A Ghostly Undertaking

by Tonya Kappes

  “You need an update.”

  “Update?”

  “I think the funeral thing isn’t your problem. It’s your appearance.”

  “I thought I heard a car door shut.” Granny had pulled open the white double doors and waved me inside the large tan-­walled entryway, which smelled of fresh paint. “Come in, come in!”

  “You’ve redecorated!” I said, looking around.

  “She didn’t waste any time painting over my red walls.” Ruthie scowled. She walked around with her mouth open, almost in shock at the changes Granny had already done. “I bet I wasn’t even cold when she moved my stuff out.”

  I wasn’t going to tell Ruthie, but the changes did make the place a little more modern.

  “What do you think, honey?” Pride shown on Granny’s face. “I took out all the old-­fogey junk and I’m going to sell it!” She clasped her hands in delight.

  “Sell it?” Ruthie screamed, and rushed to Granny’s side. “She can’t do that! Tell her that she can’t sell my things.”

  Dang! I had completely forgotten to ask Ruthie who her next of kin was. I opened my notebook and jotted down Ask Ruthie who her next of kin is.

  “Granny?” I shut the front door behind me and followed her into the front room that was used for a common space for the ­people staying at the inn. This happened to be my favorite room since it was where Granny kept fresh snacks out throughout the day.

  “Yes, honey?” Granny tucked in the edges of the black handkerchief she had tied neatly on her head, which was a sure sign she was in the cooking mood.

  I paused when I didn’t see the tray of cookies and crackers, and watched Granny sink into a huge stack of cream pillows on a new large brown couch. Her apron flew up in front and she smoothed it down.

  “Where is the old furniture?” The new sofa had replaced the old Victorian seating set that had been there for as long as I could remember. “Where’re the snacks?”

  “Where are my antiques?” Ruthie wrung her hands and walked the floor. Her jewelry clinked.

  “Sit still,” I whispered, tilting my head to the side so Granny wouldn’t hear me.

  “I am sitting, honey.” Granny’s face tightened. “Are you okay?”

  “Yes.”

  “No! You tell her that you are talking to me, Ruthie Sue Payne.” Ruthie pounded her fist in the air. “Ooh, I’d love to get my hands on her!”

  “I bet you would.” I rolled my eyes.

  “What?” Granny stood up, walked over to me and put her hand on my head as if she was checking for a fever. “I think I need to call Doc Clyde.”

  “No!” I stepped back. “That is the last thing you need to do.”

  “What is going on with you?” Granny moseyed back over to the couch and flopped down.

  Do I tell her or not? I bit the corner of my lip. I walked around the room, taking in all the new items. The red velvet curtains had been replaced by baby-­blue floor-­to-­ceiling drapes, making the windows appear larger. The room definitely looked more inviting.

  “Ask her where my things are.” Ruthie stood over Granny on the verge of tears. I could only imagine how she felt, coming into a home that she’d owned—­well, co-­owned—­for years and it had all been changed.

  “I’m not asking her,” I said through gritted teeth.

  “That’s it.” Granny jumped to her feet and rushed out the door into the hallway. “I’m going to get you a cup of tea before I call Doc Clyde.”

  “Wait!” I called after her. She turned around. “What did you do with all the antiques? I might be able to use them at the funeral home.”

  “You don’t want that junk.” She shooed me off with her hand. “Besides, I buried them deep in that old attic. Don’t try to change the subject. I’m still thinking about calling the doc.”

  Granny didn’t wait a minute longer. She headed down the hall quicker than a jackrabbit.

  “See what you did?” I pointed to the empty hall. “Now she thinks I’ve got a case of the ‘Funeral Trauma.’ ”

  “Let’s go get my antiques.”

  “If you think I’m going in that creepy old attic, you are crazy.” I shook my head. The attic was the scariest place on the earth. There were no lights and no windows. The only way to get to it was through Ruthie’s room. In the closet was a door with a skeleton-­key lock. No way was I going up there.

