The Undertaker

by Brown, William

  Two miles and a handful of stop signs later, they turned north and passed through the tall, wrought-iron gates of Oak Hill. It was one of those modern cemeteries that put an emphasis on open space. I held back as the two hearses and the sheriff turned in and followed the main road as it curved off to the right. Once they were around the bend, I turned in and took an inside track, keeping the procession in sight. Except for a scattering of tall cedars, some evergreen hedges, and a lot of flowerbeds, there was nothing to break the view across the rolling green lawns. No tombstones. No big gaudy mausoleums. No tall marble spires. No winged angels or miniature Pietas looking down on the graves in perpetual grief. What it had was row after row of small bronze plaques mounted flush to the ground and very little cover to hide a Bronco.

  They stopped near a large green-and-white striped canopy on a low rise near the rear corner of the cemetery. I pulled behind a low hedge about two hundred yards away and parked. Moving on foot, I cut the distance in half and slipped behind a tree where I could see what they were doing. The men in the black suits already had the rear doors of the hearses open and were pulling out the first coffin. The four men carried it over to the tent and set it on the ground on one side of the hole. They went back and got the second coffin and placed it on the other side. Two cemetery workers in blue denim overalls stood waiting next to a large open grave with a wheeled A-frame hoist. No crowds. No preachers. No grieving next-of-kin. No standing on ceremony. They hooked up the first casket to the frame and quickly rolled it over the grave. As the deputy watched, they turned the crank and the casket slowly disappeared into the hole and out of sight. In a matter of minutes, the second one followed next to it. Terri would love this. Her mother always said that if she married a bum like me she'd end up in a doublewide sooner or later. If she only knew.

  Finally, I saw the cemetery workers pick up their long-handled spades and set to work shoveling the loose dirt back into the big grave. Clods rained down on the wooden boxes with a muffled “Thump.” Ashes to ashes, I thought, dust to dust. A “private internment?” Was that what undertaker Greene called it? “Limited to the immediate family?” They have such odd ways of describing things here in Ohio. What a crock. Unless this Mr. Peter Talbott came from a long line of Teamsters or gravediggers, none of these characters were in the family tree.

  As the dirt continued to fly, the black suits finally relaxed. Their job done, they gathered around the deputy. I saw puffs of smoke from freshly lit cigarettes and heard loud laughter. Obviously, they knew each other and weren't worried about the graveside humor. As the cemetery workers finished and patted down the low mound with their spades, one of the attendants looked at his watch. He motioned to the others as he ground his cigarette butt into the bare dirt and waved good-bye. The four attendants got back in their hearses and slowly drove away and I figured it was time for me to do the same.

  I hurried back to the Bronco and headed for the main gate, hoping to make it around the circle before they did. I beat the hearses back, but not the deputy sheriff. His big brown cruiser lay across the road blocking the exit. The sheriff was leaning against its fender with his arms crossed, the sun glinting off the silver lenses of his sunglasses, watching me as I drove up and stopped a few feet away. Cocky and self-sure, he paused for a moment before he finally pushed his large frame off the side of the car and sauntered over to me. He looked to be around fifty years old, big and beefy with graying hair around the temples. He had colonel's eagles on his shirt collar, a sizable beer gut, and a black nine-millimeter Glock automatic riding on his hip, just what your average hick county sheriff needs to hold back the invading criminal hordes from the city and to bring down the occasional rogue elephant.

  Slowly he took off his sunglasses as he stepped next to the Bronco. I rolled the window down and he leaned-in, resting his meaty forearms on the Bronco's window frame. He scanned the SUV's interior then focused his eyes on me, narrow and hard. “You got some kinda problem here, Mister?” he asked.

  I looked the plastic nameplate on his shirt. It said Dannmeyer. I smiled my most polite and innocent smile. “Nope, everything's just fine, Deputy Dannmeyer.”

  His expression turned even harder. “That's Sheriff Dannmeyer, not deputy.”

  “Oh, excuse me there, Sheriff.”

