by Fran Rizer
“You look great.” Otis.
“What are we going to do about George Carter?” Harmon asked.
“That’s your problem, not mine,” I said. “You’re always telling me to stay out of law enforcement business.”
“Indeed, but what are you going to do to stay safe while I’m taking care of department business? If Carter/Gunderson has pegged you as dangerous to him and broken into both your and Mrs. Counts’s homes, I don’t want you staying at your apartment alone until this is settled.”
“May I remind you that I am an adult, fully capable of defending myself, as I’ve proven in the past?” I revved up my sassiest tone.
“May I remind you that I can call your dad and all your brothers to back me on this?” The sheriff’s tone was every bit as ugly as mine.
“Whatcha gonna call me about?” Daddy stood at the door. Must have come in through the back because no hymn had announced his arrival.
“Callie wants to ignore that someone broke into her apartment last night,” Sheriff Harmon said. “This morning, we’ve been told that Pearl White’s boyfriend might be a serial killer and that the woman who fingered him has left town because her place was trashed last night, too.”
“George Carter?” The gasp came from Jane, who had stepped up behind Daddy with Frank.
“Yes,” the sheriff replied. “George Carter. On top of that, the woman who died at the foot of Jane’s steps didn’t fall, and probably wasn’t pushed. The autopsy indicates she was beaten to death with a weapon, maybe a two-by-four.”
Jane spluttered. “I knew that Lucas woman was bad news the minute she showed up at my place. She deserves everything she got.”
“Did you do it?” the sheriff asked her. “I admit, I’ve wondered if you shoved her down the stairs by accident or maybe even on purpose.”
“Now wait a minute,” Frank broke in. “Jane wouldn’t have done anything like that.”
“Oh, yeah?” the sheriff said. “You have no idea what Jane Baker is capable of. You don’t know her like I do.”
“I can guarantee I know her better than you do,” Frank argued.
“Perhaps in the biblical sense, but you’ve never read her arrest record, and I’ll bet you don’t even know what she does for a living,” Harmon spat back.
“Of course I do; she’s an evening telemarketer.” Frank.
“Drop it,” I said to both of them.
“And what product does she telemarket?” Harmon ignored me.
“I don’t know,” Frank mumbled before turning to Jane. “What do you sell?”
“Fantasy and magic,” Jane said, with her head hanging so that her chin rested on her chest. Then she straightened up. “I didn’t want you to learn about it this way, Frank, but I’m a conversationalist, a fantasy telephone actress.”
“What in the four-letter-word is that?” Daddy demanded.
“A 900 phone sex operator,” Jane said, loud and clear. “And nobody ever touches me or knows where I am. It’s the best money I ever made, and I’m not ashamed of it.”
“What?”
I’d known Frank would react like that when he found out. I’d even cautioned Jane to tell him before he found out some other way. True enough, he’d heard it from Jane’s own lips, but not the way I meant.
Frank stormed out. Daddy handed me the Mustang keys, which I could identify by the SpongeBob SquarePants key ring, and followed Frank out the back door.
“Well, what good did that do?” I asked the sheriff.
Chapter Thirty-three
Jane cried.
Sheriff Harmon apologized because it wasn’t his place to force Jane into announcing her occupation. It wasn’t like being a “conversationalist” is against the law. He then took off, saying he was going to the bed and breakfast to talk to Pearl White and George Carter.
Otis and Odell got around to telling me what was scheduled for the day.
“Will we be preparing Ms. Lucas?” I asked. I’d never liked the woman, and though I’m never glad when anyone dies, I didn’t want to work on her.
“No, she’s going directly from MUSC to a local funeral home in her hometown, but we do have a job this afternoon.”
“What’s that? Is it a pickup?”
“Kind of,” Otis said.
Odell ignored us and asked Jane if she’d like to go out for lunch.
“No, thank you,” Jane said in her sweetest, though not Roxanne, voice. “If it’s all right, I want to stay here with Callie in case Frank comes back or calls.”
