Yew to a Kill

by Kim Smith

  “You okay?” Dwayne poked me in the shoulder.

  I nodded and handed the bag to him. “We need to go. I should get some food. I have to check on the Mamas.”

  He shook his head. “One minute you’re about to pass out with a panic attack and then you’re starvin’. I just don’t get you, Wall-ass.”

  “Me either. I need food to stop my stomach from jumping around. Sorry if that messes with your mind, Brown.” I pushed past him, but paused to whisper over my shoulder. “Grab Scott’s file. We need to visit him.”

  I strolled to the bottom of the stairs and told Carrie we were going to go check on my aunts and grab a bite to eat. I offered to bring her something back, but she declined.

  “I’m going to run over to the house and plan the casket cover. I have a program on my computer at home that will design a garden. I think I can modify it to work on a smaller space. I’m pretty excited. Bubba wasn’t the only one in the family with artistic tendencies,” she declared.

  I nodded as Dwayne came up behind me. “Sure. Well, we’ll call soon.”

  We took off. I didn’t know whether to be bothered by the fact that she didn’t ask us to stay and run things, or the fact that she was so full of glee over designing a contest entry that by all rights her brother owned.

  I drove to Tillie’s Home Cookin’—IT"S GOOOOD! with Dwayne. We showed ourselves to a window seat since that was the biggest place to sit and look out. It didn’t look like noon to me.

  “You still worried about the weather?” Dwayne asked.

  “No. I’m more worried that Rafe will drive by and see my car and decide to slash my tires.”

  “There’s that,” he said with a nod, perusing the menu.

  “After we eat, we have to drive over to Jason’s place,” I said, scanning the lot then the sky.

  “What you got in mind?”

  “Seems like he owes us some explanations. I mean, he hired us to stake out his cemetery and find out who was vandalizing his place. We did that. You even gave your blood to the cause,” I pointed at his shoulder and clucked my tongue in disgust. “So, I figure he owes me some sort of information on those damn caskets. Off the record or on. I’m not picky.”

  “What makes you think he’ll talk to us about it? I mean, Sal’s workin’ on that angle, ain’t he?”

  I waved to my Aunt Nan. She grabbed two glasses of water and headed our way.

  “He might tell us something he wouldn’t tell the cops don’t you think?” I whispered quickly before she could overhear.

  “You okay?” she asked me, setting the glasses down and pulling out her order form. “I know how shaky you get during tornado season.”

  Then, to Dwayne, “How are you doing, Sugar?”

  He held up his hurt arm. “I think I’m gonna live.”

  She patted his shoulder. “That’s good. What you want to eat today?”

  “You still got breakfast?”

  “Stopped serving it at 10:30.”

  “All righty. Gimme the catfish plate, slaw, and fried okra, and lots of tartar sauce.”

  He pulled the Tabasco closer to him. I knew he would have his fish smelly with the red hot sauce as soon as it was placed in front of him.

  “What are you having?” she asked me.

  I took in her usual hairstyle, pulled back in a ponytail, and her freshly painted nails. “You look nice.”

  She glanced down at Dwayne. “Spooked her, huh?”

  He nodded.

  I shut the menu and handed it to her. “Grilled chicken salad, ranch, crackers, sweet tea, and quit reading my mind.”

  Her laughter rose above the din of voices and restaurant noise to follow her through the swinging doors and into the kitchen. Someone tapped me on the shoulder.

  I looked up at Herb and smiled. “Hey, Herbert, what’s up?”

  “Oh, the news is, of course. We’re closing in on a very big story, maybe one you’d like to be involved with on the takedown? Maybe you could get some video footage of it?”

  I nodded. “Sure would! What’s the scoop?”

  He looked around at the patrons. “Can’t discuss around here, too many ears. I’ll call you.”

  Dwayne jutted his chin at him and nodded. “Do that.”

  And the reporter was gone again, hustling through the crowd to the door.

  “Wonder what that was all about?” Dwayne asked.

  I shrugged. News was in abundance to everyone but us. I waited a reasonable amount of time and began anew to convince Dwayne about needling Scott for information. I appealed to his love of money in order to get him to do what I wanted.

