by Sara Rosett
The guy with the curly hair said, “They’re already dead by the time they get to me.”
Mitch nodded. “Yeah, that’s Jake. The youngest.”
I watched him give the guys fist-bump greetings and sit down. “Do you think he told the truth that day about Grandpa Franklin’s casket?”
Mitch shrugged. “It could have happened.”
“You really think some college-age kid took a funeral home van for a joyride? A joyride that only went around the funeral home parking lot?”
“Hey, I didn’t say I believed it—only that it’s possible. Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction.”
“Somehow I don’t think that’s the case here.” I plucked the last mozzarella stick from the plate. I broke it in half, the warm cheese sagging between the two halves as I pulled them apart.
Mitch took his half and said, “I know that look.”
“What?” I asked around my last mouthful.
“You’ve got to leave it alone,” Mitch said, and popped the cheese stick in his mouth.
“The police never really questioned him. Detective Rickets decided the whole thing was a prank practically as soon as he got there,” I said, thinking of Detective Kalra. I would love to try and convince her to talk to Jake, but she’d dropped all communication with me since Mitch’s brief stint as a suspect. She hadn’t returned the one phone message I’d left for her after the fire, and it didn’t look like I should hope for more information. She’d gotten what she wanted: the case was being unofficially investigated and I supposed she couldn’t be in contact with me since I was so closely associated with the Avery family. Although that fact had been a plus with her before, I thought sourly.
“What’s that face for? Are you still brooding about Jake?” Mitch asked as he signaled for the bill. “We’ve got to get going.”
“Okay,” I said, feeling resigned. Jake would never tell me what really happened and short of walking up to his table and asking point-blank—a situation guaranteed to get zero results—there was no way to find out. I stifled a sigh and told myself to let it go. There was nothing to do about it and I had other things to worry about tonight. I put my napkin on the table and grabbed my purse. “I’m going to the restroom before we leave.”
A few minutes later, I was shaking as much water off my hands as I could. The automatic-air hand dryer was broken and there wasn’t a paper towel in sight. I wiped my wet hands on my jeans to dry them, then shouldered open the restroom door. I stopped short on the threshold. Jake was standing at the end of the short dead-end hallway. His back was turned to me and he was talking on his cell phone. His other hand was pressed to his ear to block out the laughter, conversation, and music that filtered down the hallway.
“I told you, I’m not going to do it.” Even this far away from the source of the music, he had to raise his voice to be heard and I could clearly understand each word. “Didn’t you hear me? No. I don’t care how much. Look, I helped you take the casket, but I’m not doing anything else—”
He broke off as he glanced over his shoulder. As soon as he spotted me, he flushed and jammed a button on the phone to disconnect the call. “Bad connection,” he said as he turned to face me. He tried to follow his words up with a chuckle, but it came out more like a choke. “Can’t hear a thing in here.”
“Oh, I can. I heard something about a casket.”
“Don’t know what you’re talking about.” He made a move to step by me. I shifted. Since things had worked out this way, I wasn’t about to let him leave without at least trying to find out more about the casket now that I had the opportunity.
“Do I know you?” Jake asked, pressing closer to the wall and trying to slide by me.
“Yes. We met the day before a funeral.”
“We arrange so many funerals . . .”
“Well, I’m sure you’ll remember this one. It was Franklin Avery’s funeral. The one where he disappeared the day before? Ring any bells?”
Jake stopped trying to slink past me and squared his shoulders. “Look, ma’am, I’m not sure what you’re talking about. If you have an issue with Grisholm’s Funeral Home, then you’d need to call our office directly.”
“Jake,” I said in a pitying tone of voice, “I heard you say that you helped someone take the casket. Since I doubt that any other body or casket has gone missing lately, I’m sure my friend Detective Kalra will want to talk to you about that statement.” Okay, that was a fib. A whopper of a lie actually, but he looked scared and he didn’t know that Detective Kalra had disappeared like a kid does when bedtime is closing in. He shook his head and I said, “Or, she can just get your phone records to see who you were speaking to.”
Jake ran his fingers through his curly hair. “It’s your word against mine.” He didn’t sound at all convinced with his warning.
“Yes, but who do you think the detective will believe—you or me? I think you’ve had a few scrapes . . . a few escapades?” If he knew about the things that had happened to me, he’d laugh in my face and walk away. What had happened to him was nothing compared to being involved in a few murder investigations. My palms were sweating and I was starting to feel guilty about the way I was badgering him and the lies I was telling. A thought occurred to me. Whoever he’d been talking to was going to pay him for more help. Well, I could pay, too. I reached inside my purse and found my wallet. I had three twenties.
“Let’s look at it this way. We trade.” I held up the twenties, which were folded in half. “I give you this. You tell me what happened.” What was the going rate for information? I hoped it wasn’t more than I had in my hand.
Jake pursed his lips to one side, then gave a quick nod. “But no names.”
I jerked the bills back as he reached for them. “There has to be names.”
“Sorry, then. Call the police on me if you want. I’ve got more to worry about from . . . them.”
