by Tonya Kappes
“If I’m not at Eternal Slumber when you drop off the bagels, just stick them in the fridge.” It wasn’t like I needed to be there. The funeral home was always unlocked during the day. After all, it was a business.
The one good thing when Charlotte was there was that she was there all the time. With only me, it was hard to be there and do all the other things that needed to be done for funerals. Now I had this ghost issue on my plate, which was of the utmost importance to me right now.
I took some time eating my doughnut while driving out of town toward Hardgrove’s. I wanted a little distance between me and Sleepy Hollow before I called Jack Henry back because if he knew where I was going, he’d try to stop me.
“What’s going on?” I asked Jack when he answered.
“Nothing,” Jack Henry said in a flat voice. “Are you sure that you are seeing her?”
“Really?” I asked. “You’re questioning me?”
“It just seems weird that no one has reported her missing from work.” Jack had a good point but it was exactly why I was going to Hardgrove’s.
“Glad you brought that up. I’m on my way to Hardgrove’s as we speak.” The hearse hugged the curves of the back roads between Sleepy Hollow and Lexington.
“Turn around right now,” Jack ordered me. “If there is something going on, let the police handle it.”
“No.” The nerve of him. “There was something that went on and Charlotte is right here. I’m going to find her body and get this investigation done.”
It occurred to me that I had no idea how Charlotte had died. Everything I uncovered was going to be out of pure luck. The only place I knew to start was her office where I’d last left her and her words, One minute I was at Hardgrove’s with you and now I’m here.
If Hardgrove’s was the last place she remembered being, then that was my starting point.
“I even had a buddy from the Lexington force head over to Charlotte’s apartment and he said there was no one home. Her car wasn’t in the parking lot either.” Jack was good about doing his due diligence.
My only problem was he knew she wasn’t going to answer the door.
“Of course she didn’t answer. She’s dead!” Frustrated, I yelled into the phone. “You know what.” I let out a deep sigh. “I’ve got to go.”
“Emma, don’t get mad.” Jack’s voice softened. “I know this situation is a little too close to home.”
“Too close?” I asked. “It is close. It is home. You can’t get much closer than your own flesh and blood. Oh, but you don’t have a sibling,” I growled. “You only have your mommy and daddy,” I said in a baby voice.
His mommy and daddy were a hot button topic with us. At least that was what I called them because they still treated him like he was two years old.
Or I might’ve been a little sensitive because his mother did everything in her power to keep us apart. Even turned in his application to the Kentucky State Police Department, where he would have had to move away from Sleepy Hollow and from me. Her plan.
“Don’t go bringing my parents into this,” he warned. “You know they like you.”
Jack had always wanted to work his way up into the ranks of the state police and beyond. It was true that Jack didn’t apply because he knew he’d have to move away from me and there was no way in hell I was moving away from Sleepy Hollow.
Some folks I grew up with couldn’t wait to get out of our little town, while I just sat back and enjoyed the slow-paced life. Since I’d become a Betweener life had picked up a bit.
“Emma, you are stressed. The best thing for you to do is to go back to Eternal Slumber and make sure Sissy’s funeral is ready. Let me get my buddy to go to Hardgrove’s and check it out.” Jack was always the voice of reason, but I didn’t want to hear reason.
I was hankering for an argument. I was mad. Real mad. Angry, in fact. And I had to take it out on someone.
“Did you tell your buddy that I’m crazy and see dead people?” My gift had become my curse and was proving that my high school nickname might just be true. Creepy Funeral Girl.
“Don’t be ridiculous.” Jack Henry sounded fed up. He sighed deeply into the phone. “I’m not going to pick a fight with you. You are overly sensitive for good reason. All I’m asking is that you turn around and let my buddy from the Lexington PD go over there and see what he finds.”
“Okay.” I crossed my fingers and held on to the wheel, pushing the pedal to the floor even more.
“Okay?” Jack asked with a surprised tone. “Good. I’ll see you at Sissy’s funeral unless my buddy digs up something.” He let a moment of silence pass before he said, “I love you, Emma Lee.”