  “Seems like after being duped with the missing caskets, Scott would be a little receptive at a chance to get his inventory filmed for future references. I think we should offer to film his stuff for him. Then if anything else gets taken, he can just show the cops what he has in stock, and the serial numbers, etc.”

  Dwayne’s face wrinkled with a frown. “Nice thought. How much you think he’ll be willin’ to pay for this?”

  “I don’t have a clue. I’m just the idea girl.” I sat back and tried not to smirk.

  “Well, Miss Idea Girl, you need to go back to the drawin’ board,” he replied, tapping his fingers on the edge of the table. “Scott probably has all his inventory on computer via some fancy-ass program for inventory. He ain’t stupid, Shan.”

  Exasperated, I leaned forward again and lowered my voice. “Well then, you need to come up with a plausible reason for us to get into his casket room, or rooms, or wherever he keeps his supply of boxes. How the hell else are we going to get a handle on what we are doing? I mean, we have no place to start from.”

  I watched him turn over what I had said in his mind, then continued. “Caskets were stolen from Scott’s. Something about the caskets has Rafe involved. Rafe was also involved with Bubba and Bubba turned up dead. But before that, Bubba spent all of his last day running flowers to places around town, including Scott’s. That is, if he followed his usual routine. Did I mention Scott’s was where all this crap started?”

  “You think it’s where it started,” he interjected.

  I sniffed. “And oh yeah, there’s a contest for casket covers, too, isn’t that odd? All the damn entrants will be going to a funeral home to display their damn contest entries. I swear, Dwayne, all of this crap is connected. I just feel it. And it’s beginning to give me hives.” I scratched my arms for emphasis.

  He took a deep breath and let it out, but didn’t answer right away. I let him chew on my long-winded dissertation on why we needed to go see Jason Scott while I looked out the window. The rain had started again, but the wind wasn’t blowing this time.

  “Okay, we can go see Jason,” he finally agreed. “But the thing is, he’s a good-payin’ client, and if you screw up this deal with him, just one hair—” He held up his thumb and first finger barely spaced apart. “—I’m gonna rat you out to Ramirez.”

  “As if.”

  He squinted. “I know things, Wall-ass. Things that man would love to know.”

  “Dwayne Brown! You wouldn’t dare!”

  He leaned back and looked too damn smug.

  “Fine,” I said. “I’ll just go along with you and let you fish around for answers. But for crap’s sake, find out what has gone wrong in the body box department at Scott’s Funeral Home. Shelly turned up dead, too, don’t forget, and she is involved in all this somehow. Maybe Jason can shed a bit of light on the subject. If he keeps inventory records on the computer, she might have found out something that got her a date with the mortician.”

  Aunt Tillie strolled over, wiping her hands on a flour sack towel. She nodded to Dwayne, and put a hand on my back. “Did you weather the storm okay, sweetie?”

  I fidgeted. “Of course. I’m here, aren’t I?”

  She shifted slightly to look down at me. “You sure are. And you’re with my favorite person.” She beamed at Dwayne. “How are you, Mr. Brown?”

  He grinned at her, and t
hey started chatting like old ladies, telling each other about all their hurts and illnesses.

  I tuned them out. No point in rehashing an already tired subject, and I felt like my recent hyperventilating was definitely old and tired.

  While Dwayne and Aunt Tillie discussed the best way to make orange marmalade icing, I tried to remember everything about Raphael Ramirez that I had seen and heard of in the last few days.

  Rafe at the cemetery. Rafe not at home. Rafe taking my car. Rafe being injected with drugs. Rafe getting into Sal’s car. Rafe being seen by Sal getting into the Mercedes. Rafe being seen walking home.

  Did he kill Bubba or did he know who did? And what about Bubba? Did he meet his killer on his route around town delivering flowers? How did he end up dead at his shop? How did the contest fit in? Everyone seemed pretty unhappy with the contest, but would it be enough to kill someone over? I had my doubts, but the award of money was enough to make someone drool. People had been killed for less.

