The Unraveling of Violeta Bell mm-3

by C. R. Corwin

  There was a wall of flowers across the front of the chapel. Centered in front, on a beautiful marble-topped stand, rested a bright, violet-colored urn. To the right of the urn stood a blue, yellow, and red flag. I poked Gabriella. “Looks like somebody believed her.”

  She responded with a “Huh?” Which was not a bad response given that there was no way in hell she could know what I was mumbling about.

  “That’s the old Romanian flag,” I explained. “It has the royal coat of arms on it. Either Violeta left detailed instructions for her funeral, or somebody knows for sure what we don’t know for sure.”

  There were several big sofa chairs in the front row. The family chairs. In one sat bread heiress Kay Hausenfelter in a flowery summer dress that showed too much back and probably too much front. In another sat Ariel Wilburger-Gowdy. Next to her sat her antsy, hot-tempered daughter, Professor Barbara Wilburger. Both were dressed in black. Both wore wide-brimmed black hats. Next to the professor sat Gloria McPhee, wearing a somber gray and brown plaid suit. Next to her was husband, Phil, sweltering in tweed. Just as the minister stepped behind his portable pulpit and tapped the microphone to make sure it was on, I recognized someone else. His arms were folded across his chest, pulling his suit coat tight across his ample back. It was Detective Scotty Grant. What in the hell was he doing there?

  The harpist stopped plinking and folded her hands in her lap. The service began. The minister read a slew of Bible verses, including that one I like from Ecclesiastes, about there being a time for everything. He didn’t say much about Violeta herself, except that, “I’m told she loved life” and “From the looks of things here today, she had many devoted friends.” Clearly this minister wouldn’t have known that woman in that purple jar from Adam.

  The minister read a final verse of optimistic scripture then stood aside. Kay Hausenfelter swiveled her way to the pulpit. Good, I thought. The other Queens of Never Dull were going to regale us with their favorite memories of the dearly departed. There was a chance I was going to learn something interesting.

  Said Kay Hausenfelter, “As you know, I was an exotic dancer during my youth. Only back then we ladies of the burleycue called ourselves striptease artists. Anyway, Violeta never once looked down her nose at me. Unlike so many others in this town. She loved people for who they were.” Kay raked the tears out of her eyes with her thumb and said this: “Violeta Bell never said much about her life before coming to Hannawa. But I always figured it must have been a little like mine. Memorable but worth forgetting. Anyway, we had so much fun together.” She blew a kiss at Violeta’s urn. “You were a hoot and a half, sweet woman. I will miss you to pieces.”

  Kay went back to her chair. Ariel Wilburger-Gowdy went to the pulpit. Said Ariel, “My friend Violeta Bell loved antiques. And I’m not talking about Kay Hausenfelter or Gloria McPhee! And I’m sure not talking about me!” Everyone laughed. People love to laugh at funerals. It’s permission to spit death in the eye. I looked to see if Gabriella was writing it down. She was.

  Unfortunately it proved to be the last interesting thing Ariel Wilburger-Gowdy said. For the next ten minutes she talked about homelessness, global warming, eradicating adult illiteracy, and the need to spay and neuter our pets. I could see why she drove her daughter up the wall. Finally, she got around to Violeta Bell. “Each of us is born with a gift, which God expects us to pay forward during the time She has allotted us here on Mother Earth.” I reached over and stopped Gabriella from writing that down. No way in hell was I going to let anything icky get into The Herald-Union.

  “My gift was spending my father’s money,” Ariel continued. “Violeta’s gift was spreading joy. The minute you met her, you just knew she loved who she was. Inside and out. And she expected you to love yourself inside and out, too. As Three Dog Night once sang, ‘Joy to the fishes in the deep blue sea. Joy to you and me.’” Again I stopped Gabriella’s pen.

  Ariel now turned and spoke to Violeta’s ashes, just as Kay Hausenfelter had. “In some ways I never really lived until I met you, my beloved friend. And I promise you, I am going to keep on living just as long as I can.”

  That I let Gabriella write down.

