I’d like to see the documents from the Frank Conaway case,” Ilka said when Jack Doonan finally arrived at his desk, a cup of coffee in one hand and a bagel wrapped in a napkin in the other. She’d been waiting at his cubicle by the wall for twenty minutes while the department held their morning briefing.

Last night she’d thought long and hard about going to the police, after the episode with Jeff and losing her alibi. Was it a stupid thing to do? But she knew she hadn’t killed anyone; she had nothing to fear, she told herself. She’d tossed and turned, thinking about a million things, and when she did sleep her dreams were a chaos of broken fragments. Now her head felt like an unmade bed, and the sight of the officer eating the bagel, the cream cheese hanging on his lip, nauseated her.

Doonan was visibly annoyed at being bothered so early in the morning. And it was even more obvious he had no idea what she was talking about. He scowled and sat down.

Ilka explained that Conaway had been arrested in March, and she gave him the name of the lawyer her father had hired. For some reason he let her speak, but when he finished eating he crumpled up the napkin and told her to talk to the crimes against property unit. “I don’t know anything about the case, but I’ll tell you one thing for sure—they won’t give you anything before the trial is over. If the accused is in custody, no one will talk to you. And probably not later either.”

“But what if the man’s innocent? My father was certain that Frank Conaway is a scapegoat.”

Doonan lifted his hand to stop her. “Since we’re on your father. I was up until one last night going over Margaret Graham’s bank account. And guess what, it turns out that fifteen hundred dollars was deposited in her account every three months, for the past eleven years. Interesting, I thought, so I looked at the bank account the money was transferred from.”

Ilka breathed in short, shallow bursts.

“Eleven years, the same amount. Every three months. From an account in the name of the Paul Jensen Funeral Home.”

He leaned forward, and for a moment they stared at each other.

Doonan finally broke eye contact. Maybe he was looking for signs of her knowing about this, Ilka thought. He pushed a small stack of papers across the desk.

She hardly knew what to say. “But why for eleven years?”

“That’s when Mrs. Graham opened the account. Maybe it’s been going on even longer. Her old bank closed that year, so now I’m waiting for a court order to grant me access to your account. I’m assuming I’ll be able to see when the transfers from the funeral home began.”

He handed her a sheet with the latest deposits and withdrawals. A red circle had been drawn around the amount, and the account number had been underlined. “The last transfer was made in June this year. An automatic transfer.”

Ilka laid the sheet aside and absentmindedly began putting her coat on. In a few days the third quarter would be over, but now both Maggie and her father were dead.

  

“Are you absolutely sure my father died of natural causes?” Ilka had to yell to be heard over the noise from the ventilation.

After returning from the police station, she’d headed straight for Artie’s preparation room, where he stood in a lab coat and mask, leaning over Maggie’s body, working to cover up the bullet hole in her forehead.

She slammed the door behind her and strode over to him. He was wearing in-ear headphones, and when she ripped them out he ducked his head and whirled around; some of the wax he was using to cover the bullet hole landed on her arms. He retreated a step. “What are you doing?”

Ilka handed him the tiny headphones spouting out surfer music. The Beach Boys. “Are you sure my father died of natural causes?” she repeated. “Did you see him?”

A shadow swept across his face. He looked away and spoke quietly. “He died in his sleep in his room.”

Ilka took a moment to settle herself down. “How was he found?”

The ventilation roared as she shivered from the damp cold in the room. Artie studied her a moment before turning and swinging the large vent over Maggie’s naked body. He walked over to the sink beside the door, pulled off his mask and lab coat, washed his hands, and opened the door. “Come on.”

Ilka followed him to the kitchenette. He poured himself a half cup of coffee and grabbed a Red Bull from the fridge, popped it open, and filled his cup. With his other hand he fished a pack of cigarettes from his Hawaiian shirt pocket and headed for the back door.

His goddamn Hawaiian shirts! It’s all he wore. Red, green, yellow, blue. All those palm trees and parrots made her want to throw up. And Red Bull in his coffee! Sick!

He held the door for her and pulled out his lighter, then sat down on the top step. “What’s this all about?”