“Love you too.” I threw the phone in the seat between me and Charlotte Rae.
When I said “love you too,” he knew that was me saying it because I was mad. When I said “I love you,” he knew I meant it from the bottom of my heart. No matter how much he made sense, there was no way I was going to turn around when I was almost there.
“That didn’t sound so good.” Charlotte drummed her long fingernails on the passenger door.
“Here is the thing with me and Jack Henry.” It was kind of nice being able to have girl talk with my sister about my relationship with Jack. Before she never had time to listen and didn’t want to. “We are great as boyfriend and girlfriend. He has the best manners in the world.”
“I feel a but.” Charlotte beat me to the next part of the story.
“But . . .” I took a deep breath and turned into Hardgrove’s driveway. The big fountain spouted water and the swans were happily swimming around and around. “I’m a Betweener and he is a cop, so it clashes. He likes how I can give him the clues he needs to solve the murders, only he wants me to stay away from following the clues.”
“Oh.” Charlotte’s brows lifted. She stopped drumming her fingernails and crossed her arms across her chest.
“Yeah.” Not the reassuring advice I wanted my big sister to give me, but Granny didn’t perfect her sweet tea in a day. “Of course I can’t do that. When I have a Betweener client who has a clue or I stumble upon one, I’m going to investigate to see the validity of the clue before I hand it over to him.”
“Like me,” Charlotte said with a helpless wave of her hand.
For a split second, I’d forgotten Charlotte was a client, making my heart drop again.
“The issue with you is that I don’t know where your physical body is located.” The thought of my sister’s lifeless body somewhere put a knot in my throat. I swallowed, hard. “I want to find you. Put finding the killer aside. I want to find my sister.”
“He thinks it’s part of the crime.” She looked out the window at the Legacy Center. Her car was still there parked in the parking space that had a metal sign cemented in the driveway with her name printed on it. “Because I’m sure he’s right.”
“Of course you would take up for him.” I rolled my eyes.
“No, I’ve watched a lot of crime TV shows and where there is a body, there is usually evidence,” she boasted with pride in her voice.
This was when ghost Charlotte sounded exactly like mortal Charlotte.
I turned in my seat and looked at her. I said in a matter-of-fact kind of way, “You are my sister.” I turned back around with my keys and phone in my hand ready to get out. “Oh my God!” I screamed and planted my hand on my heart when I noticed Arley Burgin’s face planted on my driver’s side window.
“Golly. You all right, Miss Emma?” he asked when he opened my door. Even though he had a crooked smile, his gray eyes drooped underneath his shaggy blond hair. He scratched his wispy goatee. “What you doing here?”
“I stopped by to see my sister.” I smiled and locked the hearse door behind me. “I heard you don’t think too much of her.”
“That big-mouth John Howard.” Arley had an aw-shucks look on his face. In a swift move, he scuffed the bottom of his shoe on the pavement. “I guess you gonna tell her.”
Ch
arlotte Rae stomped over in her fancy high-heeled shoes. She jabbed her fists on her thin hips and leaned into Arley’s face.
“I gave you a job, you ungrateful little . . .” At that moment, Charlotte reminded me of one of those cartoon characters we used to watch when we were kids on Saturday morning when they had fumes coming out of their ears, only Charlotte was much prettier.
“Of course I won’t tell her.” I smiled.
“He’s so ungrateful.” Charlotte’s perfectly pouty lips thinned in anger. She stuck her finger in his face. “Are you the sonofabitch that killed me?”
I laughed.
“Are you sure you’re all right?” he asked.
“Oh, I’m fine.” It was funny how Charlotte assumed Arley was a suspect. Rookie. “I’ll see you later.”
“Okay, Miss Emma.” He moved out of the way and I stepped around him. “Miss Emma?” He stopped me. “Are you still okay with me being on the Eternal Slumber softball team?”
“Heck yeah.” I smiled.
