Hauling Ash

by Tonia Brown

  A Post Hill Press book

  Published at Smashwords

  ISBN (Trade Paperback): 978-1-61868-967-2

  ISBN (eBook): 978-1-61868-968-9

  Hauling Ash copyright © 2014

  by Tonia Brown

  All Rights Reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author and publisher.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One – Together Again

  Chapter Two – If I Had a Million

  Chapter Three – You Can’t Take It With You

  Chapter Four – Lucky Partners

  Chapter Five – Nothing Sacred

  Chapter Six – Fools for Scandal

  Chapter Seven – Holiday

  Chapter Eight – Don’t Get Personal

  Chapter Nine – Platinum Blonde

  Chapter Ten – Bringing Up Baby

  Chapter Eleven – It Happened One Night

  Chapter Twelve – Trouble in Paradise

  Chapter Thirteen – Breakfast for Two

  Chapter Fourteen – The Awful Truth

  Chapter Fifteen – Libeled Lady

  Chapter Sixteen – The Major and the Minor

  Chapter Seventeen – To Be or Not to Be

  Chapter Eighteen – Dinner at Eight

  Chapter Nineteen – Ball of Fire

  Chapter Twenty – A Slight Case of Murder

  Chapter Twenty-One – Danger-Love at Work

  Chapter Twenty-Two – The Thrill of It All

  Chapter Twenty-Three – The More the Merrier

  Chapter Twenty-Four – Arsenic and Old Lace

  Chapter Twenty-Five – Design for Living

  About the Author

  Chapter One

  Together Again

  Early one morning

  Otto Waldorf stood in his kitchen doorway, staring in confusion at the corpse of his dead uncle. In Otto’s professional experience, not to mention just plain logical reasoning, corpses didn’t move, didn’t drink and most certainly didn’t hang around his kitchen. Yet there sat the late Uncle Walter, drinking a cup of coffee as though it were a typical Friday morning, and not the day after his own funeral. The corpse lifted his usual mug to his blue lips and sipped. He pondered the taste for a moment, while the single mouthful of hot coffee gushed forth from the open gash in his throat. The site of it drove Otto to a crouch, hiding behind the kitchen counter as if a thin layer of wood and drywall could protect him from the ire of his dead uncle.

  “Come on out, Octavious,” Dead Uncle Walter said. His voice came with the distant wheeze of far too much air joining the conversation. “I can see you back there. And I know you can see me, else you wouldn’t be squatting behind the counter like a moron.”

  “You’re not real,” Otto whispered.

  “If I’m not real, then you won’t mind if I assault your sugar.” The corpse stood—a feat that took a few moments of moaning and groaning, stretching and popping—then shuffled his way to the cupboard beside the fridge. Peering into the open cabinet, Uncle Walter let out a disappointed grunt. “Where’s the damned sugar bowl?”

  “It’s a sugar jar,” Otto said, “and it’s in the next cupboard over. To the left.”

  The corpse moved to the right.

  “No,” Otto said, “your other left.”

  Completely ignoring Otto’s instructions, the corpse rummaged through the cabinets with no luck.

  “Seriously, it’s the other one,” Otto said as he got to his feet. “The second shelf down. No, I said down. That’s too far down. It’s one up from that.” Otto ducked behind the counter again, leaning against it as he grabbed his hair with both hands in frustration. “Why am I telling my dead uncle where the sugar is?”

  “Because you were too stupid to leave it out on the counter.” The corpse shuffled back to the table and sat. He opened the jar, scooped out a heaping spoonful of sugar, then proceeded to turn the jar over, emptying what was left into the cup of coffee. Once the jar was empty, he thought about it a moment, then added the spoonful for good measure. Walter gave the combination a stir and finally a taste. The concoction oozed free from his open throat, a thick, gritty mix of blackened sweetness. This didn’t seem to faze the dead old goat. He licked his lips and grinned. “Much better. Can’t have coffee without sugar. You know I like my coffee like I like my women.”

