Grim and Bear It

by Paula Lester

  Tessa shook her head. “I’m sorry again about your loss.”

  “Yeah, well, save your sorries for somebody who can use them. I don’t need them.” He disappeared down the hall toward the bedroom.

  Tessa slipped out of the apartment.

  She wondered what Mark Sanborn was looking for—was it the money he’d told the casino about?

  As she headed to her apartment, she felt guilty about Mark and Chet’s relationship. She and Cheryl had their differences, but she couldn’t imagine being glad if her mom had died.

  Something about it all just didn’t add up.

  Chapter 9

  Tessa took a sip of coffee, winced, and tossed the Styrofoam cup in the garbage can in her tiny office. Four cups was probably too much for one morning. She was definitely channeling her nervous energy into sipping away, but her heart pounded like it was trying to escape from her chest. She opted for water to avoid some kind of cardiac event.

  Movement through the doorway caught her attention. Gloria passed through the lobby, heading toward her own office.

  Tessa logged out of the assignment system, which was blank for the rest of her day—maybe for the rest of forever until she caught Sanborn’s soul. No new jobs meant no groceries. Maybe her neighbor Abi would take pity and feed Tessa some pizza rolls or something.

  Tessa pranced out of her office and through the lobby, hoping to avoid her mother’s glare but wanting to chat with her new favorite coworker.

  Gloria’s office was actually office-sized, unlike Tessa’s janitor closet space. Tessa leaned on the doorjamb and admired the décor. The other reaper had eclectic taste. There was a mixture of modern and rustic that somehow worked together. Bright, Picasso-like paintings dotted the walls, but the desk was solid oak, heavy and sturdy. Instead of a chair, Gloria bounced on an exercise ball while she woke her computer screen with the touch of the mouse.

  She glanced up, and Tessa marveled at the perfectly arranged, long false eyelashes under a coat of sparkly silver eyeshadow. “Hey. Any luck finding your guy yet?” she asked.

  “I found him.”

  “And?”

  “When he saw me, he took off.”

  Gloria’s eyes widened. “Oh, man. You, my friend, have a runner.”

  Tessa groaned. She crossed a luxurious beige shag area rug to sink into a neon green futon.

  “Yeah, I figured that out. But why is he running from me? I mean, it isn’t like he can get his life back, right? He can’t avoid passing to the other side forever, can he?”

  Gloria glanced away, not meeting Tessa’s eyes like her answer wasn’t the one Tessa was looking for.

  “Shouldn’t he want to get on with things? Move on to the next phase of his existence or whatever?”

  “He probably will at some point,” Gloria replied. “But, right now, it seems like he has something important keeping him here. Important to him, anyway.”

  “What should I do?”

  Gloria shrugged. “You’re going to have to keep trying to tag him. Where’d you see him?”

  “The casino. He was hanging out by the blackjack table.”

  “You don’t say?” Gloria grinned and sat back in her chair. “So, either he just can’t get enough gambling, even after he can’t really do it anymore or . . .” She tapped the desk thoughtfully and then brightened. “Or someone there owes him something.” She leaned forward and tapped the keyboard a few times. “And look at that! My next assignment is due to choke at the casino’s buffet in two hours.”

  “Seriously?”

  Gloria stood and gestured for Tessa to follow. “It won’t hurt me to be a little early. Let’s go see what we can find out.”

  Tessa leaped up and trailed after Gloria. Her heart rate had slowed back to normal, and she was glad for the company of the experienced reaper.

  Once they were settled into the car and heading out of town, Tessa snuck a glance at Gloria, who had donned a pair of designer sunglasses that were huge, round, and gorgeous.

  “I love your makeup,” she ventured. “Where do you get it?”

  Gloria shot her an amused look. “From the pharmacy.” She laughed.

  “Do you really?”

  “I buy the cheapest stuff available and use online tutorials to make it look good.”

  “Wow! That’s amazing.”

  “Oh, it’s no big deal.”

  “I can never get mine to look anywhere near as good as yours.”

  “Not with that attitude! I’ll help teach you if you’re interested. We can have a makeup tutorial night. With wine. Obviously.”

