far. Lots of sunshine during the day. Still, I don’t plan to die for about a hundred years. A hundred twenty years. Science is making great strides.”
Paul wished he were still twenty with illusions that death could be planned or forestalled. “Get those blood lipoproteins buff. That’s the latest hot tip for living forever, or so says the newspaper today.”
“Okay,” Wish said. “How?”
“Exercise and drugs.”
“Oh, I’m good then. Paul, I would like to ask you a question.” Wish’s tone had become formal.
“That would be a nice change,” Paul said.
“I would like to ask you if you will hire me full-time. I mean, I’ll still take courses and get my degree. But I would like to work for you.”
“Well, now,” Paul said. “I’m flattered.”
“My parents are going back to Tahoe soon, and I don’t want to go with them. I’ve learned a lot from you.”
“I don’t know if I can afford a full-time assistant, buddy.”
“I’ll work cheap and help bring in cases.”
Paul said, “Okay.”
“Okay? Oh, my God. Okay?”
“Yeah, although your first assignment is going to be helping me convince your mom.”
“She won’t like it.”
“One day, you will have an ergonomic chair and a new Glock, like me. And a beautiful young lady holding a baby at your side. And then, when your mom sits down in the rocking chair and holds the baby, she will forgive you. They usually don’t until about then.”
“What about the Glock? What has that…”
“You won’t tell her about the Glock.”
The fading, golden September day, quiet now, even the insects resting in the slanting afternoon sun, made drama of the long lawns and headstones shadowing the cemetery grounds. Parking not far from where they had entered, they walked up and down the asphalt drives and then along paths between graves, where it was possible. Wish avoided walking right below the headstones, but Paul didn’t bother. These people were beyond disturbing.
“Too many dead,” Wish muttered, picking his way past a clump of flat markers. He started subtracting dates of death from dates of birth, commenting on those who died around the same age as Paul or Nina until Paul told him to shut up. Unable to find what they were looking for, they split up. Wish wandered toward the street that ran perpendicular to El Estero Lake. Paul made his way to the small concrete building located roughly at the center. He walked fast to ward off the chill that crept up his legs from underneath the damp grass. Before he could reach the door to the building, an elderly woman came out, saying, “Hello. Haven’t seen you here before.”
“No,” Paul said. He gave her a card.
She thanked him and introduced herself as Amanda Peltier. “I’m in charge of the janitorial staff, community relations, and sales. That kind of thing,” she said briskly, as if it was terribly mundane, selling graves. Squinting at his card, then pulling on a pair of reading glasses, she said, “Oh, my gosh. Why, you’re a private investigator! Is there something I can help you with?”
“I hope so.”
Maybe she saw him shivering, although he could swear he wasn’t reacting visibly to the cold. Still, the light blue eyes seemed to see right through him, and her voice was kind. “Why don’t you come in and sit down. It’s warmer in here.”
He followed the diminutive figure. Immediately inside the door, he found himself in a room no more than ten by twelve, which held a desk, files, a few big books, two plastic chairs, and a flourishing green plant that on closer inspection turned out to be made of silk. Several framed photographs cluttered the edge of the desk. She motioned him to a chair, then bustled into a smaller room beyond. He could hear her banging around, although he couldn’t see her.
“You take cream in your coffee? Or would you prefer tea?”
“What are you having?”
“Tea.”
“Tea, then. Three sugars. No lemon, no cream,” he said. He looked around the room. Two dated, large maps of the Monterey Bay area were the only wall decoration. The wooden desk was old, and its leather seat showed the small imprint of Amanda Peltier’s trim derriere. She had been here a very long time, he decided. Not even a window broke the wall. The only way out appeared to be through the door. The room was very like a mausoleum, in fact.
The pictures condensed Amanda Peltier’s long life into a short visual essay, ranging from an active, beaming girlhood in a wood frame house by the sea, through marriage to a distinguished- looking man with black hair and a stern gaze. The story finished off with Hair ’n’ Glare disappearing, and two tanned beach-loving children growing up, marrying, and having three more sand-castle- building young ’uns.
She returned minutes later with a tray, two china cups, and a steaming yellow-flowered teapot.
“You looked like you could use something hot,” she said, pouring him a cup and handing it over.
His hand felt better just touching the warm vessel and smelling its contents. “What kind of tea?”
“Earl Grey, of course!” she said. She leaned against the desk without sitting down and pulled a soft green sweater down over her hips. A long skirt led down to immaculate woven leather flats. She had a deeply wrinkled pink face to go with the pastel of her eyes, and a dent creasing the exact center of a stubborn-looking chin. White picket teeth as bright as a freshly painted fence smiled at him. “You’re obviously not a big tea drinker.”