I could see a resolve in his expression that hadn’t been there before. There was something else in his face, too. Was it fear? He’d been on the verge of telling me what happened, so I said, “Fine. No names, but it has to be the truth.”
He nodded. “The truth.”
“Okay. What happened? Because I don’t believe for a minute that some stranger took a van from the funeral home for a joyride.”
“Yeah. Well, it was the best I could come up with on the spur of the moment.”
“So what really happened?” I asked.
“I met . . . this person who knew where I worked. ‘They’ said if I’d help them get Mr. Avery’s casket, they’d pay me.”
“So how did you get this person access?”
He shrugged. “It was easy. I gave them a map of the funeral home and told them when the casket would be in the hallway on the rolling cart, waiting to be moved to the viewing room. We’d never had to worry about locking up.”
“So you didn’t physically help them move the casket?”
“Are you kidding? No way. I just told them how to get it and where everything is. Helping—,” he almost slipped up and said a name, but caught himself in time, “the person would be wrong.”
“But looking the other way is okay?” I asked, sarcastically.
“They were going to get to that casket one way or another. If I didn’t help them, there would have been a break-in.”
“So why steal the casket . . . why not just come to the viewing?”
“Well, you can’t really check out a casket and the body while the whole family is hanging around, can you?”
I’d thought it was just the casket, but his words meant... “They wanted to search the casket and the body?”
He reached for the wad of bills in my hand.
I stepped back. “I don’t think I’ve gotten my money’s worth. All you’ve told me is what I already thought happened. You helped someone steal a body. Did you see this person that day?” He shook his head and I asked, “So how did they pay you?”
“There was an envelope on the dashboard
of my car.” No wonder he’d been in such a hurry to get to his car after the casket had gone missing.
“How much?”
“A thousand dollars.”
I was struck speechless for a moment. A thousand dollars? Someone really wanted to know what was in that casket. And my sixty bucks seemed paltry in comparison. I handed over the money and he brushed by me.
I turned. “Wait. What did they want you to do now? I heard you say you wouldn’t help them.”
He fanned the bills out, saw it was only sixty bucks, and a look of dissatisfaction crossed his face. “I think I got ripped off. I’ve already told you too much.” He shoved the money in the pocket of his cargo pants and walked away.
It was something that he didn’t want to do. And he was scared of this mystery person, someone who had offered him money. Jake had turned it down. He didn’t seem like the type of person who’d turn down money that quickly. He must either really be afraid of the person . . . or was he holding out for another offer and more money? Hard to say with him, but there had been something in his face when he said he was more worried about “them” than the police. And was it one person or a group of people? He’d referred to “this person” as well as to “them.”
The steady murmur of conversation from across the table stopped and I tuned back into my surroundings. Mitch had been talking and I’d been so lost in my own thoughts I’d completely missed what he’d said. I looked up from the sweet potato tart we were sharing for dessert. He paused as he took a bite, then continued, “Anyway, I’d heard a couple from Florida bought the place a couple of years ago.”
We were in the restaurant at Quincy House. When I’d returned to the table at Jody’s after talking to Jake, Mitch had been holding my coat for me. We’d hurried to the car and made the short drive to Quincy House, which was only a few blocks away.
We’d toured the house before, years ago when we were first married and Mitch brought me here on the familiarization tour of Smarr. The exterior of the house with its twin curving staircases and wrought-iron balconies set in a large park with huge live oaks hadn’t changed, but the inside was completely different.
The new owners had turned Quincy House into a boutique hotel with a trendy restaurant. Mitch had picked sushi for his dinner. I’d opted for the haute cuisine version of pulled pork and a salad with a bunch of different types of lettuce that I couldn’t pronounce, much less identify. I’d expected the house to be full of dark wood antiques, but they were going against type with their decorating. Pale wood floors and walls painted in shades of lilac, baby blue, and pale yellow accented the modern silver light fixtures and curved chrome chairs. Splashes of color, modern abstract paintings, dotted the walls. It wasn’t at all what I’d expected and I wasn’t sure if I liked it or not. The contrast of modern elements with the traditional architecture was interesting.
I angled my fork into the crust of the tart and said, “I bet some people weren’t happy about the remodel.”
“Mom said the planning and zoning meetings were pretty lively there for a while. Something about paint colors and historical accuracy.”
“I’ll bet,” I said, thinking of the fuchsia accent wall in the entryway.
We finished off the tart and talked about Smarr and how it had changed, until our waiter brought the bill. Once that was taken care of, we stared at each other over the flame in the small lamp on our table. Mitch had seemed reluctant to bring up whatever had been bothering him—I’d begun to think of it as “the issue”—during dinner and I hadn’t forced the topic. Our conversation had wandered from topic to topic. What to do with Grandpa Franklin’s house, the upcoming book fair, Nathan’s sudden announcement that he wanted to play the guitar, and a smattering of other things. Deep down, I was a little worried. Whatever the issue was, it was something he didn’t want to share with me. Or he couldn’t. We’d never been in a place like this in our marriage and it scared me. I swallowed and forced my thoughts away from speculating on what he might want to talk about. Of course, that was how I got lost in thought earlier and missed part of the conversation.