  “I know I saw you and this vehicle back at the Funeral Home, and I know you heard Mr. Greene say this here was a private service. He said immediate family only.” He held out his hand. “Now, lemme see some ID.”

  I pulled out my wallet and handed him my driver's license.

  He stared down at the card and said, “Talbott, Peter Emerson.” He frowned, peered in at my face again, down at the card, then back at me. “Talbott?” he asked suspiciously. “That's the same name as the deceased. You related?”

  “In a round-about-kind-of-sort-of-way.”

  He stared at the driver's license again, his face more troubled now. “This here license says you're from California,” he said.

  I tried hard to look just as serious. “That's because I'm from California, or I was. I moved to Boston recently, but the license hasn't caught up.”

  “Hasn't, huh?” He kept looking at the license. “So whadaya do out there in California or Boston, or wherever the hell it is you're from, Mr. Talbott?”

  “Me? I'm an aeronautical systems engineer, a computer programmer. I evolve mathematical constructs for computer simulations.”

  He gave me a blank stare. “Sounds interesting.”

  “It isn't. What about you, sheriff? Whadaya do?”

  “Me? I keep people from getting their noses stuck in places they don't belong.”

  “Now that does sound interesting.”

  “Sometimes it is. Sometimes it saves 'em a lot of time and trouble.” He seemed to be studying me, not sure. “Like you, for instance. You came all the way here from Boston? That's a long damn way to come for a funeral.”

  “Well, you know how close us Talbotts are, Sheriff.” I looked down and saw Dannmeyer had a U. S. Marine Corps emblem and “Semper Fi” tattooed on his hairy forearm. “Semper Fi? Well, goddamn! Were you in the Crotch?”

  “Hey, is there anything else?” Dannmeyer suddenly beamed.

  “No shit, what unit?”

  “Fifth Marines. And you?”

  “Me? Oh, I was in the Army, but I just love those cute jarhead tattoos.”

  His eyes narrowed. His smile faded and he couldn't quite make up his mind whether I had put him on or insulted him. Whichever, he knew he didn't like it. Slowly he backed his head out of the car and handed me back my driver's license, but those hard eyes never left me.

  “The fuckin’ Army, huh,” he said as he spat on the ground, gave me a two-fingered salute, and slowly put the silver-lensed sunglasses back on. “You be real careful driving back to Boston. We had to scrape the last two Talbotts off a bridge abutment out on I-71 and you wouldn't want to put us through all that mess again, now would you?” Then he turned and walked back to his cruiser. He got in and slowly backed the big car away from the gate.

  I tried not to smile, but I couldn't help it as I drove on through, turned south, and didn't stop until the cemetery was long gone from my rear view mirror.

  A private family funeral? The whole thing stunk even worse now than it had before. Maybe it was Greene and that expression of surprise on his face when he looked up and saw me sitting in the chapel. Maybe it was the callous indifference of those men in the black suits as they stood under the awning, smoking and laughing while clods of dirt thumped down on the two wooden caskets. Or, maybe it was Sheriff Dannmeyer's attitude that got to me most, that look of dim-witted power and arrogance. I turned the car around and headed back toward Peterborough. I wanted some answers, and I figured the best way to get was to put the screws to the good Mr. Greene.

  CHAPTER THREE

  All it takes is one slippery mortician…

  It was nearly 3:00 by the time I got back to the funeral home. The parking lot was as empty as it had
been when I left. Looking in the far corner, I saw that the five employee cars were still there, but some of those must belong to the crew that had taken the coffins to the cemetery. In any event, the day's business appeared to be finished and it was too early for the evening's schedule of wakes to begin, so I had the parking lot all to myself. I stepped inside. Other than the gaudy floral arrangement in the center of the room, the foyer was still empty. They'd switched off the organ music. Even the sticky-sweet flower smell had vanished. Figured.

