Walk the Wire

Chapter 81

Decker’s long legs carried him swiftly to the funeral home. On the way he had called Jamison and told her to join him after filling her in on his discovery.

The funeral home parking lot held two long black hearses and a limo for transporting the family to the cemetery. There was also a late-model Mustang convertible, with its top up, parked near the side door. The license plate read: HEAVN.

Jamison joined him at the front door. “What are you going to do?”

“Cut through the crap,” he replied.

They entered the front doors and were confronted by the same young man they had previously dealt with here.

“Oh, it’s you again.”

“Where is Mrs. Southern?”

“She’s currently occupied.”

“Not good enough,” said Jamison, holding out her badge. “Be more specific.”

“She’s... she’s working on a client.”

“Where?” said Decker.

“You can’t go back there.”

“Watch me.”

He strode off with Jamison in tow.

The young man cried out, “I’m calling the cops.”

“Good,” said Decker.

They heard noises and followed them to their source. It was a door to a room on a hallway they had not been down before.

Decker gripped the knob and glanced at Jamison, who nodded. He pushed the door open, and they strode in.

Liz Southern looked up from what she was doing, which apparently was preparing her husband’s body for his funeral. He lay naked on a table before her. On a rolling cart lay all the tools and cosmetics she was employing to do her task.

“What the hell are you doing here?” she snapped, jumping up. “How did you get back here?”

“We need to talk to you,” said Decker.

“I’m going to have both of you—”

She stopped when Decker held it up. The item he’d found under the bed.

“You’ve probably been looking for this,” he said.

She froze, her hand halfway to the phone sitting on a counter. She turned, seemingly mesmerized by what he was holding, and held her hand out for it.

She had almost reached it when Decker pulled it back.

“Jade earring. You were wearing a pair when I first met you at the bar. Buddhist temples. Very nice.”

“Where did you find it?” she asked quietly, slumping down on the stool she had been perched on when they had come in.

Decker glanced at Walt Southern’s body. “I’m not shy about these things, but still. Can you cover him up?”

Southern hastily draped a sheet over her husband’s remains.

“Surprised you’re the one doing that,” he commented.

“Someone had to do it,” she explained, her gaze downcast. “I want him... I want him to look... presentable.”

“It must be very hard,” said Jamison sympathetically.

“Right now everything is hard,” Southern shot back. She glanced at Decker. “And apparently it’s about to get even harder.”

“To answer your question, I found it under the bed in the room Caroline Dawson keeps at the OK Corral Saloon. The same one I saw you heading up to that night. And I have it on good authority that Caroline Dawson spent that night there as well. She said she went up there with a headache, but that apparently wasn’t true. You could obviously confirm that for us.”

“I don’t feel the need or desire to confirm anything.”

“You and Caroline are a couple?” said Decker.

“I really don’t know what you’re getting at,” said Southern dully.

“You told us your husband was being blackmailed because he was seeing another woman. If the truth had come out it would have ruined him. Well, we checked on that story. And we could find no evidence of any such affair.”

Southern looked uncertain. “That’s not possible. I know that he was having an affair.”

“And I’m telling you he wasn’t. Which means you lied.”

Southern looked stricken at Decker’s words. She took a moment to compose herself. “Okay, you’re right, he wasn’t having an affair. I did lie about that.”

“Then how exactly was he being blackmailed? And we need the truth this time, Liz.”

She let out a long, resigned sigh. “He was stealing.”

“Stealing what?” asked Jamison.

“Personal effects that people were supposed to be buried with. Watches, rings, other jewelry. He’d put them on the bodies for the viewing and the funeral service, but right before the casket was sealed, he’d take them off. Who would know, right? It wasn’t like they were going to dig the person up or check. And if they were cremated, there was no way to ever check. Then he would take trips out of town or even the state to sell them. He made quite a lot of money doing that.”

“Why did he do that?” asked Jamison.

Southern looked at Decker. “Remember when we first met I told you that during bad times when people couldn’t pay us for our services they’d try to barter?”

“Yes.”

“Well, Walt got desperate. I think he convinced himself that he was simply just getting paid for services rendered by the very people he was providing the service to.”

“That doesn’t make it legal, or right,” Jamison pointed out.

“Desperate people do desperate things,” retorted Southern.

