The Murder Pit (16 page)

THIRTY

“I’ve gotta do some makeup, but as long as you don’t mind, I can talk, sure,” Olga said to me the next morning.

I’d tossed and turned all night, puzzled by the conflicting stories I had about Olaf. I didn’t think anyone knew him better than his sister, or at the very least, cared more about him. So, after getting Emily off to school and dropping the kids at a special 4-H project meeting, I drove over to the mortuary to talk some more with Olga.

I followed her down the main hallways, but instead of going upstairs this time, we turned left and entered a large square room with two long tables in the center.

There was a body on one of them.

“Sally Gaadenstern,” Olga said. She snapped on a pair of latex gloves. “Had a heart attack a few days ago, trying to start her snow blower. Husband was inside snoring away.” She shook her head. “He was pretty broken up about it.”

Sally Gaadenstern’s eyes were closed and her skin had a waxy look to it. A sheet was pulled up to her neck and if I hadn’t known better, I would’ve just assumed she was sleeping.

Olga opened a bag sitting on a small metal tray. She pulled out a bottle of foundation and a small makeup sponge. She unscrewed the lid and tilted the bottle.

“So,” she said. She dabbed the sponge at the woman’s face.

“Is that…make-up?” I asked.

Olga wrinkled her brow. “Duh. What else would I be using?”

“I…I don’t know. I just thought maybe you needed to use something different. You know, since she’s…not alive.”

Olga nodded. “Oh, we do. You can’t just use any old make-up on embalmed bodies. Most make-up works with the body’s heat.” She chuckled. “And she doesn’t have any, if you know what I mean.”

She rubbed the foundation in. “I like airbrush foundation myself. Much easier to get good coverage. But ours broke and Larry hasn’t gotten around to ordering a new one. Feel like I’m back in the Stone Age here.”

I assumed Larry worked at the funeral home but I decided not to ask. “Have the police been to talk to you?” I asked, trying to focus on her and not the dead body on the table.

She nodded as she brushed at Sally’s face. “Oh, you betcha. That Detective Hanborn is one tough cookie. A little rough to look at, but she’s been around a bunch, asking me all sorts of stuff.”

As much as I disliked the detective, it was good to know she was doing her job.

“Did she say whether she had any leads?” I asked.

Olga studied Sally’s face intently, then pulled out a round container of blush. She took the round applicator and worked it into Sally’s cheeks, dusting it across her forehead and jawline. The white, waxy hue was slowly fading. “Not really. She was pretty tight-lipped.” Olga frowned. “I tried to get information out of her, but she said it wasn’t any of my business.”

I nodded in sympathy. At least I wasn’t the only one who’d been reprimanded by the surly detective.

Look, I have kind of a weird question,” I said.

Olga lifted her eyes. “About Sally? Ask away, I love talking about my job.”

My eyes widened in horror. “No,” I said quickly. “It’s about your brother.”

Olga waited, the container of blush steady in her hand.

“Did Olaf have any, like, enemies?”

She stowed the blush and pulled out a small container of dark powder. She dipped her pinky finger into the powder and blew off the excess before dusting it in the creases of Sally’s face. Under her nose,  a little on her chin, and Sally’s transformation continued. I couldn’t help it; I watched in complete and utter fascination.

“Can’t say that he did, no.”

“So no one that he didn’t get along with?” I pressed. “Or someone that he might’ve not gotten along with.”

She squinted at Sally and leaned over her, studying her intently. “My brother got along with everyone” she said firmly. “It was probably his biggest flaw.”

“How so?”

“The man couldn’t say no,” Olga explained. Lip liner was next. She brought her face within inches of Sally’s, her fingers steady as she traced the pencil along the woman’s closed mouth. “To anyone,” she continued. “Someone asked for help, he said yes. Someone asked for ten dollars, he said yes. Someone asked for a ride down to Rochester, he said yes.” She shook her head. “He just didn’t have it in him to say no.”

That sounded more like the man I’d met at dinner.

“Everyone liked my brother,” Olga said. She straightened and looked at Sally, tilting her head sideways as she studied her work. “And it was like that even when were kids. He always had lots of friends.” She smiled and tossed the lip liner back in the bag. “I used to get mad at him for that. We made a list of our friends one day. I had maybe seven? Olaf listed nearly a hundred kids.” She laughed. “I punched him in the ear.”

Her affection for her brother seemed genuine, not forced in any way. I pictured them as young kids, with Olaf looking out for his awkward younger sister.

“So then it’s fair to say that really the only person he didn’t get along with was Helen?” I asked.

