by Elaine Viets
“But I have a coupon,” Larry said. “My friend Bert lives in Pompano Beach, which I think is near you. He sent me a coupon for a low-cost cremation. It’s good anywhere in Broward County, where you live. You can get Dolores cremated for only six hundred dollars. That includes the coffin.”
Helen squeezed Phil’s hand so hard it turned red, then said, “Larry, this is my mother’s funeral, not a sale at Costco. She will not be thrown away like a full ashtray. She wants a funeral in her parish church with all of her friends there and she will have it.”
“But Helen, dear, that’s so wasteful. We can have a memorial service at church, and the ladies’ sodality will serve tea and sandwiches. Those are free. I’d have to make a slight donation, of course, but . . .”
“I’m sure your donation will be skinnier than a heroin addict,” Helen said. Margery frowned at her, and Helen tried to rein in her rage. “Larry, my mother has left you her money and her house. Surely there should be enough money for her wishes.”
“Well, dear, housing prices aren’t what they used to be—”
Helen interrupted the dithering and shrieked, “I’ll pay the freakin’ shipping costs myself.”
“And where will you get the money, dear?”
“I’ll sell my body on the street, Larry. I’ll hold up a gas station. I’ll get the money some way. And my sins will be on your soul!”
Margery clamped her hand over Helen’s mouth. “Shut up and think before you say another word,” she whispered in Helen’s ear, then took her hand away.
“Larry,” Helen said slowly. “I’m sorry. My mother’s illness has upset me. I will pay for her funeral. It won’t cost you a penny.”
“Well, that’s very generous, dear, but—”
“And if you don’t say yes, my sister and I will start dialing all the women on the parish calling tree. We’ll contact every widow and tell them how you are treating our mother. Those women will be shocked. The parade of pot roasts will stop. No more free food, Larry. You’ll starve before you see another home-cooked meal. Do you understand?”
“Yes, Helen. Your mother said you could be forceful. Dolores can be buried in St. Louis. But I get to pick out the funeral home.”
“Knock yourself out. Maybe you can make it a double ceremony.”
Margery glared at Helen.
“I’m sorry,” Larry said, “but I didn’t get that last sentence. Something on the double?”
“I said thank you for a decision on the double,” Helen said.
CHAPTER 10
The Coral Rose Cafe was small and simple: two rooms scented with coffee and warm sugar. It was very Hollywood. The other Hollywood, the casual beach town between Miami and Fort Lauderdale. Helen’s breakfast with Vera was a break between death duties—her mother’s lingering exit and Chrissy’s violent end.
Helen’s plan to order fresh fruit was derailed when she saw blueberry pancakes arrive at the next table. They were made with blueberries, not canned fruit. That counted as fresh fruit, didn’t it?
“I have to order those,” she said to Vera. “After all, how often do I get blueberry pancakes with real maple syrup?”
“As often as I snowmobile on Hollywood Beach,” Vera said. “I’m going for the eggs Benedict with portobello mushrooms.”
Vera told the waitress, “Please don’t skimp on the hollandaise sauce. I’d like the fried potatoes and could you bring extra fruit bread?”
How could Vera look so trim and muscular when she ate like a linebacker? Helen wondered. The woman was a mystery. Helen still hadn’t figured out how Vera managed frizz-free hair in the Florida humidity.
When the waitress left with their order, Vera said, “How are you? You look a little ragged.”
“I am. The doctor says Mom doesn’t have long.” Helen felt the tears rush in and said, “Let’s talk about something else.”
“You were right,” Vera said. “Chrissy didn’t commit suicide. She was murdered. Detective McNally confirmed it. Chrissy was stunned with that Limoges pineapple, then hanged.”
Helen winced.
“At least she was unconscious when she died,” Vera said. “Poor little thing.”
“Are the police still at the shop?” Helen asked.
“I run into one every time I turn around,” she said. “Cops make me nervous. Detective McNally keeps asking questions like he thinks I killed Chrissy. I’m going to need a lawyer soon and there’s no money coming in.”
“Why would he suspect you? You wouldn’t kill a good source,” Helen asked. “Chrissy brought in prime merchandise.”