  “Dark and sweet,” Otto recited out of reflex.

  Walter raised his mug to Otto. “You got it, Eightball.”

  If there was any doubt in Otto’s mind that the corpse sitting at the table was indeed the ghost of his late uncle, the pronouncement of that single pet name did the trick, following that doubt into a darkened alleyway, pouncing on it, cutting its throat, robbing it of everything of value and leaving it for dead.

  Much in the manner Walter himself passed on.

  “Walter?” Otto said.

  “Otto?” Walter said.

  Otto got to his feet again, staring slack jawed and wide eyed at a man he’d laid to rest the night before. Obviously the laying to rest didn’t stick. At the very least, Otto had shown some respect for the man. Then again, maybe respect was too strong a word. Otto did what he could, with the money he had, which consisted of a sparsely attended service followed by a prompt cremation. And, as far as he was concerned, that should have been enough.

  Yet there the late Walter Waldorf sat.

  In Otto’s kitchen.

  Deader than a can of ham.

  And drinking a cup of coffee.

  “You’re dead,” Otto whispered.

  Walter closed his eyes with a groan. “Thank you for that insight. Would you like to comment on how the sun is hot or the night is dark? I’m sure you have a lot more wisdom to impart.”

  “No,” Otto said, moving out from behind the counter. “I only meant, well, you’re dead, dead. As in properly dead.”

  “I’m even deader than that.”

  Otto took a few steps toward the talking corpse. “I pushed your coffin into the crematorium yesterday.”

  “I know.”

  “I prepped you.”

  “I know.” The corpse shifted in his seat. “Don’t remind me.”

  “I … I … I grieved for you.”

  “I said I know. I was there, wasn’t I? Thanks for the tears. It was a nice touch. Every man should have a weeper at his funeral.”

  “You’re welcome, but I don’t think you understand what I am saying.” Otto took the seat across from his dead uncle. “How can you be here if you’re dead?”

  The corpse shrugged. “Beats me.” He sipped at the mug again, leaving another stream of coffee dribbling down his shirt.

  “You’re getting coffee all over your suit,” Otto said, pointing to the dead man’s throat.

  Walter lifted a mottled hand to his wet neck with a grimace. “Ah, for shit’s sake, son, why didn’t you tell me that sooner?” He snatched up a handful of napkins from the table’s centerpiece and dabbed at the mess. “Now I’ll be all sticky. Crap on a cracker.”

  Otto watched his dead uncle clean up the spilled coffee and pondered the possibilities of what was happening here. Two probabilities cropped up, laying themselves out in Otto’s tired mind. He didn’t like either of them. He grabbed the first one and spoke it aloud, just to get the feel of it.

  “I’m dead too,” he said.

  “What was that?” Walter said.

  “Dying hasn’t improved your hearing any,” Otto mumbled.

  “Actually it has, smartass. I just didn’t catch that last bit.”

  “I was saying this must be the afterlife, and I am dead too.”

  Walter glanced around the kitchen. “I don’t think so. I’ve heard of Hell be
ing other people, but never a kitchen.”

  “What about Hell’s Kitchen?”

  “That’s in Manhattan, boy, not your house.”

  Otto slumped against the table. “I guess you’re right. Well, it certainly can’t be heaven.”

  “Why not?” Walter bristled at the comment. “You sayin’ I’m not good enough to get into heaven?”

  Truthfully, Walter Waldorf was probably not good enough to get into heaven. The man was well known for living a life of thieving, lying, stealing, womanizing—and those were the least offensive of his various sins. Octavious Waldorf was no saint himself, yet in comparison to his uncle, well, one could say that the Vatican owed Otto a rather impressive hat and a lot of white smoke.

  “No,” Otto lied. “I’m saying that if heaven turns out to be a small kitchen filled with aged appliances, a fridge that’s in dire need of a good cleaning, and a talkative corpse, then Preacher Pruitt down at Antioch Baptist Church has an awful lot of explaining to do.”