“Give him time to cool off,” Odell consoled. “If he really cares about you, he’ll be back regardless of what you’ve done in the past.”
“Well, it’s not exactly the past. I haven’t really quit the job,” Jane said. “I haven’t worked much lately because I’ve been with Frank, but I can go back if I need to. I don’t know what I’ll do if I have to quit. It’s easy and it pays well.”
“Something to think about,” Odell said. “I’m going for lunch. I’ll bring everyone back a sandwich because Otis and I need to get out of here early this afternoon. You ladies need to decide where to stay tonight. I know the sheriff, and I know Callie’s dad. The two of you won’t be sleeping in that apartment unless there’s someone there with you.”
When a person passes away, which I’ve always thought was a pleasant if unnecessary euphemism, the mortician doesn’t hang around waiting several hours to go fetch the body. The sooner the person is removed from the place of death, the better, whether death occurred at home, in a hospital or nursing home, or at the scene of an accident. Once the deceased is pronounced dead, we try to move the person as quickly as possible. What was this about a job for early afternoon?
It’s impossible to schedule a pickup ahead of time, too. Even if the person has been on a respirator and the decision is made to cut it off, sometimes death is immediate, but sometimes the person manages to hang on a lot longer than expected.
Jane settled in the chair in front of my desk with a bottle of water. She was still sniffling over Frank. I didn’t say, “I told you so.”
I brought the web page and online obituaries up to date. Wasn’t much to do except change some verbs. We leave the obits up for a week or so after burial, so I deleted future tense verbs, like “Mrs. So-and-So will be laid to rest” and converted them to past tense, like “Mrs. So-and-So was laid to rest,” and make all the other appropriate changes.
Otis stuck his head through the open doorway. “I’m going outside and put some tarps, cloths, and drapes into the oldest funeral coach. Call me if you need me.”
“Cloths and drapes?” Jane turned toward me. “You told me that you move corpses in body bags.”
“We usually do. Let me go ask him what’s going on.”
I followed Otis to the garage where the funeral coaches were parked, and asked, “What’s happening?”
“Remember I told you we’re doing an exhumation? Mrs. Whitaker finally got all of her paperwork in order. We’re going to disinter her grandmother at two this afternoon.”
“Are you taking the body directly to the perpetual care cemetery?”
“Now, Callie, we don’t call anyone a body, even if they have been buried for several years. The grandmother’s name is Mrs. Bristow.”
“Well, are you taking Mrs. Bristow straight to the new graveyard?”
“No, remember I told you that we will be recasketing her? Depending upon Mrs. Bristow’s condition, we may change her clothing also.”
“How long has Mrs. Bristow been dead?”
“A little over ten years.”
I didn’t say another word. Just turned and walked back into the huge, two-story white house that had become as comfortable to me as my kindergarten classroom had been in Columbia. My feelings could change if they put a ten-year-old corpse on the table in my workroom.
Recently deceased people are my job. I enjoy making them as attractive as possible for their loved ones. My mental pictures of a body ten years after burial we
re based on scary movies and the occasional horror book I’ve read when I didn’t have a good mystery available.
In Stephen King’s Pet Sematary, the little boy Gage’s face was covered with mold when his dad dug him up before he’d been buried a week. And the child had been embalmed, too. Ex-cuuze me. He’d been “prepared.”
I’ll never forget that book. The scene where the daddy gets into a fight with his father-in-law and they knock the casket down at the funeral home was horrifying to me. I’ve always been very conscientious that the coffin is stabilized on the bier at Middleton’s because I used to have nightmares about that scene from the movie.
“Callie?” Jane called when I entered my office.
“Yes.”
“I called Frank on my cell phone. He’s coming to get me. We need to talk. Is that okay with you? He said you’ve got keys and your car’s in the lot.”
“That’s fine. Will you be at the apartment tonight?”
“Not only will I be at the apartment, Roxanne will be working tonight.”
“What are you going to tell Frank?”