  Now Gloria McPhee came to the pulpit. She didn’t speak from the heart like Kay, or from an over-active social conscience like Ariel Wilburger-Goudy. She read off a sheet of pink stationary. And for my money, she’d labored over it far too long. “Perhaps we will never know why Violeta had to die the way she did,” she began. “Perhaps we will never know the secrets she kept inside her while she lived and lived and lived. But we do know of her generosity. Day by day she gave us everything she had. And since her passing, we’ve learned that she left all she had to the Hannawa Art Museum.”

  Well, that sure made my antennae spin. I knew from my talk with Detective Grant that Gloria was the executrix of Violeta’s will. Which meant she knew Violeta died pretty much penniless.

  Gloria, for better or worse, had more to read. “Violeta Bell claimed to be the queen of Romania. That’s right, the queen of Romania. She told us a million times. In that whimsical way of hers that said, ‘I don’t care if you believe me or not.’”

  Detective Grant took that opportunity to look over his shoulder and wink at me.

  Gloria finished reading. “If Violeta was not the queen of Romania, she should have been.” Before sitting down, Gloria curtsied to the urn. I didn’t know whether to cry or throw a shoe.

  The minister led a final prayer. The harpist starting plinking. Row by row, people shuffled past the urn. Some brushed their fingers across it. Some bent and kissed it. Many said a silent prayer. I went straight to Gloria McPhee. I introduced myself. I told her that I’d worked with Gabriella Nash on her story about the Queens of Never Dull. “Putting that Romanian flag by her remains was a very nice touch,” I said.

  Gloria smiled weakly. “She just loved that flag.”

  “That particular flag?”

  “She said she’d had it since she was a girl.”

  “And her leaving everything to the art museum,” I said. “Isn’t that something.”

  Her eyes got as cold as those little round ice cubes they put in highballs. She knew I was laying it on thick, or, as Ike likes to say, giving her the old schmaltzaroo. “Kay told us you came to see her,” she said. “That you were feeling guilty about the story your paper did on us.”

  I bobbled my head contritely.

  “And do you know what I told Kay, Mrs. Sprowls?”

  “I can’t imagine.”

  Gloria moved in close, to make sure I could hear her whisper over the harpist. “I told her you were that librarian who sticks her nose into murders.”

  I’d been outed again. And I was glad. It made my nose-sticking easier. “I went to see Ariel, too. But all I got was her daughter’s two cents on the matter.”

  Gloria pulled back. Her eyebrows shot up. She gave one of the best Lauren Bacalls I’ve ever seen. “I’d bite down hard on those two pennies if I were you,” she said. “To see if they’re made of real copper.”

  “I’ll put it on my to-do list.”

  She mellowed. “I suppose you’d like to talk to me, too.”

  “I’d like that.”

  “Expect a call,” she said.

  I looked for Detective Grant. He was at the front of the chapel, reading all the little cards on the flower baskets. I snuck up beside him. “Any surprises?”

  He flinched. As if a scorpion had just crawled up his pantleg. He took a couple of deep breaths. “No.”

  And there weren’t any surprises. No flowers from dukes or duchesses. No flowers from anybody named Bell. No flowers from outside Hannawa.

  We followed the other people outside. A black limousine was waiting under the portico. Weedy was circling the crowd like a wolf, clicking away. After a few minutes the four Queens of Never Dull came out. Kay and Ariel had their arms around each other. Gloria had her arms around Violeta’s urn. Weedy got the picture.

  “Any objections if I
ride out to the cemetery with you?” Grant asked.

  “Not a one.” A few minutes later we were in the funeral procession, buzzing up West Apple in Gabriella’s little bumblebee car, me up front, Weedy and Grant scowling from the back like a pair of adjoined hippopotami.

  It took the procession a good half hour to reach the cemetery. It was out in Bloomfield Township. It was one of those new corporately owned jobbies that don’t allow gravestones-just those flat, bronzed plaques to make the mowing easier. It was called Riverbend Moor. As if there actually was a river nearby, bent or otherwise. As if anybody in America knew what a moor was. And according to the big, flagstone-encased sign in front, it was not a cemetery at all. It was a “family memory garden.” There was an 800 number on the sign, so you could call and make your reservations on their nickel.

