of the other Crawford staff didâbut heâd certainly seen the news reports all those years ago. âIâll be damned,â he said.
The only way to see what, exactly, was left of Annie was to cut open her skull. Bill started to cut with extreme precision while I braced myself for an eyeful of brains. I even held my gloved hands out to make sure that nothing fell on the floor. Finally, there was enough of an opening to see inside.
Thatâs when the paper towels fell out.
They unfolded like an accordionâpieces of Bounty that had been stuffed in there in place of what we were actually looking for. âOh my God!â I said, my heart racing.
âTake it easy, take it easy,â said Bill, his voice steady. He scratched his head and shrugged. âIt might be in her stomach.â
âHer stomach ? Why would her brain be in her stomach?â
âSometimes after an autopsy, they take all the organs and stick âem in a bag, then sew it up in the stomach,â said Bill.
I raised my eyebrows.
âItâs just what they do,â he said. âI donât make the rules.â
It all sounded very Egyptian to me, but itâs not like I had any better ideas. I looked on as Bill undid the Y-shaped stitches in her abdomen and pulled out a bagâno joke, like a plastic bagâfilled with organs. Bill laid them all out on the table, and I stared at the pieces, trying to figure out which was which. Biology was never my best subject, but after a quick scan, I was pretty sure our worst fears were realized: there was no brain. I felt a wave of anxiety. I was going tohave to go back upstairs, pick up the phone, and tell Annieâs son that we had no idea where his motherâs brain went. I tried to imagine the conversation:
âHello again! Itâs Elizabeth. So, now, hereâs a funny story, I mean youâre really going to get a hoot out of this. We canât find the brain! It totally vanished! We thought it would be . . . you know . . . IN HER HEAD. But itâs not. Ha! Anyway, itâs okay, because I got you a free roll of paper towels out of the deal . . .â
I snapped back into the present. âWhat am I supposed to tell her son?â I asked Bill, a jolt of panic running through me. This was a big problem. Things had been going so well at Crawford. Thanks to all the extra hours I worked and my connection with clients, Tony had started to treat me more as a funeral planner than a receptionist, and I was allowed to do more than answer phones all dayâthe task I was actually hired for. I canât do this, I canât do this, I canât do this , I thought. I started longing for my apartment and a nice bottle of wine. In my old life, the one before Crawford, murder mysteries were never on the menu.
When I got back to my desk, I took a deep breath and picked up the phone. Another of my dadâs sayings popped into my head: âSometimes thereâs no way out but through.â
So through I would go. âHello, sir, are you still there?â I said, feeling slightly queasy. (And not from a hangover this time.)
âElizabeth. Here. Yes. Did you find it?â he said.
Deep breath. âIâm sorry to relay this news, but we actually werenât able to locate the brain. Or, rather, we looked . . . but itâs . . . itâsâitâs not there, sir.â
âThatâs what I needed to know. Thank you,â he said. Then, before I could say another word: click . He hung up.
What just happened? I thought.
I never heard about the brain againânot at Crawford, not in the newspapers or Vanity Fair , which had covered Annieâs death at length. I wondered if they wanted the brain to test it for chemicalsâmaybe one last-ditch effort to prove their mom (the âkids,â of course then adults, still called her âMummyâ) had been murdered. Instead,