Varnished without a Trace

by Misty Simon

  Dad looked off into the distance. “No. There are a few things I’ll have to do, but I’ll be careful.”

  “And what are you going to do while your father works on this part of the puzzle?” Burton asked me.

  An idea hit me like a bolt of lightning and I smiled. “I’m going to call around regarding a missing corpse as an official Graver Funeral Home assistant.”

  He nodded. “Let me know what you find out, and if you hear anything about the actual Hoagie. I really want to talk to him now. We also can’t forget Ronda. Someone is out killing people or setting up staged pseudo-murders. This can’t continue.”

  Nathan flinched, and I just caught it out of the corner of my eye. Why? I’d put Max on talking to him to see what we came up with collectively. In the meantime, I had research to do, facts to check and calls to make.

  Chances were, someone would say something near me like they always did. I often thought I either had a tattoo on my forehead that said, “talk to me,” or I was so invisible that no one realized I was around when they were divulging their secrets. Either way, I’d been able to help Burton a number of times with recent cases. We hadn’t had one since he and I had started talking at the coffee shop about those podcasts I listened to like a junkie, so I’d be interested to see how this worked, now that we were on more friendly terms.

  I stayed long enough for Jeremy to come over with the body transport van. The EMTs were no longer needed, but they took their time loading up their gear, patting the dead man’s arm and shaking their heads.

  What the heck was going on? Hoagie had been a standard in this town for as long as I could remember. He was a town fixture, and everyone knew him and loved him for the generous and fun guy he was. Maybe we’d all been wrong, but I was having a hard time wrapping my head around that. But who else would have done this and why?

  Jeremy pulled away from the back of the hardware store with my dad in the front seat, apparently ready to do what he did best. And now it was time for me to do the same thing.

  “I can practically see all the little gears in your mind switching on and steam coming out of your ears.” Burton looked up from his little notebook with his face solemn.

  I bit my lip. “I was just thinking that this time I can legitimately help, and do it in a way that won’t make you angry with me.”

  Burton sighed again, and I felt like we might need to teach him to breathe normally again after this was all over. “I was never mad at you.”

  I snorted.

  “Okay, yes,” he admitted, “I wanted you to butt out and leave me to do my job, but many concerned citizens have given us tips throughout many investigations. It was never the info you gave me. It was how you got it, and how you went about giving it to me. Look, if you think you can find out where that body came from, and why it looks so much like our missing Hoagie, I’m certainly not going to turn you away. But don’t take too many risks, and don’t go getting yourself in trouble.”

  “I can’t make any promises.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m used to that, so I’m not holding my breath, but two bodies in three days and another two fires means that we have got to get this thing figured out. If you can help, then, honestly, I’m not going to turn you away this time. Bring it on.”

  Well, then, an official invitation. I wasn’t sure if I really wanted to do this, but it looked like I was at least going to be involved in this particular part. At least I didn’t have to be in the basement with my dad and Jeremy, pulling apart a man who was already dead—and one we didn’t know.

  Chapter Ten

  Digging the directory out of the bottom drawer of the rarely used desk in the second-floor office of the funeral home, I bit my lip as I tried to come up with a game plan. I couldn’t exactly call up every local funeral home to ask if they were missing a body.

  But what to do first? I tapped the eraser of my number two pencil on the blotter atop the desk, wishing inspiration would come to me.

  I pushed the chair back from the desk and spun around in it, thinking that maybe scrambling my brain might help.

  And surprisingly, it did. I ground to a halt facing the back wall and saw the funeral director league of extraordinary people. Well, it was actually an association, like the bar association for lawyers or the screen actors guild. But would they be open the day after Christmas? It couldn’t hurt to try. I was having a hard time believing it was only the twenty-sixth because so much had happened between opening presents and now.

  Placing a call to the National Funeral Directors Association, I waited for the answering service to pick up and got a person instead.

  “Oh, uh, hi.” That was not quite how I wanted to start the conversation, but the woman had caught me off guard.

  “Yes, what can I do for you?” the woman on the line said impatiently.

  I really should have planned better for this before pressing the numbers. Dang it!

  “Uh, I have a strange question.”

  “Doesn’t everyone.”

  “It has to do with dead bodies.” I sounded dumber with each thing I uttered, so I took a deep breath and prepared to start again.

  The woman sighed. “Look, I’ve had it up to here today with weird requests. All the crazies seem to be finding our number fascinating. So if you want to know about necrophilia, or how to dissolve a corpse, then there must be a full moon because I have fielded twenty questions like that since this morning. Go ahead and hang up, because I’m not telling you anything. Look it up on the internet if you’re that fascinated with death. I don’t have time. Bye.”

  “Wait! Don’t hang up, please.”

  Another sigh shot over the line. What was it with me eliciting sighs today? “At least wow me with the idiocy of your question.”

  I paused, but not for long. I didn’t want her to think I’d hung up. “Hmm, I could come up with something that would knock you back on your heels, but instead I’d like to start over. I apologize for not introducing myself. I was expecting to get the answering service because it’s the holiday week. My name is Tallie Graver, and I’m part of Graver Funeral Home in Pennsylvania.”

