Last Rights

Camille Minichino

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2010 Camille Minichino

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LAST RIGHTS

My old Aunt Millie is laid out in the funeral parlor on St. Claire Street, one mile from the brown and cream house on the hill where she lived all her life, and one mile in from Revere Beach, just north of Boston. The cover of her sturdy cherry wood casket is propped open, like the hood of a car in trouble.

I'm comfortable in this quiet, final setting. The parlor, with its heavy burgundy drapes and antique walnut cabinets filled with religious curios and delicate figurines remind me of the old library where I work and where I figured out the details of my crime.

I walk across the rich maroon carpet toward Aunt Millie, and breath the sweet odors of thick-stemmed gladiolas and wreaths of pale pink and white chrysanthemums. Outside, the early morning traffic rumbles by, a barely audible hum, adding deep tones to the music Louie the undertaker has piped in.

Aunt Millie's stiff navy blue taffeta dress is tucked into the crepe-lined edges of her expensive casket, her best mother-of-pearl rosary circling her old fingers, her thin white hair falling neatly around her crusty orange face. Louie has done a good job.

In approximately one hour, Aunt Millie will be buried. Alone with her in the dark room, settled on the small wooden prie dieu in front of her casket, I lean over and look at her necklace.

Aunt Millie asked to be buried with her exquisite old pendant. An oval ruby set in gold, surrounded by tiny diamond chips and suspended on a delicate serpentine chain, it's worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. I've always been able to see myself in Aunt Millie's ruby, my dark hair and eyes matching her own in an earlier day. Today there's no shine from the jewel around Aunt Millie's lifeless neck, not the tiniest reflection from the flickering votive lights set in rows on the shaky metal rack next to her casket.

I dig my elbows into the black velvet top of the prie dieu and lift my short frame for a better angle, pricking myself on thorns from the enormous spray of blood-red roses at Aunt Millie's waist. Streaks of light edge around the curtains and end in dullness on her necklace. I see no glow at the center stone, not a spark from the diamonds. This is not the pendant Aunt Millie cherished.

Of course not. I've stolen Aunt Millie's necklace and replaced it with a fake.

I wonder whether anyone has noticed. I wonder if someone has reported the theft. I imagine the police asking questions. Who had the opportunity to switch the jewelry? Who needs money? Did someone want revenge? I stare at Aunt Millie's small, flattened bosom until it seems to rise and fall with breath and life, as if she's trying to throw off the worthless paste around her neck.

The taped organ hymns, soft at first, grow louder and louder and pound against my head. My hands turn clammy, and my body sways on the kneeler.

The drapes behind a large crucifix part, and a startling figure in black emerges. "Are you all right, Grace?"

I catch my breath and utter a tiny, embarrassing cry. It's only Louie's nephew and new assistant, Peter, just out of high school.

"I'm fine," I say, standing up. "Thank you."

Peter relaxes his wide, padded shoulders and nods with relief, as if the moment has cost him every ounce of his newly acquired graveside manner. He wanders around the parlor, straightens rows of chairs, dusts the lectern that holds the satiny white guest book, scrapes stray wax from the long ivory candles that frame Aunt Millie's body. It occurs to me that the police might think Peter stole the necklace. About all he has in this world is a suit Louie handed down to him, and a battered car that's his graduation present.

A light breeze from a lace-covered window ruffles the flowery stalks arranged in vases and baskets around Aunt Millie's casket. Yellow and pink and lavender ribbons with curly gold letters float around her head like a choir of pastel angels. In loving memory, from Rigione's Market. Rest in Peace, from the Friends of St. Claire's. Your Devoted Children and Grandchildren. Your Loving Niece, Grace.

Another fifty minutes until Aunt Millie's coffin is closed. Before then, the whole family will march past her lifeless body. Any one of them can be suspected of stealing Aunt Millie's necklace. Like me, they've all had access to this private room before regular guests arrive. We all knew of her request to wear the ruby and diamonds for all eternity. We've all had time to prepare an imitation.

Buddy, Aunt Millie's oldest son, is a likely suspect. He's a heavy gambler with never enough money. Buddy's a regular at Wonderland, the dog-racing track stretched out behind the old railroad tracks. I can almost hear Aunt Millie's clucking at the mention of Wonderland.

"No good came of that," she'd often say, talking about how they built the track in 1935 on the site of an old family amusement park.

It's common knowledge at Wonderland that Buddy will do anything to be free of the powerful men in white ties who hound him for payments on a six-figure debt. And Buddy's not the only one in the family with money problems. Jim, his younger brother, filed for bankruptcy when his small restaurant next to the fire station failed last year. Annie, the youngest, is the single mother of teen-aged twins, trying to support her family as a grade school teacher. Her husband died in a fishing accident, leaving Annie with a pittance of insurance money.

There's certainly no lack of motive for robbery among Aunt Millie's offspring.

My mind races with other possibilities, assuring myself that I'm only one of many persons of interest that the police will question.