Her smile faded and she nodded. “That’s more than fair to say.”

“But he must’ve gotten along with her at some point if they got married.”

“Oh sure, sure,” Olga said. She unearthed a lipstick and unscrewed the cap. “They met right after college. Helen seemed nice enough then. She’s from North Dakota and moved here because she got a job working for the cable company. Olaf worked there, too—until he couldn’t stand working in an office anymore.

Collecting dead animals for a taxidermist was about as far as you could get from an office job, so it seemed clear that Olaf must’ve gotten
really
tired of office work.

“So they met there at work,” she said, carefully applying the lipstick to Sally’s mouth. “They dated for a year or so, I think, and she seemed nice. At the time,” she clarified. “She came to family picnics, went ice fishing with us, attended church. They got married and then things went south pretty fast.”

“How did they go south?”

Olga walked around to the other side of the table, still studying Sally’s face. “For one, Olaf wanted to have kids. Helen told him she did, too, but turned out she didn’t really want to.” She glanced up at me. “Think she told him she did just so he’d marry her.”

I nodded. I was pretty sure Thornton hadn’t wanted kids, either. He’d been ambivalent about all the pregnancies and only slightly more enthusiastic when each baby was born.

“But Olaf—because he was Olaf—just sort of accepted it,” Olga said. She dabbed the lipstick at Sally’s lips one more time. “He let it go. It became pretty clear, though, that he wasn’t happy. And she turned into this completely different person. She quit her job and just wanted to stay home and watch soap operas all day. She stopped coming to church. She’d find all sorts of excuses to back out of family get togethers.” She shook her head. “Got so that we hardly ever saw her.”

I nodded, digesting all that. “Did it bother Olaf?”

“Oh, he blew it off, but I think it did,” she answered. “It wasn’t what he signed up for.”

“So why did she marry him, then?” I asked. “If she didn’t want kids and she wasn’t interested in the same things, what did she get out of it?”

Olga lifted Sally’s chin a little, scrutinizing something. “She wanted to be taken care of because she’s a lazy cow. She wanted a husband to take care of her. Olaf looked like that guy.” She looked at me. “I don’t think she ever thought he’d get so fed up that he’d ask for a divorce. That surprised all of us. But I guess he just realized how unhappy he was.”

I nodded again, sympathizing. I remembered those feelings. I’d tried to convince myself for so long that I could be happy with Thornton and what I’d chosen. I’d make excuses for everything, more for myself than for any other reason. But the more excuses I made, the unhappier they made me. I never in a million years saw myself as a divorced person, but I finally reached a point where it was the only option I felt would make me happy. It was a hard realization to come to and it made me sad to realize that was the direction my life had taken, but I knew it was a necessary evil if I wanted to be happy again.

“I went and visited Elliott Cornelius yesterday,” I told Olga.

She nodded. “Ah. Elliott.”

Her tone was different than it had been before. Not quite an edge to it, but there was…something.

“Did they get along okay?” I asked. “Did Olaf like the job?”

She thought for a moment. “Olaf liked the job just fine. He liked animals and I think he felt like he was helping them out by taking them somewhere after they were dead, rather than just letting them rot on the side of the road.” She nodded again. “Yeah, he liked that work just fine, I’d say.”

“And he liked working for Elliott?”

She dug back into the cosmetics bag. I wasn’t sure what was left to apply to the woman laying on the table in front of her. “Sure. For the most part.”

“For the most part?”

She shrugged as she studied Sally’s face. “It was tense for awhile.”

“Why?”

“Because Elliott did something stupid.”

“What did he do?”

“He went out with Helen,” she said, glancing at me.

My eyebrows lifted. I knew there’d been more to Elliott’s story. “He did?”

She nodded and brushed at some invisible speck on Sally’s face. “He did. Guess she’d been flirting with him for awhile. And, at first, he didn’t pay her any attention. But she got to him somehow because Olaf found out they spent an evening together.”

Stuff It’s owner’s unwillingness to answer more of my questions suddenly made a lot more sense.

“And I think the poor guy took a genuine liking to her,” Olga said. “And let’s be honest. I could see why. Helen’s not an ugly woman and who knows what she did with him on their date. But apparently he liked it. And her.”

That image was one I was going to need some bleach in my memory to get rid of.

“So Olaf found out and I guess they had words,” she continued. “Didn’t speak to one another for a couple days. Olaf was gonna look for another job, but he didn’t think he’d be able to find anything. And then Elliott started whining that she’d already dumped him.”

“To Olaf?” I frowned. That didn’t sound like the Elliott I’d met.

