Dearly Departed (8 page)

CHAPTER 11

“W
hat can we get that resembles human ashes? I never looked that close at them. If we buy some charcoal . . .”

“No.” Amy had never examined Paisley MacGregor, either, not recently, but she felt sure the woman did not resemble lumps of charcoal. “Just ashes. Maybe a few bone chunks? I don't know. Not charcoal.”

“And where do you suggest we get ashes?” Peter Borg was trying to keep the panic out of his voice. “Other than buying a charcoal shop and burning it to the ground.”

“Let's make that Plan B.”

Replacing Paisley's urn, they'd thought, would be the tough part. But the original urn, purchased off the shelf at Frank E. Campbell's, had been silver and fairly generic. Among the hundreds of silver shops in old Istanbul, it had been relatively easy—twenty minutes, no more—to find a passable substitute. Paisley herself was turning out to be more problematic.

The disaster had started yesterday at the Istanbul airport. Peter had been stopped randomly and been asked to open his luggage. The silver urn, wrapped in a few protective layers of dirty underwear, drew the customs agent's immediate attention. As Peter tried to explain and grew more nervous each second, the heavyset, scowling agent with the stained uniform grew more curious. Peter was then taken into a small back room. It was only by turning over his passport, Paisley MacGregor, and nine hundred dollars cash U.S., which he suspected he might never see again, that he managed to get away.

Amy wondered how she might have handled such an emergency. Someone like Marcus might have been able to charm his way through. Someone like Fanny might have avoided blurting out that this powder was the remains of a maid who had financed a trip around the world for a troupe of rich New Yorkers. Someone like Marcus or Fanny wouldn't have started sweating and mumbling like a drug addict in desperate need of a fix.

Even someone like Amy, after being forced to leave the ash-filled urn at the airport for testing, might have figured out some solution on her own. Not Peter. He had gone catatonic for nearly a day, not sending as much as a heads-up text, for fear that she might misunderstand or accidentally spill the beans. So now the situation was even worse, with only a few hours to try to make things right.

“We should just tell them,” Peter moaned. Suddenly Amy missed Marcus and her mother so much.

“Really? Tell them the wake is on hold, that MacGregor is in Turkish custody, may never be released, and there's nothing left of her to scatter, so they might as well go home?”

“When you use that tone, sure, anything sounds bad. It's your fault.”

“My fault?”

“If you hadn't stayed behind to babysit the Steinbergs, I wouldn't have had to pack her myself. I told you I was no good with customs. Especially Turkey.” Peter held the new, empty urn, wrapped in brown paper and tied with string, and pressed it to his chest.

They were in the old city, a dozen blocks from the Four Seasons, on the outer edge of the tourist district, where the jewelry shops were gently giving way to copper shops, the rare bookshops giving way to secondhand bookshops. Only about once a minute did Amy have to wave away a peddler offering her a rug or an armful of watches, which was a vast improvement over the tourist district.

“Can I be of some help?”

He was a middle-aged man, large featured, with thin limbs and the hint of a potbelly. He could have been a local—a well-fed, Western-dressed, well-groomed local, the kind who came up and offered their services as a guide, only to wind up leading you to their cousin's rug shop. She might, in fact, have already waved him off a dozen times without knowing it. Amy was halfway into the gesture: no eye contact, a polite but firm lift of the hand. But then the voice . . . He was American, tristate area, maybe Brooklyn.
Not a tourist
, she thought. The man exuded a confidence in his surroundings that said “ex-pat” or “businessman,” someone who might actually be able to deliver on the help he was offering.

All of this went through her mind in those first seconds of hesitation, and the man took it as an invitation. “I noticed your confusion. Istanbul can be a rough town.”

“You're not a guide,” Amy said, with the hint of a smile that asked him not to take offense.

“My name is Bill. Bill Strunk. Call me Billy.” He might have shaken hands, but his right hand was curled around a Turkish cigarette. His left was busy with a plastic shopping bag, full to the brim and probably heavy. “My wife's birthday is tomorrow, and I had to pick up a few things. She loves this market.”