  I darted down the hallway to the kitchen to try to redeem myself. Granny was fishing around the refrigerator and pulled out a pitcher of tea as I walked in.

  “You are either going to have to fix this ‘Funeral Trauma’ by going to see Doc Clyde and getting a new medicine or learn how to hide your crazy.” Granny had a way with words. “I won’t be having all of Sleepy Hollow talk about my crazy granddaughter. We are true Southern women, so start acting like one.”

  “I’m not crazy,” I growled and sat down at the farm table in the middle of the kitchen and sniffed. I was right. Granny was cooking and something good too, making me regret stopping for a burger. “I’m not the Raines the town is going to be talking about.”

  “What do you mean?” Granny opened the glass door on the corner cabinet where she kept her special tea glasses and grabbed one. She flicked the crushed ice button on the refrigerator door and filled the glass to the rim.

  “Sheriff Ross stopped by the funeral home.” I watched the ice melt as she poured the tea in the glass. “And it wasn’t to visit Ruthie.”

  Granny placed the glass in front of me and eased down on the bench across from me.

  “Did he come for a social call?” She raised her eyebrows up and down in a va-va-voom sort of way.

  “No.” There was no way Jack was ever going to pay me a social call with the case of crazy that I had. “He was asking all sorts of questions about Ruthie and how she died.”

  “She fell!” Granny smacked the table.

  “Can you remember anything out of the ordinary from that day?” I eased into my line of questioning. “Did she limp? Was she feeling ill?”

  “How would I know? I stayed as far away from that woman as I could.”

  “When you got home from . . .”

  “The doctor.”

  I pulled out the small notepad I had put in my pocket to take notes.

  “The doctor, you found her at the bottom of the steps?” Check to see if Granny was at the doctor’s, I wrote on the notepad.

  “Facedown.” Granny nodded. “I told Jack . . . er . . . Sheriff Ross, everything I knew.”

  “She’s lying!” Ruthie rushed to my side. “She doing that eye-­twitch thing she does when she lies.”

  “Eye twitch?” I said out loud, and looked at Granny. Sure enough, her left eye was twitching like it had its own heartbeat.

  Granny lifted her hand to her eye.

  “I do have an eye twitch every once in a while.” She spread her eye lid apart like the motion was going to get rid of the twitch.

  “Go on.” Ruthie coaxed me. “Ask her something you know is a lie.”

  I took a drink of tea. “Granny, do you remember my frog you babysat when my parents took me on vacation when I was seven?”

  “Yes. Why?” Her eyes narrowed in suspicion. “What does this have to do with crazy old Ruthie?”

  Ruthie held her fists up like she was Muhammad Ali. “Let me at her!”

  Ignoring Ruthie, I proceeded with my questioning to see if Granny was going to tell me the truth.

  “How did it die again?” Not that a frog was the greatest pet in the world. But that was the only pet I was allowed to have. My parents thought owning a cat or dog in the funeral home was not appropriate for the clients. My dad worried the dog would be barking during the ser­vices, while Mom worried that cat hair would be all over the caskets. A frog it was.

  I clearly remember we got home from vacation, my fro
g was not in his glass aquarium. Granny told me the frog had died. Years later, out of meanness, Charlotte told me Granny had let the frog go because she couldn’t stand it being kept captive.

  “I have no idea.” Granny folded her hands and put them on the table. Her left eye twitched. “I got up to feed it and it was a goner.”

  “See! I told you!” Ruthie pointed.

  “Why are you asking about that silly frog?” Granny asked. Her eyes widened as she looked over my shoulder toward the oven. “My casserole!” She got up and brushed her hands down her apron before she walked over to the oven.

  Smoke poured out when she opened the door. I could never recall a time Granny had burned anything. Burned casserole for first time, I wrote in the notepad to remind myself to mentally go back through our conversation and see exactly where Granny had gone mushy-­brained and forgotten about the casserole.

  “Child, you caused me to forget all about my chicken-­and-­green-­bean casserole.” She waved the oven mitt in front of her face to clear the smoke. Not only was the food as black as night, so was the dish.

