Death in the Memorial Garden Read online

  Death in the Memorial Garden

  Kathie Deviny

  Camel Press

  PO Box 70515

  Seattle, WA 98127

  For more information go to: www.camelpress.com

  Deviny.camelpress.com

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Cover design by Sabrina Sun

  Death in the Memorial Garden

  Copyright © 2013 Kathie Deviny

  ISBN: 978-1-60381-899-5 (Trade Paper)

  ISBN: 978-1-60381-900-8 (eBook)

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2012941565

  Produced in the United States of America

  License Notes

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  * * * * *

  This book is dedicated to ...

  Family, Friends and Fellow Writers

  The People of Trinity Parish

  and

  Paul

  * * * * *

  How they so softly rest

  * * * * *

  Chapter 1

  The pigeons were gathering on the lawn of the Memorial Garden, just as they always seemed to do before an internment. Father Robert Vickers, the rector of Grace Episcopal Church, watched the birds peck, preen and flutter.

  The door of the church opened for a minute and then closed with a loud thud. A minute later it opened a second time, and once again thudded shut. Robert checked his watch and sighed. The mourners were obviously having a good time visiting inside the church, where the funeral service had been held. They probably were hoping he’d delay the internment until it stopped raining. He didn’t mind, really. It was his first quiet moment all day.

  God bless old Reverend Lewis, Robert thought. In the 1970s, his distant predecessor, using skills gained in his former career as an attorney, had shepherded a law through the state legislature breaking the monopoly of the cemeteries on burials. Robert liked to think of it as the “Hallowed Ground” law. Since then, the patch of lawn beside the church had become a burial ground for the ashes of its deceased.

  Despite his satisfaction with the presence of the Memorial Garden at his parish, Robert was not a happy man. His bad mood wasn’t because of the be-pigeoned lawn, or the spring downpour that made the birds’ feathers sodden and the ground soggy. If pigeons or rain had the power to make people unhappy, everyone in Seattle would be suicidal. Nor was it because of the internment service he was preparing to conduct. Neola Peterson had lived the full measure of her days, enjoying every minute and, it was rumored, had willed a tidy sum to the church. Her ashes would soon be joining those of her beloved husband Fred, who had died last year.

  If he could devote more time to marrying and burying, visiting the sick, clothing the naked and feeding the hungry, he’d be a happy man. And if the Holy Spirit would blow his way a woman willing to marry a 5’10,” middle-aged, balding clergyman with thick glasses, he’d be ecstatic. No, what was making him unhappy today was more concrete. Bricks and mortar, to be exact—the crumbling bricks and mortar of Grace Church’s bell tower.

  He was in the middle of a fight with the vestry over fixing the unstable structure looming over the Memorial Garden. They didn’t want to spend money the congregation didn’t have, and the Bishop felt the same way. Robert’s superior would gladly disband the small congregation and sell the property. Never mind that it was the oldest church in the area, that the ashes of the famous dead of the city were interred in the altar, that its pipe organ and German stained glass were renowned far and wide. What good was all that, they all but said, when the average Sunday attendance in the 400-person sanctuary was sixty, and the average age seventy, with ten of the congregation pushing 100?

  One of the new vestry members, a businessman in his thirties who worked in a high-rise downtown, had come up with a scheme he claimed would solve all their problems. It involved selling what he called an “underutilized” part of their property to a real estate developer, who would build a tall, skinny condo. Apparently, Grace Church owned thousands of square feet of underutilized empty air above its roof that could be transmigrated one half block north to add ten stories of concrete to the city height limit. Robert hoped there’d be room for him in the condo, because the underutilized corner included the rectory. It also included the food bank, which he seriously doubted the developer would want to keep as an anchor tenant.

  This vestry member, Rick, claimed that the church and the Memorial Garden would remain the same, and that proceeds from the sale could be used to fix the bell tower and create a healthy endowment. Robert smelled a rat, but he hadn’t been able to flush it out—yet—and wished his seminary training had included a few business courses.

  As he headed to summon the mourners, a brown lump in the corner of the garden caught Robert’s attention. Protected by an overhang, the patch of soft lawn attracted urban campers.

  Detouring, he called out, “Excuse me, sir,” to the person inside the sleeping bag, “but you’re lying in a graveyard and we’re burying someone in a few minutes. You’ll have to find somewhere else to sleep.”

  “The Hell you say!” came a voice from inside the bag. A head emerged. The man was about forty, with bushy dull brown hair and a matching week-old beard.

  “Wait a minute!” the man said. “Where are the gravestones? You can’t have a cemetery without gravestones!” He paused. “Just kidding, padre.”

  Robert answered, “Oh, it’s you, Lester. You know better than to sleep here.”

