Always Kiss the Corpse (5 page)

“The family will not be pleased. I am not pleased.”

“Surely Sandro wouldn't commit suicide. He knew the disgrace for us.”

“An accident. Overdose is shameful enough.”

Philip scowled. “I could look at the body.”

Andrei nodded. “If you would, Philip.”

A wry smile. “Not my idea of pleasure, of course. And I'm not a pathologist. But I'll do what I can.”

“Thank you.”

“I'll go right away.” Philip left.

The two best things about Andrei's office were, first, his private bathroom, and second, the cabinetry on the wall across from the window. The middle door, right side, hid a collection of fine bottles. Assorted brands of ouzo, as well as the drinks of many other nations. Right now Andrei chose a thirty-year-old Scotch and poured two fingers of it, neat.

Andrei himself had not always been the perfect member of his community. He'd been a rough kid, at twenty-three arrested for pot possession. The fact that everyone smoked pot in those days didn't help. In the community, one was not everyone. The protopresbyter had convinced the authorities to drop the charges, and Andrei promised before his parents and priest never to touch pot again. And he hadn't. The hot glow of shame grew less bright, till it faded into a distant past. He was never caught for the acid he dropped on occasional weekends with friends, well outside the community. Then he reached twenty-seven and something turned in him. He rejected small private pleasures and became a man responsible to those he cared for.

Now, not much warmed by the good Scotch, Andrei feared Sandro had brought shame on them all.

THREE

Twilight thickened into dark. The Schultzes lived on a quiet street of two-storey fifties clapboards; lights on in many houses, curtains undrawn. Poignant, Kyra thought, looking in on families from empty streets.

The door swung open as Kyra and Noel climbed the three steps to the stoop. A man stood in the entry, hand on the doorknob. Maybe thirty, longish curly hair, a sloppy-muscled look that would run to flab as he aged, a thin attractive face overlaid with worry. Kyra wanted to trust him instantly but remained wary. He looked familiar but she couldn't place him. Just a familiar type?

“Noel Franklin.” Noel handed him his card. “Mr. Schultz?”

“Yes,” Schultz acknowledged, taking it.

“And I'm Kyra Rachel.” Kyra stuck her hand out.

Schultz took it with a frown. “Mrs. McDermott? I'm Garth Schultz. I work for your husband. Site prep, backhoe?”

“Sam's my ex-husband,” Kyra corrected, then smiled. “Right! That's why you're familiar! Christmas parties and picnics! How's your wife,” she searched for a name, “and your child?”

“They're fine, thanks. Sorry, I didn't know Sam and you split up. He never talks personal at work. I did know you'd gone into detecting so I told Sandro's mom to hire you. And call me Garth,” he said to Noel. “Come in.”

“Is it them?” A voice from the living room, then the clatter of child in the hall. A small face peered around Garth's thigh, small hands clutching his pant leg.

“Yes!” He lowered his voice. “Mackenzie, let me back up.” Garth swung the girl to his shoulder and opened the door wide. Kyra and Noel entered. Garth shut the door. “Poor Mrs. V. Her husband died not long ago. And now her only kid.” He shook his head. “We took her home last night and Debbie called the doctor, she gave Mrs. V. a sedative. In here.” He gestured through an archway.

Noel wondered, take his shoes off? But Garth was wearing his.

They followed him into the living room. A small-faced pretty woman nursed a baby on the sofa. “Hello, Debbie.” Kyra, glad of Garth's prompt. “I remember Mackenzie, but not the baby.”

“Ralphie. He's nine months. I missed last Fourth of July,” Debbie chuckled, “and you weren't at the Christmas party.” A polite question in her tone.

“Sam and I separated a year ago February. I'm Kyra Rachel now.” Damn Sam, she thought. Telling no one, not taking their separation as permanent?

“That's too bad,” said Debbie, all domestic contentment. She tucked her breast back in her shirt and sat the baby up to burp him. He obliged. The floor was cluttered with bright toys. Mackenzie kicked at them, systematically.

“Won't you sit down?” Garth looked around for an unoccupied chair. One held a package of diapers, another the unfolded laundry. Half the sofa was taken by Debbie and the baby.

“Perhaps the kitchen?” Noel suggested.

