“Could I have the coffin delivered to my home? Before I’m dead.”
Patricia didn’t bat an eyelash. Maybe she couldn’t with her tight eye job.
“Well, yes, you could,” she said. “The casket company does not like to deliver to private residences. You’d have to order it from us and have it delivered here at the funeral home. Then you’d pick it up from here with your own truck.
Are you interested in one of these models?”
“I was thinking of something in wood,” Helen said.
“Pecan, pine, cherry or walnut?”
“Ebony,” Helen said.
“Fine woods such as ebony are very expensive,” Patricia said.
“I bet they are,” Helen said. “But I saw one at a party and really liked it.”
Patricia turned white as a satin lining. Her surgery scars glowed red with rage. She rose like a zombie from a new grave.
“I don’t believe I can help you after all,” she said. “My assistant will show you out.”
“I believe you can, Ms. Wellneck. Tell me about the Six Feet Unders. Drop-dead sexy, aren’t they? Especially in coffin clothes. Did they buy them here?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Patricia stepped around her desk and clamped her hand on Helen’s arm. It was cold as ice, but steel-strong. Patricia could have been a South Beach bouncer. She’d spent years dealing with the overwrought at wakes and funerals. She knew how to subdue someone while making it look as if she was helping the person out of the room.
Helen struggled to get free, and Patricia changed her grip.
Pain shot up Helen’s arm. Patricia dragged Helen out of her office.
“Buying a casket can be an emotional experience,” Patricia said. “Perhaps you would like to rest a moment in our family comfort room. I’ll bring you a cup of tea.”
She steered Helen toward a gloomy green-curtained area with a dark door. Helen knew if she went through that door, she’d come out feet first. She took her size-eleven shoe and stomped down hard on Patricia’s foot.
“Bitch,” Patricia said and relaxed her grip for a split second.
Helen pulled free and ran. Out the door and down the hall.
Past the empty slumber rooms. Past the bronze casket, where dying carnations covered a dead man. Through the double front doors and into the hot Florida sun.
Chapter 25
Helen shivered in the blazing sun.
It was ninety degrees. The sidewalk sparkled and shimmered in the heat. But she felt bone-cold after being strong-armed by the coffin pusher, Patricia Wellneck.
I imagined that scene, Helen told herself. I was never in any danger. Patricia Wellneck is a respected funeral director.
She thought I was upset because I’d been looking at coffins.
She offered me a comfortable chair and a cup of tea.
But the bruises on Helen’s arm were already turning purple.
After she ran out the front door, Helen hid behind an SUV in the parking lot for fifteen minutes, waiting to see if Patricia Wellneck would come after her. No one left the funeral home. But three people arrived in somber black. Patricia had funeral business, Helen decided. And she figured I got the message.
Helen didn’t feel safe catching a bus in front of the funeral home. She ran half a mile before she waited at a bus stop.
That left her panting and out of breath, but it didn’t warm her.
Now Helen was pacing anxiously, peering down the sunhazed street, praying her bus would come soon.
The street was deserted. No one was following her. The land was flat as a kitchen counter. There wasn’t a bush to hide behind. She should feel safe. But she didn’t.
Get a grip. Quit behaving like a wimp. Patricia doesn’t even know your name.
But Helen knew where that ebony coffin came from. She wondered if Patricia and her horny husband were connected with the boiler room. Were the Mowbrys laundering cold cash from her funeral homes—or sawbucks from her sawbones spouse? Did they know about the murdered Debbie?
Were they in on her murder?
No, she decided. Patricia would never leave a body unburied.
Helen should feel triumphant. She’d found an important connection. Instead she was uneasy. Casket shopping would give anyone the shivers, she decided. Fashionable caskets were even creepier, as if death were a
Eternally cool.
At last, she heard the screeching rumble of bus brakes.
Helen climbed on, sat down and sighed with relief, glad to be on her way. It was only three o’clock. Two more hours before she went to work at the boiler room. She wondered how much more trouble she could get into.
Might as well call Savannah. Helen had a lot to tell her.
The bus let off Helen in front of a convenience store. She went in to buy a large coffee, determined to throw off the graveyard chill.
“You don’t want to drink the stuff in that pot. It’s turned to sludge,” the woman behind the counter said. She was a scrawny fifty and moved like her feet hurt.
“It’s OK.” Helen poured herself a big cup of something drained from a crankcase. “I’m not going to drink it.” She carried it to the cash register, wincing when she saw a bucket of “love roses” next to the beef jerky.
“I’m not charging you for that stuff,” the footsore woman said. “I was going throw it out. Just don’t tell anyone you got it here.”
Helen thanked her and stood outside the store, holding the hot foam cup. She wondered how the woman stayed so nice in these depressing surroundings. The parking lot was littered with trash, spilled drinks and fluids she didn’t want to examine.
When her fingers were warmed enough so she could punch the buttons, Helen walked over to the pay phone. It was encrusted with chewing gum blobs like fake jewels. She dialed Savannah’s number.
“We need to meet.”
“I can’t. Too busy,” Savannah said. She’d even speeded up her drawl. “See you at the Floridian after we both get off work tonight.”
She hung up before Helen could answer.
Savannah didn’t show up at the Floridian until nearly eleven p.m., which gave Helen plenty of time to contemplate the cheap champagne breakfast for two on the menu, and wonder if she’d ever have anyone to share it with. She sucked up coffee till she was jittery as her old junkie seatmate, Nick.
Finally, Savannah arrived, trailing apologies and excuses.
She wore the same seat-sprung jeans and scuffed cowboy boots. She looked thinner. Her face was more lined, as if it had been freeze-dried. Her eyes were tired. Her sister’s death was taking its toll.
This time Savannah did not pick at her food. She ate like it was her last meal before a seven-year famine. She ordered an astonishing four fried eggs, a ham steak and a loaf of buttered toast. Helen felt positively virtuous with her single egg and English muffin, so she added a chocolate-cake chaser.
When their food arrived, Helen told Savannah everything.
Well, almost everything. She did not mention Phil. But she said she’d heard some things at the party: The Mowbrys could be involved in drugs and money laundering and so, possibly, could their good buddy, Hank Asporth.
“So you think that’s what my sister had on that disk? She was going to nail the Mowbrys and that murdering buzzard Asporth for drugs and money laundering?” Savannah stabbed the ham steak through the heart. Her egg yolks bled onto the plate.
