Howard Engel - The Cooperman Variation

As I swung the Olds out into traffic, such as it was, the first thing I saw was the sign on the front lawn of the corner house: “Croft’s Funeral Home Since 1913.”

On a whim, I pulled into the lot connected to the chapel and parked next to the only other car. I got out and went through the glass doors that had been added to the side of the big white clapboard house. The quiet inside hit me. It was just the quiet of an empty house, but there was an extra hollowness underlying the silence. Then a man in a grey cardigan came through from a room at the back.

“Mr. Egan? I’m Henry Croft. We spoke earlier on the phone.” The welcome that began as friendly as you please wilted as he came to realize that I wasn’t Mr. Egan at all. I quickly explained who I was, that I had just been to see Ed Patel across the street and that he had told me about poor Alma Orchard. The sound of those names warmed him up again. “Oh yes, Alma. She was quite a character around town. Everybody liked Alma once they got on to her little eccentricities. Did you know her, Mr. Cooperman?”

“I didn’t, but Ed Patel was just talking about her and feeling sort of powerless because he couldn’t come to the service you held for her.”

“Yes, indeed. He was missed. But, under the circumstances … It was very well attended. The service, I mean. Alma was local, you understand, and there weren’t many in these parts she didn’t know. My grandmother and hers were great chums when they were young. She’d been keeping Ed’s practice going after Ed took sick. Couldn’t take on new work, but kept up to date on what was there.”

“Was she an elderly woman?”

“Coming up to her retirement. Was worried what she’d do once she shut down the last of Ed’s offices. One here in town, I mean. It was a great shame about Alma. She was a healthy woman and a careful one. Not like her to take a radio into the bathroom with her.”

“Nasty way to go,” I offered.

“Closed casket, of course. They didn’t find her, you know, for some days after it happened. I told her time and time again about living alone in that big old house. It just goes to show you. Naturally, it tested our professional skills out back. But I think we made the best of it. Got her all dressed up in her Sunday best. Mrs. Croft is a licensed female embalmer, you understand.”

“Of course.”

“Yes, she’d just taken off a clean outfit for a bubble bath with the radio perched on the corner of the tub. That’s what Sergeant Hoffmeister told me. The Provincial Police took an interest for a few days. There were things that puzzled them. Things puzzled a few of us.”

“Like what, Mr. Croft?”

“Well, I never speak ill of the dead, Mr. Cooperman. They’re my bread and butter, so to speak. But Alma was never all that fastidious about herself. And I wondered what she was doing all dolled up in clean clothes before she took her bath. Most times you find discarded dirty clothes and linen in the bath or bedroom, but not in this case. She was all dressed up to go out to the church bake sale that Monday when she stopped to take a bath. How do you like that?”

It was nearly noon when I hit the highway back to Toronto. It was a perfect day for travelling in an air-conditioned car. Unfortunately, none of the former owners of the Olds had thought of installing air-conditioning. The present owner hadn’t the initiative either. So he fried, even with the back windows open. Through the windshield, which had by now acquired an impressive collection of dead insects, I could see Canadian Shield granite following me back to town. It quit only as I neared Orillia, where I missed the overpass to Webers hamburger stand. Feeling that lapse keenly in the pit of my stomach, I pulled into the city of Orillia at the first suggestion from the highway signs.

Orillia was a borderline sort of place. For those driving north, it represented the gateway to vacationland; for those moving back to the city, it represented the first touch of urban civilization. Here you were reintroduced to fire hydrants and sidewalks, curbs and parking meters. You were once more in the iron grip of the city. From the highway, shopping plazas and large, flat areas devoted to parking took the place of outcroppings of rugged granite rock. Names such as IGA and Zehrs and Century 21 led the way into the town on Lake Couchiching. In saying that Orillia was the tunnel through which you re-entered civilization, I don’t mean to bad-mouth all of those towns north of there. Places such as Gravenhurst, Bracebridge and Huntsville can all boast of curbstones and parking meters, but they are inside the inescapable context of being north . At least to a southerner like me, they are north. So, for me, driving back to Toronto, Orillia was the gateway to the south.

Orillia was squeezed between the eight-lane highway and the south and west shores of Lake Couchiching. Part of the town spilled south of the lake, filling the gap between it and Lake Simcoe, which hooked up with the smaller lake at The Narrows. Like the great city of Rome, Orillia seemed to be built on seven hills as well, with streets climbing away from you towards the highway or sloping away from you towards the docks of the port. A large information booth that was set up here for tourists was having a busy day. Men and women in shorts or cutoff jeans were filing in and out carrying maps and brochures back to their cars as though they spelled the way to ease from earthly pain. I spotted a restaurant between two stone buildings that must have gone back to the early years of the community.

The meal at the Town and Country wasn’t exactly gourmet fare, but while I scanned the menu, I was watching a living diorama of busy Orillians taking their ease.

“I’ve had that car on blocks for two years, Lyal, and I don’t dare fill them tires without a damned good reason.” Lyal was wearing a grey T-shirt, blue pants, a heavy brass bracelet and yellow work boots. His pal wore a peaked blue cap, a light-blue shirt and running shoes. He’d hung a blue-on-blue windbreaker on the back of his chair.

“You got no call to talk like that, Bert. I only asked if she ran, is all.”

“You know as much about cars as you do about livestock.”

“The hell I do!”

“You couldn’t breed rabbits, Lyal. You know that!” said Bert with finality.

The restaurant was furnished in reproduced captain’s chairs, with captain’s stools next to the bar, where a Molson’s Export sign winked at the thirsty. A big Coke cooler filled the part of one wall that wasn’t occupied by the kitchen hatchway.

“What can I get youse?” This last was a red-headed waitress with a blue butterfly tattooed on her bare arm. She wasn’t chewing gum nor was there a pencil stuck in her hair, but her apron and salmon-pink uniform were starched and pressed as though they came from a roller mill.

“What’s the soup today?”

“Too hot for soup,” she announced flatly. I moved my finger further down the menu. I placed my order and tried to move my ears away from the discussion.

At another table, what looked like a small-town lawyer was eating a piece of apple pie, his chin nearly touching the plate. He was wearing a worn brown tweed jacket. Pens and pencils filled his shirt pocket beside a greasy necktie. Next to him, his briefcase threatened to explode, sending tattered pieces of writs and processes around the room. When my chopped-egg sandwich on white bread came, I tried to think of what awaited me in Toronto when I got back. Vanessa was probably still in L.A. and might be there for another day or so. That would leave me free to continue my digging. I would mend my fences with Sykes and Boyd by giving them the shotgun and shells. If that didn’t work, I’d try something else. I didn’t know what that might be, but I knew that I always thought of something.