Casket Case

by Fran Rizer

  “Everything in there is boxed up,” I said. “My brothers are moving Jane today.”

  “Not until my men have been through everything, including looking in packed boxes. I want to see if Jane has bloody clothes hidden before we release her belongings.”

  “Do you think we can move her this afternoon?”

  Harmon didn’t bother to answer. He just gave me an official reprimand look and left me standing while he went to talk to the state officials.

  I sat in the Mustang and pulled out my cell phone. I don’t know why I hadn’t made my first call before, probably too surprised and upset to think. I flipped the phone open and hit the automatic dial for “Daddy.”

  The hello that answered was too low and sleepy for me to tell which Parrish man it was. “I need to talk to Frank,” I said.

  “This is Frank,” the voice responded.

  “I’m at Jane’s.”

  “Yeah, we’ll be over there, but not yet, Callie. It’s too early to start moving her.”

  “That’s not why I called. Ms. Lucas is lying at the foot of Jane’s steps.”

  “Then call an ambulance, not me.”

  “She’s dead, and Jane’s upstairs, and Harmon won’t let Jane come down or me go up. He seems to think Jane pushed her down the steps, and he’s getting a search warrant for Jane’s apartment. He’s sure to want to talk to you, too.”

  “I’m on my way.”

  I clicked the phone off and started to call Jane when a deputy rapped his knuckles on my window.

  “You’ve got to get out,” he said.

  “Why? The sheriff told me to stay out of the way.”

  “We’re taping off the crime scene, and you’re in it.”

  “What?”

  “Your car is parked so close to the body that it’s part of the crime scene.”

  “I’ll move it,” I said, as I turned the key in the ignition.

  “No, don’t move the car. It’s part of the scene. Just get out and walk away.”

  I’m proud that I limited myself to kindergarten cussing as I stomped across the yard. I had my purse and my phone with me. I knew from experience that once a vehicle becomes part of a crime scene, it could be impounded and held for ages. My brother John’s Winnebago camper—excuuze me, motor home—was still impounded from April. I also knew that once that yellow tape encircled anything, authorities wouldn’t let me get back in for any belongings.

  I leaned against Mrs. White’s house and called Jane. Yes, I know the sheriff said for me not to talk to her, but I didn’t call to discuss our statements.

  “Sheriff Harmon says he’ll get you down as soon as possible,” I said. “Stuff your toothbrush and some clean undies and bras in your clothing. He’s not going to let you bring anything out, and you know we still haven’t got our clothes from the Winnebago.”

  As inappropriate as it was, I laughed. “I’ll lend you clothes, but you know my underwear won’t work for you.” The thought of Jane wearing my inflated bras and padded panties was funny. Jane was blessed with an abundance of bosom and a pert little behind that needed no help.

  After Jane and I disconnected the call, I looked around to see if George Carter’s Continental was in the garage. Surely if he and Pearl were in the house, all the commotion would have brought them out by now. The garage was empty. That led to another thought. Where was the gray Lincoln Town Car that Ms. Lucas always drove? It wasn’t parked in the yard.

  By the time Frank arrived, accompanied by John driving Dad’s truck, yellow crime scene tape had been looped around my car and the front of Jane’s apartment, but not the back wall. Frank and John solved the problem of getting Jane across the crime scene with a tall ladder they’d brought from Daddy’s. They propped it against a rear window. Frank climbed while John steadied the ladder. Frank carried Jane down the ladder like a hero fireman. I noticed that Jane looked a lot pudgier than usual.

  John and the sheriff were best friends all through school, and that’s probably why John was able to convince Harmon to let us go over to my apartment until he was ready to talk to us.

  “Don’t discuss this at all until after I take your statements,” Sheriff Harmon cautioned. “And you’d all better be there when I arrive.”

  The four of us piled into the truck with me in the passenger seat beside John. Frank was in the backseat, apparently thinking Jane would need comforting, but Jane was not upset and crying. She was mad. Rip-roaring, college-level-cussing mad!

