Murderous Mummy Wars

by Nicole Ellis

  “No, no. Please don’t.”

  She laughed. “I called Angela today to touch base with her on the treasurer position and somehow found myself roped into helping today. I think she may have called Lisa too to see if anyone in the MUMs group was available to help out today.”

  “That’s what happens when you volunteer for a single job with an organization—you find yourself doing so much more,” I said smugly. “I told you that you’d regret it.”

  She shrugged. “You seem to have ended up here too.”

  I rolled my eyes at her. “It’s my job.”

  “Yeah, well, I wouldn’t have said I’d do it, except she was going on and on about her assistant Mindy going through a bitter divorce and how much it was affecting the quality of her work because she should have had time to help out today. Angela was so mad and I though her rant would never end. I finally said I’d help move the decorations so that she’d let me off the phone.”

  “Ah. That does sound like Angela.” I laughed. “And I am glad you’re here.” I smiled at her.

  “Anyway, I heard you all talking back here when I pulled up. This place is amazing! I didn’t even know there were still houses like this in Ericksville. My mom would love to see it. Maybe Angela would consider adding it to the Ericksville Historical Society’s house tour.” She gestured to the shed. “Is that where all the magic is kept?”

  I nodded. “Take a look.”

  She walked over to the shed and greeted Lisa and introduced herself to Angela’s husband before ducking her head into the shed, pulling on a string to turn on the overhead light. “Whoa.” When she turned to face us, her eyes were wide.

  Angela’s husband laughed. “My wife takes Halloween very seriously.” His voice took on a concerned note. “Which is why I’m surprised she’s not here to meet all of you. She usually wants to make sure care is taken with all of her decorations. Some of them took weeks to create.”

  “Do you want us to wait until she gets back?” I asked, shifting my weight between my feet. I crossed my fingers behind my back, hoping he’d say no.

  “Uh.” He glanced at the shed. “I guess it’s ok. She did mention you’d all be coming to move everything over to the event space. I’m sorry I can’t help more, but my asthma has been flaring up lately and I’m trying to avoid strenuous activities. Plus, everything in there has a year’s worth of dust on it.”

  “No worries.” Lisa set the lock down on the concrete pad next to the shed and pushed the door all the way open. “Now, what should we grab first?”

  “How about the smaller decorations in the front. I’d like to load the sarcophagus into the truck first, if the three of us can manage it, but we need to move some stuff out of the way to get to it.” I assessed the situation, my gaze stopping on some mouse droppings in the corner of the shed. I forced myself to not think about the possibility that a mouse could jump out at me at any moment.

  “We can set the other stuff down on the concrete,” Desi said, pointing to where Lisa had placed the lock. “I think I see a tarp in there that we can put down to keep everything dry.”

  I pictured Angela’s reaction if we let any of her decorations get wet or muddy and shuddered.

  “Good plan, Desi!” Lisa beamed at her and grabbed a few things off the shelving unit.

  I marveled at Lisa’s energy and seemingly constant state of chipperness. I didn’t know her very well yet, but I suspected she must consume a lot of coffee or energy drinks every day.

  We moved everything smaller away, then loaded a few medium-sized items into the truck bed.

  I eyed the sarcophagus. “I think we can get it out of there now.”

  “Let’s try!” Lisa sprinted over to it and grabbed the top. It barely moved. She laughed. “I think I’m going to need some help. It feels like there’s a real mummy inside.”

  I squeezed into the gap between the shelves, all the while trying not to think of the possibility that rodents might live in the shed, and wrapped my fingers around the back of the container. With both of us moving it, the sarcophagus inched along the ground until we had it outside of the shed.

  “Whew!” Lisa wiped away sweat from her brow with a tissue. “That wasn’t easy!”

  “Are we going to be able to move that all the way to the truck?” Desi regarded the sarcophagus with doubt. “I wish we had a dolly.”

