This particular funeral home was more like an antebellum mansion than anything else, with a winding staircase in the central foyer that led upstairs to offices, and parlors off to each side of the great hall where the bereaved families gathered in front of the usually open coffins. Funerals, especially Southern funerals, are pageants, deep-fried dramas, ripping passionate catharsis. I’ve been to funerals where fat ladies tore their pearls off and fainted in puddles of sweat, foam spreading across their lips as they spoke in tongues. And food … God, the food. Some poor high school dropout clerk in a 7-Eleven gets blown away at two in the morning by a demented crackhead, and what does the family do? Scream in agony, tear hair out, yell for the death penalty, then chow down like a bunch of linebackers in spring training.
I hoped that wasn’t on the agenda for this one. There was a black signboard with little white letters in front of each parlor, MR. E. GIBSON was in the room off to the right. The front room, to my left, had a sign that read DR. C. FLETCHER.
I walked into the room silently, my footsteps muffled by the thick red carpet. Long blue drapes hung down in front of floor-to-ceiling windows fourteen feet high. Victorian parlor lamps with engraved purple and gray cherubs in the glass shades lit the room dimly. The room was jammed with flowers, and the air was thick and heavy with their perfume.
And I was the only one there. Except Conrad, of course, who was lying face up in an open bronze coffin on the other side of the room. He wasn’t much company, though.
I discreetly glanced at my watch. Visiting hours had started nearly an hour ago. Where was everybody? Even in death, it seemed, people didn’t want to spend too much time around the good doctor.
I backed out of the room and checked out the visitor’s register, opened to the first page on a white stand near the door. There were three names, one a doctor. That was all. Conrad wasn’t going to break any box office records at this pace.
Back inside the parlor, I stepped across the room over to the coffin. Connie lay in the box, wearing a white shirt, striped tie, pressed blue suit. On his left lapel was an American Medical Association pin of some kind. At least I think that’s what it was; the snake wound around the shaft, anyhow.
I’ll say this much for him-he looked a hell of a lot better than he did the last time I saw him. He had some color back, his face had filled out some, probably from the funeral director’s padding, and the ghastly sunken purple under his eyes was gone.
Yeah, he looked a lot better. Not that it mattered.
I backed away from the coffin, thinking how weird it was that nobody else was there. It was still early; most people had to finish the work day. Yeah, that was it. Had to be.
The funeral home had conveniently set up a coffee room in the back of the building so the grieving and the bereaved could grab a cup of hot java and a smoke between hysterics. I went back and discovered why the front parlor was empty: everybody was in here on break.
Rachel sat at a Formica table behind a sweaty can of diet soda, dressed in a severe black dress with a white lace collar. She was staring down at her hands when I came in and didn’t notice me for a second. Mrs. Goddard, Rachel’s protective neighbor, sat to the left. She nudged Rachel when she spotted me.
“Harry,” Rachel sighed. She stood up and crossed in front of the table, her arms held out to me. “I’m so glad you came.”
I took her properly in my arms and gave her the usual shared comforting hugs one gives at a funeral home. After a few seconds, we disengaged and stood back from each other.
“How you holding on?” I asked.
“Okay. Mostly tired. The rough part’s going to be when the family arrives. My parents get in at six tonight. Connie’s are probably at the airport now.”
“That’s going to be tough, isn’t it?”
She smiled gamely, took my arm in hers, and led me out of the coffee room. “I’ll be okay,” she said, pulling me with her down toward the parlor. “I just need a little time.”
“Yeah,” I agreed. “You’ll get through this okay.”
We strolled casually into the room. Standard practice at the funerals I’ve attended calls for the closest, most grieving, family member to guide each visitor up to the coffin to pay respects by remarking how natural the person looks in death. I genuinely hated that custom, mainly because nobody looks natural in death. They just look dead.
Two other people were already in there now, standing close together a few feet away from the coffin. The woman was my height, within an inch or so, with striking black hair flowing down over squared shoulders. Even from behind, I could tell she was a looker. The guy standing next to her barely came to her chin: rumpled khaki suit, slightly dumpy around the waist, thinning curly mousy brown hair. Odd pair, these two, I thought. I sensed from their proximity that they weren’t strangers.
Rachel led me around them to the open lid of the coffin. She stared down at Connie and let loose with a deep sigh, then squeezed my arm tightly.
“God, I can’t believe it,” she said, sniffling and pulling me close. I put an arm around her and scrunched her shoulders. She stifled a sob, largely without success.
“I’m so sorry, Rachel,” I said. And I was.
She raised her head again and stiffened her neck, as if gathering strength for the next two days.
“I know, Harry. I appreciate your being here. It means worlds to me.”
She stepped back, turned from the coffin toward me. “I’m sorry it took this to get you back into my life,” she continued. “But I am glad you’re my friend again.”
“I never wasn’t your friend, Rach. Things just happen the way they happen, that’s all.”
She gazed at me for a long time, intently, seriously, a look that was as much troubled as saddened, as much afraid as grieved.
“Maybe it’s not too late to get it right this time,” she said, almost a whisper.
I was close to being embarrassed, standing here in front of Conrad Fletcher’s coffin, talking to his wife this way. Then, I thought, what the hell, he can’t hear us.
“Yeah,” I whispered. “Maybe.”
A throat cleared behind us. I suddenly remembered that we weren’t alone. I turned. The guy in the khaki suit was staring at us uncomfortably, the pale light mostly unflattering on his sallow complexion. The woman, though, was as elegant and as lovely as I’d guessed from a rearview shot. Her skin was smooth, flawless, her features sharp and beautifully defined. Her cheekbones would give Katharine Hepburn’s a run for their money.
“Mrs. Fletcher?” he asked.
“Yes,” she answered, holding out a hand, “I’m Rachel Fletcher.”
“I’m Al Zitin, Dr. Al Zitin. And this is Dr. Jane Collingswood. We were taking our surgical residencies under Dr. Fletcher. We’re so sorry about this.”
Zitin and Collingswood, I thought. What a nice surprise.
14
This voice inside my head said: think fast, boy. Rachel obviously hadn’t met these two and couldn’t know that Jane Collingswood and Albert Zitin were firmly established in the ranks of Conrad haters. I knew she was about to introduce me to them, but as who? Did I want them to know I was an investigator? Did I
“Thank you for coming,” Rachel said, extending her hand now to Jane Collingswood. “This has been a terrible shock to all of us. All of us who loved him, respected him.”
I thought I detected a slight twitch in Al’s right eye. Dr. Jane, though, was beautifully sculptured ice.
“This is Harry Denton,” Rachel said, pointing to me.
“Hi,” I interrupted. “I’m an old family friend. I’m pleased to meet you.”
We shook hands and made pleasantries for a moment. Then we all turned, as if choreographed, toward the