  “How dare that old woman fall down my stairs and cause me all this grief!” After that statement, Jane proceeded to call Ms. Lucas every bad name she could think of and some she made up on the spot.

  John rode through McDonald’s drive-through and ordered a lot of sausage and pancakes. It wouldn’t be like going to the Pancake House, but it would be better than eating my cooking. No hope of Jane cooking. She was in no mood to do anything but fuss and cuss.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Bored and irritated. My brothers, my best friend, and I were beginning to get on each other’s nerves. By four o’clock that afternoon, we’d watched two movies on the DVD player and Big Boy had finished off our McDonald’s leftovers before Harmon got there. Daddy had called and told us the electricity was back on out at the farm. Frank and John were having a heated discussion about which sports show to watch on television.

  When the sheriff arrived, he questioned Frank and me quickly. He accepted that Jane hadn’t called me to go over to her house and that it had been my idea. I’d arrived at Jane’s about 8:30 a.m. Frank assured him there’d been nothing at the bottom of the stairway when he left at 3:00 a.m.

  I wanted Harmon to ask Frank and Jane what they’d been doing all that time, but he didn’t. He concluded that Ms. Lucas had fallen down the steps during the five-and-a-half-hour time span between when Frank left and I arrived. The sheriff would obtain a closer time of death from the medical examiner.

  When Sheriff Harmon was ready to take Jane’s statement, he asked if he could speak to her privately. I wanted to listen, but I knew he’d only asked to be polite. If we’d said no, he would have demanded. John, Frank, and I took Big Boy outside for a long walk. When we got back, John knocked, but the sheriff called out for us to wait. John had a Frisbee in the trunk of his car, so we all played with Big Boy until the sheriff stuck his head out the door.

  “Okay,” Harmon called, “you can come back in now. I doubt I’ll have any more questions, but I need to ask that none of you leave town without checking with me.”

  “Not even to Beaufort?” Frank asked.

  “Nope, not even to Beaufort,” the sheriff said in an official tone.

  Big Boy followed John to the Mercedes and watched as John opened the trunk. The dog sniffed a back tire as John tossed the Frisbee into the car. I was absolutely positive he was going to hike his leg and tee-tee like a male. Big Boy, not John. I would assume all my brothers have used the bathroom in masculine fashion for many years, and I have no interest in knowing for sure. Big Boy sniffed the tire, then squatted. I rolled my eyes as we went back into the apartment.

  “I’m not kidding,” Sheriff Harmon said, passing us. “Stay in St. Mary unless you talk to me first.”

  He pulled the door closed behind him, then opened it again. I expected him to tell me to be sure to lock it. Instead, he said, “By the way, Callie, Otis called you.”

  “I can’t believe he answered my phone,” I commented when I heard the sheriff’s cruiser leave my driveway.

  “He didn’t,” Jane said. “Otis left a message on the answering machine. He wants you to call him.”

  I picked up the phone, then put it down without calling. “Jane, are you okay?” I asked.

  “Yes, I’m upset that the sheriff would even consider that I’d kill that woman, but he wasn’t mean about it.”

  “He’d better not be mean to you,” Frank said and swaggered over to Jane. He put his arm around her.

  “Don’t cop an attitude,” John cautioned. “Wayne
does his job well, and I’ve never known him to be mean to anyone who didn’t deserve it.”

  “I don’t think I’d test him by going out of town either,” I said as I dialed the funeral home.

  “Middleton’s Mortuary. Otis Middleton speaking. How may I help you?”

  “Otis, this is Callie. Did you just call me?”

  “Yes, can you come over here? Odell has gone to take Ms. Lucas to Charleston for her postmortem exam, and I’ve got a pickup call at the nursing home.”

  “I can do either. Stay there or make the pickup for you.”

  “Just come on over and answer the phone. Bring a book. You won’t have anything to do except take calls.” He sighed that mournful sound that meant he was worried about the business.

  John agreed to drive me over to Middleton’s Mortuary. Frank and Jane stayed at the apartment so Frank could watch the televised ball game he’d chosen.