  “We’re going to try.” We were going to get all of this stuff moved to the Boathouse today because I didn’t want to have to borrow Lincoln’s truck again. If we’d had another person, it would have been better. Where was Angela anyway? This was her project. “I think if one of us holds onto the middle and one of us carries each end, we should be able to lift it. Watch the mud, ladies. We don’t want to slip.” I checked the sky. The air held the acrid scent of recent rain, but the clouds drifting across the sunny sky weren’t as dark as the rainclouds that had hovered over us earlier.

  “No kidding.” Desi lifted a mud-covered foot off the ground. “We could have done without that rainstorm drenching everything.”

  “We can do this! On the count of three, let’s lift. One, two, three!” Lisa shouted.

  We tilted the coffin backward and she lifted the bottom of it in the air.

  “This isn’t so bad,” I said as the three of us moved it toward the front yard. It was heavy, but it looked like we’d make it.

  “Nope, not too bad,” Desi said, carefully picking her way backward along the grass. Suddenly, she pitched to the side and slid, unable to get her footing on the muddy grass. Without Desi anchoring the end of the sarcophagus, we were powerless to stop it from falling. Lisa and I jumped away from it instinctively so our feet wouldn’t get squished. We watched in horror as it crashed to the ground, hitting the grass with an unsettling thud.

  Desi stood, brushing mud off of her jeans. “I’m so sorry, guys. I tripped on a rock or something.”

  I glanced at the ground near where she’d been walking. Someone had left a paver half buried in the grass. I pointed to it. “Looks like that’s the culprit.”

  “That’s a dumb spot to leave a piece of concrete,” Desi grumbled.

  “No kidding!” said Lisa. “Do you think this thing is broken?” She stared down at the end of the sarcophagus by her feet.

  My heart stopped. Angela would kill us if anything happened to her precious decorations, and this one looked particularly real. I circled it, searching for any signs of damage.

  When I finished, I took a deep breath. “I think it’s ok. Let’s get it into the truck before anything else happens to it.”

  We each picked it up in the same places we’d been assigned to before, but something felt different.

  “Stop. I think the lid is loose.” I hadn’t seen the lid separating from the base when it was on the ground, but it was apparent from this angle. We gently lowered it to the ground and I pushed on the lid to reseat it, Desi reaching over to help me.

  “It’s not working. Maybe we need to take it off completely and then place it back on the base.” Desi ran her finger around the open seal.

  I shrugged. Her suggestion just might work.

  We shimmied the lid off and pushed it to one side of the container.

  Lisa was the first to look inside. “Oh my goodness!” Her skin paled and she stumbled over to the bushes and vomited.

  Desi and I looked at each other, then peered into the coffin at the same time.

  A woman’s body had been stuffed into the sarcophagus. Cold, blue, unblinking eyes stared straight up at us. Strangulation marks ringed her neck.

  Desi sucked in her breath and pointed. “I’ve never met her, but is that Angela Laveaux?”

  4

  I distanced myself from the grimace on the woman’s face and took a better look at her features. She had round cheeks, a pert nose, and minimal makeup. She wore jeans and a T-shirt, both of which appeared to be dry. “No, it’s not Angela. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her before.”

  Lisa was dabbing at her mouth
with a tissue. “That’s Mindy Danvers.”

  “Who?” I moved my attention from the woman’s body to Lisa.

  “Mindy is, uh … was, Angela’s secretary at the district offices of MUMs.” Lisa’s face turned green again and she ran over to the other side of the yard.

  “I thought that coffin was too heavy to be fake.” Desi stared at the body. “But how did she get in there? And where’s Angela?”

  All I could do was shake my head. How was this happening again? There had to be a limit to how many dead bodies one person could discover in their lifetime—and I must already be at my quota.

  And where was Angela? She’d promised to meet us here, but instead she was missing and her assistant had turned up dead.

  A chill ran through my veins. Had Angela been killed too? Or kidnapped? I didn’t like her much, but I didn’t want her dead either.

  “I guess it’s time to call the police,” Desi said in a dull voice.

  “Yeah.” I really didn’t want to have to do that. I was beginning to have a not-so-great reputation with the police department in this town.

