Unbury Carol(48)

“How’s that?”

“He asked that the burial take place this very morning. I told him it could not. Not with the Illness probably just leaving Harrows now.”

“But the wake was today.”

“I suppose he meant directly following.”

Opal studied Manders’s eyes specifically. No one in Harrows handled as much death as the funeral director, and information from Manders had helped solve more than one case. Yet Dwight Evers never struck Opal as someone to worry about.

“So then, is that it?”

“Well, Lucas and Hank tell me Mister Evers is keeping Carol in the cellar.”

“What does that mean?”

“I don’t know. But it seems a curious place to keep a lady.”

“How do they know this?”

“They heard it from Clyde Darrow, Sheriff, who heard it from his wife, Carol’s girl Farrah.”

Opal exhaled long and looked into the flame.

“The funeral is the next morning after?”

“Yes it is.”

“At your place?”

“Yes. I had the plot dug this evening.”

“Okay.”

Opal ran his fingers through his hair once and got up.

“You understand by your coming here tonight you’re accusing a man of suspicious behavior?”

“I do. Though I hope nobody has to hear of my coming.”

“I just might need you later is all. I’ll look into it, I will. But it’s almost too bright to be anything foul. Those sorts of things usually hide themselves better. My advice to you is to carry on with your business as you would and let me do the looking.”

Opal saw Manders out and thanked him for coming. He locked the door and walked back to his bedroom. In bed, he closed his eyes and thought it was a strange thing for a man with so many bedrooms to keep his dead wife in the cellar. Even if only for a short spell. It was weird, is what it was. Like maybe the only reason a man would do such a thing was because he didn’t want anybody to see her the way she was.

He’s hiding her.

But Opal knew better than to jump to conclusions.

He considered getting back out of bed and riding over to the Evers home. A lot of adjusting could be carried out in one night. He didn’t like that the funeral director felt compelled to come out. Got dressed and rode all the way out here.

Opal sat up once and then lay down again.

Tomorrow, he told himself. Tomorrow.

But it wasn’t a confident directive, and the three syllables troubled him as he slept.





When he limped, stiff-legged, into the bawdy house, the girl thought she’d just tell him it was too late at night for a customer. The last thing on earth she wanted to deal with was a pity case, and she knew the girls didn’t love doing the cripples. There was something extra pathetic about this one, like the man was too broken even for a place this foul. But it was that late hour when the place still rollicked, the moment just before the fun would crack in half, and she silently cursed the man for not showing twenty minutes later. Then it would have been easy. Then she could have fanned her hand out to the two dozen men and women passed out on the couches, the floors, the piano, and he would have seen for himself the night was over. But he hadn’t. And here he was. And he didn’t look like he could even make it up the stairs let alone climb atop one of the girls. But the closer he got, the more the girl guessed this wasn’t his first time in a house of ill repute.

Something unnerving about this one.

Maybe it was the lack of a hat. Or the fact that only half his hair was cut.

“Kind of a late-night decision, eh?”

Smoke, who had been observing the jolly rancor, looked at her now. “It’s always late at night in a place like this.”

She didn’t like the way he spoke. The way he looked at her as he spoke. She reacted fast, attempting to establish a tough veneer. A thing she was used to.

“Did it take a while to get up the nerve or did you just find yourself bored?”

He didn’t answer. Only looked around a little more.

The girl decided no, she didn’t feel good about him at all.

But she didn’t show it.

“You’d like to see the girls, then?”

Smoke put his elbows on the counter. “No.”

“No?”

“No, ma’am.”

“You want a drink?”

“I’m working right now.”

“If you’re just looking for a place to sleep…”

Smoke lit up. A smile. Ghastly as a smashed plum.

“That’s it,” he said, and the girl thought she smelled oil on his breath. “A place to sleep. Here’s what I’d like: I’d like a room, one of the rooms you’d give a man with a girl but I don’t want the girl. All right?”

The girl tried to remain polite. She knew what to do with the rough ones. But this one hadn’t gotten rough yet.

“There’s a hotel,” she said. “Just up Howard Street.”

Smoke looked at her without expression.

“Understand,” she said, “it’d be…unusual for me to just rent out a room.”

“Then let’s be unusual. Let’s be downright weird.”

Wild piano chords clanged from the adjacent room. Girls giggled.