by Lois Winston
Anastasia had spent a lot of time here in the last three years. She’d practiced on this very living room-cum-tap-studio floor several times a week. But this was different. Her own bungalow on the north side of campus was already in escrow, her title hanging by a thread, or a signature.
She looked out Marty’s—that is, their—front window to busy Ashby Avenue. The first word that came to her mind was flat—not a hill in sight. Unlike her home above the University of California campus, where she’d sat on top of Holy Hill, the popular name for a collection of schools of religion and theology. She already missed her view of San Francisco Bay and the Golden Gate Bridge.
The second word that came to mind for her new neighborhood was colorful. Berkeleyites who lived in the flats couldn’t be outdone in the colors they chose for their homes, their walkways, even their fire escapes on the three large apartment buildings in her view. Across the street stood a two-story stucco with a bright red front door. Next to it was an adobe style home a shade of mustard that was strangely attractive, and next to that a bright purple home sat on a stark white porch. The pale yellow-and-brown Tudor on the left seemed boring in comparison to its neighbors.
Anastasia made her way across the floor, now crowded with cartons labeled KITCHEN, BEDROOM, BATHROOM, DESK, WORK, and, the largest number of all, MISC. She lowered herself to the floor, stretched out her long legs, and pulled the WORK box toward her. Easier to start with the one that would be simplest to deal with, easier than trying to decide whether to replace Marty’s new red skillet with her mother’s old cast iron one, or his polyester blanket with the quilt her friend Keicia had made for Anastasia on her graduation from mortuary school in Boston.
She stripped the first piece of tape from the top of the WORK carton and extracted a catalog of mortuary supplies. Most of the facilities Anastasia worked at were well stocked and up to date with the latest aspirator units and protective apparel. She seldom needed to purchase her own tools, but she always enjoyed browsing through the array of drain tubes, scalpel blades, syringes, and updated laboratory accessories that were available. She needed to stay current, but she was also aware that this was a stalling tactic; almost anything was more appealing than unpacking.
A new style vein expander on page four of the catalog caught her eye, until her cell phone rang. She turned down the corner of the page for later viewing, and pulled out her phone. A shiver of excitement ran through her. What did it say about her that she hoped there’d been a delivery of a body at one of the mortuaries she serviced? Did she really hope someone died just so she wouldn’t have to stay in this strange new home and unpack? Something she’d better keep to herself, or risk losing not only Marty but all her friends and acquaintances.
She checked the screen of her smartphone and couldn’t suppress a smile. Yes! A job, she whispered to the empty living room.
“Anastasia? Paul B. here.” The Babcock Mortuary, one of her favorite workplaces. She could hardly wait to suit up. “Sorry to bother you so early on a Saturday. And I know you’re trying to get settled in at your new place.”
Eleven in the morning was not early. Anastasia wondered at the strange apology, as if Paul wasn’t aware that there were no business hours for death. As if he hadn’t called her in the middle of the night, more than once. “No problem, Paul. You have someone for me?”
Paul blew out a loud, heavy sigh, a sign that this might not be an ordinary case. “It’s a tough one, Stas. A young woman is on her way in. Terry Corbett, twenty-five. Caroline’s best friend’s daughter’s best friend.” He paused. “Sorry. Could you even follow that?”
She tried to sort out the number of degrees of separation from Paul himself—four?—but so what? Paul was clearly upset by Terry’s death. “I’m so sorry, Paul. I can come in right away.”
“Bless you, Stas.” Paul’s voice was strained. He cleared his throat and swallowed, and Anastasia could tell he wasn’t finished.
She’d worked many cases for the Babcock Mortuary. Paul wasn’t any more expressive than the typical undertaker she knew. She’d been one herself for a while and the part she’d hated was dealing with the living. Undertakers had to walk a fine line between empathy and professionalism. They had a job to do while a great deal of emotion was circling the drain, so to speak. And not always the same kind of emotion. Anastasia had witnessed a wide range of reactions in families of the deceased, from apathy to uncontrollable grief and sometimes even hatred.