“Okay.” Garth led them down a short hall. Mackenzie trailed along. The table contained supper remains. Garth set plates and bowls by the sink.

“Read me a story, Daddy.”

“In a while, kiddo. I have to talk to these people.”

“Read to me!”

“You went to the funeral home on Whidbey Island yesterday?” Kyra asked.

“Yes. I drove Mrs. V. down.”

Mackenzie piped up, “Justin said a word today, at daycare—”

“Did you think the body was Sandro's?” If she ignored the child, Kyra thought, the child would get the message. She accepted the fact she didn't like children. Certainly not this one.

“Shit! Justin said shit! What's shit, Daddy?”

Garth rolled his eyes.

Kyra thought: Get that kid outta here.

“You have any paper?” Noel asked Mackenzie. She nodded. “And crayons?” Nod. “Can you go into the living room and draw me a picture? I'd like your drawing to take home to put on my fridge.”

Mackenzie climbed up on the chair next to him. “I can draw it here.”

“I especially want a picture that's been drawn in the living room,” said Noel. “That's the only sort I put on my fridge.” He smiled down at her.

Mackenzie considered. “Okay.” She climbed down and thudded off.

A side of Noel Kyra had forgotten—Noel taking her fishing when she was ten.

Garth ran a dishcloth over the table.

“Mrs.Vasiliadis said you were Sandro's best friend. You sort of looked after him?” Kyra set her notebook down.

“He did a lot for me too, taught me things. Yeah, I protected him. He was a small quiet kid, liked reading and music, so the rough guys went for him.”

“What did he do for you?”

“Stuff like—” Garth pulled out a chair, thinking. “Pointing out things. How people do the opposite of what they mean sometimes, how to figure that. Like in junior high we had a teacher who was always sucking up to the smartasses in the back row and I got mad 'cause I figured he should pay attention to the guys that cared about school, like Sandro. But Sandro said the teacher really wanted to murder the smartasses so he had to undermine them. I'd never thought about that, but he was right. Like I mean, Sandro understood people. Like Debbie does.” Garth frowned. “I sure don't. Like I don't see Debbie's getting mad till she blows. Sandro knew that stuff. He knew plants and insects too, he loved studying those. He shoulda gone into biology, I always said.”

Kyra rephrased her earlier question. “Was that Sandro in the coffin yesterday?”

“Well,” Garth looked at his hands, big hands, close-cut nails. He picked at a cuticle on his index finger. “My thought was, if Sandro was still in junior high, that would've been him. But yeah, I never really doubted it was Sandro. He just looked different somehow. We haven't seen each other since he moved to Whidbey.” Another cuticle. “You just can't keep up with friends when you have children and both Deb and me work. So it's kinda exhausting.” He glanced at them. “You have children?”

They both shook their heads.

“Deb and me haven't been out anywhere in two years. We could hire a sitter but we'd be too tired to enjoy it.”

“You went to the viewing on Whidbey Island without the children,” Noel noted.

“Oh yeah. First time we left them with anyone other than the daycare.”

Kyra said, “Mrs. Vasiliadis said ‘they,' I assume she meant the police or coroner, think the dead man had been a drug user, and he'd overdosed.”

Garth's head snapped up. “You get through high school without drugs, you get to thirty without, then you do drugs? No way!”

“You know who he hung out with on Whidbey?”

“He had friends at the hospital. A nurse from there identified his body, I think she was at the viewing. And he was on a bowling team, I remember.”

“His mom said he was taking courses.”

“Oh yeah? Good. He was smart.”

“Anything else about him that'd help us?” Noel asked.

Garth thought hard. “Nope. Just things. Like the tadpoles. Where we lived? By the lake? Bunch of tadpoles we went out to see every day after school, watch them develop and things. So one day these guys we know, they're scooping tadpoles out and pulling their new legs off and leaving them on the grass and the tadpoles aren't dead, they're flopping without their new legs, and Sandro belts on the guys and scoops the tadpoles back in the water and starts to cry. The guys woulda murdered him but we were both so mad, I dunno where Sandro got the strength, it was like maybe God wanted the tadpole destroyers punished, but we lit into those guys, they were a grade ahead of us, and they cleared off. Then both Sandro and me cried.”

