“You all right, Wesley?” Coop asked.
Wesley nodded curtly, put his hand over his mouth and inhaled deeply. He had to stop thinking about the dead guy. He was freaking himself out.
“God, how he loved that old chair,” the old woman said, smiling, giving the ancient yellow tweed chair a thump that dislodged dust motes into the air. “I can’t believe he’s gone. I used to take care of him when he was a little tyke. Our parents died when he was young, so we’ve always been close. Neither of us married, and the rest of the family has died off.” She gave them a watery smile. “We always looked out for each other. Now it’s just me.”
Coop touched her rounded shoulder. “You’re in a nice place, Miss Dunbar. There are a lot of people here who care about you.”
Wesley listened as Coop comforted the old woman, but he realized with the impact of hitting pavement that he could be looking at a future picture of himself and Carlotta—growing old alone, winding up in the same nursing home, for Christ’s sake. Until this moment, he’d never considered the possibility that their parents wouldn’t come back. The thought made him feel sick…and even more appreciative of Carlotta. Although, if he continued to get in trouble, how much longer would his sister stick by him? All the more reason to fix things, the sooner, the better.
“Has Mr. Gentry seen a physician recently?” Coop asked the woman.
“This morning, when Dr. Tessler came and pronounced him dead.”
“Before that.”
“About six weeks ago.”
“If the person hasn’t seen a physician within thirty days, an autopsy is automatic.”
Her mouth twitched. “Can we still have an open-casket viewing?”
“Of course—the medical examiner will be respectful, I promise.”
She nodded.
“Have you selected a funeral home, Miss Dunbar?”
The woman smiled. “Everyone here speaks highly of your family funeral home, Dr. Craft. I thought we’d have Gentry’s service there.”
Coop smiled. “Thank you. My uncle will take good care of him. We’re going to give you time to say goodbye. We’ll be back in a few minutes.”
She nodded, smiling. “Okay.”
They left the room and closed the door behind them. Wesley gulped non-dead air as their audience leaned in for details.
“Is he sure enough dead, Doc?” one of the old men asked.
“Sure enough,” Coop said. “But it looks as if he was ready to go.”
Agreement chorused through the hallway, and a few amens.
They threaded back through the crowd to the stairs.
“This is going to be harder than I thought,” Coop murmured.
Wesley frowned. “What do you mean? The guy even dressed up in the suit he wants to be laid out in. I wouldn’t think it could get any easier than that.”
“Ever tried to move a body in full rigor mortis?”
Wesley swallowed. “No.”
“Let’s just say that nothing bends.”
“But the guy is sitting up.”
“Exactly.”
Wesley grimaced, feeling like he could lose his eggs on the spot.
They passed Sarah, who angled a sly smile at Coop, and then they walked outside to the hearse. The fresh air revived Wesley a bit as Coop unlocked the rear door and pulled out the gurney.
Staring at the flat surface, Wesley asked, “So how are we going to get a guy frozen in a seated position to lie flat on the gurney?”
Coop sighed. “Good question. It wouldn’t be so bad if we didn’t have an audience, but a sheet’s not going to hide anything.” He scratched his head, then worked his mouth from side to side. “In the back seat, there’s a hand truck. Get it.”
Wesley did as he was told, and soon they were back in Gentry Dunbar’s room. His sister, sensing the end, was crying softly. Wesley’s heart went out to her and he wondered if the old man in the chair had put his older sister through as much hell as he had put Carlotta through.
Coop helped the woman to her feet and led her toward the door. “We need to move Gentry now, Miss Dunbar, but I was wondering—since he loved this chair so much, how about if we give him one last ride in it?”
Her eyes rounded. “You mean take him out in the recliner?”
“Yeah,” Coop said, as if it were perfectly normal. “We’ll make sure you get the chair back, of course.”
The old woman smiled wide. “He’d like that. And just give the recliner to Goodwill.”
“Fine,” Coop said. “We’ll be right out.” When she left, Coop handed Wesley a pair of rubber gloves and donned a pair himself. Then he turned to assess Gentry.
“He’s starting to smell,” Wesley said, covering his nose with his sleeve.
“The cells begin to break down the second the heart stops beating,” Coop offered calmly. He bent over and pried open the man’s mouth with two gloved fingers.
Wesley winced but couldn’t look away.
Coop made a noise in his throat. “Just as I suspected.”
“What’s wrong?” Wesley asked.
“The reason that Gentry here had prior knowledge of his death is because the old boy did himself in.”
Wesley’s eyes bugged. “Suicide?”
“Yeah.”
“How do you know?”
“Look—his tongue is dry and flushed, probably an overdose of antidepressants.” He closed the man’s mouth, then walked over to a side table, opened a drawer and pulled out several prescription bottles. “Doxepin and trazodone—probably took a little of each, just enough to do the job.”
Wesley bit his lip. “His sister will be crushed.”
“She won’t hear it from me,” Coop said lightly.
“But won’t it be on the death certificate?”
“Only if the medical examiner notices.”
“You’re saying he won’t?”
“He, she, whoever is doing the autopsy. Gentry’s an old man who died in a nursing home and probably was being medicated for a number of ailments. His autopsy isn’t going to be a high priority in an office where hundreds of autopsies are performed every day.”
“But you spotted it right away,” Wesley said.
Coop was silent for a few seconds, then said, “I’ve been doing this for a while.” He covered the man with the sheet, tucking it in around the sides of the chair. “Okay, when I tilt the chair, slide the hand truck underneath.”
Wesley did and between the two of them, they managed to balance the chair on the hand truck. When they wheeled it out into the hall, there were guffaws of laughter, applause and an impromptu rendition of “I’ll be Seeing You.” Wesley couldn’t help but smile as they wheeled the old man out to the hearse.
Getting the recliner into the back of the hearse was another matter, but they managed. In the process, Wesley’s hand slid under the sheet and he accidentally touched the man’s stiff fingers. He flinched, then realized the skin felt more like a cold bar of soap than anything sinister. A few minutes later when he swung into the front seat and banged the door closed, he was feeling pretty good about