Paul spoke again, his voice still choked up. “It will mean a lot to Caroline,” he said. “And, uh . . .”
Caroline was Paul’s wife of many decades. “Is there something else, Paul?” Anastasia ventured. They were a devoted couple and if Caroline was in pain, then Paul would be, too. But Anastasia had a feeling there was more to it. “Something I should know?”
Anastasia heard a loud exhale. “I wanted to tell you in person. But, okay, yes. Caroline thinks the girl was murdered.”
Uh-oh.
~*~
It had taken Paul ten minutes to explain the circumstances surrounding Terry Corbett’s death, and another fifteen to come to the point.
“We need you to investigate, Stas.”
Anastasia knew it would do no good to remind Paul that her expertise was as an embalmer—washing, disinfecting, suturing, reconstructing, dressing, cosmetizing as required. She’d come across many special cases, even ones that involved ethnic and religious considerations, or specific needs for victims of violence. She’d been trained for a broad spectrum of circumstances. Playing detective was not among them. She’d learned in fact, that her sewing skills were more important than any flair for police work.
She also knew that her claim would have little power since she’d been instrumental in solving the murder of one of Paul’s clients a couple of months ago. But that had been a fluke. A piece of evidence—a simple ATM receipt—had fallen into her hands as she prepared the body of the deceased for viewing. And, if she were being truthful, she’d have to admit to one other incident. While she was visiting her old friends and mentor in Boston, where she’d gone to school, she’d helped with a murder investigation. She could blame that one on Frank Galigani, of Galigani’s Mortuary, who had inspired her and supported her, as the only woman in her class. Frank, who was lifelong friends with a police detective, had pulled Anastasia into a case involving a murdered scientist. Then there was last February, when . . .
Still, it all amounted to only a few cases over the course of decades, but Paul and Caroline had been unduly impressed by her sleuthing, as he’d called it. Was that situation influencing the couple now, as they were forced to deal with the death of someone close to them? Would they see every client now as a potential murder victim? And Anastasia as the sleuth who solved the case? She hoped not. Just this one time, though, she’d see what she could do.
Anastasia switched to speaker mode so she could get ready for work while she listened to Paul. Clean jeans and shirt were all she needed. She kept lab coats at her most frequent venues, Paul’s among them. She pulled her hair into a ponytail, not only for the sake of the cap she’d soon be wearing in the prep room, but to remove from her view the strands of gray that seemed to multiply rapidly since her fiftieth birthday this year. As she dressed, she let Paul lay out the Terry Corbett case as he saw it.
The details were simple. Terry was to be married on Sunday. She and her close friends—her wedding party—signed into a weekend package at the Abrey Resort, a large hotel, tennis club, and spa on the edge of Berkeley. The festivities included the usual round of massages, scrubs, oils, and wraps, all thanks to the mother of the bride. Terry had her own suite; the bridesmaids paired up in other rooms; the groomsmen had a variable schedule. On Friday evening, everyone was together and in good health at dinner and drinks afterwards. When Terry didn’t show up for breakfast or morning tennis, someone checked her room and found her drowned in her whirlpool tub.
Paul did his best to put names and a label to everyone involved in the party�
��Lucas, the bridegroom; Erica Nichols, Terry’s childhood friend and maid of honor, who roomed with Rachel Willows, Terry’s coworker at a pharmaceutical company. Anastasia knew better than to try to keep everyone straight until she arrived at Babcock’s and could talk to Paul in person. Her fondest wish was that he’d have come to his senses by the time she got there, that he’d let her ply her trade with the new trocar Marty had bought her on her birthday, along with a new pair of tap shoes.
She smiled at Marty’s thoughtfulness, even though her choice of profession remained a mystery to him. The first time she wanted to show him pictures of a prep room at a new mortuary in town, he’d gagged.
“I’m just glad it’s the law that I’m not allowed to go in there,” he’d said.
