by DB Gilles
As I approached Mel, Alton, Perry and Vaughn, I picked up on part of what was being discussed.
“I don't want this getting out in the wrong way,” Mel bantered as he wiped the perspiration from his forehead, his slight lisp creeping in-between his words making him sound like Elmer Fudd. “I can't have people thinking they're going to be dug up if they're buried in my cemetery.”
“Calm yourself down now, Mel,” said Alton, his backwoods Louisiana accent making him sound like a Cajun crawfish trapper. He was fifty-two and had appeared out of nowhere to apply for a grave-digging job twenty-five years before. The position had been open for six weeks and, as always, was difficult to fill. Cemetery work was at the bottom end of the manual labor food chain, historically attracting drifters, drinkers and the chronically unemployable. Over the years Vaughn had learned to read an applicant quickly, making his decisions on gut instinct and the person’s eyes.
Vaughn hired Alton on the spot.
“How the hell is it not gonna get out, Mel?” Perry said. “A body was found in one of your mausoleums. What are we supposed to do, pretend it didn't happen?”
“Can't you play it down?” Mel asked.
“How do I play down a murder?”
“Y'all got to look at it from our point of view,” said Alton. “This here's sacred ground. Y'all can't have the folks believin' it's anything less. Right, Vaughn?”
Vaughn nodded a solemn yes.
“If it’s profits you guys are worried about,” said Perry. “This is the only cemetery within a thirty mile radius. You're not ever gonna run out of customers.”
“That's not the point,” Mel stammered. “It's bad enough that I have grave robbers running loose, but to have a body found in someone else's grave is such a... violation!”
“Mel's right,” said Vaughn, his crisp voice belying his age. “People are sensitive about their dead.”
“I know that, Vaughn,” said Perry respectfully. Vaughn and Perry's father were friends. Around Vaughn, Perry always behaved like an altar boy talking with an Archbishop.
“That's why this has to be handled with the utmost of discretion,” said Mel.
“Alright,” Perry said. “Fine! But let's get the body out of here, then we'll figure out how to break the news.”
“Thank you,” Mel said, then, as if he noticed me for the first time, said, “Hello, Del.”
I nodded to Mel. Alton pointed at me with his right index finger and thumb as if he were shooting a gun, which was his customary greeting. Then, with great pomposity, Perry stated, “I want to get this over with quick.” He rudely turned away from the others and came towards me. “The only thing I hate more than a dead body is being in a graveyard.”
Chapter 3
Before I had a chance to respond, Perry noticed the white Dunkin' Donuts bag in my left hand. “That for me?”
I nodded and handed him the bag.
He flipped the plastic lid off the container and noisily took his first sip. His eyes peered at me over the rim of the paper cup, then he bit into the donut. Crumbs dribbled out of both sides of his mouth. “Greg's at the mausoleum with the body. He'll help you load it into the hearse.”
Before I had a chance to acknowledge his instructions he walked away from me and turned his attention back to Mel Abernathy who was huddling with Vaughn and Alton.
Greg was sucking on a string of green dental floss. When he saw me approaching he stared, expressionless, his mouth hanging open, his watery brown eyes looking empty, lost. He spit the floss onto the grass.
Greg looked more like a drug addict than a policeman. He was balding and the top of his head was scaly, his brown hair stringy. His face covered with pockmarks and pimples. His beard didn't help to improve things much either. There was hair on his face, but only in random splotches connected by wisps of unhealthy-looking follicles.
He came off as a fifteen-year-old boy trying to look older so he wouldn’t get carded in a bar. Ironically, the only part of his face that was perfect and pleasant to look at was his teeth. They were as close to pearly white as I'd ever seen.
Greg didn't like me because I knew that his mother had committed suicide. Greg had found the body and with Perry Cobb's blessing had by-passed the mandatory autopsy which would have determined the cause of death. Mrs. Hoxey had been an active member of Dankworth's Catholic community. Greg felt that public knowledge of a suicide would have tainted the positive image his mother had maintained, so the cause of death was presented as a heart attack.
