The Undertaker's Daughter (Ilka #1)(68)



She got in. “Is it a long drive?”

Artie shook his head. “The crematorium is on the edge of town. Douglas Oldham was going to build onto Golden Slumbers, but Phyllis didn’t want the soot from burning dead bodies bothering her when she was out on her terrace. Douglas promised there would be a particle filter and machinery installed to remove the mercury in the smoke, and he got permission from the city, but not his wife. So they built it at the end of a residential street where the Oldhams owned a big lot. Now the neighbors out there get to enjoy the crematorium’s chimney.”

“Why didn’t they just build it outside of town?” Ilka fastened her seat belt as the hearse slowly swayed out of the parking lot. Their mood lightened as they chatted.

“Probably for practical reasons. So they wouldn’t have to drive so far. And I think Douglas wanted to show everyone who’s boss, after the county gave him permission to build within city limits. The people living there raised hell, of course, but that didn’t change anything. You got the bucks, you can get it done. It was a great status symbol for his funeral home.”

Ilka looked over at him; she didn’t understand.

“A lot of people think funerals are cheaper if the funeral home has its own crematorium. That’s not true, of course, but the Oldhams hoped it would bring in more customers.”

Gray two-story buildings slid by. Failed businesses, abandoned industry, empty back lots with graffiti smeared on walls visible through mesh fences and open gates. Construction waste and trash had been bulldozed into large piles. It looked like no one had taken responsibility for cleaning up after everything had closed. So much of Racine was like a ghost town that Ilka could hardly imagine the lively trade center where many Danish immigrants had settled. And her father had been one of them, though he must have arrived at the end of Racine’s glory days. What the hell were you doing here? she thought. She leaned her head against the window and watched it all pass by.

They crossed a four-lane bypass that led to the freeway, and after a church and a gas station, Artie signaled and turned off into a residential district with tall trees on both sides of the street. The hearse swayed.

They had ridden silently most of the way, but suddenly he asked, “So we’re not going to see each other? Privately, I mean?”

That took Ilka by surprise. She glanced over at him and smiled. “Like you said, it’s probably not so smart.” She looked out at the front lawns with their low hedges and neat lawns.

“You didn’t think it was so wrong the other day,” Artie reminded her quickly.

“It’s not at all that I think it’s wrong. We’re adults; we don’t owe each other anything. I’m just not so good at planning. Anyway, not at this sort of thing.”

“We don’t have to plan anything,” he said. “It was nice that you just showed up. But it might be even better if I was a little bit prepared.”

“You mean so I don’t walk in on you and your other women.” She expected that would embarrass him, but he didn’t react. Maybe he’d already forgotten the woman who had driven off the first evening Ilka came to get him. Then she thought about the guy at the bar who had showed up at the funeral home. She dropped it.

Artie hummed something she couldn’t hear. At the end of the street, a low, square brick building with an enormous chimney came into sight. A small paved driveway to the left led around the building. CREMATORIUM was written in the same gold cursive script as on the sign at the Oldhams’ funeral home. But there was nothing pretentious about anything else. The chimney rose above the treetops, pointing to the sky like a symbol of death.

Artie drove around the building and backed the hearse up to a green door. He’d just gotten out when an older man wearing a black shirt tucked into a pair of heavy canvas pants stepped outside. His Irish cap pulled down over his forehead shaded his eyes. Ilka sensed a problem, and sure enough, the man folded his arms and shook his head when Artie approached. For a moment, the two men stood talking, but before she could loosen her seat belt, Artie was back in the hearse. He slammed the door angrily and turned the key.

“This is fucking blackmail; I’ll be damned if I’m going to stand for this.”

They roared out of the driveway, as much as the hearse could be said to roar, and the chimney disappeared behind them as he floored it.

“Blackmail?” Ilka didn’t understand.

They drove for a while in silence while he calmed down.

“He demanded cash before he would accept the body! And they’re charging us thirty percent extra for being late on our payments.” He was furious again. “If they think they can run us out of business because we backed out of the deal, they’ve got another think coming.”

“Can they do this? I mean, I’m sure they can demand cash if we owe them. But can they add thirty percent? Isn’t that a lot? Isn’t it usually just a few percent for a late payment?”

Artie shrugged and stared straight ahead, though he kept his eye on the cars crossing the highway ahead. “In principle they can do whatever they want; they own the place. But we’re not taking this lying down. I don’t know if Paul had a special arrangement with them. It wouldn’t surprise me if he’d been paying extra to keep the peace, since the Oldhams didn’t try to cut prices and run him out of business. But if I know Golden Slumbers, they profited from it.”

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