See Also Deception (13 page)

I stepped over the threshold and stopped just inside the foyer. The overbearing and unwanted smell of the funeral home hit my nose in a floral explosion of blossoming life that could only be associated with death. It was such a mix of scents that my mind, usually prone to sorting and listing identifiable substances, was confused and scattered. I knew it was more than the jumble of flowers all vying for my attention, demanding to be categorized. It was the fact that I was about see to Calla in her final state. Unless the casket was closed.
Please let it be
closed
 . . .

“Miss Eltmore, I presume,” a man's familiar voice said.

I looked over and made eye contact with Pete McClandon, proprietor of the funeral home and the current Stark County coroner. I had known Pete for most of my life, and to be honest he looked the same now as he did when I was a young girl. He had to be in his early eighties, and his hair was still as black as the underbelly of a crow. I wondered if he colored it with shoe polish. It looked like it—either that or Rit dye. His face held deep worry lines, rivulets of time cut through weathered flesh that made him look hard, like a marble sculpture had been set on his shoulders instead of a soft human face. His gray eyes were cloudy but still as warm and comforting as they could be in any circumstance. Pete McClandon had a quick smile and a hearty handshake on most days, except when he was working the front of the funeral home; then he was the tower of sadness, quiet and respectful. Like now, like he had been for both my parents and Hank's and for so many of our friends.

“Yes, of course, I'm here to see Calla Eltmore,” I said to Pete, never breaking eye contact with him. I wondered if there were any other funerals in the coming days. I hadn't checked the paper to see.

“Straight ahead.” Pete pointed the way. He was wearing his signature black suit, which made him look the same as always. I'd never seen him dressed any other way. Always in black, like it was a cloak he couldn't escape or a military uniform he refused to discard.

I hesitated; I had a flood of questions that I wanted to ask Pete, but I knew he wouldn't answer them, couldn't answer them.
Did she really kill herself? Why does a person do that? You've seen it before, you have to know
 . . . I exhaled instead and walked slowly toward the open double doors that led into the parlor that held Calla's casket. The walk was lined with bouquets of colorful flowers, but one thing was missing from each of them: a card. It was like no one wanted to be associated with a suicide but had sent flowers out of respect anyway—or the funeral home had put them there so the showing, the funeral, would appear normal for those who did attend. That made sense.

The parlor was long and narrow and also served as a chapel for those that chose not to have their funerals in a church. The walls were stark white and the ceiling was arched, the rafters dark walnut with a high sheen. The center of the room was filled with folding chairs, all spaced evenly, row after row, waiting to be filled. The floral fragrance—carnations, chrysanthemums, heather, lilies, and more—followed me inside the room and was accompanied by distant music, an instrumental organ hymn that I knew the words to but tried to ignore. The promise of salvation, of a perfect eternity, was out of place, distasteful, a discussion I didn't want to have. I couldn't imagine heaven at that moment—if ever. Hell was easier. I never thought of Calla as a tortured soul, but I must have been wrong.

I gasped and stopped when I realized that the lid to the casket was open. It was a simple oak coffin like I had seen more times than I wanted to admit, with a white satin interior. When I focused, I could make out Calla's profile, her face angled upward, her glasses on like she was staring into the sky at a forty-five degree angle, her head propped up on a soft virgin pillow. I was certain that her eyes were closed. As certain as I could be at that moment.

At the thought, I closed my own eyes, and then opened them again to make sure I wasn't imagining the vision of Calla dead, lying in a casket. I wasn't. She was there for all the world to see.

There was only one other person in the parlor, which surprised me, since there had been a few cars in the parking lot. It only took me a second to recognize Herbert Frakes, sitting alone in the front row, dressed in his best moth-eaten suit, his head bowed like he was praying, or counting the threads in the lush, gold-sculptured carpet under his feet. I made my way to him, never taking my eyes off of Calla. I couldn't believe that Pete had left the lid open. I just couldn't believe it.