  The procession snaked through the gates and parked along the drive. People got out of their cars, stretching and twisting until their undergarments were back in place. It was a big cemetery. Big and sterile. The grass was short and brown. There was a sprinkling of small trees still tethered to their stakes. There was a chalky-white angel statue surrounded by a ring of red geraniums. At the top of the hill sat the columbarium, the modern glass and brown-brick monstrosity where Violeta’s ashes would spend eternity.

  “I’ve never been in a columbarium before,” I confessed to Detective Grant as we followed the walkway toward a pair of tall, copper-covered doors. “But I’d hear they’re quite the thing these days.”

  “You’re in for a real treat,” he said.

  I can’t say it was a treat. But it was interesting. The building had a high, vaulted ceiling. All glass, so that rays of sunlight were shooting down at every angle, and in every color, like rainbows almost. The marble walls were lined with niches for the urns. Each niche was maybe a foot-and-a-half square. They were lined up eight across and eight high. They looked like giant trophy cases.

  Anyway, each individual niche had a glass door and a lock. And what made it all so interesting is the way the niches were decorated. Next to the urns were favorite family photos and keepsakes. Baseballs. Teacups. A favorite pair of shoes or fishing lure. Military medals. Big-eyed Precious Moments figurines. Bibles opened to special passages. One niche contained a half-smoked cigar resting in one of those horrible topless-woman ashtrays. But most were in good taste and quite touching. I’d always envisioned myself being lowered into the ground in a casket. But the place did make me think.

  Violeta Bell’s niche had a very nice view of the pond and sitting garden outside. It was in the third row, too, so you didn’t have to stoop too low or stretch too high to see inside. Gloria put the urn into the niche. Kay placed a ceramic bell next to it. It was covered with hand-painted violets. Ariel put a folded classifieds section from The Herald-Union inside. A half-dozen garage sales were circled. Gloria took a small wooden box out of her purse and put that inside. The box was about the size of a harmonica, maybe five inches long and a couple of inches wide. A fancy little box.

  Gloria closed the glass door. The click of the lock echoed across the columbarium. The minister conducted a brief service. There was a little sniffling and a lot of silence. People headed for their cars.

  Detective Grant locked his arm in mine and eased me off the walkway, away from Gabriella and Weedy. We walked along a row of those bronzed plaques, twenty or thirty of them, until we were well out of eavesdropping range. “So, Maddy,” he asked, grinning like a Buddha statue. “How’s your investigation going?”

  “Badly. And yours?”

  “It’s taken an interesting twist. One I figured you’d want to know about before the brown stuff hits the fan.”

  “Before Dale Marabout’s story comes out tomorrow, you mean?”

  “Pretty much the same thing-no?”

  Maybe I was only the paper’s librarian, but I was a newspaperwoman. And I was a good friend of Dale Marabout’s. I had my loyalties. I took the offensive. “Given that it took you so long to release the body for cremation, I gather this interesting twist of yours has something to do with the autopsy.”

  He was still grinning but he suddenly looked a lot more like Beelzebub than Buddha. “It seems that when the coroner did his thing-how can I put this-a few things were missing inside.”

  The sun was suddenly very hot. “Things missing?”

  “Everything you’d expect to find on the outside was there-but inside.”

  “Scotty-what are you saying?”

  He knew me well enough to get to the skinny. “It seems that once upon a time Violeta Bell had been a man.”

  The sun was now sitting directly on top of my head. “Are we talking sex change here?”

  “Yes, we are,” he said. “Yes, we are.”

  “Heaven’s to Betsy! First she’s the queen of Romania and now she’s a man?”

  Grant took my arm and started us toward the car. “We live in interesting times, don’t we?”

  I slipped my arm out of his. “I hate to go liberal on you, but does the whole world have to know? She was who she wanted to be. And apparently didn’t want anyone to know.”