  I walked down the hallway to the right and found Greene's business office at the far end. There was a black felt sign on the wall next to the door with the usual gold letters that said “Enter,” so I did. There was no one in the outer office. It was well appointed, like the rest of the place, with a beautiful couch and loveseat, two tall wingback chairs, and colonial prints on the wall, straight out of the Ethan Allen catalog. The secretary's big, L-shaped mahogany desk was empty. It had a laser printer, a modem, fax machine, cables, wires, and a large computer with a flat screen. Impressive. And expensive. Greene probably had his own web page too. I could just picture those two hearses outside rolling down the fast lane of the Information Super Highway. Why should that come as a surprise either?

  I heard a familiar, syrupy male voice coming through the doorway to the right. There was a bright red light on one of the extensions on the secretary's telephone console, so I walked over and peered around the doorframe. It was Greene all right, the silver-haired undertaker himself, leaning back in an over-sized leather desk chair, feet up on the desk, his eyes closed, talking on the telephone.

  “Yes, very tragic, very tragic indeed, Mrs. Casey, but you can take comfort from the fact that your mother led a full, rich life right up to the end, didn't she?” Greene was still wearing his suit coat, tie up, jacket buttoned. Habit, no doubt, like the thin plastic smile and the expression of mournful empathy. Maybe it was pinned in place or painted on, like a mannequin's. “No, no, Mrs. Casey, you have other things on your mind right now. I shall contact the hospital myself, personally ... Yes ... and we'll see to all the arrangements.”

  Odd. His voice was animated and very empathetic, but his expression never changed. It showed no emotion at all, as if it was detached, or it was a recording, and I felt another cold shiver run down my back. Maybe this guy had been around too many dead bodies and too much grief, I thought, but he was scary.

  Finally, Greene opened his eyes and saw me standing in the office doorway. He never blinked. Not the slightest hint of surprise. “Mrs. Casey, I promise you I will call you back in the morning. Yes, I will take care of everything... Now never you fear, just try to get some rest... Yes, you too.”

  His delicate white hand placed the telephone back in its cradle and he looked up at me with those sincere, brown cow eyes. “I'm sorry, but Miss Sturgis has left for the day.”

  “I assume you're Mr. Greene, of the funeral home Greenes?”

  “Indeed I am. Lawrence Greene, the proprietor,” he said as he dropped his legs to the floor and straightened his jacket, his eyes not leaving me. “Is there some way I can be of assistance?”

  “Well, I was curious about the Talbott funeral.”

  “Ah,” he said as he drew the word out in a soft sigh. “Now I remember. You were there in the chapel, you and that other man.”

  “I was there for the… service,” I answered as I looked around his spacious office. There wasn't a sheet of paper on his desk, not a file folder to be seen. Showroom clean.

  “Ah, yes,” he continued to study me carefully, eying me from head to foot. Did you know them, then? Mr. and Mrs. Talbott?”

  “Not nearly as well as I should have.”

  “Isn't that always the case?” came the syrupy reply.

  On the far wall hung the usual array of licenses and certificates from the state, the Chamber of Commerce, even the Boy Scouts. “You throw a nice funeral service here in Peterborough, Mr. Greene. Brief and to the point. Not much of a crowd, though.”

  “All too typical when people die so young, so tragically,” he shrugged, his lips forming a soft, commiserating smile. “Friends? Relatives? Sometimes, they can't bring themselves to come to the service, they can't bear the pain.”

  “The closed caskets?”

  “It was a very bad accident.”

  “I bet. A fire, wasn't it?”

  “No, their automobile was struck by a train at one of those unguarded crossings over on the east side somewhere. You know how dangerous those things can be at night. As I said, it was very bad. And you are ...?”

  “Mr. Talbott.”

  I saw a flash of surprise cross Greene's face. “Oh? A relative, then?”

  “Me? Oh, no, I'm the deceased.”

  The soft brown eyes narrowed, ever so slightly, and the thin smile began to fade. “If this is some kind of joke, sir, I fail to see ...”