“McNally said I was in the back of the store when Chrissy was killed,” Vera said. “I was messing around with the silk scarves that morning. That’s true, but so were Roger and Commissioner Stranahan.”
“But Loretta left before Chrissy was killed, didn’t she?” Helen said.
“I personally let her out the back door. I gave her an alibi and let the cops loose on me,” Vera said.
“I know Danny the developer killed his wife,” Helen said. “I wish we could prove it. You saw how he treated Chrissy. He yelled at her. He dragged her to the back like a caveman and bruised her arm. She was afraid of him.”
“Chrissy was so afraid of him, she bruised my arm,” Vera said. “She grabbed it and made me promise I wouldn’t tell Danny about the money she made at my store. She even gave me the pony-hair purse as a bribe. I’m keeping it, too. I earned it. I showed my bruises to McNally, but the detective said I could have gotten them from anyone, even a boyfriend.
“Danny is as protected as the manatee. The police will be gone tomorrow, or so they say. I think they’ll be harder to get rid of than roaches. At least I can open the store again at ten o’clock. I hope I’ll have customers. Can you work tomorrow?”
“Unless Mom takes a sudden turn for the worse,” Helen said.
“Are you sure you’re ready to come to work?” Vera asked.
“Please,” Helen said. “It will take my mind off things. I have to make my mother’s funeral arrangements this afternoon.”
Helen was grateful when plates of fragrant food arrived with a basket of warm breakfast bread and the conversation ended. She slathered on butter and poured half the Vermont syrup crop for 2009 on her cakes. The two women dined in blissful silence for a few minutes.
Then Helen asked, “I don’t understand why Detective McNally is going after you. Isn’t the husband the chief suspect when a wife dies?”
“I thought so, but the cops are all over me like fleas on a hound. Aw, crap. I’ve dripped hollandaise on my Lilly Pulitzer shirt.” Vera dunked her napkin in her water glass and dabbed at the stain on the turquoise-and-white-striped shirt.
“New shirt?” Helen asked.
“New old shirt,” Vera said. “Mrs. Vanderbilt brought it in. I think she wore it once.”
“Why did you code name your Lilly Pulitzer source Mrs. Vanderbilt?” Helen asked. “She’s a dreadful snob, right?”
“Right. She sees herself as the social arbiter of Hendin Island. She’s pleased to be named after the creator of the Four Hundred. My Mrs. Vanderbilt has never seen any photos of the society leader. The real Mrs. V. was no size two.”
“Your major jeans source is Sookie Stackhouse,” Helen said, “but she doesn’t look anything like Anna Paquin, the True Blood actress.”
“My Sookie dates a real bloodsucker,” Vera said. “My code names are little jokes, and the jokes are on my ladies. But they don’t know it.” Vera’s smile was a hard bloodred slash.
“Why name them at all?” Helen asked.
“Helps me keep track of things.” Vera took another sip of coffee. “In their world, it would be a disaster if anyone found out Mrs. Big Bucks was buying Mrs. Fat Cat’s castoffs. Planets would collide and stars would fall from the sky. So I choose buyers from outside their orbits.
“My Glenn Close serves on a lot of boards and wears serious suits. Emily usually buys them. She’s a drug rep who needs to dress well when
she visits doctors’ offices, but she can’t afford designer suits. The rest of Glenn’s suits are usually bought by Commissioner Stranahan and Tara, an up-and-coming young lawyer.”
“What if your Glenn’s husband had an affair with Tara?” Helen asked. “Wouldn’t he notice she was wearing his wife’s old suit?”
“That’s the sad part,” Vera said. “Once the honeymoon is over, the trophy wives are invisible to their husbands. Glenn’s husband would rip that secondhand suit off Tara so fast, he’d never see it.”
Helen forked in another mouthful of blueberry pancake. “What I don’t get is why Chrissy had to sell her clothes at Snapdragon’s in the first place. Her maneuvers cost Danny a fortune, just so she could have some spending money. Danny would have been better off giving her three grand rather than having her collect two hundred fifty after you sold a purse that he bought for three thousand dollars.”