“Herbert,” I whispered, putting my hand on his shoulder as I came to a stop. There was no mistaking that it was Calla in the casket. I was less than eight feet away from her, and she looked just like herself, not a waxy, unrecognizable, embalmed face.

“Marjorie.” Herbert reached up and clasped my hand on his shoulder. It was like ice jamming into ice. It was a miracle that we both didn't shatter. “How's Hank?”

“Getting better,” I said. Only this time it wasn't a lie to placate curiosity. It was the truth, and what I fully believed. “I hope to have him home in a few days.”

“That'd be good.” Herbert's voice echoed up into the rafters and then mixed with the hymn, “Awake, My Heart, with Gladness.” Even though I hadn't been to church in ages, I figured I would remember the Lutheran hymns in any circumstance. They were engrained in me, wedged deep in a part of myself that I barely knew any longer. I still thought the hymn was inappropriate, but I supposed Pete didn't have a record for suicides to trumpet through the oversized speakers in each corner of the room, just records for a death that promised hope and eternal life, streets paved of gold and the reunion of souls who had passed the test of time and faith.

Herbert looked up at me. “It looks just like her, doesn't it?”

I nodded, then leaned down and whispered, “Why is it open?”

Herbert looked at me, so that we were eye to eye. “I asked Pete to do that. I wanted to see her one last time. He didn't figure it'd be a problem since there was no one here and it wasn't like her head was . . .” He stopped and looked down again. “Broken open,” he said with a quiver. “He'll close it if I ask him to, if people start to come.” He hesitated and said, “It'll be closed for the funeral, so you best go see her now.”

“Okay,” I said. He looked on the verge of tears, but restrained himself. I sighed, patted his shoulder, and stood up at the sound of voices coming in the door. Truth was, I wanted to see her, too, say goodbye one last time.

I took a deep breath, ignored the incoming visitors the best I could, and made my way to the casket alone. An unannounced shiver trembled up my spine, and I suddenly realized how cold it was in the parlor. I wanted to stop and run to the nearest fire to warm myself, to feel alive, to be warm, but I couldn't. I had to see her.

Tears flowed down my cheeks, obscured my vision, and Calla looked distant, asleep, at peace, which I had not expected. Her hands were clasped over an old book bound in worn brown leather—
Poems
, by Elizabeth Barrett Browning. More of Herbert's doing, I was sure. Browning was Calla's favorite poet. She had on a soft pink sweater, a color I'd never seen her in before—she wore mostly grays, blacks, and browns—and figured she would balk if she could. It probably wasn't even her sweater, but a piece of spare clothing out of Pete's wardrobe for the dead.

I cleared my eyes and stood over Calla as
Why? Why? Why?
circulated through my mind and heart. I studied her face, looking for an answer that I knew would never come. I had to accept that she had had her reasons for doing what she did, and no matter how much I protested she wasn't ever going to be able to answer my questions.

Slowly, with shame and curiosity, my vision drifted to her right temple, expecting to see something of note, something that would look like a cake of makeup to cover up a scar, or a bullet hole in this case. But nothing was there.

A quick glance at her left temple gave me what I was looking for, and at that moment I knew something was wrong. Something was horribly wrong.

CHAPTER 21

I had to consider that my immediate perception of the truth was completely wrong. But first I had to catch my breath, slow my heart from jumping out of my chest. I felt like all of the blood in my head had drained to my feet. I couldn't move. Each toe felt chained to the soft carpeted floor. I was a prisoner of my vision, to the horror of the sudden reality that I was certain of:
Calla Eltmore had not committed suicide
. If I fully understood what I had seen, then I had been right all along. I had never believed that Calla could do such a thing, and now that I had seen her, I was almost certain that I knew that to be true. As true as the sun rose in the east and set in the west.

I looked at Calla again and what I saw made sense—or made no sense at all. Calla had been right-handed. The bullet wound should have been at her right temple, not her left.
Calla had been right-handed, damn it.