I threaded my fingers through his and leaned a bit closer. “I thought we were going to talk.”
“We were,” Mitch said, and squeezed my fingers. “But I didn’t want to ruin a nice evening.”
I felt all the fancy food I’d just eaten churn in my stomach. Whatever he had to say could ruin our dinner?
Mitch let go of my hand and put the black padded check folder on the table. “Let’s go for a walk.”
“A walk? Isn’t it a little cold for that?”
“Nah, it’s not that bad,” Mitch said as we retrieved our coats and stepped onto the porch.
“Well, it’s not as cold as it has been. I’ll give you that,” I said, noting that my breath wasn’t coming out in frosty white puffs. “Where are we going to walk?”
As we strolled down the curve of the steps, Mitch took my hand and guided me to a gravel path that wrapped around the house. “The grounds,” he said with a sweep of his free hand, indicating the wide expanse of grass interspersed with fountains, shallow pools, and low hedges in geometric patterns. The fountains and pools were empty now and looked a little forlorn in the chilly air, but there were enough strategically placed lights that the garden didn’t feel forbidding or scary.
We strolled along the gravel path in silence for a while, our linked hands swinging companionably. “I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately,” Mitch said. I turned my head to look at him while we walked. His gaze was focused on the gravel path, his thoughts concentrated inward. “The last few years . . . well . . . things have changed. We’re not the same couple we used to be.”
I felt a frisson of fear spike through me. I’d worried about what had been bothering Mitch, but I’d pushed away the thought that something was seriously wrong, but now . . . those words, the “we’ve changed” speech. I’d been on the receiving end of the “we’ve grown apart, we want different things” talk before. Of course, that had been years ago when I was dating, but to hear those words now . . . I stumbled on an uneven section of the path and Mitch gripped my elbow to steady me. I looked into his face. It was darker here and I couldn’t see his expression. I’d always thought our marriage had a solid underpinning that couldn’t collapse, but . . . those words worried me.
We’d reached the end of the formal gardens, which were marked with another hedge, this one higher, towering over Mitch’s head. This area wasn’t as well maintained as the grounds closer to the house. The hedge hadn’t been trimmed recently. It was shaggy with new growth and there were gaps where the bushes had died and hadn’t been replaced.
“Here, I want to show you something,” he said, and stepped through one of the gaps in the hedge. I followed him, wanting to ask what he was thinking, but as I stepped through the hedge, I paused to let my eyes adjust to the blackness. It was even darker on this side. As my eyes adjusted, I could make out the dim forms of huge, gnarled oak trunks, their high, spreading branches blocking out the faint starlight. I couldn’t see any Spanish moss, but I knew if it were daylight, I would have been able to see it dripping from the tree limbs above. “What’s this place? Another park or something?”
“No, it’s still part of Quincy House. They just don’t do anything with it. Their property goes all the way to the road over there. See down there?” Mitch said.
“No. I can’t see anything.”
Mitch’s arm materialized beside my face, his hand pointing off in the distance. “Down there.”
“Oh.” I saw several pinpricks of white light, a chain of them in the distance. “Those lights that are so far away? Yes, I see them,” I said, thinking that Mitch suddenly seemed relaxed. Had I been wrong? Maybe he wasn’t winding up to tell me he wanted something different than I did? But his words . . .
Mitch interrupted my thoughts as he wrapped his arm around my waist and turned me to the right. “Those lights over there? That’s Holloway Park. Dan and I used to ride down there
when we were kids. We’d climb trees back there, too. No one cared.”
“It’s too bad he’s so busy with his new job. You haven’t seen much of Dan,” I said.
“Yeah,” Mitch agreed as we walked along.
There was a smaller, rougher path that curved to the left and we walked along it at a slower pace because of the darkness and the uneven ground. “And if we were feeling really daring, we’d race over here to this side and climb over the fence into the cemetery,” Mitch said. My eyes had adjusted to the darkness and I was able to see a low brick fence set with wrought-iron bars that extended up to at least six feet high. The trees ended at the fence and on the other side of the bars I could see the wide, flat grounds of a cemetery, the headstones heavy slabs of darkness.
“We used to dare each other to climb the fence and steal a flower from one of the graves.”
“Mitch, that’s awful,” I said, “stealing flowers from graves.”
“Hey, it could have been something worse.”
We walked along the edge of the fence, the dark trees looming on one side and the open plain of the cemetery on the other. The large headstones gave way to a more modern area with smaller markers set flat into the ground. I stopped and looked at a large stone fountain glowing dimly in the starlight in the cemetery. “That looks familiar,” I said. “Mitch, this isn’t the cemetery where Grandpa Franklin’s buried, is it?” I didn’t know the layout of Smarr all that well and was disoriented from our walk, but I hadn’t thought we were near the cemetery we’d visited last week.
Mitch’s voice was quiet. “Yes, it is. It’s the biggest cemetery in Smarr. For a few minutes there, I forgot. I was just thinking about Dan and me when we were kids.”
“It’s okay,” I said. “Come on, let’s go back and—” I stopped to listen. “Did you hear that?”
“Why are you whispering?” Mitch asked, but he’d lowered his voice, too.
