Greely's Cove (11 page)

“I’m afraid this won’t wait,” she declared, thrusting out her chin. “It concerns the death of my friend, Lorna Trosper.” Carl started at the mention of his dead ex-wife, and the old woman noticed. She turned her turquoise contact lenses upon him and surveyed him, inch by inch, top to bottom. Carl marveled wordlessly at the intricacy of the lines in her face, obscured but not hidden by a thick layer of makeup. Without the elaborate blond wig or the fiery lipstick and cosmetics she would easily have looked a hundred years old, but as it was, she looked eighty. Her voice, while that of an elderly woman, was strong and even.

“I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure of meeting
this
gentleman,” she said, indicating Carl.

Stu sighed, “Miss Hannabeth Hazelford, I’d like you to meet Carl Trosper. Carl, this is Hannabeth Hazelford.”

“
Trosper,
” said the old woman. “You must be Lorna’s husband.”

“Ex-husband,” Carl corrected. “I’m happy to meet you, Miss Hazelford.”

She offered him a bony, spotted hand adorned with a huge ring, which he shook ever so gently, for fear of breaking something so old. “Please call me Hannie,” she said. “All my friends do. Your wife and I were quite close, you know. I was privileged to acquire several of her paintings.”

“Hannie owns the ladies’ store up the block,” said Stu. “She came to town—what? A little over six years ago?”

“It’s a boutique, actually,” said Hannie, “directly opposite Lorna’s gallery.”

“Well, I wish we could stand here and chitchat all day,” said Stu, “but I’ve got important business to attend to. What can I do for you, Hannie?”

“As a friend of Lorna and as a member of the taxpaying public, I’ve taken it upon myself to inquire as to the procedures employed in dealing with her tragic death,” said Hannie in her very British way. “I’m given to believe that you plan no autopsy. Tell me, Stuart, can this
really
be true?”

“That’s right. The coroner, the prosecutor, and the medical examiner’s office agree that the cause of death is apparent. No autopsy is necessary.”

“Dear,
dear
, I find this troubling indeed. You see, I’ve taken the liberty to research the law in this regard. According to Washington State’s criminal code, a suicide by a presumably healthy young adult falls into the realm of ‘suspicious’ death, and the law requires that a medico-legal autopsy be performed in any such instance. But of course you know this, your being the constable and all,”

“Hannie, I’m a police chief, not a constable,” said Stu, planting his fists on his hips, “and I’m afraid I don’t have time to stand here and argue the fine points of the Washington criminal code with you. What do you want from me?”

“Merely this, Stuart: As a taxpayer and a friend of Lorna, I insist that you arrange an autopsy on the unfortunate girl, and that you do so posthaste.”

“You
what?
I don’t believe this. Hannie, why in the name of God should you care whether there’s an autopsy? Usually the friends and relatives of dead people do everything they can to
prevent
autopsies! They don’t like to think about their loved ones being sliced up and dissected.”

“My concern is the letter of the law,” answered Hannie unconvincingly, avoiding the police chief’s wide eyes.

“If you’ve read the law,” said Stu, “you also know that the authorities have considerable discretion in these matters, particularly in suicides. In this case there’s absolutely no reason to suspect foul play and no reason to inflict the expense of an autopsy on the taxpayers. Now, if you’ll excuse me...”

“I’m afraid I
can’t
excuse you just yet, Stuart,” said Hannie with a shade of desperation. “I demand that you carry out your duty under the law! Lorna’s tragic passing is indeed a suspicious death and, as such, warrants an autopsy!”

“Look, Hannie,” said Stu, becoming angry, “I don’t tell you how to run your dress shop, or your
boutique
, or whatever it is. And I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t try to tell me how to do
my
job. You’re a very nice lady, and I know you were Lorna’s friend, but the way we deal with her death is no concern of yours!”

Carl watched as the desperation in Hannie’s eyes turned to blue fire.

“It most certainly
is
a concern of mine!” she shouted, leaning defiantly toward Stu’s tree-trunk frame. “You cannot possibly know all that’s at stake here. That young woman’s body must not be allowed to lie unattended in its present state. I’ll say it but one final time, Stuart: Do your duty as an officer of the law, or I shall be forced to do mine as a lawful resident and taxpayer.”