“No.”
“I drink it all day long.” She put her head back and took a swig, eager as an alcoholic attacking the first drink of the day, set the cup down on the table, and sighed with pleasure.
Paul tried his. The sugary liquid scalded his tongue. He set the cup down. “I’m looking for a certain grave.”
“Of course you are.” She nodded knowingly. She walked behind the desk and pulled out a large folded piece of paper, which she laid flat for him to see. The glasses went back onto the tip of her broad nose. “Take a look, here.”
They studied a map of the graveyard. Each plot had a letter and a number to identify it. “Constantin Zhukovsky,” he said. “That’s the name I want.”
“Ah, yes. Papa. A popular man these days.” She licked the tip of her thumb, and flipped through a big green ledger with oversized pages. “Poor man gets more visitors these days than he did when he first died. That’s not the usual trend, you know. I could point you to the general vicinity. He’s over there with all the other Russians, but since you’re here…”
“No computer?”
“Oh, there’s one in the back. We have a Web site, of course. My oldest granddaughter helps maintain it. You should have heard some of the ideas she had about what to put on there! Ghastly stuff. Or should I say ghostly.”
“I can imagine. Grisly?”
She chuckled. “See, I promise you this is quicker than going through all that rigamarole to turn that darn computer on. People fool themselves, thinking computers are the best thing for every purpose.” Her fingers flew through the pages, and within a few seconds she had the page she wanted. “Here we go.” She wrote a note on a yellow pad, then ran her finger to a section of the cemetery over by a high fence. “Let me draw you a little diagram. It’s close to Pearl Street. Have you found the Russian section?”
“No.”
“Their graves are mostly clumped together.” She tore the page off for him.
“Thanks.”
“You’re very welcome. But please, finish your tea. There’s no rush. Kostya’s not going anywhere today, you know. That was Constantin’s nickname.” Now she sat down in the chair, crossed her ankles, and drank some more tea.
Alex Zhukovsky had said his father visited the graveyard frequently. “You knew him, Ms. Peltier? Is it Ms. Peltier?”
“Mrs. Peltier, please. And yes, I knew Kostya. It’s a scandal what happened to ruin that poor man’s peaceful rest, dug up and carted around like trash. It took me months to go by his grave without feeling terribly sad. Of course, all of us here were upset. We thought of having extra guards at night, but really, graves don’t get dug up in the normal course of human events. Dead people aren’t worth anything on earth, only in heaven. It’s shocking, but not something we could have prevented.”
“When did you meet Constantin Zhukovsky?”
“When his wife, Davida, died in 1971, the same year my Harry died.”
“Did you work here then?”
“I did. I was a part-time accountant in those days, and when the manager retired a few months after Harry passed, they asked me to take over. I needed the job, so it was a considerate gesture. Kostya and I were both lonely, and he developed a habit of dropping by. We developed a-kind of friendship during those hard times. Let’s see, he would have been just about seventy or so then, already getting along.
“You see, after Harry died so suddenly, I realized he never really knew me. There were so many things unsaid, and so many secrets we could have shared. I guess I thought we’d have longer, or maybe I thought he should try harder. I was devastated. Death is such an abrupt ending to all of life’s possibilities. Kostya helped me move on. He was such a sensitive, funny man.”
“Kostya came to visit his wife’s grave often?”
“Oh, he really loved that woman. Which is why I was so surprised when…”
“When?”
She set her cup down, clearly flustered. “Oh, dear. I’m sorry, but I hate gossips! I refuse to play that game!”
“He’s dead,” Paul said. “Nothing you can say will hurt him now.”
She sighed. “His son was here recently so that we could inter the remains once and for all. I suggested Kostya be moved to our new columbarium, but he preferred to keep his father where he was. The columbarium is a beautiful new facility we have over near the lake. Have you seen it yet?”
“Not yet,” Paul said, really hoping this was not prelude to a sales pitch for his very own prime spot in the new facility. “I’m curious about something. I’ve been doing some research and I discovered that in many cases, caskets don’t just go into the dirt. They’re embedded in concrete. Is that true here?”
“Correct. The law requires that a mortuary prepare the body properly, and then the casket is set inside concrete in the ground. Has to do with keeping things sanitary. Keeping the water table pure, that sort of thing.”
“By properly, you mean…”
“Embalming,” she said serenely.
“That’s required by law?” How could this nice lady stand the idea? His flesh crawled at the thought of his blood pouring down a metal drain, to be replaced by preservative. Probably floral scented. Was this the work of some sneaky funeral parlor lobby? Or the manufacturer of embalming fluid, possibly. Or the pair of them, in cahoots. Talk about a powerless consumer group in the grip of forces beyond its control.