  Otis chatted with John a few minutes, then left in the funeral coach. I noticed that Odell had taken the older one and left the new one for Otis. I doubted the average person could tell one from the other anyway because they’re both always polished to a high shine.

  John and I peeked into Slumber Room A. It looked just like it always did. No signs of a party the night before. Not even the smell of pizza. We sat down.

  “I’m going to head back to Atlanta this evening,” John said.

  “Have you decided what to do?” I asked, hoping he’d changed his mind since our dinner at Blue Crab.

  “No, I don’t know, but pulling Johnny’s Frisbee out of the car made me think that I do want to see my children regularly, so if Miriam and I separate, I’ll probably stay near Atlanta instead of going somewhere totally new.”

  He stood, leaned over, and kissed me on the forehead. “I love you, Little Sister, and I hope I didn’t ruin your birthday by dumping my problems on you.”

  “Oh, no,” I said, “this was my best birthday ever and I’m glad you can talk to me about how you feel.”

  When he left, I confess that I had to pull a few of our expensive aloe-imbued tissues from their fancy container and shed a few tears.

  I went back to my office and booted up the computer. I was checking to be sure that I hadn’t left any outdated info on our pages when “Immortal, Invisible, God Only Wise” sounded. I headed for the front door, hoping that it wasn’t a relative of the nursing home pickup. Sometimes the bereaved arrive at the funeral home before the deceased.

  Dennis Sharpe stood in the entry hall with a gift-wrapped box in his hands and the usual unlit cigar in his mouth. He thrust the package toward me before I was within reaching distance.

  “I didn’t know anything about your party last night ’til I heard about it on the radio, so I didn’t have a present for you then. I’ve brought you something.”

  He put the box in my hand, and I placed it on the shelf of the mahogany hall tree beside the door.

  “No,” he protested, “don’t do that. I want you to open it now.”

  I followed his directions and opened the package. No appropriate words came to mind when I pulled out a stuffed squirrel. I don’t mean like the Squiggy the Squirrel puppet we’d had in my kindergarten class. This was a real squirrel with real squirrel fur and a real squirrel tail. He was mounted on a branch. Then I noticed it wasn’t a “he” squirrel because it had a stuffed baby squirrel in a suckling position.

  Dennis looked at it with such pride that I knew he thought he’d given me something special. On the other hand, I don’t like squirrels. I don’t like what they do to gardens, and I don’t like their rattiness, and I’d rather eat barbecued possum than squirrel stew. That’s saying a lot because I’m not fond of possum either.

  “Thank you,” I managed to say, “but this is too nice. You hardly know me. I’m sure you can sell it.”

  “No, it’s for you. If you don’t want to take it home, I thought you might put it on display here at the funeral home.”

  I promise, I tried not to laugh at the thought of using a couple of dead squirrels to decorate a funeral home. I grinned and hoped Dennis thought it was in appreciation of his gift.

  “It’s been so hot today after all that rain, I was wondering if ya’ll might have Cokes for sale or even some leftover beer from last night. I’d be happy to treat us both to something to drink.” He shot a shy smile at me and I realized that he was not just interested in taxidermy and freeze-drying and embalming. Dennis Sharpe was interested in Callie Parrish.

  “The only beverage I have available is bottled water, and there’s no charge for that. Would you like one to take with you?” I was trying to be nice and not hurt his feelings, but I didn’t want to be here with him and his creepy dead squirrels.

  “Oh, I didn’t stop to think. You’re probably busy doing mortuary work. I didn’t mean to interrupt you.”

  “Don’t worry about it. Let me get you a water to go, and thank you again for the present.”

  “I don’t need anything to drink. I’ll just be going now. Maybe I’ll see you later,” he said as he backed out the door and “The Old Rugged Cross” sounded.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Riiiinnnng. I grabbed the phone and almost said “hello” before I realized that I was at work and had been sleeping at my desk.

  “Middleton’s Mortuary. Callie Parrish speaking. How may I help you?”

  Someone was crying. Sobbing with great wretched gasps.