“If you’re threatening me, Hannie—”

“If I must bring a lawsuit to ensure that the law is carried out, that is indeed what I shall do!”

A bolt of intuition hit Carl, owing to Hannie Hazelford’s curious reference to the dead Lorna’s
present state.
“Miss Hazelford,” he said, “you might be interested in—”

“Hannie. Please call me Hannie.”

“Uh—
Hannie.
You might be interested in knowing that Lorna is to be cremated. That’s what she always wanted.”

“Cremated?” The old woman’s turquoise stare bore into Carl’s own, and her frown weakened. “And when is this to be done, may I ask?”

“Very soon. We plan to make the arrangements this afternoon, after I see my son. Tomorrow at the latest, I’d guess.”

“Cremated,” she said again, her eyes narrowing as though visualizing the actual procedure. “And you intend to have this done very soon—tomorrow at the latest?”

“The sooner the better,” said Carl, watching relief pour into Hannie’s face. “It’s what Lorna would’ve wanted.”

“I see. Well, if she’s to be cremated, there isn’t much point to an autopsy, is there?” She drew her orange slicker around her tiny body and turned slowly toward the door of the lobby. “Forgive my making such a nuisance of myself, Stuart. I do hope you’re not angry.”

“I’m not angry, Hannie. It’s been a bad weekend.”

“Yes, quite.” She turned back toward Carl when she reached the door and paused before pushing it open. “You
will
see to the cremation, won’t you?”

Carl felt a chill but shook it off. “Yes, Hannie,” he promised. “I’ll see to it.”

The old woman smiled feebly, then pushed through the door and headed for her Jaguar.

Mitch Nistler pressed his tongue against the interior of his broken lip and tasted blood. He watched through the window as Corley the Cannibal Strecker roared away in his new four-wheel-drive Blazer, with its huge tires and blinding chrome roll bars, the ice-haired Stella DeCurtis seated next to him.

“
Fuck
you!” Mitch screamed, now that they were safely out of earshot, spattering the glass with bloody spittle. “Fuck you and that silly cartoon cunt of yours! Fuck you
both!
”

He turned from the window and winced. His rib cage ached. He hoped that Strecker had merely bruised his ribs and not broken any. The son of a bitch had gone King Kong on him, had actually slammed him against a wall and treated him like a punching bag.

Cannibal was a strong believer in violence. He considered pain the Great Persuader, and he felt no compunction about using it on someone half his size if a point needed proving. Even on someone like Mitch Nistler, an old friend.

As usual, the persuasion worked. After catching two cement-hard fists to the solar plexus and one more to the jaw, Mitch had agreed to
share
in Strecker’s “good fortune,” which meant becoming a partner, as Strecker euphemistically termed it, in the crack business.

Some partner: In reality Mitch would become a throwaway, a low-level courier of drugs and cash between Greely’s Cove and Seattle. Every week he was to take a load of processed crack and cash (the proceeds from Strecker’s retailing in Greely’s Cove and surrounding towns) across the Puget Sound to an alley off Seattle’s Pike Street, there to meet other throwaways who worked for Strecker’s unnamed distributor. He would deliver the money and receive a load of unprocessed cocaine, which he would carry to an old house near his own place on the outskirts of Greely’s Cove. There, in their newly outfitted “laboratory,” Strecker and Stella DeCurtis would convert it to crack.

Mitch, of course, was not entitled to a percentage of the take, even though he would bear the lion’s share of risk in transporting cash and drugs; his compensation would be a measly $250 a week, since he was a mere serf in the feudal world of cocaine peddling. Just as Strecker was a vassal of
his
lord, the distributor, who himself owed fealty to an even higher mandarin.

“Hey, what the fuck are you screamin’ about?” Strecker had bellowed after hearing Mitch’s complaint about the piddling money. “That’s thirteen large a year, little man. You’ve never seen that much green in your whole life, I bet. And don’t tell me you couldn’t use it. How much is that old sleaze undertaker paying you, anyway? Eight grand a year, maybe ten, to sink your hands into dead people’s guts? I’m more than doubling your income, you little shit. You should be kissing my ass with gratitude.”

Mitch moaned.

Maybe Strecker was right. In some ways Mitch was as much old Matt Kronmiller’s slave as he had been Cannibal’s in Walla Walla. His job paid shit, a good share of which went back to Kronmiller as rent for this tottery old house, with its weed-infested yard, swayback roof, and clanking pipes. And when Kronmiller shouted, which was often, he jumped, just as he had jumped for Cannibal back in D Block.

