Funeral Hotdish (6 page)

What should have been a permanent stain on the Phoenix Police Department—should have opened up new investigations and maybe solved the question of who ordered Bolles’ assassination—went away because the media didn’t push. Whoever or whatever convinced the
Republic
to stonewall the shredding assured that Bolles’ murderer went free. Bolles himself would have laughed. “Business as usual,” he’d have said.

For Joya, it was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Kill a reporter. Get away with it. She had never trusted a cop since. Her disdain for the
Arizona Republic
was irreversible.

Now she was in a horrible position. Could she trust the cop she was dating? Could she trust his higher-ups, who would have to sign off on the deal? Could she trust a law enforcement agency that had betrayed Don Bolles? Sure, those guys were retired now, but did they leave a lingering taint? Could the same kind of corruptions happen today? She had trouble thinking of anything else.

She was relieved when her heavy eyes led into a long Saturday nap. She dreamed of celebrations, not murder.

She awoke and scolded herself. “Shake it off, Joya. Shake it off.” She watered plants in the backyard and filled the bird feeders and grabbed a banana before she got herself ready for the library dinner. She dressed in her beaded black gown; she acted like everything was fine.

***

Joya’s usual Sunday had its own rituals, even if they didn’t resemble the way she’d been raised. For the first seventeen years of her life in Northville, North Dakota, Sundays meant St. Vincent’s Catholic Church, a magnificent cathedral with two-story stained-glass windows and elaborate statues of the saints. The Stations of the Cross weren’t pictures on the wall, like in many Phoenix churches, but carved statutes depicting the agony of the crucifixion. As a little girl, she’d loved going into the church alone and kneeling at the communion rail that separated the congregation from the altar and the priest. She’d wanted to be on that altar, to help serve the mass, but girls weren’t allowed. Only altar boys. That had changed, but too late for her.

Now the railing was gone and the priest faced the congregation—but none of those changes had been enough to keep Joya Bonner a “capital C” Catholic. Still, she had a soft spot in her heart for the church where she made her First Communion, walking down the aisle in a white dress with a white veil, like a bride. There were a dozen pictures of her from that day, and an ornate certificate that her mother framed. St. Vincent’s was the church where she made her confirmation, and where, as a teenager, she dreamed she’d be married.

But life had taken a different turn. Sundays weren’t spent in church, but with a group of friends over brunch. Little Northville couldn’t hold her like big Phoenix could. For the last decade, she’d worked for an irascible weekly where she had made a name for herself as a journalist no one messed with.

Still every Sunday, Joya dutifully called home to her folks. Most of the time, she was the one doing the sharing—telling them about her week and what was going on in Phoenix. Their news was usually pretty skimpy—what Grandma was up to and anything new with the aunts and uncles, how Dad’s garden was progressing or if the leaves had turned. It was normally the conversation of people whose lives were going along quite nicely with no traumas to report. But that wasn’t the visit they had this Sunday.

“You aren’t going to believe the tragedy here,” her mother began and Joya held her breath, praying it wasn’t someone in the family. It wasn’t, but it came close enough.

“It’s Amber Schlener—Nettie’s daughter? You went to her basketball game last Christmas. Remember?”

Of course Joya remembered. The Schleners weren’t close relatives, but Gertie Bach was a cousin to her grandma, and Gertie was like a second mother to Amber. The girl had visited the folks’ house many times, and there was no debate that she could net a basketball. Joya expected to hear she’d broken her leg and couldn’t play on this year’s team.

“What happened?” She shifted the phone from one hand to the other.

“She’s dead.”

The words hung like a sinker weight on a fishing line. Joya wasn’t sure she’d heard right.

“Dead? What do you mean, dead?”

“She overdosed on dope,” her father said—the man who always cut to the bottom line.

“Amber was on dope?” Joya yelled into the phone.

“She wasn’t ON dope, Ralph. She only took it once they said and she died. Friday night at a dance out on the Jacobson place. Her boyfriend’s still in a coma.”