“Elliott’s not the brightest bulb,” Olga said, rolling her eyes. “But yes. To Olaf. And Olaf told him he didn’t care that she’d found someone else so he could take his pity party elsewhere.”

“So was she actually dating someone else then?” I asked, trying to keep up with everything Olga was divulging.

“Well, she said she was,” Olga said. She zipped the cosmetic bag shut and peeled off her gloves. “She told Olaf she was. She told him that the fling was over with Elliott and she’d moved on to someone bigger and better. I was at Olaf’s one day and she stopped by to have him sign some more stupid papers and she just kept going on and on about how wonderful this new man was. How sexy he was.” She rolled her eyes again. “She must’ve called him sexy about fifteen times before I asked if he was blind.”

I stifled a laugh. Despite our initial meeting, I was really beginning to like Olga. She cared for her brother and she was funny.

“Anyway, Olaf didn’t care,” she said, shrugging. “At all. So she just got mad and stormed off. I heard around town that she was telling everyone the same thing. Who knows if it was even true?”

“Any idea who it was? I mean, if it was true?”

She shook her head. “None.” She put her hands on her hips and looked at me. “So what do you think?”

I thought for a moment. “I honestly don’t know what to think, Olga. My encounters with Helen have definitely been strange. I can’t believe Elliott went out with her when Olaf worked for him. But I’m just baffled as to how Olaf ended…where he did.”

She pointed at the body on the table. “I meant what do you think about Sally.”

I felt my cheeks color. “Oh.” I stepped closer to the table. Olga had transformed the woman on the table from a waxy figure to someone who looked warm and peaceful. She didn’t look fake or artificially beautiful. She looked like someone’s wife, a person that people would miss. She looked real.

I smiled at Olga. “I think she looks beautiful.”

Olga offered me a smile in return. “Everyone deserves to look beautiful at their own funeral.”

I couldn’t have agreed more.

THIRTY ONE

I pulled into the lot back at the church to pick up the kids from their 4-H meeting and my mood took a turn for the worse when I spied Thornton’s car parked in the lot.

My mood dipped even further when I saw him sitting in the car. He gave me a half-wave when he saw me.

I drove past him and parked at the other end of the lot. I shut off the car and took a deep breath before I got out to go see what the heck he wanted.

He was already halfway across the parking lot by the time I got out of the car. Thornton Bohannan was a little over six feet tall, with an ever-expanding beer belly and hair that he kept trying to grow out  in an attempt to look hip. He wore a red AC/DC t-shirt over a long sleeved gray t-shirt and both looked one size too small on his ample gut. His expensive-looking jeans were turned up at the ankle over expensive looking black shoes. He liked to think that he had a good sense of fashion, but it always came off as a guy in his forties who was trying to look two decades younger. And failing.

He held up his hand again in greeting. “Hey.”

“Hey,” I said. My breath puffed white in the air. “What are you doing here?”

“Well, I knew the kids had 5-H this morning, so I figured you’d be here.”

“4-H,” I corrected.

“Right,” he said dismissively. “Anyway, I had the morning off, so I just figured I’d cruise by.”

My radar went into high alert. Thornton never just cruised by.

“Okay,” I said. “What’s up?”

He leaned against my car, his hands shoved into his jeans,and his shirt rode up, exposing his belly. I couldn’t understand why he didn’t have a jacket on. “I heard about what happened at your house.”

“You and everyone else.”

“Kids okay?”

I narrowed my eyes. “Why wouldn’t they be?”

“I don’t know,” he said, running his hand through his hair. “I just thought…” His voice trailed off.

“They’re fine,” I told him curtly.

“Good, good.”

I stood there for a minute, waiting for him to speak. He didn’t.

“Thornton, why are you here?” I asked. “You could’ve texted me if you were worried. Or, you know, called them and talked to them.”

“Right, right.”

I frowned. The double word talk had always driven me nuts.

“So…?” I prompted.

“I just thought I should check in on them.”

It wasn’t normal to hear him say things like that. He’d always been a bit disconnected from the kids. He rarely attended their activities and his work schedule had pretty much dictated that he didn’t spend much time with them. It wasn’t that he didn’t love them. I was pretty sure he did love them in his own way, even if he hadn’t been crazy about having them. But he could rarely see past his own nose and his wants had always come before mine or the kids’. So it always rubbed me the wrong to hear him express concern for the kids, even when I knew he meant well.

“Well, they’re fine.”

I turned to go but he reached out a hand to stop me.

