Greely's Cove (12 page)

He rose from his padded chair and ushered her into the sumptuous selection room, where a dozen caskets stood on display like islands of comfort in a cool sea of voluptuous blue drapery and gray carpet. The caskets boasted wood and satin, or copper and velvet, all set off in the warm hues of life.

“A suitable casket for Mrs. Trosper might be this one,” said Kronmiller with heavy solemnity, indicating a gorgeous hardwood model with white satin upholstery and brass handles. For a moment Lindsay’s mind doted on the pleasant image of Lorna at rest in this work of art, comfortable at last in billowy white satin. But then she shook herself awake.

“How much?” she asked, interrupting the mortician’s litany of this model’s features.

“Only seventy-six hundred,” assured Kronmiller.

Lindsay blinked and caught her breath. “No, I don’t believe that one would be suitable at all.”

“Oh, but it’s such an elegant piece—”

“My sister was not an elegant woman, at least not in that way. The thought of burning a casket like this would’ve revolted her. She’d want something simple, unostentatious. Do you have anything like that?”

Within the next five minutes Lindsay had selected a gray model of light wood. Simple cotton upholstery instead of satin. Stainless-steel handles instead of brass. Three hundred dollars instead of seventy-six hundred. Five minutes more and she had chosen a small urn from a collection encased in glass, and a simple wooden plaque with a brass plate, upon which would be engraved Lorna’s name, birthdate, and date of passing.

Mitch Nistler’s El Camino swung off Sockeye Drive into the shaded brick access road of the Chapel of the Cove. Parked in the front portico of the white-columned funeral home, sheltered from the steady beat of rain, was a blue Saab Turbo that Mitch had never seen before. He continued around the side of the building to the employees’ parking area, where sat Matt Kronmiller’s brown Mercedes.

He let himself in through the garage and sidled between a pair of massive, sin-colored hearses. A few steps down an interior corridor brought him to the preparation room, which had tiled walls of apple green, a floor of immaculate white, and an array of glistening equipment that included two operating tables with “flush receptors” for draining away human fluids. A framed sign hung on one wall, a little reminder to promote reverence:

“
Regard Every Body As Though It Is Your
Most Beloved Relative
.”

Taped to the frame of the sign was a note addressed to
M. N.
in Kronmiller’s unmistakable bold cursive. Mitch’s heart fluttered as he took it down and unfolded it, for this would surely be the old batfucker’s final word to him, the long-anticipated walking papers. Mitch had played hooky the night before and had been late this morning, so the final word would come as no surprise, not after his many transgressions. That he had lasted six years was something of a miracle.

But the note did not contain the final word. Actually it was quite civil. Apparently written sometime the previous afternoon, it informed Mitch that Mrs. Lorna Trosper’s family had called and specified cremation without open-casket viewing, making embalming unnecessary. Therefore, Mitch need not prepare the remains for embalming. He was off the hook. Kronmiller probably didn’t even know that he hadn’t shown up yesterday.

He closed his eyes and heaved a sigh of relief. For once in his life, the fates had favored him. He still had a job.

Voices came to his ears: Kronmiller’s hushed baritone and the more direct contralto of a woman. Mitch slipped out of the preparation room and down the carpeted corridor, following the voices to the nearest of two slumber rooms, where many a bereaved family had beheld the cosmetic triumph of the embalmer.

Mitch grasped the handle of the service door that gave access to the slumber room and shoved it open a crack. Standing with Kronmiller was a young woman who seemed radiant in the pietistic light streaming through the Gothic windows. She had flaxen hair that swept back in a wave from a noble forehead, over the ears and down the neck almost to her shoulders. She had eyebrows thick with fine blond hair, deeply set eyes of startling size and blueness, and severe cheekbones that could have used a bit more flesh. Her body was lithe and tall, her shoulders square under a knitted pullover of bright green. She wore loose, pleated trousers of beige wool and sensible Reeboks on her feet.

Mitch thought her beautiful beyond belief and vaguely familiar.