  Granny didn’t bother with trying to save any of it. She dumped the entire thing in the sink.

  “Who was that for?” I asked. Granny only made that particular dish for certain occasions.

  “I had planned on taking it to Ruthie’s funeral tomorrow.”

  Yep, all good Southern women, whether they liked you or not, brought food to a funeral.

  “She knows I can’t stand chicken-­and-­green-­bean casserole.” Ruthie pinched her nose as if with a clothespin. “She always wanted to make it for the ­people staying at the inn, but I never let her. Harrumph.”

  “Which reminds me.” Granny’s burnt food brought me back to the real reason I was here. “Jack seems to believe you know more about Ruthie’s death than you are letting on.”

  “He didn’t say that to me.” She hurried around her kitchen. There was definitely something going on in her head, because she was doing a good job of ignoring me.

  “He told me that he told you to get a lawyer.”

  “He did? Hmm. I don’t recall.” Granny looked up to the ceiling as if she were really thinking about it. But I knew better. Granny really should have been an actress.

  “Granny?” I needed her to look at me.

  “What?” She stopped and turned. Her eye was twitching again.

  “Lie!” Ruthie screamed and pointed.

  “He served me a warrant.” I rubbed my head. It was beginning to hurt. Trying to keep up with two conversations at the same time was exhausting.

  “He arrested you?” She gasped.

  “No.” I shook my head. “The warrant was to stop Ruthie’s funeral until he investigates her suspicious death a little further.”

  “She fell!” Granny untied the apron and threw it on the table. No eye twitch this time.

  Changing the subject at this point was a good idea. Granny was getting irritated not only by my line of questioning, but by the fact that her casserole was burnt. She didn’t seem to be worried about Ruthie’s funeral being stopped. She didn’t question me any further. Nor did she seem to care that Jack thought she might be a suspect.

  Regardless, another ten minutes of idle chitchat and I said good-­bye. There was a little sneaky suspicion in my gut that Granny would be making me a visit with some more information that she wasn’t quite willing to give up . . . yet, anyway.

  “I’m telling you she is hiding something.” Ruthie tapped her kitty slipper on the passenger-­side floorboard. “I could always tell when Zula Fae was lying by that darned ol’ eye twitch of hers.”

  I glanced in my rearview mirror to make sure no one, including Jack, was watching me before I spoke.

  “I can’t get over it.” I shook my head, keeping my eyes on the road. “I have never noticed that little quirk about Granny before.”

  There was no denying it. Granny was hiding something, but what?

  “I have no doubt that she found you facedown at the bottom of the steps and believes that you fell.” I recalled Granny’s eyes when I asked her about Ruthie and there was no eye twitch. I pulled the hearse in the garage behind the funeral home.

  Both of us walked in silence going into the funeral home. Ruthie looked like she was still contemplating what I had said about Granny believing Ruthie fell. If Ruthie’s theory about Granny’s eye twitch was true, Granny was telling the truth. Whether Ruthie liked it or not, Zula Fae Raines Payne did not push her down the steps.

  Chapter 5

  Last night my mind wouldn’t slow down long enough for me to get any sort of sleep. With Ruthie’s little bombshell of being murdered, Jack stopping the funeral, and Granny as a potential suspect, my mind was reeling with how I was going to solve all of these problems.

  During the midnight hours, I went over my notes several times. I had nothing written down that was going to give me any clues about who murdered her. All I had was a bunch of questions with no answers.

  There was one person who did have the answers. Ruthie.

  Who was her next of kin? Did she have any fights with anyone recently? Did she know of anyone who wanted to get rid of her . . . permanently?

  Dom, dom, dom. Chopin’s “Funeral March” chimed on my cell. I didn’t recognize the number and quietly prayed it wasn’t about another dead body. The thought of a real serial killer didn’t make me feel better. Besides, I didn’t have time to do another funeral. My time needed to be spent getting Granny off the hook and Ruthie to the other side.

  “Hello?” I answered.

