Danforth Peale’s “office” had little in common with the image the term brought to mind. With the exception of a handsome walnut file cabinet and a laptop computer on a small Hepplewhite table, there was no hint of it being a place where business was conducted, even the genteel business of burying the wealthy dead.
The old-money look of the furnishings evoked the cozy den of an Ivy League dean. One wall was covered with sepia prints of what Gurney guessed were the winning boats in various yacht races, another with old botanical prints. Four damask-covered Queen Anne chairs were grouped around an oval coffee table. In the center of the table stood a Chinese vase.
Peale gestured to the chairs as he chose one for himself. Once they were all seated, he spent a few seconds flicking invisible specks off his sweater before looking up with a strained smile.
Morgan cleared his throat. “I’d like to hear more about that security camera in the embalming room—and your whole security setup.”
Peale sat back and crossed his legs. The preppy loafers visible below the cuffs of his green pants looked expensive. He steepled his fingers thoughtfully in front of his chin. “Three or four years ago, some vandals from Bastenburg broke into the embalming room. They were observed by a neighbor and apprehended almost immediately. No damage was incurred beyond a forced lock on the back door. But it did raise a concern, and I brought in a security expert who installed a state-of-the-art system. Supersensitive to sound and motion, audio-tropic, video-tropic, hi-def, full color.”
Slovak interrupted. “Sorry, sir? Audio-tropic? Video-tropic? Could you—?”
Peale cut him off. “The camera lens pivots automatically in the direction of any detected sound or motion, follows it, and transmits it—to be recorded on that computer.” Peale pointed to the laptop on the Hepplewhite table. “Wonderful theory. Horrible reality.”
“Sir?”
Peale addressed his answer to Morgan and Gurney. “The damn system’s strength is its weakness. Its level of sensitivity makes it a waste of my time. There’s a street that runs in back of my parking area. Every damn vehicle that passed set off the system’s functions. Every single morning, on that computer, I would have a series of videos of the rear wall of the embalming room—which, as far as the camera was concerned, was the source of the sound of the passing cars. All those hi-def files ate up the computer memory.”
“So you turned it off?” asked Morgan.
“Not entirely.” Peale flicked another invisible speck off his sweater and re-steepled his fingers. “I left the search and transmit functions on, since I’m often here in the evening and I can glance at that computer screen to see if anything problematical is occurring. In fact, nothing ever is. But I did turn off the record function.”
“So, the basic monitoring function is on all the time?”
“Just from nine in the evening till six in the morning. To my knowledge, Larchfield’s never had any daytime crime at all.”
“So,” said Morgan with a summarizing frown, “if you were in this office the night of the body’s removal, you would have witnessed it happening on that computer?”
“Correct.”
“But no recording was made.”
Peale’s voice hardened. “Also correct. Infuriatingly so.”
“It would be helpful if you could take us through everything that happened between the time you took possession of the body and the last moment you saw it.”
Peale raised his hands in objection. “Let’s be clear about that ‘possession’ term. I was told that the deceased’s next of kin, Darlene Tate, had requested that the body be brought here, pending a decision regarding its final disposition. I complied with that request as a courtesy, not as a legal transfer of possession. I agreed purely as a temporary matter of accommodation to the bereaved.”
Morgan looked at Slovak, as if for confirmation.
Slovak nodded his assent to Peale’s account and added some details, seemingly for Gurney’s benefit. “During my call to Billy’s stepmother, she asked that the body be taken here. She said she’d come as soon as she could to discuss arrangements. Since the fatal accident had been witnessed by Chief Morgan, myself, and the couple who photographed it happening, Dr. Fallow waived the need for an autopsy.”
Perhaps in response to a look of surprise on Gurney’s face, Slovak added, “In addition to being a local physician, Dr. Fallow is the county’s part-time medical examiner—so he gets to make the autopsy decisions.”
“He signed a preliminary death certificate?”
“Yes, sir, he did,” said Slovak. “Right after we brought the body in on the trolley.”
“He arrived that quickly?”
“Yes, sir. He lives right here in the village. As soon as we saw Tate fall, we called him—in his capacity as a regular medical doctor. When he examined Tate on the ground, he pronounced him dead, then signed the certificate in the embalming room.”
Peale resumed his narrative, again addressing himself to Morgan. “As I was saying, I was informed that Darlene Tate would be arriving with further instructions.”
“Did she show up as promised?”
“Sooner than I’d expected. Around four thirty that morning. I was still here in the office.”
Morgan asked, “Did she give you specific instructions at that time?”
“Indeed she did. Specific and unnatural.”
“Unnatural in what way?”
“First of all, she insisted on conducting our meeting down in the embalming room rather than my office. She asked to see the body. I cautioned her concerning the brutal effect of the lightning strike on the side of his face. It was a burnt vertical gouge, with some of the bone over the eye and cheekbone exposed. But she insisted that I wheel the body out of the storage unit so she could see it. Reluctantly, I complied—fully prepared for a shocked reaction. The shock was my own, when I saw the look on her face.”
He paused before adding, “She was smiling.”
Morgan grimaced. “Smiling?”
“Radiantly.”
“Did she say anything?”
“She asked if Billy was really dead.”
“And you told her he was?”
“Of course.”
“How did she react to that?”
“She said, ‘Let’s hope he stays that way.’ Honestly, it gave me the shivers.”
“God,” muttered Morgan. “Did she provide you with funeral instructions?”
“Only that there was to be no embalming, no obituary, no visitation hours, no service of any kind.”
“Did she make any other requests?”
“She said she needed a couple of days to decide on a location for the burial, and she asked me to keep the body here until then.”
“And that was it?”
“Not quite. She wanted to pick out a casket immediately. I keep a limited selection in a display room downstairs. She picked the cheapest one. Then she insisted that I place the body in it, at that moment, while she watched. I would normally refuse such a request. But I was desperate to be rid of her, so I did. It was awkward, unsanitary, and unprofessional. The clothing of the deceased was still wet in places where there’d been bleeding.” Peale sighed and shook his head.
Slovak looked appalled.
Morgan leaned forward in his chair. “What happened then?”
“I had removed some personal effects from the pockets of the deceased’s jeans and sweatshirt—a nearly empty wallet, a phone, a car key—and I suggested that she take them. But she said no. Absolutely not. She demanded that her stepson’s body be left just as it was. She was adamant.”
Slovak looked confused. “Did she say why?”
Peale continued to speak directly to Morgan, as if underscoring a preference for addressing only the highest-ranking person in the room. “She said she wanted everything he had to rot in his grave with him. Rot in his grave. Her exact words.”
Morgan asked Peale if he put those belongings in the casket with the body.
“Yes. I laid them on the body, dressed just as it was—in the bloodstained hoodie, jeans, and sneakers. I closed the casket. I latched it. I rolled it into the refrigerated storage unit. I shut the door. And finally, thank God, I was able to bid farewell to that woman.”
“And the next time you visited the embalming room? When was that?”
“When you called me an hour ago and asked me to check on Tate’s body.”
Morgan appeared to be struggling to assimilate everything Peale had said. Eventually, he turned to Gurney. “You have any questions?”
About a dozen, he thought. But this was not the best time to ask them.