Deadly Slumber Page 2

  He was dead. Even with only a year of training at the San Francisco Mortuary College, David could tell that at a glance.

  Eyes were open but unseeing, and a small trail of vomit had trickled from his mouth, staining one cheek. His shoes were on the floor beside the sofa, and near them, a large liquor bottle, on its side; a smaller bottle also, with a prescription label on it, too small to read at this distance, an empty glass and—tellingly—a syringe.

  Cyril Bartholomew stepped to the corpse. One hand clutched a sheet of paper. Cyril took it from the lifeless fingers and, unfolding it, glanced at it briefly before folding it again and slipping it into the pocket of his suit jacket.

  "Suicide?" David said.

  "Obviously," was the answer. "You'd better go down to the reception desk. Take that elevator there, it'll be quicker.

  Matt's office is just behind reception. Tell him to come here.

  And stay there yourself, to welcome any guests. Mister and 18

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  Mrs. Bunderson are due shortly. Escort them into the front parlor, the Rose Room, and make them comfortable. There's a bell pull there. If you need anything, coffee or whatever, ring for Armando. He'll take care of it."

  David knew then that he had gotten the job.

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  19

  Deadly Slumber

  by V.J. Banis

  Chapter Two

  Leslie Cavendish, as was her practice, was the first arrival in the morning.

  "I like to get an early start," she told anyone who commented on it.

  More than that, as the only female funeral director at Bartholomew's, she knew perfectly well that good enough wasn't good enough. She couldn't exactly say she suffered harassment from the otherwise male staff; everyone here treated her courteously and fairly. There was an unspoken sense that they were all a team, that what was good for one was good for all. They had some lesbian clients. A lesbian funeral director worked better with them. Everyone understood that. Her gender was, they all agreed, if not a business necessity, certainly a business asset.

  Still, as any token woman in an otherwise male workplace knew, you had to prove yourself every day, over and over, endlessly. You weren't allowed to coast for a moment to catch your breath. Your successes were taken for granted; your failings could be magnified out of all proportion.

  Moreover, even among mostly male workplaces, Bartholomew's was unique. For one thing, there was the gay factor. Everyone knew that to fit in here, you had to be gay or very gay friendly; that was only logical, considering the overwhelming bulk of their clientele. None of the funeral directors, including a couple who were resolutely heterosexual, minded in the least being taken for gay—nor, 20

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  as it happened, had any reservations about flirting, subtly or sometimes outrageously, where they thought it might pay dividends. They were as well a spectacularly handsome crew, and they all knew which side of their bread got the butter.

  "Bartholomew's pays top dollar." Everyone knew that.

  It was an open, if unspoken, secret among them that death affected some people in amorous ways.

  "There are people who prefer to affirm life in the midst of death," was as frank as Percy Bartholomew had ever been on the subject. "Of course, as in all things at Bartholomew's, discretion must reign."

  Even the most determinedly straight directors knew, then, that if a grieving client happened to make known his temporary interest in the affirmation of life, no one would fault him for retiring briefly to an unused parlor with the grieving partner or relative.

  To cooperate in this manner was not exactly required and, again, never mentioned, not even in whispers. Presumably if one simply and utterly felt unable to acquiesce, regrets must be gracious and diplomatic, and delivered in such a way that no offense could be taken.

  In fact, however, at Bartholomew's, that never happened.

  Their funeral directors were assiduously trained, some might say brainwashed, in the importance of making clients comfortable in every way possible.

  "Our job is to ease their grief in a difficult time," they were told on first hiring. It was understood that this meant, "In every way possible." Bartholomew's did not hire unattractive personnel, and they did not hire fools.

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  There was not a man among them, then, regardless of personal bent, who hadn't spent some time leaning against an empty casket in a dim lit room with legs spread. Even Leslie, whose clients were primarily lesbian, had sometimes been called upon to uphold the mortuary's tradition of total comfort. It was just part of what it meant to be a physically handsome staff member of the biggest, the most completely gay-oriented, funeral parlor on the West Coast.

  No one spoke of it for good or ill. That sort of reputation, had it become generally known, could just as easily put a mortuary out of business. They all knew that, too.

  It was just the way things were.

  * * * *

  At this early hour, of course, there were no clients to be accommodated. The building was silent. The night custodian was in his own little studio behind the offices but that door was closed and no sound emanated from it. "Asleep," Leslie said to herself.

  Except for those times when a call came through—a death of one sort or another, but not of the police sort—night duty was deadly boring. When she was on duty, Leslie simply went to bed and tried to sleep as usual, though her sleep was never as restful as when she was in her own little apartment in Noe Valley, with her partner Susan nestling beside her.

  The interns on the top floor had not yet begun to stir.

  There were no clients at hand yet, at least, no living clients, though she supposed some of the slumber rooms were occupied, and there was nearly always someone waiting in 22

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  the embalming room. None of these, however, disturbed the quiet in any way.

  There were some, she knew, who might find the silence of a funeral home unnerving, especially since the suicide death of old man Bartholomew a few weeks earlier.

