Chapter 30
Tom Fogg had grown up three doors down from Osgood & Sons Funeral Home.
His father had always thought his interest in funerals must be the product of a sick mind, called him a little freak because he didn’t know the word morbid.
Fogg had learned not to ask his father questions about death or graves or coffins, or anything of the sort.
Fortunately, his mother had a much less superstitious and more practical mind, and she had taken him to wakes and funerals of people they barely knew.
She’d gone to school with Dwight Osgood, said many times that she probably ought to have married Dwight instead of her actual husband.
When Fogg had turned fifteen, she’d asked Dwight to give her boy a job at the funeral home to satisfy his fascination.
Eleven years later, Fogg knew he would own this funeral home someday. The place might be called Osgood & Sons, but Dwight was the third generation, and his only son was a dentist in Chicago.
For now, Fogg was assistant funeral director, which meant he did all the preliminary work.
Like accepting cadavers and preparing them for embalming.
Sometimes he did the embalming himself, especially when it was early and Dwight had been out late with Mrs. Osgood the night before.
Sometimes they would drive to the El Morocco in Worcester in hopes they might rub shoulders with celebrities and rich folks.
Fogg always laughed inwardly at these efforts on the part of the Osgoods.
Fame and money didn’t rub off onto people who came near it, and all those people eventually ended up on a table like the one in front of him now.
Fogg stared at the canvas shroud that covered the body.
When the cops had brought her in, they’d been quick about it, like they couldn’t wait to make her Tom Fogg’s problem instead of theirs.
He knew both officers—Hurwitz and Chapman.
Oddly, they were both named Glenn, but had nothing else in common except the uniform.
They were separated by at least twenty years, forty pounds, five inches in height, skin color, religion, and temperament.
Sergeant Hurwitz had already been in uniform when Fogg had been a weird little kid who needed some kindness, and the sergeant had been kind.
Chapman had sat behind Fogg in homeroom.
He’d been a slovenly bully with dreadful hygiene—most of the corpses that came into Osgood & Sons smelled better—and he’d been half the reason Fogg had needed kindness from others back in those days.
But Fogg had never seen either Glenn seem as nervous as they did when they’d carried this body into the elevator at the back of the funeral home.
Their fists had gripped the canvas at either end.
Chapman had cursed the elevator’s slowness.
Hurwitz had tapped his foot and nodded impatiently, and when the elevator door opened, they’d hustled the dead woman onto the table and then gone up the stairs instead of waiting for the elevator to return.
“What’s your story?” Fogg asked, sliding his fingers along the smooth metal surface of the table. The workroom stayed cold, but the metal felt colder than it ought to. He pulled his fingers away and gave the pale tips a curious look.
The canvas had been stitched shut with something like heavy twine.
He didn’t recognize it, but of course, he would have to preserve it for the police.
Whatever had happened to the dead woman, the cops would investigate, and only when they gave the go-ahead would Dwight or Fogg be able to embalm the body.
Usually, they would hold on to the embalmed remains until a family member showed up to claim the body.
In a larger community, the dead woman would be in a morgue, but the nearest real morgue was in Springfield, so Osgood & Sons would have to do.
He used surgical scissors to snip the first stitch. It made a sound almost like a piano note. Puzzled, he pulled the scissors back and stared at the twine again. When he snipped the second stitch, he heard a similar sound, although the piano note seemed different.
“What in God’s name?” he whispered.
Fogg cut the rest of the stitches, skin crawling with unease in the presence of something he could not understand.
Filled with nervous wonder, he peeled the canvas away from the body, thinking of the little boy he’d been, the child fascinated with the profound unknown of death and the soul and the flaws of the flesh.
Imagination had given so much fire to his curiosity in those days, but that fire had waned dramatically over the years. Now this.
The dead woman’s eyes were open. Most cadavers had dull eyes gone dusty, like grapes about to shrivel. Hers retained a certain sheen. Fogg felt as if she were staring at him. He froze a moment, watching for the impossible, and then he chuckled at himself.
“All right, lady. You spooked me a bit. Maybe you’re just the sociable type.”
Hurwitz and Chapman hadn’t said much about her, likely because they didn’t know much.
It was hard to tell, but Fogg figured her age at about seventy-five.
If he had to guess, he’d say she had been beautiful once, and maybe she’d retained that beauty despite her age, but she was dead now.
Fogg liked to say there was dignity in death, but it was never pretty.
That was part of his job—trying to make the dead look good enough for the dog and pony show of a wake.
Her left hand twitched. He flinched, not breathing, watching to see if it happened again. Cadavers sometimes had muscle twitches or gas bubbles that caused some motion. He shouldn’t have been startled, but with the glint in her eyes, he couldn’t escape the feeling that she was somehow still there.
Feeling idiotic, he checked her wrist for a pulse.
She had been sewn into a canvas shroud, certainly dead, and yet he waited, a part of him certain he would feel the ticktock beat of her heart in that wrist. Instead, all he felt was how cold she was.
Her skin had a blue tint. The body felt much colder than the room they were in.
“Tommy?”
Fogg jumped, cursing loudly, and turned to see Dwight watching him from the bottom of the stairs. The funeral director’s disapproval lined his face.
“You know I don’t like that language,” Dwight said.
Fogg smiled. “The customers never complain.”
Dwight rolled his eyes. “That joke will never be funny, no matter how many times you make it.”
“And yet I will persevere.”
Against his better judgment, Dwight did smile. “Tell me about her.”
Before Fogg could reply, he heard music. Just a few quiet notes, played on a piano. He glanced around for the source, and his eyes landed on their new arrival.
“What is it?” Dwight looked around as well.
“Do you hear music?”
Dwight cocked his head. “Are you feeling all right?”
Fogg wondered. He wanted to go home, to get as far away from this body as he could.
But he also felt a tremor of excitement and knew he wouldn’t be able to pull himself away.
Life and death had become so ordinary to him, no different from glancing out the window to find out the day’s weather—sunshine or rain.
But whoever this woman had been, she was anything but ordinary.
“No,” he said. “I don’t think I’m all right at all. But I’m not going anywhere.”