CHAPTER 6

“Honey, I’m home!” Helen called out the old sitcom line as she breezed into Phil’s apartment. “It’s only two o’clock and I’ve finished work. I even got some exercise, and then I walked home. I—”

Helen saw Phil’s face and stopped her runaway report. “Something’s wrong,” she said. The apartment smelled of burnt coffee. Half-empty mugs were scattered on the table and the kitchen counter. Three cups were on his desk next to the computer, mute testimony to Phil’s frustrated efforts.

“Way wrong,” Phil said. “Our case is dead before I even started. I can’t find any official paper on Mark’s accident. I spent the morning searching for the records in Plantation. There’s no police report, no incident or accident report, no autopsy.”

“Gus was right,” Helen said. “There is a conspiracy.”

“Not necessarily,” Phil said. “Mark has been dead a quarter of a century. Paper trails are easy to lose. Could be the police report was destroyed after all this time. I talked with Barry, an old-timer who retired from the force. Barry doesn’t remember any suicide shooting from 1986.”

“It’s been a while,” Helen said.

“It has,” Phil said. “But Mark’s accident was dramatic, and Barry has a good memory. He was new to the force twenty-five years ago. I checked with Gus again. He insisted his brother’s shooting happened in Plantation. Gus says his sister told him it was there. I need official paper.”

“What about the murder investigation files?” Helen asked. “The murder book, I think it’s called. Don’t the police keep that?”

“Could be the cops never started one,” Phil said. “Barry said they could have closed this case before it became a murder investigation. I spent the morning checking records and drew a blank.

“I called Gus once again and went over the timeline with him. The first day, Mark went to the hospital with a gunshot wound to the head. He was in a coma. The surgeons operated. Mark died two days later. A week or so after, someone told the cops that Mark was bipolar and suicidal, and the case was closed.”

“Wouldn’t Ahmet tell the cops that the day of the accident?” Helen asked. “If the shooting took place at Ahmet’s import-export business like Gus said, I assume the cops questioned the drug dealer after the shooting.”

“The cops wouldn’t take Ahmet’s word alone,” Phil said. “They got confirmation from someone. Gus said Mark died the third day and the police closed the case as a suicide. That’s all he knows.”

“Gus doesn’t want to believe his brother killed himself,” Helen said.

“It’s a typical reaction when a family member commits suicide,” Phil said, “especially if they are Catholic or some religion that has strong prohibitions against it. Gus hung on to his grief for twenty-five years. We’re supposed to exorcise it.”

“I can understand why he’d have trouble with his brother’s death,” Helen said. “I have a hard time believing that gorgeous man is gone, and I only saw him in a scratchy old video. He was so alive.”

“I feel like a fraud taking a grief-stricken man’s money,” Phil said.

“We’ve just started,” Helen said, rubbing his back. “You’ve worked cases before. You know they take time. Why are you reacting like this?”

“At my old job, I mostly did work for rich people or corporations who used me like a servant. Gus isn’t rich like they are. He can get hurt. He’s hurting now.”

“But that was true of that drug case you did so many years ago. That family wanted their daughter found.”

“That was different,” Phil said. “I’m in charge now. I can’t blame my bosses anymore when things go wrong. I make the screwups.”

“We do,” Helen said. “Together. Gus needs us. He needs to know what happened to his brother.”

“Please don’t say he needs closure,” Phil said.

“No,” Helen said, “but he needs to know the facts, and we need to find them. It’s too soon to give up. Maybe you’re looking for the records in the wrong place. Lots of Florida communities are brandnew. Did Plantation exist when Mark died in ’eighty-six?”

“The city has been around since the fifties,” Phil said. “It has an important place in film history. The Caddyshack pool scene was shot at the Plantation Golf Course. It’s also a rich city. Mark died July seventh. Plantation has no record of any similar incident for four months either side of his death date. If we can show Gus the official records, maybe he will accept his brother’s death.”

“If we need paper, why don’t we start with Mark’s funeral records?” Helen asked. “When my mom died, the funeral parlor had stacks of paperwork about her life and death.”