  “I’m a very open-minded guy,” he said. “I’ve got a transgendered officer in my department. I’d be happy to let Violeta Bell’s secret stay right up the hill there in that jar.”

  “But it’s public record?”

  “And it could be pertinent to the case,” he added. “Transgenders get murdered all the time. Boyfriends who aren’t too happy with the news.”

  “Boyfriend? She was seventy-two!” I laughed at my own stupidity. “What am I saying-I’m sixty-nine with a boyfriend.”

  Grant helped me over the droopy chain that ran along the edge of the drive. “I’ve got a press conference at four to spill the beans. You want to come?”

  “Unfortunately, I’ve got a doctor’s appointment.”

  ***

  Dr. Menke finished his examination. He scooted back on his stool. “I figured they might be the culprits,” he said.

  It was not what I wanted to hear. “They’re that big?”

  “A couple of beauts. You should have them removed.”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “It’s a relatively simple procedure.”

  “Absolutely not.”

  He stood up. Deposited the tongue depressor in the wastebasket. “Like I said, your test results show that you have obstructive sleep apnea. Which is often caused by enlarged tonsils. And like I said-”

  “A couple of beauts?”

  “More than likely your swollen tonsils are the result of an allergic response to something,” he explained. “Your body has ordered immune cells to take up residence in your tonsils to fight off the infection. That’s what puffs them up.”

  I slid off the examination table. “I thought allergies made you sneeze.”

  “They can cause all sorts of interesting reactions,” he said. “And given that your snoring is a relatively new problem-or so you say-then I’d say you were only recently exposed to this allergen.”

  I rewound my memory tapes and played them fast forward. “Can you be allergic to a man?”

  He chuckled. Let me know that my time was just about up by grabbing the doorknob. “Have you recently exposed yourself to one, Mrs. Sprowls?”

  I sure wasn’t going to answer that. “How about a dog?”

  “A much more likely culprit,” he said.

  15

  Saturday, August 5

  Ike was not happy. Not with the Cream of Wheat I’d made for our breakfast. Not with my refusal to have my tonsils out. “I’m not mad at you,” he assured me as we sat in the breakfast nook watching a pair of squirrels plunder the birdfeeder outside. “I’m just pointing out the inconsistency of your stubbornness.”

  “The inconsistency of my stubbornness?”

  “That’s right,” he said, wagging his spoon at me. “We’re choking down this tasteless gruel because of your bad cholesterol-”

  “The male species comes with good and bad
cholesterol, too, you know.”

  “-But you don’t care one iota how many times a night you stop breathing!”

  “If I make you eggs will you shut up about my tonsils?”

  “Good try.”

  “I’m just trying to be consistent, Ike.”

  “And I’m just trying to keep you from falling over dead.”

  “Good! We’ve met each other half way. Now eat your gruel so I can read the paper.” I snapped the paper open and read the headline across the top of page one:

  Stunned Police Say

  Slain Woman Born A Man.

  I’d already read the story twice that morning-once on the trunk of Ike’s car, where the paperboy had graciously thrown it, and once sitting on my front step-but how can you not read a story like that over and over?

  By Dale Marabout

  Hannawa-Union Staff Writer

  HANNAWA-The autopsy of 72-year-old antique dealer Violeta Bell revealed that she had undergone a sex change operation earlier in life, Police Detective Scotty Grant said.

  “We debated long and loud whether to release such a personal detail about the deceased,” Grant told a hastily called press conference yesterday. “But given that Miss Bell’s murderer is still at-large, we decided that public disclosure might facilitate our investigation.”

  While Grant refused to discuss what he called the “more intimate details” of the coroner’s examination, he did say that the autopsy report “shows unequivocally that Bell had been born male.”

  “Makes you wonder if the other Never Dullers knew,” I said.

  Ike scraped the last lump of Cream of Wheat from his bowl. He spooned it into his mouth and pretended to enjoy it. “How could they not know? Every time I see a person of that variety I know it.”

  “And how do you know that?”

  He laughed at his foolishness. “I guess I wouldn’t, would I?”

  “Still, you’ve got to wonder if the killer knew.”