The Undertaker's Daughter (Ilka #1)(37)
For a moment, she closed her eyes and rested her head against the doorframe. She didn’t even know if there were executors to administer estates in the US, but she didn’t want anything more to do with this. The moment she’d found out what was going on, she should have refused to get involved, should have said she knew nothing about the funeral home business. Or her father, for that matter. Her mother had, of course, been right; she shouldn’t even have come here. But she’d never been much for doing the smart thing, she reminded herself. She’d tried. And now she was giving up. It was simply too much for her, inheriting a funeral home in Racine. And even more too much to manage it and make decisions that ran against her father’s wishes.
She fished her phone out of her bag and called her mother.
“Hi,” she said, trying to sound calm and composed. “It’s going fine. I’m coming home now. I just need to find out if I can catch a plane today, or if I have to wait until tomorrow. I’ll finish packing; then I’ll leave for the airport. No, nothing’s wrong. But you were right—I’m not going to get bogged down in all this. I’m having an executor take over. Yes! I’m sure. Everything is fine. And I’ll take care of the photo shoots starting Monday; don’t worry about finding someone else.”
Ilka heard the relief in her mother’s voice, now that she was coming home without anything catastrophic happening. Knowing that Ilka hadn’t ended up in an American prison undoubtedly kept her mother from asking more questions. Ilka promised to call again when she knew her arrival time in Copenhagen. It felt great to hear her mother say she and Hanne would pick her up at the airport.
She sat on the bed and glanced around the room. Less than two hours remained until the IRS deadline, and she hadn’t even begun looking through her father’s closets and all the boxes pushed up against the wall. Someone showing up and putting big locks on all the doors sounded like an exaggeration, but you never knew. When her hairdresser went bankrupt several years ago, all the employees in the chain’s other shops had been ordered to close and leave without taking so much as a hairpin with them.
She had to get her father’s things out of the house, but all she had to pack with was her small suitcase. At first Ilka considered dragging all the boxes downstairs, but where would she put them? They would still be on the funeral home property out in the parking lot. She would have to sort things out lightning quick and do the best she could.
The clock was ticking, and she felt a bit desperate, but finally she pulled herself together and went downstairs to look for boxes or something to pack with. She hated the thought of running into Artie. That asshole had known all along that her father didn’t want to sell to the Oldhams, and yet he worked his tail off to do just that. Presumably he’d thought he could push the transfer agreement through before she found out how her father had felt.
She hurried past the office and arrangement room without seeing anyone. Phyllis Oldham had left, but her heavy perfume—cinnamon and something that nauseated Ilka—still hung in the air. The door into the preparation room was closed, but she could hear the fan running. Quickly she punched in the code to the garage, and for a moment she stood and looked around. A low shelf filled with black file boxes ran along the entire wall behind the hearse. For a second she thought about emptying and using them, but they wouldn’t be able to hold much. She checked the high shelf on the other wall. Coffin liners, blankets. Farther down the shelf stood boxes of masks and plastic gloves. On one of the lower shelves, she found a large box with body bags. Ilka grabbed two of them and ran back upstairs.
At ten thirty, she started pulling drawers out of her father’s desk. She scooped up all the letters; the most important thing was to rescue his personal papers. Of course, there could be other things with sentimental value, but they would have to wait. She had to get hold of everything that might explain why he had abandoned her and her mother.
She ignored a stack of old order books in one of the drawers. There were also calendars marked with birthdays of people she’d never heard of. The next drawer: opened envelopes containing letters. All addressed to him, some with a feminine cursive script, others with heavy block letters. She stuck them in a body bag, to be read when she got home. Underneath was a folder with children’s drawings by Leslie and Amber. She laid them aside. Her half sisters would probably be happy to have them, or at least to know their father had saved them. She would drive by and drop them off before flying back to Denmark.
The bottom drawer was filled with scattered bundles of old bills and receipts. Something for the IRS to play around with. Leave them, she told herself.
It didn’t take her long to decide about the few clothes that hadn’t been given to the sister’s parish. While sorting through them, it had felt wrong to empty out the whole closet. She left the few suits and shirts there.
Someone knocked, and she turned around. “Yes!”
Artie carefully opened the door. “May I come in?”
Should she tell him to leave, or what? Finally, Ilka nodded.
He glanced around the room before stepping inside and sitting on the bed, next to a pile of her clothes.
“I want to apologize,” he said, his tone signaling unconditional surrender. “I totally understand why you got angry. It did come out sounding all wrong. It’s true, Paul had several run-ins with the Oldhams over the years, and of course I should have let you in on that. I just didn’t feel we had time to go over what happened so long ago. Like I already told you, I didn’t know the business was in such bad shape before your dad’s lawyer contacted me. I didn’t know he owed the IRS so much, and I didn’t know we were so close to bankruptcy. You can take this however you want, but I think I panicked. I’ve always had a good working relationship with the people at Golden Slumbers, and Paul could be stubborn as a mule. So when I contacted them, I felt I was trying to move things along, not acting against his wishes.”