The Undertaker's Daughter (Ilka #1)(13)

“You won’t need any documentation when Artie is with you. They know him.” The sharpness in Sister Eileen’s voice had disappeared. “This is a very simple pickup; you can handle it easily. But remember to take a stretcher to wheel the deceased on. And bring along some extra plastic. It sounds like it might be a mess.”

Ilka nodded and smiled, reminding herself that it would soon be over.





5



Ilka settled in behind the wheel of the hearse and adjusted the mirrors; she quickly checked out the instrument panel. She wasn’t used to an automatic, so the car jerked when she braked at first. Tense now, she looked in the side mirror; this boat seemed twice as long as the station wagon she drove back home. The engine growled as she slowly backed out of the garage. She realized that a sensor would warn her if she was about to back into something. It actually did feel as if she were navigating a large boat instead of driving a car. The axles creaked noisily.

Was the rear door completely shut? She’d tried to fit the stretcher to the tracks, but it hadn’t seemed to sit exactly right, or maybe the wheels underneath hadn’t been pushed up well enough. Finally, she had shoved it in and slammed the door shut as best she could. Hopefully it was heavy enough that it wouldn’t spring open while she was driving.

She turned around in the parking lot behind the funeral home, then punched in the address on the GPS. It wouldn’t take more than ten minutes to drive to where she hoped Artie was still fishing, she saw. It was just outside town.

She drove down the broad residential street. It was deserted, but she noticed a school across the way from the funeral home. A group of kids were laughing as they hung over a fence and tossed their school bags down on the ground.

The houses in the area all looked the same. Front porches and lawns open to the street, hedges to the sides. The Stars and Stripes swayed over several of the porch railings, and every house had the classic American mailbox in front. Ilka followed the directions given by the GPS, turning from one street to the next. She passed a supermarket with its doors open, though there seemed to be no one inside, no cars parked outside. She’d just turned onto the main street when her phone rang.

“He can’t take care of your jobs on Friday after all,” her mother said, after asking how things were going. “Can you make it home by then?”

Ilka assured her that everything was going fine. She sensed that her mother held back from asking more. “I don’t think I can be back that soon. But I’ll probably leave on Friday. Otherwise this weekend. Call West District School Photography. They usually have trainees; maybe we can borrow one. If we can’t, call back.” The GPS said to turn and drive over a small canal that looked like it ran far into the city. She seemed to be in an old industrial area, long since abandoned, though ships still lined the wharf.

And though stores were open, the downtown streets were also empty. The town simply seemed deserted. As if it once had been alive but now was gasping for breath, about to give up the ghost. Ilka reminded herself it was early September. Maybe there had been tourists all summer; the atmosphere might have been different earlier. But when she drove up a hill and shortly after found herself leaving town, she doubted there had been much life here. Ever.

Everything around her was green. Horses grazed in large pastures on the left, and on the right, toward Lake Michigan, she glimpsed houses built on the cliff facing the lake. She slowed and tried to look down, but her view was blocked by high fences and hedges.

Quite the place—nice! she thought. She drove by a whitewashed lighthouse. For a moment, she was tempted to drive down there, but the GPS said she would reach her destination in two minutes. She drove on until it told her to turn right.

The road was winding and quite steep. Ilka drove so slowly that a person could easily have walked beside her. The vehicle swayed and floated its way down to a fence with an open gate; she wasn’t at all sure she could make it through. Slowly she coaxed the big Cadillac forward, and only one side mirror scraped as she slipped between the gateposts. She stopped at a cliff, where a small path led to the water. She slammed the door hard, hoping Artie would hear and not be too surprised when she appeared.

She started down the path, and within short order, a breathtakingly magnificent sight spread out before her. Had she not known better, she would have thought Lake Michigan was an ocean; the calm waters looked boundless. So beautiful and peaceful. It smelled of freshwater, and despite the mirror surface on the lake, a light breeze was blowing.

“Two men drowned down there last week.”

The voice from behind almost scared her to death. Artie. She tried to hide her embarrassment.

Two fishing rods were clamped under his arm, and he was carrying a lidded white plastic bucket. He didn’t seem at all surprised to see her; maybe Sister Eileen had had better luck getting through to him. He waved his bucket and said there would be fish on the grill if she wanted to stay and eat.

Ilka shook her head and handed him the keys to the hearse. She didn’t at all care to listen to him talk about food. She was so hungry she could almost eat the fish in the bucket raw. “We have to work. A dead man at the morgue is waiting to be picked up. I brought along gloves, masks, and extra plastic, because they say he’s in bad shape.”

Artie broke out into a broad smile at the sight of the hearse parked with its front grille just above the cliff. He shook his head at her, his grin still smeared all over his face. “You think we can get it back up?”