“It’s not about money,” Vera said. “It’s about control. Some of these rich men give their wives allowances like little kids, but the women have no money of their own. The wives have unlimited shopping at places like the Galleria. They’re on a tight leash. The clever ones figure out how to get off the leash. They buy expensive things, wait until the store’s return policy expires, then sell the clothes to me on consignment. They only get a fraction of the money back, but it’s their money, not their husband’s. The husband keeps the illusion that he’s in control. The leashed wives have their secret bank accounts or stashes for their cash. Maybe they use it to buy gold cigarette lighters for their boy toys, or drugs, or maybe they’re saving it to pay a divorce lawyer. But they are desperate for money of their own.”
“My grandmother did that,” Helen said. “She wasn’t rich, but she was a traditional wife. My grandfather wouldn’t give her spending money. She was on a tight household budget, figured down to the last can of cleanser. She’d wait until Grandpa had a few beers and fell asleep. Then she’d tiptoe into their bedroom and take his pocket change. But that was almost a hundred years ago.”
“In the world of the rich, marriage hasn’t changed that much,” Vera said. She mopped up the last of her hollandaise sauce with a triangle of English muffin.
“What about murder?” Helen asked.
“That’s why Chrissy’s murder is so complicated,” Vera said. “All the suspects are either rich or politicians.”
“Don’t forget bargain-hunting Jordan,” Helen said. “She was there, too, and alone in the back.”
“She’s poor but weird,” Vera said.
“What about Roger?” Helen asked. “He’s not rich.”
“He’s a hanger-on. Or maybe that’s banger-on. He likes to bed his rich ladies. There are no normal suspects.”
Helen was home before noon. She changed into a dark pantsuit and climbed into Margery’s big white rectangular car. The cozy, sugar-scented Coral Rose Cafe vanished in a cloud of Margery’s cigarette smoke as they drove to the Florida Family Funeral Home.
Even on the porch, the air smelled of hothouse flowers and felt heavier, as if accumulated sorrow weighed it down. A grandfather clock gave a single, solemn bong! as Helen and Margery entered the funeral home.
“Why do grandfather clocks sound so gloomy in funeral homes?” Helen asked.
“What do you expect?” Margery asked. “It’s a place for grieving. Though some funerals I’ve been to needed a cuckoo clock—and a referee.”
Helen barely recognized her landlady this afternoon. Margery wore a pale lavender shirtwaist. Matching pumps hid her orange pedicure. Her fingernail polish was a subdued pink. She’d left her wild outfits and gladiator sandals at the Coronado.
Margery had stubbed out her cigarette on the porch, but Helen thought smoke still trailed after her.
“Why are you staring at me?” Margery asked.
“You’re dressed for a June Cleaver look-alike contest.”
“I’m trying to look like a respectable citizen who can fork over enough dough for a funeral,” Margery said. “You don’t have any money.”
“I have eight hundred dollars in cash,” Helen said.
“Hah. This will cost five thousand minimum. Where will you get the other forty-two hundred?”
“Phil gave me the money.”
“Good,” Margery said. “That’s what a fiancé is supposed to do.”
“His gift comes with strings,” Helen said. “He made me promise that when we fly to St. Louis for the funeral, we’ll hire a good lawyer to fight my divorce. He wants all the paperwork in order so we can get married legally.”
“Thank the Lord,” Margery said. “And why are you whispering? We’re not in church.”
“It’s all the stained glass and candles,” Helen said.
A sober-suited receptionist appeared. “We have an appointment with Cassie, your preneed specialist,” Margery told her.
The receptionist seated them in an office the size of an upright coffin, painted a lugubrious shade of pink. There was room for an undersized desk, two client chairs and a rack of pamphlets headlined Plan for Dignity at the End of Life.
Cassie squeezed in between the wall and the desk and sat down. The preneed specialist looked like an overgrown cheerleader: small, smiley and chirpy. She had a perky dark bob and a cat pin on her gray suit. A black cat.
Cassie arranged her smiling face into a professionally sad expression. “Now, how may we help you—Miss . . . ?”