  “Yeah, but this was an emergency. The mission was full, and so were all the best spaces under the freeway bridge. Besides, it’s dangerous down there.” Sitting up in the sleeping bag, he yawned hugely and cleared his throat. Seeing that he was preparing to spit, Father Robert scowled, so Lester swallowed instead and said, “This ground is too cold anyway. I’m heading to the steam grate on Second Avenue. Have to get my dibs in first. The other day two guys beat me to it. And they weren’t even sleeping. They were looking at dirty pictures on one of them little computers.” Seeing Robert’s skeptical frown, he added, “I’d swear it on a Bible if I had one.”

  Wondering where the pair recharged the computer’s battery, Robert let Lester use the church bathroom. But first he warned him to tell his friends that if he heard of any more drug use in there, or vandalism, the privilege would be cut off. As the priest hurried toward the church, the scent of daffodils wafted under his nose, smoothing his furrowed brow. He smiled. It was a good day for a burial.

  * * *

  Rick Chase stood at the window of his twenty-fifth floor office. Mount Rainier wasn’t out today, but he had a nice view of the bustling waterfront.

  Up the hill just south and east, he could see Grace Church’s shingled bell tower topped by a modest brass cross. The rest of the structure was hidden by a big public housing project and the public hospital. Not exactly the toniest part of town.

  He and Stacy had been married there by Father Robert. Even though churches were no longer fashionable places fo
r weddings, Stacy had insisted on Grace, because it was where her grandparents had exchanged vows, back before the mansions had been torn down and the town’s movers and shakers had relocated to Capitol Hill and north to the Highlands.

  Stacy was the churchgoer, not Rick, but he loved old buildings and wanted to save this one. That’s why he’d joined the vestry and solicited the advice of real estate developer friends on a proposal to develop the property. He figured the area was due for a turnaround. He couldn’t profit from the project directly, but its successful completion would save the structure and raise his profile in the business community.

  At last week’s downtown Rotary meeting he’d managed to sidle up to Bishop Anthony Adams. The man (“Call me Bishop Anthony, son!”) was excited at the prospect of development. A tall condo plus a bigger cross on top of the church would increase the visibility of the Diocese, the Bishop said, and oh, Grace Church, of course.

  Rick wondered if he should be attending the funeral scheduled for this afternoon. He didn’t know the deceased, but had heard she had a pretty substantial estate. He could see who was there and introduce himself to her family. It would be good if some of the restoration funds came directly from the Parish. The development group would need their buy-in or things could get sticky.

  He checked his phone and rubbed the top of his brown crew cut. If he skipped the funeral and just showed up at the internment, he’d have enough time to grab a sandwich as he walked up the hill.

  * * *

  Lucy Lawrence looked about her at the twenty other mourners standing in the Memorial Garden. The sight of the elderly women—dressed in somber wool coats and sober black chunky-heeled oxfords, umbrellas unfurled against the rain—did nothing to lift her spirits. They were here to bury Neola Peterson, their friend and contemporary. Neola would not have approved of the mourners’ attire; she would have worn a mink wrap and spike heels to her funeral, even in the pouring rain.

  I fit right in with the old ladies, Lucy thought, glancing down at her belted navy raincoat and zip up boots. She felt her limp hair separate around her ears, remembering Neola’s soft ash curls tinged with pink, miles more stylish than her own gray pageboy. Too bad she’s gone, Lucy mused. I’ll miss her. But she was eighty-eight after all, and I’m not far behind. One can’t go on forever, Lucy told herself sternly, and I for one wouldn’t care to.

  Just the previous week Neola had attended the cake and coffee party for Lucy’s seventy-eighth birthday. It was her last public appearance. Immediately after returning to her suite, the unfortunate woman had suffered a stroke and spent her final days in the first floor nursing center, dressed in a horrible backless cotton thing. Lucy would be satisfied to die in her own bed.

  The square of lawn surrounded by loose earth and plantings that constituted the Memorial Garden was creased with brown, soggy footprints. The branches of the rhododendrons on its perimeter drooped under their load of showy blossoms. The rhodies here always bloomed a month ahead of schedule.

  Looming to the immediate south, the century-old shingle and stone church blocked what little light there was on this blustery day. The bell tower seemed to shiver as the wind whistled through its shuttered window openings. To Lucy’s right and immediately to the north, the steam-heated parish hall beckoned. She spied the tea urn and trays of cookies through the French doors.

  Watching the pigeons flapping around reminded Lucy of her parents’ Iowa chicken coop, and the memory filled her nostrils briefly with its dusty, acrid odor. She sniffed, and the smell was gone, neutralized by the moist, cool Northwest air.

  As the mourners hunched into their coats, Father Robert, water dripping off his balding head, started to read the burial service at double speed, garbling the stately phrases.

  “’N the midst oflife we’re in death whomayweseek for succor butoftheeoLord?”

  Why doesn’t he shave that mustache? Lucy grumbled silently to herself. It doesn’t disguise the fact that he’s over fifty and it turns his speech to mush! There was nothing he could do about the lack of forehead hair, of course. Why, he looks a bit like Brother Cadfael, she realized, except that his tonsure stops at his ears. Her irritation dissipated as she recalled with pleasure the Ellis Peters mysteries about the twelfth century English monk “with a past,” who solved murders related to the turbulent politics of the time.

