The Undertaker's Daughter (Ilka #1)(69)

“Do we have to take Mrs. Norton back? Or are there other crematoriums we can just show up at?”

Artie nodded. “There’s a private crematorium just outside of town; it’s open twenty-four hours a day. We can drive up there, but it’s expensive. And there’s one down in Kenosha. They also burn pets; not all crematoriums do. Right now, they’re closed, though. They’re renovating the place.”

Ilka thought of the crematorium at Bispebjerg Hospital back in Copenhagen. It was hard for her to understand that Americans could charge whatever they wanted, though she didn’t know anything about it. It just seemed so improbable that there weren’t regulations. But then, she didn’t know if pets could be cremated in Denmark, or if cremations were done twenty-four hours a day. She’d never needed to know.

Artie had turned off, and now they were headed west, away from Lake Michigan, according to Ilka’s sense of direction. Which wasn’t particularly reliable. “We’re not going north?”

Artie didn’t answer, but soon, when the trees seemed to close in on the narrow road, he turned off again. They drove through hills with large, open fields, sectioned off into enormous squares. “First let’s see if Dorothy has her oven up and running,” he said.

He slowed down and turned off onto a winding gravel road leading to a farm nestled in the hills. Ilka couldn’t spot a sign, which made her wonder, but she waited for Artie to say something.

“Here we are,” was all he said.

Two long ells of a farmhouse lay at angles to each other. Potted plants stood in the windows of the one Ilka guessed was the living quarters. A building with an oddly shaped tall roof lay farther back. The crematorium, she thought, when she noticed the tall chimney at one end. A thin, almost invisible wisp of smoke rose out of it. There were no other cars in the parking lot, no signs indicating this was a crematorium. In contrast to the wooden and masonry houses in town, the buildings were made of red stone.

Artie punched the hearse’s horn several times, and soon a middle-aged woman in coveralls, her medium-length gray hair held in a scarf, came out and stood on the front steps. When she saw the hearse, her face lit up in a big smile. She waved.

Artie jumped out of the car and walked over to her. She didn’t look at all like someone who ran a crematorium, nor did the place even look like a crematorium to Ilka. Beside the building with the chimney, though, the ends of two coffins stuck out from under a tarp, with firewood stacked beside them. An ax stuck up out of a chopping block.

She looked back at the woman. Obviously, she and Artie knew each other well. Something in the way they faced each other told her they might have been lovers. Curious now, Ilka leaned forward for a better look. Suddenly the woman stared over at the hearse; her smile disappeared as she concentrated on what Artie was saying. They seemed to be negotiating.

Being ignored this way annoyed her. She got out of the car, walked over right past Artie, and introduced herself.

“She’s from Denmark,” Artie said. She waited for the woman to measure her up. Reluctantly she held a surprisingly big, strong, dry hand out to Ilka.

“Dorothy Cane.”

When she stepped down to face her, Ilka was surprised to see they were the same height. They eyed each other for a moment before Artie broke in. “We can carry the coffin ourselves.” He pointed out at the hearse.

“What is it?” Dorothy asked. “The cold room is shut off; I can’t have anything sitting around here. And I’m busy.”

“This is one of the quick ones,” Artie said. “A small older lady.”

She nodded. “Okay, then.”

Artie smiled at her; then he got back into the hearse and slowly backed up toward the red building. He waved Ilka over to help him with the coffin.

“What about the money?” Dorothy said.

“We’ll pay you right here and now,” Ilka said. Not that she had any idea how much it would cost to burn Mrs. Norton, but the two thousand dollars she’d promised to Sister Eileen was in her pocket, and she wanted so badly to shut Dorothy Cane up. For some reason, the woman irritated her.

Ilka felt the woman’s eyes on her as they lifted the coffin out. She straightened up and concentrated on gripping the two handles. It wasn’t pretty, but they managed to keep the heavy coffin level so Mrs. Norton wasn’t shaken too much on the way across the farm’s parking lot.

Dorothy held a small gray gate open for them. “There’s a catafalque over there by the wall. Go ahead and set the coffin on top of it.”

She pointed at a long box the length of the coffin, equipped with two tracks to slide coffins in. With her foot, she unlocked the catafalque’s wheels, and they pushed it into a room across the tiled hallway with two empty coffins, lids open. As if two people had just gotten up and walked away.

Ilka looked around. Whitewashed walls, clean reddish-brown floor tiles. The place was nice, not musty at all, and a bit cool, though there was a faint odor of an extinguished fire out in the hall. In here, though, where they left Mrs. Norton, she couldn’t smell anything. Cool and dark; that was it.

“Cash would be fine,” Dorothy said. “You want a look at the oven?”

She started down the hall before Ilka could answer. At the end, she opened a heavy double door. The noise was more pronounced than the heat when they walked into the room, which was open all the way up to the roof. An iron monster with glass doors stood in the middle in front of the brick chimney. Flames leapt up on one side. Underneath the glass doors was a broad trapdoor. The box the ashes fell into, Ilka guessed.