Mortal Remains

by Mary Ann Fraser

  “Um, not exactly.”

  “What does ‘not exactly’ mean . . . exactly?”

  She cleared her throat. “There was a break-in.”

  “Someone stole the remains?!” I shouted into the receiver.

  “The police are investigating the situation. That’s all I know.” The line went dead.

  I didn’t dare bring this up with Dad or Rachel, at least not until I knew more. They had enough to deal with already, with credit companies breathing down our necks and a damaged custom-made coffin. But I was far from letting this one go.

  Hoping Mae Wu, the reporter who accosted Adam in the parlor, was mistaken—or at the very least incompetent—I did an online search of my own for anyone named Lassiter. I didn’t find a single listing. Not for Neil, his former wife, nor a son. It was as if every trace of the family had been erased, and yet I knew from the grave markers in the family cemetery that the family was nearly as old as the town. It’s not like you can remove public records. Regardless, it was obvious I wasn’t going to get anywhere this way. Maybe one of the Lassiter’s nosy neighbors knew something, but hearsay and gossip weren’t exactly what I was after. It looked like the best I was going to get was already in my phone.

  I rocked back in my chair. How could he do this to us, to me, after everything we did for him? What could he possibly hope to gain from such a scam? Sympathy? An inheritance?

  Another possibility occurred to me. Maybe Adam had forgotten who he was and had adopted a mistaken identity. If that were the case, he needed professional help. At the very least I needed to tell my parents, but first I had to confront Adam—or the boy who claimed to be Adam—and the sooner, the better.

  When I asked Nana Jo if she’d seen Adam, she directed me to the basement. “He’s hunting for a jacket to wear for the Marshall viewing. I’ve sent him back down four times. I swear that boy doesn’t know the difference between a windbreaker and a housecoat.”

  Or between a truth and a lie.

  The wooden treads leading down to the basement creaked ominously. The furnace was silent this time of year, but the water pipes trailing across the ceiling pinged and moaned. I heard shuffling coming from the basement’s far side.

  “Adam?” I called, my voice cracking with nerves. The clothes rack swayed. “Adam?” I repeated. Why didn’t he answer?

  Irritated, I wove through the maze of broken coffee urns, spare chairs, and forgotten easels to where I expected to find him rummaging through the racks of spare clothes. Specter scurried out. No Adam.

  The basement door creaked open. His angular silhouette loomed at the top of the stairs. “But I like this coat,” Adam explained to someone out of sight.

  Maybe this was a mistake, confronting him here, alone. Who knew how he might react? I tried to duck farther back into the shadows but bumped into a samovar, sending it crashing to the floor in a glorious symphony of clanging metal.

  “Lily? Is that you?”

  Defeated, I stepped into the light.

  “What are you doing down there?”

  “Looking for you.”

  “Oh.” He held out his arms. “What do you think of this jacket?”

  “I’m not here to do a fashion consult.” I took a bold step closer. “Just how long did you think you could pull off this charade?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  I waved my cell phone. “I have proof that you can’t possibly be Adam Lassiter.”

  “Of course I’m—”

  “Come look for yourself.”

  He slowly picked his way down the stairs. He had no sense of personal space and stopped not twenty inches from me. I brought the screen to life and pulled up the first photo: the grave marker bearing Adam’s name. He snatched the phone from my outthrust hand and stared at the image. “Where’d you take this?”

  “By a tree beside the Lassiter family cemetery.” I scrolled through the remaining pictures. “Did you know about this?”

  “No! What does this mean?”

  With a confidence I seldom possessed, I stabbed him in the breast pocket with my finger. “Let me break it down for you. It means the real Adam Lassiter died five years ago. His body was cremated until all that remained were fragments of bone and ash. Those were ground bit by bit into dust, scattered beneath a dead tree, and marked by a chunk of granite. So, you see, you can’t be Adam. Adam is about six pounds of dust.”

  “It’s a mistake.”

