Never Buried: A Leigh Koslow Mystery by Edie Claire Page A

to one of the floor-length windows whose thick red-velvet curtains blocked out any light. He parted the curtains slightly and gazed out, eyes unseeing.
    "I've been wanting to get all this off my chest for 10 years. Now I have no choice. Maybe it's just as well."
    Vestal's need for a confessor suited Leigh perfectly. "What happened to Paul Fischer's body?" she asked softly.
    Vestal took another long breath, then drooped his shoulders, resigned. "It disappeared," he said simply.
    Leigh squirmed in her seat. "Disappeared?" she echoed.
    "I had never been so angry in my life!" Vestal's apple cheeks turned to balls of red in a sea of white. "I embalmed the body soon after it came in from the hospital. That's standard procedure. I had finally sold Paul on an advance package about a year before: bottom-of-the-line, no frills. The cheapskate. I remember he hadn't bought a plot like he was supposed to, which was going to be a pain. With no family coming forward, the loose ends would be left to us. I was wondering what I was going to do with him. But the next day, he wasn't there."
    Vestal pulled out his handkerchief again, this time blowing into it loudly. "I had hired this kid, as a night janitor. He was a pathetic sort, but I was trying to give him a break. He was the only one in the building that night, as far as I know. When I confronted him, he made up some cock-and-bull story about hearing funny noises, and said he didn't know anything. I grilled him and another teenager I had doing some odd jobs for me, and what did I find out? The second guy told me that the first one was—"
    He broke off suddenly, remembering his audience. Leigh kept her face impassive. "Well, the other kid told me that he had seen the night janitor acting—how shall I say it—'inappropriately' with some of the cadavers. What a nightmare. Do you have any idea how a scandal like that could affect my business?"
    Leigh could imagine.
    "I made a decision. Maybe it was a bad one, but it seemed like the best thing to do at the time. Fischer had no relatives, nobody. People in Avalon who had known him his whole life didn't give two hoots about him. He was that kind of man. No one was going to ask questions about him, much less visit his plot."
    Leigh couldn't help breaking in. "So you never reported the body as stolen?"
    "No," he said, perhaps with regret, "I didn't." The confession seemed to be helping him; his color had improved to a pale pink. He went on.
    "Maybe the kid had the body, maybe he didn't. Maybe he sold it. I just hoped that whoever had it would keep it. I changed the advance order from embalming to cremation and let the world think Fischer was buried right on schedule. And I made sure those two kids would let the world go on thinking that. The janitor promised to leave town, and I'm sure he did. He could have gone just about anywhere with the wad of cash I gave him. Nobody else ever knew."
    He returned to the chair behind his desk and sank into it. "So, that's it. That's all I know. The body disappeared. I've spent the last ten years hoping it would stay missing. Until yesterday, I thought it was going to."
    Leigh had to ask him one more question.
    "I don't understand why you weren't more worried about the body turning up somewhere and being identified by the police."
    Vestal looked slightly embarrassed. "That was always a risk, and in the end, I suppose it happened. But you see, I knew Paul Fischer. The man didn't trust anybody. Bankers, lawyers, especially not doctors. That's why he died so young, you know. Refused to believe he was sick. Didn't see a doctor till he collapsed in his driveway and a Samaritan called an ambulance. I wasn't too worried about dental x-rays being on file somewhere. And he didn't look much like himself when he died. He was emaciated, you know, from the cancer."
    "Surely some of his neighbors would recognize him?" Leigh asked tentatively.
    "If they had a chance to look at the body, maybe." Vestal replied with a