No Money, No Casket

Elio Bianchi has spent nine years in a funeral home quietly refusing to become the kind of man who gets a funeral home. Then the head of the Marchesi family dies, Elio gets the funeral, and the old man's will names him executor. Attached to the estate is Carmela Marchesi, thirty-six years younger than her husband was, in four years of black and a very clear idea of where the money went. The family wants Elio to swear in. Carmela wants him to move two million six out from under them before the succession closes. They have nine days, a crematorium, a flower wholesaler, and a stranger's casket. She asks him at the end of it whether he wants her or his career. He says both, which is the wrong answer, and the man who paid for it was the only person in the room who was telling the truth.