"Yes, didn't he?" Tannerton said, touching the sealed lips of the corpse. "It's unusual to find a coroner with an aesthetic sense."
"Rare." Olmstead said.
Joshua shook his head. "I still find it hard to believe."
"Five years ago," Tannerton said, "I buried his mother. That's when I met him. He seemed a little ... strange. But I figured it was the stress and the grief. He was such an important man, such a leading figure in the community."
"Cold," Joshua said. "He was an extremely cold and self-contained man. Vicious in business. Winning a battle with a competitor wasn't always enough for him; if at all possible, he preferred to utterly destroy the other fellow. I've always thought he was capable of cruelty and physical violence. But attempted rape? Attempted murder?"
Tannerton looked at Joshua and said, "Mr. Rhinehart, I've often heard it said that you don't mince words. You've got a reputation, a much admired reputation, for saying exactly what you think and to hell with the cost. But...."
"But what?"
"But when you're speaking of the dead, don't you think you ought to--"
Joshua smiled. "Son, I'm a cantankerous old bastard and not entirely admirable. Far from it! As long as truth is my weapon, I don't mind hurting the feelings of the living. Why, I've made children cry, and I've made kindly gray-haired grandmothers weep. I have little compassion for fools and sons of bitches when they're alive. So why should I show more respect than that for the dead?"
"I'm just not accustomed to--"
"Of course, you're not. Your profession requires you to speak well of the deceased, regardless of who he might have been and what heinous things he might have done. I don't hold that against you. It's your job."
Tannerton couldn't think of anything to say. He closed the lid of the coffin.
"Let's settle on the arrangements," Joshua said. "I'd like to get home and have my dinner--if I have any appetite left when I leave here." He sat down on a high stool beside a glass-fronted cabinet that contained more tools of the mortician's trade.
Tannerton paced in front of him, a freckled, mop-haired bundle of energy. "How important is it to you to have the usual viewing?"
"Usual viewing?"
"An open casket. Would you find it offensive if we avoided that?"
"I hadn't really given it a thought," Joshua said.
"To be honest with you, I don't know how ... presentable the deceased can be made to look," Tannerton said. "The people at Angels' Hill didn't give him quite a full enough look when they embalmed him. His face appears to be somewhat drawn and shrunken. I am not pleased. I am definitely not pleased. I could attempt to pump him up a bit, but patchwork like that seldom looks good. As for cosmetology ... well ... again, I wonder if too much time has passed. I mean, he apparently was in the hot sun for a couple of hours after he died, before he was found. And then it was eighteen hours in cold storage before the embalming was done. I can certainly make him look a great deal better than he does now. But as for bringing the glow of life back to his face.... You see, after all that he's been through, after the extremes of temperature, and after this much time, the skin texture has changed substantially; it won't take makeup and powder at all well. I think perhaps--"
Beginning to get queasy, Joshua interrupted. "Make it a closed casket."
"No viewing?"
"No viewing."
"You're sure?"
"Positive."
"Good. Let me see.... Will you want him buried in one of his suits?"
"Is it necessary, considering the casket won't be open?"
"It would be easier for me if I just tucked him into one of our burial gowns."
"That'll be fine."
"White or a nice dark blue?"
"Do you have something in polka dots?"
"Polka dots?"
"Or orange and yellow stripes?"
Tannerton's ever-ready grin slipped from beneath his dour funeral director expression, and he struggled to force it out of sight again. Joshua suspected that, privately, Avril was a fun-loving man, the kind of hail-fellow-well-met who would make a good drinking buddy; but he seemed to feel that his public image required him to be somber and humorless at all times. He was visibly upset when he slipped up and allowed the private Avril to appear when only the public man ought to be seen. He was, Joshua thought, a likely candidate for an eventual schizophrenic breakdown.
"Make it the white gown," Joshua said.
"What about the casket? What style would--"
"I'll leave that to you."
"Very well. Price range?"
"Might as well have the best. The estate can afford it."
"The rumor is he must have been worth two or three million."
"Probably twice that," Joshua said.
"But he really didn't live like it."
"Or die like it," Joshua said.
Tannerton thought about that for a moment, then said, "Any religious services?"
"He didn't attend church."
"Then shall I assume the minister's role?"
"If you wish."
"We'll have a short graveside service," Tannerton said. "I'll read something from the Bible, or perhaps just a simple inspirational piece, something nondenominational."
They agreed on a time for buriaclass="underline" Sunday at two o'clock in the afternoon. Bruno would be laid to rest beside Katherine, his adoptive mother, in the Napa County Memorial Park.
As Joshua got up to leave, Tannerton said, "I certainly hope you've found my services valuable thus far, and I assure you I'll do everything in my power to make the rest of this go smoothly."
"Well," Joshua said, "you've convinced me of one thing. I'm going to draw up a new will tomorrow. When my times comes, I sure as hell intend to be cremated."
Tannerton nodded. "We can handle that for you."
"Don't rush me, son. Don't rush me."
Tannerton blushed. "Oh, I didn't mean to--"
"I know, I know. Relax."
Tannerton cleared his throat uncomfortably. "I'll... uh ... show you to the door."
"No need. I can find it myself."
Outside, behind the funeral home, the night was very dark and deep. There was only one light, a hundred-watt bulb above the rear door. The glow reached only a few feet into the velveteen blackness.
In the late afternoon, a breeze had sprung up, and with the coming of the night, it had grown into a gusty wind. The air was turbulent and chilly; it hissed and moaned.
Joshua walked to his car, which lay beyond the meager semicircle of frosty light, and as he opened the door he had the peculiar feeling he was being watched. He glanced back at the house, but there were no faces at the windows.
Something moved in the gloom. Thirty feet away. Near the three-car garage. Joshua sensed rather than saw it. He squinted, but his vision was not what it had once been; he couldn't discern anything unnatural in the night.
Just the wind, he thought. Just the wind stirring through the trees and bushes or pushing along a discarded newspaper, a piece of dry brush.
But then it moved again. He saw it this time. It was crouched in front of a row of shrubs leading out from the garage. He could not see any detail. It was just a shadow, a lighter purple-black smudge on the blue-black cloth of the night, as soft and lumpy and undefined as all the other shadows--except that this one moved.
Just a dog, Joshua thought. A stray dog. Or maybe a kid up to some mischief.
"Is someone there?"
No reply.
He took a few steps away from his car.
The shadow-thing scurried back ten or twelve feet, along the line of shrubbery. It stopped in an especially deep pool of darkness, still crouching, still watchful.
Not a dog, Joshua thought. Too damned big for a dog. Some kid. Probably up to no good. Some kid with vandalism on his mind.
"Who's there?"
Silence.
"Come on now."
No answer. Just the whispering wind.
Joshua started toward the shadow among shadows, but he was suddenly arrested by the instinctive knowledge that the thing was dangerous. Horrendously dangerous. Deadly. He experienced all of the involuntary animal reactions to such a threat: a shiver up his spine; his scalp seemed to crawl and then tighten; his heart began to pound; his mouth went dry; his hands curled into claws; and his hearing seemed more acute than it had been a minute ago. Joshua hunched over and drew up his bulky shoulders, unconsciously seeking a defensive posture.