The Undertaker

Looking down at my notes, I could see what they were doing and I even knew how they were doing it, but I didn't have a clue as to why. What could they possibly be accomplishing? I read them over again and recognized a few more similarities. They were shorter than most of the other obituaries and lighter on details. None of them listed any living relatives. No relatives meant no one to quibble over the fine print, like the identity of the bodies, and that was important. I also noted that all seven people had died at the Varner Clinic. Add in the two Talbotts and that made nine people, none of whom had a photo in the obituary of the deceased. To be fair, only about half of all the others in the paper had photos, but none of the Varner Clinic ones did, but even the IRS would consider fifty percent versus zero to be a “statistical anomaly.” And all nine had the key elements: they were younger, it was an accident, Varner issued a death certificate, Larry Greene and his pals in the black suits boxed them up, there were no photographs, they had a private service, they had all been planted under one of those pretty green awnings in the back row of Oak Hill Cemetery, and Ralph Tinkerton, Esq. was the executor.

I sat back and thought about that for a moment. Ralph Tinkerton of Hamilton, Keogh, and Hollister. What was it Lawrence Greene called him? The managing partner in one of “our finest law firms.” He said I should be careful running around “impugning his reputation.” I figured the managing partner of a big downtown law firm would charge three or four hundred dollars per hour easy. So why would a public transit staffer, a motel desk clerk, a car mechanic, a carpenter, and a low-end bookkeeper hire high-priced legal talent like that to handle their estates? Pro bono? Hardly. It made no sense.

I stared down at the obituaries again. What could be the link? Different ages, different hometowns, all big cities far away from Columbus, and each one in a different occupation. Mostly lower income. Fairly generic jobs. Sometimes when you can't see something that's right in front of your nose, you have to ask yourself what isn't there. There was no next-of-kin. Like my own Columbus funeral, I doubted there was any audience, either. No one knew these people and no one else knew or even cared what was going on. They had all come from some place else, some place far away, and they all died in Columbus, mostly from accidents. But why? It wasn't for the money, or at least not mine or the dumb schlep who lived on Sedgwick, because neither of us had any.

Mr. and Mrs. Richard C. Skeppington, Mr. and Mrs. Thomas K. Pryor, Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Brownstein, Mr. Edward J. Kasmarek, and the new “Talbotts”. Could it be medical malpractice? Over a ten-month period, did the quacks at the Varner Clinic screw up a whole bunch of operations and accidentally kill all nine of them? Was this some new way to cover up botched surgeries? Was there some new disease cutting a swath through the Great Buckeye Heartland? One that would strike down a husband and the wife at the same time? Maybe biological warfare from Michigan? Nah. There were Health Departments and Centers for Disease Control for all that stuff. Eventually someone would wonder what happened to them. Someone would start asking why so many people were going in the Varner Clinic and coming out dead. Besides, how did that explain me or Terri? We had never set foot in the Varner Clinic. And what was the Varner Clinic to begin with? A fat farm? A nursing home? Maybe a drug rehab center or a private surgery theater?