  Hot tears threatened to spill, but in my rage I fought them off. “Yes, and I made it. I believed you, and I probably still would if not for that marker. But wait. It gets better. This afternoon, after I found your note, I called the coroner’s office. They said Neil Lassiter’s body is supposed to be delivered to EMS and that there is no listing for next of kin.”

  “EMS? But he’s to be brought here. The officer said so.”

  “Well apparently Neil Lassiter made his own arrangements.”

  “If that’s true, it’s news to me. And what do you mean, ‘supposed to be delivered’?”

  “Seems there was a break-in and his remains were stolen.”

  “What?! My father’s body was taken?”

  “Oh, but there’s more. I did a search online. Not only could I not find a record of you; I couldn’t find a single trace of your parents ever living in this town. But whoever erased all the records either didn’t know about the gravestone or forgot it.” I tapped the sleeping screen on my phone and resurrected it.

  “I don’t care what that marker says. I am Adam Lassiter. I couldn’t lie if I wanted to.”

  “Everyone lies.”

  “Everyone but me.”

  “Okay, then explain it to me. Make me believe, because I want to. I really want to.” Come on, Adam. Convince me that bringing you home wasn’t a huge mistake.

  He couldn’t.

  I reached for my phone. “That’s what I thought.”

  He yanked it back. “Wait.” He screwed his eyes shut, like it pained him to think that hard. When he opened them, he said, “Your . . .” He pointed to my left hip, where my pelvis jutted out more than it should.

  My daily reminder of that afternoon in the orchard, when I thought I was as good as gone. My hand drifted to the seam of puckered skin. “What about my hip?”

  “It was broken.” He indicated a spot on my side, below my waist. “There.”

  “You’ve seen me limp.” But he never asked me about it. Was that because he already knew the story?

  “You fell from a tree,” he said, sounding surprised by his own statement. “Our tree. You were wearing a light blue blouse the color of your eyes.”

  Goose bumps prickled along my arms. That blouse was my favorite. I wore it all the time back then. And how did he know about our tree? Still, it wasn’t enough to explain the gravestone. “Do you remember why I climbed that tree?” I asked, my voice trembling.

  He massaged his temples in his struggle to come up with something to satisfy me. I wanted him to know the answer but knew it was an impossibility. How could he? It wasn’t him, couldn’t be him, and all my wishing wasn’t going to make it so.

  “You were running from. . . someone . . . no—from someones.”

  “Lucky guess. Besides, you said you lost your memory in an accident. If that’s true, you couldn’t know that. So which is it? Do you have amnesia or not?”

  He was pacing now, tearing at his hair. “I . . . I swear there’s this picture in my head. A girl.”

  “Well, there’s a simple answer to that: you saw my photo on the mantel.”

  “No, before that. A memory, I think. I never understood where it came from or who it was. Until now.” He turned, his face a perfect picture of bewilderment. “You’re that girl—the one in the orchard, the one my father told me died. He said it was my fault. My fault.”

  “He told you I died? Well, I’m not dead.”

  “No, I can see that. Obviously this broken memory of mine has jumbled the facts.”

  I wanted so badly to
believe him. Everything—the tone of his voice, the way he met my eyes without blinking, the way his forehead wrinkled like a washboard above those pitched brows—everything was begging me to trust him. “Can you tell me why I fell?”

  He tapped his head with his fist as if to knock another nugget of memory loose.

  “So you’re saying you’re the Adam who was there the day I fell, but you don’t remember the circumstances. You know what I think? I think you’re a liar.”

  He shook his head. “What possible reason would I have to lie?”

  “I can name several, but let’s start with the will. And let’s not forget a piece of land like that must be worth a sizable chunk of change.”

  “Will?”

  “Oh, quit with the act. You know what a will is. It’s a document stating you are entitled to your father’s estate.”

  “If something like that even exists, it’s in my father’s lockbox and I’ve never seen it.”

  “Is that why you’re so desperate to find the lockbox?”

