What do you mean, he’s missing?”
Ilka clamped onto her father’s arm and made him stop. “And what about Fernanda?”
Despite his Key West tan, her father looked pale. He seemed a bit confused as he squinted and took a deep breath, as if he were struggling to get hold of himself. Ilka supported him as they began walking again, slowly this time down the hallway toward the hospital’s main entrance, where the car was parked outside.
“The police are down there now,” he said, his words catching in his throat. “She was shot. They found her on the steps out back.”
Ilka was stunned. “And Ethan?”
Her father kept his eyes on the tile floor, concentrating on his every step.
“What did they say about him? Did they contact his school, his friends?”
They reached the car, and Ilka opened the passenger door and helped him in.
“They don’t know where he is,” he said. The corner of his mouth trembled as he stared straight ahead.
She backed out of the parking space. “If he saw what happened, maybe he’s hiding somewhere?”
“His schoolbag was in his room, and they found his phone on his bed.” Her father reached in his pocket for a handkerchief and wiped his nose. “They sent out an APB, and the police have my number so they can call if there’s any news.”
Ilka noticed her hand trembling when she squeezed his arm. Her father swiped his eyes dry with the handkerchief and shook his head.
Ilka thought of Fernanda, her coal-black hair, the smile that spread from her eyes to her lips. A beautiful woman. “Did she have a black hood over her head when they found her?”
He whipped his head around to look at her. “Why do you ask that?”
“Forget it.” What if the Rodriguez brothers had found something when they searched Lydia’s apartment? Something that led them to Fernanda. Whom they killed to put pressure on Lydia. First Artie, and now Fernanda. “Don’t say anything to Lydia.”
“But I have to,” he said, his voice thick, hoarse. “Fernanda and Ethan are family to her. I have to tell her what happened.”
Ilka ran over the curb at the funeral home’s front parking lot and braked so hard that her father’s knees rammed into the glove compartment.
The parking lot was nearly full. “What in the world’s going on here?” She turned to her father, but his face was blank as he surveyed the rows of cars.
Ilka found a spot at the far end of the lot. “If the Rodriguez brothers are responsible for this with Fernanda and Ethan, they did it to frighten Lydia, so she’ll give up. And if she hears about what’s happened, she won’t go back to Texas with Jennings.”
She laid her hand on top of his. “And if she doesn’t go back, to testify against Isiah Burnes, she’ll never be free. Fernanda would never have wanted that. The only people who do want that to happen are the Rodriguez brothers and Burnes.”
Her father was even paler now, and Ilka watched him fight back tears. Another car parked in the spot beside them. Two older women got out, one of them carrying a Tupperware container. Ilka watched as they walked briskly to the front door.
“You’re probably right,” her father finally said. He was about to add something but thought better of it. He shook his head and folded his hands together.
Ilka didn’t feel like leaving the car, and apparently, he felt the same way. She could hardly bear the thought of walking in and seeing what it was her mother and Jette had done to attract this horde of people. But finally she got out and walked around to help her father.
“It could be someone other than the Rodriguez brothers,” he said after Ilka had locked the car. “It could be a burglar, she might have surprised him. Or…”
Ilka agreed, someone else could have done it. Could have. Regardless, though, she was afraid that someone was targeting Lydia, attacking her where she was most vulnerable.
“Ethan’s a smart boy,” her father mumbled. “A good boy. He knows a lot of people down there. Has a lot of friends. There’s a lot of places he could go to for help.”
His voice broke.
He was trying to keep from falling apart, Ilka understood that. But the monotonous way he mumbled, almost a chant, grated her nerves like a fingernail scraping a backboard.
Another car pulled into the parking lot, and a man her father’s age stepped out and headed toward the front door.
“There you are!”
Ilka stopped and turned at the sound of her mother’s cheery voice. She’d come out from around the back, and now she was waving at them.
“So many more have shown up than what we counted on.” She looked at Ilka. “Dear, would you please pick up more milk for us? And a few more packs of napkins.”
“What’s going on?” Ilka’s father asked.
“It’s the Danish evening, the one we planned. It seems that the flyers we put out the other day found their way onto Facebook, a special Racine group, and now people are flooding in. We weren’t at all expecting so many, isn’t it wonderful!”
Ilka nodded then asked what she should buy, skim or whole milk.
Her mother held her hand out to her father and frowned at Ilka, as if her daughter had said the completely wrong thing. Ilka watched them disappear inside the funeral home, then she got back in the car.