  “Obviously.” Tessa beamed. “That sounds great!”

  Tessa very much doubted even Gloria could teach her the technicalities of applying makeup or that it would look as good on her. And she knew she wasn’t the type to apply it every day. But hanging out with Gloria sounded like a lot of fun, and if she had to put up with some makeup woes to do it, then so be it.

  When they got to the casino, Gloria reapplied her tangerine-colored lipstick before they went in.

  The cigarette smoke hit Tessa just as hard as the last time, but it didn’t take as long for her to adjust to it. The reapers wandered among the slot machines, Gloria drawing people’s attention in a way Tessa never could.

  When they passed the first room containing table games, Tessa spotted Ricardo there playing blackjack again. She nudged Gloria, who shrugged and followed Tessa’s lead. The women flanked the man, who wore a green version of the casino tank top and held a cigar in one hand. His bushy eyebrows danced, almost touching the fringe of his toupee as he tried to look at them both at once.

  “Well, hello, there.” He puffed out his chest and looked smug, as though beautiful women flocked to him daily. “How you ladies doing?”

  He looked closer at Tessa. “Hey, don’t I know you? Yeah, I do. From that restaurant downtown, right?”

  “Not anymore.” Tessa sighed. “Hey, my friend and I noticed you seem to do pretty well at this.” She nodded toward the cards on the table. “Can you teach us?”

  “Oh, yeah. Yeah, sure.” He seemed surprised but shook it off fast. “You came to the right place—the right man. I’ll tell you, the dealers here hate to see me coming.” He said the last part in a hushed tone, eyes darting toward the dealer, who smirked but didn’t correct him.

  “Great.” Gloria smiled and settled into a seat. “Teach away.”

  Ricardo launched into a detailed but convoluted explanation of the game of blackjack. Tessa didn’t pay a bit of attention. She knew the gist was to make twenty-one. Instead, she tried to appear interested while keeping an eye out for Sanborn’s spirit.

  “Who wants to try a hand?” Ricardo beamed at his pupils.

  “I’ll do it.” Gloria leaned forward and put a chip on her marker before the dealer tossed out some cards.

  As the other reaper played, Tessa leaned toward Ricardo and pointed at his shirt. “One of my neighbors used to wear these all the time. I didn’t realize they were from the casino.”

  “Who was your neighbor?”

  “Chet Sanborn.”

  Alarm flitted across his face. If Tessa hadn’t been watching closely, she might’ve missed it. He quickly rearranged his expression into sadness.

  “Oh, yeah, I knew him. It’s a bummer about what happened.” He seemed to be avoiding eye contact. “Do you . . . happen to know the cause of his death? The report I read didn’t say. Heart attack maybe?”

  Tessa shook her head. “Unfortunately, he didn’t die of natural causes.”

  “What does that mean? He have an accident or something?”

  “Someone killed him.”

  Ricardo nodded and tsked. “Ah. Can’t say as that I’m too surprised, really. If you’re going to make a living gambling, you have to hedge your bets. Get really good at one, maybe two things and stick with ‘em.”

  “Like blackjack!” Gloria screamed as her cards made twenty-one.

  Ricardo cheered and fist-pumped. “Way to go! Ha
! I’m quite the teacher, eh? But honestly, any putz can make twenty-one. The real trick is to know when to split and double down.”

  Tessa steered the conversation back to Sanborn. “So, you were saying Mr. Sanborn didn’t focus.”

  “Right. Chet tried to get a little bit into a lot of things instead of a lot into a few. He never got good at anything and lost a lot.” He shook his head. “Kind of a shame.”

  Gloria tapped the table with a well-manicured nail and said, “Hit me.”

  “Good, good!” Ricardo praised the reaper.

  “So, you think Mr. Sanborn was killed because of something to do with his gambling?” Tessa pressed, not wanting to lose the conversation thread again.

  Ricardo shrugged. “I can’t really say, but it wouldn’t shock me if he was.”

  “Did he owe people money?” Tessa knew he owed the casino, but this was her chance to find out about anyone else.

