(2012) Colder Than Death (3 page)

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 chuckle 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.

I would venture to guess that Wilt Ging, the embalmer and restoration man at DiGregorio's, was just as ignorant of cemeteries as Nolan. Plus, he had a bum right leg, the end result of a bad fall ten years ago. Walking was difficult for him. The idea of him meandering around cemeteries doing tracings of hundred-year-old headstones was laughable.

This same ignorance applied to most cemetery employees as well. Because of all the funeral arrangements I'd made over the years, I spent a considerable amount of time in the business office of Elm Grove cemetery. I'd gotten to know the entire staff. Inside, besides Mel Abernathy, there were three other employees, two women and one man: Joanne Huxley, the bookkeeper, Patricia Lemaulrik, the secretary/clerk and George Yawler, the salesman.

I can't deny that Mel and George were as knowledgeable about the history and layout of Elm Grove as any cemetery buff, so conceivably
they
could be possible suspects. But Joanne and Patricia just came in to the cemetery office, did their work and went home. In and out, like browsers in a mall. They were just as naive about the workings of a cemetery as the average person on the street. It was almost as if they worked as clerks at a factory or small boutique.

As for the outdoor workers, Alton supervised a crew of four, three of whom had worked at Elm Grove for over ten years and the remaining guy for probably five years. I knew that each of them had a comprehensive awareness of the cemetery grounds and the patterns of visitors, more than anyone, even Mel or George. But despite the lowliness of their profession there was an inherent decency to these men. They might be drinkers and loners, but they weren't murderers. And even if one of them were, he would be intelligent enough not to have hidden the body so near to where he worked.

As for myself and Lew, Tyler DiGregorio and his father, as well as all the Funeral Directors who worked out of Elm Grove, we all had probably walked every inch of cemetery simply because helping people pick out a grave site is a scaled down version of helping people buy a house. Some are picky and want to check out a dozen Sections. Others take the first space they see.

******

I was so lost in my thoughts that the drive to the Coroner's flew by. I pulled into the rear entrance of the four-story, official-looking municipal building, then backed the hearse into what was, for all intent and purpose, a loading dock for bodies.

“We're here,” I said, nudging Perry softly in the ribs as I brought the hearse to a stop.

Perry grunted and spent about thirty seconds shaking himself awake and maneuvering himself out of the car. I went to the back of the hearse to open the door. As I was doing so, Greg Hoxey pulled up alongside of us. He got out of the cruiser and walked over to Perry's side of the hearse, ignoring me.

An Assistant Pathologist came out of the building holding a clipboard with some paper attached to it. I'd dealt with him before. His name was Ray and he possessed a jolly demeanor that made him come off more like the entertainment director on a singles cruise ship.

“Who do we have here?” he asked cheerfully.

“Unidentified at the moment,” I said.

“Oh, right. Body in the cemetery.” He scribbled something on the form.

Perry pointed at Greg, saying, “He'll give you a hand.”

I held open the door. Greg and Ray removed the body bag and placed it on a gurney, then a release form was signed and the body was quickly whisked away into the building. Perry thanked me for picking up the body, then promised that once the identity of the dead girl was learned, if her family didn't have a preference, he would recommend us to handle the funeral arrangements.

That was what I'd been waiting to hear. I thanked him, then before I left he said one last thing:

“What you said about the killer hiding the body in the mausoleum? I appreciate that, Del.”

I nodded. “Just trying to help.”

“You get anymore bright ideas like that and you let me know, okay, man?”

He winked at me, then yawned, revealing a brief flash of his ravaged teeth. He patted the top of the hearse, then headed into the building, sticking a wad of chewing tobacco in his mouth.

I was convinced that Perry loved his job as top law enforcement person in Dankworth. It was his identity. Just as being a Funeral Director was mine. It was the only thing we had in common. He had found
his
place to hide from the world and so had I.

Chapter 5

Five days passed and I hadn't heard a word about the dead girl's identity. Business picked up. We had two funerals and three people came in for Pre-Needs. That’s when someone makes arrangements for themselves or a loved one in advance of their passing.

Then Perry Cobb paid me a visit.

“I got some business for you,” he said as I opened the door. “Mausoleum girl's been identified. Her family will be calling you.”

“Thanks, Perry. Come on in.”

“No time. Gotta meet with Gowen and Timerlane.”

Richard Gowen and Bennet Timerlane were the County Sheriff and District Attorney respectively.

“They're trying to dump the entire investigation on me.” There was concern in his voice.

“You mean you don't want it?” I stepped outside.