  Nothing; no sigh, no groan. But then she squeaked and cleared her throat. “Ms. Graver, my deepest apologies for my earlier words. It has been quite the day already, but that’s no excuse for my insolence and ignorant remarks to you.” I heard clicking and wondered if she was writing an email or searching for our website to see who she was dealing with.

  I could tell her that without her having to do the dirty work.

  “No need to apologize, and it’s not that big a deal. I’m sure you get some real crazies calling. I admire your ability to do your job and would probably have done the same thing. In fact, I once had someone call about how to effectively dig up a grave so they could take the jewelry from the corpse. I told her that the only way the person wouldn’t haunt her was if she used a teaspoon to remove the six feet of dirt. If she used a shovel, she would be visited nightly for the rest of her life.”

  A burst of laughter was a step in the right direction. “And did she listen to you?”

  “I doubt it. My cousin never takes my advice, and it’s very much to her detriment.”

  Another laugh. “Oh, I needed that. Thank you, and I am sorry about how I answered the phone. Thanks for understanding.”

  “No worries. We all have crappy days. I won’t take up much more of yours, though. I was wondering if there’s been any kind of bulletin about a missing body in the state. We found a male leaned up against a wall and he was not someone we had taken care of, so we’re wondering if perhaps another funeral home reported a case of a missing person?” Or should I have said body? I wasn’t sure what the right terminology for this particular situation was.

  “Missing person, as in someone missing a body at a funeral home?” More tapping. “I’m checking now, but that’s not something we normally hear about.” More tapping had me waiting patiently because I didn’t want to interrupt her concentration. I really, really hoped
she was going to come back with something useful.

  “Interesting. I do see something here; let me read it. Can I put you on hold?”

  I would rather she didn’t, but I couldn’t exactly say that when she was helping me.

  I agreed and then listened to Muzak for a while. Christmas carols played through the line. Some I knew right off and some the arrangement was so weird that I didn’t know what it was until it came to the chorus. I hummed along to the ones I vaguely recognized and sang the ones I knew the words for. I was in mid-“Winter Wonderland” when she came back on.

  “Oh, that’s one of my favorite songs. Are they still playing those?”

  Thankfully, she couldn’t see me flush. “Ah, yes.”

  “I really like the one by Annie Lennox.”

  “Oh, me too.”

  “Don’t get me started on all those reboots of “Last Christmas,” though; no one does it like George Michael.”

  “I’m with you on that. He did the best.”

  She laughed. “But you didn’t call to talk Christmas music. I had to look you up on the computer to make sure I wasn’t giving information to someone who wasn’t attached to a funeral home. I see that you’re with your father?”

  Thank goodness he had put me on the website, although I guess I could have just pulled a name from anywhere and given it to her. I wasn’t going to bring that up, though, if she didn’t have a mind that constantly doubted what she was told.

  “Yes, I have been for a couple of years now.”

  “Had you always wanted to follow in his footsteps?”

  Absolutely not, and that was not why I’d called, but I needed to humor her if I wanted that information. “I work there part-time and also clean houses.”

  “A little variety is the spice of life. I couldn’t imagine working with the dead all the time. I much prefer paperwork.” She paused, but I didn’t hear any clicking this time, so I wasn’t sure what the holdup was. “Anyway, sorry, I didn’t mean to talk your ear off.”

  “No, it’s okay. Were you able to find anything?”

  “Yes, in the bulletin news, we have someone from West Virginia who had a corpse as of the day before Christmas and now it’s missing. The building was locked. He’s frantic to find it because the family is well-connected with the horse set and he’s just starting out. He doesn’t want to have his reputation ruined before he gets started and would appreciate any info anyone could give him.”

  My heart beat faster. “Can you give me his info so I can call to see if this is the right guy?”

  “Of course.” She rattled off a phone number and his name, along with his website.

  “I can’t thank you enough,” I said.

  “Please, you cut my crappy day in half. I should be thanking you. I think I might turn the phones onto the answering service and take myself out for lunch.”

  “If you can get a cheesesteak, I would highly recommend it.”

  “Honey, this is Georgia. I’m going for barbecue.”

  I laughed. “Enjoy, then, and thanks again”

  “My pleasure. Good luck with everything.”

  Why did I feel like I might need it?

  Once I disconnected, I wrote out a list of questions for this next call so I didn’t get caught off guard like before. I had to be honest with myself, though: I wasn’t sure exactly how to ask about a missing body without sounding suspicious. I’d just hope that something would come to me. Not that it had ever worked out well for me by doing that before, but hey, there could always be a first time.

  The phone rang six times, and I was sure I was going to get voice mail this time, but then a man who sounded out of breath gasped a hello.

  “Hi, this is Tallie Graver from Graver Funeral Home in Pennsylvania.”

  “Okay. I run my own funeral home, so I don’t think I need whatever you might be selling. And I have a body that just fell off the table, so I should go.”

  “Wait, I have a question about the body that’s missing from your home.”