As he was doing now, Kyra noted. They waited. The little girl burst into the kitchen waving a piece of crayoned paper. She looked only at Noel. “Here! I did it in the living room all by myself, Mommy's bathing Ralphie!”

Noel took the piece of paper she slapped down. “Can you tell me its story?”

Kyra craned for a look and Noel tilted it her way. An uneven blue circle with lines, a squarish brown thing, a red blob.

“It's a dog,” Mackenzie announced, her tone saying anyone would know that. “A boy dog. He's Shit. That's Shit's house and that's Shit's dish. He's a happy dog and that's the sun.”

Kyra, Noel and Garth stared at the picture.

Noel said, “That's a fine drawing. It'll look good on my fridge. Thank you.”

Garth said, “It's bedtime, kiddo.” He showed them out. “It was Sandro in the coffin, but he sure looked different.”

Back in the car Kyra refrained from starting the engine. “Everyone,” she said softly, “should have a Garth for a friend.”

Noel nodded. “I thought, in there, one of the advantages of being out in the field, you get to see the real insides of houses. And you meet real people. Fortunate kids, Mackenzie and Ralphie, having him for a father.”

“Yep.”

≈  ≈  ≈

Philip Deriades had some notions about what he'd learn on Whidbey Island concerning Sandro but he wouldn't speculate. He would drive up to the north end of the island and take the bridge over Deception Pass down to Coupeville. A longer route but, because of ferry lineups and the trip across Possession Sound, maybe faster. If he got his inquiries done in time he'd return on the
Kittitas
from Clinton. Ferry lineups and crossings were good times for mulling. He might be dealing with some hefty stuff on the way back.

Andrei had brought Philip in during the middle stages of Maria's husband's cancer. Too late, Philip saw at first glance. Eldest of the five Vasiliadis sibs, Kostas should have been head of the family from the moment of the death of his own father. But Kostas at twenty-two had impetuously moved with Maria to Bellingham, to sire his own stock. Only one offspring, Sandro. And Sandro never became the leader Kostas had wanted his son to be.

After Dom, who was married to his sister Marina, Philip knew and liked Andrei best—Andrei, by default head of the Vasiliadis family. Andrei had shown himself over the years to be the force that bound them to each other. It was appropriate that Andrei should now, after Maria's outburst, insist, for the family and its place in the community, that Sandro's body be laid to rest with full decorum and low profile.

Philip had been to Whidbey Island several times, though never on business. As he drove through Oak Harbor, and now into Coupeville, his eye caught the institutions of his profession—hospital, medical center, labs. His secretary had called ahead to make an appointment at Oceanside Funeral Home. He'd examine the body and speak with whomever was in charge.

Lights on inside the funeral home, no apparent activity. A sign on the closed door said Enter, but he rang the bell. A man in black opened the door. Philip introduced himself. The man in black invited him in. He stepped in. He saw several closed white doors and a white staircase with a varnished wood balustrade.

“I'm Claude Martin. This,” the man's hand swept a hundred-eighty degrees, “is Oceanside.”

“So I gathered from your sign.”

Martin opened the first door on the right. “My office.” He walked in.

Philip followed. Again, stark white walls, several Shaker cabinets—pine, Philip guessed—and some certificates hanging behind a six-foot wooden desk that held only a telephone and a blotter. Claude Martin gestured to two black captain's chairs with white cushions. Philip sat. Martin pulled on the cuffs of his black suit jacket. It matched his trousers, tie and shoes, as well as his black hair slicked back firmly. Martin's shirt, white, made it appear to Philip that the man's chest was drawn back, beyond the body. Martin lowered himself into the chair behind the desk.

“How can I help you?” Martin's mouth edges curved up a little but no smile appeared.

“It's about the Alessandro Vasiliadis viewing.”

The curve dropped away. “An awful moment for Oceanside.”

“Tell me, did the body come directly from the morgue?”

Claude Martin's brow knotted in the middle. “Of course.”

“The necessary papers came with it?”

The knot tightened. “Of course.”

“And these papers bore the name Vasiliadis.”

“That's correct.”

“The body would have been identified at the morgue, then?”

“Dr. Deriades, we do not accept unidentified bodies.”