Wesley Rountree couldn’t help thinking how incongruous the setting was. Here they were in a formal Colonial-style living room, with a grand piano and green velvet drapes, and a cream-colored Oriental carpet. Against one wall an oak sideboard held an assortment of silver and crystal ornaments-that must be the wedding-present display, he thought-but here on the marble-topped coffee table was a mound of human remains. He wouldn’t like to have to explain this to the lady of the house. In that event Wesley doubted if he’d get a word in edgewise.
This wasn’t exactly his idea of an expert witness, either: a girl who looked hardly more than a teenager, wearing jeans and an oversized sweatshirt. He had to admit, though, that despite the unusual nature of the surroundings, the information provided had been fast and was confidently given. The sheriff was inclined to trust the opinions offered, but he wasn’t planning to go into detail with anyone about where he had obtained them.
“So these remains are human,” said Wesley, when Elizabeth had given her verdict. “I was afraid of that. What did you mean, though, that I got more than I bargained for? Who is it?”
Elizabeth sighed and shook her head. “The Mormon Tabernacle Choir?” she suggested.
Wesley blinked. “Come again?”
“I mean, there are traces of more than one body in here, Sheriff.”
“What, that little bit of ash is more than one person? It hardly seems like enough.”
“I don’t think you have the ashes of a complete body here,” Elizabeth told him. “You’re right: there aren’t enough ashes to indicate that multiple bodies were put into the urn. But I don’t think this sampling is all of anybody. You have bits and pieces of several. Look here: this is a porcelain tooth from a partial plate, and these are fragments of teeth that are badly decayed, and this is a baby tooth! Also, this big bit of bone here is the epiphysis of a femur, and there is some indication of arthritis, but this bone is from a younger individual. In fact, I’d say this smaller one is from a female.”
Wesley stared at the evidence, trying to make sense of the new information. “Are you sure about this?”
Elizabeth nodded. “Even if I were a complete klutz when it came to bone analysis, nobody could be wrong about one particular bit of evidence here. Look at this.” She held out a handful of metal brackets of two different sizes. “What do you make of that?”
“Can’t place them,” said the sheriff. “Not tooth fillings?”
“They’re staples,” said Elizabeth, grinning triumphantly. “You see, there are two basic kinds of cremation. There’s a deluxe plan, in which the deceased is placed in a pine casket to be incinerated, and then there’s the economy funeral, which uses a container which is more or less… cardboard. Now, these big staples fastened the pine box together and the little ones came from the cardboard casket.”
“So we know that the remains here come from at least two funerals.”
“At least two. Probably more.” Elizabeth looked extremely pleased with herself. “I learned all this from a medical examiner in North Carolina. He came up to the university to talk to us about his cases. One of his strangest tasks was to identify the remains when a funeral home accidentally sent the wrong urns to the families of the deceased and the medical examiner had to sort them out.”
Wesley was still stunned into silence. “This takes some getting used to,” he said at last. “I was prepared for murder, but this-”
“Murder?” Elizabeth’s eyes widened. “Oh, you don’t have to worry about murder. Sheriff Rountree. Fraud maybe, but certainly nothing violent.”
“Fraud?”
“Sure. When a body is cremated, not all the ash gets collected and put into an urn. A few stray bits and pieces stay behind in the grate of the incinerator, and after a number of cremations, that grate has to be removed and cleaned out.” She pointed to the pile of ashes on the newspaper. “What I think you have here is-”
Wesley nodded. “Somebody cleaned out the grate and dumped the leftovers into that urn.”
“That’d be my guess,” Elizabeth agreed. “Ship it off to Atlanta to be sure, though.”
“Oh, I will,” Wesley assured her. “First thing tomorrow. So the question now is: where did these remains come from?”
“I can’t help you there.” She picked up the blue enamel vase and examined it carefully. “I take it you’ve looked at this?”
Wesley nodded. “Sure. Fingerprinted it, too.”
“Usually, funeral homes put serial numbers on their urns, and they have number codes so that they can tell which urns are theirs. This one is blank, though. I suppose there are other places one could obtain one. You say it was mailed to the widow from California?”
“She thought so,” grunted Wesley. “Says she never checked the wrapping to find out.”
“Well, that’s understandable. She was in mourning, after all.”
“She’s over it now from the look of her,” the sheriff remarked. “I’d say if that husband of hers staged a third coming, she’d arrange his next departure personally.”
“There’s no chance of that, is there?”
“No. This time I called California myself, and they faxed me a photo of the deceased. This time around it’s official.”
“Wonder what happened last time,” mused Elizabeth.
“Emmet Mason left home, saying he was going to California.” Wesley ticked off the facts one by one on his fingers. “His wife gets a phone call from somebody saying he’s dead. To corroborate this report of his death, she receives a funeral urn, supposedly containing Emmet, but actually filled with-” Wesley made a face.
“Leftovers,” suggested Elizabeth.
“So somebody provided Emmet Mason with a perfect way out. No messy divorce, no recriminations. As far as Chandler Grove, Georgia, is concerned, Emmet is dead. But instead of going to heaven, he went to California.”
“Some people would consider that the other alternative.”
This remark brought Wesley Rountree back to full alert and he decided that he should not be sitting around theorizing with a civilian, expert witness or no. “I want to thank you for your time,” he said solemnly, scooping the evidence back into its container. “You certainly have been helpful.”
“You’re welcome,” said Elizabeth. “And any other time, I’d love to be of any help I could to you in solving this case, but I’m getting married next week. I just don’t have time to get involved.”
Wesley’s eyes twinkled. “I think I can take it from here,” he said gravely.
CHAPTER 10
DEPUTY CLAY TAYLOR arrived at the sheriffs department at 7:53 A.M. to find the coffeepot on and a note on his desk from Wesley Rountree, giving him instructions for the day’s interrogations. Wesley himself, the note explained, had gone off to court. After that he proposed to drive directly out to question the proprietor of the regional crematorium. He had no plans to return to the office in between. In his absence, the deputy was to attempt to ascertain the number of local residents who had been cremated within the last seven years.
“How does he expect me to do that?” grunted Clay in disgust. “Go door-to-door?”
Two cups of coffee later he had given the matter enough thought to figure out how to proceed. The logical person to begin with would be Azzie Todd, manager of Todd and O’Connor Funeral Home in Chandler Grove. He had learned from his telephone inquiries that their firm did not do cremations, but Clay felt that they could advise him on what steps to take next. What he did not want was to look up every obituary in the local newspaper for the last seven years and then contact each family individually.
With some misgivings about the nature of his errand, the deputy set out for the funeral home. Like most Southern mortuaries, the Chandler Grove establishment had begun its existence as a large private home. It stood on Main Street, white-columned and splendid, with spreading oak trees and a perfectly manicured lawn. Its former owners had become customers of Todd and O’Connor too long ago for anyone to remember or care that the house had once been a happier, if less tidy, place.