  “Oh God, not another one. I should never have posted that on the bulletin board. Look, I don’t know what happened to it and, quite frankly, with the widow missing now, and not paying for the funeral, or the embalming, I can’t be bothered. And I have to get this body off the floor. His jaw just fell off.”

  Let him go or ask for a name? I decided to go for it because this guy did not sound like he was qualified to do anything really. “Can you at least tell me who is missing?”

  “Jerry Howard. Seventy. Dead of natural causes. Wife is Wanda, and I don’t know where she is either, though at least she wasn’t in my care. I had to fire three people this week, and everyone keeps dying. Now can I go? The hose just slipped out and is starting to whip around the room, and I’m getting sprayed standing here.”

  I gulped. “Sure. Thanks for the information, I guess.”

  “Yeah, well, don’t call back unless you have someone who knows what they’re doing to share with me. I have my hands full. Literally.” He grunted, and then the connection went dead.

  I didn’t need the vivid picture in my mind of what all he’d said was going on. I valued my father and my brother very much for a moment, because as far as I knew, we’d never had anything like that happen. Of course there were accidents, but a body falling off the table? A hose running rampant? Another missing body? What was this guy doing and how did he ever get a license?

  Right now, that was not my concern. It was finding Jerry Howard and seeing if it was the same man as the one my father currently had in the basement. Once I did that, I had to find out why he looked so much like Hoagie and why he was here instead of in West Virginia. And perhaps, with all that information, it would also help me start to look into Ronda’s murder. I felt like she was getting left on the back burner, but with everything that was going on, I only had so much time. I would get to her once I did all the other tasks on my to-do list.

  A tall order, but one I was sure I could fill if I could just get a few snickerdoodles and talk with Gina to run a few things by her. I went out while my computer did a bunch of updates I didn’t understand or care about as long as it was working when I came back.

  I expected big things. Once I was properly nourished of course.

  Chapter Eleven

  Of course running anything by Gina was mainly an excuse to get a whoopee pie latte to go along with the snickerdoodles I planned to snatch once I got back home.

  “Do we know anyone named Howard?” I asked after I’d been served a to-go cup. Gina didn’t look happy about me not hanging out, but I had things to do and she did too judging from the big crowd in the café. Mama Shirley was handling gift cards with the precision of a soldier while I stole Gina for just a moment.

  “First name or last?” she asked, wiping the same spot on the counter over and over again, just in case her mom looked over.

  “Last name. I have a lead on something, but I need to know if we have any Howards in town.”

  She looked at the ceiling as if the tiles up there might answer her question. “Not that I know of. There are Howards in Harrisburg, but I don’t know of anyone here in town.”

  “Okay.” I got up from my seat.

  “Wait, you can’t leave it like that. Why do you ask?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it too much until I know more. But has your mom filled you in on what happened earlier?” I asked Gina.

  “She mentioned the fire down the street and the fact that there was a body. I was waiting for you to come in so I could get the rest of the scoop.”

  I lowered my voice. “Well, that corpse today might have had the last name Howard, and I’m just trying to figure out why he’d be here when he was in West Virginia until the day before Christmas.”

  Gina leaned forward on her elbow and dropped her voice to match mine. We probably looked like a couple of teenage gossip girls. “I heard he was a doppelgänger for Hoagie, except for the mole and the fact that the eyes were blue instead of deep brown.”

/>   “Yes, but why is what I want to know. And if he was already dead and embalmed, why was he here and how did he get here?”

  “I don’t know, but I look forward to what you come up with.”

  “Yeah, me too, though I don’t know what that might be. Can you ask your mom to see how Hoagie is related to us? I just want to see if there’s a branch of the tree I don’t know about.”

  When I got back to the house, Max was there, puttering around the kitchen. I had a ton of room now, so I got out of his way while he made us a late dinner from all the leftovers my mom had sent us home with.

  “What’s up?” he asked, wiping his hands on his apron. It told me to “Kiss the Cook,” so I did before I moved my laptop to the living room and rebooted.

  “I have a line on the missing corpse, but I don’t know what it means.”

  “That’s some quick work.”

  “It was awkward work, and I really hope it pays off. Now shoo while I look up a few things, and then I promise to put it all aside while we eat dinner.”

  He laughed as he went back to the counter, where he had various containers laid out, and started assembling plates.

  “No cranberry sauce,” I called out.

  “Yes, I’m aware of that, even if your mom hasn’t gotten the clue yet.”

  Smiling, I pulled open my browser and typed in the parameters I had—Jerry Howard, West Virginia, death.

  I had to refine it because there were quite a few Jerry Howards and many deaths over the course of the years. I wished I had asked the owner of the funeral home where he’d died or when, but I wasn’t going to call him back. Instead, I pulled up newspaper articles and obituaries.

  And found him.

  I crowed as I watched his picture load on my monumentally slow laptop. I had him, and in life he looked even more like Hoagie. The resemblance really was uncanny. But why?

  Reading over the obituary gave me nothing, but I still felt like I’d done some solid work.

  I let Max know I’d be right back and then ran down three flights of stairs to give my dad the info and then called Burton with my dad standing over poor Jerry.