The minister led a final prayer. The harpist starting plinking. Row by row, people shuffled past the urn. Some brushed their fingers across it. Some bent and kissed it. Many said a silent prayer. I went straight to Gloria McPhee. I introduced myself. I told her that I’d worked with Gabriella Nash on her story about the Queens of Never Dull. “Putting that Romanian flag by her remains was a very nice touch,” I said.
Gloria smiled weakly. “She just loved that flag.”
“That particular flag?”
“She said she’d had it since she was a girl.”
“And her leaving everything to the art museum,” I said. “Isn’t that something.”
Her eyes got as cold as those little round ice cubes they put in highballs. She knew I was laying it on thick, or, as Ike likes to say, giving her the old schmaltzaroo. “Kay told us you came to see her,” she said. “That you were feeling guilty about the story your paper did on us.”
I bobbled my head contritely.
“And do you know what I told Kay, Mrs. Sprowls?”
“I can’t imagine.”
Gloria moved in close, to make sure I could hear her whisper over the harpist. “I told her you were that librarian who sticks her nose into murders.”
I’d been outed again. And I was glad. It made my nose-sticking easier. “I went to see Ariel, too. But all I got was her daughter’s two cents on the matter.”
Gloria pulled back. Her eyebrows shot up. She gave one of the best Lauren Bacalls I’ve ever seen. “I’d bite down hard on those two pennies if I were you,” she said. “To see if they’re made of real copper.”
“I’ll put it on my to-do list.”
She mellowed. “I suppose you’d like to talk to me, too.”
“I’d like that.”
“Expect a call,” she said.
I looked for Detective Grant. He was at the front of the chapel, reading all the little cards on the flower baskets. I snuck up beside him. “Any surprises?”
He flinched. As if a scorpion had just crawled up his pantleg. He took a couple of deep breaths. “No.”
And there weren’t any surprises. No flowers from dukes or duchesses. No flowers from anybody named Bell. No flowers from outside Hannawa.
We followed the other people outside. A black limousine was waiting under the portico. Weedy was circling the crowd like a wolf, clicking away. After a few minutes the four Queens of Never Dull came out. Kay and Ariel had their arms around each other. Gloria had her arms around Violeta’s urn. Weedy got the picture.
“Any objections if I ride out to the cemetery with you?” Grant asked.
“Not a one.” A few minutes later we were in the funeral procession, buzzing up West Apple in Gabriella’s little bumblebee car, me up front, Weedy and Grant scowling from the back like a pair of adjoined hippopotami.
It took the procession a good half hour to reach the cemetery. It was out in Bloomfield Township. It was one of those new corporately owned jobbies that don’t allow gravestones-just those flat, bronzed plaques to make the mowing easier. It was called Riverbend Moor. As if there actually was a river nearby, bent or otherwise. As if anybody in America knew what a moor was. And according to the big, flagstone-encased sign in front, it was not a cemetery at all. It was a “family memory garden.” There was an 800 number on the sign, so you could call and make your reservations on their nickel.
The procession snaked through the gates and parked along the drive. People got out of their cars, stretching and twisting until their undergarments were back in place. It was a big cemetery. Big and sterile. The grass was short and brown. There was a sprinkling of small trees still tethered to their stakes. There was a chalky-white angel statue surrounded by a ring of red geraniums. At the top of the hill sat the columbarium, the modern glass and brown-brick monstrosity where Violeta’s ashes would spend eternity.
“I’ve never been in a columbarium before,” I confessed to Detective Grant as we followed the walkway toward a pair of tall, copper-covered doors. “But I’d hear they’re quite the thing these days.”
“You’re in for a real treat,” he said.
I can’t say it was a treat. But it was interesting. The building had a high, vaulted ceiling. All glass, so that rays of sunlight were shooting down at every angle, and in every color, like rainbows almost. The marble walls were lined with niches for the urns. Each niche was maybe a foot-and-a-half square. They were lined up eight across and eight high. They looked like giant trophy cases.
Anyway, each individual niche had a glass door and a lock. And what made it all so interesting is the way the niches were decorated. Next to the urns were favorite family photos and keepsakes. Baseballs. Teacups. A favorite pair of shoes or fishing lure. Military medals. Big-eyed Precious Moments figurines. Bibles opened to special passages. One niche contained a half-smoked cigar resting in one of those horrible topless-woman ashtrays. But most were in good taste and quite touching. I’d always envisioned myself being lowered into the ground in a casket. But the place did make me think.
Violeta Bell’s niche had a very nice view of the pond and sitting garden outside. It was in the third row, too, so you didn’t have to stoop too low or stretch too high to see inside. Gloria put the urn into the niche. Kay placed a ceramic bell next to it. It was covered with hand-painted violets. Ariel put a folded classifieds section from The Herald-Union inside. A half-dozen garage sales were circled. Gloria took a small wooden box out of her purse and put that inside. The box was about the size of a harmonica, maybe five inches long and a couple of inches wide. A fancy little box.
Gloria closed the glass door. The click of the lock echoed across the columbarium. The minister conducted a brief service. There was a little sniffling and a lot of silence. People headed for their cars.
Detective Grant locked his arm in mine and eased me off the walkway, away from Gabriella and Weedy. We walked along a row of those bronzed plaques, twenty or thirty of them, until we were well out of eavesdropping range. “So, Maddy,” he asked, grinning like a Buddha statue. “How’s your investigation going?”
“Badly. And yours?”
“It’s taken an interesting twist. One I figured you’d want to know about before the brown stuff hits the fan.”
“Before Dale Marabout’s story comes out tomorrow, you mean?”
“Pretty much the same thing-no?”
Maybe I was only the paper’s librarian, but I was a newspaperwoman. And I was a good friend of Dale Marabout’s. I had my loyalties. I took the offensive. “Given that it took you so long to release the body for cremation, I gather this interesting twist of yours has something to do with the autopsy.”
He was still grinning but he suddenly looked a lot more like Beelzebub than Buddha. “It seems that when the coroner did his thing-how can I put this-a few things were missing inside.”
The sun was suddenly very hot. “Things missing?”
“Everything you’d expect to find on the outside was there-but inside.”
“Scotty-what are you saying?”
He knew me well enough to get to the skinny. “It seems that once upon a time Violeta Bell had been a man.”
The sun was now sitting directly on top of my head. “Are we talking sex change here?”
“Yes, we are,” he said. “Yes, we are.”
“Heaven’s to Betsy! First she’s the queen of Romania and now she’s a man?”
Grant took my arm and started us toward the car. “We live in interesting times, don’t we?”
I slipped my arm out of his. “I hate to go liberal on you, but does the whole world have to know? She was who she wanted to be. And apparently didn’t want anyone to know.”
“I’m a very open-minded guy,” he said. “I’ve got a transgendered officer in my department. I’d be happy to let Violeta Bell’s secret stay right up the hill there in that jar.”
“But it’s public record?”
“And it could be pertinent to the case,” he added. “Transgenders get murdered all the time. Boyfriends who aren’t too happy with the news.”
“Boyfriend? She was seventy-two!” I laughed at my own stupidity. “What am I saying-I’m sixty-nine with a boyfriend.”
Grant helped me over the droopy chain that ran along the edge of the drive. “I’ve got a press conference at
