by Lynn, JB
“Can I ask you something?” I tried to sound curious but not pushy. “How do you normally identify bodies? You know, the ones that haven’t been cremated?”
Griswald glanced at me, and then replied, “Fingerprints, dental records.”
“Tattoos?” I asked.
“Sure,” Griswald said with a shrug, checking on my pancakes.
“Is there some database or something?” I asked.
“There are some,” he said. “But usually, something like that is a friend of a friend recognizes it. That’s why sometimes if you see surveillance from a bank robbery, and there’s a tattoo on the robber’s hand, they ask the public for help.”
“And that really works?”
“It’s a small world, Maggie,” he told me. “You’d be surprised at how interconnected we all are.” He plated my pancakes and handed them to me.
“Thank you,” I said. “These smell delicious.”
“Eat up. You’re going to need your strength,” he told me. “Interviewing suspects is not for the faint of heart.”
I smiled. The man had no idea that I killed people for money, I was pretty sure that I could handle a couple of interviews.
14
I dressed in black for going to the funeral home. That was God’s suggestion. That I should be respectful of the place.
Before I could get into my car, Armani came limping toward me. I waited patiently until she reached my side.
“That’s something, isn’t it?” she said as a way of greeting.
“About Templeton and Loretta?” I guessed.
She nodded. “I’m glad everyone knows.”
I squinted at her suspiciously. “You knew?”
She shrugged. “I did try to tell you.”
I shook my head. “No. You definitely did not tell me.”
“I did,” she said. “I told you that mixing business and pleasure is never a good idea.”
I nodded slowly. I had thought she was talking about me, but she had been talking about Loretta. “Next time, you could be a little clearer,” I suggested.
She shrugged. “What was I supposed to do? She’s my business partner.”
“I guess that put you in a difficult spot,” I murmured.
She nodded. “I don’t trust the guy.”
“We’re not talking about Templeton now, right?” I asked, not wanting there to be any confusion.
She shook her head, her gorgeous hair glistening in the sunlight. “You need to figure him out, Maggie.”
I let out a shaky sigh. “Why me?”
“Who else will do it?”
“I don’t know. You? You spend all day with her.”
Armani shook her head. “No. He’d get suspicious if I started asking around. You’ve got to be the one to do it.”
I frowned at her. “Is that you saying that I have to be the one to do it, or are you getting some sort of guidance from ghosts or spirits or whoever it is you talk to?”
“Does it matter who the instruction comes from?” she challenged.
I stared at her for a long moment, trying to determine what that answer meant. “I’ll see what I can do,” I said finally. “But no promises.”
She beamed. “You’ll fix it. You fix everything.” She turned and began to limp back toward the house.
“I saw Jack yesterday,” I called after her.
She stopped but didn’t turn back to face me.
“Why didn’t you tell me he was back in town?” I asked.
She glanced over her shoulder at me. “Because I didn’t know.”
She trudged slowly back toward the house. I wanted to go after her, to say something to make her feel better, but I just didn’t have the time. I had to go interview the employees at the funeral home. Then, I had to try to identify the tattoo on the body found with Delveccio. And then, somehow, I had to fix things between Loretta and Templeton.
The Carson Funeral Home was unassuming. A quiet building with a large parking lot flanked by shrubs, but no flowers. Even the air that hovered above the asphalt seemed somber.
“Death is a part of life,” God intoned from my shoulder.
“Seriously?” I mocked. “If you’re not going to have anything useful to say, please remain silent.”
“You’re the one who froze outside the door,” he pointed out. “I was trying to reassure you.”
“Death is a part of life,” I repeated, reaching for the handle and opening the door. A blast of air conditioning hit me.
“It feels like a subzero freezer in here,” God complained.
I was really starting to regret the fact that I hadn’t left him at home. “Probably delays decomp,” I quipped.
He jumped into my bra in search of warmth just as a tall thin man in a suit hurried toward me. He seemed ageless, somewhere between forty and sixty-five, his face a frozen mask of faux concern.
“Can I help you in your time of need?” he asked in a voice that was barely above a whisper, despite the fact there were no other cars parked in the parking lot.
“Mrs. Hallangen hired me to investigate the theft of her husband’s ashes,” I told him.
He clasped his hands in front of him and shook his head. “Terrible thing. Only time that’s ever happened in the entire seventy-six years that this business has been in my family.”
“Would you mind answering a few questions for me?” I asked.
“Of course,” he said. “We here at Carson want to resolve this as soon as possible.”
I asked him what had happened the night of the theft, and he brought me down to the basement to show where the thief had broken a window and shimmied in.
I stared at the narrow opening. “Must have been an awfully skinny thief,” I murmured.
He stared at the hole which had since been boarded up. “Desperate people do desperate things.”
I wondered who would be so desperate as to need to steal the ashes of a dead man.
He really had nothing useful to share, so I asked if I could talk to anyone else who had worked that day. He pointed me in the direction of Chuck. “He’s our embalmer,” Mr. Carson explained. “Very good at his job. Thorough. A man of details.”
