The lights were dim inside, the carpet soft underfoot. A dark young man with a thick mustache and a Mona Lisa smile stood waiting. Betsy had a vague feeling she’d seen him before.
“Mr. Huber?” said Betsy.
“Ms. Devonshire,” said Mr. Huber. “Come with me.”
He led her to a small office with dark wood paneling, soft lighting, and samples of ground-level grave markers in the comer. He seated her and went behind the desk.
“I am very saddened by Margot’s death,” he said.
“You knew her personally?”
“Yes, of course,” he replied, by his voice a little puzzled at her tone. “We’re both members of Lafayette Country Club, and we worked together on a Habitat for Humanity house in Minneapolis this summer.”
That hadn’t occurred to Betsy, though it should have. Margot had said that in Excelsior everyone knew everyone else. But Betsy hadn’t known her sister was a member of a country club. Of course, that probably didn’t mean out here in the wilderness what it did in, say, Rancho Santa Fe.
Still, better tell the bad news up front. “I haven’t much money,” she said. “What I do have is tied up in an IRA, and of course I don’t have any way to access what assets Margot had, so this is going to have to be a ... an inexpensive funeral. I hope you understand.”
Mr. Huber was frowning now, though more in puzzlement than anger. “You haven’t spoken with Margot’s attorney yet?”
“I haven’t talked to anyone, much less Margot’s attorney, whose name I don’t know. I’m practically a stranger here in town. But there’s no time now for that. I know this has to be taken care of promptly, so I want to tell you right now that it can’t cost a whole lot.”
“What do you consider ‘a whole lot’?”
“Why don’t you tell me what the very least is I can spend, and we’ll see if I can meet even that amount?”
Mr. Huber lifted his hands in a gesture of surrender. “Very well.” He helped Betsy fill out a death certificate and write an obituary. He said he’d take care of sending it to the local papers. He was kind and patient through all of this, but then they were back to the big question of the funeral.
“I want her cremated,” said Betsy, “so we don’t have to do all that chemical stuff, do we? Can you do that right here in your place?”
“No, we don’t the facilities. There are two choices in the area. There’s Fairview Cemetery in Minneapolis. They can make it part of a service—”
“No, I want a funeral service in a church.”
“Margot was a member of Trinity Episcopal.”
Betsy nodded. “Yes. I’m going to call the rector today.”
“You’ll find Reverend John a pleasure to work with.”
He led Betsy upstairs to look at the urns. And here she weakened. She picked a very nice Chinese-vase style in a pearl color with cranberry-colored lotus blossoms on it. Three hundred and forty-nine dollars was the price, which she thought outrageous, but what could she do? The polished wooden box wasn’t much less, and it looked like something you keep recipes in.