  I wondered about Shelly and how she had gotten herself mixed up in whatever was going on at Scott’s. And what was going on there anyway? Who could possibly steal caskets? And why?

  Chapter Seventeen

  Later, after we had stuffed ourselves on Nan and Tillie’s fabulous orange marmalade cake with marshmallow crème icing (at least until they could try Dwayne’s recipe), we drove over to the office before rolling toward Jason Scott’s place.

  Dwayne’s idea on how to interest him in our services, while still nosing around his place, was to show him the footage we had taken for him earlier in the week.

  I promised Dwayne that nothing of interest was on them. They surely hadn’t perked my ears up. He insisted though, and so we brought the whole group from both times when we were at Scott’s.

  “Don’t freak out, Wall-ass. I can make copies real quick.”

  And he did. Then he gave the copies to me and I stuck them in my desk drawer for safe keeping. I was pretty paranoid about discs getting out and about where the public could see them.

  We didn’t call ahead, figuring for a Friday, Scott’s would be open. It was hard to imagine funeral homes ever closing. Dead people didn’t stop dying for office hours, did they?

  I wasn’t sure who was the soon-to-be-buried in attendance, but I sort of hoped we would bypass the viewing rooms and such and go straight to the offices and inventory area. We saw Theo Makamushi straight away, straightening papers on a reception desk.

  “Hello,” he said to us as we strolled in. “You are looking for Mr. Scott?”

  “Yes, is he around?”

  “One moment.” He turned on his heel and went down the hallway toward Jason’s office.

  “Look at this,” Dwayne whispered, showing me a potted plant nested on a dark mahogany table. It looked like a small pine tree. “It’s a Bonsai.”

  “I thought that was a term martial artists used when hitting something.”

  “No. That’s kill or somethin’. Although, bonsai is a war term. too, I guess. It’s also the name of these cool little plants. They trim them and train them to grow into wild shapes.”

  “Amazing,” I said, studying the squat plant.

  “This monastery in Georgia has special bonsai operations. I always wanted to go visit.”

  I gaped at him. “You’re always surprising me.”

  He straightened and gave me one of his girly hand gestures. “Honey, you’ll never know all of me.”

  Theo headed back our way so I left off a snappy reply.

  “Mr. Scott says he is very busy now. You should come back later.”

  This reply didn’t set well with either of us. Busy doing what? Didn’t he hire us, pay us good, hard-earned cash for a job? Didn’t he want to see what his money had bought?

  “Did you mention to him that we brought the discs?” I asked, lifting the stack wrapped with a rubber band to wave at him. “Per his request the last time we were here?”

  “No. You did not say anything about discs,” he answered, getting a strange look in his eyes. “You can leave them with me.” He reached to take them.

  “No, that’s okay. I insist we see Mr. Scott.” This guy had just stomped on my last nerve.

  “He is not seeing—” he started to say.

  “Jason!” I called out. “Get your ass out here or I’m calling the cops.”

  His office door slowly shut then reopened. He stepped out and motioned us in. I tried to look my most smug as I passed Theo. Dwayne flipped the man’s tie up as he passed. Sometimes you just can’t take him anywhere.

  Jason looked sheepish as he took a seat behind his desk. “What?”

  I glared at him. His disheveled look was even more noticeable than usual and his forehead was a mass of wrinkles. He looked like a blond Shar Pei.

  “What do you mean what? We brought the discs to look over. We came to get paid. You’re treatin’ us like some damn door-to-door religious pamphlet pusher,” Dwayne answered, yanking a chair out. I followed suit and we sat.

  Jason Scott ran his hand over his unshaved face and I was struck by the fact his nose was crooked like it had been broken a number of times and that made me wonder who would want to hurt him and why.

  “I’m sorry,” he replied. “This casket thing has got me so rattled I don’t know what I’m doing anymore.”

  I cast a quick glance at Dwayne. He nodded slightly.

  “Yeah, we heard all about that. You know Dwayne got shot out there in the heat of the heist?” I asked, keeping my face poker-straight. “And also, we were the ones who discovered the...”