Why not Louie, the impeccably groomed mortician who's as old as his dead client? I steal a glance at him. He's leaning against the doorway, arms folded across his chest. No one else was with Aunt Millie's body for so long. And I'd heard a rumor that he and Aunt Millie dated in the '50's. For all we know, it was Louie who gave Aunt Millie the necklace in the first place. She never told us how she came by it nor why she chose this particular piece for perpetual companionship.

I know the police will suspect me, too. Such a tightly knit neighborhood, everyone knows Aunt Millie reluctantly took me in when I was a child. My father, her brother Nick, couldn't deal with me, eight years old when my mother died.

"I don't like living with Aunt Millie," I told my father over and over. "I don't fit in and my cousins hate me."

But he always said I'd get used to it. I needed a real home life, he said. "With a rich woman in charge," he winked. He forgot to mention that he also wanted to start a new life, with nothing to remind him of my mother.

I was always second-class in Aunt Millie's household. Her sons, Buddy and Jim, were sent to a Jesuit high school, and her natural daughter, Annie, went to an academy in Boston. For me, public schools, hand-me-downs, and banishment from the living room during family meetings.

My mind revisits my first holiday in Aunt Millie's house. My father called from his new home, two hours away, to wish me a Merry Christmas. We stayed on the line only a few minutes, and by the time I returned to the living room, the whole family had already finished opening all their presents.

"Your stuff's in the corner," Aunt Millie said, while her children played with their new toys.

I sat on the floor, undid the wrappings, and looked at my gifts. Underwear from Aunt Millie, mittens from my cousins, and jewelry—a plastic heart-shaped pendant on a pink cord—that had been sent by my father.

Footsteps.

My fruitless reliving of one deadly holiday after another is interrupted as Buddy arrives with his latest wife, Rita, tall and slim, in a fashionable black cloak. Certainly bought for this special occasion, and not from a sale rack.

Rita pinches her cloak closed at her neck and looks at Aunt Millie. Buddy stands behind her and rolls his bald head around his tight collar.

"Doesn't she look beautiful," Rita says, her voice high and whiny, like the voice people use with infants or puppies.

I've already moved to a cold folding chair in the shadow of a potted tree so Buddy and Rita can have the kneeler. Closer to the window, I feel the chill of the early fall air. I hunch my shoulders and stuff my hands into the pockets of my brown knit jacket, the most respectable article of clothing I own.

Yesterday Rita offered to lend me a coat for the trip to the cemetery.

"I'm allergic to wool and animal fur," I told her.

I may not be able to afford designer fashions, but it's my menial library job that helped me pull off this heist. The idea hit me like a bolt the day a poor young girl from the projects came in and asked me to help her with a school report.

"I want some books on how to make jewelry that looks real," she said. "You know, like imitations of expensive necklaces and stuff."

Thanks, inarticulate little waif in the tattered sweater! Over the next few months, I worked with the girl on a grade A report, and finished my own project, a replica of Aunt Millie's necklace, on the side.

Now, in Louie's parlor, Buddy and Rita hardly notice me. I watch to see if they'll spot the fake necklace, but they seem to be concentrating on other things. Rita eyes a wilted flower in a small basket and calls Peter to remove it. Buddy tells Louie to straighten the ribbon on the arrangement from him and his siblings.

"Let's look through these cards," Rita says. Her elaborate coral fingernails pick through the envelopes on the narrow oak stand. "There might be money in some of them."

"Forget it," says Buddy. "What's the matter with you? Nobody's been here since we looked last night." Buddy's wearing the navy pinstriped suit and wide dark tie he says he bought for job interviews.

In the next few minutes, the peace of the funeral parlor is destroyed as Jim and his wife Marianne arrive, their four children, Annie, and her twins close behind. A few old women in black file in also, Aunt Millie's friends from St. Claire's. Two by two, they all take a turn on the kneeler as I watch their faces from the sidelines, looking for some sign of recognition that Aunt Millie is wearing inferior goods.

Jim and Marianne whisper to each other the whole time they kneel in front of Aunt Millie. Then they approach me in my corner and ask me to move to the next row back.

"So the children can help each other with the rosary," Marianne says. She pronounces each word deliberately, as if I need special handling.

"We should have marked this row for the family," Jim says, "then Grace would have known enough not to sit here." I'm sure he sincerely believes this remark is a kindness to me.

Carla, their oldest, stumbles into the chair that was mine. She turns to catch my eye, rests her hand on her shoulder, and flicks her fingers, as if brushing off an insect or a bit of lint.

"Good morning, step-Auntie Grace," Carla says.

I adjust my glasses and glance down at the bright crystal rosary in Carla's hand. I clench my jaw at the recollection of year after year of miserable evenings when I baby-sat Carla and her brothers. Without recompense of any kind, of course.