We dispensed with hellos. I said, “All set?” and his response was a curt “Yeah,” then we each grabbed an end of the body bag, lifted it and headed to the hearse.
“Where's Wendell?” I asked.
“Perry's got him scouring the other mausoleums that were broken into. Bastard sticks me with the shit work.” He looked over my shoulder. “Here he comes.”
I turned and saw Wendell about twenty yards away coming towards Greg and me. He quickened his pace and was standing next to us within ten seconds.
“Almost missed you,” said Wendell, a warm smile gracing his handsome face. He had blonde hair and looked like a young Harrison Ford.
I was about to speak, but Greg blurted, “Find anything?”
“No,” said Wendell.
“I knew it'd be a waste of time. I hate it when Perry plays cop.”
“Perry plays cop every day,” said Wendell more to me than to Greg.
Greg smirked. He hated working for Perry. It was a thankless job, more like Barney Fife to Andy Taylor, the difference being that Perry Cobb wasn't a kindly, laid back sort and Greg wasn't a lovable nerd. Perry treated Wendell with a measured respect, because of his experience on the Cincinnati police force, while with Greg he pulled rank at every turn.
“Looks like a big city case, eh, Wendell,” I said.
He nodded and raised his eyebrows. “Brings back the good old days in Cincinnati.”
“I’d like to get my teeth in this one,” said Greg. “But it’ll never happen. It'll be Perry’s chance to be the big cheese. Just once I'd like to have a shot. You had your chance in Cincinnati to prove yourself. I've never had my day in the sun. Probably never will as long as Perry's around.”
Suddenly Perry's voice boomed, “What the hell's the delay up there?”
We turned. Perry was staring at us as if we were five-year-olds.
“Let's get moving,” said Greg, then we hoisted up the body bag and headed for the hearse. Wendell walked alongside.
“You don't want this case, Greg,” said Wendell. “It'll never be solved. Too much time has passed.”
“Never by Perry,” said Greg.
“I saw the remains,” said Wendell. “That body's been in that mausoleum for years. Talk about a cold case. Perry doesn't have the skills to solve a murder that happened this morning with three eyewitnesses and a fingerprint.”
As we approached the hearse I noticed that Perry was still holding a small chunk of the donut I'd brought him. Wendell opened the vehicle's rear door, enabling us to slide the body bag inside.
To Wendell, Perry said, “Find anything?” and Wendell said “No.”
Perry paused for a few seconds, as if he were thinking something deep, then said, “Greg? Wendell? Let's talk.” He glanced at me. “Be right with you.”
As the three of them huddled, I noticed that Mel and Alton were in deep conversation and that Vaughn was off by himself. I went over to him.
“How'd you manage to find the open mausoleum?” I asked. “It's so remote back here.”
“Only thing left of me that's not falling apart is my hearing. Heard a scream. Had a hunch it came from around that direction. My guess is that it was the knucklehead who stumbled onto the corpse. Actually, it was more of a shriek. By the time I got here the punks were gone.”
“It was more than one?”
“People who sneak into cemeteries at night tend not to be alone.” He shot me a terse look and raised his thick eyebrows. “Well, not every
body.” I looked at him sheepishly. Years ago, on the night I met Vaughn, I had broken into Elm Grove cemetery, alone. I was about to respond to Vaughn's remark when Perry called out.
“Del? Let's go.”
I waved to Vaughn and headed towards Perry who stood with Greg and Wendell on either side.
“I'll be riding with you,” Perry said.
I knew someone would be coming along because of a regulation that required an appropriate law enforcement representative to accompany the remains while in transit to the morgue. If it was Wendell the trip was mostly BSing and telling jokes. If it was Greg, there was attitude and long silences. If it was Perry, it would be him pontificating on the problems of the world.
Perry instructed Wendell to put up some yellow crime scene tape around the mausoleum. then he told Greg to meet him at the Coroner's.
“What for?” Greg asked.
“To drive me back,” said Perry.
