Organize Your Corpses

by Mary Jane Maffini

  “Have a seat, Charlotte Adams,” Miss Henley said.

  I sat. After a minute I decided it might be safe to set my briefcase down. I kept my jacket on, since Henley House seemed even colder inside. The lovely smell of wood smoke sure hadn’t come from here.

  Miss Henley handed me a cup and saucer.

  “There’s no milk or sugar,” she said

  “Thank you. I’ll take it as it is.” Hot was all that mattered.

  I reached into the briefcase for my red notebook and the Celtic-patterned pewter pen I’ve had since my sixteenth birthday. I opened the notebook to the page I’d already ear-marked as Henley House Project and clicked my lucky pen confidently. Call me a young fogy, but I prefer my connection to paper over the benefits of electronics.

  Miss Henley sat on the other chair. “Here is the situation. I have always been the poor Henley relation. I’m not complaining. I had a career I enjoyed. I have invested wisely and I have a good pension. My wretched cousin Randolph ran my grandfather’s home into the ground. Now see what I have to deal with.”

  I had a flashback of how Miss Henley dealt with people she didn’t much care for. I felt a flicker of sympathy for the late Randolph Henley. He was better off dead than facing his cousin. “I can recommend a good hauler to drag the garbage to the landfill,” I said.

  “It’s not that easy.”

  “I think—”

  “You think wrong, Charlotte Adams. Randolph is laughing at me from beyond the grave.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Miss Henley gave me a triumphant grin. “I mean he set me up. So if I followed your advice, I’d be in real trouble, wouldn’t I?”

  I sensed I was about to lose a point. “Why?”

  “Are you going to let me finish or not?”

  “Go ahead.” I tried to sound magnanimous.

  “Randolph was born nasty. Always playing mean games on the other children. He could ruin any celebration. Thanksgiving. Birthday parties. Christmas was his specialty.”

  “What did he do?”

  “Toys disappeared. Whatever you cared about. Your shoes. Your gifts. Your puppy.”

  I gasped. My sympathy for Randolph evaporated.

  Miss Henley took a minute to pull herself together. “He was an evil child and he grew up to become a wicked man.”

  I had a hazy memory of a shriveled man in a stained three-piece suit and a yellow bow tie. Suit and tie were always dotted with stains. For sure he’d been a sloppy eater and a pack rat. But given Miss Henley’s critical nature, I gave him the benefit of the doubt on the evil label.

  “Are you listening?” Miss Henley said.

  “Of course,” I said.

  “There are papers I need. Documents. Randolph has hidden them.”

  “What kind of papers?”

  “Legal documents. Several items. Not necessarily valuable, but of great historical significance.”

  “Well, if you tell me exactly what we’re searching for . . .”

  A flash of steel from the grey eyes. “If I knew what and where, I wouldn’t need your services, would I?”

  “How do you know he hid these documents?”

  “For reasons I don’t wish to go into, I believe that Randolph was playing a very dangerous game. He had the use of this property for his lifetime. In trust. After his death, the property was to pass to me.”

  “Also in trust?”

  “No. I am the next oldest and inherit it outright. My cousin Olivia Henley Simonett is the only other relative left. She’s richer than God, so Grandfather didn’t feel she needed more money. And rightly so.” She sniffed. “I plan to transfer the deed to the Woodbridge Historical Society, once we’ve found the documents. Of course, we’ll have to ensure it’s in better shape than this. The Henley name is attached to it.”

  “Do these documents have to do with your inheritance?”

  “All that should matter to you is that I require them.”

  Right. I wrote down “missing documents???” and left it at that. “So to recap, you want me to recommend a way to eliminate this chaos while searching for documents that can’t be described or discussed.”

  “I want you to find them.”

  Something snakelike brushed against my ankle and I screamed.

  “Have you never seen a cat before?” Miss Henley said. “Another miserable legacy from Randolph, but hardly worth shrieking over.”

  I’ll decide what’s worth shrieking over, I thought. “Do you have any idea where these, um, documents might be?”

  “They’ll be someplace inconvenient. Possibly dangerous.”