  “Can you do it?” I pleaded. “You’re a policeman’s wife. It won’t be so bad coming from you.”

  “Are you kidding me? If they find out it’s me calling, Tomàs will hear all about this and he’ll be upset and worried about me being involved with another death.”

  “Fine, I’ll call.” I patted the front pocket of my zip-front sweatshirt, but there weren’t any hard bumps in it. “I think I forgot my cell phone in the truck.”

  “Go. I’ll stay here with the body,” Desi said.

  Lisa had disappeared, probably to avoid vomiting again. I went out to my truck and retrieved the cell phone from my purse. As I closed the door, I heard a noise behind me.

  “It doesn’t look like you’ve done much here,” Angela said. “I thought you’d be almost done by now. I had to go to the store to pick up a few things and the stupid cashier messed everything up. It took forever.” She held up a plastic bag containing what looked like the outlines of a tabloid magazine, a bag of chips, and a bottle of soda.

  I looked at her in disbelief. Had she been late on purpose so she wouldn’t have to help move the decorations?

  “Where is everyone, anyway? Lisa and Desi were supposed to be here already.” She scanned the yard.

  I sighed. “Come into the backyard.”

  She followed me around the side of the house, stopping short when she saw the lid to the sarcophagus lying on the ground.

  “What have you done? How could you be so careless? That’s an antique. I can’t replace it. Oh, I hope it’s not broken.”

  Before I had a chance to explain, she ran over to the object. “Oh my.” She covered her mouth with her hand. “Is that Mindy?”

  “I think so.” I checked her expression as I spoke.

  She blinked her eyes. “What happened to her? Why was she even here? I asked her to help today, but she said she didn’t have time.”

  “I don’t know,” I said truthfully. “When we were carrying it out, Desi tripped on a piece of concrete over there and we accidentally dropped it. I noticed the lid was ajar and realized we needed to take it off first to reposition it in the grooves. That’s when we found her like that.”

  She couldn’t seem to take her eyes off the body. “Poor Mindy.”

  “Angela, you’re back.” Her husband came into the backyard. “What’s going on out here?”

  Angela pointed at the open coffin and he walked toward it.

  His eyes widened when he saw what was in it and he backed away. “No. Uh, uh. There’s not a body in my backyard.” He continued retreating until he reached the house, then disappeared inside of it.

  I looked at Angela, raising my eyebrows.

  She shrugged. “Drew doesn’t deal well with stress.”

  She seemed calmer now about finding her employee’s body in her backyard.

  I held up the phone I held in my hand. “I’m calling the police now.”

  She nodded and stalked over to the shed. “You’ve done hardly anything.”

  Desi’s eyes narrowed and her mouth formed a wide O. She muttered something under her breath that I couldn’t quite hear, but I was pretty sure wasn’t complimentary. She walked over to me, standing close.

  “I see what you mean about Angela now. Is she even upset about this? Or does she only care about her decorations and the haunted house?”

  “I don’t know.” My eyes followed Angela. “She certainly isn’t acting like a normal person who’s discovered their employee dead in their backyard.”

  “No kidding.”

  I called the police and they promised to send emergency personnel to the scene.

  “Thank you for not mentioning me,” Desi said. “Tomàs was pretty upset about what happened last time we discovered a body. I thought there was no way he was going to let us stay at Thunder Lake Resort after that.”

  “Me too.” I was quiet, thinking about the other bodies we’d found and the situations we’d found ourselves in, like the time we’d almost been drowned in Lake Elinor. “This time we don’t know the victim and we don’t have a horse in this race. There shouldn’t be any reason for us to get involved.”

  “Agreed. I’d e-mailed Angela about treasurer stuff, but I never met her in person until just now. I’m staying out of this one.” She and I walked over to the house’s back porch to wait for the police to arrive.

  The police showed up five minutes later and immediately took control of the scene. Desi and I were standing closest to Mindy’s body, so they interviewed us first.