“As I told you on the phone yesterday,” the young woman was saying in a slightly irritated tone, “we don’t wish to view the body, and we don’t want a traditional funeral. One of Lorna’s close friends has suggested a casual get-together in the park for anyone who wants to come, and that’s what we’ve decided to do. We’ll have some of her favorite music on tape, some light refreshments, and a little good, old-fashioned, heart-to-heart conversation. In other words, Mr. Kronmiller, we won’t need your
slumber
room here, and we won’t need your chapel for a service. All I want is for you to put the body in a casket, cremate it, and send me the bill. Can you do that for me?”

Kronmiller seemed nonplussed, which pleasured Mitch immensely, and after clearing his throat loudly, he said, “As you wish, Miss Moreland. We must caution you, however, that the weather this time of year can be very unstable, and a rainstorm could very well ruin your gathering in the park. Wouldn’t it be more prudent to—”

“The park has a covered barbecue area, Mr. Kronmiller. I estimate that we could squeeze fifty to sixty people into it if we had to. Now, please excuse me. I have a crowded schedule this afternoon.”

After signing the necessary release forms, Lindsay Moreland retired through an adjacent chapel with Kronmiller gliding after her, through the selection room with its rows of caskets, and finally out the front door of the funeral home to her Saab. Every step of the way, Kronmiller effused assurances that things would be done
exactly
as Lindsay had specified, that she was not to trouble herself in any way whatsoever.

Mitch was pretending to inspect the floor of the preparation room for dirt as his boss returned. Kronmiller had jettisoned his bedside manner and now wore a black scowl.

“What are you doing here on a Sunday?” he bellowed. “Didn’t you see my note yesterday? And what the hell happened to your face?”

“Hi, Mr. Kronmiller,” answered Mitch, reflexively touching the lip that Cannibal Strecker had fattened. “I just came by to see if you wanted anything done about the Trosper cremation.”

The old man blinked with his good eye, and his wrinkled visage softened a bit. “Good God, some people don’t know the meaning of the word
respect
,” he growled, apparently having lost his concern over Mitch’s lacerated mouth. “The woman who just left was Lorna Trosper’s sister. Won’t pay for a closed-casket viewing before cremation and doesn’t even want a service in the chapel, for the love of Pete. A ‘casual get-together in the park’ is what she wants, with a ‘little good, old-fashioned conversation. ’ That sure as hell isn’t
my
idea of respect for the departed. It was all I could do to sell her a three-hundred-dollar box! I’m glad we don’t get many of those, Mitch, because if we did, it wouldn’t pay to turn on the lights in this place.”

And you’d be forced to survive on your income property and your stock portfolio
, thought Mitch.
Poor baby.

“As long as you’re here,” said Kronmiller, “you might as well cremate her. Use display casket number nine, since we don’t even stock those plain wooden jobs anymore. Then put the ashes in one of these.” He handed over a slip of paper with the model of a “vessel” written on it. “I’ll take care of the engraving on the memorial tomorrow.”

He headed for the rear door, then paused and turned back to Mitch. “I’m going home to watch golf on TV. No matter what happens, don’t bother me for the rest of the day, understand?”

“Yes, sir, Mr. Kronmiller.”

The old man went out the door, leaving his assistant alone in the hushed funeral home, and Mitch set about his chore, feeling almost lighthearted.

Cremating a corpse is not hard work, and requires few skills: Dump the body into a casket that’s suitable for burning; roll the casket into the committal room, and rig it onto the catafalque, a mechanized slab that inserts the casket and remains into the retort; start a fire in the retort, which is no more difficult than turning on a gas kitchen range, and wait ninety minutes, checking the draft every now and then to ensure maximum temperature. The process reduces a dead body to about six pounds of ashes and bone fragments—“suitable for bottling,” Mitch always said to himself with a laugh whenever he handled cremation chores.

Matthew Kronmiller owned one of the few crematories in the area, which he operated as a sideline to his funeral home, even though, like most funeral directors, he hated the very concept of cremation. Not enough profit in it. Unless of course the surviving family wants embalming and a traditional funeral before cremation. But these days more and more people were choosing
direct
cremation, forgoing the horrendous expense of showpiece caskets, embalming, and all the other costly malarkey commonly associated with American funerals. Kronmiller had installed his crematory as a hedge against this irksome trend, knowing that other funeral directors in the area would use his services when clients were “disrespectful” enough to demand cremation, direct or otherwise.

