The Truth About Death Read Free

didn’t want to mention Gianluigi Bevilacqua, and she couldn’t remember the name of the mystery novel; so she said, “You lectured on Caravaggio in your art history survey.” Elizabeth was an art historian. Louisa had sat in on her introductory course at the college. “I want to see The Calling of Saint Matthew. What would it be like to be called like that? There you are in a gambling den with a bunch of lowlifes and this strange figure comes. ‘Follow me …’ ”
    “It’s in the French church,” Elizabeth said. “San Luigi dei Francesi. And it’s a customhouse, not a gambling den. Caravaggios can be very intimidating, you know.”
    Before they could pursue the subject of Caravaggio, the phone rang. They stopped talking and listened while Simon took the call in the hallway. Anders Johansen had died. Simon would have to go out on a removal.
    “Johansen,” Louisa said before Simon was even off the phone. “He’s prepaid. He’s one of the last prepaids I handled before they started putting everything on the computer.”
    “Isn’t he the one who sold Grandpa Bart the horses?” Hildi asked. “Stormy and Salty? For the Amish funeral?” And the conversation took a sudden turn.
    “You couldn’t have been more than seven years old,” Louisa said to Hildi, counting backward on her fingers.
    What had happened was that an Amish family had been stranded in Galesburg. The husband had died on the train—a massive heart attack—between Burlington and Galesburg, and the train crew had put him in the baggage car. They’d wanted the body off the train at the next stop.
    “He’d been ostracized,” Louisa said, “and they were on their way from somewhere in Iowa to Kewanee, where they had family. Shunning, they called it. No one would talk to any of them. The whole family. It was okay for them to take the train, but not to ride in a motorcar, so Bart borrowed a horse from Anders Johansen. Anders hitched it up to an old buggy and Bart drove it into town.”
    “It was Salty,” Hildi said.
    “That was right after Van Gogh’s Irises sold for fifty million dollars,” Elizabeth said.
    “Yeah,” Morris said. “Right after the stock market collapsed.”
    Salty was a small-boned, flat-footed Tennessee Walker. Bart had bought her after the Amish funeral, and then Hildi’d thought she’d be lonely, so she talked her grandfather into buying the second horse, Stormy, a broken-down quarter horse. He’d made a paddock in the lot in back, which had since been turned into a parking lot, and when the city had sent him a notice that he couldn’t keep horses in town, he’d said it was part of the business, that he needed the horses for Amish funerals. So he’d been granted a variance.
    “It was sad,” Louisa said. “Bart and a couple of the conductors got the body into the buggy and Bart brought it back here, and then he went back to the station to get the rest of the family, a wife and two little girls. He brought them back here too. They didn’t have anyplace else to go. I fixed sandwiches, and we all ate in the kitchen, and they slept on the floor up in Simon’s tower. They held themselves together.”
    “The Amish don’t make a big fuss about death,” Simon said. He was standing in the doorway. “It was like a Jewish funeral. Plain box. No embalming.”
    “They must feel something.”
    “Yes, but it’s different. We’re all trying to find ourselves,” Simon said. “The Amish are trying to lose themselves.”
    “I’m coming with you,” Hildi said, struggling to get up off the sofa.
    “Don’t be silly,” Elizabeth said. She turned to Simon. “Can’t you call Gilbert? He could take Henry with him.” Henry operated the crematory and sometimes worked as a greeter. But Simon shook his head. “Or wait for Able to get here.” Able, Simon’s younger brother, was a funeral director in Kewanee.
    “He won’t be here till eight o’clock,” Simon said.
    “Or take Morris,” she said. “It might