“Not when there’s a client.”
“Not ever.”
She’d laughed and threatened to boycott his tap studio, but they both knew it was too late for that.
Anastasia used her Bluetooth to leave a message for Marty now: “I got called to work. Call when you’re done with class. I hope you’re having a good day.” She refrained from mentioning that she was relieved she’d have to abandon her unpacking chore.
TWO
The smile on Anastasia’s face faded as reminiscences of fun times with Marty were cut off as soon as she pulled into her reserved parking spot behind Babcock’s. The sight of Paul, waiting for her at the back entrance to his mortuary, sobered her. His posture—shoulders sagging, arms folded in front of him, head bent—made him seem even shorter than his five-foot-six. His dark complexion emphasized his mood; his black suit, usually pressed to perfection no matter the weather, slumped with the rest of him. A cloud hung over him, even on this sunny day. Anastasia wished she’d worn one of her bright summer dresses.
“Stas,” he said, holding the door for her. “She’s not here yet.”
Anastasia knew Paul meant that young bride-to-be Terry Corbett, Babcock’s latest client had not yet been released.
Paul led her to their small conference room, a pleasant area where he often met families of the deceased, instead of subjecting them to a cold office environment. Before they were seated, he pulled a notepad from his jacket pocket and set it on the table. Anastasia understood that they were to sit next to each other and go over what looked like a list, handwritten on Babcock’s logo note paper. Any other day, Paul would have had the notes typed and printed from his laptop. Another sign that things were tough today.
“I put this together while Caroline read the info to me over the phone, so it’s a little rough,” he said. “She’ll be here soon. Right now she wants to be with Terry’s mother.”
Anastasia craned her neck to the left to see the pad. In upper case letters she read ERICA, RACHEL, SHANNON, JESSIE, the bridesmaids whose names she remembered from Paul’s earlier briefing on the phone. Below the names were bulleted items.
ERICA
• M of Honor
• best friends since 1st grade
• runs program for troubled teens
RACHEL
• works as tech writer
• Terry was her new boss
• older than the others (35? 40?)
SHANNON
• lives with Jessie
• not a couple
• dated Lucas (groom)
JESSIE
• lives with Shannon
• engaged to Cody, an artist
“Caroline is coming in later,” Paul said. “As I said, she’s with Laura, who’s a widow, by the way.” He turned over a page of the notepad. More handwriting, this time with men’s names. Groom and groomsmen, Anastasia supposed, sparsely annotated.
LUCAS
• groom
• accountant
• met Terry at CAL
NOAH
• best man
• met Lucas ?
CODY
• Jessie’s fiancé
DAVID
• accountant
• works with Lucas
GARRETT
• ?
“This is pretty thorough,” Anastasia said, stretching the truth and, at the same time, wondering why the lists mattered. Was this Caroline’s idea of a suspect list? Possible witnesses to Terry’s fate? Who exactly found the bride’s body?
“Caroline obviously doesn’t know the guys as well as the ladies,” Paul said, his finger on Garrett, a complete unknown it seemed. “I guess she thinks these are the people who had the opportunity to . . . do something to Terry. You know, they had the means—that would be drowning—and the opportunity, since they were all there. But what the motive could be, I haven’t a clue.”
“Does Caroline really think one of the wedding party . . . did something to Terry? Aren’t these people all close friends?”
Paul shrugged. “Or friends of friends. It’s a start. Can you work with this? Caroline was thinking you could talk to them.” He ran his finger down the page, flipped it back to the women’s page, and ran down that one. They’re all still at the hotel. The police have asked them all to stay until they figure things out.”
Anastasia started. This was the first she’d heard about police involvement. Until now, she’d thought murder had been Caroline’s crazy idea, maybe in conjunction with Terry’s mother, Laura. “The police have been brought in?”
“You know the rules. When a young person in perfect health dies suddenly, outside of a hospital or ER, they always investigate to a certain extent.”