Annie's twins, a boy and a girl, are the last to approach the kneeler. After only a few seconds, they reach out together and touch the narrow collar of Aunt Millie's dress. For a moment, I think they've spotted the arts-and-crafts jewelry; but their awkward fidgeting and stifled giggles tell me they're involved in some sort of mutual joke, probably daring each other to touch their dead grandmother.

I look at the clock: only a half hour to go. So far, no one has mentioned the necklace. The air in the parlor is heavy, choking, partly from perfumes, and partly from Louie's chemicals. Aunt Millie's children discuss the details of the burial mass and the motor procession to her final resting place.

Rita's voice rings out, a sharp contrast to the hushed tones of the parlor. "We have two limos," she says. "Car number one will have Buddy and me, Jim, Marianne, and Annie. Car number two is for the six kids. Grace can drive her own car and take Uncle Nick, if he ever shows up."

No one objects, and Peter disappears through the back door that leads to the mortuary garage.

"Where are the prayer cards?" Annie asks. "They should be here by now if we're going to have them at mass. People will be looking for them." Her twins, slumped in a corner, look at their mother as if waiting to be blamed for the missing package.

"Somebody'd better check over at the convent," Marianne says.

"I'll go," I say, happy for an excuse to leave the parlor and the necklace. I head out into the air and light. I pass my old green Dodge and hurry along St. Claire Street to the convent, a block away, anxious to put distance between me and the parlor.

It seems that Aunt Millie will go to her grave in a few dollars worth of glass and glue, for all her children noticed, and I, at last, will have what's rightfully due me, a share in the family's goods. I smile as I picture the real necklace resting nicely in the bottom drawer of my dresser.

At the convent I pick up the memorial cards, stacked tightly together and stuffed into a small box, like a deck of ordinary playing cards, ready to be dealt to the worshippers at the funeral mass. I look at the sample pasted to the front of the box. Annie, who was given the task of designing the card, chose a colorful rendering of The Sacred Heart of Jesus, trimmed in gold. I pull the sample from the cover of the box and read the simple facts of Aunt Millie's life, printed on the back in small, ornate font. Born 1930, nee Palermo. Beloved wife of Albert (d. 1999); Mother of Albert, Jr. (Buddy); James; and Ann Marie. May she rest in peace.

I try to stick the sample back as it was, but the glue has stripped away, so I shove the card into my pocket and clean the sticky front of the box as well as I can with a tissue. I hope Annie won't notice.

I approach the funeral home and check the time on the old clock tower attached to the post office building behind Louie's parlor. Eight-fifty. If we're on schedule, we have only ten minutes left in the parlor, for final prayers. Father Rossi will lead the rosary, then Aunt Millie and the pasty necklace will be closed up and buried forever at Holy Family Cemetery.

I reach the short walkway leading back to the parlor and spy a uniformed policewoman at the door, next to Louie, her hand at hip level where her gun is holstered.

"Grace has always been a problem," I hear someone say.

I realize immediately that they're looking directly at me. Very slowly and deliberately, the policewoman walks toward me. I back away slightly, but a second officer, a man I'd known in high school, moves in and blocks my way.

At once the energy drains from my body, my arms drop to my side and the package of holy cards spills out of my hands. The flimsy cardboard box lands on its edge and opens as it hits the ground. Spread out at my feet are one hundred identical images of Jesus, sad-eyed from disappointment in his disciples, his fingers pointing to his heart, bare and wounded in his chest. Some of the cards are already soiled from grains of dirt blown around them. A few have flipped over during their fall -- May she rest in peace. I look down without hope, and know that the cards can never be put back into their crisp, perfectly wrapped deck.

Louie looks at the officers, and then at me, and shakes his head, his eyes cast down. His highly polished black shoes catch the light from shiny handcuffs at the policewoman's waist.

In the doorway behind Louie, Aunt Millie's children and grandchildren and the ladies in black stand crowded together in silence, mouths closed, eyes stunned into openness. My father, who has finally arrived, has the startled look of a fallen angel. Father Rossi, in his stark white collar, clutches his lapels and glares at me. I have everyone's full attention.

"I'm sorry about this, Grace," the officer says, his voice low and steady.

I give him a weak smile and lift my hands, wrists together, fingers touching, as if to pray.

Rita pushes her way to the front and comes within a few inches of me. Her cloak waves around us, a dark shroud that clouds my vision of the bright morning; she throws her head back, and breathes a loud sigh into my face.

"Your car is blocking Louie's driveway," she says with a haughty air. "You're getting a ticket."

I turn from her and see the sun dance on my car, on and off, on and off, bringing the world into focus on the chrome rim of my steering wheel.

I point to the curb at our feet, lined with cars, bumper to bumper.

"It was the only way I could fit in," I say.

THE END

About the author:

Camille Minichino has published eight novels in the Periodic Table Mystery series and four in the Miniature Mystery series (writing as MARGARET GRACE).

Visit me:

My website http://www.minichino.com

My blog: http://www.killerhobbies.blogspot.com