“I’m telling him that my job really is acting and it’s only talk, but I need to work to survive. If we get truly serious, I’ll consider changing, but Roxanne isn’t stopping until I’m into something committed that means sharing expenses, and we’re not there right now.”
“Makes sense to me. I thought you were just sitting here. You must have been thinking.”
“That’s right, and I’ll have supper cooked for you when you get home.” She leaned over and cocked her head toward the window. “I hear the Jeep. Please walk me to the door, so he doesn’t come in. This needs to be private.”
I guided Jane to the door with my fingers gently touching her arm. We reached the loading dock the same time Frank parked. He jumped out and climbed the steps, took Jane by the hand, and in just a few minutes, they were gone.
Just as Frank’s Jeep drove away, Odell pulled his Buick in.
“Was Jane in there with Frank?” he asked.
“Yes, they’ve gone to talk things over.”
“Well, I brought her a sandwich along with some for you and Otis. Come on in, and we’ll eat.”
“You didn’t eat at the restaurant?”
“I did, but there’s no point in letting Jane’s lunch go to waste.”
Otis joined us and we pigged out on great big barbecue sandwiches and potato salad, with sodas, not bottled water.
“Do you want to go with us?” Odell asked.
“To the old graveyard to get Mrs. Bristow?” I said.
“Yes, we’ve got authorities and workers meeting us there. I can call Jake in to catch the telephone or we can just lock up and forward all calls to my cell phone,” Odell continued.
“I don’t know. I don’t think I want to see it.”
“It’s up to you, but in all the years Doofus and I’ve run the mortuary, this is the first time we’ve done a reinterment. Our father handled one years ago when a body had to be disinterred for an autopsy after evidence changed the manner of death from natural to homicide, but I don’t remember it too well. I was just a chap back then.”
I closed my eyes and thought of Gage in Pet Sematary. I could hear Jane’s frequent advice: “Live for the day.” Sometimes Jane took her own advice too literally, but I needed to take it myself sometimes.
“Will I have to dig?” I asked.
“No, not at all,” Otis said.
Against my better judgment, I agreed to go. A note went on the front door advising anyone who needed us to call on the telephone. The business lines were forwarded to Odell’s cell phone. Odell took his car; Otis and I rode in the “oldest” funeral coach, which is only three years old and just as shiny and bright as the new one.
Chapter Thirty-four
Taylors Cemetery was less than an hour’s drive from the funeral home. I was surprised at how many people were standing around when we drove into the fenced yard. A Middleton’s Mortuary canvas awning stood over the grave site. Two bright yellow backhoes sat on the edge of the road, and several of our part-timers were there, each holding a pick or shovel.
A middle-aged lady wearing a navy blue dress, white shoes, and a white hat stood beside a Beaufort County sheriff’s deputy. We’d crossed out of Jade County about five miles ago. The lady in blue smiled at me. I realized that until we arrived, she’d been the only female there. I walked over to her and said, “Hello, I’m Callie Parrish. I work with Middleton’s.”
“Yes, I’m so glad you came. I’m Kitty Whitaker. I was afraid I’d be the only woman.”
“I’m glad to be here for you, but I can assure you that my employers would take excellent care of you anytime, anywhere.”
Otis spoke with the deputy and gave him a handful of legal-looking papers. The officer nodded.
Odell approached the digging equipment and spoke with one of the drivers, who started the smaller backhoe and slowly drove it to a grave with a very small gray granite marker bearing the name “Catherine Margaret Bristow” and dates showing she was eighty when she died ten years ago.
“I understand Mrs. Bristow was your grandmother,” I said.
“Yes, but when she died, there was no insurance, and we didn’t have much money. Grandmama had the cheapest funeral we could get.”
“Is your grandfather here, too?”
“No, he was MIA during the war.”
I didn’t ask which war. He would probably have been in his nineties now, so I assumed she was talking about World War II.
“The first thing I thought when I found out I’d won the lottery was that now Grandmama can have a nicer funeral.” She watched silently for a few minutes. “I’m her only survivor. I want her where someone will keep her grave clean when I’m gone, and I want to be buried beside her.”