  “Is it true that Ruthie Sue Payne’s funeral has been put on hold?” Mayor May frantically questioned me. I was positive she wasn’t winking and waving on the other end of the phone.

  Funeral! I smacked my head and looked up at the clock on my office wall. It was ten minutes till show time and last night I had completely forgotten to put in a late-­night call to the Sleepy Hollow Journal so they would publish the cancellation of Ruthie’s funeral in the paper for all the citizens to see. I set my notebook on my desk and got up.

  “Yes, Mayor May,” I confirmed and peeked around the door into Charlotte’s office, where she was talking to a grieving family about some arrangements. Charlotte glanced up, and I motioned for her to come here and mouthed now.

  I grabbed the warrant off my desk and clutched the papers.

  “Was anyone going to say something?” Mayor May was not happy. “I am a busy woman. And I would have wasted not only my time, but the taxpayers’ money, if I had not run into Sheriff Ross.”

  If she already knew, then why did she call me? To let me know that I screwed up again? Regardless, I’m glad she did. It prevented an even bigger mess.

  “I’m sorry, Mayor.” All I could do was apologize. The wrath of Charlotte might put me right next to Ruthie if I didn’t come up with a solution . . . and fast!

  The mayor ranted and raved a few more seconds about how this would have never happened if my parents and Granny were still running the funeral home. She threatened to call my parents, as if they were going to ground me or something, before she slammed down her phone.

  Now I was beginning to realize why my parents took early retirement and moved to Florida, leaving Charlotte and me to run the place.

  I rushed into Charlotte’s office without knocking, without thinking.

  “Oh.” I stopped and looked at the two gentlemen in there. They were dressed in black suits and each of them had a black briefcase on his lap. Each looking more official than the other. And both serious.

  “Yes, Emma Lee?” Charlotte acted like I had ruined her life by just breathing.

  “Can I please see you out here?” I pointed behind me into the hallway.

  “Excuse me.” Charlotte apologized to the gentlemen like I probably should have. She stood up and planted a smile on her face. She rubbed her hand
s together. “I’ll be right back.”

  “This better be good, for you to call me out of a potential client,” Charlotte whispered in my ear. She wasn’t happy either.

  “Who are they?” I asked.

  “Emma Lee, I’m in the middle of my job. Is there something that you need?”

  “You are going to kill me.” I glanced over Charlotte’s shoulder. Ruthie was standing behind her. I handed Charlotte the wadded-­up paper with the Sleepy Hollow Sheriff’s logo.

  We were familiar with the sheriff’s logo because some families wanted records of a loved one’s autopsy and it required a warrant.

  “Oh my God, Emma.” Her brow creased with worry. “The next thing out of your mouth, I pray, is that you called the Journal last night after this happened.”

  Slowly I shook my head.

  “Ahh, oh,” Ruthie said, and backed away from Charlotte. Nervously, she picked at the edges of her gray hair, which hung loosely, perfectly framing her petite face. Her bracelets jingled around her small wrists.

  For a split second, I thought Charlotte’s head was going to spin around and fly right off her shoulders.

  But it didn’t.

  “You have no idea how important it is for us to not make any mistakes.” She closed her eyes. She spoke in an odd, yet gentle tone, “I’m going to go to the bathroom to compose myself. When I come out, you better have a typed note on the door and be ready to answer any questions from the good citizens of this fine community.”

  She turned on her heels, her long, red, luscious curls flung in the air, landing perfectly on her back as she made her way to the restroom.

  “You better watch out for her,” Ruthie warned and gazed at Charlotte with a bland half smile. “She’s the spitting image of your grandfather, with the wit and charm of Zula.”

  Ruthie was right. Zula and Charlotte had Southern charm with a venomous tongue. Everything was great, if everything went their way. You better watch out if things didn’t. Business dealings were no different.

  Charlotte didn’t care about poor Ruthie’s body in a freezer for God knew how long. All she cared about was the fact the town was going to see this as a big mistake on the funeral home’s part, which the mayor had already confirmed. Now it was my job to figure out how to fix it.