  “NO! I’ve explained that already.”

  “What about your mother? Give me her name. We’ll look it up. Oh, wait, that’s right—you don’t remember that, either. And yet I’m supposed to believe you remember a girl who fell out of a tree, a girl you haven’t seen in years, a girl who died.”

  “It’s the truth.”

  “The truth? What about that mark around your neck, the one you’re hiding under that ridiculous starched collar? And the hole in your arm? How do you explain those?”

  “Mehercle! It was your fault!”

  “My fault? How was it my fault?”

  “If you had come with me to Zmira’s like I asked”—he held up his bandaged arm—“this would not have happened.”

  I knew my old teacher was cantankerous, but to physically attack someone? “You’re telling me Mr. Zmira did that to you?”

  “No, not him!” His hand tightened around my phone. “I never made it that far. On my way to Zmira’s, two men followed me.”

  “Reporters?”

  “I don’t know. Could have been. I ran into an alley, but they caught me from behind and knocked me to the ground. The next thing I knew one of them slipped a bag over my head and tied it with a cord around my neck. That’s when I felt the bite in my arm.”

  “A bite?”

  “Not with teeth, but that’s how it felt.”

  “How would you know? Did your father ever bite you?”

  “No! Ground squirrels. The orchard was full of them.”

  The more Adam talked, the less sense he made. And it all sounded so bizarre—two mysterious men, ground squirrels, sacks over heads. “Why would someone do that?”

  “That is the question.”

  Whatever the answer, it was something far more sinister than overzealous reporters. “Adam, you have to talk to the police.”

  “And say what? The police didn’t believe me when I told them an intruder came to the house the night of the fire. Why would they believe me now? No, I gave them the truth and they did nothing, and now my father’s remains are missing.”

  “How do you know whoever jumped you won’t be back?”

  “I don’t.”

  “Well, even if what you say is true, it still doesn’t explain the gravestone with your name on it. Now give me back my phone.”

  Adam held it defiantly over my head.

  “I have copies of those pictures, you know. And even if I didn’t, it wouldn’t change the fact that Adam Lassiter is dead.”

  “Fine.” He let me have my phone. “Lily, I’ve never lied to you, but there are things about me I can’t explain—not yet. That’s why I need to find my father’s lockbox. Please. Say you’ll help me.”

  My brain was telling me to do the safe and easy thing: go to my parents with my suspicions and let them deal with him. My heart was telling me to trust him—at least until we found the box. But apparently my mouth was on autopilot because what did I say?

  “Fine. Tomorrow I’ll take you to see Zmira.”

  “Tomorrow,” he agreed.

  I hobbled up the stairs before I dug myself in any deeper but halted at the top, my finger hovering over the light switch. I should leave him in the dark. That’s what he did to me. Instead my hand fell limp to my side. The guy had been left to rot in a shelter by his own father. I hollered down to him, “And, Adam!”

  “Yes?”

  “The jacket you have on looks fine.”

  RULE #14

  LEATHER HAS NO PLACE IN A MORTICIAN’S WARDROBE.

  I’d been on the phone with Mallory for an hour. She was a one-note song, and the tune was all about tomorrow night at Hayden’s. Apparently she’d blabbed about it to everyone. Fame through association, I guessed.

  “You sure you wouldn’t rather go cosmic bowling?” I asked. “I hear they use black lights and the balls glow in the dark.”

  “Yeah, as fun as that sounds . . . I’m sure.”

  “But you used to love bowling.”

  “When I was ten. Next year is my senior year. I want it to be epic, hence ‘the summer of reinvention.’”

  “Stop with the air quotes. I can hear them through the phone. And you don’t need to reinvent yourself. You’re perfect the way you are.”

  “It’s not you I’m trying to impress.”

  I made the fatal error of mentioning I had nothing to wear to the house party, and an hour later she hauled over a half dozen outfits for me to try. I told her I didn’t think I could pull off the dominatrix look, and since when did she go for black leather, laces, and buckles? I reminded her that my idea of a party was a laid-back get-together with a few friends—not a costume parade. It was almost a relief when Adam showed up later that afternoon.

