The woman drew herself up and stared at Angie across the counter. “What I mean is, it don’t seem right messing with her now. Seems like she ought to have a quiet, decent burial, so she can rest in peace, instead of being poked and prodded at by people like you.”
Angie’s head snapped back as if she’d been slapped. Then her eyes got fierce, and I thought for a moment she was going to vault the counter and punch the woman. Instead, she spun and strode out of the courthouse, her heels clacking like gunshots on the black-and-white checkerboard of the marble hallway.
By the time I caught up with her, she was already in the car, slamming the door. I got into the passenger seat just as she clutched the steering wheel and began to weep—deep, racking sobs that made the car tremble like some frightened animal with wheels instead of legs.
“People . . . like . . . you,” she gasped. “How dare she? People like me are the only ones who give a damn about what really happened to Kate.” She took a few heaving breaths, then the crying shifted from angry to mournful. “People like me didn’t do enough to save her.” She leaned her head on the steering wheel. I squeezed her shoulder awkwardly, just once, and then we sat in silence for a few moments before heading to the funeral home.
Morningside Funeral Home occupied a small, tidy brick building on the edge of Mocksville, alongside a memorial garden adorned with brass urns and plastic flowers. The receptionist—Lily, said her name tag—seemed flustered by our arrival, but she got a lot more flustered when Angie explained who we were and why we were there. She bloomed a splotchy crimson and looked from Angie’s face to mine, and back to Angie’s again. Angie finished by saying, “So could we see the body now, please?”
The flustered woman stood up from her desk. “You need to speak with Mr. Montgomery,” she said. She held up both hands, as if warding off evil, and backed through a doorway into an inner office. The door closed behind her, and I heard voices speaking in hushed, urgent tones.
Eventually the door reopened, and a tall, pale man with a wispy gray comb-over emerged. His upper body didn’t move or sway in any way that corresponded to his footsteps; it simply glided forward, as if he were on casters. “Hello, I’m Samuel Montgomery,” he said. The name seemed to ooze out of his mouth in a way that made my ears feel greasy. He held out a hand for me to shake, so I took it. It was as cool and flaccid as the hand of a dead man after rigor mortis has come and gone. Angie also shook his hand, and I saw the surprise and distaste flit across her face as she did. “What can I do for you?”
Angie repeated the explanation she’d given to the receptionist, then handed him the twenty-four-hour injunction and the court order authorizing us to examine the body. He studied the documents somberly. Gravely, even. Finally he looked up, handing the pages back to Angie. “I’m sorry to say that we have, ah, a bit of a problem, Ms. St. Claire.”
Angie took a long, slow breath. “What sort of problem?”
“I received a phone call earlier today from Mr. Nicely—the, ah, husband of the deceased—saying he wished to make a slight change in the arrangements. He asked that we proceed quite, ah, expeditiously.” He looked down, brushed a few flakes of dandruff from the lapel of his pinstripe suit, then looked up again, but not quite all the way up, so his eyes stopped just short of meeting Angie’s and my own. “I’ve just returned from the cemetery. The, ah, deceased—Mrs. Nicely—was buried an hour ago.”
Angie and her husband—Ned, an ornithologist for a Tallahassee environmental education center—dropped me at a hotel in downtown Tallahassee. Our new plan, which I hoped Burt DeVriess’s colleague could help with, was to obtain an exhumation order allowing Kate Nicely’s body to be dug up and examined. I wasn’t terribly optimistic about the chances—it’s one thing to delay a burial, but another, bigger deal to dig up a corpse. But between Grease’s high-wattage connections and Angie’s law enforcement credentials, it might work.
I’d suggested staying at the Hampton Inn, a chain I’d always found clean, comfortable, and affordable. Instead, they booked me at the Hotel Duval, a stylish and recently renovated hotel whose lobby was an Art Deco study in green glass, black granite floors, and—overhead—thousands of luminous soap bubbles. The bubbles, I realized upon closer inspection, weren’t actually soap; they were spheres of thin blown glass, suspended from the ceiling on spider-thin threads of clear nylon. The illusion was remarkably convincing.
After I’d rubbernecked sufficiently, I ambled to the front desk, where the clerk greeted me with an obliging smile and began checking me in. “Do you have a room preference, Mr. Brockton?”
“Nonsmoking, please.”
“Of course. And do you have a color preference?”
“Excuse me?”