It was cool outside, and some fallen leaves from the big copper beech swirled around in the parking lot. He blew out a cloud of smoke and waited. Finally she sat down and covered her face with her hands a moment.

“I guess this link between Maggie and my father bothers me, and now they’re both dead. And it was so cold-blooded, the way she was killed. I want to know what happened to him.”

She watched the leaves dance around as she explained about the bank transfers. She couldn’t meet his eye. “Do you know anything about it? You might as well tell me, I’m going to find out anyway. Either my father set up the automatic transfer of funds from our account, or else one of you two did. You were both here eleven years ago. What is it you’re not telling me?”

Ilka heard him set his cup down. Smoke drifted over to her, and she breathed it in.

“He was in bed,” Artie said. “Sister Eileen thought something was wrong—the hearse was still in the garage when she came over that morning. The evening before they’d talked about him leaving early, around six, to beat the morning rush hour. He was supposed to take a body to Iowa. The man’s family wanted him home, they were going to arrange the funeral themselves. When Sister Eileen went upstairs and knocked, Paul didn’t answer. She said he was lying in bed and had died quietly in his sleep.”

Artie folded his hands around his knees.

“I’d like to see the death certificate,” Ilka said.

“Mary Ann has it.”

“But don’t we have a copy?”

He took a deep breath. “What difference does it make? Ilka, listen. He died in his sleep.”

“Right now, it’s important. To me.”

Artie explained that the physical certificate had been delivered to the crematorium. “It’s the law. It’s used as identification before the body can be cremated. And then they gave it to the family, along with the urn.”

“But surely we have a copy?”

He nodded. “Digital. On our computer.”

“Did you see him up there in bed?”

Artie studied his hands on his knees; a small fleck of tobacco was stuck in the corner of his mouth, and she was about to lean forward and brush it off when he shook his head.

“No. I was off a few days, fishing up in Canada. The morning Sister Eileen found him, I was gone before sunrise. She tried to get ahold of me several times that day, but I didn’t hear her messages until I got back that evening.”

Now Ilka understood why he’d acted so aloof. He hadn’t been there when her father died, only Sister Eileen.

His eyes were glued to his hands again. It seemed difficult for him to talk about this, and Ilka had to remind herself that unlike her, Sister Eileen and Artie had been close to her father. She waited.

“It was hot the night your father died. His body was already swelling when Sister Eileen found him. He’d probably been dead twelve hours, and there’s no AC up there—well, you know that. He didn’t really look like himself. Sister Eileen told Mary Ann the swelling would disappear when he was embalmed. She offered to arrange the services, but Mary Ann wanted him cremated immediately and asked to have the urn delivered to her. So Sister Eileen got another undertaker to drive him to the crematorium that same day.”

“No service was held?” Ilka was surprised. It seemed odd that no one wanted to say goodbye to an undertaker.

“There was, but not here. Mary Ann wanted it at her home, family and friends only. Nobody with business connections to your father was invited, except for Sister Eileen and me.”

After a few moments Ilka stood up and offered to take his empty cup inside. She went into her father’s office and shut the door, then she sat down in her father’s chair, turned on the aging computer, and waited for it to come to life. Strange, she thought; she’d been thinking so much about her father recently, yet she didn’t know what he’d looked like the last several years he was alive. She remembered him only as someone who made her feel safe. All the insecurity he’d left her with had somehow been pushed out by how much she’d missed him while growing up.

She typed his name and waited for his death certificate to show up. August 16. He’d died exactly ten days after her fortieth birthday. But she hadn’t been contacted until Artie called her two weeks after that, asking her to come to Racine. The doctor had determined the cause of death to be cardiac arrest. Artie had told her that in the hearse, the day he picked her up at the airport. She’d also been told that her father had died in his sleep, but she hadn’t needed to know the decomposition process had already begun because of the heat.

The death certificate had been scanned and saved in the computer two days after his death. She turned on the printer.

Most of the information was hard for her to understand, but it didn’t matter; after skimming through the last page, she stopped abruptly. She pulled the paper out of the printer and turned on the desk lamp.

The death certificate had been signed by Margaret Graham.