Page 1 of Strangers She Knows

1

CapeCharade

Washington’s PacificCoast

This Spring

The Cape Charade undertaker, Arthur Earthman, never wanted to hear noises in the casket display room, especially after midnight.

But this had been a week of interesting firsts.

On Tuesday, a beautiful young woman, a grieving widow, had come into his office carrying a marriage certificate and a State of Washington Certificate of Exhumation. He hadn’t even known Washington state required a Certificate of Exhumation, since he’d never exhumed a body before.

Through its entire existence, Cape Charade had been merely a wide spot on Highway 101, a place where summer tourists stopped for gas and lunch. The tiny cemetery, founded in 1879 by Arthur’s ancestor as part of his mortuary business, had never contained more than 5,300 dear dead souls.

The widow, Miranda Nyugen, had been so sorrowful, so grief-stricken, so respectful of her Vietnamese husband’s traditions, that Arthur ached for her. It didn’t hurt that she was a beautiful woman—medium height, curvaceous, with shoulder-length, dark, shining hair, fair skin and piercing blue eyes. She had whispered her story in a voice shattered with heartbreak.

She had met Mitch in California, two weeks before he was due to go overseas with the Army. He convinced her to wed, and they had driven to Las Vegas and married. They spent the next two weeks in bed, and he had left her alone, grieving, waiting for his emails and calls. The longer he was gone, the more and more infrequently she heard from him. At last, when she heard nothing for too many months, she scraped together all of her money and went to visit Mitch’s parents.

In their shame, they could hardly look at her. Mitch had left the Army, gone to work at Yearning Sands Resort in Washington, and been killed while committing criminal acts. His immigrant family was deeply ashamed of him and the shadow his perfidy had cast upon them. Rather than bring his body home to them for burial, they had allowed him to be interred in the Cape Charade Cemetery where no one would visit him, no one would grieve for him.

Miranda said she didn’t believe Mitch had committed any crimes—Arthur knew better, but he didn’t tell the young widow that—and she couldn’t bear for him to remain in the ground here, unmourned and unloved. She would take him back with her to Wyoming to her family burial plot.

When Arthur asked why she would go through so much trouble for the husband she hardly knew, tears welled in her eyes.

Miranda and Mitch were the parents of twins, a boy and a girl. The children deserved to be able to mourn at their father’s grave.

So today they had exhumed the casket with its body from its corner of the cemetery, making sure not to desecrate any of the surrounding graves, and now Arthur sat in his kitchen and told the whole story to his wife, Cynthia, as she cooked his dinner. When he was done talking, she turned away from the stovetop and asked, “You believe all that? About the wedding and the family and the kids? When did you become the world’s biggest sucker?”

“I haven’t!”Had he?

The scent of garlic and oregano wafted from the pot. “It’s because she’s pretty, isn’t it?”

He prided himself on saying the right thing in delicate circumstances. “Not as pretty as you, honey.”

“There’s no fool like an old fool,” she retorted.

“I’m not old!” Better to protest age than whether or not he’d been unwise.

She laughed, opened a can of stewed tomatoes and dumped it into the pot. “Did this woman pay for the excavator?”

“Yes. I have the check for that and the cost of my services.” He pulled it out of his shirt pocket and placed it on the table.

“She wrote a check?” Cynthia left the stove, came to the table and examined it. “Hmm. Did you give her a discount?”

“No!” He had.

“Did you pay for flowers?”

“Yes. But we get a reduced rate from the florist.”

“Arthur.” Cynthia tapped her foot.“Whereis the casket?”

“Mrs. Nyugen is grief-stricken and she wanted to pray for his soul in the proper surroundings—”

“You put him in the chapel? Why would you do that?” Cynthia threw her arms into the air in exaggerated exasperation. “That body’s been in the cold, heavy, damp ground for four years, and now it’s in the warm chapel? You know what could happen.” She stomped back to the stove and very, very vigorously whisked the marinara.

“It’s a magnificent casket, top of the line. You know, when the Nyugen family purchased it, we wondered if they felt guilty about leaving him here or if that kind of coffin was Vietnamese tradition.”

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