The Undertaker's Daughter (Ilka #1)(51)

He crushed out his cigarette, then walked over and threw the butt in the Dumpster. It was as if what she’d said didn’t really interest him.

“And what got into you back there at the coffin?” she asked. “Have you been smoking weed or something?”

When he didn’t answer, Ilka realized she’d put her finger on the real reason for his bravado in front of the Norton family. “Damn, Artie, what if they’d noticed it?” She was serious now.

“The only thing they noticed was the coffin model wasn’t what they’d ordered.”

Ilka nodded. After a few moments, she shrugged. “You handled that great. But what if someone had found out about the flowers? It would have ruined our image!”

He gazed at her a second longer than necessary before saying, “Sweetheart, we don’t have an image. Not anymore!”

The choir began singing.





23



The coffee had just finished dripping through the filter, and Ilka had brought two cups out to the steps where Artie was smoking another cigarette, just as Shelby came marching across the parking lot. Her face was ashen, her lips pursed in anger. She carried a pair of pants and a shirt over her shoulder.

Ilka had hoped that Shelby wouldn’t show up until the people attending the funeral service had left. It would have been best given the present situation—Artie wouldn’t have been stoned any longer, hopefully—and Ilka needed a breather. The past days had simply been too much pressure.

“I’ll kill him,” Shelby said, when she reached them. She threw the clothes at Artie, who was on his feet now. “I’ll wring his neck; I’ll cut him up into pieces.”

Ilka handed one cup of coffee to her, the other to Artie.

“Shelby, what happened?” Artie said, trying to placate her. He pushed his hair back so it wouldn’t fall into the steaming cup of coffee.

“I’ll tell you what happened!” she yelled as she looked for a place to sit.

Ilka took her elbow. “Come in; let’s go sit down.”

She gestured at Artie in no uncertain terms for him to follow.

“I just came from the police station,” she said, after she and her coffee had been settled in the plush chair in the arrangement room. Ilka and Artie sat across from her.

“It’s Howard Oldham! You already know he was on the tape of the school’s surveillance camera that night; the police said so. And he admitted doing it, but you’ll never guess what made him break in and do the horrible thing he did to my son.”

She made it sound as if an undertaker from the town’s leading funeral home breaking into a competitor’s business, pulling a corpse out of the refrigerator, and urinating on it was a minor detail compared to what she was about to say.

Artie set his coffee down and hunched over a bit. He looked frozen. Through the thin walls they could hear singing from the funeral service.

Shelby looked back and forth between the two of them.

“No, you’re right,” Ilka said. “We’ll never guess.”

She didn’t seem to have heard Ilka; she was too outraged to deal with what was about to burst from inside her. Her anger stood in total contrast to her small, delicate body. “He was wild about her. Howard Oldham claims that Ashley was his great love. The police told me he broke down; they had to postpone the questioning because he wasn’t able to speak.”

Tears appeared in her eyes. “He says my son stole her from him. That Mike ruined his life. Howard claims that if it hadn’t been for Mike, he would have been engaged to her.”

Artie was confused. “Are you saying he and Ashley had a relationship before she met your son? He must’ve been twice her age.”

“It’s not like that’s never happened before,” Ilka said. She was thinking of the center of Copenhagen on Friday nights, where men in their forties and fifties puffed themselves up like roosters, drinking cocktails, with teenage girls all over them.

“I don’t know if they actually had a relationship,” Shelby said. “But he was courting her, per the police report. They let me see it down at the station. He must have thought their age difference wouldn’t be important if he could just show her he was serious. Something must’ve gone on between them, anyway.”

Artie began nodding, as if something was dawning on him. “Ashley Simpson’s dad was a chauffeur for the Oldhams. Not for the funeral home, but the private chauffeur for Douglas Oldham, the old undertaker.” He explained that Ashley had lived in the chauffeur’s quarters with her brother and parents. “It’s behind the Oldhams’ house, farther out on the coast road. I remember hearing the old man couldn’t keep his hands off the daughter. But I thought they meant Douglas Oldham. I only met him a few times. He killed himself a year after all this happened. Or maybe he just got sick? There were a lot of rumors flying around back then.”

Shelby looked fragile and pale as she sat slumped over, staring down at the table seemingly without seeing the coffee or her folded hands in front of her. She shook her head weakly. “It never would have happened. What would she do with an old man? She was just a big kid. Even if Mike hadn’t fallen in love with her, she wouldn’t have hooked up with a man old enough to be her father. Would she?”

She looked up, confused and in despair.