“I’m Helen Hawthorne and this is my friend Margery Flax. We’re here about my mother. She’s in a nursing home in Fort Lauderdale. Her doctor says she hasn’t much time left. Mother was down here on a trip and took ill suddenly. She wants to be buried in St. Louis, where she’s lived all her life. I want to make the arrangements now, while I can think clearly.”
“Wise,” Cassie said. “We offer thoughtful care and affordable dignity. Let me explain the process.
“When the time comes, we would pick up your mother and bring her to our care. She will be washed, embalmed and dressed here. We will have her transported by plane to St. Louis. We will ask that you call the St. Louis funeral home to receive her at the airport. Picking her up and preparing her in our care is twenty-eight hundred ninety-five dollars.”
Helen wondered why the home didn’t round out the price to a flat twenty-nine hundred dollars.
“That price will include a one-hour viewing for the immediate family,” Cassie said.
“I’m the only one here and I’ve seen her,” Helen said. “I mean, alive.”
“You don’t have to have a private viewing if you don’t wish one,” Cassie said. “Our caskets start at eight hundred ninety-five dollars and go up.”
Again that ninety-five dollars. Helen felt a wild urge to giggle.
“The actual cost of returning your mother home will depend upon the casket you choose,” Cassie said. “You can make that choice today. When your mother is ready to leave, we will drive her to the airport.”
Cassie made it sound like a taxi service. Maybe they had a special airport shuttle for the dead, Helen thought, using black vans.
“Will she fly on a cargo plane?” Helen asked.
“Your mother will fly commercial,” Cassie said. “It’s a well-kept secret, but most commercial flights have at least one casket on board, especially here in Florida, where so many of our citizens come from other states.”
“Will the passengers see her getting on the plane?” Helen asked. She had a vision of her mother’s casket waiting on the tarmac, piled high with rolling suitcases, baby strollers and golf bags.
“No,” Cassie said. “The casket will be placed in an air tray, which has a wood cover.”
“So the airline won’t roll the casket out with the luggage?” Helen asked.
Margery looked at her strangely.
Cassie said smoothly, “Nothing like that. The air tray, which is required by the airlines, is one hundred twenty-five dollars. No one on the flight will know there’s a casket on board. We will make sure that your mother tr
avels with dignity. The airfare will be about five hundred dollars.”
“How soon after she . . . uh . . . passes,” Helen began. Suddenly, “dies” seemed too difficult to say. “. . . can Mom go home?”
“She could go home within the week after the certificate is signed by the doctor. There probably won’t be an autopsy, since your mother is under a doctor’s care. Any death certificates needed are ten dollars each. Would you like to see our caskets now? We offer dignity no matter what your budget.”
“Let’s go,” Helen said. The room was claustrophobic. Helen hoped if she moved around, she would lose the urge to giggle.
The showroom reminded Helen of a used-car lot, with polished caskets lined up in rows. She settled on a midpriced wooden casket with a mahogany finish and silver handles.
“The lining has pink overtones to flatter the complexion. This is a very warm look,” Cassie said.
“Right,” Helen said. “We wouldn’t want Mother to look cold.”
Margery glared her into silence.
“Will you be purchasing a slumber robe?” Cassie asked.
“A what?” Helen said.
“She means a shroud,” Margery said. “They look like nightgowns to me.”
“They’re very well made and dignified,” Cassie said.
“I think Mother would be more comfortable in her own clothes,” Helen said. “I can ask my sister to FedEx our mother’s favorite dress.”
“Very good. Do you have a recent picture of your mother? That will help us prepare her hair and makeup so she looks as natural as possible.”
“My sister can send that, too,” Helen said. “Mother has her own wig, and that’s been washed and styled.”
“Good,” Cassie said. “Then her hair will look just the way she always wears it.”
They were crammed back in the sorrowful pink room. Cassie reached into the undersized desk and pulled out a pile of papers and a black pen.
“If your mother passes in the night after our business hours,” she said, “it would help if you signed the paperwork now so that you could contact us and we could take her into our care. The total, including preparations, casket, airfare and air tray, comes to four thousand, nine hundred seventy dollars. Would you like to order any death certificates in advance?