The Undertaker's Daughter (Ilka #1)(52)

“But was it Howard Oldham who paid your son to leave town?” Ilka asked. So it was jealousy, just as she had guessed.

“Paid?” Artie said, still looking at Shelby. “What’s that about? Paid for what?”

She straightened up a bit. “My son was paid to leave town. He was given a lot of money to start a new life. A lot. Someone bought him.”

Artie stared straight ahead in thought. “Which made it look like he ran away.” He nodded.

“Like he was guilty.” Shelby spit the words out. She drew herself up, tried to get a grip. “But the money didn’t come from Howard. The Oldham family was questioned, because they knew Ashley and her father, and maybe they knew something, but Howard wasn’t even in town back then. He was in Minneapolis, taking extra courses to add to his undertaker degree.”

She paused a moment before explaining that it was his alibi, not being in Racine during the three weeks between Ashley’s death and Mike’s disappearance. “He didn’t kill her, and he wasn’t around when Mike was paid either.”

“No one can be sure he wasn’t home some of those days, can they?” Ilka said. “It was a long period. It almost sounds too good to be true, gone the entire three weeks. Very convenient.”

“He was gone for four weeks, in fact,” Shelby said.

Artie nodded at Ilka. “He fabricated the alibi, you’re thinking.”

“That’s what I said too, down at the police station,” Shelby said. “But they reopened the old case, and the alibi is good. He enrolled in the continuing education half a year before all this happened, and he had no absences from class. And besides, it’s written in the witness statements that his reaction clearly showed he had no knowledge of what had happened. Back then, though, he didn’t mention his relationship with Ashley. The police just found out about that.”

They sat in silence as the magnitude of his confession sank in. A grown man, Ilka thought. How could he let himself break in and pull a body out of the refrigerator and piss in hate—over twelve years of hate—on it?

“And he wasn’t the man who killed my son,” she finally continued. “He also has an alibi for the evening that Mike came back.”

“That’s even more convenient.” Artie sounded suspicious. He seemed to be completely sober now; his eyes were clear and focused, as was his anger.

“The police have arrested the two Oldham sons,” she said. “They’re suspected of doing the dirty work for their uncle. The officer couldn’t tell me more, but obviously they deny having had any contact with Mike after he came back. But why would they admit it if they did?”

“Hold da k?ft!” Ilka said. Unbelievable! She sat back in her chair. Everything began swirling in her head: names, dates, people she didn’t know. None of it made sense to her. She needed to take a walk, be by herself for a while.

She turned and glanced across the parking lot. People who had attended the funeral service were beginning to drift outside in small, scattered groups, and she thought about Mrs. Norton’s favorite dishes, which were to be placed inside the coffin before it was taken to the crematorium.

“Please excuse me,” she said. She bumped into the table when she rose, spilling coffee. “There’s something I have to take care of.”



The grandson was standing alone by the coffin when Ilka walked in. She heard voices out in the front hall; a few people must still have been eating canapés.

Pete stood with his back to her. The two small, ovenproof dishes were still on the small table, and the two dachshunds were curled up, each at one end of the sofa. There was something comforting about the silence. Peaceful, Ilka thought.

He turned and watched her approach. “My uncle thinks it’s stupid, about the food.” He glanced over at the table. “Grandma doesn’t know we’re doing this.”

Ilka smiled. “Don’t you think she does?”

He wasn’t sure if she was serious. “Isn’t it a little bit yucky?”

“Well, yeah. It’s a little bit yucky. But so what? No one will know, and if it feels right to you, I think she should take it along with her.”

“Maybe we’re not supposed to do it?”

“Maybe not, but we can just not ask anyone about it.”

“But aren’t you the one who decides?” He looked at her suspiciously.

Ilka nodded. “Yes, but you didn’t ask me, either. You just said this is what you want to do. And rule number one is that the nearest relatives should decide how they want to send someone off. I think this is very thoughtful of you, to give your grandmother a few of her favorite dishes on her last journey. That’s how they did it a very long time ago. They gave the dead something to eat for their journey.”

Ilka should have stuck a bottle of red wine in Erik’s coffin; she just hadn’t thought of it.

She opened the bottom half of the lid and told him he could put the food down there, that no one would discover it.

As soon as the boy grabbed the two plates, the dachshunds jumped up and began barking, shrilly and very loudly. They wagged their tails and danced around Pete’s legs. “I could just…” He nodded down at the dogs.

Ilka laughed. Not because she thought dachshunds were particularly lovable, but the glint in the grandson’s eyes told her this wasn’t the first time the two small, dark-brown wiener dogs had begged their way into his heart. He had already surrendered, and there was something proper, something touching, about him shifting his attention from death to what was still a part of life.