“So you're a local?” The smell of strong tobacco said yes; the accent said no.

“For a few years now. Half retired. Dabbling in things here and there. Are you guys looking for—”

“Where can we get some ashes?” The words shot out of Peter's mouth, like the arm of a drowning man reaching for a lifeboat. “They don't have to be human ashes, but the closer, the better. And if you can get some tiny bone fragments . . .”

Billy might not have physically taken a step back, but it certainly felt that way.

“No. Let me explain,” Peter stammered. “Sorry.” Then he started right in, trying to tell it all, the words cascading over each other, reaching even harder for that lifeboat.

To Billy's credit, he didn't run. Instead, he put down his bag and listened. Amy noticed that his hands were shaking. Then she realized this was a medical condition, some sort of palsy, perhaps Parkinson's.

An amused twinkle spread lightly across Billy's eyes, and she could see he believed them. It wasn't the kind of story that anyone, even a suspected drug smuggler like Peter, would make up.

“The customs officer was being a prick.”

“Thank you,” said Peter.

“If he suspected drugs, he wouldn't have let you go. He just wanted the urn and your money.”

“You see?” Peter nudged Amy. “It wasn't my fault. Wait! What about my passport?”

“You'll get that back. But your maid is already down a toilet.”

“A toilet?” Amy was shocked. “You think he just dumped her. No!” It seemed so sacrilegious.

“I think so, yes.”

“And he's never going to return her?”

“Why should he?”

“Oh.”

It sounded reasonable. But it had never occurred to her. Amy allowed herself a moment to grieve. Poor MacGregor. The woman had meticulously planned and taken comfort in this deathbed dream. She'd spent many thousands on making it happen, only to wind up floating in a Turkish sewer. Ah, well, at least she'd had Paris.

“Sorry,” Billy said, taking another puff. “You know, I like meeting Americans. Reminds me of home. Sometimes I take them out for a mint tea, and we chat. Talk about the States. About life in Turkey. But you guys . . . I gotta say . . .”

“You weren't prepared for something this crazy. I understand.” Amy shrugged and pointed to his plastic bag. “You should get home for your wife's birthday.”

“No.” Billy stubbed out his cigarette, then raked a hand through his thinning black crew cut. “This is much more fun. Do you think chicken bone fragments will do?”

Amy and Peter exchanged a look. “Maybe,” said Peter. “No one looks up close. It's so solemn.”

“Besides, what are they going to say? ‘Wrong ashes'? We just need something not too obviously fake. And it shouldn't smell of chicken,” Amy added.

Billy's chuckle was throaty and warm. “My wife says Americans are dull and unimaginative.”

“I wish,” Amy said with feeling.

“My wife's cousin has a kebab shop.” Billy pointed down the narrow and endless line of wooden storefronts, with their obstacle course of stalls pushed out into the street. “It's not far from the Four Seasons. I'll have you back in plenty of time.”

“That's very nice,” Amy said. “Thank you.”

“No problem,” said Billy. And without wasting another second, he led the way, the two travel agents falling in line behind him. “You'll like Theo. He grills the chicken and beef over a charcoal pit.”

“Charcoal?” Peter asked.

“It turns to ash. You'll have all the ash you want. What shade of gray was your friend?”

Peter thought as he dodged through the stalls and the tide of customers. “Actually, I think she's kind of charcoal colored.”

“Good,” Billy called back over his shoulder. “You're in luck.”

 

The Basketmakers' Kiosk was technically part of the sprawling Topkapi Palace, home to sultans and their wives and concubines and eunuchs for over four hundred years. The building, Amy discovered that evening, was in no way a kiosk and had never had anything to do with basket makers. In fact, the only thing romantic about the four-story, monolithic structure was its quaint name—and the fact that it had been used historically as a pleasure palace, as if the sultan had needed another excuse for pleasure seeking, given all his wives and concubines and eunuchs waiting just up the hill.

