Then she turned, holding the receiver. “For you, Sheriff.”
Loudermilk uncoiled his hawkish six feet and strode to the phone.
Bayliss and Suggs continued talking. But they broke off when Loudermilk gasped, “Maddy vanDeventer! Where?”
The Sheriff listened a moment. Then he snapped, “I’ll be right out!”
He turned from the phone, his face colorless. “Maddy vanDeventer’s dead!”
Nobody else in the diner said anything for a long moment. Then Suggs croaked, “Where? How? By the devil, there ain’t never been a sweeter, more considerate, nicer girl born than Maddy vanDeventer, even if she is rich. She just can’t be…”
“She was found a few minutes ago,” Sheriff Loudermilk said. “She slipped and fell off her cliff.” Howard knew that this simple explanation was sufficient to make the occurrence clear to every inhabitant of Pine Needle. Near Maddy’s home, the vanDeventer mansion, there was a wild cliff with jagged rocks at its base. Maddy enjoyed taking long walks on top of the cliff in the cool of the evening. Apparently she had taken one walk too many.
Loudermilk, Suggs, and Bayliss rushed out. Howard sat staring at the bright hot day outside.
The waitress said something to him. She was so excited she was scratching the rolls of flesh along her ribs. He looked at her and said. “Huh?”
“I said I’m closin’ up. I want to get out there.”
“Yeah,” Howard said. “I guess I better be getting back to business myself.”
He had his undertaking parlor aired, swept, and dusted when Sheriff Loudermilk brought the girl’s body in.
She was so young and beautiful. And then Howard, laying her out on the slab, touched the back of her head where the blood was clotted and the bone crushed, and she wasn’t beautiful at all.
Simply pathetic.
She had been wearing jodhpurs, flat-heeled oxfords, and an open-throated nylon blouse when she had gone down the cliff. The ripped and torn clothing was no problem. The bruises and scratches also presented no great difficulties. The head, however, was going to be a really tough job.
Face drawn, Sheriff Loudermilk wiped his forehead with a blue bandanna. “She wasn’t missed until this morning. Her daddy knew she was out and thought he heard her come in last night—but it was a servant walking around upstairs. She always sleeps until ten or eleven o’clock, so the poor old man thought she was safe in her own home until a couple boys came to tell him what they’d found at the bottom of the cliff. They were on a berry-picking trip.”
“Where is Mr. vanDeventer now?” Howard asked.
“He’s coming down here,” Loudermilk said. He gave the body a brief glance. “I reckon it’s a clear case of accidental death. She didn’t have an enemy in the world.”
The bell attached to the front door tinkled.
“I’ll bet that’s her daddy now,” Loudermilk finished. The Sheriff trailed Howard as the undertaker went from the rear of the building to the entrance. The caller was vanDeventer.
The old man usually presented a rather dashing appearance, for all his years. He was slender and in good health. His white hair fell in snowy, glistening waves across his head. His blue eyes were sharp and clear, his lean, tanned face firm.
But now Howard was shocked at vanDeventer’s appearance. He seemed to be a bag of dried sticks from a quaking aspen. His face was blotched with spots of color the hue of a sick liver.
“Please sit down, Mr. vanDeventer,” Howard said, pulling a chair from the wall.
The old man sank into the chair and leaned his head on one elbow. Loudermilk hovered in the background as Howard came around and sat down beside the old man.
The girl’s father pulled himself together. “I came to discuss…”
“I understand,” Howard said.
The old man looked around the office, sat in thought, then said at last, “Perhaps a bigger establishment would be better. Perhaps an Atlanta mortician…”
Howard looked directly at vanDeventer and suddenly there was steel in Howard’s eyes.
He spoke quietly but firmly. “Mr. vanDeventer, I am the only man alive to whom you can entrust this precious duty. I admit that Atlanta offers bigger establishments, but I offer you—and Maddy—much more. They would lay her away with the precision of a machine. I shall do so with the skill of an artist.”
He rose and stood over the old man, his face kind but unyielding. “Two generations of Aldens have buried all the departed of this county, Mr. vanDeventer. The Aldens as well as the vanDeventers are of this land, this soil.”
“You almost convince me, young man.”
“I need only to point out the facts, sir. Consider me first as a craftsman. I grew up in this business, sir. I know all the old ways, the fine ways. I take no short cuts to streamline my effects. I am the most capable mortician in this whole state of Georgia.
“Next, consider me as a man. I knew Maddy—her generosity, her beauty, her graciousness. I can impart to her a full measure of her divine naturalness. I shall approach my task, sir, with the deepest sense of duty.
“Add to all this the deep knowledge I have of what you, sir, would want. When this land has become ancient, her memory will still remain a landmark. Is that not your true desire, Mr. vanDeventer?”
“You read my heart, young man.”
“I would suggest, sir, a crypt of the purest marble from our own Georgia earth. If I may be permitted, I would deem it an honor to go to the quarries myself and personally choose every stone, supervise every inch of its cutting.”
“You would do that, young man?”
“Humbly,” Howard said.
“Then spare no expense,” the old man said, rising.
“As high as twenty thousand, sir?”
“As high as fifty thousand. The years left me are few, and of what use is my money now?”
The chauffeur was waiting outside to help the old man into one of the vanDeventer cars. Howard stood at the window and watched them
