The Bishop’s Wife (Linda Wallheim Mystery, #1)(53)

A double funeral? “But you’ve years left to live,” I said. She was only just past sixty. She could remarry, have a whole new life. Just because Tobias’s heart had given out didn’t mean Anna had to think of herself as nearly dead.

“I suppose so,” said Anna. “I don’t know what to do with the house, or the garden. I can’t bear the thought of turning it all back to lawn, but I can’t take care of it the way he did, either.”

Anna was staring at the door, but she wasn’t making a move to leave. Should I mention the time? No. She knew. Let her do this at her own pace. This was a difficult moment for her, becoming a widow.

I tried for something less sad. “He loved his tools and his garden, didn’t he?”

Anna let out a small laugh. “He did at that. He kept a brand new hammer by his bedside, do you know that? I used to wonder if he got up in the middle of the night and worked on projects inside the house, but the hammer was never used. It looked as new the day he died as when we were first married.”

“He had a hammer by the bed when you were married?” I said, feeling the hairs rise on the back of my scalp.

“The boys kept stuffed animals by their beds when they were younger. And Tobias had that hammer,” said Anna. “I used to think he needed it for the same comfort that they did.”

“Where is it now?”

“Still there, probably,” said Anna.

“You should put it back in the shed,” I said, the words sounding like they had been spoken by someone else. “With the other tools.”

“I will, eventually.”

I walked to the door, opened it and stepped outside. “Are you ready to go?” I asked, hearing the brusqueness in my voice.

She nodded and we drove toward the mortuary while I tried to convince myself that no man would have kept a hammer by his bed in order to make sure that he could kill his wife when he decided it was time for them to die together.





CHAPTER 19




A woman in a pencil skirt with her hair up in a severe knot showed us the way to the back of the mortuary, past the viewing rooms with chairs set up in neat rows, to a room where Tobias’s body lay on a metal table.

“Oh!” said Anna, and she stepped back at the sight of him.

I stood behind her and put a hand on her shoulder. “Are you all right?”

The woman who had brought us here had already disappeared.

“Yes. It just gave me such a start. I thought for a moment—” She shook her head. “It’s like him, and not like him at the same time. How very strange.” She stepped closer to the body and looked it over carefully without touching it. There was a white sheet over the chest and the lower half of the body.

I was carrying the grey temple bag Anna had given me at the house. Inside it were all the things we would need for this; I had checked before we left. The smell was strongly floral.

Anna pulled the sheet down a little. “His scar there,” she said, pointing to a spot on his lower stomach.

I glanced at it and saw a long, puckered scar. “Do you know how he got it?” I asked.

Anna shook her head, then let out a long sigh. “We should get started,” she said.

They had asked us to be finished by one o’clock so that they could make sure the body was transported to the chapel by two, when the funeral was supposed to start.

I put the temple bag on a chair near the body, opened the zipper and pulled out the garments. They were snowy white and soft cotton. Brand new, most likely, and not the threadbare, greying kind Kurt tended to wear, no matter how many times I suggested gently to him that it was time to buy new ones. Kurt seemed to think garments lasted forever, as if that were some kind of bonus blessing for those who wore them regularly and served God in them.

“Top first?” said Anna practically.

I bunched the top up around the neck and she lifted up Tobias’s head as we pulled the fabric over it. Then it was my turn to lift up his arms. They felt so heavy and limp that I had a momentary flashback to my daughter’s birth/death. They had handed her to me as soon as she was born, as they would have handed me a live child. She was small, but she felt heavy because she was not moving. Her limbs had felt like rubbery weights and her skin tone had been dark. I remember her fingernails in particular, and how dead and black they looked.

I got one of Tobias’s arms through an armhole, then the other. Anna tugged down the shirt over Tobias’s stomach. I had to help her lift his body so we could smooth down the back. I was breathing heavily with effort, but I nodded, glad we’d managed it by ourselves.

Anna got out the bottoms and pulled off the sheet that covered his lower half. I was happy to discover it wasn’t embarrassing at all to see Tobias nude. It wasn’t him anymore. It was just a shape of human flesh.

Anna wiped at her sweat and then we pulled the bottoms up to meet the top. Somehow that felt like half the battle. Tobias looked more himself now. She tucked the top in all around the waist.

I glanced at the nearly invisible white thread embroidery, a reminder of specific promises in the temple to follow God. There were three marks, two on the top and one on one leg. People make fun of Mormons’ special underwear, and I could see why, although the underwear itself isn’t so strange—there are new styles every few years to keep up with the expectations of each generation. We don’t wear the ankle- and wrist-length garments our great-grandparents wore, and we don’t have slits in the back for bathroom stops the way our parents and grandparents did.