“Why can't Del drive you back?” he whined like a ten-year-old.
I would’ve asked the same question. In the past, I drove whoever came with me back to Dankworth.
“I’ll need to spend some time talking to the Coroner,” said Perry curtly. “That could take awhile. I don't want to hold up Del.” I was surprised by his consideration. “Ask Alton to drive my car back to the station house. Wendell, you bring Alton back out here.”
Wendell nodded his head yes, tipping his index finger off of his forehead in mock salute. Greg said, “Got it.” As he turned away he mumbled softly, “Asshole.”
Perry slid into the passenger side of the hearse. I started the engine and was about to pose a question.
“Don't ask me,” he said as he proceeded to remove a container of Skol chewing tobacco from his shirt pocket and stash two fingers worth into his mouth.
“Don't ask you what?” I said.
“If I have any idea who killed her.”
“I was going to ask if you thought that the grave robbers might've had something to do with it?”
“No way.”
He raised his left hand, then pointed his thumb towards the rear of the hearse. “Whoever that is... she's been dead for years. The assholes who broke into the mausoleum saw the body, shit a brick and took off. The other coffins in the other mausoleums were all yanked out of their crypts and pried open. There's a family buried in the mausoleum where the girl was found. Six people. According to the inscriptions on the outside of the door the last one to die was buried ninety-eight years ago. Only one coffin had been touched.”
“Where was the body?”
“Stashed in a corner. I figure the jerks who broke in were using a flashlight and had started in on the first coffin, then they stumbled onto the body and bolted.” He smirked.
“How do you know it's a female? I mean, when you say ‘girl’ you're implying that she was young. How can you tell?”
“The clothes she had on say so. For one thing, she was wearing one of those funny Virgin Island T-shirts. You know. In large letters across the chest it says I'M A VIRGIN, then in little tiny letters underneath it says... Islander. Get it? “I'm a Virgin... Islander?” He laughed.
“Plus, she wore a pair of cut-off jeans and sandals. A couple of cheap bracelets were on her wrists and two rings on her left hand and three on her right. Middle-aged women tend not to dress like that.”
“Interesting that she had all those rings on her fingers. The grave robbers didn't take them. Considering they were looking for jewels, wouldn't they have grabbed them?”
Perry nodded his head. “My feeling is that if you're the kind of creep who's gonna break into mausoleums and steal jewels, it's one thing to take it from a body that's been in a casket for a hundred years, but it's something else to rip off a corpse that shouldn't be there.” He paused, looking straight ahead. “What kind of fuckhead can go into a grave? How sick do you have to be to do that?”
He scratched the tip of his nose with his left index finger. I noticed the wedding ring. He had never removed it despite the fact that his wife, Jeanne, divorced him at least ten years ago. The story he wanted people to believe was that because of his weight gain during the marriage, he couldn't pull the ring off. But I held to the notion that he still carried a vicious torch for Jeanne.
“Can I make a suggestion about the killer, Perry?”
Perry looked at me, his left eyebrow arched slightly, not so much out of irritation, but amusement. “Shoot.”
“Whoever did it probably knew something about cemeteries.”
“How so?”
“He hid the body in an old mausoleum in the oldest Section of a really old cemetery. Better than half the graves in that particular Section and all the Sections around it are between ninety and a hundred-fifty years old. Some are even older. Nobody visits graves that old because paying respects is a generational thing.”
“Talk my language, Del.”
“Let's say you're a kid. Your grandfather dies. Maybe for a few years you go with your parents to visit his grave. But as you get older, you move out of your folk's house... you don't go to the cemetery to visit grandpa's grave anymore. Over the years your parents die. You pay your respects to them. You have a child. He never knew your grandfather so he's not gonna be very motivated to visit his grave. But he'll visit your grave, but chances are his kids won't have too much of an inclination to say a prayer over your father's or grandfather's grave. Get the picture, Perry?”
“What you're saying is nobody gives a good Goddamn about you after you're dead forty, fifty years.”