At least thirty people had shown up, maybe more, Ilka guessed, when she returned and entered the memorial room. The retractable partition wall had been pulled out, as only the front half of the room was being used, and three long tables covered with white tablecloths lined the wall. Plates and cups were stacked on the tables, which were covered with cakes. Leslie was busy cutting and handing out generous portions with a big smile on her face.
Ilka watched her for a moment, then walked over with the milk and asked if there was anything she could help with. Her mother and Jette were setting out more chairs while smiling at all the unfamiliar faces and urging people to come inside. Gregg, the old undertaker, was standing up front with rolled-up sleeves, fastening a large screen to a stand. The whole production reminded Ilka of her school days back in Brønshøj. She noticed the machine on the table beside him, and for a moment she thought they were going to show slides. Then she realized it was a film projector.
“What are they showing?” she asked Leslie, who was unpacking napkins.
“I think it’s something about Hamlet and Crownburg.” It took Ilka a moment to realize she was trying to pronounce Kronborg, Hamlet’s castle. “But your mothers were also talking about some woman named Leonora Christine, who sat up in a blue tower.”
My mothers and a blue tower. Ilka was already tired. But she also felt overwhelmed by the same warmth she’d felt before, the evening her mother and Jette had showed up at the funeral home. There was something reassuring about how they were itching to tell their stories, as if their class had just come in from recess. Their energy—moving chairs around and helping people they’d never met—distracted her for a moment, made her think everything would be okay. But there was a morgue down in Key West with Fernanda inside.
Ilka nearly jumped when Leslie said, “During the break I’ll hand out the folders. I’m afraid we don’t have nearly enough, there’s so many people here. Do you think it’s okay if I ask people for their email, so I can put them on our mailing list and send them our newsletter?”
“Newsletter?” Ilka tried to focus. “What’s the news you want to get out?”
Leslie stared at her. For a moment Ilka noticed the same expression of contempt she’d been met with the first few times she’d seen her half sister. But then Leslie cleared her throat and explained that this whole program was part of the effort to lure people back to the business. It was a marketing strategy, offering something special to counter the American Funeral Group, which was trying to squeeze out all the other funeral homes in the city.
“This is it,” she said, emphasizing every word now. “This is what we have to offer. We can be personable, tell stories that people are interested in hearing. We have something to offer that no one else does: Danishness. We can hygge with people. History still means something to a lot of folks in Racine; a lot of them have Danish blood, you know. And look around, all these people meeting up here—that speaks for itself.”
Ilka could see Leslie’s mouth moving still, but she’d stopped listening. She eased her way out of the conversation and back toward the door.
Her mother stood up at the lectern and clapped her hands, and in her pleasant British accent she addressed her audience.
“Hjertelig velkommen,” she said. “Welcome to our Danish evening.”
Ilka glanced around for her father, but he was nowhere in sight. She grabbed her jacket and made sure the pack of cigarettes was still in her pocket. As she fished around in her bag for her lighter, someone from behind called her name. She whirled around and saw Calvin Jennings coming in from the foyer.
“Am I late?” He smiled at her.
Ilka shook her head and said they were about to start.
“Your mother invited me. I ran into her down at the hotel. Interesting; it’s like this place is a colony of Scandinavians, all these descendants. I didn’t know.”
He was wearing a light-blue shirt, newly ironed, and the same narrow tie from the first time she’d seen him. Ilka tried to remember—was that tie in style back in the 1980s? But back then she had been too young to have noticed things like fashion.
“We’re serving cake and coffee in there, if you’d like.” She pointed at the door. “I just need some fresh air before she gets going on Hamlet and Ophelia.”
Jennings headed for the memorial room while Ilka walked out back, still searching for her lighter in the front compartment of her bag.
Ilka loaded up on cake and coffee during the break, then made her way through the crowd to where Jennings was sitting, clear in the back.
She handed him the coffee and plate. “Lydia told me about your daughter.”
Her mother and Jette were up at the podium, trying to stop the projector from spitting out its stream of pictures, while Leslie was busy at the cake table, making sure every person she served cake also was given a folder.
The mention of his daughter didn’t seem to bother him. He simply nodded and said that even though it had happened years ago, it was still there with him.
“You know how it is when you’ve got a rock in your shoe? This might be hard to imagine, but it’s like getting that rock stuck in your heart. It reminds you all the time that something’s not right. The pain doesn’t go away, it’s always there. That’s how it is for me.”
Ilka knew all about loss. Flemming’s death had made her incredibly vulnerable. She’d never felt it as a rock in her heart or as a constant reminder, yet she still understood what he was talking about.
“Emma was a quiet girl. Once in a while her mother and I talked about it, that being so shy might be a problem for her someday. When she got older, we both felt it might help her to have a boyfriend, but then she met Josh.”