Frozen in place, locked in my own imagination, I raised my right hand to my head. It instinctively went to the same side, to my right temple. My hand did not cross over to the left side of my head. But if she had done that, then why? What difference would it have made? Why not just take the path of least resistance and get it over with?
Just get it over with
—unless she hadn't been the one to pull the trigger.

I hadn't wanted to believe that Calla had killed herself from the very beginning. But maybe she did cross her hand and the gun over to her left temple. It was possible that she had done exactly that—and impossible to know for sure.

Questioning everything had always been a way of life for me. I questioned myself, but in that single moment I couldn't come up with one reason why a right-handed person would shoot themselves on the left side of their head.

Somehow, I staggered backward, away from the casket and made my way to Herbert.

He reached out to steady me. “You alright, there, Marjorie? You look pale as a fresh bleached sheet hung on the line. It's hard to take, I'll tell you that. Sure is hard to take seein' her like that.”

“I'm fine.” I welcomed Herbert's touch, even though up close to him I realized he smelled of whiskey. The overwhelming fragrance of funeral flowers had completely hidden it when I'd spoken to him before. “I need to find Pete McClandon,” I said.

“I saw him leave.”

“What time is it?” I asked, befuddled that Pete had left the building, that he would leave his post at the door during a viewing.

Herbert looked down at his bare wrist. “It's the funniest thing, Marjorie, I can't seem to find my watch. I take it off every evening when I wash up after work. It's not waterproof like those new-fangled ones. I must've left it on the sink, but when I reached for it, it was gone, like it had never been there.” He shook his head in disbelief. “But it's hard to say; maybe I left it somewhere else. The last few days have been a blur. That was my Navy watch. I bought it in the Philippines when I was on leave the first time. I'll never find another one like it. Nope, I sure won't. I can't believe it's gone any more than I can believe Calla's gone.”

“I'm sure it'll turn up.” I tried to sound hopeful but I didn't believe myself, and I was pretty sure that Herbert wasn't comforted at all by my meager offering.

“Everything's lost,” Herbert said, turning away from me, facing Calla's presentation in the casket.

I didn't know what else to say to that. He was right.
Everything
is
lost
. I felt exactly the same way.

My feet suddenly moved underneath me, away from the casket, away from my puzzling assumption as quickly as they could go. It felt like I wasn't in control of any part of my body. I was being propelled out of the parlor by an unseen force: fear, dread, panic, and righteousness. I had to find Pete.

If I was right, that the bullet hole was on the wrong side of Calla's head, then it meant there was a possibility that Calla Eltmore hadn't killed herself at all. That would only mean one thing. Being right would mean that she had been murdered, killed in her office for some unknown reason, by some unknown person, who, as I thought about it, was still walking around free of any suspicion.

The killer could be anyone.

I shuddered at the thought and came to the quick conclusion that I hoped I was wrong. Now, I hoped that Calla
had
killed herself. I couldn't bear the thought of another murderer loose in Dickinson. My stomach tied itself up in knots so tight I feared they would never be undone.

I was at the front door of the funeral home before I knew it. Pete had been replaced by his wife, Helen, a tall thin woman with perfectly coifed hair the same color as Pete's shoe-polish-black. Pete had an easier time hiding his age than she did; her face was a map of deep worry lines. She smelled like a garden of flowers, too, like the fragrance inside the funeral home was permanently housed inside every pore in her skin. But unlike Pete, Helen was a perpetually stoic woman. Her smiles took effort. The muscles in her face protested openly every time she smiled, making the map more canyons than roads. She wore a modest, knee-length, black skirt and a blouse and jacket the same color, with a red rose pinned to the right lapel. There was not one speck of lint on her anywhere to be seen. Her eyes were nearly as dark as her hair and outfit, and, if I had to guess, it was her steel spine that navigated the business side of things, while Pete was left to the politics of the coroner's office and glad-handing at the front door. I had always preferred to deal with Pete. He was the gentler of the two. Helen always looked uncomfortable at her public post at the door—and at Pete's side.

I stopped before her almost like I would if I were a lesser human being. “Could I speak to Pete?” It was almost a whisper.