  Scott wasn’t paying attention.

  He kept tapping his pen on the desk on the ledger book, lost in thought. Finally, he said, “I’m short about ten caskets. Normally, that wouldn’t make or break me, but this time, it’s different. Those were high-end boxes. Combine that with the destruction in the cemetery and losing Shelly, well, I’m just messed up.”

  He sat back and stared into space.

  “What do you mean high-end boxes?” I asked, curious.

  He pursed his lips. “Expensive. Lacquered boxes. Imported.”

  “What? Like from Slovakia or something?” Dwayne asked, leaning forward.

  “Yeah. China to be exact. They were a new line. I was testing the market here to see how successful sales could be. Guess that’s screwed now.”

  I made soothing noises and scooted to the edge of the chair. “According to the grapevine, you got them with no packaging? Is that right?”

  “How’d you know that?” he asked, raising one eyebrow.

  Ramirez would kill me if I leaked information that he was supposed to be privy to alone. “I’m the lead grape on the vine. Listen, never mind how I heard it, is it true?”

  He nodded. “Yeah. It was really weird. We get shipments all the time with three-inch thick Styrofoam caps on their ends covered up in cardboard boxes to protect them during the air trip. This time, nothing. No packaging, no crates, no nothing. Had big plans for those caskets, had buyers lined up. Geez.”

  “You could always buy more, right? The timing may be bad, but that shouldn’t stop you.”

  “No. You don’t understand. This was a one-time shot.”

  He was right. I didn’t understand and wasn’t sure I wanted to know the inner workings of casket buying. I wanted to get to the reason for our visit.

  I shoved the stack of discs toward him across the desk. “Maybe you should look over these copies. See if anything or anybody stands out to you. Maybe we can help figure out who took them, then all this can be settled and over with. And Jason, we know how important keeping your inventory straight is to you, so we thought we would recommend a new service.”

  Dwayne fell right into step. “Yeah, we offer a great film of inventoried items for insurance purposes. We can get the serial numbers or descriptions or whatever you need on video and then you can just give it to the cops when, I mean if, you ever need it.”

  Scott tilted his head to one side, ignoring the discs. “No k
idding?”

  Dwayne smiled. “Yes, sir.”

  His face lit up. “Can you do that like, now?”

  “We could take a look at your stuff and see if it would pay for you to do it,” I interjected. Then with the exquisite timing most comics love to have during a particularly good joke, I gave Dwayne a fake glare. “This might not be the best thing for Jason. Especially since most of his inventory is now missing. Now, Jason dear, what about looking at these?” I indicated the discs.

  Scott stood and scooted his chair back, scooping them up. “Did you look at them?”

  “Yes.”

  “See anything?”

  “No.”

  He sighed loudly. “Keep looking. I trust you. In fact, I like this idea of taping my inventory. Let’s go see if you can do it.” He took one DVD out of the stack and set it in front of him on the desk. “I’ll look at this later.”

  He led us down the hall, away from the front of the building. We turned left into a room, then right into another one. I had no idea the funeral home was so roomy.

  The storage area was a large bay, with a concrete floor, and door that lifted out for easy deliveries. It held a handful of caskets still in packaging material, and an assortment of bereavement items like plaques and books. I was sure it could hold a whole lot more. Taping this lot would be easy.

  “Wow. Pretty empty.”

  He nodded. “A shit-load of inventory. Gone.”

  “You know anybody who’d want to take them?” Dwayne asked.

  Scott switched all his weight to his other foot and put his hands on his hips. “You can’t be serious. I mean, do you really think anyone else in this town has use for them, other than another undertaker?”

  Dwayne shrugged, but an insidious thought ran through my mind. “You didn’t take them, did you, Jase?”

  He looked like he had swallowed one of Aunt Nan’s fishing lures. “Shannon Wallace. We’ve known each other for a long time. I can’t believe you just asked that question.”

  Dwayne, ever protective, inserted his point of view. “The cops asked that question, too, didn’t they? So, consider us the cop’s cops. We’re the freakin’ neighborhood watch committee. Now answer the damn question.”