He showed no sign of it being difficult for him to talk about his daughter. On the contrary, he spoke as if he’d done so many times.
“She was seventeen when they met, and nineteen when she took her own life. That last year we only saw her once. That was tough, really tough, maybe especially for my wife, because she felt Emma was turning away from us.”
He shook his head. “I tried to tell her that wasn’t true, that it was Emma turning to them. That it was no conscious choice on Emma’s part, cutting us out of her life. It was just that Josh and the cult became everything to her. God’s Will was her life. At the start she wrote us letters, she seemed happy, a lot more open than the girl we’d known. But the letters gradually stopped coming, and then one day a guy at my station came into my office and told me what had happened.”
Ilka set her untouched coffee down on the floor.
“They’d already burned her by the time we found out. Josh disappeared right after she died. I don’t even know what happened to him.”
Ilka tried to imagine what it must have been like, watching as their daughter disappeared into God’s Will.
Their conversation shifted to his plans for their return to Texas. “First we’re going to talk to a lawyer. I’ve got one lined up, one I’ve been using, to run interference for us before Lydia goes in and makes her statement. It’s mostly to make her comfortable with the situation, so she doesn’t feel like she’s walking into a lion’s den. The police are planning a raid on God’s Will, but it’s all got to be coordinated so Burnes doesn’t slip away. It’s happened before. They have a private plane and landing strip. He’ll try to get out of the country, no doubt about that, if he finds out the police know where he’s at. For a long time, everyone thought he was staying at their headquarters in Utah, but some months ago we got a tip that he might have moved to their place in Texas, along with a lot of his family.”
Ilka told him that Lydia had helped her younger sister escape. “Both sisters are married to him. They had moved to Texas recently, and they’d counted on meeting Lydia there, but then they were told she’d run away. After that, Alice Payne got into contact with them.”
Jennings nodded. He’d heard they were planning on settling in Canada, he said.
“It must be a big risk for Payne,” Ilka said. “It can’t be that hard for the God Squad to keep an eye on what she does and where she goes.”
He shook his head with a glint in his eye. “It’s not that easy. Alice Payne knows what she’s doing, and her network of people are loyal. The second a woman gets free from the cult, they’re right there to make her vanish. Then when they’re absolutely sure no one’s on their trail, Payne sets the wheels turning in the network. And the women are on their way.”
“Make them vanish?” Now Ilka noticed the guests returning to their seats. Her mother had managed to get the projector under control, and Jette was glancing through some of her notes.
He lowered his voice. “They send an undertaker, and then it all starts. The coffin is driven from a morgue to a funeral home or a private home, then to a church or a crematorium. Along the way the women and their children are hidden in the coffin. It can take a few days, or even a week.”
Ilka stared at him, but he just nodded. “That’s it. They vanish while the coffin gets driven around. Just like a shell game. You know, with a coin hidden underneath one of the shells. Suddenly it’s gone, and no one knows when it happened. Pallbearers, is what Payne calls her helpers.”
Ilka’s mother clapped her hands again and thanked everyone for their interest and the excellent turnout. “We plan on holding a program once a month, and everyone will have the opportunity to register, if you go into our funeral home’s website and then to ‘Danish Evening.’ Naturally you’re always welcome to stop in, and we’ll be glad to tell you about what we have to offer. We always have coffee ready and time for a chat, and we also are happy to help with information, such as finding out where your families in Denmark originated from.”
Jette stepped in, and an image popped up on the big screen: a Danish kringle.
The audience laughed. Jette gave a thorough account of the pastry’s history, starting with an Austrian baker’s apprentice who traveled to Copenhagen, back when the pastry’s form was that of two crossed arms…Ilka stopped listening. There was something she’d read, shortly after arriving in Racine. Something about the town playing an important role in the Underground Railroad that helped slaves escape from the South in the mid-1800s, bringing them to safety. Sometimes to Canada. That was back then, she thought. Now they were using closed coffins, but Racine was still a vital link in the network. The need was still there.
After the guests left, Ilka helped clean up and put away the chairs. Jennings had offered her mother and Jette a lift to the hotel, and Leslie headed for her room after all the cake pans had been returned to their owners. Her father had gone to his room during the break, and now Ilka felt bone-tired. Ten minutes later she crawled under the covers and texted Lydia, telling her that Jennings had everything under control. He would be picking her up at eight, and the long drive would take somewhere around two days.
She turned out the light in her tiny room and set the alarm. Then she searched for the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel on Google Maps and saved it for her trip the next day.