“Thanks.” He took the hat off his head and held it to his chest. “You never know when someone finds out that their people have been talked about. I sure didn’t mean for it to get back to ya.”
By people, I knew he meant family.
“Don’t worry about it.” I waved it off and headed on into Hardgrove’s. It wasn’t like what he said wasn’t true. I knew firsthand that she was a pill to work with.
The glass doors slid open and the receptionist was sitting behind the desk, talking into her headset. She didn’t have the old push-button desk phone I had. She held up a hand when I tried to walk back to Charlotte’s office.
I waited patiently until she took down some information for yet another wedding client.
“Can I help you?” She curled her hand over her microphone in front of her mouth. Her brows rose.
“I’m here to see my sister.” I gestured down the hall toward Charlotte’s office.
“I’m sorry, she’s gone on vacation. You’ll have to come back when she gets here.” The woman hit another button and answered the other line.
“Hell, I hope I went somewhere warm and sunny.” Charlotte Rae cackled. She leaned on her elbow up against the receptionist’s desk and drummed her long fingernails on top.
“That’s weird,” I interrupted the woman. My head tilted to the side, my brows furrowed. A little sarcastic tone came out of my mouth. “She never said anything to me and Granny about going on vacation.” I straightened up and shrugged. “I just need to get my paperwork I left for her.”
I began to walk past the receptionist’s desk.
“Oh,” Charlotte tsked. “She’s not going to like that,” Charlotte warned.
“Whoa! Whoa!” The word came out very loud and very clear. “I said whoa! Whoa!”
I picked up the pace when I heard the wheels on her rolling desk chair squeak. She was coming for me. Picking up the pace, I took off in a dead sprint down the hall until I slipped into Charlotte’s office and locked the door behind me.
“Whoa! Whoa!” The girl beat on the door. Suddenly Yosemite Sam from the childhood cartoon popped in my head. The one where he was riding that camel, bouncing up and down and yelling whoa until the camel finally threw him off and Yosemite Sam cracked the animal on the head with his shotgun. Thank God the woman didn’t have a shotgun.
“Oh my God!” There was pleasure in Charlotte’s voice from the other side of the door. “She’s using her flat palm to bang on the door.”
“You better open the door or I’m calling the police!” The woman shrieked; the banging was becoming faster and louder.
“She will.” Charlotte ghosted herself next to the desk where I was rummaging around the top of it.
“So.” I didn’t pay the woman’s threat much attention.
“So?” Charlotte questioned. “But you will go to jail.”
Phew. I rolled my eyes. “This is part of the Betweener gig.” I shuffled the files around her desk trying to see if anything popped out at me. Charlotte’s calendar was sitting on top. I scanned down it to see who she had appointments with. “I have to get in here and see if there are any clues.”
“I’m here. I’m dead. What other clues do you need?” she asked sharply.
“Oh, I don’t know, maybe clues about who killed you.” I looked up and took my phone out of my back pocket.
“Oh.” She had a perplexed look on her face. “Now what are you doing?”
“I’m taking a photo of your calendar so I can visit these people.” I clicked away, turning the pages. There was no time to analyze the appointments because the distant sound of sirens echoed. That damn receptionist kept her word. “Where are your files?”
“In there.” She pointed to a credenza on the other side of her office.
I hurried over, trying to beat the sirens coming closer and closer. With my phone in my hand, I used my thumb to go down the photos of her calendar while my other hand pulled out the client files. My ears perked when I heard a car door slam outside. I stood up; my eyes darted back and forth between the door and the window.
“I told her not to go in there!” The woman’s shrill voice was faint from the other side of the office door.
I grabbed the files and hurried over to the window. I set the files on the windowsill and looked out. Charlotte’s office was facing the fountain. I opened the window and looked down. There were bushes under her window, so I threw the files out next to them.
The hearse was parked pretty close to Charlotte’s window and I looked to judge the distance, wondering if I could just jump out the window, grab the files and run to the hearse.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” Arley appeared next to the bushes. He had a metal rake in his hands. His eyes drew down to the files scattered on the ground around his feet.