  “Talkative?” Walter said, cocking his head at the idea. “Really? I never thought of myself as talkative.”

  Otto smirked. “I can officially and with some authority say that at this moment in time you are far more talkative than a corpse has any right to be.”

  “You should know.”

  As a mortician, Otto did know. And what he knew, he didn’t like.

  “I’ve lost my mind,” Otto said. “That must be it. Working with the dead for all of these years has finally gotten to me. I’ve lost my marbles.”

  “I wouldn’t say that,” Walter said.

  “Sure you wouldn’t. You’re part of my delusion.”

  Walter dipped his head, motioning to the floor beside him. “You better tell your dog I’m not real then, because he’s been staring at me for ten minutes now.”

  Otto leaned to the side of the table and found the miniature Schnauzer parked next to Uncle Walter’s feet, staring up at the man in awe.

  “Who’s a spoilt brat?” Walter said.

  Finster wagged his tail and yipped in reply.

  “I always liked that dog,” Walter said.

  “He always liked you,” Otto said. He sighed as a third possible reality settled upon him with the clingy assuredness of a death shroud. “It really is you, isn’t it?”

  “Must be me, Eightball, because who the hell else would want to be such a cantankerous old fart?” He winked.

  Otto smiled at the sound of a nickname he thought he would never hear again. The corpse sure sounded like Uncle Walter. Sure looked like him too. Although admittedly, the corpse looked like the Uncle Walter that Otto identified in the morgue of the police station a few days prior, not the uncle that Otto cleaned and stitched and dressed before the service yesterday. And certainly not the uncle that Otto watched burn asunder either.

  “I still don’t understand what is happening here,” Otto said.

  “Search me,” Walter said. “All I know is one moment I was alive, then I was dead, and now I’m here.” Walter lifted the cup to his mouth, taking a sip and intending to swallow, then paused when he thought better of it. He grabbed his throat, pressing his fingers tightly to the open wound and tried to swallow the mouthful. A bit of coffee seeped through his fingers. “Crapdoodles. This is going to get old.”

  “I could stitch it shut again for you. If you think it would help?”

  “Don’t waste your time. I ain’t planning on hanging around that long.”

  Otto sat straight up at that. “Why? Where are you going?”

  “Hopefully above, as opposed to below.”

  “I see. So this is temporary?”

  “I sure hope so. Don’t you?”

  “Point taken. Speaking of being here at all … why is that exactly?”

  The corpse shrugged again. “I really don’t know. Must be haunting you.”

  “Haunting me? Why me? I was the only one that cared enough about your remains to claim them.”

  “Maybe that’s why? I don’t make the rules.”

  “Okay then, why like this?” Otto waved a hand at the dead form of his uncle.

  Walter glanced down at his suit, then back up to Otto. “What are you talkin’ about, boy? I always wore a suit. I died in a suit, and I’d do it again too. I like this suit. Clothes make the man, you know.”

  “I meant why a corpse? If you’re haunting me, then why aren’t you, I dunno, more ghost like? How can you pick up things? How can you drink? Why can Finster see you? How long will you stay? Can anyone else see you?”

  “Will you quit grilling me? I don’t have all of the answers. I’m as new to this whole thing as you are.” Walter lifted his mug again, then lowered it when an idea struck him. “What do you mean you were the only one who cared enough about me to claim me?”

  Otto squirmed in his seat. The truth was a delicate, as well as an awful, thing.

  Walter didn’t give Otto a chance to consider a fib. “Don’t lie to me, boy. I can see ya eye twitching. That means you’re trying to work up a good story. Tell me the truth, you hear me?”

  “Yes, Uncle Walter,” Otto said. “The truth is … well, at first when folks heard about your death, everyone came out of the woodwork to mourn you. Relatives I didn’t even know we had showed up wanting to know when the funeral was. It was very touching.”

  Blinking, the corpse relaxed back. “Really? Didn’t expect that.”