“WHAT?” None of this made sense. Kids don’t overdose on dope in Northville, North Dakota. They don’t die from taking something once; they don’t even take anything. They get drunk, maybe—okay, they probably get drunk—but that was as far as it would go. Besides, where would somebody in that little town get any dope? There certainly wasn’t a market there, and she’d never heard of a drug dealer who hung around where there wasn’t a profit.

Dope in Northville? A hometown of garden trinkets, statutes of the Virgin Mary, wooden flower baskets, fiberglass deer, bowling balls covered with glass beads to make a “gazing ball.” A town filled with backyard gardens—tomatoes, beans, beets, cucumbers, cabbages the size of basketballs, zucchini as big as softball bats. She never, ever, thought of that town and saw a dirty drug dealer.

“This doesn’t make any sense.” Her voice faltered.

“The town is just devastated,” Maggie Bonner agreed. “The funeral’s Wednesday at St. Vincent’s. Our circle has the funeral dinner.”

“I’ve got to call Gertie.” Joya knew the old woman would be shattered.

“Oh, please do, but wait till after the funeral.”

“Okay, I’ll call her next week. Give her a hug for me.” They were all so far away.

“They’re doing the visitation at the high school. In the gym. Where she played basketball. I hope that wakes those kids up.” Ralph thought kicks to the gut were a good lesson for the teens of Northville.

“Start at the beginning,” Joya begged. Maggie and Ralph, talking over one another, filled her in as best they could, but they really didn’t know much. They didn’t remember what kind of dope it had been.

“What difference does it make? Dope is dope,” Ralph pronounced.

“Where did it come from?” Joya wanted to know.

Now Ralph was full of information. “It’s that Crabapple kid—he’s the pusher. You know, we went to the sheriff about him last year when we first heard he was pushing dope, but the sheriff didn’t do nothing. We’re waiting to see if he does anything now. He better.”

“This is so sad,” Joya said. They all commiserated together about what a shame, what a loss.

“Boy, I never thought I’d hear something like this out of Northville,” Joya declared.

“Neither did I,” her father said.

“What is this world coming to?” her mother wanted to know.

“I hope they put that punk away,” Joya offered.

“They better,” her dad said again.

“I’m sure they’ll get him this time,” her mother declared.

“Yeah, sure,” her father scoffed.

As Joya hung up, she cringed at how ominous her father’s voice sounded. He had good reason to hate the sheriff before this, and now—oh, for Ralph Bonner to say “I told you so” when a pretty little girl was dead. That had to be killing him. He wasn’t the kind of man to let this lie. His lifelong buddies weren’t, either. The sheriff better take care of this because who knows what they’d do to him. Make him pay one way or another. See this crime was punished.

But Joya’s heart wasn’t on revenge, it was on sadness for the loss of a sweet young girl who shouldn’t have died. It astonished her that this could have happened. In Northville, of all places.

The hearts that were broken belonged to people she knew and loved. Nettie, who’d already lost so much and now this. Poor old Gertie, whose grief had to be unbearable. Her mom and dad. Neighbors. Cousins. Her mind swept the few streets of Northville, and Joya couldn’t imagine a single citizen who wasn’t heartbroken.

Even if there’d been time—even if she could have gotten off work on the spur of the moment and could afford a last-minute flight to Fargo, Joya wouldn’t have gone home for the funeral. Not now. Not with the biggest story of her life staring her in the face.

She’d send a condolence card and next week she’d call Gertie, and for now, she’d say a prayer for Amber.

Chapter Five

Wednesday, October 20, 1999

Gertie Bach was always the first to arrive at the church basement the days the Judith Circle handled the funeral dinner.

As Circle president, she was in charge and took her responsibilities seriously. By the time everyone else arrived two hours before the funeral mass, she’d have everything set out for the makings of the casserole they always served.

But nobody was expecting Gertie today—not when it was Amber they were cooking for. That hadn’t stopped Gertie from coming even earlier than usual. At seven a.m. she pulled up to the side of St. Vincent’s Catholic Church—the tallest building in Northville, next to the water tower.

