6

Nick and Emily safely delivered the bones to the morgue that evening. Then Nick drove Emily home, and she crept quietly into the dark house. Cathy was already long asleep. Emily trudged upstairs past a note Jo had left on the kitchen table about soup in the fridge. She drew a bath, where she soaked for an hour before collapsing into bed.

The next morning, Emily woke up with one thing, and only one thing, on her mind. Where was her mother’s real autopsy file? She needed to know the details of what she had been missing all these years.

But there was no time. She had to rush to the cemetery by nine AM. They were burying her father in a private ceremony for her, Cathy, and Aunt Laura, who had come up from Chicago overnight.

*   *   *

After leaving the cemetery, Emily went straight to her father’s empty home. Cathy was at Bishop and Schulz taking care of business the rest of the morning, leaving Emily in the house alone. She kept expecting to hear her father clacking away on his computer from the office or shuffling about in the kitchen cupboards. But it was, of course, silent.

She went into her father’s office and sat at his desk. She pulled open the long center top drawer and riffled through it, looking for a small key that she hoped would open the locked file drawer on her right. Finally, she removed the drawer and dumped its contents onto the desktop. The key plinked out. Small, worn, tarnished brass. She slid it into the keyhole and turned left.

It didn’t take her long to find her mother’s “hidden” file. It was only two pages in length. Simply stated, with clear handwritten notes over front and back diagrams of a human figure. Manner of death: accidental. Cause of death: transection of cervical spine at level of cervical vertebrae two due to single vehicle automobile collision. Below that the medical examiner had noted incidental findings: carcinoma of the pancreas.

My mother did have cancer! How long did she have to live? Emily didn’t remember her mother feeling sick or complaining about being tired. She could easily have hidden it from Emily, though. Emily had been fifteen and busy day and night with her studies and high school activities. And obviously she’d hid it from Dad, too. How had it been possible to keep such a secret?

Her father’s words came back to her. There had been another woman. The details had been eating him up all these years, Emily was certain. What could have been so devastating or so embarrassing or so guilt-laden that he couldn’t tell her sooner? Or maybe he had wanted to, but she’d never come back home or returned his phone calls to make amends. So much lost time.

Emily slid the death report back into the manila folder and placed it in the file. She’d started to clean up the contents of the drawer and place them in a more organized manner when the doorbell rang. She glanced out the office window, which overlooked the driveway, and saw a white, newer Ford pickup truck. It wasn’t the kind she often saw farmers driving—those were rusted out, dented, their paint peeling off. This truck belonged to someone who had means and liked to show it off. She jotted down the license plate quickly. Her father had run his general medical practice and Freeport County’s medical examiner’s office from his home office. And death wasn’t always a friendly business.

The doorbell rang again. She went to the front door and peered through the peephole. On the other side she could see a Caucasian male, about sixty, bald, dressed in jeans and blue collared button-down. He didn’t look threatening or angry or anxious. He glanced down at his shoes—loafers—and then back at his truck. He rang the bell again, and Emily opened the door a crack.

“Hello, may I help you?” she said.

“Hi, Emily? I’m Hank Wurthers. Friend of your dad’s,” said the man, taking a step back from the door out of respect.

“I see. Something I can do for you?”

“I’m also a Freeport County commissioner. And I know this is probably poor timing and all, but in light of the body that was found at Pinetree Slopes yesterday, we need to know if you’ll be taking over your father’s coroner duties on this one or if we need to hire this out.”

Emily opened the door and stepped out. “Oh, I see. Yes. I started working on the case yesterday with Sheriff Larson.”

The coroner was an elected position. The medical examiner was a hired gun. Her father had been serving in both capacities, and for thirty-some years, the commissioners hadn’t had to give it another thought. He was a one-stop death investigation shop that saved the county hundreds of thousands of dollars because they didn’t have to pay for both positions separately.

“Will you be continuing in your father’s duties as coroner on this case?”

“Um … yes. I will,” said Emily, wondering what was brewing beneath all this.

“Good. For now. But we are going to open up the position for county coroner at the next board meeting. As you probably remember from working with your dad, county coroner is an elected position. So, if you want the job, you need to throw your hat in the ring. Do you think you’ll be sticking around Freeport to do that, young lady?”

“I’m not sure. When’s the next meeting?”

“Three weeks.”

“I know my father’s passing was sudden and has put the county in a bind here. I told Sheriff Larson the county’s going to need to hire a forensic anthropologist to get an ID on the victim.”

“You’ll have to run that expenditure through the commissioner’s office.”

“What? How long will that take?”

“You can submit before then, and we’ll take it up at the meeting.”

“There’s a bagful of bones in the morgue right now that need to be identified.”

“We have protocol. Third Thursday. Courthouse, room two-oh-seven. Seven PM. Until then, you’re allowed to operate in the position of coroner for this case and this case alone, under probation, until we elect the right guy.”

Allow? Guy? Probation? Oh, no. Dad had never had to ask permission to do his job.

“I want to hand this over to an anthropologist who can make the proper identification,” said Emily. “That has to happen now.”

“You can argue that with the commissioner’s board in three weeks.”

Emily just stared in disbelief. She couldn’t decide which offended her more: his chauvinism or his ignorance. Emily wanted to slug him, but she smiled politely and stepped backward into the doorway. “Thank you for informing me.”

“I’m just saying, that anthropolygist’s fee is gonna come outta your pocketbook if the commissioners don’t approve it.”

Anthropolygist?

“My father always undercharged the county for his services. Did you know that?” Emily asked, bracing herself in the doorframe. “His rates were at least half what bigger-city medical examiners charge. And he didn’t charge you extra for his elected title, either.”

“He did this county a great service. He will be greatly missed.”

Hank glanced over his shoulder to the driveway. “Is that your peashooter over there?”

“My car?”

“Yeah, the deathtrap. If you’re planning to stay up here, you’re gonna need something more rugged to get around in. Stop by the dealership. I’ll set you up with a good deal.”

With that, Hank stepped away and sauntered back to his truck.

Emily felt anger surge as she stayed planted by the door to watch Hank Wurthers and his fancy pickup truck pull out of the driveway. Hank would have never treated her father this way. After his white truck drove out of view, she slammed and locked the door.

Wait. What was she getting herself all worked up about? Yes, things were up in the air. True, she needed to move her things out of Brandon’s new townhouse and find a new place to live. Yes, she should finish her residency. But Dad had built a legacy, one she, as a teenager, had always thought she would carry on. And now she could. Did she want to?

Stop spinning. I don’t need to decide this all now.

Like she’d always told her surgical patients, it was best not to make any big decisions after a traumatic event. And oh how the past few weeks had been full of them. Her breakup with Brandon. Her dangerous foray back into death investigation. A new case on her hands. Her father’s passing. And now her mother’s secret to unravel.

She decided to escape it all under the cozy retreat of a down comforter.