  “Just take your time and catch your breath,” I said. “I’m right here when you’re able to talk.” I’d had calls like this before.

  A few more sobs and some long sniffles later, an elderly female voice said, “Can you help me?”

  “What do you need?”

  “It’s Amos. They won’t keep him.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said in what I hoped was an encouraging voice, urging her to continue.

  “I said they won’t keep Amos.”

  “Who won’t keep Amos?”

  “Those people at the medical university. He had willed his body for research because after he was laid off and got sick, we couldn’t afford to keep paying his life insurance. Now those people say they won’t take him.”

  “I’m sure you can make other arrangements. Perhaps you and Amos can come in tomorrow and speak with Mr. Middleton about prearrangements. You can finance services if they’re prearranged.” As I spoke, I realized that I really needed to go to the bathroom.

  “You don’t understand. It’s too late for prearrangements. Amos died this morning. The university people came and got him, but now they’ve called and said they don’t want him. They said I have to hire a funeral home to fetch him from them. I want to know if Middleton’s will do that.”

  “Yes, ma’am. We can take care of it for you. I’ll need some information. Give me Amos’s full name, date of birth, and the name and number of who called and told you to get a funeral home to pick up Amos.”

  I squeezed my legs together and picked up a ballpoint pen. The lady was spelling, “B-a-l,” when I realized I couldn’t wait.

  “Ma’am,” I interrupted, “please hold. I’ll be back to you in just a moment.” I pressed the button and dashed to the bathroom. When I returned, the light wasn’t blinking.

  More than one time I’d suggested to Otis and Odell that we have caller ID put on the office phones, but no, they didn’t want to spend the money. Now I’d lost a customer, but I didn’t have to worry long. The phone rang and I answered on the first ring.

  “Middleton’s Mortuary. Callie Parrish speaking. How may I help you?”

  Little old lady voice: “Did you hang up on me because I don’t have any money?”

  “Is this Mrs. Ballentine?”

  “No,” she said.

  “Was I just speaking with you?”

  “Yes, we were talking about Amos, but our name is Valentine, just like those little cards with hearts on ’em.”

  “Oh, I misunderstood.” I scratched out the B on my note-pad. “I didn’t mean to h
ang up on you. The phone’s acting up. You know, with all that rain we’ve had.”

  She was crying again. Sobs so harsh that she couldn’t catch her breath. Finally, she said, “I’m so glad. I was afraid you’d hung up on me, and I don’t know what to do about Amos. They said they won’t bring him back. I have to send someone to pick him up. I’ve got a station wagon, but I just don’t think I could manage going for him. I’m sure I’d wreck the car.”

  “No, ma’am. I didn’t hang up on you.” I knew I was repeating myself, but I thought she needed to hear it again. Besides, I wondered if I did hang up on her. Maybe in my rush to tinkle, I’d pushed the wrong button.

  “Now tell me again how to spell the last name,” I said.

  “I already told you. It’s just like February fourteenth.”

  “And can you give me the phone number and name of the person who called you?”

  “Wait a minute. I wrote it down, but I’ll have to find it.”

  Ten minutes later, I had all the information I needed to pick up Amos, but my natural nosiness made me ask, “Mrs. Valentine, did Amos die of a communicable disease?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Did Amos die of something that’s catching? Did he have tuberculosis or AIDS or something like that? I was just wondering why the medical school can’t use his body.” Thank heaven my bosses weren’t there. They might have fired me for that last question and the word “body.” Technically, deceased who are donated for research are called “cadavers,” but that sounds worse than “bodies” to me. Otis and Odell would solve the entire issue by calling him “Mr. Valentine.”

  “Amos had emphysema for years. I don’t think that’s catching.”

  “No, ma’am. Let me write down your phone number, and I’ll call you when we have Mr. Valentine here. You can come in then to make arrangements.”

  She gave me the telephone number and was sobbing again when we said good-bye.

  This was a first for me, but I doubted seriously that it would be for Otis or Odell. Everytime something strange happened at work, one of them would say, “Yeah, like So-and-So,” back in some year before my time.