  "I like the stillness," she was fond of saying, "the peace.

  Having the place to myself."

  It was one of the reasons she had first gravitated to funeral service. There were few businesses more given to calm demeanor, almost a sine qua non here. Voices were never raised, conflicts always downplayed. Like any business, it had its stresses, but it was, in fact, an astonishingly low key work environment. The directors were so accustomed to dealing in serenity with their clients that they tended without conscious effort to extend the same gentle solicitude to one another.

  Moreover, she was hardly superstitious when it came to death, even to suicide. If ghosts existed, and she had never really formed an opinion on the subject, this was surely not where the unquiet dead would come to haunt.

  "Marley visited Scrooge, didn't he, not his own embalmer?"

  she had said when Susan brought up the subject of ghosts.

  A funeral parlor was a bleak place, it seemed to her, even soulless despite all those chapels ostensibly for people to pray, but there was no presence of horror here—indeed, quite the opposite, she thought.

  She left her purse and car keys in her locker and locked it up. Her mailbox was right next to it. Rarely was there 23

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  anything in it and as a rule she gave it no more than a passing glance.

  This morning, however, a carefully folded sheet of white paper waited for her notice. She took it out, unfolded it, and ran her eyes quickly over the printed message—brief, and ugly:

  "Dyke bitch, why don't you go somewhere where you're wanted?"

  She gasped, as much in astonishment as anger. Her initial reaction was to crumple the note up in a ball. She went to fling it in the wastebasket, and changed her mind. Instead, she smoothed it out, folded it again, and stuffed it into her pocket.

  She would bring this up with the managing director, as soon as he came in. He ought to know about it.

  She couldn't help wondering, though, who on earth had sent it. And why? It was absolutely the last thing she would have expected at Bartholomew's.

  Perhaps, after all, there was horror to be found in this deadly quiet. But of what an unexpected nature.

  * * * *

  "Where are the lights?" "Just right of the door."

  Both question and answer were whispered. That was an instinctive thing for most people coming into a funeral home—

  especially for the first time, as the new trainee was—you whispered in the presence of the dead, however irrational that might be upon logical consideration. Those sleeping here 24

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  would hardly be awakened by the sounds of voices, loud or soft.

  A moment's pause and then the overhead lights came on, so bright that both of them blinked. Marvin's eyes went automatically, as if guided by radar, to the coffin on its bier across the room, but Billy, the experienced deliveryman, was already setting down the two floral arrangements he carried.

  "You put those on either end of the coffin," he said, "and I'll start bringing in the rest of them. We've got more than a dozen, and the casket spray. It's going to be a big funeral."

  He went back outside. Marvin carried the two machés over to the coffin, bent to put one at the foot, and the other at the head. He paused to look briefly into the coffin. His eyes went wide and he actually felt his skin crawl, the way people talked about its doing, but which he'd never experienced before.

  There was a prickling at the back of his ne
ck.

  Billy had come in and set another pair of arrangements just inside the door. He left again without a word or even a glance in Marvin's direction. Marvin opened his mouth to speak, but he couldn't seem to form the words, and Billy was gone before his thoughts had settled themselves into anything that might be verbally expressed.

  Back at the truck, Billy was just taking two more arrangements from the foam rubber carriers they transported them in when Marvin appeared behind him, so suddenly Billy almost dropped the flowers.

  "Christ, what are you sneaking up on me like that for?

  What are you doing out here, anyway, you're supposed to be 25

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  placing the flowers around the room. I told you, put the little arrangements on the tables, and the bigger ones..."

  Marvin reached for one of the delivery tags and leaned close to read it. "This Eleanor Rose, the deceased—is that a guy?"

  Billy laughed. "What do you think, with a name like that?

  You ever hear of a guy named Eleanor?"

  "No. Only, this one is."

  Billy gave him a sharp look. Marvin looked pale. He looked, in fact, like he was on his way to Barf City. Instinctively, Billy took a step back. Somebody puking on him was one thing, but puking on the flowers, there'd be all hell to pay.

  "What are you talking about? What's wrong with you? Are you sick or what? If you're going to..."

  "No. I'm telling you, it's a guy in that coffin."

  Billy scoffed. "You're crazy. Eleanor Rose was a friend of my Aunt Ginny's. I met her myself once or twice. Old lady, really old, sixty, seventy, something like that. Blue colored hair ... what are you talking about?"

  "I-I think you'd better come in and take a look."

  "Christ." An exasperated sigh. "Here, you bring these. And move it, we're running late." He thrust the flowers at Marvin and, turning on his heel, went quickly back into the mortuary.

  One of the funeral directors was just coming down the long hall, the really cute one with the chestnut colored hair. Luke, his name was. Luke smiled when he saw Billy.

  Normally, Billy would have smiled back. He'd been thinking for a while of whether he might one day coax the sexy funeral director into one of the empty rooms for a few minutes. There 26

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  were whispers about the staff at Bartholomew's, whispers he'd like to confirm, and especially with cute Luke.