  “It's no joke, Mr. Greene. That was me you buried.” I pulled out my wallet and handed him my driver's license. “I'm Peter Emerson Talbott, thirty-three years old, from Los Angeles, a lieutenant in the Army, UCLA, and all the rest.” I stepped closer to his polished mahogany desk and leaned on it with both hands, getting right up in his face. “I could show you my Visa card, my old business card, and my library card if you want, not that it matters to me, but I'm the guy you buried, all right.”

  Greene looked up at me. My eyes locked on his and I saw him flinch. I saw it. In that moment of surprise and uncertainty, the brief look in Greene's eyes told me everything I wanted to know. I had him. The bastard was lying, but he was a pro. He was doing the backstroke as fast as he could and doing an admirable job of keeping his head above water, but it was too late. For that split second, I saw the truth in his eyes

  He coughed and sat up, carefully studying my driver's license again. “Well, uh, it does indeed appear that your name is Peter Emerson Talbott, I will concede you that,” he shrugged. “And a remarkable coincidence, I would say.”

  “Coincidence? You bury some guy who's pretending to be me and you call that a coincidence?”

  “The name,” he looked up, appearing to study me. “Perhaps the age and race. Those are the only similarities I see. As for the rest of it, your delusion that someone was pretending to be you; well, I'm not in any position to comment about that. Frankly, you do not even look like the man,” he smiled pleasantly. “Or more correctly, what was left of him.”

  “I guess we'll never know, will we?”

  Greene blinked again. “Mr. ... Talbott? What are you suggesting?”

  “That something's seriously wrong here. That wasn't Peter Emerson Talbott you buried today. It wasn't my wife Theresa June Talbott either, and I want some answers.”

  “How dare you,” he puffed, but he couldn't pull it off.

  I stared down at that stuffed shirt and felt the heat rising. I wanted to reach across the desk and slap the smile off his face, but I didn't.

  “Dare? How dare I? You see, that's what got my juices flowing last night. You can screw around with my name and reputation all you want. They aren't worth very much to begin with,” I said, leaning over the desk again, my face getting even closer to him, my eyes blazing. “But when you dragged my wife into your little game, you made it very, very personal.

  The look in my eyes must have been hot enough to scorch paint. Greene blinked and turned away, his eyes dropping to my driver's license again. “But this says you are from California,” he flicked the edge of the driver's license with his index finger, quickly changing the subject. “The Talbotts were from Columbus, right here in Ohio. So, I'm afraid you've lost me again, Mister Talbott. Who are you and why are you here, anyway?”

  “Here? You mean in Columbus, or alive and walking around?”

  “Mr. Talbott, if that really is your name, you're being entirely too melodramatic and too flippant about a very painful matter. Did someone send you here to cause trouble for me? Because if this is some kind of practical joke, I really don't appreciate it.”


  “A joke? Suppose you tell me about the guy you buried.”

  “You mean Mr. Talbott?”

  “I think we've already established that he wasn't Mr. Talbott.”

  “We have done nothing of the sort, young man.” Greene leaned forward and looked up at me with feigned anger. He had taken a couple of good body shots, but he was already picking himself up off the canvass. His voice turned more calm and confident as he tried to reestablish his authority. “I will admit that you share the same name and that you have some similarities in your backgrounds, but this is a very big country, Mister Talbott. I'm sure we would both be amazed by the number of people who share your last name.”

  “Do you have death certificates?”

  “Of course we have the death certificates; it's the law here in Ohio.”

  “Signed by a doctor, a real one?”

  “You should not make light of what was a very tragic situation. Mr. and Mrs. Talbott's mortal remains were forwarded to us by a very reputable medical facility, the Varner Clinic. Doctor Varner himself signed them and they are completely in order, I assure you.”

  “Doctor Varner? Who identified the bodies?

  “It was Doctor Varner himself and Mr. Ralph Tinkerton, their executor. He is a very prominent attorney with Hamilton, Keogh and Hollister downtown, the managing partner, I might add, so you should think twice before you go around impugning the reputation of a man of Mr. Tinkerton's standing or mine. He has many highly placed friends in this town. So do I.”