She’d driven the eight blocks from her two-bedroom home without the usual anxiety she felt lately whenever she was behind the wheel. She’d have to give up the car soon, but really, she’d never had an accident and the few close calls weren’t her fault, anyway. Losing her independence, losing her mobility, becoming one of those old people who has to be hauled around everywhere, always bothering someone…Gertie dreaded that day. Whenever she put the key in the ignition, she said a special prayer to St. Christopher to get her wherever she was going without hurting anyone. Today there wasn’t a single soul on Main Street during her trip to the church, which was a blessing, since Gertie was operating only on autopilot.

She had gotten into the car in her driveway without bemoaning, as she did every single day, that Leo Marx hadn’t put in his garden this year, which was a sure sign he was ready to die. She’d started the car without her prayer and if St. Christopher—who wasn’t even officially a saint anymore, but Gertie didn’t care—were indeed watching over her, he was disappointed he wasn’t called on to help today.

Gertie pulled out of the driveway without seeing the Johnson boy’s car parked at Linda Myers house again, and her not even divorced yet. She’d made the first turn without noting the White Church was almost through the regular painting that gave it its name. She was halfway down Main Street without noticing the drug store remodeling she’d been monitoring all summer. She never saw the two pickups she could have hit in front of Harley’s Hardware that always opened early for the farmers. Her friend Rose had a prize-winning garden across from the church that was in full bloom—the Peggy Lee roses were particularly wonderful this year—but Gertie didn’t see a single petal. She hadn’t even looked in the car’s mirror to realize she’d forgotten to comb out her roller curls. She looked like she was on her way to the beauty parlor.

Gertie entered through the church basement door and made her way immediately to the back steps, climbing slowly to the sanctuary. This was automatic, too, since her memory banks knew these steps like a pair of old shoes. Once her cane hit the marble floor of the main church, its echo brought her back to the present moment.

She found herself at the back of the massive, ornate church where she’d been baptized eighty-two years ago, a church she’d cleaned and tended and fussed over all these years, from which she’d buried her parents and would herself be buried, not too many months from now.

Her eyes widened and she made a pitiful sound from the back of her throat, because she didn’t know how she’d gotten here. For a second or two— a blissful, lovely, comforting second or two—she couldn’t remember why she’d come this morning.

She wouldn’t get any more gifts like that today, when all the pain came flooding back. She slowly, noisily, thumbed her way down the center aisle and over to the side altar where the Virgin Mary balanced on a pedestal. Gertie could never look at that statue without seeing the carved marble altar that used to surround Mary, an altar torn away in a modernization from Vatican II that she neither understood nor favored. The Virgin’s shrine looked so bare to her now.

Nine candles were already burning beneath Mary’s statue when Gertie put her three dollars into the metal box and lit hers. Even at this moment, she knew she couldn’t properly kneel, so she half-sat, half-kneeled in the first pew. She closed her eyes and got no farther than “Hail Mary, full of grace,” before the tears came again.

Gertie Bach said her own private rosary through sobs and sighs before she opened her eyes. She took her time, because she never said the rosary in the rote way many did, the sing-song way that comes naturally when you’re saying the same prayer fifty times. She said each word as an individual prayer to be certain the Blessed Mother was pleased with her efforts.

The Catholic Church has some lovely prayers, but the one that speaks to its core—the one that is only Catholic and is the first prayer a member of the faithful utters in a time of need—is the Hail Mary. Gertie had never once worried that her Protestant friends thought Catholics were a little nutty over Mary. She knew the truth. The Mother of God didn’t create this church. She didn’t name it or give it its rules. No member of her gender had any real decision-making rights in its hierarchy. But the Mother of God was the one who got things done and every Catholic knew it.

So Gertie prayed from her heart to the Blessed Mother for the soul of Amber Schlener.

It was getting on eight a.m. when she made her way down the back stairs to the church basement’s kitchen.

Maggie Bonner arrived promptly at eight, astonished to see Gertie in her bib apron. “Oh God, Gertie, we don’t expect you to be here today. You have to be with the family.”

Gertie waved her off and kept organizing the ingredients like a general getting her troops in order. Maggie deposited the plastic sacks full of fresh buns from the bakery on the service counter, and walked over to her old friend.

