“Yes, indeed,” Sparacino said. “You personally receipted the valuables in question to the funeral home. It was after this that the items disappeared. The problem was proving it. Mrs. Smathers is still of the opinion the OCME stole her husband’s jewelry and money. I’ve talked to her.”
“Her office was cleared, Robert,” Mark offered in a monotone as he looked over the articles. “Even so, it says here that Mrs. Smathers was issued a check for an amount commensurate with what the items were worth.”
“That’s correct,” I said coldly.
“There’s no price tag on sentimental value,” Sparacino remarked. “You could have issued her a check for ten times the amount, and she’s going to be unhappy.”
That was definitely a joke. Mrs. Smathers, whom the police still suspected was behind her husband’s murder, married a wealthy widower before the grass had even started growing on her husband’s grave.
“And as the news stories point out,” Sparacino was saying, “your office was unable to produce the evidence receipt that would verify you did indeed turn over Mr. Smathers’s personal effects to the funeral home. Now, I know the details. The receipt was supposedly misplaced by your administrator, who has since gone to work elsewhere. It boiled down to your word against the funeral home’s, and though the matter was never resolved, at least not to my satisfaction, by now nobody remembers or cares.”
“What’s your point?” Mark asked in the same flat tone.
Sparacino glanced at Mark, then returned his attention to me. “The Smathers situation, unfortunately, isn’t the end of this sort of accusation. Last July your office received the body of an elderly man named Henry Jackson, who died of natural causes. His body came into your office with fifty-two dollars cash in a pocket. Again, it seems, the money disappeared and you were forced to
issue a check to the dead man’s son. The son complained to a local television news station. I’ve got a videotape of what went out over the air if you’d like to see it.”
“Jackson came in with fifty-two dollars cash in his pockets,” I responded, about to lose my temper.
“He was badly decomposed, the money so putrid not even the most desperate thief would have touched it. I don’t know what happened to it, but it seems likely the money inadvertently got incinerated along with Jackson’s equally putrid and maggot-infested clothing.”
“Jesus,” Mark muttered under his breath.
‘Your office has got a problem, Dr. Scarpetta.” Sparacino smiled.
“Every office has its problems,” I snapped, getting up. “You want Beryl Madison’s property, deal with the police.”
“I’m sorry,” Mark said when we were riding down on the elevator. “I had no idea the bastard was going to hit you with this shit. You could have told me, Kay …”
“Told you?” I stared incredulously at him. “Told you what!”
“About the items missing, the bad publicity. It’s just the sort of stink Sparacino thrives on. I didn’t know and I walked both of us into an ambush. Damn!”
“I didn’t tell you,” I said, my voice rising, “because it isn’t relevant to Beryl’s case. The situations he mentioned were tempests in a teapot, the sort of housekeeping snafus that inevitably occur when bodies land on the doorstep in every possible condition and where funeral homes and cops are in and out all day long to pick up personal effects–”
“Please don’t get angry with me.”
“I’m not angry with you!”
“Look, I’ve warned you about Sparacino. I’m trying to protect you from him.”
“Maybe I’m not sure what you’re trying to do, Mark.”
We continued to talk in heated voices as he cast about for a cab. The street was almost at a standstill. Horns were blaring, engines rumbling, and my nerves were to the point of snapping. A cab finally appeared and Mark opened the back door, placing my suit bag on the floor. When he handed the driver a couple of bills after I got in, I realized what was happening. Mark wasn’t joining me. He was sending me back to the airport alone and without lunch. Before I could roll down the window to talk to him, the cab jerked back out into traffic.