We watched as men swung picks to chip an outline of the grave in front of the tiny marker. After the picks, they used shovels to dig around the edges. Then the backhoe dug into the earth, throwing each load of dirt on a pile.
Odell stood by the deepening hole. He threw up his hand and yelled, “Stop!” A lot of people think that six feet under means that the top of the casket or vault is six feet beneath the surface of the ground. Actually, the bottom of the burial container is six feet below the surface, with the top sometimes barely two feet down. In front of the backhoe, in the same area that the workers had outlined with picks and shovels, parts of two caskets were visible. There was no vault around either of them, not even the concrete blocks some cemeteries use. The coffins lay side by side at about a sixty-degree angle across the grave.
“What’s happened?” I asked Odell.
“They’ve shifted. Sometimes it happens, especially in these older graveyards. If there are no name plates on the caskets, and I doubt that there are, we’re going to have to open them to find Mrs. Bristow. Then we rebury the other one and take Mrs. Bristow back to St. Mary with us.”
Mrs. Whitaker approached us. Otis walked by her side.
“Is there a problem?” she asked, then looked down into the grave. “Oh, no, how could this happen?”
“Very minor underground shifts of earth,” Otis said.
“Like an earthquake?”
“Not anything big enough to be felt on the earth’s surface, but kind of like small earthquakes. Heavy rains cause underground shifting, too,” Odell responded.
“What do we do now?” Mrs. Whitaker’s voice quivered. Like me, she probably dreaded watching them open two caskets. One with her grandmother buried ten years previously; the other, perhaps dead and buried long before.
“I’ve read about this, but I haven’t actually encountered it before,” Otis said. “I think perhaps you and Callie should go sit in Odell’s car while we sort this out.”
“You don’t happen to remember what your grandmother was buried in?” Odell asked Mrs. Whitaker as he handed me his car keys.
“Yes, I do. We buried her in her favorite church dress. It was burgundy with a white lac
e collar.”
“What about the casket? Do you remember what kind she had?”
“It was metal, not expensive, but metal. We couldn’t afford a vault for the grave, so we didn’t want wood. Besides, the metal one we chose was cheaper than the available wooden ones.”
That wasn’t surprising. Some of the most expensive coffins are highly polished woods like mahogany, oak, or teak. A few years back, Middleton’s buried a lady in a cherrywood casket that was more beautiful than any piece of furniture I’ve ever seen.
“I’d really like to see Grandmama,” Mrs. Whitaker added.
“We agreed that you’d let us do what’s necessary first,” Otis said.
“Okay, but I want you to be sure that the right body is moved.”
“I assure you we shall treat this as though Mrs. Bristow were our own grandmother.”
Personally, I hadn’t wanted to be here anyway, but now that I was, I breathed a sigh of relief that I wouldn’t have to watch openings of the two old coffins. I led Mrs. Whitaker to Odell’s car. I held the passenger door open for her and then slid in the other side under the steering wheel, cranked the car, and turned on the air-conditioning.
The Buick faced away from the grave, and I didn’t want to see, but I glanced in the rearview mirror to see what was going on anyway. The men were excavating around both caskets with picks and shovels. The backhoe had been driven over to the road. I realized I should be talking to Mrs. Whitaker, distracting her, but I couldn’t stop watching the scene behind us.
“What do you do at the funeral home?” the lady beside me asked.
“My title is cosmetitian, which is the name for a mortuary cosmetologist, but I’m kind of like a girl Friday. I do the obituaries and a lot of paperwork, too.”
“Well, I hope you’ll be able to make Grandmama look good. If so, I’m going to invite some of her old neighbors to her new service.”
My mouth flies open too quickly and when it does, I often insert my foot into it. For once, I was speechless. Did this woman think I could make a ten-year-old corpse pretty enough for an open-casket service? I wondered if Otis and Odell knew about her expectations.