“Gertie, I’m so sorry.” She took the woman in her arms. “Joya sends her love. She’d be here if she could.” She kindly stretched the truth.

Gertie tried to hide her face, hoping her eyes weren’t too red and the tears would hold back. But the crying she’d already done this day—done last night at the wake, done the day before when she sat with Nettie, done since she first heard and collapsed on her living room floor—that kind of crying leaves an unmistakable swelling around the eyes.

“I know,” Maggie cooed, as she rubbed her friend’s back. “It’s so hard. I just can’t believe it. It’s such a shame. She was such a special girl.” They were the identical words Maggie had whispered to Nettie the night before at the visitation in the high school gym. Oh, that had been terrible—all those teenagers wailing in grief. All those townsfolk crying in agony. Maggie had never been to a visitation where emotions were so raw, so wrenching.

Gertie kept nodding against Maggie’s shoulder. And then, as though her breath came from the pit of her lungs, she straightened up to her full five-feet-five-inches, wiped her nose with the handkerchief from her apron pocket, and gave a closed-mouth smile. “Come on, we have a lot of hungry people to feed today. We need to buck up.”

“You’re sure you want to be here?” Maggie probed again.

Gertie gave a definitive nod. “It’s the last thing I can do for her.” Her voice caught.

“Of course. Of course.” Maggie smiled and wiped her own tears with her fingers.

There was another reason. Being here in the basement preparing dinner meant Gertie couldn’t go out to the cemetery to bury Amber. Circle members always shed their aprons and climbed the back stairs for the funeral, but the minute the casket was out the front door, they came back down to finish the meal that would be ready when mourners returned to the church.

Maggie herself was glad she wouldn’t have to witness that unbearably sad moment when Amber was put into the ground, so she could imagine how much Gertie wanted to avoid it. Better to visit the grave later, when it was all filled in and grass was growing over the mound of dirt and the headstone was in place—it was hard enough then. Maggie had no doubt Gertie would visit Amber in the cemetery a mile out of town. Just like Maggie visited her own people, who’d been buried there since 1897.

Maggie blanched as she noticed Gertie’s roller-curler hair. The old woman was so distracted, she’d never realize the mistake, so Maggie stepped in to fix the problem: “The least I can do for you today is comb out your hair, dear friend.”

Gertie looked puzzled, but one touch of her head and she realized. Maggie grabbed a comb from her purse and quickly turned the roller shapes into a nice hairstyle.

“Are those all the buns?” Gertie covered her embarrassment and got back on track.

“No, I’ve got more in the car, but I couldn’t carry them all in one load. We ordered five hundred. Do you think that will be enough?” Gertie thought it would.

“I’ve also got my Jello-O salad and my cake.” Maggie started for the door.

“Did you bring your pickles?” Gertie did a mental inventory of Maggie’s contribution.

“Oh damn, I forgot my pickles. I better run home and get them.”

“No need. If the others come through, we’ll have enough. Besides, there’s a couple jars left over from the Esther Circle, but I’m sure those girls won’t mind if we used them today.” Maggie agreed.

Over the next half-hour, the other eight women of the Judith Circle straggled in, each bringing her own cake or pan of bars and Jello-O salad. Every woman arrived with a jar of her homemade pickles, much to Maggie’s relief. All blinked in surprise when they saw Gertie with her apron over her black dress, but Maggie signaled them not to make a fuss.

Even though the entire circle understood the usual hotdish recipe was being tripled for the first time in memory, they were astonished by the mound of ingredients Gertie set out on the counter. Each woman walked through the kitchen, marveling at how gigantic sixty pounds of hamburger looked, or how twenty-seven cans of tomato paste all set in a row resembled a battalion.

Each and every one said a few words about the shame of it all and the pain of it all and those things you say when you don’t know what to say but need to say something.

Gertie shook the dime jar to get everyone’s attention. “This is no time to lollygag, ladies. We have a lot of work to do.” Everyone hopped to and took on a job.

“What is that?” the newest member asked, pointing to the mason jar half full of dimes.

“Gertie, tell her the story,” Maggie yelled, hoping the distraction would help the old woman.