Mitch left the preparation room and went a few steps down the corridor, fingering the retractable ring on his belt and looking for the key to the padlock that secured the walk-in cooler. As he inserted the key, he caught a mental glimpse of himself astride one of Liquid Larry’s bar stools, his hand wrapped around an icy mugful of triple threat, his brain awash in blessed fog. That’s where he’d be in a couple of hours: astride that stool with nothing more on his mind than ordering his next drink and adding another thickness of foggy insulation against reality.
Fuck reality,
with its Matthew Kronmillers and Cannibal Streckers and
(Craslowe?),
the real owners of Mitch Nistler. Astride that stool in Liquid Larry’s, with eyes aglaze and jaw gone slack, Mitch Nistler would be nobody’s slave.

In just a couple of hours—

Craslowe.
Something writhed in Mitch’s innards as he pulled the cooler door open. Cold, disinfected fumes crept out of the darkness and embraced him. His hand groped for and found a switch, and the dead-silent cooler filled with harsh light from a bare bulb.

Metal walls, close and gray. White-tiled floor. A trio of gurneys abreast, one of which held the sheeted body of a woman. A trace of smell that spoke of death, despite the aerosol disinfectant.

The
something
writhed again, but Mitch tried to ignore it. He took hold of the gurney and wheeled it from the cooler; and he nearly jumped out of his skin when the compressor kicked itself on, filling the cold air with an unfriendly whir. He hit the light switch and slammed the door home, shutting off the source of darkness and the whirring sound.

He pushed the sheeted cargo into the preparation room and parked it next to an embalming table, then readied the slings that were attached to the body lifter, an electrically run device that moved on tracks in the ceiling. Using the body lifter, one man could easily move the heaviest corpse from a gurney to the embalming table, and afterward from the table to a casket, Wonderful invention, the body lifter.

He drew the sheet off the gurney—

The writhing again
(Craslowe!).
Mitch fought back a swell of nausea.

—exposing the pathetic, death-ravaged body of Lorna Trosper.

She lay on her back, naked. A bundle of beggarly clothes lay between her knees where the medical examiner had left it the previous day: threadbare jeans, wretched underclothing, a beige smock spattered and encrusted with water paint. Her facial skin was ashy white, her blond hair wild and stiff with dirt. Agonal dehydration had slackened her lips and loosened her facial muscles, giving her once-delicate nose a severe, pinched look. Her eyeballs had softened and appeared sunken. Her skeletal muscles had gone flaccid and had flattened under her body weight. On the undersides of her emaciated limbs and along the buttocks and back, the skin was a startling cherry -red—the mark of blood-pooling, which is typical of carbon-monoxide poisoning.

Mitch’s nausea subsided a little as he gazed at the tragic, inert form that had been Lorna Trosper. Though filthy with its owner’s neglect and wasted by the agonies it had suffered, the body was strangely beautiful to him. He knew now why Lindsay Moreland had looked familiar a few minutes ago: She shared her dead sister’s beauty. And, contrary to what Matt Kronmiller had told him on the first day of his job, when the old undertaker had whisked the sheet off a gurney to expose an elderly man dead of a massive heart attack, Lorna Trosper’s body was not “garbage.”

“
What you see here, Mitch, is nothing but garbage,
” Kronmiller had said, apparently relishing his new employee’s unease over such close proximity to death. “
Let it stand awhile, and it’ll start to stink, same as any other garbage. The man who owned it is gone, a mere idea, a memory. This heap of garbage contains no more of him than the dirty underwear he left on his bathroom floor. No need to worry bout sinking needles into it or cutting holes in it. It’s useless to him and to everybody else
.”

Mitch had not known Lorna Trosper personally. Occasionally he had caught sight of her as he ambled past the tiny gallery on Frontage Street, but he had never spoken to her, never even traded hellos. Yet he had admired her, had thought her the prettiest lady in Greely’s Cove. He liked the way she held herself, so straight and confident, and the way she dressed, so casually grubby and unmindful of her own looks. When he dared to fantasize about having a woman of his own one day, he visualized not the spread-eagle sluts who adorned the pages of his porn magazines but someone like Lorna Trosper.

And here she lay, naked on an icy sheet of stainless steel, wrapped only in silence. Despite the body dirt, the signs of suffering, and despite the fact of death itself, she was still beautiful. She was
not
garbage.