  “Ah. In that case, I imagine your cousin planted them in the newspapers.”

  “That sounds like him.”

  “Maximum inconvenience.”

  “I see that you’re getting the point.”

  “Of course, he might have put the newspapers here to slow your search. Not to mention providing a handy fire hazard. I recommend you deal with the newspapers first. They impede access to other potential hiding places. I’ll hire a team to comb through the papers, carefully. Since the team members won’t know what to look for, I’ll get two people to check each newspaper. Then we can discard them.”

  She frowned. “Not until I have the documents.”

  “No problem. After they’ve been checked, we’ll stick them in temporary storage. When the documents turn up, we dispose of the newspapers.”

  Miss Henley gave her familiar snort. “As long as I find what I want in time.”

  “With the papers removed, we can move on to the clothing, concentrating on pockets and linings. We’ll have easy access to furniture. We’ll check under tables, beneath beds and sofas. We’ll hunt for items sewn into cushions or upholstery.”

  Miss Henley brightened. “Sewn into cushions. I hadn’t thought of that.”

  “Next, we’ll check loose wallpaper and examine the backing of paintings and photos. I’ll get the artwork valued, if you want.”

  She sniffed. “And if the documents aren’t found?”

  “At some point, we’d inspect the china, crystal, and silver, if there is any.”

  “Of course there is. Randolph kept all the family heirlooms. After all, this was the Henley House.”

  “Then the china and silver might be worth a lot. You don’t have a security system here. You should get one or have valuables moved until your search is completed. Before they’ve been removed, we’ll look between the plates, in the felt wraps for the silverware, inside the coffee and tea services, under trays.”

  “You’ve done this type of job before?”

  “It’s my job.” Maybe not exactly like this.

  “Not that organizing drivel,” she said. “I mean searching for missing documents.”

  Well, I’d read enough Nancy Drew in my childhood to get the drift. “It’s all a matter of logic and planning.”

  “Fine. You’re hired.”

  “Great,” I said, jotting down the requirements for sorting and disposal. “I’ll draw up an itemized contract with a timetable for your signature tomorrow morning.”

  “Then you can start immediately.”

  “As soon as you’ve signed the contract.”

  Miss Henley reached down and picked up her handbag. She snapped it open and extracted her checkbook. I watched as she wrote out a check, in my name. She waved it under my nose. “A retainer. To engage your services. It should be enough to get you started.”

  I said, “First, we need to get a liability insurance rider set up to cover the site. I wouldn’t want one of my sorters or movers to get hurt.”

  “You’re already stalling. You’ve got two weeks to get it done. No more. You can name your price, but that deadline holds. Take it or leave it, Charlotte Adams.”

  You’d think, at some point, I would have asked myself why anyone would want this job. I imagined my mother’s voice, shrieking, “Wait. What’s the catch?” But who listens to her mother?

  “It’s a deal.” I slid
the check into my briefcase. Now why didn’t that make me feel all warm and fuzzy?

  Write out your next day’s to-do list before you go to bed at night.

  2

  By the time I deposited Miss Henley’s check through the ATM on Hudson Street, I was in desperate need of black and white fudge from Kristee’s Kandees, which was right around the corner. But, oh crap, Kristee’s was unaccountably closed. That was very bad. The meeting with Miss Henley had depleted my serotonin levels. Black and white fudge would have raised them. I formed Plan B, which was to head straight for Hannaford’s and the candy aisle. But that was before the line of police cars shot by with roof lights flashing and sirens wailing, splashing my clean car and taking my mind off fudge.

  I kept my eyes open in case I spotted trouble in the form of the upturned nose and expensive blonde hair of Pepper Monahan, née O’Day. At home, Pepper had been Mrs. Nick Monahan for the past two years. And about Nick Monahan, the less said the better. At work, Pepper had been recently promoted to detective sergeant in the Woodbridge Police. Once she’d been my very best friend in the world. But that was then.

  The cop cars were clustered around a battered baby blue Honda Civic, crumpled nose first into the guardrail. I swung past, keeping my head low. Another patrol car, lights flashing, blocked the intersection. So much for getting to Hannaford’s.

