The Undertaker's Daughter (Ilka #1)(34)

Ilka sat down beside him. She felt responsible for someone getting into the garage while she was there. And she should have looked for an alarm to turn on. But Artie should have told her; it wasn’t all her fault.

“Someone has been inside the garage,” she said.

Artie listened without interrupting while she explained she had found Mike on the floor last night and had to wake Sister Eileen up to help get him back in the refrigerator. Cigarette smoke curled around his fingers as he ate the rest of his jelly doughnut and sipped his Red Bull coffee without reacting.

“Was he covered with urine when we picked him up at the morgue?” she asked.

Now he looked surprised. “What do you mean?”

“Did he smell like piss?”

He shook his head. “Not that I noticed. Does he now?”

Ilka nodded. “I think someone peed all over him while he was on the floor.”

He knocked another cigarette out of the pack and offered one to her, but she waved the pack away. “That sounds bizarre,” was all he said.

“You forgot to tell me if there’s an alarm,” she said, not the least bit bashful to give him some of the blame. But he didn’t seem to hear her. He smoked a while without speaking; then he flipped the butt away and stood up.

“There was so much hate simmering in town after what happened. Everybody had an opinion, but most people seemed to think Mike was guilty. And the talk picked up when he left town. There was even a rumor that Ashley was doing it for money; then other people said no, she was doing it for free. The gossip turned vicious, and I know this sounds bad, but it was almost like people enjoyed it. It was like this smear campaign against Mike Gilbert energized the town; people started making up stories and juicing up the ones they’d heard. And now you tell me this. I can’t say I’m surprised the hate’s flared up again, if someone found out Mike was back.”

He opened the door into the garage and walked over to the refrigerator. Ilka followed him. “But Shelby is convinced her son didn’t kill the girl.”

“Don’t you suppose most mothers would feel that way, without conclusive evidence?” He opened the refrigerator to pull the steel tray out. “We’ll have to call the police.”

He’d already whipped his phone out.

“But his own mother didn’t even know he was back.”

“Someone must’ve seen him,” Artie said, while waiting for someone to answer.

“Then the same ‘someone’ must know he’s dead. Otherwise they wouldn’t have come here.”

Artie nodded and turned away after being transferred.



Ilka was sitting out on the steps when the police car turned in and parked. Artie had agreed that someone had soiled Mike Gilbert with urine during the night, but he thought it probably had been poured over him; there was far too much for a single urination.

She hadn’t understood what difference it made, but Artie thought pissing on the body could be a spur-of-the-moment act, whereas dousing it with urine meant it was planned. An insult, sick. More emotional.

When she saw the two officers from the day before, she walked over to meet them. Officers Thomas and Doonan nodded to her and asked if there were surveillance cameras in the garage.

She hadn’t even thought of that. Artie would have mentioned it if there were, surely, she thought. Then she remembered about the alarm, and she asked them to follow her.

“Do we have surveillance cameras out here?” she asked Artie. Odd, she thought, how natural it was to say “we” after only three days here. A few weeks ago, she hadn’t even known the funeral home existed.

“We have some installed, yeah, but it’s been a long time since they’ve been working. Paul had a contract with a security company, but I have the feeling he didn’t renew it. So they’re just hanging there now.”

“What time did you come down here?” Officer Thomas asked Ilka. The two of them had walked outside the garage.

“The first or the second time?”

“When you heard the noise the first time. And you’re sure there was nobody here?”

She shook her head. “I don’t think so. But I’m not totally sure anymore. I checked the room with the coffins; there was nobody there. Unless someone was hiding in one of the two coffins. I didn’t think about that. I didn’t check if the preparation room was locked, either, but I know the door was closed.”

“It’s always locked,” Artie said, walking outside.

“The first time I came down, I was thinking mostly about maybe there was an open door banging; I thought that was what woke me up. But it was only the small window I’d left open for the cat. That was at three thirty.” She added that the door out to the carport had also been locked.

Artie had pulled Mike out of the refrigerator; his body lay on a stretcher, covered by a sheet.

“Don’t touch anything,” Officer Thomas said as the two policemen squeezed past the hearse.

They leaned over the body. She heard them mention the stink from the urine. “If there was any doubt before, it’s pretty clear now it wasn’t a random assault that cost him his life,” Officer Doonan said. “Someone knows he came back.”

Ilka heard the cat purr before it started rubbing her legs. She squatted down and petted it. Long, soothing strokes, as if she were trying to calm her own nerves.