“You watch today. An old woman in a flat straw hat will come in and sit at the back table. She’ll eat three plates of food and stuff rolls in her purse. Don’t you pay any mind. That’s Cissy German. She comes to every funeral. She always leaves us a dime. The dimes go in that jar. It’s our ‘tip jar.’” Gertie almost giggled as she finished.

Maggie started cutting the nine pounds of bacon into small pieces. Angie Krump grabbed the eight bunches of celery for dicing. Norma Stine started opening, by hand, the twenty-four tall cans of tomato juice because Wanda Bach was already using the electric opener on eighty-four cans of soup. That left the onions for Mary Entangle, who complained she always got this job, and nobody bothered to tell her that if she wasn’t always late, she’d get a better task.

The rest of the circle took over the dining room, setting out paper placemats with napkins, forks, knives, and glasses. Salt and pepper shakers were scattered on the tables, and nobody was too happy to see most of them needed refilling—another item to raise at the combined circle meeting next month. The silk flowers K.C.’s dad had donated years ago went out, each sitting on a paper doily. So did the mismatched collection of toothpick holders—one a tiny beer barrel, another a wee lantern, one a shot glass with the words “Las Vegas.” Gertie, for one, hated them. They looked tawdry on a funeral lunch table, but nobody dared leave them off and nobody had bothered finding the pretty collectible ones that were classier.

General Motors could learn a thing or two about assembly-line precision from watching the Judith Circle get ready for a five hundred-plate funeral dinner.

As busy as they were—as solemn the occasion—any notion that these women did their assigned tasks in silence is nonsense. Except when she’s actually measuring an ingredient or double-checking the recipe, silence isn’t a normal part of a woman’s cooking routine. If she’s alone, she’s likely to be talking to herself, reciting the steps she’s taking or counting out the measure and scolding herself when she spills the flour—“Oh, you sloppigoose.” But when she’s with a group, this is the time to “visit,” to be polite about it, or gossip if not.

Their first choice was not to talk about why they were here or how awful the next few hours were going to be or how could poor Nettie ever pull through this, so they talked about the things that gave them a reason to keep going.

“Did you know I’m going to be a grandmother again?” Mary offered the news that always brought joyful congratulations. “My third!”

Angie said that was nothing, she already had seven, which set everyone to counting. By the time they were done, they figured the grandmothers in the crowd—excluding Gertie and her sister, Wanda, of course—could claim a total of sixteen. The younger women, who had a total of twenty-one children yet to raise, were silently praying for the relief of grandmotherhood.

Maggie reported she expected Joya home for Christmas. Norma said they weren’t going to Arizona this winter because Bernard’s dad wasn’t doing well. Angie said her family planned a winter reunion and she expected seventy-five. One of the town girls reminded everyone there was a wedding dance this weekend at the Legion Hall and knowing it was the Schultz clan, everyone expected a good time and a plentiful bar.

A farm wife said her husband was beside himself because corn prices had fallen again. “He says what good is it to spend four dollars a bushel growing corn when it’s selling for three dollars?” Everyone voiced their agreement.

Gertie used to have her own contributions to these brag-fests, even though she’d never had children of her own. But she could tell about “my Amber,” the girl who fulfilled all her mothering fantasies. She’d cared for Amber since she was born, as Nettie fought off the depression of her husband’s death and then searched for jobs to support them. Gertie had been there through the knee scrapes and the first bike ride; she read her books and then collected books for the voracious reader Amber became. She’d taught the girl to sew and crochet, stood up for Johnny when no one else would, supervised Amber’s homework, and never missed a basketball game. “You should see the dress my Amber is making,” she bragged while making one funeral dinner. “My Amber is learning to make pierogies, and she’s pretty good,” she bragged at another. Everyone knew Amber wanted to teach third grade because Gertie had told them. Again and again. She and Amber had started collecting the new state quarters—they already had Delaware, New Jersey, and Connecticut—and Amber vowed to collect all fifty over the next ten years and use them to teach her third graders history. North Dakota’s State Quarter wasn’t scheduled to be released until 2006, and Gertie hoped she’d still be here to see that happen.