  Plan C. I turned left to avoid the problem, drove around the block, and pulled up in front of Tang’s Convenience. I was grateful that attempts at trendy redevelopment uptown hadn’t changed Tang’s much. It had ten times more stuff than you’d expect to find in a store that size, plus many intriguing concessions to the changing demographic in Woodbridge. Inside, I picked out some nice navel oranges and headed to the back for the ice cream. I’d just turned by the ten-pound sacks of basmati rice when a guy with light brown hair and sad eyes careened into me. We both claimed to be sorry and kept going. I ignored him when I arrived at the cooler and found him there ahead of me. I was angling to reach the Ben & Jerry’s when he fumbled a tub of ice cream. I yelped in surprise when it landed on my foot. I teetered on the four-inch heels.

  “Gosh, I’m sorry,” my attacker said. He grabbed my arm just in time to keep me from toppling backward into a detergent display.

  I latched onto his leather jacket as I tried to get my balance. Maybe I was just thrown off by a man who said “gosh.” I found that sort of charming. Now that I got closer, his eyes were more like a shy woodland creature’s. Large, dark, and vulnerable. My weakness.

  Here was a man who would easily pass inspection by any of my girlfriends. Even Sally would have approved. I knew that his simple leather jacket and faded jeans were the current trend in the city. He was carrying a camera case. That seemed interesting.

  His forehead wrinkled. “I don’t usually throw ice cream at unsuspecting women. Or not Neapolitan anyway.”

  “These things happen,” I said with as much dignity as the situation permitted. “Especially with Neapolitan.”

  He managed a lopsided grin that went straight to my knees.

  I blushed.

  How dumb was that? Hadn’t I sworn never to think about another man after my craptacular engagement? If not, I certainly should have.

  He picked up the tub of ice cream and said, “No broken toes?”

  “My feet are fine.”

  I watched him amble away and wondered where my notorious wit was when I needed it. My feet are fine? Not that it mattered because here was a guy who made my knees melt on first sight, so naturally I’d already spotted his wedding band. I didn’t need a man in my life. Not even one who fumbled ice cream and said “gosh” and looked really good in those faded jeans. This jerk had a wife he should have been thinking about.

  Five minutes later, I headed to the counter with two tubs of Ben & Jerry’s New York Super Fudge Chunk ice cream and a fistful of Mars bars.

  I smiled bravely at Mrs. Tang. She never acknowledges me even though her daughter Margaret has been my friend since grade school. Margaret has never been big on small talk either.

  “Hang on a minute.” I scurried back to the cooler and grabbed a third tub of ice cream. I believe it pays to be prepared.

  I slid my business card across the counter along with my cash. “Mrs. Tang, can you tell Margaret I’m back in town? Ask her to call me, please.”

  Like me, Margaret had returned to Woodbridge. She was supposed to be setting up a law practice, but she wasn’t in the phone book yet. Mrs. Tang’s expression remained unchanged. This was the third card I’d left with her. Three times lucky maybe.

  “Already paid,” Mrs. Tang said.

  “What?”

  “Man paid.” Mrs. Tang pointed toward the window. I saw Mr. Gosh I’m Unavailable amble out of sight.

  I left swinging the plastic bag and whistling bravely.

  On the sidewalk, I froze. There were now seven patrol cars at the corner of River and Hudson. I didn’t think we had that many in Woodbridge. I spotted an unmarked black sedan with a snap-on round red light. Sure enough, Pepper stepped out, thin as a whippet and wearing a form-fitting black coat that made her seem more like a model than a detective. She glanced around elegantly.

  I wasn’t about to find out what was going on. On a day where I’d had to deal with Miss Henley, I couldn’t face Pepper without a chocolate fix. Call me chicken, but I slipped discreetly into the alley next to Tang’s, unwrapped a Mars bar, and ate it in two bites. I waited where I could see but not be seen. I stayed there until Pepper disappeared down the block, accompanied by a cluster of uniformed officers. They kept their hands on the butts of their weapons. But whatever they were doing down at the end of Hudson Street was none of my business.