  She wondered why religious mysteries almost always featured monks or priests rather than the descendants of Martin Luther or John Calvin. Possibly they considered solving crimes a distraction from Bible Study.

  Speaking of distraction, she willed herself to focus on the matter at hand. Neola’s ashes were being interred next to her late husband’s … at least where they were supposed to be. One might wonder after that unfortunate incident last year. Lucy smiled, remembering the congregation’s outrage upon discovering that an over-enthusiastic groundskeeper had removed the sod and six inches of topsoil to level the area. Although Father had reassured them repeatedly that the remains were buried at least a foot deep, suspicion lingered that the garden’s previous occupants were now reposing at the city composting facility.

  Lucy spotted her own 144 square inches, a few feet to the left of Neola’s. She’d purchased it after retiring from the Midwest to Seattle to be near her widowed brother Thomas and her niece Lisa. Her retirement residence was near Grace Church, which had been her brother’s parish for years. Thomas’ plot was toward the middle of the garden. He hadn’t given it up, even though he and Lisa were no longer members.

  Since Lucy’s estrangement from them the previous spring, they’d stopped attending. The thought of resting near Thomas for all eternity wasn’t appealing, but of course it wouldn’t matter then. People assumed that they’d moved or lost interest in religion, and she didn’t disabuse them; she didn’t want to increase her pain by sharing the truth.

  The truth was that she had been overeager to share in the life of an active teenager who was also a musical prodigy. Thomas was a famous organist and Lisa had followed in his footsteps, amazing audiences with her mastery of the unwieldy instrument.

  Thomas kept tight reigns on his daughter’s practice and concert schedule. Only her high school studies were higher priority. Things had come to a head when Lucy planned an out of town trip for the two of them during Lisa’s spring vacation. Because Lisa would have missed two rehearsals, Thomas refused to let her go. His inflexibility led to an ugly confrontation and then the estrangement.

  As the service continued, Lucy remembered how much Father Vickers, despite his mustache and relative youth, had helped her after she stumbled into his office to share her grief and loss. Through their talks, she’d come from a place of despair to a shaky faith that “all would be well,” just not on her timetable. At her invitation, he’d taken to visiting with her once a month at Heritage House, after his service for the shut-ins, even accepting a glass of sherry accompanied by water crackers. It was good to have a rector who appreciated the niceties.

  He’d also encouraged her to call him “Robert,” not that she was special in that regard. Upon appointment as their rector five years earlier, he’d told the congregation to dispense with the Father-this and Father-that. However, like most of Grace’s parishioners, she had been raised in a more formal era. They compromised by calling him “Father” or “Father Robert” among themselves. However, it was always “Father Vickers” to strangers.

  If my kitties predecease me, she thought, I’ll ask Father if their ashes can be buried with mine. Blind, dumb animal love was the best, she’d decided long ago. Surely the Almighty would agree, after all the trouble He’d had over the centuries with the rest of creation. And if Father wouldn’t allow it, she just might give away her plot and join her kitties in the charming pet garden located on the terraced area below the church’s south side.

  Other than a youngish, slender man with a brown crew cut dressed in what looked like a Burberry raincoat, and the new young organist (who’d acquitted himself quite nicely during the funeral,
pulling out all the stops, as it were), Neola’s two teenaged grandchildren were the only mourners under thirty in attendance. The young man and woman seemed distinctly uncomfortable standing in a public place amidst people in long robes and underneath an oversized cross waving back and forth in the none-too-steady grip of old George the crucifer. Lucy noticed them glancing toward the street, fearing, she supposed, that a friend in a passing car might recognize them. The girl was just a few years older than her niece Lisa, she realized. A surge of longing welled up and she wiped away a tear. She missed Lisa terribly.

  * * *

  After the last prayer before the actual burial of the ashes, Father Robert looked at the deceased’s daughter and her husband, who seemed uncomfortable, apparently not having inherited Neola and Fred’s dedication to the ways of the traditional church. He glanced at the service bulletin for their names, Mark and Audrey Miller. They seemed to be exactly the same height, about his 5’10”. The husband was unremarkable, a middle-aged, middle-sized, brown-headed man. The wife was somewhat more handsome and stood up straight despite her height, as if she’d attended a poise class at some point.

  Robert remembered Neola bemoaning their attendance at a Christian Center in the suburbs, where waving arms abounded but nary a waving cross could be seen. Neola blamed her daughter’s new husband for, as she put it, “brainwashing” her.

  He’d visited a number of these places incognito, when he relocated to Northwest Washington. He wanted to know how they attracted so many families so willing to part with the sums of money needed to maintain the large campus and multitudinous programs. The services reminded him of charity telethons, alternating professional quality musicians and sound systems with upbeat monologues by handsome pastors striding across the stage with mics stuck in their ears. To each their own, he finally decided.