“Yes, of course, but then why does Caroline want me to—”
“Caroline doesn’t think the cops will take it very seriously. It looks like a ‘drowning while drunk’, if you know what I mean. They’ll probably write it off as ‘death by partying’.”
And what if it was just that? Would Caroline and Terry’s mother be able to live with that verdict? Anastasia decided that a cop’s job was ten times harder than hers.
“Don’t you think I should wait and start on Terry first?” she asked. A gentle suggestion, that she do what she was trained for, what she was hired to do.
Another shrug from Paul. He sat back in his chair and gave out a heavy sigh. Anastasia hadn’t seen him this affected by a client, not even when his own cousin died. “I guess so. Maybe there’ll be a clue.”
Anastasia nodded, her stress level increasing. She wished she could get up and do one of Marty’s limb-loosening shuffle routines. When Paul’s cell phone rang, she took advantage of the disruption to stand and stretch.
“I have to take this,” he said.
Anastasia swooped down on the lists, stuck them in her briefcase, and signaled that she’d be on her way. She didn’t wait for his agreement and didn’t look back.
THREE
Much as Anastasia wanted to get to work and do her best to make Terry as beautiful in death as she’d been in life, she had to wait for the justice system to do its job with whatever tests they needed. The embalming process interfered with most toxicology studies, which she assumed would be the main focus of the police investigation. According to Paul, there were no outward signs of violence on Terry’s person, so the medical examiner and the lab would be looking for evidence of poisoning.
Anastasia knew the signs of common poisons. Arsenic came to mind immediately. She couldn’t help smiling as she thought of its nickname: the inheritance powder. A designation earned since an arsenic compound was often used to kill off a family member who stood in the way of an inheritance. She recalled photos of burnt extremities as a result of overdoses of the odorless, colorless substance.
Anastasia had gone through a stage in mortuary school where she read accounts of the many women throughout history who’d used arsenic to murder their entire families for dowries, or later for insurance money. And if you included other poisons used for homicide or suicide, the list of victims was endless, beginning perhaps with Socrates and ending with noblemen, celebrities, and even a pope.
Was Terry Corbett’s name to be added to that long list? It wasn’t An
astasia’s business to know, except that her boss had dragged her into what he thought of as a case. If Paul and Caroline had their way, Anastasia would have been spending the waiting period for Terry’s body working on the list of so-called suspects, and visiting the Abrey Resort for clues.
She’d been to the Abrey for a weekend to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of Keicia’s parents. Anastasia remembered dozens of luxuriously appointed treatment and steam rooms. Party guests were able to take advantage of a full-service hair and nail salon, saline whirlpools, and an enormous fitness center with deluge showers that would have passed muster as a radiation decontamination facility. Anastasia supposed she should be grateful that the suspect list now in her briefcase hadn’t included the hundreds of employees of the resort.
Anastasia pushed away pangs of guilt as she headed for Dziva’s, the bookstore-cafe combo that her best friend, Keicia, owned and operated. She called Keicia, also her sometime shrink, from her car’s Bluetooth.
“I need a break,” she said, cranking up the air conditioning in her small hatchback. “Actually, I need food.”
“I’m on it.” Keicia’s laugh sent a much needed wave of relaxation over the ether, or whatever ran from one cell tower to another. A college semester in Kenya, with a month-long side trip to Zimbabwe and points south, had turned the petite California blond from Kathleen to Keicia. She’d yielded to her parents’ pressure and not changed her last name. Keicia Parsons had less of a goddess ring to it, so she went by her first name only, as much as possible.
Keicia became an unrelenting devotee of Dziva, the Goddess of Creation. “The moody Goddess of Creation,” she was quick to remind those who were not nice to her.
Anastasia doubted anyone was nasty to Keicia, who had a wide open spirit and whose goal was to embrace the world. The first clue might be her wardrobe, with no two hues alike. Quite the opposite of Anastasia’s narrow spectrum of browns and beiges, with the occasional detour to navy blue, all in keeping with her medium height and medium brown hair.