Mr. Mercedes (Unnamed Trilogy #1)(72)
He puts the poisoned hamburger in a Baggie and stows it back in the mini-fridge, taking care to hide it behind the cans of soda again. He also takes care to wash both his hands and the mixing bowl in plenty of hot, soapy water.
That night, Brady sleeps well. There are no headaches and no dreams about his dead brother.
24
Hodges and Janey are loaned a phone-friendly room down the hall from the hospital lobby, and there they split up the deathwork.
He’s the one who gets in touch with the funeral home (Soames, the same one that handled Olivia Trelawney’s exit rites) and makes sure the hospital is prepared to release the body when the hearse arrives. Janey, using her iPad with a casual efficiency Hodges envies, downloads an obituary form from the city paper. She fills it out quickly, speaking occasionally under her breath as she does so; once Hodges hears her murmur the phrase in lieu of flowers. When the obit’s emailed back, she produces her mother’s address book from her purse and begins making calls to the old lady’s few remaining friends. She’s warm with them, and calm, but also quick. Her voice wavers only once, while she’s talking to Althea Greene, her mother’s nurse and closest companion for almost ten years.
By six o’clock—roughly the same time Brady Hartsfield arrives home to find his mother putting the finishing touches on her tuna salad—most of the t’s have been crossed and the i’s dotted. At ten to seven, a white Cadillac hearse pulls into the hospital drive and rolls around back. The guys inside know where to go; they’ve been here plenty of times.
Janey looks at Hodges, her face pale, her mouth trembling. “I’m not sure I can—”
“I’ll take care of it.”
The transaction is like any other, really; he gives the mortician and his assistant a signed death certificate, they give him a receipt. He thinks, I could be buying a car. When he comes back to the hospital lobby, he spies Janey outside, once more sitting on the bumper of the ambulance. He sits down next to her and takes her hand. She squeezes his fingers hard. They watch the white hearse until it’s out of sight. Then he leads her back to his car and they drive the two blocks to the Holiday Inn.
Henry Sirois, a fat man with a moist handshake, shows up at eight. Charlotte Gibney appears an hour later, herding an overloaded bellman ahead of her and complaining about the terrible service on her flight. And the crying babies, she says—you don’t want to know. They don’t, but she tells them anyway. She’s as skinny as her brother is fat, and regards Hodges with a watery, suspicious eye. Lurking by Aunt Charlotte’s side is her daughter Holly, a spinster roughly Janey’s age but with none of Janey’s looks. Holly Gibney never speaks above a mutter and seems to have a problem making eye contact.
“I want to see Betty,” Aunt Charlotte announces after a brief dry embrace with her niece. It’s as if she thinks Mrs. Wharton might be laid out in the motel lobby, lilies at her head and carnations at her feet.
Janey explains that the body has already been transported to Soames Funeral Home in the city, where Elizabeth Wharton’s earthly remains will be cremated on Wednesday afternoon, after a viewing on Tuesday and a brief nondenominational service on Wednesday morning.
“Cremation is barbaric,” Uncle Henry announces. Everything these two say seems to be an announcement.
“It’s what she wanted.” Janey speaks quietly, politely, but Hodges observes the color rising in her cheeks.
He thinks there may be trouble, perhaps a demand to see a written document specifying cremation over burial, but they hold their peace. Perhaps they’re remembering all those millions Janey inherited from her sister—money that is Janey’s to share. Or not. Uncle Henry and Aunt Charlotte might even be considering all the visits they did not make to their elderly sister during her final suffering years. The visits Mrs. Wharton got during those years were made by Olivia, whom Aunt Charlotte does not mention by name, only calling her “the one with the problems.” And of course it was Janey, still hurting from her abusive marriage and rancorous divorce, who was there at the end.
The five of them have a late dinner in the almost deserted Holiday Inn dining room. From the speakers overhead, Herb Alpert toots his horn. Aunt Charlotte has a salad and complains about the dressing, which she has specified should come on the side. “They can put it in a little pitcher, but bottled from the supermarket is still bottled from the supermarket,” she announces.
Her muttering daughter orders something that sounds like sneezebagel hellbun. It turns out to be a cheeseburger, well done. Uncle Henry opts for fettuccini alfredo and sucks it down with the efficiency of a high-powered Rinse N Vac, fine droplets of perspiration appearing on his forehead as he approaches the finish line. He sops up the remains of the sauce with a chunk of buttered bread.
Hodges does most of the talking, recounting stories from his days with Vigilant Guard Service. The job is fictional, but the stories are mostly true, adapted from his years as a cop. He tells them about the burglar who got caught trying to squirm through a basement window and lost his pants in his efforts to wriggle free (this earns a small smile from Holly); the twelve-year-old boy who stood behind his bedroom door and cold-cocked a home invader with his baseball bat; the housekeeper who stole several pieces of her employer’s jewelry only to have them drop out of her underwear while she served dinner. There are darker stories, many of them, that he keeps to himself.