“I know,” he said. “I…I just wondered if maybe they should come and stay with me for awhile. You know, with everything going on over there.”

He said the word ‘there’ like it was the hills of Afghanistan and there were hordes of Al Qaeda members waiting to take them out.

I gaped at him. “Are you serious?”

“Well, yeah.”

I took a deep breath and tried to maintain my cool. “They are fine.”

He stared at me for a minute and I shifted my gaze so I was looking at his shirt. It was one of about a thousand music T-shirts he owned. He’d grown up believing he’d be a bassist in some famous rock band. When that hadn’t panned out, he’d stayed in music, working for a large music retailer. He was now a manager and able to set his own schedule most of the time, which enabled him to still play gigs with his band. Unfortunately, their venues hadn’t moved past dive bars and the Elks Lodge. They hadn’t turned up on the marquee at the Legion next to our house but I was pretty sure it was only a matter of time.

“Are you sure?” he asked, brushing the brown locks away from his eyes. “I mean, that had to be pretty scary for them.”

Our custody arrangement was such that he saw them one weekend per month. That was his decision when we divorced, as he claimed he wasn’t sure what his schedule was going to look like. It pissed me off at the time, but I was also selfishly happy. I didn’t want to share my kids. And in the time we’d been divorced, he’d never asked to have them for more than that single weekend a month. So to have him asking if the kids should come stay with him for a while? It definitely raised my hackles.

“ Jake and I handled it,” I said. I couldn’t resist adding, “Like we always do.”

“Yeah, but if you’ve got the cops and stuff at your house, is that really the best place for them?” he asked.

I felt my blood begin to boil. “Are you questioning my parenting?”

“No, Daisy, I just—”

“Good, because that would be a huge mistake on your part,” I said. “Considering you have them for about 60 hours a month and don’t really have to do much parenting, I don’t think you’re in much of a position to be questioning me or how I’m handling their well-being.”

He held his hands up in surrender. “Alright, alright. I was just asking.” He pushed off the car and readjusted his hands in his pockets. “And, uh, there’s something else.”

I sighed. “Okay.”

He cleared his throat and stared at the sky. “I’ve, um, met someone,” he said.

I looked up, thinking maybe he’d found Jesus. He’d never been the religious type, either.

“And it’s serious,” he continued. He cleared his throat again. “She’s become very special to me.”

So he hadn’t renounced his atheist ways.

“Oh,” I said,not bothering to hide my surprise. “That’s…great.”

And it was. Despite my complete frustration with him as a husband, I didn’t want him to be alone or unhappy. We’d reached the point where we were semi-friends again and he was still the kids’ father, regardless of whether or not I agreed with how he played that role. He’d struggled mightily trying to find someone to date after we’d divorced and the kids were always reporting back about his bad luck.

“So I, um, just wanted you to know,” he said. “Because I’m going to introduce the kids to her next time I have them.”

“I’m sure they’ll be excited.” I tried to inject some enthusiasm into my voice. They’d never shown any excitement about his past attempts at finding companionship. “They worry about you being alone.”

“We’ll probably be moving in together soon,” he said. “She has kids, too. Twin boys.”

“Oh, nice,” I said, nodding. I just wanted our conversation to be over. “That’ll be fun for all of you.”

“It was actually her idea to come talk to you,” he said. “Babette’s.”

“Her name is Babette?”

His mouth turned upward in a lazy smile. “Babette Sherzer.”

“Okay,” I said. “Well, that was nice of her to think of letting me know before the kids showed up. I can tell them so they won’t be so surprised.”

The smile withered. “No. I meant it was her idea about maybe having them spend some time with me since you were having…uh, some trouble. She said it sounded like maybe things were a little out of control.”

My goodwill quickly evaporated. “Thornton, I’m genuinely happy for you. I hope it works out. But telling me your new girlfriend is questioning whether or not the kids should be with me is about a million times worse than your questioning it. Do you see that?”

He thought hard for a moment, like he was genuinely struggling with the question.

“Oh,” he said. “I guess so.”

I shook my head, my patience gone and my nose cold. “I need to get inside.”

He glanced at the watch on his wrist. “I need to get to practice, too. I’m in a new band.”

“Oh, yeah?” I tried to sound interested.

He nodded. “Yeah. We’re pretty good. I think this could be it.” He smiled. “Babette’s insane.”

I stared at him, confused by the sudden change in topic. “That doesn’t exactly make me want to let you have the kids around her,” I said tightly.

He looked confused for a moment, then shook his head. “No, no. That’s the name of our band. Babette’s Insane. She’s the lead singer.”

Of course.