“What makes you think it’s a man? Could be a woman, you know. Women like chewing gum too.” Jake smiled. "Right, Franny?"
Francesca sneered then nodded.
“You two aren't going to answer any of my questions, are you?” Kyli asked.
Jake shook his head.
“Very well. Any chance you have medical records?”
Jake opened his backpack, dug around and pulled out a large manila envelope with a metal fly clasp. “Latest blood work-up. Copy of physician's records."
"Seriously?" Jake heard the excitement in Kyli's voice. "How'd you pull that off?"
"Compliments of one of Wiley's hackers at the new office in Virginia. Sanitized, of course.”
"But of course." Kyli slipped on a purple glove. "I would expect nothing less."
"Purple now, huh?" Jake pointed at the box of gloves. "What happened to the pink gloves?"
"Found out I'm allergic to latex." Kyli held up a glove. "These are nitrile rubber. Where can I find you?”
Jake pointed at Francesca. “We'll be in the conference room by the RF lab.”
He stood, pushed his stool under the counter, and followed Francesca out of Kyli’s lab. Jake and Francesca stopped at the elevator door as Francesca pushed the call button.
“What the hell was that?” Francesca asked.
“What?”
“That.” She motioned back toward Kyli’s lab. “Between you and Kyli. Are you banging the boss’s granddaughter?”
“Banging?" Jake furrowed his brow. "Seriously?”
The elevator door opened, Jake followed Francesca inside, the door closed.
“So you’re the one,” Francesca said. She pushed the button for the RF lab.
“I’m the one…what?” Jake felt the elevator move.
“She would never give me a name, but her eyes would light up every time she talked about that special guy she’d been seeing. And I just saw that same sparkle when she talked to you…so now I know.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Kyli and I are just friends.”
“Just friends, my ass. I should have known. It all makes sense now.” Francesca grabbed Jake’s arm. “Does the old man know?”
The elevator chimed and the door opened.
“Does the old man know what?” Elmore Wiley, Kyli's grandfather stepped into the elevator.
Scott Katzer knew his suspicions were correct as soon as he unzipped the body bag. The transferring funeral home claimed to have effectually embalmed the kid's body even though the odds were stacked against it. The seventeen year old died from a drug overdose, his body undiscovered for nearly thirty-six hours. Decomposition and bloating had set in by the time the funeral director embalmed the young man. When Katzer unzipped the bag, the bloated face of the young man stared up at him, tongue protruding through swollen lips. The deceased had been discovered in his bed with his head hanging over the side, a pool of dried vomit on the floor.
The odor told Katzer that putrefaction had set in. Purge from the deceased had discharged from the mouth, nose, and ears. With modern advancements in embalming, it had been a number of years since he'd encountered remains in this bad of shape and decided as soon as he saw it that he was too old to deal with remains in this condition. It was time to let the younger embalmers handle the distasteful parts of the job. His gag reflex kicked in, the three-day cross-country drive from the Portland, Oregon funeral home to Nashville in the back of a van under the scorching August sun was too long for any dead body, much less this one.
“Oh, Hell no. Not today.” Katzer turned his head and zipped up the body bag. Why couldn’t the relatives just spend the extra money and fly their loved one home? Six hundred more dollars was all it would have taken yet they opted for a three-day van rental plus driver expenses versus a nine-hour plane ride. As soon as the driver had dropped off the body bag, Katzer thought he could detect the faint smell. Now the stench would remain in his nostrils for hours.
He burst into the break room and pointed at a junior embalmer and a summer intern from the Gupton-Jones College of Funeral Services in Decatur, Georgia. “You two handle Mr. Wilson’s remains — he needs to be ready by noon.” He looked at the young intern sitting at the table. “It’ll be good experience for him. I need to call the family and try to cancel, or at least postpone, the family viewing.”
“Yes, sir,” The junior embalmer said.
Katzer started to leave, then turned to the young apprentice. “And you…try not to vomit on the deceased this time, please.”
Katzer himself was a 1964 graduate of the John A. Gupton School of Mortuary Science when the school was located in Nashville. His courses seemed easy. An advantage he had since he'd worked in the funeral home for his mother and stepfather since he was ten. The Katzer Funeral Home was located on the opposite side of Lebanon Pike from the Mt. Olivet and Calgary Cemeteries. Although not his biological father, Matthew Katzer was the only father he'd ever known and had adopted him and his twin sister when they were two years old. Matthew Katzer died tragically and mysteriously in 1966 in an accident while working on a tractor in the Mt Olivet Cemetery. Scott and his mother had been running the funeral home ever since.
Katzer remembered the somber mood of preparing his stepfather’s body while his petite mother stood silent and watched, her blue eyes swollen and bloodshot from the seemingly endless flow of tears. The next day they interred his remains in a small plot in the back of Mt. Olivet Cemetery. The young Katzer thought it odd his mother chose to bury her husband in such a parsimonious manner. It wasn't’ like the family didn't have money. The funeral services business had proven lucrative for the Katzer family. Funerals were expensive and there was never a shortage of customers, especially now, as the baby-boomers were coming of age.
His mother was one of the most respected funeral directors in Nashville, handling funerals for some of the city’s most prestigious residents including congressmen, senators, as well as several top country music artists. She had a soothing, empathetic voice. While the emotional duress of the situation made the grieving family vulnerable, his mother was an expert at influencing them to open their pocketbooks.
He flipped open his appointment book and dialed the number. A woman answered on the second ring. “Mrs. Wilson…”
A few minutes later Katzer placed the phone on the receiver after successfully convincing the family that a viewing was not a good idea due to the condition of the remains. He was surprised by the family's response. Initially, the Wilsons had been downright difficult to deal with and he dreaded making the call, but strangely enough, the family seemed to take this news in stride. Perhaps now they had accepted the painful truth behind the demise of their son. The drugs had alienated him from the rest of the family. In a strange way, Katzer sensed, the Wilsons were relieved the ordeal was over.
Death can cause a myriad of emotions.
He remembered a late November day in 1967 when a man was so distraught because the cosmetologist was unable to completely conceal a bruise on his deceased wife's forehead that he balled his fist and struck Katzer on the jaw in the viewing room. Katzer fell backward and crashed into a spray of flowers, shattering vases and ruining the display. He was shocked when he looked up and saw his mother holding a gun. She put a quick stop to the fracas and, after his mother explained the reason for the blemishes on his wife, the man apologized.
After business hours, Katzer sat with his mother and recounted the day. She explained to him that it wasn’t the first time she had been forced to pull a gun in the funeral home. The first time she actually shot a man. Trying to deal with his loss with a bottle of whiskey, a man came to the funeral home drunk, began to rant, and throw things. He grabbed pictures from the walls and hurled them across the funeral parlor, busted a candle display against the piano, and threw an urn through a window. That’s when she shot him in the leg. The police came, arrested the drunkard and never charged his mother with any wrongdoing.