  “And you just happened to drop the coffin thing and the lid dropped open to reveal the body?” The policewoman scrutinized Desi and I.

  Lisa had disappeared completely and Desi gave the police what little contact information we had for her.

  I nodded vigorously. “Yes. Well, kind of. We dropped it and then the lid loosened, so we had to take it off to reposition it. That’s when we saw her like that.” I averted my eyes from Mindy’s body. The crime scene technicians were busy photographing everything and taking samples of what appeared to be every surface in the area.

  “I tripped over that piece of concrete and the whole sarcophagus came down.” Desi pointed helpfully at the paver, then glared at it.

  “Uh huh.” She jotted something down on her notepad. “And where was Ms. Laveaux while all this was happening?”

  “She was at the store.” Desi said, pointing at the discarded shopping bag on the porch.

  “Well, she told us she was at the store.” My eyes darted to Angela, who was standing next to her husband, comforting him, but looking unperturbed herself.

  The officer’s gaze shot up sharply. “What do you mean, ‘she told you’? Do you think she was somewhere else?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. She was supposed to meet us here to help us load the truck. All of this needed to get to the Boathouse downtown today. When I arrived, she wasn’t here and her husband had no clue where she was.”

  “Do you know if Ms. Laveaux had any grudge against Ms. Danvers?” Her eyes drilled into my face, making me squirm under the scrutiny.

  How was I supposed to know if there was bad blood between them? I’d never met Mindy Danvers while she was alive.

  “Not that I know of, but I’ve never met Mindy before and I wouldn’t say I was close to Angela Laveaux, so I’m not the best person to ask.”

  “Is there someone who would have a better idea?”

  Desi piped up. “Lisa Aldane. She’s the group leader for our local MUMs group and reports to Angela, who’s the local director. I believe they’ve known each other for a while.”

  “MUMs group?” she asked.

  “More United Mothers,” Desi said. “It’s a bunch of moms who get together to chat and have our babies play—there are exercise classes as well. Jill and I joined last week, so we don’t know too much about it, but Lisa can explain it better.”

  She scribbled so
mething on her pad and then snapped it shut. “Thank you for your time. I’ll be in touch with you if we need anything else.” She tilted his head to the side and peered at Desi. “Say, your name sounds familiar. Are you related to Tomàs Torres? He’s a policeman here in town.”

  Desi froze, then sighed. “Yes, he’s my husband.”

  The officer grinned at her. “Ah, I thought so. It’s nice meeting you Ms. Torres.” She turned to me. “And you too, Ms. Andrews.”

  “Nice to meet you too,” we said in unison.

  She jetted off toward Angela and Drew Laveaux, leaving us standing alone.

  “Now what?” Desi asked. “I don’t think they’re going to let us take any of the decorations home with us today.”

  “I don’t think so either.” I glanced toward the front yard where my truck was parked. “They’ve taken everything from the shed out of my truck too, in case it contained any clues. I sure hope they aren’t keeping everything for long.” The haunted house was scheduled to open in a little over two weeks, and if we didn’t get Angela’s stuff back in time, I didn’t think the decorations I could buy at the local department store were going to cut it. We’d be the laughingstock of all of Ericksville if all our haunted house had was a few paper skeletons and peeled-grape eyeballs.

  “It’ll be ok.” She gave me a quick hug. “And if they don’t return the decorations in time, we’ll figure it out together.”

  I wasn’t positive she was right, but at this point, I appreciated the reassurance. “Thanks. Should we go home now?” I gestured to all the decorations strewn across the grass. “I feel bad leaving these here.”

  “There’s nothing we can do. Besides, they belong to Angela. She can make arrangements with the police to get everything returned in time for the haunted house. You’re responsible for the actual event, not for the decorations. Leave that to her,” Desi said firmly.

  “Ok.” I walked toward the front yard, with Desi following me. “I’ll see you for dinner? You and the kids are still coming over, right?”

  “Yep. Tomàs has to work, but I’ve got all the veggies for the taco and burrito bar in my fridge. I’ll see you at six.”