The Undertaker's Daughter (Ilka #1)(67)

He was in her face now, inches away; they were the same height, and it felt as if his eyes were burning straight through her, which enraged her. She stared straight back at him. “Leave, now.”

They stood there without moving; then he broke the tension by glancing over at his partner. They turned and walked out without closing the door.

After they drove off, Ilka slammed the door and glared at it. When she turned around, she saw the nun was pale and frightened. “Have they been here before?”

“They’ve never showed up in person. But American Funeral Group contacted Paul; they’ve been trying to monopolize the market here in Racine for some time. Several years ago, they took over a funeral home on the outskirts of town, an old family business. He should never have sold.”

“Are they trying to control prices?” Ilka still felt uneasy. She would never claim they had threatened her, and perhaps she was just sensitive. But what that tall man had said about her father was about as close as he could come to a threat without being direct about it.

“Paul said they had a reputation for ruining undertakers who didn’t go along with them. But he always managed to avoid them.”

“But they contacted him?”

Sister Eileen nodded. She still looked pale. “They did, a few times. But Paul wasn’t interested in being part of their chain, even though they offered to let him run the business. Changes would of course have been made; we would have had to follow their way of doing business. All their funeral homes are run the same way. But he would have kept his position as funeral director. Your father called it a monopoly, and he kept them at a distance.”

Artie stood in the doorway now. He spoke quietly. “This is exactly what I wanted to keep you away from.”

She turned to him. “What do you mean?”

“If we’d gone through with the deal I set up with Phyllis Oldham, they wouldn’t have targeted us. Now we won’t be able to shake them. American Funeral Group wants to take over everywhere. They undermine businesses, pressure people to sell. I’ve seen it before, and it’s not pretty. They’re brutal. They’ll stop at nothing. If they can’t scare us into selling, they’ll make sure no one dares do business with us. They’ll ruin us, take everything we have so we can’t fight them. And they won’t give up until we surrender or close down.”

“They can’t do that,” Ilka said. “It’s not like this is the Wild West.”

“Oh no?” the sister muttered.

“Matter of fact, they can. They’re financially powerful, and they’ve got connections in places that make us vulnerable. They can see to it that we can’t renew our license. Or they can get the IRS to come in and check every last detail in our books. That would be trouble for anybody. They can invent problems for us we never even heard of.”

Ilka listened without speaking as she tried to ignore the knot growing inside her, the one that made her bend over a few inches and fold her arms.

“Just look at Gregg, like Sister Eileen says. He was forced to sell his funeral home to them a few days before declaring personal bankruptcy. You’ve seen him around town; he usually hangs out on the square or in Oh Dennis!, when they let him in. He’s a shadow of himself. The rest of him disappeared the day he turned over the keys to his funeral home. Drive by and you’ll see how they’ve let the place go. Like, the flag outside the door is ripped; they’ve boarded the windows. The best thing they can do for the place is level it. American Funeral Group closed it right after they took over. They weren’t one bit interested in running the business. All they wanted was one less funeral home. No one knows how they managed to ruin him, but it was a lesson for all of us.”

Artie fished a cigarette out of his pocket. His voice was thin now. He’s under pressure, Ilka thought. And he feels bad. Maybe he’s even scared.

She watched him walk out of the foyer; then she turned to Sister Eileen. “I’m going along to the crematorium to see how everything is done. If we’re not back before you leave, just lock up.”

The nun forced a faint smile and nodded.





30



Artie had already driven the hearse out of the garage. He asked if Ilka had remembered the urn and papers.

“I’ve got it all right here.” Carefully she laid the urn in the hearse. Mrs. Norton’s death certificate was in her bag. She hoped Artie had calmed down.

“Ready?” He pointed to the coffin. “We’re putting her in feet first.”

Ilka looked up in surprise, and he smiled. “That way, if she wakes up and sits up in the coffin, she’ll be able to see out the front windshield. Paul taught me that on our first trip together.”

They grabbed the handles on each side of the coffin, lifted it over onto the small rollers in the back of the hearse, and carefully pushed it in.

Ilka noticed several rusty spots around the rear door as she closed it. In fact, a few places looked almost rusted away. Iron peeped through the uneven rusty brown splotches, which looked like scabs. She inspected the back; the rust was worst at the bottom of the door. But as long as it drove okay, she thought, it would do. At a distance, it looked decent enough. It wasn’t something she had to take care of right now, and anyway, if the funeral home business was sold, it would probably end up at an auto salvage yard.