For this second leg of MacGregor's wake, they had rented a restaurant/disco that had been carved out of one section of the kiosk's ground floor, although they wound up not using the indoor space at all, except for the bar. Amy and Peter had arranged the linen-covered table and the silver spoons and MacGregor's photo by the seawall, in a conveniently shadowy nook. The new urn and new ashes became little more than outlines in the growing sunset, which was exactly their plan.

One by one, the mourners did their duty, stepping up to the far edge of Europe, saying a few somber words this time, and tossing spoonfuls of chicken charcoal out toward the Bosphorus and the soft, twinkling lights of Asia.

Amy had been concerned that the ashes might still be warm, a difficult thing to explain, or that the smell of chicken might be in the air, an easier thing to explain here on the grounds of a restaurant. But the only hiccup occurred when Laila Steinberg mentioned offhandedly how, after two wakes, so much of Paisley MacGregor seemed to be left in the urn.

“We'll have to start doing two scoops from now on,” she said. Peter pretended to find this amusing.

In the end, they seemed to have gotten away with it. Amy felt euphoric at having so deftly dodged a bullet, and more than a little sad. “Don't you feel sad?” she asked Peter, seeking some confirmation of her muddled emotions. The two of them were sipping the mandatory champagne by the boat slip, far enough away from the best view and from the others to speak freely.

“Not really,” said Peter. “When you break it all down, it's just symbolic. Even with real ashes, the funeral home gives you only a fraction of them. And a lot of that is the casket she was burned in. Memorials are for the living.”

“You're right,” Amy had to agree. “It's the thought and the memories.”

“And you were right not to tell them the truth.” Peter looked back at the figures silhouetted in the sunset's last red glow. Their voices echoed off the waves, telling stories they'd already told a dozen times. He sipped again and smiled. “But a couple of chickens are getting one hell of a send-off.”

When Amy laughed, the chilled champagne almost flew out of her nose.

“And on that high note . . .” Peter checked his watch. “I gotta go. You'll take care of getting the mourners back home?”

“Sure. Where are you going?”

“Billy wanted to get together for a drink. I think he's homesick.”

“And probably curious about our little group.”

“It's a curious group. Anyway, I certainly owe him a drink. Is that okay?”

“Buy him one for me.”

Amy walked Peter to the bottom of the stairs leading up to the street, then circled around the cobbled plaza, taking the long way back to the waterfront site. Evan and Barbara Corns were leaning on the railing, gazing out at a lone motorboat, little more than a pair of red and green lights making their way across to a new continent. And that, of course, reminded her. Amy caught their eye and joined them.

“I hear you're renting a boat tomorrow morning, which is totally doable,” she said. “Our flight isn't until six fifteen in the evening, so—”

“We canceled,” Barbara said quickly. “The water's supposed to be choppy.”

“Are you sure?” Amy had checked the forecast a few hours ago. Tomorrow was predicted to be another perfect, calm day.

“We thought it over.” There was a note of true reluctance in Evan's voice. “It seems a little risky.” He turned to his wife. “Don't you think?”

“Yes,” Barbara said emphatically. “Too risky.”

“We can still do it, honey. What do you think?”

“Come on, Barbara,” Amy blurted out and was surprised by her passion. She had seen instantly what this was. It was like her own life with Eddie. “Do it. How many times will you ever get to sail on the Bosphorus?” It almost sounded like pleading.

“I think it's safer if we don't,” said Barbara.

“What about adventure?” Amy looked up over the rims of her glasses, her eyes meeting Barbara's. “It's the adventures we remember, not the perfect days. You remember getting caught in a thunderstorm. Running out of gas in the French countryside. What's the worst that can happen? You get a little lost and you miss the flight? There'll be another.” She saw Barbara's look of alarm and instantly backtracked. “Okay, that's not good. That's a worst-case scenario. It'll be a gorgeous day, and you'll be so glad you did it. How many chances like this will you get?”

“How many chances will we get?” Evan echoed. “Honey?”

Barbara turned back to the railing and focused on the disappearing red and green lights. “We'll get another.”