Phil kissed her. “Did I say you were brilliant?”

“Not often enough,” Helen said. “Do you know where Mark was laid out?”

“It’s on Gus’s list. His brother’s visitation was at the Becca Funeral Home in Fort Lauderdale,” Phil said. “It’s a family-owned business. Been around since the 1920s. It’s only three o’clock. We have time to go there.”

The funeral home was pink stucco with a red tile roof flanked by the inevitable palm trees. Inside, the satiny gold wallpaper made Helen feel like she was trapped in a giant jewelry box. Dark red flowers and pale torch lamps added to the gloom. Helen shivered. The funeral home was cold, even by summer-in-Florida standards.

“May I help you?” The woman had a severe gray suit, short gray hair and a face so immobile it seemed frozen by the funereal cold.

Phil’s smile should have melted the woman. “We’re with Coronado Investigations. We are looking for records of a visitation you had here some time ago.”

The glacier face shifted slightly. Now the woman seemed worried.

“It’s okay,” Helen added. “We’re helping a family look into the cause of the man’s death. There’s no problem with the funeral home.”

Phil showed her the paperwork Gus had signed.

“I’m Jessica,” she said, her face thawing slightly. “Let me present this to our director. Mr. Harold is the fourth generation to run the Becca Funeral Home. Please take a seat.”

Helen sat on a couch upholstered in mournful brown velvet and felt it swallow her. She’d have to punch her way out of its pillowy depths. The air was thick with the lifeless perfume of hothouse flowers.

“Looks like a horror movie set,” Phil whispered.

“Shush,” Helen said. “If I start giggling, we’ll be kicked out.”

Jessica returned. She was smiling, but her face looked—Helen’s mind skittered away from the word—stiff.

“We’ll be happy to help,” Jessica said. “Follow me.”

They trailed behind Jessica like lost ducklings down the drab gold hall with the dark visitation rooms. Helen was relieved they were all empty.

The ordinary office with its oak veneer desk, fax, phone and computers seemed almost cheerful. Jessica pulled a leather-bound ledger off a shelf. “We did our records by hand back then,” she said. “I think they have more dignity than the computer entries.”

She opened the pages to Mark Behr’s “Record of Funeral.” It had cost $6,518.61. Mark had been buried in a Regal Steel Blue casket. Helen read the details with horrified fascination. Each seemed to add more weight to this sorrowful story. The funeral home had charged extra for dressing the body, for underwear, for hose (were those socks?) and slippers.

Mark’s family had paid for candles and candelabra, for an organist and a singer. They’d paid $150 for a second limousine. Flowers had cost $410. They’d ordered five hundred prayer cards for $50. The family had rented a tent to shade the mourners from the hot summer sun.

The last detail was the saddest: Mark’s mother had paid for the funeral in installments. It was stamped PAID a year after her son’s death.

Helen fought back her tears. That poor woman. Every month, she got a fresh reminder of her son’s death. You never knew Mark, she told herself. Quit being so dramatic.You have a job to do.

She heard Phil ask, “Is there a death certificate?”

“Let me check the files.” Jessica opened another door, and Helen got a glimpse of gray ranks of file cabinets.

Jessica was back in five minutes. “Here’s a copy.”

Phil’s eyebrows shot up when he read the certificate. Helen knew he’d found something. Phil put on his poker face. “I appreciate your time,” he said. “What do we owe you for the copy?”

“Nothing,” Jessica said. “We’re happy to be of service. We hope you’ll remember the Becca Funeral Home in your time of need.”

“We will,” Phil said. “We hope we won’t need you anytime soon.”

Helen couldn’t wait until they got to Phil’s Jeep.

“What is it?” she said. “Tell me.”

“The death certificate says Mark died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.”

“That doesn’t explain your smug look,” Helen said. “We already knew that.”

“Look.” His finger pointed to a box that read PLACE OF INJURY. Typed in it was “a motor vehicle” at “3868 Palmwood Blvd., Sunset Palms, FL.”

“Sunset Palms is nowhere near Plantation,” Phil said. “Why did Gus tell us the wrong town?”