“And you knew?” asked Decker.

“I suspected. Right before he killed himself we had a big argument. You see, I knew that one of our clients had been dressed in her diamond engagement ring. It was at least four carats. Exquisite. Walt closed up the casket after the service, right before the body was loaded into the hearse to be taken to the cemetery. Then I couldn’t find one of my tools that I used to touch up the body before the viewing. I remembered that I had used it to work on her. I opened the casket and found it. It had slid down to the side of the body. That’s when I noticed that the ring was gone. After the service was over, I confronted him about it. He was furious. He said I was nuts. I thought he might hit me.”

“So that explains his note,” said Jamison. “That he was sorry and hated himself.”

“I suppose it does, yes.”

“And someone else must’ve found out,” said Jamison. “And blackmailed him.”

“How did the blackmail start?” asked Decker.

“He received an anonymous message just about the time that Irene Cramer’s body was found.”

“He showed it to you?”

“Yes. He was both angry and scared.”

“What did it say?”

“Basically, it threatened exposure unless Walt did what they asked him to do.”

“Fudge the post results?” said Jamison.

“Yes. Particularly about the slicing of the stomach and intestines. To tell the truth, I was surprised that he had even mentioned it in his report. But he really did care about doing a good job, I’ll give him that.”

“How did you know they weren’t bluffing about knowing about his thefts?”

“Those ‘business’ trips he took? They had photos of him pawning the items he’d stolen. Business records, payment receipts.”

“Any idea who it was?”

Southern shook her head.

“Why did he tell you about the blackmail?”

“I guess he needed my support on this to make sure it all went okay. I mean, I was part of the business, too. Our whole life is tied up in this place. If it went under we’d have nothing. And Walt said if he was caught he’d say I knew all about it. That I would go to jail, too. I was so scared. So I just went along with everything.”

“Have the blackmailers been in touch with you since Walt killed himself?” asked Decker.

“No. Why would they contact me?”

“I don’t know, but they might. And let us know if they do.” He paused. “So what do you plan to do now?”

“I don’t know. My head is filled with so much stuff now it’s hard to think straight. I have to keep the business going, for one thing.”

“Can you manage that?”

“Walt was certified in doing postmortems, which I’m not. But I am a trained and certified mortician. I can do embalming, cosmetics, cremation, everything you need to take care of people properly at the end.”

“Will you eventually leave here?” asked Jamison. “I mean, you could build a business somewhere else.”

“Caroline would have to agree. I don’t want to go without her. I really do care for her. And, yes, we are a couple.”

“But she was seeing my brother-in-law. You saw them together at the OK Corral.”

Southern smiled grimly. “She was merely keeping up heterosexual appearances.”

“That must’ve been hard to keep secret in a town this small.”

“We worked at it. We were very careful.”

“Not so careful if you met up in the bedroom above the bar,” Decker pointed out.

“We did that very infrequently. Besides, all the people at the bar were drunk and the staff was too busy to notice. And we were friends. Everyone knew that. They just didn’t realize what close ‘friends’ we were. And we’d leave out the back only very late at night. Most of the time we would go out to my parents’ old farmhouse to be together. I thought about selling the place. Walt wanted me to. My father fought in Vietnam. He brought back a lot of curiosities from there that might be quite valuable. Plus a lot of weapons. He was quite the gun guy. But it made for a private place for Caroline and me. So I’m glad I kept it.”

“Is that your car in the parking lot?” asked Decker. “ ‘Heaven’?”

“Yes.” She smiled.

“What?” asked Decker.

“Remember I talked about barter? Well, the tires on the Mustang came from Hal Parker in payment for us burying his wife.”

“I guess people do what they have to do.”

“Will this have to come out, I mean, Caroline and me?”

“Lots of gay people live their lives openly and freely now,” said Jamison.

“Yes, but not here, I think.”

“Look,” said Decker, “we can’t guarantee anything. We’re trying to solve a series of crimes. We have to go where the evidence takes us.”

“I guess I can understand that. Will you be talking to Caroline, too?”

“Probably.”

“Can you tell her that I didn’t tell you about us? That you figured it out?”

“If it’s important to you,” said Jamison.

“It is. Very important.”

“I can see that,” said Decker quietly.