  Today, though, Billy barely glanced in his direction, instead went straight into the slumber room and crossed without pausing to the coffin in the far side niche. Where Eleanor Rose of the blue hair ought to have been lying.

  "Shit," he swore, his eyes bugging out. He wasn't even aware of Marvin coming to stand beside him.

  "I t-told you. And he's not sixty or seventy either."

  Which Billy could see for himself. The naked young man lying on the pink satin lining of the coffin couldn't be more than twenty-two or twenty-three years old. A very splendid twenty-two or twenty-three—or at least he had been. Death did not gild the lily. Nor did the golden drapery cord knotted about the young man's neck.

  Behind him, Luke, the cute funeral director said, his voice startlingly loud, "What the fuck?"

  * * * *

  "What do you know about Bartholomew's Funeral Home?" "Bartholomew's Funeral Home?"

  "Yes. Isn't that what I said? Is there anything, well, I don't know, funny there? That you know of?"

  "Funny?"

  Stanley Korski and his best friend, Chris, were having early breakfast at their favorite coffee shop, The Cove, in the Castro. The proprietress paused just then at their table to refill their coffee cups.

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  "Solange," Stanley said, "there's an odd echo in here this morning. Everything I say seems to bounce right back at me."

  "Really?" Solange looked around at the crowded tables, and up at the ceiling. "The air conditioning, maybe, it's been acting funny. I'll have Maurice take a look at it."

  When she was gone, Stanley glowered across the table.

  "Okay, let's have it. Why are you being so coy about a funeral home?"

  "I'm not."

  "Yes you are. I know you, and I know when there's something you don't want to tell me. Plus, I hate it when you don't share the dirt. Come on, out with it."

  Chris started to protest, and gave a sigh instead. "Okay. I can't play footsies with you. But, fair is fair. First, tell me why you ask. What brought on this sudden interest in Bartholomew's? Has Korski and Danzel..."

  "Danzel and Korski."

  "...Private Investigators, got a case you haven't told me about?"

  "Maybe. I don't know yet. I got a call, yesterday, from Cyril Bartholomew—do you know him? He was in the Gay Lesbian Council the same time I was."

  "I know of him. I think I may have met him once or twice, casually—you know, at parties. Good looking, as I recall, but getting sort of long in the tooth. And a little precious for my tastes."

  "Right on all counts. Anyway, he asked to see me, said there was a problem he wanted to discuss. I'm meeting him for lunch. Sandwiches. At the funeral parlor."

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  "Really? I wonder what kind of sandwiches they serve at a funeral parlor. I'd take a close look at the meat."

  Stanley pretended not to hear. "But when I asked what kind of problem, he was a bit vague. He said there's been some kind of harassment going on. Someone making mischief, was how he put it. He said we'd talk about it in more detail when we get together. I just wondered if you'd heard any scuttlebutt."

  "I know the old man died. Percy Bartholomew. A couple of weeks ago."

  "I know that too. Suicide, wasn't it?"

  "That was the story. Maybe Cyril doesn't think so. It does seem odd, doesn't it, he dies, and then some mysterious trouble starts?"

  "If it weren't suicide, though, he'd be talking to the police, wouldn't you think, not a private detective? It happens like that in the books and movies, but in real life, we don't really do that kind of investigation. Besides, that's hardly the kind of thing he'd describe as mischief. So, I'd say it's, well, something that's not exactly police business, but not quite kosher, either. I just don't have any clue what."

  "I might have an idea," Chris said, avoiding looking directly at Stanley. "In general terms, anyway."

  Stanley narrowed his eyes suspiciously. It was unusual for him to have to pry information out of Chris, who was usually all too eager to share any gossip he picked up. "Really?

  What?"

  Chris laughed a little nervously and gave Stanley an abashed smile. "Well, if you really want to know, this guy I 29

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  was seeing a while back, he used to call it the Sweet Cream Palace."

  "Bartholomew's? Sweet cream? As in...?"

  Chris nodded. "Cum. Yes. That sweet cream."

  "But, I don't understand, what's the connection with a funeral home, and cum?"

  "Not just cum. Sweet cream. The sweetest."

  "Okay, sweet cream, if you like? I still don't see what one has to do with the other."

  Chris sighed. "I swore I'd never repeat this."

  "So, just tell me once. I'll listen carefully."

  "I used to date this funeral director..."

  "You dated an undertaker? I never knew that. You never said."

  "This was before I met you. And they prefer funeral director."

  "Okay, funeral director. Didn't it feel, well, kind of funny, though? You know what I'm saying? By whatever name you call him, it's still somebody who spends his time with dead bodies."

  "Bodies, that's the operative word, as I quickly learned.

  They deal with bodies. They know all about them. He knew exactly where all the nerve endings were and where the blood flows and how every joint worked, to maximum effect, let me tell you. And, no, it wasn't like we dated, not really. It was more like a couple or three hot boom-boom sessions. There was nothing dead about his movements, I can assure you."

  "Was he from Bartholomew's?"

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