoon was the height of what passes for civilization among the funeral-home set.

  Keening Celtic pipes set the tone as visitors to "the Effinger observance" were funneled into the tastefully accoutered viewing room. A gilt-lettered volume, open like an angel's book, recorded visitors' names. Discreet white envelopes and cards the size of cocktail napkins accepted cash, check or spare chips in the name of good works in the name of the deceased.

  In return, donors acquired gilt-edged cards embossed with the nondenominational image of a dove.

  Matt and Temple were the first to arrive, both a symphony in black. Matt was probably the only man in Las Vegas who wasn't dead and who possessed a black suit.

  "I just realized that look is ultrachic," Temple commented as they left the car.

  "Please. I can't take being chic at the moment."

  " Men in Black, the motion picture. All you need are the vintage shades."

  "I missed that one."

  "You miss a lot of them."

  "And I don't miss them at all."

  Matt paused outside the antebellum facade of white pillars.

  "White is the Asian color of mourning."

  "And it was the favored color in eighteenth-century France, I believe."

  "So why are we in black?"

  "It's always chic?"

  Temple didn't own much black, but this long-skirted loose dress with its row of tiny buttons seemed appropriate for the occasion.

  Low-volume music piped them into the proper viewing area. Spencerian script on a white card announced the name "Effinger" by the open double doors.

  Inside, a scene both sweet and cloying overwhelmed them.

  "Did we order piped-in perfume?" Matt asked.

  "No way." Temple scrawled her name and Matt's in the ornate book.

  No one else had signed in yet, but the day was young.

  They advanced across the empty quicksand of too-thick plush carpet to the front, where the plain casket was bracketed by banks of flowers from floor to six feet high.

  Unlike the usual large, showy funeral blossoms and wreaths, these were diminutive flowers that impressed by mass rather than bulk or size.

  Rank on blue-purple rank of curlicued blossoms. Hothouse flowers forced into bloom afore time. Hyacinths breathing saccharine scent into the room, enough to overlay the sickly sweet odor of the dead.

  "What is this?" Matt stopped dead in midroom.

  "Let's see if there are any cards."

  But Temple probed among the spear-shaped leaves to no avail. These flowers were truly anonymous, a legion of delegates from nowhere and no one.

  "This is bizarre." Matt stopped before one of two padded kneelers set in front of the casket.

  Temple knew he would never kneel here. "Hyacinths, right?"

  "Hyacinths. Let's see who comes to visit them."

  First they passed by the casket. Matt's hand tightened on Temple's forearm.

  Effinger lay there, wearing the healthy tan of a department-store dummy, his features stapled into a sharpness they had never mustered in life.

  He did look pasty in the black suit and yellow shirt against the gag-green-colored satin. Yet all that tawdry glory seemed to elevate him to the station of an effigy. A symbol more than a man. A murdered man.

  Matt moved on, retreating to a rose brocade settee along one wall. "Now what?" he asked Temple.

  "You should know."

  "Not here. At visitations I attended, the Rosary Guild would come to tell the beads. Or I would read from the psalms. There were crowds of parishioners. Everyone knew everyone.

  Everyone felt a personal loss. This is ... a mockery. No community. No religion. Only empty ceremony."

  "And hyacinths by the hundreds. I wonder why?"

  "I don't think I care, Temple. No one will come. This practical joker who says it with flowers won't show up. We won't learn anything, and Kinsella will have spent his money for nothing."

  "Let's wait and see."

  Waiting and seeing involved the next two hours.

  Two nuns came in. They wore civilian dress except for the vestigial headdress: a shoulder-brushing navy veil with a starched white rim at the hairline.

  They were heavyset and middle-aged, performing an act of charity by mourning the unknown dead who had no survivors.

  After a glance Matt ignored them. He hated to see the good sisters waste their sincere prayers, but even they could not save Effinger. He knew that every soul was salvageable, by the lights of his religion. He just couldn't believe it in this case, his most clear crisis of faith since he had left the priesthood.

  A few itinerants drifted in as the second hour ticked away. Street people looking for diversion, perhaps someone worse off than they were to shake their heads over.

  Matt was always struck by street people's kinship with dust-bowl nomads. He had thought those starved, asymmetrical, suffering faces no longer existed outside of Depression era or postwar Europe photographs. He could hardly restrain himself from handing them cards with donations as they left, except that the poor have a dignity that cannot be violated in their few sanctuaries, and apparently funeral homes were one of them.

  "Sad," Temple commented. "It's an event, like a wedding chapel ceremony. That's why Electra put the dressed-up soft sculptures in her pews. So many people in cities don't belong anywhere nowadays."

  Matt nodded, checking the watch his mother had given him for Christmas. Somehow it was appropriate that it be here, ticking away Effinger's last moments as a physical body on this planet. He'd had about all that he could take, and his pierced side throbbed like a grandfather clock, pain and time swinging back and forth on the pump of his blood through taut veins.

  "There's nothing to learn here," Matt mumbled to Temple, turning to go.

  At the double doors they met Sam himself, who suggested softly that they adjo
urn to his office.

  Once seated in comfort--and not a seat in the house was other than cushy--it was impossible for Matt and Temple to fidget, though they both felt like doing that, given the restless swings of their feet along the plush carpeting.

  "Were all the arrangements satisfactory?"

  "Completely," Matt said.

  "Who sent all the hyacinths?" Temple asked.

  "Is that what they were! We usually see gladioli and lilies, mums and roses. Funny you should ask. No card was found."

  "But you have a record of the delivery service?"

  "Well, that is odd. The flowers were found in the delivery area this morning. No, I guess we don't have a record of the delivery com-pany.

  "But you folks aren't to worry about any of the details. Your anonymous donor showed up in person first thing this morning and paid for everything, in cash."

  "Did he say anything?" Temple was shocked into asking. Why would Max personally inspect the visitation scene?

  "She was very soft-spoken. Wore a hat with a true mourning veil, utterly impenetrable. And black leather gloves. Quite a dramatic figure."

  Matt and Temple exchanged a long glance. Max's hoped-for visitor was a dramatic one.

  After leaving the director's office they loitered restlessly in the foyer, about to conduct a hushed postmortem of speculation on the Lady in Black.

  At that moment a black-suit-clad assistant rushed out of the viewing chamber.

  "Thank heavens I caught you," he said. "There was a windfall among the offerings. I don't know where these all came from, but I had to find a stationery box to hold them."

  Temple took the box, surprised when it weighed her arms down.

  "Bingo," she said in a daze, staring into a mound of small square envelopes.

  Matt pulled one off the top and opened it. Only the usual folded note card and inside ... he elevated a silver dollar like a glittering metal host.