  He took a long pull from his cigar. “Everybody under the sun.” He gave Tessa a serious look and lowered his voice. “You can’t be doing that, you know? Borrowing money from folks and not paying it back. Leaves a bad taste in people’s mouths. We’re all just trying to get by, you know?”

  Both she and Gloria nodded in agreement.

  “None of us can afford to bleed out money, especially to support somebody else’s habit.”

  “Did Sanborn owe you money?”

  “You gotta double down on those.” Ricardo disregarded Tessa in favor of Gloria’s instruction.

  The dealer added a three to her eight. Gloria hit again to make twenty.

  Slowly, she turned toward him, expression serene. Her tone was cool but held a note of irritation. “My grandfather taught me to play blackjack when I couldn’t even see over this table. And I can tell you this—you could be doing a lot better than you are.”

  The dealer made seventeen and shoved a stack of chips beside Gloria’s. She pushed away from the table and stood.

  “Too bad for you, I have to go to work and don’t have time to teach you any of Granddad’s tips.” She winked and pushed her winnings toward Tessa. “You can have this.”

  Gloria started to leave and then stopped, glancing over her shoulder. “By the way. If I were you, I’d give up that horrible smoking habit. Your heart is getting tired of it.”

  Tessa wanted to ask Ricardo more about his relationship with Sanborn—maybe try to weasel out some information about how much money Chet had owed the other gambler. Ricardo seemed to have an attitude about Sanborn. Maybe even a motive.

  But her phone buzzed, and she took it out of her purse to read the text. It was from her mother: Come over for dinner. This roast is too big for just me.

  Tessa sighed. She wasn’t about to turn down free food. But an evening with her mother wasn’t the highest thing on her to-do list. Especially since she hadn’t caught Sanborn’s soul yet. She was pretty sure dinner would consist mainly of getting an earful from Cheryl.

  As if she hadn’t been good enough at parental lecturing, now she was also Tessa’s boss. Who knew if their relationship could survive the double dose of authoritarianism.

  She put away the phone and turned back toward Ricardo, but his attention was completely on the cards in his hand. The moment was gone.

  Tessa left the room, scrounging up the chips that Gloria had gifted her. Maybe she could buy some cat food. She made her way toward the dining room to find Gloria. She didn’t feel like walking back to town and decided she’d rather wait for the other reaper to finish up with her choker.

  As she skirted around slot machines, Tessa thought about what Ricardo had said. It jived with what Officer Stewart had let slip—that Chet Sanborn had a lot of enemies who may have wanted him dead. So far, Tessa knew Melinda Chino was one of them. And Ricardo himself seemed to have motive too. Maybe Mark Sanborn could even make the cut.

  How was she ever going to narrow down the list enough to figure out who the real culprit was? Because, even though Gloria had said things weren’t quite as dire as Cheryl made them out to be, Tessa knew she only had so much time before a horrible tear ruptured in the veil between worlds. Or, at the very least, before she lost her job.

  Chapter 10

  Even though Tessa’s mother wasn’t exactly the cookie baking, emotionally nurturing type, going to her childhood home for one of her favorite meals was comforting. Tessa parked Linda on the curb in front of the white colonial with black shutters and gazed at it for a moment.

  As always, memories and feelings came at her too fast to process. Happiness, warmth, safety, and anger rushed at her like an oncoming train. Mixed in there, overlying all of it for the past half a decade, was the pang of sadness that her father wouldn’t be opening the door as she walked up the steps to the porch. He always timed it like that.

  Tessa sighed and rang the doorbell, catching her breath when the front door opened. But, of course, it wasn’t Michael Randolph standing there, backlit by light from the living room, smiling and then running a hand through thick, dark hair. It was Cheryl. She leaned on the door frame and waited, moving aside to let her daughter enter.

  “I thought you had a key.”

  “Hello to you too, Mom.” Tessa dropped her purse on the bench in the foyer and breathed deeply. “Dinner smells great.”

  “It’s ready,” Cheryl said. “I just need to carry the platter to the dining room.”