  “Neither did I. At first I thought they were there to help me share the burden of the funeral and grieving and all of that. Turned out they were searching for your money.”

  Walter crossed his arms with a grunt. “Now that I did expect.”

  “So did I.”

  Once upon a yesteryear, Walter Waldorf was known across three states as the King of Vinyl Siding, a fact evidenced by his lucrative business, Waldorf’s Inexpensive Exteriors. He was also known among the same folks as the world’s tightest fist when it came to money. A miser of the first degree, he made more in one week than most folks saw in a year, yet with all the money coming into the house, very little went in the other direction. He would, for example, let that same house crumble around him rather than spend a dime to fix it, as long as there was a single wall standing to call home. He never married, claiming he could pay a woman what she was worth for an evening’s pleasure instead of owing her half of his rumored fortune for a lifetime of misery.

  And what a fortune that rumor rumored.

  It was said around town, especially amongst the extended Waldorf family, that despite Walter selling the business ten years prior for a lump sum, the man was still sitting on an easy million, maybe more. The meat of this gossip promised the man kept said money stuffed into his mattress, hidden under his floorboards, even a buried in various holes in the backyard. This was easy to believe, because the rumored fortune was accompanied by a simple, well known fact.

  Walter Waldorf never kept a bank account in the whole of his rotten life. He held a professional account, certainly, one that he emptied and closed the day he sold his business. But a personal bank account? Not on his life. Or death.

  “They tore your place apart,” Otto said, “looking for any money you left behind. I tried to stop them, I tried to tell them you didn’t have any. They wouldn’t listen to me. They dug up your garden, your lawn, shredded your furniture, your carpet. They even started taking apart the house, slat by slat and brick by brick, when someone finally called the police.”

  “Was that someone you?” Walter said.

  “Well, yes, sir.” Otto’s cheeks went an embarrassing soft pink. “I couldn’t sit back and watch them destroy your home. It was disrespectful.”

  “Not to mention it lowers the selling value.”

  Otto blinked in surprise. “I guess so. I didn’t care about that.”

  The corpse seemed unconvinced. “Tell me the rest.”

  “Um, when they discovered you didn’t actually have any money, they … well you see … they scattered.”

  “Scattered,” Wal
ter echoed.

  “Like ashes to the wind. They didn’t even stick around for the service. And they certainly didn’t help with it.”

  “Everyone scattered huh? Except for you, it would seem.”

  “It would seem.”

  “What made you stick around?”

  “Someone had to take care of your remains.”

  “And my worldly possessions?”

  “As if.” Otto gave a short snort. “No offense, Uncle Walter, but you didn’t have much to speak of. What little you had in the house, the family either destroyed or took with them. Except for your Crown Vic.”

  “The Vic? What happened to her?”

  “While they were tearing up the house I snuck it away.”

  “You’ve got her?”

  “Sure. It’s parked out back. Aside from her, everything else is gone.”

  “Everything?”

  “Everything. There’s nothing left.”

  “What about the house? It certainly isn’t gone.”

  “Not yet, though it probably will be when Aunt Betty is done with it.”

  “My sister? What has that lying bitch got to do with anything?”

  “She said the house went to her because she was your closest relative.”

  Walter wheezed a sharp laugh, sending Finster skittering into the living room to escape the sudden noise. “She’s in for a rude awakening, because that’s not what my will says.”

  “Ah yes, your will.” Otto swallowed deep, dreading this next bit.

  “What about my will?”

  “You mean that greasy napkin in your underwear drawer?”

  “That’s the one.” Walter grinned wide enough to match the slash across his throat. “Did you read it?”

  “Not really. I didn’t get a chance.”

  The smile slipped away. “How so?”

  “When I first found it, and realized what it was, I gave it to Aunt Betty.”

  Walter eyed Otto as if he were the talking corpse. “Why on earth would you do something so stupid, boy?”

  “She’s your closet relative. I thought it was the responsible thing to do. How was I supposed to know she would blow her nose on it, set it on fire, then dump her vodka on the ashes?”