“Arley.” I was never so glad to see him. “I need you to grab those files and stick them under my car tires.”
His eyes lowered and he paused a second.
“Open up!” The police officer’s voice boomed behind the locked door in a demanding voice.
“Please.” I wasn’t beyond begging or bribing. “I’ll buy all new equipment for the softball team this year.”
Arley dropped the rake and gathered the files. I didn’t wait by the window to see if he did what I asked. I just put the window down and went to the door.
“Can I help you?” I asked and ducked as a police baton swung a little too close to my head.
“Sorry.” The young officer’s face popped open in surprise as he put the baton back on his belt. “I was going to knock again.”
“That’s her! Arrest her for trespassing!” The receptionist pouted and stomped.
“Ma’am, I understand that you are not an employee here and not”—he paused, looked past me and read the nameplate on the door—“Charlotte Raines.”
His deep brown eyes slid back to me. They were barely visible underneath his blue police hat.
“No, that would be my sister.” I let out a deep sigh.
“Tell him you are here for the file in the top drawer with your name on it.” Charlotte appeared next to me.
“I’m here to get the file my sister left for me with my name on it in the top drawer.” I pointed behind me. God, I hoped there was a file in that top drawer with my name on it. My heart thumped. My palms were sweating.
“Are you really going to go in there and look?” the receptionist cried from the door when the officer walked into the office.
“Do you smell him?” Charlotte’s face lit up. “He’s dreamy.”
Charlotte stood next to him with her eyes closed and breathing deeply the scent of the man. She was right. He did smell good.
“What is going on here?” Gina Marie Hardgrove stood behind the receptionist. Her beady eyes snapped at me.
“That woman trespassed, locked the door and did God knows what in here while I told her that Ms. Raines was on vacation. So I called the police.” The woman’s chin lifted up and then down.
>
“Officer.” Gina walked in; she didn’t bother looking at me. She simply folded her hands in front of her body, the big diamond ring glistening. “I’m sure my receptionist overreacted.” She lifted her arm and curled her hand around mine, giving it a good, tight squeeze that was enough for me to know she wasn’t pleased, but gentle enough for me not to scream. “Emma Lee and I have been friends a long time. I’m sure there’s a reasonable explanation for her behavior.” She dropped her hand. “In fact, Emma is sick.” She curled her nose and looked at me. “Isn’t that right, Emma?”
The officer’s hand was on the drawer. My eyes begged him to open it. I really wanted to know if there was a file in there for me and if the file was her signature on a duplicate contract since she ripped up the other one.
It would be just like Charlotte to be dramatic and rip up a contract when she knew there was another one in her desk.
“She takes medicine for the ‘Funeral Trauma.’” Gina Marie Hardgrove did something that made me want to deck her right there. She circled her forefinger around her ear like I was crazy.
“Yes. I’m Emma Lee Raines, Charlotte’s sister.” I held my head high. “I do have ‘Funeral Trauma.’”
I guess acting crazy in order not to get arrested was my best bet when Gina Marie was giving me a pass on trespassing. Or she knew I was there because Charlotte was dead and she wanted to see what I knew.
“Well.” The officer dropped his hand from the drawer handle and my heart sank into my toes. Grief and despair tore me up inside. I couldn’t help but hope there was a file in there with my name. “If the two of you can work this out, it would be best.”
“Yes, officer.” Gina nodded. “Isn’t that right, Emma?”
“Yes,” I whispered, wanting to protest, but it was best to keep my mouth shut.
“You don’t have ‘Funeral Trauma’!” Charlotte screamed. “Tell them! Tell them!”
Silently I stood as the officer walked out of Charlotte’s office. The receptionist huffed off, leaving me there with Gina Marie.
When the coast was clear, Gina took the moment.
“So you thought you could come in here while your sister is on vacation and see if you can take some of her clients like you broke into Burns and took their clients?” Gina’s hands were planted on her hips.