  “Ready?” he asked.

  “Where are you guys going?” asked Mal, ever the opportunist.

  “To—”

  I quickly cut him off. I wanted to keep this between the two of us for now. “To the morgue to sign some papers,” I lied. Normally Mal wouldn’t come within twenty feet of the prep room, and in her book, the morgue was nothing but a prep room on steroids.

  “I’d go with you, but I’ve got a load of chores to do. Leverage for going out tomorrow night,” she said.

  “Good strategy.” It was all I could do to hide my relief.

  She packed up all the rejected clothing except for a short black leather skirt she’d coerced me into wearing, and I escorted her to the door.

  “See you tomorrow night.” She was almost giddy with anticipation.

  “Yeah, tomorrow night.” I felt the acidic burn of a nervous stomach.

  I waited to be sure she was long gone before I signaled to Adam that I was ready to take him to Zmira’s—although I used the term ready loosely. I was still hoping the Lassiter grave marker discovery was all a big coincidence. And the only reason I agreed to go at all was because Zmira was the one person who might know something about Adam’s true identity.

  We scaled the chain-link fence and cut through the property of my old elementary school, now a collection of condemned buildings. It seemed a safer option than sticking to public streets. For all I knew someone could be out there looking for another piece of Adam—literally.

  With each step closer to Zmira’s house, I felt my bravado slip a bit more. Whatever possessed me to agree to this? Already my arms tingled like they were buried up to the elbow in anthills. The itching would come next. And for what? The unlikely chance that Zmira knew something about a boy who supposedly died? A box that was either long gone or buried so deep we’d never exhume it?

  The mailbox with ZMIRA painted in red did me in. “I’ll wait here. It’s probably better if only one of us talks to him.”

  “And that one of us is me?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “You’re scared.”

  “Like, clinically.” I showed him my forearms, which were already decorated in angry raised spots. “If I get any closer, I might faint,” I threatened.


  “I didn’t realize.” He looked genuinely apologetic.

  “Yeah, major case of Zmiraphobia.”

  “Is that even a real word?”

  “Whatever. We’re here. Let’s get this over with.”

  Adam marched up the front stoop and pounded on the door. There was no answer. I indicated the driveway. “Look, no car. I don’t think he’s home.”

  Adam ignored me and stepped into the shrubbery lining the front of the house. He cupped his hands around his face and pressed his nose to the front window, leaving a smudgy impression of his face on the glass. Then, to my horror, he returned to the stoop and tested the door handle. The door swung open.

  “Adam, what the hell are you doing?!” I called in a raspy whisper.

  “Nobody’s home,” he said, and disappeared inside.

  The drapes on the house next door parted and a woman’s craggy face appeared in the window. I smiled all friendly-like and waved. The woman whipped the curtains closed. Adam was going to get us both arrested if I didn’t get him out of there. I rushed up the walkway and slipped inside Zmira’s open door.

  Other than smelling like Bengay and fried onions, the inside was nothing like I expected. Who would have guessed that my crabby, Janis Joplin–obsessed, ex-marine history teacher would be into mid-century modern decor? I expected the floor-to-ceiling wall of books—he was a reader—but the macaroni menorah on the mantle and the leopard-print doggy bed beside his recliner? Who was this man?

  “Adam,” I whispered, “where are you? We’ve got to get out of here. I think the neighbor next door is calling the police.”

  Adam emerged from the dining room. “I’m the neighbor next door.”

  “The other neighbor next door!”

  He opened the linen closet. “I’m not leaving until I find that box.”

  “We don’t even know if it’s here!”

  “That’s why we’re looking for it. Now help me search.”

  “How big is this thing?”

  “About the size of two chocolate-milk cartons.”

  With that he vanished down the hall. I swear that boy does not know the meaning of fear.