I nodded, thinking that might be the person I needed to speak to. Mr. Carson had talked in generalities.
Chuck, the embalmer, looked like a mad scientist. I was grateful that he wasn’t in the middle of his work as he answered my questions. I’ve seen more than my share of dead bodies, but I still get weirded out by them. Unfortunately, Chuck really had nothing of value to add, even though he seemed intent on listing the minutiae of the day of the break-in in endless detail. After about twenty minutes, I understood why Griswald had said I would need my strength.
Finally, when he paused to take a breath, I asked, “Was there anyone else here?”
“Just Harp,” Chuck explained. He led me to a back room, knocked twice, pushed the door open for me, and then scurried away before whoever was inside could greet us.
I hesitantly stuck my head in. “Hello?”
“Hi,” a cheery voice answered. I had to swallow a chuckle at the incongruity of the happy-sounding person in such a subdued place of mourning.
A woman in her thirties, tattooed from head to toe, and pretty much pierced everywhere, waved at me.
“I’m looking for Harp?” I said, thinking perhaps she was here as the loved one of a dearly departed.
“I’m Harp,” she said, jumping up and extending her hand.
“Maggie,” I said. “Maggie Lee.”
“How can I help you, Maggie Lee?” she asked.
I explained to her why I was there and asked if she had seen anything suspicious or if anything had stood out for her.
She really had nothing to add, but it was a lot more pleasant talking to her than it had been for her boss or Chuck.
“Well, thank you for your time,” I told her. “Would it be okay if I took your phone number in case I have any other questions?”
She nodded. “Sure.”
Then, she offered me a tentative smile. “You know, I do the hair and makeup on the bodies,” she admitted. “But sometimes I work on living people, too, so if you’d ever like a makeover…I’m thinking you with a dark bob…”
I grinned at her, knowing that the offer was genuine. “Maybe.”
She nodded.
As I prepared to take her phone number, I remembered the picture of the tattoo I’d taken on the body found with Delveccio.
I stared at her tats for a long second. “Can I ask you something?”
“Sure,” she said with a chuckle. “It doesn’t hurt that much.”
I shook my head. “It wasn’t that. I’m trying to find the owner of a certain tattoo. Who would you ask about that?”
She considered the question for a long moment. “Hard to say without knowing who did the work.”
“If I show you, could you tell me who might have done the work?” I asked hopefully.
“If they’re local, sure. I’m pretty familiar with most of the artists.”
I pulled up the picture of the tattoo and held it out for her. She gasped. “Oh, you don’t need to find the tattoo artist for that. I know who that is.”
I sucked in a breath. It couldn’t be this easy. Griswald couldn’t be right about everyone being so interconnected, could he? “Who?”
“That’s my cousin Josh’s friend, Nelson,” she said.
She shook her head. “Josh has been worried about him. He hasn’t come home for a while. He’s even thought about going to the police to file a missing person’s report. I keep telling him that he’s probably off with some girl,” Harp said. “If he’s not in trouble, Nelson is with a girl.”
I nodded and quickly turned off my phone, realizing that I knew that Nelson was dead and eventually she could figure out that I had a picture of his tattoo.
“You saw it on his Facebook page, didn’t you?” she guessed. “That’s where you got the picture from?”
I nodded quickly. If the tattoo was public knowledge, it wouldn’t seem suspicious that I’d been asking her about it.
“It won’t look good on you,” she said.
I feigned disappointment. “Really?”
“No,” she said. “I can read your energy. You’re the hopeful type.”
I nodded slowly. “You might be right.” I moved toward the door. “Thank you for your help, Harp.”
“Any time,” she said with a smile.
I hurried out of The Carson Funeral Home, realizing I’d just identified the body.
15
“If you can’t be good, at least you’re lucky,” God said as soon as I was back in the car.
“I was actually just taking Griswald’s advice,” I told him. “He’s the one that said we’re more interconnected than we know.”
“Now, the question is, who are you going to tell?” the lizard asked, scrambling out of my bra, running down my arm, and positioning himself at the center of the dashboard. Just once, I wanted to put him in a little grass hula skirt and watch him dance.
“Are you going to tell the detective who showed you the photo, or the mobster’s henchman?” he asked.
“I’m telling Gino.”
“No hesitation?”
I shook my head. “Patrick doesn’t want to be involved. The more I can keep him out of it, the better it will be. Gino will know what to do.”
“And how are you going to get in touch with him?” God asked.
I frowned. I had burner phones that I could use to call Patrick, but Gino and I had never set up a way to get in touch with one another. “Maybe I’ll call to check and see how Dominic is,” I said slowly.
“Oh sure,” God mocked. “Just show everybody that you have a definite connection with the mob boss.”
“My connection with him isn’t secret,” I reminded him. “Everyone knows that Katie and Dominic are friends. I could call and offer a playdate, to keep his mind off the fact that his grandfather isn’t there.”
“That sounds dangerous,” God said.