Mitch still fantasized now and then about working hard and learning enough about undertaking to gain entry into a prestigious institution like the San Francisco College of Mortuary Science, but he knew in his heart that his job as Kronmiller’s embalming assistant was a dark and certain dead end. He could never aspire to full membership in the profession, for he’d read in one of Kronmiller’s textbooks that “practitioners of mortuary science,” as they called themselves, must be super Boy Scouts—energetic, modest, cooperative, cheerful, brave, clean, reverent, neat, tasteful in dress, and the possessor of a strong face.
Christ almighty
, he often lamented, even the Boy Scouts don’t demand a strong face! Mitch’s criminal record alone, never mind his alcoholism and severely inferior face, shattered any hope for admission to a mortuary-science school.

Maybe he
should
be kissing Cannibal’s ass: The extra money might get him out from under Kronmiller’s thumb. By exercising a little thrift, he might be able to score a real apartment someday, a place with a telephone and a dishwasher, maybe even a hot tub. He might be able to unload his pathetic, rusting-out El Camino for a real car, something like a Camaro or a Trans Am. He might actually achieve a smidgen of respectability.

Oh yeah, respectability.

Who am I trying to kid?
he asked himself while making his way painfully to the bathroom. Do you get
respectable
by being a throwaway in the crack business, by being so low on the totem pole that your arrest and cooperation with the police can’t hurt anybody important, because you don’t
know
anybody important? By earning $250 a week, helping to turn teenagers into drooling, twitching addicts? By letting yourself be terrorized into violating your parole rules and joining a criminal enterprise?

Oh, a few years of this, and I’ll be up for president of the Rotary.

Mitch splashed his battered face with water from a corroded faucet, then stared at himself in the cracked mirror of his medicine cabinet. The face that stared back was in every way inferior: hooded, inert eyes; sunken, stubbly cheeks; colorless lips stretched taut over crooked teeth. In the thirty-three years he’d owned it, this face had disserved him amply. This face had been no ally.

Lindsay Moreland hated funerals, and she hated mortuaries. She wasn’t wild about morticians, either. The trappings and rituals of funerals, tinged as they are with superstition and unspoken dread, grated against her rational view of the universe. The Chapel of the Cove was everything she hated about mortuaries. White antebellum columns. Gothic windows with panes of amethyst, ruby, and amber. Saturnine silence.

Matthew Kronmiller, Practitioner of Mortuary Science, epitomized the smoothly predatory undertaker, which was why Lindsay was glad she had refused to let her mother come along on this trip to the chapel. Nora Moreland would have been putty in Kronmiller’s hands.

He was a potbellied, mustachioed man of seventy, whose demulcent voice flowed like oil, whose expensive chalk-striped suit had pressed-in creases that looked sharp enough to draw blood. His left eye was of glass, and he had longish, silver hair and hanging jowls that nearly covered his gold collar pin. His words carried the authority of a man who had staged thousands of funerals, who knew better than anyone what was “right and proper” in the handling of the dead.
Best not to

argue,
the authoritative tone suggested.
Best to shut up and pay up.

“You understand, of course, that even though Mrs. Trosper will be cremated, she will nonetheless require a casket,” he intoned, folding his hands on the polished mahogany table of the elegant consultation room, gazing with his one good eye into Lindsay’s face. “Many of our friends who choose cremation”—Lindsay noted his use of
friends
rather than
clients
—“find that casket selection is still very important, because it’s the final opportunity to express love and appreciation for the departed in a material way.”

And that “final expression” had better be a rich one, or you’ll feel guilty for the rest of your life, Lindsay wanted to add. Or worse, the offended corpse might climb out of that cheap, uncomfortable coffin before it’s cremated and crawl into bed with you in the wee hours, just to teach you a lesson. But she merely nodded, pretending to agree.

“And of course there’s the matter of a vessel for the cremated remains, together with a suitable memorial,” added Kronmiller.

“You mean an um and a plaque?” asked Lindsay.

The old undertaker cleared his throat and smiled indulgently. “Yes, that’s essentially what we mean, Miss Moreland. We’re certain that you’ll want to select these items very carefully. They are, after all
, forever
.”