  Tessa followed through the formal foyer with its brass-framed artwork and mirrors into the big modern kitchen that glittered with stainless steel and polished black and white tile. A platter of roast and vegetables sat on the black granite countertop, and Cheryl grabbed it before heading through another doorway into the formal dining room.

  “You changed the locks,” Tessa said in answer to her mother’s earlier question.

  “That was years ago.”

  Tessa knew it was years ago. But she didn’t visit often enough to warrant a key. Not since her dad passed.

  Even though she knew what the answer would be, Tessa asked, “Can’t we just eat at the kitchen table?”

  She cast a wistful glance at the wood table tucked into a kitchen alcove next to a huge bay window that looked out onto the front yard’s lovely landscaping. It was a homey, comforting spot that Cheryl never used for family meals.

  Sure enough, Tessa’s mother shook her head. “The dining room’s the proper place for dinner.”

  She headed into the room in question, which had always made Tessa feel uncomfortable because of its formality. It reminded her of times long past. Nights when she had a boy over and her father grilled him about sports and hobbies—about school if the boy showed any hint of not being good enough for daddy’s little girl.

  They never were good enough.

  The room was large, with oak wood floors and cream-colored walls. Paintings of food hung at intervals, and a long mahogany table, scrubbed with wood polish until you could see your reflection, stood in the center under a fancy chandelier that dripped with crystals.

  Cheryl set down the platter and waited for Tessa to get to her spot. They sat simultaneously. Tessa couldn’t contain a sigh as she looked at the place setting. The china was off-white with a delicate pink and blue flower pattern, and Tessa hated it. She preferred the blue everyday plates in the cupboard. Their chips and stains made her feel comfortable.

  How can home not feel like home?

  She reached for the red wine already poured at her place and took an unladylike gulp that drew a frown from Cheryl. “Sorry. Thanks for inviting me.”

  “Well, you’re my daughter. And, really, this is way too much food for just one person. You can take some leftovers home too.”

  That sounded great to Tessa. Cheryl may not look like a fifties housewife, but she was a fantastic cook. The roast would be melt in your mouth good, that went without saying.

  For a few minutes, the only sounds in the echoey dining room were utensils against plates as they served themselves and started eating. Tessa wasn’t disappointed. The f
ood was amazing. So much better than the Hot Pockets and ramen she’d gotten used to after losing her waitress job.

  Then she remembered something. “Wasn’t this Dad’s favorite?”

  Cheryl kept her eyes on her plate and nodded. “Yes. This and spaghetti.”

  Tessa chuckled. “Do you remember that time you asked him to make the noodles while you took a shower and he threw some against the wall to see if they were done?”

  “How could I forget? He threw a whole blob along with about a half-cup of boiling water.” Cheryl grinned, finally looking up. “He ruined the wallpaper.”

  “I helped him tear it off and repaint.” Tessa laughed at the memory.

  “Plus, the noodles were overdone and gooey, so we had to go out for dinner,” Cheryl finished, adding her own belly laugh to Tessa’s.

  The room seemed to lose some of its formal stiffness as they remembered Tessa’s dad’s antics.

  “He was always such a goofball.” Cheryl shook her head and picked up her fork, poking at a carrot.

  “Yeah. Dad was like the comedic relief around here.” Whenever you and I got too serious or dramatic, he was always good for a dad joke or some good old slapstick.”

  “Us? Get dramatic? Well, I never.” Cheryl grinned. “He used to say I had a flair for it. But he married me anyway.”

  The view of her mother blurred as a mist of tears jumped into Tessa’s eyes. “I miss him.”

  Cheryl’s face crumpled into a smile. “Me too.”

  Tessa tipped her head. “I’ve been wondering about something lately. Did Dad know what you do? I mean, what you really do? Or did he think you were just a life insurance agent?”

  “He knew.” Cheryl’s words were soft, but the huge empty room made them perfectly audible.

  Tessa turned that over in her mind a bit. Cheryl had held the same job for as long as she could remember. When she’d found out her mother was a reaper, it had taken Tessa a few days to come to grips with the idea. Before that, she hadn’t even believed in an afterlife, spirits, or magic in any way.