“I’m open to any other suggestions you may have,” I told him. I folded my arms across my chest, leaned back in my seat, and waited. He had nothing.
“I’ll call him from the phone at Herschel’s,” I decided. “That will make it look like I had nothing to hide. It’s just a concerned aunt calling about her niece’s friend.”
I started back to the compound.
“Now that you’ve solved Gino’s problem, you still made no progress on your case with Griswald,” God pointed out.
I squeezed the steering wheel. “I don’t think he expected me to. I think he thinks it’s a family member that was responsible.”
“Family,” God said. “They can be deadly. Speaking of which…”
“Oh God,” I muttered. “Do we have to talk about Daphne?”
“You have to do something about her,” God insisted.
“And when have I had the chance to do that?” I snapped.
“But you don’t even have a plan,” the lizard accused.
“I’m making a plan,” I lied. I really had no plan about how to deal with Katie’s cousin on her father’s side. I just knew that I had to take her out, before she hurt anybody else in my family.
My phone buzzed and I answered it without looking at the display. “Hello?”
“Maggie May,” my dad boomed.
“Oh, hi, Dad.”
“Don’t sound so disappointed,” he teased.
“Sorry,” I murmured. “I’m just distracted.”
“Well, did you get a chance to talk to your Aunt Loretta about her giving me a job?”
I chuckled. “No, Dad,” I told him. “I did not.”
“But you said,” he began to protest.
“I walked in on Loretta making out with some short guy with glasses,” I told him. “It wasn’t the time to discuss your employment opportunities.”
“Oh,” Dad said quietly.
“I’ll do it as soon as I can, Dad,” I promised. “I’m really busy. Can we talk again soon?”
“Sure, Maggie May,” he said, sounding sad. “Soon.” He ended the call.
I was almost back to the compound when a car swerved in front of mine and cut me off.
“If that’s Ms. Whitehat again,” I said. “I’m going to see what I can do about getting her driver’s license revoked. She likes to run me off the road.”
“She’s never run you off the road,” God retorted. “And she’s not a woman that you should make an enemy of.”
The car that had cut me off, then pulled alongside me, rolling down its passenger window. Gino nodded at me.
“Oh good,” I said excitedly. “Now, I don’t have to call.”
He waved, indicating that I should follow him, and I gave him a thumbs-up in reply. He led me past the compound, and into the neighborhood where his mother’s house was.
“You don’t think it’s weird that he lives at his mother’s place?” God asked as we rumbled down the driveway toward it.
“Maybe it’s not worth maintaining a place of his own, he seems to be with Delveccio all the time,” I pointed out.
“I think it’s odd,” God said. “It’s suspicious.”
“You’re paranoid about everyone,” I accused, getting out of the car. I left him there on the dashboard.
As I closed the door, he yelled, “You should be suspicious, too!”
“You heard?” Gino said, striding toward me.
“About the arrest?”
He nodded.
“Yes,” I said. “But I think I have some good news.” I quickly relayed what Harp had told me about her cousin’s friend.
Gino grinned. “I knew you could do it.”
Then, as if to reward me for my good behavior, he kissed me. His kisses are better than carbs, in terms of releasing feel-good chemicals within me. Pretty soon, we were both breathless and pulling at each other’s clothes.
“More important things!” I could hear God yelling from inside my car, despite the f
act that all the windows were closed.
The lizard had a point. This wasn’t the time.
Grudgingly, I pulled away from Gino. “You should go do whatever you’re going to do with that information,” I told him. “I’ve got to get back to work.”
He looked at me quizzically, seemingly disappointed that I had pulled away. “Work?”
“Griswald has me working a case with him,” I revealed. “I don’t want to make him suspicious.”
“Wise move,” Gino approved. “Beautiful, clever, wise. You’re the whole package, Maggie Lee.”
His kiss may have made my toes curl, but his comment made my heart warm. A blush spread through me, that had nothing to do with our sexual attraction.
“I need to go,” I said awkwardly, quickly climbing back into my car. He leaned against his, waving as I backed out of the driveway.
“Your timing needs work,” God muttered.
He wasn’t wrong.
16
After leaving Gino, I returned to the compound. I was relieved to see that Templeton was sitting in the front room, doing a crossword puzzle.
“You’re still here,” I said, probably sounding slightly surprised.
“I promised you three nights,” he said. “It’ll be easier on the little girls that way, too. They don’t really need somebody else just disappearing from their lives suddenly.”
I nodded, grateful for his consideration. Katie had lost my sister Darlene and her daughters that way, and Alicia had lost her father just as suddenly. There one minute, gone the next. I teared up at how thoughtful of Templeton to give them time to adjust to the idea of him being gone from their lives.
“You okay?” he asked worriedly.
I nodded, dashing away my tears. “I’m looking for Griswald.”
“He and Herschel are out back building something,” he said with a shudder.
I laughed. “You don’t believe in building things?”
“I don’t believe I was born with that gene,” he said. “Do you know a six-letter word for dexterous?”
I thought about it for a second. “No. Four-letter words are more my style.”
