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be more a lunch bucket crowd, our inhabitants mostly descended from train people,” he continued, proprietary as any native son. “The crystal-and-silver bunch generally drew the line at building their big estates twenty miles south of this area. If it weren’t for the fog, you’d see clapboard houses are the preferred style. As for all our vacationers and weekenders, they can’t afford luxury addresses close to the horse race set either. You’ll find them squirreled away in cottages and cabins all through the woods. Of course, there are exceptions, places where people have gone all out-”
    “The Bradens were among those,” Mark said, wanting to rein in the conversation closer to the business at hand.
    “Really?” The New York detective briefly pondered the fact. “Now why would a family that powerful want to be away from their own kind and off by themselves?”
    Mark shrugged.
    “I don’t know their reasons for sure,” Dan said, “I suppose it’s because they’re what I’d call quiet money. They like to enjoy it with their friends, not show it off.” Dan’s voice had become normal again, the drawl gone and his manner casual, as if nothing had happened. But authority had been established and boundaries marked – Dan’s way of trying to make himself appear an insider, at least to the eyes of a visitor.
    “What about here?” Everett said, nodding to a massive shape that emerged from the gloom at the end of the street. “Is this more quiet money?”
    “The quietest there is,” said Dan. “Welcome to Blair’s Funeral Home.”
    Even in the mist the structure appeared substantially bigger than anything they’d passed. Stepping through an elaborate wrought-iron gate guarding the entrance, they followed a well-raked path that meandered up a sloping lawn. What little foliage remained on the surrounding trees glowed a muted orange, like a bed of coals smothered in ash. As they drew closer the three-story mansion took on a warm yellow hue, and white railings of a long wraparound porch became easily visible. Capping the structure, a cupola with a black-shingled roof pointed upward like a witch’s hat.
    Mark grimaced at the thought of what awaited them inside.
    Everett gave a soft whistle, “Christ, it’s bigger than Gracie Mansion, where our mayor lives. Same paint job, though, except this one isn’t peeling… his is. Death must pay good here.”
    Dan chuckled. “Not from us locals. We live forever. But the part-timers, the outsiders, after ruining their health with big-city stress and pollution, they all want plots where they spent their summers, sort of the ultimate vacation. Mr. Blair can hardly keep up.”
    They passed a gleaming Cadillac hearse parked at the head of a curved driveway. A haphazard cluster of lesser vehicles reached all the way out to the street. Mark had suggested they walk the block from Dan’s office so as not to add a police car to the mix. He shipped most of the local dead here, and in exchange for the business got to keep his coroner cases in the refrigerator locker alongside the corpses slated to be embalmed. But, as old man Blair always reminded him, he had to keep his comings and goings out of sight and not disturb the viewings upstairs.
    Mark led the way around to the back door, to which he had the key. They went down a wooden staircase and passed through a dimly lit hallway stacked with empty caskets. Some had sticker prices on them. There was a cloying sweetness in the air, offset by a hint of something sour.
    Everett looked around and curled up his nose. “You do most of your autopsies in a mortuary? This place looks like it’s owned by the Addams family.”
    “They let me use a slab in their refrigerator now and then. Autopsies we do at the hospital in Saratoga, or in Albany,” Mark said.
    With a second key he unlocked a large metal door at the end of the corridor and ushered them into a gleaming tiled room that was markedly colder than the temperature outdoors. A