Read Online Grave Undertaking by Mark de Castrique - Free Book Online Page A

Overhead, I could hear the shower running.
    “Good morning. Hoffman Enterprises.” The woman’s voice was crisp and pleasant.
    “Ted Sandiford, please.”
    “May I tell him who’s calling?”
    “Barry Clayton, from Gainesboro, North Carolina.”
    “Yes, Mr. Clayton. Mr. Sandiford told me to put you right through.”
    Everyone likes to feel important, and the idea that I was being given preferential treatment gave my ego a boost.
    “Barry, Ted Sandiford here. Thank you for returning my call, especially since the Weather Channel says the sky fell on you.”
    “Looks like we’ll have a white Christmas.” I jotted
Christmas
on my legal pad as if it were some significant point. Writing down my own words only happened when I was nervous. “My uncle said you called.”
    “Yes, a delightful gentleman.” Sandiford sounded like he was in his late fifties and his mellow southern accent had overtones of an Eastern education. “I’ll get straight to the point, Barry. You know anything about bird dogs?”
    “Bird dogs?” I asked. I scribbled the word under
Christmas
and wondered if Uncle Wayne had gotten the message confused and this man was trying to sell me something.
    “Yes sir, because that’s what I am. Hoffman Enterprises pays me to spot what they’re hunting. I’m a pointer. When I see something I like, I point it out to them.”
    “So they can shoot me?” I laughed, although being in the funeral business had already gotten me shot once.
    “I don’t want this to come out wrong, but I know a little bit about your situation. Four years ago, we looked into bringing Clayton and Clayton into our company. I was the bird dog and I liked what I saw.”
    “I never heard about it. Did you speak with my father?”
    “No, it never went that far. At the time, we had just come through a major expansion and capital funds were tight. We had to get the operation phase of our new acquisitions under control. And, frankly, the situation in Gainesboro worried us.”
    “Too small?”
    “Too unstable. We knew about your father’s illness, and although we could have approached you with a price favorable to us, the management team was leery of picking up a property with uncertain operational variances.”
    The phrase was so corporate sounding I didn’t bother to write it down. “What’s that mean?”
    “Barry, Hoffman Enterprises is a business. We utilize all of the strategic and managerial tools available to operate at a fair profit.”
    “Right, so why didn’t you make a fire-sale offer when you learned my father had Alzheimer’s?”
    “Because that wasn’t the issue. You were the issue.”
    “Me?”
    “Yes. I may have a string of degrees and years of business experience, but I also understand the uniqueness of our industry. I’m a second son.”
    “Second son?” The man was losing me in a conversation of meaningless phrases.
    “You’re an only child, Barry. You’ve probably never heard of what I call second son syndrome. My family ran a funeral home in Irondale, Alabama. I was the second son, and there wasn’t enough business to support two families, even though at the time I wanted the home more than anything. My brother was older by ten years, he made a buy-sell arrangement with my father, and I got tuition money for Harvard Business School instead.”
    Want more than anything
went on my pad.
    “So I know a funeral home is about relationships with the community,” continued Sandiford. “There was no continuity we could see at Clayton and Clayton. You had taken a different path.”
    “And that made a difference?”
    “Absolutely. Our business model is to buy family funeral homes, keep the family as employees, and run the business with the efficiencies of a large corporation able to buy equipment, supplies, and services at discount volume.”
    Wal-Mart has come to the funeral business, I thought, except the people saying “Welcome to Wal-Mart” are all kinfolk.
    “Without that family link,” said