  I made a dash to my car, made a first-rate U-turn, and raced like hell for home. I took some mean-spirited pleasure thinking that Pepper probably couldn’t chug-a-lug New York Super Fudge Chunk with impunity and keep that figure.

  Seemed only fair.

  I pulled into the driveway and felt the warm glow that comes from getting home on a wet November workday when it’s already dark in the late afternoon. The pale yellow wood-frame Victorian with the gingerbread trim was starting to feel like my own place. A welcoming light burned in the window of my tiny, perfect second-floor apartment.

  I spotted a face in the first-floor bay window as I parked and struggled out of the car with my purchases and briefcase. Dim streetlights reflected off rimless glasses. The glasses suited Jack Reilly. They were just right for his cute old-young-guy look. Perfect for a onetime dweeb with an equal interest in nineteenth-century European philosophy, high-end racing bicycles, and animals in need of rescue. Normally, I would have loved to stop and chat with Jack. But I needed a few minutes alone to calm my spirit. I planned to put my medicine cabinet in order. Or maybe fluff my towels.

  I wasn’t fast enough. Jack’s door swung open. He leaned his six-foot-two lanky body casually against the frame. Behind him, where anyone else would have living room furniture, I could see the stock from the cycle shop he was planning to set up. I reminded myself that Jack is my good buddy and landlord, not my client, and the state of his living room is none of my concern. Who knows? Maybe hanging tires from ceiling hooks is a cutting-edge trend in interior design.

  “By any chance, could I interest you in a dog?” he said.

  I wasn’t fooled by his expression of extreme innocence. From behind my door on the second floor came the unmistakable sounds of the last dogs Jack had tried to interest me in.

  “I’m trying to cut down. But thanks for asking.”

  “It’s not a terribly large dog. Not huge,” he said.

  “Nope.”

  “Harmless, affectionate, well behaved.” He leaned over and called up the stairs.

  “Actually, I’m good for dogs right at the moment,” I said over my shoulder.

  Jack was undeterred. “The kind of dog who could save your life in an emergency.”

  Like what? A St. Bernard? “It’s so not happening,
Jack.” I scurried up the stairs and stuck my key in the lock. I felt a bit silly with a brand-new, high-end dead bolt now that I was back in Woodbridge where a fender bender brings out seven cop cars and a police detective.

  Jack’s size-thirteen Nikes thumped on the stairs after me, although it was hard to hear above the yipping. I opened the door and braced myself for the assault. Two small velvety creatures launched themselves at me, their metronome tails working hard. Truffle, the black mini dachshund, and Sweet Marie, the tan one, were ready with homecoming kisses.

  Unconditional love. I needed that.

  The phone screamed. Naturally, I reached for the receiver. A lifetime of conditioning is a curse.

  “Are you all right?” Sally shrieked.

  I stood in my tiny front entrance, with the door open to the stairs, holding the phone with one hand, while the dogs leaped joyously, tugging at my grocery essentials. I dropped my house keys. The bag from Tang’s followed. The dogs went after the spilled goodies.

  “Can I call you back? This isn’t the perfect time. You two leave those Mars bars. I mean it.”

  “Come on, you must have been traumatized. Remember how terrified we used to be? That hideous old bat. I hope you told her to take her stinky old project straight to hell.”

  “I’m not traumatized and I am taking on the project.”

  “How could you after everything she did to us?”

  “Can we talk later? I just got in.”

  The fact was I didn’t think I could explain to Sally why I wanted this. It wasn’t just the potential media exposure. It was Miss Henley herself. Sure I’d been terrified of her. Everyone had been. But I’d been impressed too. Miss Henley’s classroom had been a model of order, her desk a work of art. Her lesson plans were done a month in advance; color-coded highlighting illustrated her board notes. Her files were the same size, with crisply printed labels. She was never late, never flustered, and never chaotic. I was sure she’d never missed deadlines or had awkward man trouble, like say, for instance, my mother. I couldn’t imagine that Miss Henley’s underwear ever turned up draped over lamps. She understood the value of written goals and milestones. And she always wore such lovely shoes.