“A better way of putting it is that there's no one alive to give a damn about you after you're in the ground forty or fifty years. That's why the Old Section at the cemetery is such a perfect place to hide a body.”
“Where there's not a lot of traffic. Sonofabitch!”
“Other than the periodic great granddaughter of somebody, who for curiosity sake, decides to visit a grave or a family plot, the only ones who come around are the cemetery buffs.”
“Cemetery what?”
“Buffs. People who get a kick out of visiting old cemeteries and finding interesting headstones or the graves of famous people.”
“You gotta be yankin' my chain,” Perry sneered.
“Nope. People do tracings of birth and death dates. The epitaph. Whatever. I've seen people taking tracings at every cemetery I've visited. They take a piece of wax paper, press it on the headstone and trace over it with a pencil. Other people take photographs. Some people go to cemeteries all over the country, or the world, doing tracings. You'd be surprised at some of the things that are carved into headstones, especially the older ones. Some of them are somber and spiritual, others are hokey and sentimental. Some are funny. I have one from a graveyard in New Mexico that says: Here Lies Les Moore. No Less, No More.”
“You're a cemetery buff? And I thought I was screwed up for collecting old Mad magazines.” He laughed.
“Perry, it's just a harmless way to pass the time for people with a morbid fascination with death.”
“I never would've thought of that in a million years,” he said. “I'll put cemetery buffs at the top of my list of suspects. Probably stands to reason that my next batch of suspects would have to be people who may not be cemetery buffs, but who know something about cemeteries.”
“How do you mean?”
“The only other people who'd know anything about boneyards are cemetery employees and people who work at Funeral Homes.” He grinned impishly. I could see the grotesque residue of freshly chewed tobacco in his mouth.
“Are you saying I'm a suspect?”
“You been working at Henderson's a long time. I'd say you know a shitload about cemeteries. How the hell many people have you buried? I bet you know Elm Grove cemetery like the back of your hand.”
“If I killed the woman, why would I be volunteering all of this information?”
Perry didn't miss a beat. “Probably to throw me off.” Suddenly a sound somewhere between a long belch and a ch
uckle resonated from the bottom of his throat. “But you better believe every single person who works at Elm Grove cemetery or your Funeral Home or DiGregorio's is on my suspect list.”
“If you're going to think along those lines, don't limit your suspect list to just the Funeral Homes here in Dankworth. There are dozens of Funeral Homes in the County who bury people at Elm Grove.”
“I'm aware of that, Del, but my point is that you and DiGregorio's are located in Dankworth, so I'm pinpointing you guys first.” He looked at his watch. “How fast you going?”
“Fifty-five. The speed limit.”
“Seeing as how I'm Police Chief in this fine town, speed it up.”
He tipped his hat down over his eyes and as he proceeded to make himself comfortable, softly mumbled “Wake me up when we get to the Coroner's, Coffin Boy.” He closed his eyes. Within thirty seconds he was snoring.
Chapter 4
Perry slept for the balance of the trip.
I spent the time wondering if my theory that whoever killed the girl had to know something about cemeteries was on the money or miles off base. The more I pondered the notion, the stronger I felt that I was right. Had Perry not turned things around and put me on the spot I would have volunteered more information that might have helped him in his investigation.
Like the fact that he was dead wrong about the idea that working at a cemetery or Funeral Home automatically gave someone special knowledge about cemeteries. That was nonsense. Take Nolan. Even though he had been an embalmer for nearly thirty-five years, I would have bet money that he was as ignorant of cemeteries as he was of piloting a plane.
Nolan's work, like that of all embalmers, was done in the Embalming Room. He knew death and corpses and a dozen different ways to make a dead body look presentable, but his job-related exposure to cemeteries was nonexistent. Once he placed a freshly embalmed, made-up and dressed corpse into its coffin, as far as he was concerned, his work was completed.
As for Nolan's spare time, if he hung around Elm Grove exploring old headstones, he never mentioned it to me and I never heard about it from Vaughn or any of the other cemetery workers and it would have been the kind of thing that Vaughn would have told me.